Grant

by Ron Chernow

  When the Chicago convention ended, Grant resumed his nomadic life, hoping to end up in New York City—if he could afford it. To escape hot weather, he returned to the Rocky Mountains, where Jesse had struck it rich in Arizona and New Mexico mining ventures. The newly extroverted Grant was much in demand, his appetite for public ceremonies never sated. In Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, Grant was asked if he ever tired of these events. “Oh, no,” he replied. “I rather enjoy them if I could only get sleep enough.”80 Wherever his train stopped on the Great Plains, huge assemblies of welcoming people gathered and Democrats no less than Republicans honored him at banquets and parades.

  Grant was especially pleased to visit Colorado, which had recently become a state, thanks to his signature on a bill late in his presidency. Inspecting gold and silver discoveries, he ventured some political humor when told that a Colorado creek was called Son of a Bitch Creek and he suggested it be renamed Carl Schurz Creek. He provisionally accepted the presidency of the San Pedro Mining Company, a gold and copper producer, hoping its dividends would sustain him. “One thing is certain: I must do something to supplement my income or continue to live in Galena or on a farm,” he confided to Badeau. “I have not got the means to live in a city.”81

  On June 22, Grant spurned a lucrative offer to become president of the new Panama Canal Company that was extended by Ferdinand de Lesseps, who had overseen creation of the Suez Canal. Though a spirited advocate of an interoceanic canal, Grant favored Nicaragua as the most practicable route from an engineering standpoint. Ever mindful of the Monroe Doctrine, he also wanted a canal created under American auspices. By December, Grant had emerged as a charter member of the new Maritime Canal Company of Nicaragua with the expectation that he would soon become its president.

  Wherever he went, reporters eagerly solicited his views on the presidential race. In mid-July, he issued a thumping vote of confidence in Garfield: “There is no reason why any Republican should hesitate to define his position, or not vote for Garfield. I know him to be a man of talent, thoroughly accomplished, and an upright man.”82 Garfield was gleeful at the zest with which Grant had suddenly embraced him. “Certainly no American is so well able, by an experience wholly unequalled in our history as you, to aid in bringing our people into harmony and ensuring the success of our party,” Garfield flattered Grant.83 Grant sent back a robust letter of support, disclosing that he would return east around September 20 and suggesting that he and Garfield travel partway together. Grant was back in the game. On September 28, he campaigned with Conkling in Warren, Ohio, and dazzled the crowd with a seven-minute speech. Startled by his sudden loquacity in public, the press began talking up the notion of a new Grant. He stayed at Garfield’s home in Mentor, near Lake Erie, while Julia, resenting Garfield’s triumph and believing her husband cheated of his rightful place in the universe, refused to join him. “The General went,” she wrote with proud defiance, “but I would not go.”84

  Grant volunteered to campaign for Garfield in northeastern states and again blazed a new path for ex-presidents. Having sat out his own presidential races, he had never campaigned before or made speeches on the hustings and threw himself into the task with self-evident gusto. “We must elect Garfield,” he exhorted a Cincinnati audience. “He is a great man. He has but few intellectual peers in public life.”85 With his uncanny knack for self-reinvention, Grant turned into a master of the stump speech, condensing his thoughts into brief talks and prompting prolonged bursts of applause. As Mark Twain recalled, Grant “was received everywhere by prodigious multitudes of enthusiastic people and . . . one might almost tell what part of the country the General was in . . . by the red reflections on the sky caused by the torch processions and fireworks.”86

  On October 16, Mark Twain escorted the born-again, whistle-stopping Grant from Boston to Hartford, where he introduced him to a vast audience in Bushnell Park. On the train, Fred Grant revealed to Twain that his father, “far from being a rich man, as was commonly supposed, had not even enough income to enable him to live as respectably as a third-rate physician.”87 Twain thought this disgraceful, and, in introducing Grant, contrasted his financial plight with that of the pampered Duke of Wellington, so richly rewarded after Waterloo. England had “made him a duke, and gave him $4,000,000. If you had done and suffered for any country what you have done and suffered for your own, you would have been affronted in the same sordid way,” Twain joked to Grant, then added, “Your country loves you, your country is proud of you, your country is grateful to you.”88

