by Ron Chernow
In early March 1876, a House committee, headed by Hiester Clymer of Pennsylvania, pieced together evidence that Belknap had taken hefty payments for an Indian trading post and prepared to release a report recommending his impeachment. A Democrat and a confirmed racist—one of his campaign posters proclaimed “CLYMER’S platform is for the White Man”—he was eager to discredit Reconstruction and savaging the war secretary was a handy way to do so.8 Not masking his hatred for Grant, Clymer declaimed against “the corruption, the extravagance, the misgovernment which has cursed this land for years past.”9 At 10 a.m. on March 2, Belknap, knowing the congressional committee would present its critical report that afternoon, rushed to the White House in an unholy panic to tender his resignation. Rumors even made the rounds on Capitol Hill that Belknap had shot himself.
At breakfast, Bristow had tipped off Grant that Congress had gathered incriminating evidence on Belknap, which came as a complete surprise to him. He was distracted by the Orville Babcock case and blindsided by the sudden appearance of this new scandal. According to Julia Grant, he was heading out to have his portrait painted when a White House steward informed him that Belknap and Secretary of the Interior Zachariah Chandler wished to see him in the Red Room. “I cannot now,” Grant said, “but will when I return.” “Oh, Mr. President, do see [Mr. Belknap] before you go,” the steward urged. “He is in some trouble and looks very ill.”10 In the Red Room, a wildly discomposed Belknap—Julia described him as hoarse and “deadly pale”—offered to resign. “Accept it at once,” Belknap cried. “Do not hesitate, Mr. President. For God’s sake, do not hesitate.” “Certainly,” Grant conceded, slightly mystified, “if you wish it.”11 Belknap fostered the impression that he was acting gallantly to save his wife, not his own scalp. Years later, Jesse Grant said his father suggested the resignation to Belknap and that the two of them always thought Belknap “an upright, chivalrous man, worthy of all respect.”12
In a curt letter, Grant accepted Belknap’s resignation: “Your tender of resignation as Secretary of War, with the request that it be accepted immediately, is received, and the same is hereby accepted with great regret.”13 “Thank you, you are always kind,” said Belknap, beating a hasty retreat from the room.14 His unseemly haste should have alerted Grant that something was grievously amiss. The president had acted impetuously, unaware of the full legal ramifications of his action. In typically unflappable style, Grant strode off to the studio of Prussian-born artist Henry Ulke, oblivious to the tremendous hubbub now shaking Capitol Hill. When impeachment articles against Belknap passed that afternoon, Grant’s premature acceptance of his resignation threatened to sabotage the process, having made Belknap a private citizen at the time he was impeached. This fresh scandal renewed questions about Grant’s judgment. As the Washington correspondent for the notoriously anti-administration New York Herald sketched events that day in Congress:
When the letter of the President was read, stating that he had accepted the Secretary’s resignation at half-past ten o’clock, there was a murmur of amazement at what looked to everybody then like an act deliberately intended to shield Mr. Belknap, but when the terms of the letter were read, in which the President tells Mr. Belknap that he accepts his resignation with great regret, people turned to each other with indignation at something which seemed to them an open defiance of decency and of public opinion . . . The discussion turned mainly on the question of the power of the House to impeach a person who had resigned office.15
The next day, in a confessional mode, Grant informed his cabinet that when Belknap first arrived, he hadn’t fathomed the scandal’s magnitude. Belknap had been so overcome with emotion, he said, that he could hardly spill out his words. Only later in the day, when Grant learned that Belknap hoped to escape impeachment, did he recognize the gravity of what he had done. As so often with Grant, he saw the Belknap case in personal rather than political terms. “He spoke of his long continued acquaintance with Belknap in the Army,” Fish wrote, “of his having known his father as one of the finest Officers of the Old Army, when he himself was a young lieutenant.”16 Profoundly shaken, Grant instructed Attorney General Pierrepont to pursue Belknap in criminal or civil court. John Eaton recalled that the episode “had a very disturbing effect upon the President. I remember his asking me in connection with it, if I had any knowledge or suspicion of corruption in any of the other Departments.”17 Although the cabinet recommended Rutherford B. Hayes as Belknap’s successor, Grant turned instead to Senator Lot M. Morrill of Maine. In an ominous sign for the lame-duck president, Morrill refused, confiding to Fish that he was deterred by Orville Babcock and other unsavory White House characters.18 Grant gave the job to Yale-educated Alphonso Taft of Cincinnati, an influential judge and father of William Howard, the future president.
