by H. W. Brands
Nor did he worry when a group of supporters offered him a premium price for his Washington house. “The proposition was to pay me $65,000 for the house and grounds, which I insisted was more than the property was worth or than I would take,” Grant wrote Sherman. The house had cost $30,000 when Grant purchased it three years earlier. But the group making the offer refused to be rebuffed, and he let himself be persuaded. “I would sell it with the carpets, chairs, wardrobes and much of the other furniture for that price.” He was telling Sherman because the buyers proposed to give the house to Sherman, whom Grant planned to promote to commanding general of the army now that he himself would be vacating the post for the presidency, and the house for the White House.
Tens of thousands of well-wishers traveled to Washington to see their hero take office. They came in good spirits, but a sleety mist cloaked the capital and, in the wake of the Johnson impeachment trial and amid the continuing fight over reconstruction, the mood of the city was somber. A reporter likened the inaugural stand to a scaffold. “People looking at it suggested, smilingly”—most smiled, at any rate—“that it was there that Andy would take his final drop and deliver his last veto.” Grant showed little emotion. “Of all those present—his escort, the judges, the senators, the ladies—he appeared the least affected, and looked at the magnificent scene about him with more nonchalance than any other man who formed a part of it.” And no wonder, thought the reporter, who knew Grant only by reputation. “What was this crowd to a man who had stood amid shot and shell for two whole days on Orchard Knob, and saw one hundred and twenty-five thousand men contending for Lookout Mountain and Mission Ridge? This was only the muster of the awkward squad to him.” Grant gave no hint of the anxiety he always felt at giving a public speech. “General Grant betrayed on his countenance or manner neither agitation, solemnity, joy, sorrow, nervousness, pride: he remained the sphinx to the last.”
Grant read his inaugural address slowly and carefully. He distanced himself from the political classes. “The office has come to me unsought,” he said. “I commence its duties untrammeled.” He distanced himself still further from his predecessor. He said he would speak his mind to Congress and perhaps veto bills he opposed. “But all laws will be faithfully executed, whether they meet my approval or not.” The laws would be enforced consistently and rigorously. “Laws are to govern all alike—those opposed as well as those who favor them.” He added, sagely but counterintuitively: “I know no method to secure the repeal of bad or obnoxious laws so effective as their stringent execution.”
One issue demanded immediate attention. The Fourteenth Amendment had failed to resolve the issue of African American voting; advocates of equality urged a straightforward constitutional guarantee of the suffrage and had recently persuaded Congress to go along. Grant put the proposed Fifteenth Amendment front and center. “The question of suffrage is one which is likely to agitate the public so long as a portion of the citizens of the nation are excluded from its privileges in any state,” he said. “It seems to me very desirable that this question should be settled now, and I entertain the hope and express the desire that it may be by the ratification of the fifteenth article of amendment to the Constitution.”
His only additional policy prescription involved another matter left from the war. To fund the Union military effort Congress had borrowed heavily and issued paper money unbacked by gold. Grant declared a swift return to conservative financial policies essential to the nation’s health and happiness. “Every dollar of government indebtedness should be paid in gold, unless otherwise expressly stipulated in the contract,” he said. “Let it be understood that no repudiator of one farthing of our public debt will be trusted in a public place, and it will go far toward strengthening a credit which ought to be the best in the world.”
He echoed Lincoln’s second inaugural address as well as his own campaign theme in reaching out to the South as well as the North. “The country having just emerged from a great rebellion, many questions will come before it for settlement in the next four years which preceding administrations have never had to deal with. In meeting these it is desirable that they should be approached calmly, without prejudice, hate, or sectional pride, remembering that the greatest good to the greatest number is the object to be attained.” Safety of persons and property and tolerance for divergent political opinions were prerequisites to national reconciliation. “All laws to secure these ends will receive my best efforts for their enforcement.” Again echoing Lincoln, he closed with an appeal: “I ask patient forbearance one toward another throughout the land, and a determined effort on the part of every citizen to do his share toward cementing a happy union; and I ask the prayers of the nation to Almighty God in behalf of this consummation.”
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AN EARLY TEST OF ANY PRESIDENT IS HIS CONSTRUCTION OF A CABINET. New presidents mend rifts in the party by appointing persons from opposing factions; they spread the wealth among various states to broaden their base geographically. Selection of strong, respected secretaries connotes leadership and self-confidence; a stumble at this early stage augurs ill for a president’s first months or years in office.
Grant hadn’t studied the traditions surrounding cabinet appointments, and he appeared to ignore what little he knew of them. Determined to distinguish himself from ordinary politicians, he chose cabinet secretaries as he might have chosen officers for his military staff. Personal acquaintance and loyalty counted for much; he desired that his secretaries offer their opinions but fall in line behind decisions once made.
Grant saw little reason to consult widely in choosing his secretaries and ample reason not to. “I have come to the conclusion that there is not a man in the country who could be invited to a place in the cabinet without the friends of some other gentleman making an effort to secure the position,” he told a delegation of lawmakers while the choices were pending. “Not that there would be any objection to the party named, but that there would be others whom they had set their hearts upon having in the place.” From the moment of his election he had been bombarded with requests for preferment, and he didn’t like the clamor. “Therefore I have come to the conclusion not to announce whom I am going to invite to seats in the cabinet until I send in their names to the Senate for confirmation.”