  Grant had deployed his gift for dry humor in private, but now delighted audiences with droll commentary. At the New York Stock Exchange, he entertained brokers with humorous observations of their frenzied trading routines: “The first time I came here I thought you were all fighting with one another, and if that were so it was no place for me to be, among fighting men . . . I am pleased to see you all and wish both bulls and bears success, and that you will all come out of this without a scratch.”89 On October 21, the man renowned for stoic silence squeezed three speeches into one hectic day. “I am hoarse to-day,” he told a crowd in Stamford, Connecticut. “Frequent speeches make one hoarse, I believe.”90 He kept up a brisk pace, more typical of lightning military strikes than electioneering forays, explaining in Franklin, New Jersey, that he believed the fate of the republic was at stake—that all the blood and treasure spilled during the Civil War would be squandered by a Democratic victory. “The great importance of this occasion has induced me to attend political meetings as I have never done before in my life. I have felt . . . that I could not see the Government in the hands of those who labored to destroy it.”91

  During his concluding ten days of electioneering, Grant spoke with unwonted ebullience, dropping deep-seated inhibitions. Flashing his trademark silk hat and cigar, he was hoisted on the shoulders of delirious crowds. What became clear as he crossed upstate New York was that Grant wasn’t just campaigning for a candidate but for a cause. He was outraged that “our fellow-citizens of African descent” in the South couldn’t vote “without being burned out of their homes, and without being threatened or intimidated.” He would not allow Democrats to “control elections by the use of a shot-gun and by intimidation and assassination.”92 In Auburn, Grant spoke at two giant wigwams that held up to ten thousand people apiece and blasted the southern doctrine of states’ rights, charging that the Democratic Party upheld the principles of Robert E. Lee and Andrew Johnson and stood under the control of “Rebel Brigadiers.”93 In a final burst of energy, he returned to New York City right before the election and stood with Chester Arthur at a nocturnal parade that lasted from midnight until 4 a.m.

  On Election Day, all of Grant’s campaigning appeared to pay off. Garfield won by a wafer-thin margin in the popular vote column, but did better in the Electoral College, and Grant had good reason to believe he had made a signal contribution to Garfield’s election. “The country, in my judgment has escaped a great calamity in the success of the republican party,” Grant told his daughter. “A month ago the result attained was not expected.”94 In a postelection interview, he again showed his newly acquired candor: “If the South had once obtained a firm hold of the Government they would have ruined the country and nothing short of a revolution would have rescued it from their hands again.”95

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

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  A Miserable Dirty Reptile

  AFTER THE ELECTION Grant picked up hearsay that he might receive a cabinet post or foreign mission from Garfield and he eased the president-elect’s mind on the subject: “I want no reward further than the approval of the patriotic people of the land.”1 In reply, Garfield expressed disappointment at Grant’s reluctance to serve, saying he had hoped to profit from his knowledge of Mexico, Japan, and China and welcomed his advice on cabinet appointees. Taking Garfield at his word, Grant fruitlessly recommended John Jacob Astor III for treasury secretary. In his inaugural address, Garfield seemed to s
atisfy Grant’s expectations, stressing voting rights and economic opportunity for black citizens and reviving some of the bygone spirit of Reconstruction.

  Grant’s short-lived honeymoon with Garfield ended when he appointed James Blaine as secretary of state, a man Grant regarded as his political foe. Already he had warned Garfield: “I do not like the man, have no confidence in his friendship nor in his reliability.”2 He thought of yanking support from Garfield, then reconsidered. When he and Julia breakfasted with the new president in Washington, Garfield solicited his advice on policy matters and appointments. Grant huddled with his troika of Conkling, Logan, and Cameron and kept a weather eye out for their interests. Then came a series of Garfield appointments that infuriated Grant, notably that of Judge William H. Robertson—the man Grant thought engineered his downfall at the Chicago convention—as collector of the port of New York. It was the biggest plum in the patronage pie and Grant took umbrage. Having campaigned for Garfield at a torrid pace and helped him carry New York, Grant felt double-crossed. He thought he had earned a special place in Garfield’s affections and had been penalized instead. In a published letter, he took a shot across Garfield’s bow, alluding to “a deep laid scheme by somebody to punish prominent leaders for being openly friendly to me. I cannot believe that Garfield is the author of this policy.”3 Grant had violated an unspoken rule that presidents not chastise their successors so publicly and he had done so with unseemly speed.

