After eight years in the presidential office during Reconstruction, Ulysses S. Grant looked forward to retirement from public life. When his second term in office ended in March 1877, Grant had gained weight, while he desired to travel the world and visit his daughter in Scotland. Grant began his post-presidential life with a two-year tour that took him and his wife and entourage around the world.
On returning, Grant was welcomed home with an adoration unknown since the end of the Civil War, and he began to consider running for a third term as president in 1880. Following a hard-fought defeat at the Republican National Convention that year, Grant embarked on a financial career in partnership with Ferdinand Ward, but the venture failed and Grant was nearly bankrupted.
Diagnosed with cancer in 1884, he began writing his memoirs as a way to tell his story and provide for his family after his death. The book, finished just before his death the following year, was a huge success and remains in print. Grant was interred in Grant's Tomb, a massive mausoleum in New York City.
Leaving office
In 1876, the collected scandals of the last eight years led many in the Republican party to repudiate Grant.[1]Benjamin Bristow was among the leading candidates to replace him, suggesting that a large faction desired an end to "Grantism" and feared that Grant would run for a third term.[1] Ultimately, Grant did not run, but neither was Bristow the nominee, as the convention settled on Governor Rutherford B. Hayes of Ohio, a reformer. The Democrats nominated Samuel J. Tilden of New York, and the election that year was undecided for several months, due to voting irregularities in three Southern states.[2] Grant assured both sides that he would not use the army to force a result, and agreed to the formation of an Electoral Commission to decide the matter.[3] The result was the Compromise of 1877: Hayes was elected, but the last troops would be withdrawn from Southern capitals.[4] The Republicans had won, but Reconstruction was over.
Leaving the White House, Grant and family stayed with friends in New York, Ohio, and Philadelphia for two months before setting out on a tour of the world.[5] The trip, which would last two years, began in Liverpool in May 1877 where enormous crowds greeted the ex-president and his entourage.[6] Travelling to London, the Grants dined with Queen Victoria at Windsor Castle and Grant gave several speeches in the city.[7] They next traveled to Belgium, Germany, and Switzerland before returning to England. There they spent a few months with their daughter, Nellie, who had married an Englishman and moved to that country several years before. Returning to the continent, Grant and his wife journeyed on to France and Italy, spending Christmas 1877 aboard USS Vandalia, a warship docked in Palermo.[8] After a winter sojourn in the Holy Land, they visited Greece before returning to Italy and a meeting with Pope Leo XIII.[9] Travelling to Spain and then to Germany again, Grant met with Chancellor Otto von Bismarck; the two men discussed military matters.[10]
After another visit to England and then to Ireland, the Grants left Europe by ship, sailing through the Suez Canal to India. They visited Bombay, Lucknow, Varanasi, and Delhi, being welcomed in each city by the colonial officials.[11] After India, it was on to Burma, Siam (where Grant met King Chulalongkorn), Singapore, and Vietnam.[12] Traveling on to Hong Kong, Grant began to change his mind on the nature of colonization, believing that the British rule was not "purely selfish" but also good for the colonial subjects.[11] Leaving Hong Kong, the Grants entered China proper, seeing the cities of Canton, Shanghai, and Peking. He declined to request an interview with the Guangxu Emperor, a child of seven, but did speak with the head of government, Prince Gong, and Li Hongzhang, a leading general.[13] They discussed China's dispute with Japan over the Ryukyu Islands, and Grant agreed to help bring the two sides to agreement.[14] After crossing over to Japan and meeting the Emperor Meiji, Grant convinced China to acquiesce in Japanese annexation of the islands, and the two nations avoided war.[15]
By then the Grants had been gone two years, and were homesick. They crossed the Pacific and landed in San Francisco in September 1879, greeted by cheering crowds.[16] After a visit to Yellowstone National Park, they returned at last to Philadelphia on December 16, 1879.[17] The two-and-a-half-year voyage around the world had captured popular imagination, and Republicans—especially those of the new Stalwart faction, who had been excluded from the Hayes administration—saw Grant in a new light.[18] With Hayes having forsworn a second term when he was elected, the nomination for 1880 was wide open, and many thought that Grant was the man for the job.[18]
