The storm of criticism and calumny through which President Grant passed during the election canvass of 1872 had no effect to change his general course or open his eyes to the true sentiment of the nation. Instead of realizing that he was reËlected, not because his administration was approved, but because circumstances prevented an effective combination of the various elements of sincere opposition, he and his friends accepted the result as popular approbation of their past conduct and warrant for its continuance. Things went from bad to worse with a pell-mell rapidity that made good men shudder.

In the four years there were but two exhibitions of conspicuously courageous and honorable statesmanship. One was the passage of the Resumption Act of January 14, 1875, which promised the resumption of specie payments on January 1, 1879, and gave the Secretary of the Treasury adequate power to make the performance of the promise possible. This was one result of the collapse in 1873 of the enormous speculation promoted by a fluctuating currency and fictitious values. The demand for a currency of stable value enabled the conservative statesmen in Congress to take this action. Grant's approval of this act and his veto in the previous year of the "inflation bill" must always be regarded as highly commendable public services.

The only immediate change in the cabinet was the appointment of William A. Richardson to succeed George S. Boutwell as Secretary of the Treasury. Mr. Richardson had some qualifications of experience for the place, but wanted the essential traits of firmness and high motive. In the next year after taking office he was forced to resign, on account of a report of the committee of ways and means condemning him for his part in making a contract, while acting Secretary of the Treasury, with one Sanborn, for collecting for the Treasury, on shares, taxes which it was the business of regular officers of the government to collect. Immense power was given by the contract, and the resources of the Treasury Department were put at the service of a crew of irresponsible inquisitors before whom the business community trembled. They extorted immense sums in dishonorable ways which aroused popular resentment. The President saw no wrong, and accepted Secretary Richardson's resignation unwillingly, at once nominating him to be Chief Justice of the Court of Claims, a reward for malfeasance which amazed the country, although the administration supporters in the Senate confirmed it.

General Benjamin H. Bristow, of Kentucky, became Secretary of the Treasury, a man of superior ability, aggressive honesty, and moral firmness. He quickly uncovered a mass of various wrongdoing,—the safe-burglary frauds of the corrupt ring governing Washington, the seal-lock frauds, the subsidy frauds, and, most formidable of all, the frauds of the powerful whiskey ring having headquarters in St. Louis. The administration of the Treasury Department, especially the Internal Revenue Bureau, was permeated with corruption. The worst feature of it all was that officers who desired to be upright found themselves powerless against the intrigues and the potent political influence of the rascals at the headquarters of executive authority. When the evidence of wrongdoing accumulated by the new Secretary of the Treasury was laid before the President he was dumfounded by its wickedness and extent, but showed himself resolute and vigorous in supporting his able and resourceful Secretary. The trap was sprung in May, 1875. Indictments were found against 150 private citizens and 86 government officers, among the latter the chief clerk in the Treasury Department, and the President's private secretary, General O. E. Babcock. All the principal defendants were convicted except Babcock, and he was dismissed by the President.

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.