The senior position in the cabinet—secretary of state—went to Elihu Washburne, Grant’s longtime sponsor. Grant felt a personal debt to the Illinois congressman, who had supported him at the start of the war and stuck by him during the dark moments after Shiloh, the Wilderness and Cold Harbor. Washburne had little talent for diplomacy and not much ambition for it, but Grant sought to repay the many compliments Washburne had given him. Washburne’s ill health made the appointment easy, for both men understood that he would serve only briefly before yielding to a permanent officeholder.
Alexander T. Stewart served even more briefly, as secretary of the Treasury, but in this case the brevity was accidental rather than intended. Grant’s prewar background had given him no connections to the nation’s financial community, which typically provided Treasury secretaries. His wartime career did nothing to remedy the lack, and after the war the only capitalists with whom he had had much contact were the businessmen who gave him houses and other gifts. Stewart was America’s most successful merchant, with a giant emporium on Broadway in Manhattan and other outlets elsewhere. Stewart befriended Grant and just before the inauguration personally handed him the $65,000 check for his house. The next day Grant announced that Stewart would be his Treasury secretary.
Grant’s critics carped and some of his friends groaned at this conjunction, but it was a federal law that spoiled the appointment. In 1789 Congress had prohibited officers of the Treasury from engaging in business that might bring them within the purview of the federal customs bureau, which the Treasury oversaw. The customs bureau administered the tariff, and the temptation in a customs agent to interpret the schedules in favor of a superior was considered excessive. Stewart’s firm pai
d millions of dollars in tariffs; a close call in his direction by one of his Treasury underlings could be worth a great deal. Grant had never heard of the old law until after he announced the Stewart nomination, and the Senate forgot it in approving Stewart without debate. Even when the statute surfaced just days later, Grant thought the problem a technicality. “I would ask that he be exempted by joint resolution of the two houses of Congress,” the president wrote the legislature. John Sherman promptly introduced an exempting measure in the Senate. But others resisted. Charles Sumner, a self-appointed guardian of the Senate’s dignity, declared, “It is a matter for profound consideration.” Grant decided not to test his luck, and Stewart resigned after a mere week on the job.
Grant’s second choice for the Treasury was George Boutwell, a former governor of Massachusetts. Boutwell had been a Democrat until the 1850s, but as the party of Jefferson and Jackson fell under the sway of its Southern wing Boutwell switched to the Republicans. Lincoln made him the first commissioner of internal revenue and the voters of Massachusetts subsequently made him a congressman. He became a leader of the Radicals in the House and one of the managers of the impeachment trial of Andrew Johnson. His Radical friends touted him to Grant, citing his experience collecting taxes and his devotion to the Union. The president, eager to repair the slip with Stewart, tapped Boutwell for the Treasury. The Senate quickly confirmed.
But Boutwell’s appointment created other problems. Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar was the most respected of Grant’s nominees, being the least political. He had spent the decade after 1859 on the Massachusetts supreme court, where he won a reputation for honest, evenhanded dispensation of justice. Grant was pleased to nominate him for attorney general, and the Senate was pleased to approve. But when the president turned to Boutwell after the Stewart miscue, he found himself with two men from the same state in the cabinet. No law forbade this and practice on the matter was malleable. Yet Republicans from other states thought Massachusetts was receiving too much consideration, especially when one of the appointees—Boutwell—controlled the second-largest number of patronage appointments, in the customhouses.
First place in patronage rested with the postmaster general. The tens of thousands of postmasters across the country owed their jobs to the man in Washington who headed the post office. No one held much against John Creswell, who had served one term in the House and then the unexpired part of a dead man’s term in the Senate before Grant made him postmaster general. He possessed a sharp legal mind, which didn’t count for much at the post office, but he was from Maryland, which did. The border states had always been ticklish for the Republicans, and anything that made Marylanders feel welcome in the party was welcomed by the party in turn.
No one complained about Jacob Cox, who had won a reputation for gallantry as a general in the Army of the Ohio. Cox was elected Ohio governor after the war, and he distinguished himself for his moderation. The Radical Republicans disliked him on this account, but Grant valued him for it, and anyway Ohio, which was becoming the heartland of Republican politics, required representation in the upper echelon of the executive branch. Or so Grant decided, deeming his own Ohio connection somewhat attenuated by now. He gave Cox the Interior Department.
John Rawlins was certain to get something, having been at Grant’s right hand since 1861. The War Department was the obvious choice, in part because Rawlins knew the department well and in part because he was one of the few men in the country who could handle William Sherman with anything like success. Some of those who knew Grant, and more of those who knew his reputation, judged Rawlins a good choice for the cabinet because there he could keep Grant off the bottle, as he had during the war. Grant deemed Rawlins a solid staff man and was willing to leave the matter at that.