The Stalwarts, led by Grant's old political ally, Roscoe Conkling, saw the ex-president's renewed popularity as a way for their faction to regain prominence. Grant said nothing publicly, but privately he wanted the job and encouraged his men.[19]Elihu B. Washburne wrote to Grant in February 1880, urging him to run; Grant demurred, saying he would be happy for the Republicans to win with another candidate, though he preferred James G. Blaine to John Sherman.[20] Even so, Conkling and John A. Logan began to organize delegates in Grant's favor. When the convention convened in Chicago in June there were more delegates pledge to Grant than to any other candidate, but he was short of a majority.[20]
Grant's popularity was high, but fading. Washburne conjectured that had Grant stayed abroad longer, the wave of adulation that greeted him on his return might have carried him all the way back to the White House.[21] Conkling placed Grant's name in nomination with an elegant speech, his most famous line being: "When asked which state he hails from, our sole reply shall be, he hails from Appomattox and its famous apple tree."[20] With 370 votes needed for nomination, the first ballot had Grant at 304, Blaine at 284, Sherman at 93, and the rest scattered to minor candidates.[21] Subsequent ballots followed, with roughly the same result; neither Grant nor Blaine could win.[22] After thirty-six ballots, Blaine's delegates deserted him and combined with those of other candidates to nominate a compromise candidate: Representative James A. Garfield of Ohio.[22] Grant received 306 votes on the final ballot, his supporters staying committed to their man to the bitter end.[23] Logan moved that the nomination be made unanimous, and it was, but those 306 Stalwarts were immortalized in Republican myth.[23]
Grant accepted his defeat, even claiming to be relieved at the result.[22] He gave speeches for Garfield, but declined to criticize the Democratic nominee, Winfield Scott Hancock, a general who had served under Grant in the Army of the Potomac.[24] Garfield was elected by a narrow popular margin, but a solid Electoral College vote—214 to 155.[24] After the election, Grant gave Garfield his public support, but also pushed him to include Stalwarts in his administration.[25]
Grant & Ward
Grant's world tour, although successful, was costly. When he returned to America, Grant had depleted most of his savings and needed to earn money.[26] To that end, Grant, Jay Gould, and former Mexican Finance Secretary Matías Romero chartered the Mexican Southern Railroad, which planned to build a railroad from Oaxaca to Mexico City.[27] At the same time, Grant used his influence to convince Chester A. Arthur, who had succeeded Garfield as president in 1881, to negotiate a free trade treaty with Mexico. Arthur and the Mexican government agreed, but the United States Senate rejected the treaty in 1883.[27] The railroad was similarly unsuccessful, falling into bankruptcy the following year.[27]
At the same time, Grant's son Ulysses Jr. ("Buck") had opened a Wall Street brokerage house with Ferdinand Ward. Ward was regarded as a rising star, and the firm, Grant & Ward, was initially successful.[28] In 1883, Grant joined the firm and invested $100,000 of his own money.[29] The firm's success attracted more investors, who bought securities through them, then used the securities as collateral to borrow money to buy more securities. Grant & Ward then pledged that collateral to borrow more money to trade in securities on the firm's own account. The practice–called hypothecation–was legal and accepted; what was illegal was rehypothecation, the practice of pledging the same securities as collateral for multiple loans.[28] Ward, with the collusion of the bank involved[which?], did this for many of the firm's assets. If the trades resulted in profit, then there would be no problem; if they went bad, however, multiple loans would come due, all backed up by the same collateral. Historians acknowledge that Grant was likely unaware of Ward's tactics, but it is unclear how much Buck Grant knew. In May 1884, enough investments went bad to convince Ward that the firm would soon be bankrupted. He told Grant of the impending failure, but suggested that it was a temporary shortfall.[30] Grant approached businessman William Henry Vanderbilt, who gave Grant a personal loan of $150,000.[31] Grant invested the money in the firm, but it was not enough to save the firm from failure. Essentially penniless, but compelled by a sense of personal honor, Grant repaid Vanderbilt with his Civil War mementos. Although the market value did not cover the loan, Vanderbilt insisted it was paid in full. The matter left Grant financially destitute.[30]
Grant learned in 1884 that he was suffering from throat cancer.[32] He had forfeited his military pension when he assumed the Presidency, but Congress subsequently restored Grant to the rank of General of the Army with full retirement pay.[33]
