XXII.

GENERAL GRANT.

MR. LINCOLN was assassinated six weeks after taking the oath of office for a second term, and Andrew Johnson became President. The civil war was virtually at an end, and already the general plan of reconstruction of the States in rebellion was much discussed. That Mr. Lincoln's own views were much more liberal than those of most of the Northern statesmen who had supported his re-election, was known before his death. But a combination of circumstances was to make the new President a more strenuous opponent of conditions to the readmission of the Southern States than Mr. Lincoln could ever have been.

The four years of Mr. Johnson's administration form the most agitated period in American political history. A bare list of some of the political events of the time is enough to show that the civil war between the two sections, North and South, was succeeded by war, bloodless but severe, between the executive and legislative depart ments of the government. Mr. Johnson's training had been that of a Southern State-rights Democrat, and although his patriotism was strong enough to keep him loyal when Tennessee voted herself out of the Union, no sooner was the military conquest of the Southern Confederacy accomplished, than his former principles reasserted themselves. The more radical Republicans of the North, remembering the experience of the Whigs with Mr. Tyler, were only too ready to see in all that Mr.

Johnson did an evidence that he was to be treacherous to those who had elected him. He was continually under suspicion, and subjected to adverse criticism, from his earliest proclamations and his appointment of provisional governors for the seceded States, until, led by his life-long principles, adhered to with all the more obstinacy because of the persistent and violent opposition he encountered, he was in full sympathy with the Democratic party. Congress carried through its measures of reconstruction only by overcoming a succession of vetoes. The President expressed his constitutional views, which were shared by few Republicans, in returning the bills to establish the Freedmen's Bureau, to secure civil rights, to admit Colorado to the Union, and many others. He tried to remove from office Republicans, and to fill their places with Democrats; and Congress retorted upon him with the Tenureof-Office Bill, which Mr. Johnson returned without his signature, and which Congress promptly passed in spite of the veto. The savage contest with Secretary Stanton, and the correspondence with General Grant, the disrespectful manner in which the President spoke of Congress, in "swinging round the circle," all these events aggravated a contest which culminated in the impeachment of the President by the House of Representatives and his trial by the Senate. In all this time the Republicans in Congress were strongly supported in the North, which then, constitutionally or not, governed the country without assistance from the South. The resolution that the long struggle against rebellion should not be fruitless. was firm and unchangeable, and the Republicans had the satisfaction of seeing all their measures adopted, ineffectual as some of them have since proved to be.

During this period another set of questions began to be discussed, and some of these were to be the basis of a new

party and a new school of politicians, and to form the issue on which future elections were to be decided. In the prosecution of the war a great debt had been created, and a part of this debt consisted of treasury notes, made a legal tender for all public and private debts, except duties on imports and the interest of the public debt. An attempt in the early part of Mr. Johnson's term to reduce the amount of legal-tender notes, or greenbacks, outstanding, had resulted in a temporary stringency in the money market, and had led to action by Congress which forbade a further reduction of the volume of the currency. The heavy taxation caused by the war, the high premium on gold, and the rapidly increasing value of government bonds which were drawing gold interest, induced some politicians to propose a variety of schemes which would lighten the burden of the taxpayer at the cost of a virtual breach of faith on the part of the government. One of these was the taxation of bonds, which were by their terms expressly exempted from State and municipal taxation. Taxation of them by national authority would have been the same thing as reducing the rate of interest which had been promised upon them. The most popular form of attack upon the bondholders was a proposition to pay the principal of the bonds in greenbacks. The letter of the law did not forbid this, but the Republicans maintained that the spirit of the law was against any such step, and that it would be virtual repudiation. A very large number of Democrats, particularly in the West, took up this proposition with great enthusiasm, among whom Mr. Pendleton of Ohio, who had been General McClellan's associate on the National Ticket in 1864, and was now regarded as the leading candidate for the first place in 1868, was one of the most prominent. While this view of public policy was most prevalent among Democrats,

there were many Republicans also who shared it; Thaddeus Stevens being the most conspicuous example of dissent from the general opinion of the party, although even he finally voted in favor of a bill to strengthen the public credit, which President Johnson defeated by a "pocket veto." It was in the canvass preliminary to the election of 1868 that the Democrats first manifested that preference for the greenback currency which has ever since been a principle of the controlling wing of the party.

A great many circumstances united to make General Ulysses S. Grant the natural and inevitable choice of the Republicans for a candidate for President. The chief of these reasons were his military success and the conspicuous position into which he was thrust by the controversy with Mr. Johnson. But added to these recommendations was the confidence reposed in his judgment in the choice of men; and the fact that he was no politician increased not a little his popularity with the people who were tired of the wrangles of the past few years. General Grant, it was well known, had never voted for Republican candidates in his life, and there were many persons who feared that the risk of taking for the leader of the party, at such a time, a man whose political principles were thought not to be well defined, was too great, and that the Republicans might be about to repeat their own mistake of 1864. But nothing could stay the tide of public sentiment in General Grant's favor, and the warnings of the dissentients were drowned in the nearly universal demand that he should be selected. The wisest and most cautious men of the party convinced themselves by General Grant's letters and private conversation that he was fully to be trusted, and their confidence was not misplaced.

The question of the candidacy for the first place being fully decided by the action of the State and District Con

ventions, as well as by popular sentiment, all the interest in the Republican Convention was concentrated upon the vice-presidency and the platform. The vote of the Senate upon the impeachment of the President had been taken the week before the convention met, and as several Republican senators had voted for acquittal on the eleventh article, which had been taken for a test, some of the more radical and impulsive delegates were in favor of expressing decided condemnation of the act which had rendered the removal of the President impossible. But in spite of the vehemence of the more hot-headed members of the party, the proposed action was defeated, and the convention contented itself with expressing the opinion that those who voted for conviction were in the right. There was a long list of candidates for the nomination for Vice-President. There was Mr. Hamlin, who had been left off the ticket four years before in order to give a representation to the loyalty of the South; Mr. B. F. Wade, senator from Ohio, who was President of the Senate during a part of the time that the war between the President and Congress was waging; Mr. Colfax, the speaker of the House of Representatives; Senators Fenton of New York, and Wilson of Massachusetts, Governor Curtin of Pennsylvania, and other candidates of less promin

ence.

Prior to the meeting of the National Convention of the Republicans, a convention of soldiers and sailors was held at Chicago. It was presided over by General John A. Logan, and was full of enthusiasm for General Grant. The Republican Convention met on May 20, at Chicago, and completed its work in two days. General Carl Schurz was the temporary presiding officer, and General Joseph R. Hawley of Connecticut was made permanent president. The first day was occupied with preliminaries. On the