Even in a capital inured to scandal, Belknap’s downfall produced deep reverberations. “The corruptions of this administration seem to permeate every Department of the Government,” wrote Orville Hickman Browning, a sturdy Grant hater, with grim satisfaction.19 More sympathetically, Amos Akerman declared that he had thought Belknap “to be thoroughly upright. This is to me the saddest of the falls of our public men.”20 While William Tecumseh Sherman had long grumbled that Belknap bypassed him in military matters, he had never suspected malfeasance. “I feel sorry for Belknap—I don’t think him naturally dishonest, but how could he live on $8000 a year in the style that you all beheld?” he wondered aloud to his brother.21
Amazingly, Grant soon reverted to his childlike belief in Belknap’s innocence. By March 7, a U.S. attorney had issued the first subpoenas for witnesses to appear before a grand jury. When this subject arose at a cabinet meeting, Grant suddenly expressed his faith that Belknap was not guilty. The cabinet was so taken aback, wrote Fish, that “no response of assent was made by anyone present.”22 Julia Grant had exercised restraint as First Lady, saving political judgments for private talks with her husband. But her friend Amanda “Puss” Belknap had been ostracized since the scandal and Julia, like her husband, tended to side with the victim. On March 21, she personally summoned cabinet members to an extraordinary meeting, imploring them and their wives to visit poor Mrs. Belknap. “She says that Mrs. Belknap was very much distressed and had expressed a wish to see her and that she would come so as not to be either seen or recognized,” Fish recorded. “Mrs. Grant had refused to let her come in secret; but had seen her when she called on Sunday last during the day.”23 The soul of honesty, Fish told Julia he hadn’t called on the Belknaps “because I thought it better for both the Belknaps and the Administration that I should not.”24 Secretary of the Navy Robeson hinted at political embarrassments and legal complications that might emerge from such contacts. Reluctantly Julia agreed to stop seeing Mrs. Belknap. Fish observed that “Mrs. Grant [was] overcome and in tears said she supposed this was right—but she felt so sorry for them.”25 From a human standpoint, it was a poignant display of empathy, but a shocking case of political naïveté. In their psychological makeup, both Ulysses and Julia Grant too readily identified with troubled souls, leaving them exposed to manipulation.
On March 31, Pierrepont broached to the cabinet the prospect of a criminal prosecution of Belknap. Not hedging his words, Fish said candidly “that the Administration owed it to itself and to the country to press the indictment.”26 Other cabinet secretaries concurred. Whatever his reservations, Grant gave Pierrepont full permission to proceed with a criminal indictment of Belknap. In the end, the evidence didn’t justify criminal proceedings. By April, the Senate began to sit as an impeachment court under the tutelage of Chief Justice Waite and the case dragged on through July. In making his closing statement, Belknap’s counsel, Jeremiah S. Black, drew a false analogy between Belknap’s accepting gifts and Grant’s accepting houses from admirers after the war. His speech showed how poorly Grant’s loyalty to Belknap had been repaid:
That the present Chief Magistrate has taken large gifts from his friends is a fact as
well known as any other in the history of the country. He did it openly, without an attempt at concealment or denial. He not only received money and lands and houses and goods amounting in the aggregate to an enormous sum, but he conformed the policy of his administration to the interests and wishes of the donors. Nay, he did more than that; he appointed the men who brought him these gifts to the highest offices which he could bestow in return. Does anybody assert that General Grant was guilty of an impeachable crime in taking these presents even though the receipt of them was followed by official favors extended to the givers?27
Of course, Grant received gifts for wartime sacrifice whereas Belknap had taken money from men profiting from his protection. On August 1, he was acquitted on all five impeachment articles, but it was something less than a total vindication. Many senators believed him guilty and only refused to convict him because he had resigned hours before being impeached, returning him to the status of a private citizen. Grant’s blunder in accepting his resignation had saved him.