At the suggestion of Robert Johnson, Grant wrote several articles on his Civil War campaigns for The Century Magazine at $500 each. The articles were well received by critics, and Johnson suggested Grant write a book of memoirs, as Sherman and others had successfully done.[34] Grant took up the project and asked an old friend and fellow writer, Adam Badeau, to review and critique his work. Century offered Grant a book contract, including a 10% royalty. When Grant shared this information with his friend Mark Twain, Twain suggested that Grant counter with a request for double the royalty; at the same time, he made his own offer to Grant for his memoirs, talking of a 75% royalty. Grant ultimately decided on Twain's company, Charles L. Webster and Co., as his publisher. His son Fred assisted primarily with references and proofing. Grant finished his memoir just a few days before his death.[35]
Twain created a unique marketing system designed to reach millions of veterans with a patriotic appeal just as the nation began mourning the war hero's death. Ten thousand agents canvassed the North, following a script Twain had devised; many were themselves veterans who dressed in their old uniforms. They sold 350,000 two-volume sets at prices from $3.50 to $12 (depending on the binding). Each copy contained what looked like a handwritten note from Grant himself. In the end, Grant's widow Julia received about $450,000, suggesting a royalty of about 30%.[36]
The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant has been highly regarded by the general public, military historians and literary critics.[37] Grant was a shrewd, intelligent, and effective writer. He portrayed himself in the persona of the honorable Western hero, whose strength lies in his honesty and straightforwardness. He candidly depicts his battles against both the external Confederates and internal Army foes.[38]
Grant and his wife Julia interred inside Grant's Tomb
Three days after finishing his memoirs, Grant died of throat cancer at the age of 63 in a cottage at the top of Mount McGregor in upstate New York. His last words were, "I hope that nobody will be distressed on my account."[39]Commanding General of the United States ArmyPhilip Sheridan ordered a day-long tribute to Grant on all military posts, and a six-month mourning among West Point cadets. President Grover Cleveland ordered a thirty-day nationwide period of mourning. Private services were held in Mount McGregor on August 4. After lying in state in the New York State Capitol at Albany, Grant's body was placed on a funeral train and traveled via West Point to New York City, where a quarter of a million people viewed in the two days prior to the funeral. His funeral was held August 8, in New York, and was supervised by Military Division of the Atlantic head Winfield Scott Hancock. It featured a procession of 60,000 men, many of them veterans from the Grand Army of the Republic or other veterans’ organizations.
Grant’s casket was placed on a catafalque pulled by two dozen horses between New York City Hall and Riverside Park. His pallbearers included Generals Sherman, Sheridan, Buckner, and Johnston, as well as GAR head John A. Logan and admiral David Dixon Porter. Attendance at the New York funeral purportedly topped 1.5 million. In the days before and after the funeral, ceremonies were held in other major cities around the country. Those who eulogized Grant in the press likened him to George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, then the nation's two greatest heroes.[40] His body was interred in New York City's Riverside Park, first in a temporary tomb and later in General Grant National Memorial ("Grant's Tomb"), the largest mausoleum in North America. His wife, Julia Grant, was also interred in Grant's Tomb following her death in 1902. Grant is also honored by the Ulysses S. Grant Memorial at the base of Capitol Hill in Washington.
Ulysses S. Grant was an American military officer, politician, and the 18th president of the United States, who served from 1869 to 1877. As commanding general, Grant led the Union Army to victory in the American Civil War in 1865 and briefly served as U.S. secretary of war. An effective civil rights executive, Grant signed a bill to create the Justice Department and worked with Radical Republicans to protect African Americans during Reconstruction.
James Abram Garfield was the 20th president of the United States, serving from March 1881 until his death the following September after being shot by an assassin in July. A preacher, lawyer, and Civil War general, Garfield served nine terms in the United States House of Representatives and is the only sitting member of the House to be elected president. Before his candidacy for the presidency, he had been elected to the U.S. Senate by the Ohio General Assembly—a position he declined when he became president-elect.
