During all these proceedings, in spite of the President's professions, the Treasury Department was beset by subtle hostile influences and impediments. The politicians who had the President's ear made him believe that it was the ruin of himself and his household that the investigators sought. Only the enthusiastic popular approval of Secretary Bristow's brave course prevented yielding to the political backers of the corruption. When in the spring of 1876 Bristow initiated a similar campaign against the corruptions rife on the Pacific coast, the Secretary was overruled and the government prosecutors were recalled. Whereupon the Secretary resigned, and no less than seven high Treasury officials, who had been active in the crusade of reform, left the department at the same time. Mr. Bristow was succeeded by an honorable man,—the President had to appoint a man known to be pure,—Lot M. Morrill, of Maine; but he was infirm, and all aggressive reform work ceased.
In the War Department, Secretary Belknap, sustained by the President, stripped General Sherman of the rights and duties properly pertaining to his rank, of which Grant himself, in the same place during Johnson's administration, had protested against being deprived. Sherman was subjected to such humiliations by his old commander, turned politician, that he abandoned Washington and retired to St. Louis. Congress was a subservient participator in this shame, repealing the law that required all orders to the army to go through its general. But in February, 1876, it was discovered that Belknap had been enriching himself by corrupt partnership with contractors in his department, and he hurriedly resigned, the President strangely accepting the resignation before Congress could act. He was impeached, notwithstanding. He set up the defense that being no longer an official, he could not be impeached, and this being overruled, he was tried, but was not convicted. Of his guilt the country had no doubt. Then Alphonso Taft, an Ohio judge, was made Secretary of War. He was soon transferred to the Attorney-General's office, and was succeeded by Don Cameron, already his father's lieutenant in control of the Republican party of Pennsylvania.
Columbus Delano, Secretary of the Interior, had so mismanaged affairs, especially in the Indian Bureau, which teemed with flagrant abuses, that public opinion turned against him with great force, and in 1875 he had to abandon the office, in which he was succeeded by Zachariah Chandler, against whom no scandalous charge was made, although he was a rank partisan of the President.
Marshall Jewell, of Connecticut, became Postmaster-General in 1874. He was a successful business man, and on taking the office he declared his purpose to conduct it on business principles. He attacked effectively a system long in vogue known as "straw-bids" for mail-carrying contracts. He introduced the railway post-office system, that has been of so much use in facilitating promptness of transmitting correspondence. But he also insisted on conducting his office with respect of its personnel as a business man would, that is, by making appointments and promotions for merit rather than for political influence. This was intolerable to the spoilsmen in politics; and within two years he was summarily dismissed in a manner as graceless and cruel as any President, no matter how unfortunately bred, was ever guilty of. Jewell was succeeded by James N. Tyner, an entirely complaisant official. In 1875 Congress neglected to make any appropriation for the civil service reform commission, and its work was suspended.
During this time affairs in the Southern States were, as a rule, growing worse and worse. The unreasonable arrogance and oppressive extravagance of the freedmen where they were in control, under the leadership of reckless carpet-baggers, and still more reckless and malicious white natives, had produced a revulsion in the minds of all at the North who regarded justice, honor, and honesty as essentials of good government. There were exceptions, like oases in the desert of ignorance and vice. The administration of Governor Chamberlain in South Carolina was an instance of an earnest and partially successful endeavor to educe good government from desperate conditions. The colored race abused its privilege of the ballot with suicidal persistency. The experiment of maintaining bad State governments by the presence and activity of federal troops did not tend to social pacification. Reconstruction in its earlier fruits was an obvious failure; and again, if the apparent paradox can be understood, lawless violence began asserting itself as the only hopeful means of preserving property, civil rights, and civilization itself.
During the second term the report was persistently circulated that Grant and those who followed his star were scheming for another term, in order to give him in civil office, as in military rank, a distinction higher than Washington or any American had obtained. The proposal shocked the public sense of propriety; but its treatment by those who alone could repudiate it became ominous. The Republican State Convention of 1875 in Pennsylvania boldly declared unalterable opposition to the third-term idea. Grant then spoke. In a letter to the convention's chairman he said: "Now, for the third term, I do not want it any more than I did the first." After calling attention to the fact that the Constitution did not forbid a third term, and that an occasion might arise when a third term might be wisely given, he said that he was not a candidate for a third nomination, and "would not accept it, if tendered, unless under such circumstances as to make it an imperative duty—circumstances not likely to arise."
This was justly regarded as a politician's letter, and increased alarm instead of allaying it. The national House of Representatives (which the elections of 1874 had made a Democratic body), by a vote of 234 to 18, passed the following resolution: "That in the opinion of this House the precedent, established by Washington and other Presidents of the United States after their second term, has become, by universal consent, a part of our republican system of government, and that any departure from this time-honored custom would be unwise, unpatriotic, and fraught with peril to our free institutions." As 70 Republicans voted for this resolution, it was practically the voice of both parties, and it dispelled the spectre of "Cæsarism," as the third-term idea was called. There is reason to believe that if it had caused less alarm it would have assumed a more substantial aspect.
During the excited and perilous four months after the election of 1876, when civil war and anarchy were imminent on account of the disputed result of the people's suffrage, the conduct of the President was admirable. He let it be understood that violence would be suppressed, without hesitation, at any cost. He preserved the status quo, and compelled peaceful patience. The condition was one which summoned into action his genius of supreme command, and it shone with its former splendor of authority. On the 4th of March, 1877, he became a private citizen.