  On April 24, Grant sent Garfield a stinging letter, protesting that he had made New York appointments without consulting the state’s two senators. “To select the most obnoxious man, to them, in the state is more than a slight.”4 The surly tone Grant adopted suggested he craved a return to power and wasn’t ready to withdraw into the political wilderness. He had grown accustomed to exercising power and deeply felt its loss. Once again he misjudged the revulsion against old-style party bosses. Both New York senators, Conkling and Thomas C. Platt, resigned to protest Garfield’s action. By May, Grant described himself as “completely disgusted” with Garfield’s deeds and allowed their feud to play out in the press.5

  On May 15, Garfield sent a strongly worded letter to Grant, defending Robertson’s appointment and saying “worthy and competent men should not be excluded from recognition because they opposed your nomination at Chicago.”6 He tempered the note with a friendly ending. “My dear General, I can never forget your great services during the late campaign.”7 Instead of reacting with respectful silence, Grant spewed forth more harsh opinions in public, telling one paper that “Garfield is a man without backbone; a man of fine ability, but lacking stamina.”8 He pushed things past the point of a rapprochement. Instead of relaxing in the afterglow of his round-the-world trip, Grant fell back into the peevish, crabbed mood of his embattled last days as president, berating Garfield at every turn. As the New York Evening Post observed, “The role of the ‘silent man’ became him much better.”9

  On July 2, Grant was staying at Fred’s cabin in Long Branch, across from the hotel where Garfield’s wife, Lucretia, stayed, when word arrived that Garfield had been shot in a Washington train station by Charles Guiteau, a mentally disturbed office seeker. Grant had kept an icy distance from Mrs. Garfield, merely tipping his hat when he passed her. “I do not think he can afford to show feeling in this way,” Garfield had complained in his diary. “I am quite certain he injures himself more than he does me.”10 Suddenly Grant found himself in the uncomfortable position of having vilified a badly wounded president. Almost as soon as Lucretia Garfield learned of the shooting, Grant knocked at her door, entered quietly, and took her hand. According to one observer, Grant was “so overcome with emotion, he could scarcely speak.”11 Forgetting his spat with Garfield, Grant sought to comfort his wife with a telegram from Washington, asserting that the president would survive the shooting, and recounted how many soldiers in wartime recovered from comparable bullet wounds. Grateful for Grant’s intervention, Lucretia Garfield later told Julia her husband had been among the first to express sorrow.12 Grant also wired Secretary of War Robert T. Lincoln, “Express to the President My deep Sympathy & hope that he may speedily recover.”13 Lincoln replied that Garfield was “perfectly clear in mind and desires me to thank you for your telegram which I gave to him in substance.”14 The next day Lincoln plied Grant with rosy telegrams, charting the president’s cheerful temper and medical improvements.

  It turned out that before he had stalked Garfield, Charles Guiteau had stalked Grant. The previous winter, when Grant stayed at the Fifth Avenue Hotel in Manhattan, Guiteau had sent up his card and attempted to visit his room. Fred Grant had warned his father that Guiteau was “a sort of lawyer and deadbeat in Chicago. Don’t let him come up. If you do he will bore you to death.”15 Grant couldn’t shake the entreaties of this uncouth stranger, who accosted him persistently in the street. Finally Guiteau trailed a waiter to his hotel room and knocked on his door. Thinking it a servant, Grant said, “Come in.” He instantly recognized Guiteau, who “looked seedy and like a dead-beat,” and reprimanded him. “I said I would not see you.” “All I want is your name,” Guiteau rejoined. “I don’t want you to trouble to write anything at all.” “But I don’t know you,” said Grant with annoyance, “and I won’t give you my name for any purpose whatever.”16 A disappointed Guiteau slunk off, only to resurface as the president’s assailant.