The 1880 United States presidential election was the 24th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 2, 1880, in which Republican nominee James A. Garfield defeated Winfield Scott Hancock of the Democratic Party. The voter turnout rate was one of the highest in the nation's history. Garfield was assassinated during his first year in office, and he was succeeded by his vice president, Chester A. Arthur.
The Whiskey Ring took place from 1871 to 1876 centering in St. Louis during the presidency of Ulysses S. Grant. The ring was an American scandal, broken in May 1875, involving the diversion of tax revenues in a conspiracy among government agents, politicians, whiskey distillers, and distributors. Whiskey distillers bribed officials from the U. S. Department of the Treasury to increase profits and evade taxes. Grant's Justice Department prosecuted members of Grant's own Republican Party who were part of the Ring. The kingpin of the Whiskey Ring was the notorious General John McDonald, whom Grant had appointed Revenue Collector of Missouri District in 1869. Under the leadership of Grant's Secretary of Treasury, Benjamin Bristow, a reformer, the Ring was uncovered and broken up.
The Stalwarts were a faction of the Republican Party that existed briefly in the United States during and after Reconstruction and the Gilded Age during the 1870s and 1880s. Led by U.S. Senator Roscoe Conkling—also known as "Lord Roscoe"—Stalwarts were sometimes called Conklingites. Other notable Stalwarts included Benjamin Wade, Charles J. Folger, George C. Gorham, Chester A. Arthur, Thomas C. Platt, and Leonidas C. Houk. The faction favored Ulysses S. Grant, the eighteenth President of the United States (1869–1877), running for a third term in the 1880 United States presidential election.
Roscoe Conkling was an American lawyer and Republican politician who represented New York in the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate.
Orville Elias Babcock was an American engineer and general in the Union Army during the Civil War. An aide to General Ulysses S. Grant during and after the war, he was President Grant's military private secretary at the White House, Superintendent of Buildings and Grounds for Washington D.C., and a Florida-based federal inspector of lighthouses. Babcock continued to serve as lighthouse inspector under Grant's successors Rutherford B. Hayes, James A. Garfield, and Chester A. Arthur.
The Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant are an autobiography, in two volumes, of Ulysses S. Grant, the 18th President of the United States. The work focuses on his military career during the Mexican–American War and the American Civil War. The volumes were written during the last year of Grant's life, amid increasing pain from terminal throat cancer and against the backdrop of his personal bankruptcy at the hands of an early Ponzi scheme. The set was published by Mark Twain shortly after Grant's death in July 1885.
William Henry Robertson, also known as W. H. Robertson, was an American lawyer and politician from New York.
The 1880 Republican National Convention convened from June 2 to June 8, 1880, at the Interstate Exposition Building in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Delegates nominated James A. Garfield of Ohio and Chester A. Arthur of New York as the official Republican Party candidates for president and vice president in the 1880 presidential election.
The 1873 United States Senate election in New York was held on January 21, 1873, by the New York State Legislature to elect a U.S. Senator to represent the State of New York in the United States Senate.
The 1881 United States Senate special elections in New York was held from May 31 to July 22 by the New York State Legislature to elect two U.S. senators to represent New York in the United States Senate. The elections were triggered by the May 16 resignations of Senators Roscoe Conkling and Thomas C. Platt, triggered by ongoing disputes with President James A. Garfield over federal patronage privileges in the state, particularly the lucrative postings at the New York Customs House. The resignations were intended to trigger the Senators' re-elections to affirm their support in the New York Legislature as a show of either popularity or political force. Instead, the legislature demurred for 52 days before electing Warner Miller and Elbridge Lapham in their place. During the balloting, President Garfield was shot; he died two months after balloting concluded.