The Navy Department went to Adolph Borie. Grant knew only a little about the navy, and with the war over and the navy largely idle he didn’t feel compelled to educate himself. Borie knew even less, but he was from Pennsylvania, a keystone state for the Republicans as much as for the country, and he and Grant had become friends when Grant briefly resided in Philadelphia.
Hamilton Fish wasn’t in the first round of Grant’s selections, but he might as well have been. The ailing Elihu Washburne had hardly been confirmed when Grant began seeking his replacement. Fish had served in both houses of Congress, as a New York judge and as the governor of New York. But when he left the Senate in 1857 he thought his career in public office was over. He enjoyed the anonymity and comparative ease of retirement and had no urgent desire to see it end. He and Grant had become acquainted on one of Grant’s visits to New York; Grant attended the wedding of Fish’s daughter in the autumn of 1868. Yet Fish had no cause to think that Grant was considering him for high office, and he was surprised to receive an oddly diffident letter from the president seven days after the inauguration. “It has been my intention for some months back to offer you the position of minister etc. to England when the time came,” Grant said. “Now, however, owing to my inability to secure the great services of Mr. A. T. Stewart in the Treasury Department, I will have to make another selection of Cabinet officer from New York. I have thought it might not be unpleasant for you to accept the portfolio of the State Department.”
“I cannot,” Fish telegraphed back. “I will write by mail this afternoon and explain why.” Following lunch he continued: “Your letter reached me at a late hour this morning. I immediately sent an answer by telegraph and hope that it reached you in time for any action you may desire to take today.” Fish expressed his gratitude for the honor of being considered for the secretaryship. “Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to be associated with your Administration, and to give the best of my humble abilities to aid in advancing the high objects which are the aim of your thoughts and your hopes and to which the country looks hopefully and confidently.” But he had to decline. “There are pressing private and family considerations which oppose a removal to or residence in Washington. My wife’s health forbids it.”
But Fish had moved too slowly. “Not receiving your dispatch until about 1:50 p.m., I sent your appointment of Secretary of State to the Senate,” Grant replied. “I sent to the Senate to withdraw but was too late.” Grant appealed to the support Fish professed for the new administration. “Let me beg of you now, to avoid another break, to accept for the present, and should you not like the position you can withdraw after the adjournment of Congress.”
Grant’s unwillingness to let Fish decline was characteristic, reflecting his belief that the country had a legitimate call on the services of its talented men, in peace as in war. He himself had overcome his aversion to politics and let himself be drafted for president; Fish could certainly accept the lesser responsibilities of running the State Department. Grant’s insistence also reflected his own immediate needs. As he told Fish, he didn’t want another fumble like that with Stewart.
He set friends and allies to work on Fish. “You have exceptional qualifications for the position,” Elihu Washburne wrote him; Fish simply must answer the president’s call. Orville Babcock, a Grant aide from the war now serving as presidential secretary, explained to Fish that the country could not possibly do without his services.
Fish found himself outflanked. “I am ‘in for it,’ and must take the consequences,” he wrote his wife.
Grant’s cabinet choices elicited praise from Republican newspapers. “The Cabinet is a surprise to most people,” the Boston Journal observed. “It will, however, not only stand the severest scrutiny but it makes a good impression at the outset.” The Baltimore American declared: “The Cabinet as a whole is a strong one and we believe will secure the approval of the Republican party and the confidence of the country.” The Trenton Gazette said, “This Cabinet will give every satisfaction not only to Republicans but to candid Democrats.” The Springfield Republican thought Lincoln himself could have done little better in choosing advisers. “No halting or half-faced men are among them; no men of mere theories and crotchets; and n
one of whom any section of the country need be ashamed,” Lincoln’s hometown journal declared.
Democratic papers were predictably less enthusiastic. “We hope for the best from the new Administration,” the Troy Press of New York opined. “We believe in its honesty, but we fear that there is a strong feeling in the mind of the President that the Government can be well conducted on a sort of strategic, military plan.” The Baltimore Gazette examined the list of secretaries and grumbled: “There is not one among them who bears an established character for disinterestedness, or who is entitled to be classed among statesmen.”
John Bigelow, a well-connected New York Republican, thought the president’s choices would be measured by his expectations of the secretaries. “The Cabinet is not strong, but it is respectable,” Bigelow wrote a friend. “Whether it lasts or goes to pieces depends upon Grant’s purpose in selecting it. If he has a policy and wanted men merely for instruments to put it into operation, it is admirably chosen. If he wants responsible ministers he has not got them.”
The selection of the cabinet intensified the clamor for lesser places. Each appointment Grant made disappointed a dozen aspirants who felt equally worthy. To a man who had been told by an acquaintance that he was in line for a plum post, Grant wrote: “There was nothing in what I said to justify him coming to such a conclusion except the warmth with which I defended you against the charge of obscurity.” He let the man down gently. “The object in my writing now is to state that I have often thought of you in that connection, and that there is no one in the world who would be more agreeable to me than yourself. I had, however, come to the conclusion that it would be unjust to ask you to leave your business to take a place of so much harassment in your present health.” To his sister he was more candid. “I scarcely get one moment alone,” he wrote Mary. “Office-seeking in this country, I regret to say, is getting to be one of the industries of the age. It gives me no peace.”