A perfect torrent of scandal had swept over the administration and Grant seemed powerless to stem the rushing, foaming tide. In the face of such overwhelming facts, a few points are worth emphasizing. Grant had not been personally involved in any scandal. His failure had been one of poor selection of cabinet officers and how he handled their downfalls. He never stopped prosecutions of guilty parties and was often insistent about having them prosecuted. It is also important to emphasize that the manufactured outrage over the scandals came from legislators eager to discredit Reconstruction and the moral underpinnings of the administration. Finally, the Grant scandals, which have so clouded his historical reputation, were largely confined to the second half of his second term, obscuring his earlier signal successes as president. Still, endings have a disproportionate influence on any narrative and this holds true for presidencies as well. Grant’s maladroit response to scandal reflected the lack of sophistication in a man who had been a stranger to politics before the war. He could recognize evil in his enemies, but not in those who posed as his friends. Many Americans understood this, and, through the many vicissitudes of his administration, retained respect and affection for Grant.
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GRANT SHUFFLED HIS CABINET one last time in spring 1876. Attorney General Pierrepont was shipped off to London as minister to England, replaced by Alphonso Taft, who had served fleetingly as secretary of war. Replacing Taft at War was James D. Cameron of Pennsylvania, a Princeton graduate with a background in banking and railway businesses. A man of substantial wealth, Cameron, forty-three, was little known in political circles, except as the son of Senator Simon Cameron, the disgraced war secretary under Abraham Lincoln. Despite his earlier reluctance to replace Belknap, Senator Lot M. Morrill agreed to follow Benjamin Bristow at Treasury. He was an apt choice, having agreed with Grant on financial matters, such as opposing the inflation bill, and had also firmly supported Reconstruction.
The final cabinet shakeup came in July when Marshall Jewell was unexpectedly asked to resign as postmaster general, an abrupt decision that prompted intense speculation about Grant’s motives. “The true reason for the President’s action is . . . that Gov. Jewell made too many apologies for the administration, and was not disposed to stand before all the world as a member of it,” The New York Times conjectured.28 Something about Jewell grated on Grant, who told Fish “he could stand his annoyance no longer.”29 In appointing his successor, Grant displayed the mischievous side of his nature. He called in James N. Tyner, second assistant postmaster general, and announced, “I have decided, Mr. Tyner, to ask for your resignation.” Tyner blushed, his head drooping. “And to appoint you Postmaster-General,” Grant added, to Tyner’s sudden, brightening delight.30 Thus ended the topsy-turvy history of Grant’s many cabinet appointments.
Although Grant had rejected a third term and refrained from involvement in choosing a successor, he was hardly indifferent to the fate of a party he had piloted for nearly eight years. Hamilton Fish had been his most intimate confidant, showing cool, superlative judgment and forming the perfect counterweight to Grant’s sometimes unaccountable moods. Grant deemed him the foremost statesman of the age and favored him as his successor. Without telling Fish, Grant secretly drafted a letter of support to be disclosed at the Republican convention if the favorite-son candidacies of James Blaine, Oliver Morton, and Roscoe Conkling misfired. While Grant would have happily embraced any of these party regulars, he was still infatuated with Conkling, holding “his great character and genius in profound respect” and believing he had been fiercely loyal.31 Conkling chafed at Grant’s refusal to endorse him openly and maintain surface neutrality in the race.