Ulysses S. Grant was the first born son of Jesse Root Grant and Hannah Simpson Grant. This article lends itself to the story of this future general's ancestry, birth, and early career in and out of the United States army from 1822 to 1861. Grant was born in Point Pleasant, Ohio and he was educated in both private and public schools or academies and was later known to be an avid reader. Grant was raised as a Methodist, but uncommon for his time, he was not baptized or forced to attend church by his parents. Growing up in a middle-class family and supported by his father's tanneries, he sought a different career in the military. He was appointed to West Point by Ohio Congressman Thomas L. Hamer. It was Hamer who gave Grant the name Ulysses S. Grant when Grant entered West Point as a plebe in 1839. After four years at West Point, he was stationed in Missouri, where he met his future wife, Julia Dent. In 1846, Grant served in the Mexican–American War, where he was brevetted for bravery. There he fought in Mexico and learned under two commanders, Zachary Taylor and Winfield Scott. Upon his return to the United States, he married Julia and started a family.
After the Civil War, Ulysses S. Grant spent four years as head of the United States Army in peacetime. With his defeat of Robert E. Lee and the Confederacy, Grant was the most popular man in the country. As the Civil War ended Grant turned his attention to the Plains in the American West where there were numerous conflicts between white settlers, railroads, and Native Americans that resulted in wars between the Natives and the U.S. military. While the attempted Fenian invasion of Canada and French intervention in Mexico took some of his time, Grant's biggest focus was on Reconstruction of the defeated Southern states. Grant found himself caught between President Andrew Johnson, who wanted leniency to the South and a continuation of the social structure there, and the Radical Republicans in Congress, who wanted harsher punishment to rebel leaders and more government assistance to the freed slaves. Grant preserved his popularity and authority throughout the crisis that culminated in Johnson's impeachment. In 1868, the Republicans nominated Grant for president, and he won easily over his Democratic challenger.
Charles L. Webster and Company was an American subscription publishing firm founded in New York in 1884 by author and journalist Samuel Clemens, popularly known as Mark Twain. The firm was closed after declaring bankruptcy in 1894.
Hundreds of historians and biographers have written biographies and historical accounts about the life of Ulysses S. Grant and his performance in military and presidential affairs. Very few presidential reputations have shifted as dramatically as Grant's.
Ulysses S. Grant began his world tour in May 1877, only a couple of months after his second presidential term had ended. After serving as a general during the Civil War, and as president for two consecutive terms during the turbulent Reconstruction era, Grant was ready for a vacation from the years of stress that war and politics had brought him. Now in his later fifties, Grant looked forward to the tour with great enthusiasm. With his wife Julia they embarked on a long-anticipated tour, which would develop into an around the world tour, lasting more than two and a half years. The tour was filled with visits to a variety of places and prominent people, including Queen Victoria, Pope Leo XIII, Otto von Bismarck and other such dignitaries around the world. The Grants had a flexible itinerary and their visits to various countries would bring them to Paris three times during their tour. Grant was often received by cheering crowds as "General Grant" the Civil War hero in the various countries along the tour, often with official greetings and huge celebrations.
President Ulysses S. Grant sympathized with the plight of Native Americans and believed that the original occupants of the land were worthy of study. Grant's Inauguration Address set the tone for the Grant administration Native American Peace policy. The Board of Indian Commissioners was created to make reforms in Native policy and to ensure Native tribes received federal help. Grant lobbied the United States Congress to ensure that Native peoples would receive adequate funding. The hallmark of Grant's Peace policy was the incorporation of religious groups that served on Native agencies, which were dispersed throughout the United States.
Louis Frisbie Payn was an American manufacturer and politician from New York. A Republican, he was most prominent for serving as United States Marshal for the Southern District of New York from 1887 to 1881 and Superintendent of the New York State Insurance Department from 1897 to 1900.
The Blaine faction, also known as the Blaine section, was a political organization of Republicans in the United States during the presidency of Rutherford B. Hayes who coalesced around Maine U.S. senator James G. Blaine. Forming a coalition with the conservative Stalwart wing during the era, they opposed civil service reform, as well as the conciliatory actions of the Hayes administration towards the South. Blaine himself would vote with Stalwarts in opposition to President Hayes' reform efforts, siding with Conkling's faction in December 1877 when voting against the nomination of Theodore Roosevelt Sr., to become New York Custom of Collectors.
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