  Three days after Garfield was shot, Grant gave a newspaper interview and commented on Garfield’s condition with perhaps more truth than wisdom. At first he had been hopeful about the president’s medical condition, then learned physicians couldn’t locate the bullet. “I have known a great many cases of men shot very much in the same way where the ball was lodged where it could not be found,” he said. “The men would rally after the shock and then suddenly change for the worse, contrary to the expectations of the patient and physicians and then die in a few hours.” Realizing his words might depress the nation, not to mention Mrs. Garfield, Grant ended on a more upbeat note. “If the President should live two or three days longer with his strong constitution and absolutely correct habits, I should expect he would eventually recover.”17 He also said that, if he could see the bedridden president, he would gladly board the next train for Washington.

  Profoundly dispirited by the shooting, Grant argued that it had “produced a shock upon the public mind but little less than that produced by the Assassination of Mr. Lincoln.”18 He noted that the Constitution made no provision for an incapacitated president and sensibly suggested that the cabinet should consider a report from physicians about Garfield’s disability and, if necessary, deputize the vice president as temporary president. For much of July, as Garfield hung on, Grant felt more sanguine about his recovery, then revised his opinion toward the end of the month. “Now however I fear the chances are largely against” his recovery, he told Badeau.19 He applauded a belated decision to evacuate Garfield from the White House in early September and bring him by train to Long Branch. “During the months of August and September the White House is one of the most unhealthy places in the world,” Grant told the press. “He should have been taken from there long ago.”20

  Garfield’s physician seriously mismanaged the treatment, repeatedly probing the wound without antiseptic conditions, and the president died on September 19. A shocked Grant received the news at his New York hotel. “You will please excuse me from a consideration of this sad news at this time,” he told a reporter. “It comes with terrible force and is unexpected.”21 Withdrawing to a private office, Grant wept such bitter tears that Fred Grant said “he had never known him to be so terribly affected.”22 It must have tormented Grant that he would never have a chance to heal the breach with Garfield, and he was probably reminded of the many death threats he himself had received during his presidency.

  Garfield’s death lifted Chester Arthur—scorned as Conkling’s puppet with muttonchop whiskers—into the presidency. The Half-Breed press poured out its loathin
g for Arthur, who had stayed incommunicado as the president lay dying. Grant was scandalized by the “shameful and villainous manner” in which Arthur was slandered as “a monster . . . I know him to be a man of common sense and clear-headed, with good associates—a man of integrity.”23 When Grant attended Garfield’s funeral, he followed Chester Arthur in the procession.

  With Arthur’s rise to the presidency, Grant found his influence reinstated at the White House and was instrumental in the appointment of Frederick T. Frelinghuysen as secretary of state. Arthur seemed receptive to Grant’s suggestions and honored him with a dinner in March 1882. That same month he nominated John Russell Young as minister to China. Then, without warning, Arthur asserted his independence from Grant and Conkling, becoming a proponent of civil service reform. When he named William E. Chandler as secretary of the navy—a man who had staunchly opposed Grant’s third term—Grant’s relations with Arthur began to unravel. Although Arthur named him to negotiate a commercial treaty with Mexico and Grant accepted, he inwardly seethed that Arthur sought to allay his anger in this way. As Badeau recalled, Grant found in Chester Arthur “a bearing more imperious than he thought necessary or appropriate in the new President toward the old.”24 At bottom, Grant’s problem with Arthur, as with Garfield, was that he couldn’t relinquish his old hold on Washington or accept his diminished authority. The man who had felt so powerless in his early years had acquired a taste for power and refused to quit the high-stakes game of politics.

  The practical details of Grant’s future lay shrouded in uncertainty. He felt the potent lure of New York City and its manifold opportunities, but noted the prohibitive cost of living in the metropolis. Financial worries also beset Julia, who had indulged in a gargantuan shopping spree on the global tour. The Grants had spent the previous winter at the Fifth Avenue Hotel, even though they could scarcely afford this grand establishment. “With an income of less than six thousand dollars per annum,” wrote Julia, “we found it difficult to meet even the very liberal terms made for us by the proprietor of the Fifth Avenue.”25