The one man Grant didn’t care to see nominated was Bristow, who had become a darling of Liberal Republicans. In the minds of reformers, Grant remained associated with party bosses who would get their just comeuppance with civil service reform. In mid-April, Carl Schurz rallied Republicans concerned by “widespread corruption in our public service” and they met in New York a month later.32 These insurgents didn’t endorse Bristow openly, but agreed to work quietly for him at the Republican convention. For Grant, Bristow was the treacherous cabinet secretary who had connived to discredit him, and he wasn’t a man to forget such a supposed betrayal. As Louise Taft, wife of the new attorney general, confided to a friend: “The President’s family naturally consider [Bristow] in league with his enemies, as Bristow’s friends all abuse the Administration.”33
Party Stalwarts agreed with the administration on Reconstruction and were prepared to turn the upcoming election into another contest of loyal Republicans versus disloyal Democrats. They would inveigh against the Klan and make emotional appeals that reminded voters of northern sacrifice and southern betrayal during the war. Yet a segment of the Republican Party establishment now wondered aloud whether troops should be withdrawn from the South, leading many blacks to yearn for a third Grant term. As Robert T. Kent of Atlanta wrote to him, “We the Colored Men and Women Boys & Girles yes Even the Litle Children Thank you dear Sir,” and he ended with a plea for Grant to stand for reelection.34
When the Republican convention met in Cincinnati in June, it was feared Bristow’s nomination would alienate Stalwarts, while Blaine, Morton, and Conkling would deter the party’s Liberal reformers. The platform implicity criticized Grant, railing against “a corrupt centralism which, after inflicting upon ten states the rapacity of carpetbag tyranny, has honeycombed the offices of the federal government itself with incapacity, waste, and fraud.”35 The one man who seemed able to unify the party was Governor Rutherford B. Hayes of Ohio, who defeated Blaine for the nomination on the seventh ballot by a 384 to 351 vote; Congressman William A. Wheeler of New York joined him as the vice presidential candidate. Hayes had been wounded during the war and fought with sufficient gallantry to attain a rank of brevet major general. Grant, having known Hayes well as a congressman and admired him as “an honest, sincere man, and patriot,” hurried off a telegram of hearty support.36 “I congratulate you and feel the greatest assurance that you will occupy my present position from the Fourth of March next.”37 Serenaded by the Marine Band, Grant appeared on the White House balcony to address the party faithful crowded below: “I cannot withhold my approval of the excellent ticket given you by the National Republican Convention at Cincinnati—a ticket that should receive the cordial support of all races in all sections.”38 On July 4, he invited Hayes to stay at Long Branch and sample “the genial sea breeze, fine roads and beautiful surrounding villages, and pleasant and hospitable neighbors.”39 Perhaps distancing himself from the administration, Hayes studiously avoided such a visit.
Grant soon discovered Hayes wasn’t the friendly, compromise candidate he had envisioned. As early as March 1875, Hayes had admitted privately he was “opposed to the course of Gen. Grant on the 3d term, the Civil Service, and the appointment of unfit men on partisan or personal grounds.”40 Now, in a letter accepting the nomination, Hay
es embraced civil service reform, flayed the spoils system, and promised, in advance, to spurn a second term. Grant interpreted this last pledge as a backhanded swipe at him. Despite promises to protect southern blacks, Hayes resorted to code language to suggest a repeal of Reconstruction, telling southerners he would “cherish their truest interests” and assist them in obtaining the “blessings of honest and capable local government.”41 The New York Tribune reported that Grant thought Hayes’s letter “in extremely bad taste” and that it “reflected upon the present Administration . . . The President’s entire manner indicated complete dissatisfaction with the political situation, and much personal anger.”42 This coincided with reports portraying Grant as moody and temperamental in the twilight of his second term and hypersensitive to criticism. On July 14, Hayes wrote to Grant and denied that he had tried to insult him by renouncing a second term. Putting forth a lame argument, he said he had hoped to harmonize the Republican Party by reassuring younger presidential hopefuls that he wouldn’t block their path.