ANTI-GRANT MOVEMENT 823 nois; Chase and Stanley Matthews and Thomas Ewing of Ohio; Governor Curtin and A. K. McClure of Pennsylvania; Charles Francis Adams, Senator Sumner, Carl Schurz, General Banks, Cassius M. Clay, Justice Field, and many others. These men had many followers, and were supported by such great dailies as the New York Tribune, the Chicago Tribune, and the Cincinnati Commercial. The great body of the Republican party, however, determined to renominate Grant, whereupon a majority of the opposing faction broke away from the party, put its own ticket in the field, and called itself the Liberal Republican party. The national movement was preceded by a local movement in Missouri, where the liberals, led by Carl Schurz and B. Gratz Brown, joining the Democrats, won a victory over the radicals, who favored retaining the disabilities of the ex-Confederates. The Missouri liberals were soon joined by a similar faction in New York and other states, and thus the anti-Grant or Liberal Republican party came into existence. 2 When the Liberals saw that the nomination of Grant by the regular party was inevitable, they called a national convention, to meet at Cincinnati on the 1st of May, 1872.1 The proposal met with a wide response, and on the appointed day the city on the Ohio witnessed a great gathering, a huge mass meeting rather than a convention. Much of the best Republican brains was represented, but the crowd was a motley one; the members had not been sent, they had come of their own accord. They represented every shade of political opinion, and were of the same mind in one thing only - opposition to Grant. Had the regular party consented to drop Grant, the Liberal movement would doubtless have dissolved; but as this could not be, they proceeded with their work. Their platform pronounced against civic corruption, and the continued disabilities of the ex-Confederates, and, as a direct thrust at Grant, declared that no President should be a candidate for reëlection. On 3 Liberal conthe tariff they could not agree, and they waived the vention, May, issue. The momentous question was the choice of a 1872. candidate for the presidency. On this point success or failure would probably turn. It was known that the new party could not win alone; but there was a tacit understanding that the Democrats would indorse its nominees if acceptable to them. Much, therefore, depended on the choice of the Liberal convention. 1 The call was made by the Missouri Liberals. 2 The Nation, Vol. XV, p. 20. 8 McPherson, p. 207. The leading name before the convention was that of Charles Francis Adams. Adams was a finished statesman. He had displayed high diplomatic skill as minister to England during the war, and, moreover, he belonged to the only family in America that had given two Presidents to the United States. But Adams, like his father and grandfather, was wanting in tact and in the winning arts of the politician; and, true to his ancestral precedents, he made a foolish blunder at the moment when this convention seemed about to name him for the highest office in the land. He telegraphed his managers to "take him out of that crowd" rather than make any pledges for his honesty. There were men in "that crowd" who resented the apparent reflection and cast their ballots in another direction. The other leading candidates were Lyman Trumbull, David Davis, and Horace Greeley. Any one of the first three would have been agreeable to the Democrats. The convention nominated the fourth. HORACE GREELEY The great editor of the New York Tribune was the most conspicuous man in the country next to President Grant; and while Grant had but recently loomed first upon the military, then upon the political, horizon with the suddenness of a meteor, Greeley's fame had shone with a steady light for a generation. While Grant was yet a boy in knickerbockers on his father's farm in southern Ohio, Greeley was experimenting in the nation's metropolis with the first one-cent daily ever issued; while Grant was an unknown cadet at Greeley. West Point, Greeley was in the forefront of the memoraGrant and ble political battle of 1840; and while Grant was hauling cordwood and hoeing potatoes in Missouri, already a middle-aged man, and perhaps without a dream of future greatness, Greeley was the proprietor of the leading American newspaper and the acknowledged prince of American editors. Horace Greeley, the son of a farmer, was born in New Hampshire in 1811. As a well-grown boy we find him in the printing business in Erie, Pennsylvania. At length, determined to strike out in the great world and win for himself the best that his talents could procure, he went to the city of New York. After a long journey on foot and on canal boats he reached the metropolis with ambition in his soul and nothing in his pocket; to become, after years of toil and discouragement, the leading editor in the city and the nation. THE DEMOCRATS JOIN THE LIBERALS 825 For many years Greeley had been in the midst of every political battle in his state and in the nation. His pen was often caustic, always powerful; his courage never faltered, but he often displayed a singular lack of wisdom at a critical moment. So outspoken had he been on public questions that he had made enemies on every side. Herein lay his weakness as a candidate. He could not hope to be elected without the aid of the Democratic party, and he had been the implacable foe of that party for a generation. Scarcely a leading man in the party had escaped the bitter castigation of his pen. Could this party now make this man their standard bearer in the great contest? The nomination of Greeley at Cincinnati stunned the Democracy of the North. Any other public man would have suited them better. For a time the opposition to him was formidable; but as the weeks passed and the leaders perceived the hopelessness of their cause, except they joined with the Liberals, it was decided to swallow the medicine, however bitter. Accordingly, the Democratic convention, which met in July at Baltimore, nominated Greeley and B. Gratz Brown, the Liberal Republican candidates.2 The Republicans had met in Philadelphia, and had renominated Grant by a unanimous vote. Henry Wilson, the Massachusetts senator, was named for Vice President. The campaign partook of the character of that of 1840, when Greeley first rose to public notice. The Greeley orators rung many changes on Grant's civic incapacity, his nepotism in public appointments, and on the corrupt carpetbag governments of the South. The Grant supporters declared that if Greeley were elected, it would be a Democratic victory, as the great majority of his supporters came from that party; that it would be turning the government over to the unregenerate Democracy. It was dangerous, they argued, to intrust the hard-won fruits of the war to the party that but eight years before had pronounced the war a failure, the party that was unfriendly to the freedman and to the last three amendments, the party that included all the old slaveholders and ex-rebels. But Greeley was hopeful until the early state elections 1 Greeley was more popular at the South because of his mild attitude on reconstruction, and because he had signed the bail bond of Jefferson Davis. 2 A small faction of the party, however, calling themselves "the Straightouts," refused to support Greeley, met in convention at Louisville, and nominated Charles O'Connor and John Quincy Adams. This party made little showing in the election. 3 Wilson's origin was as obscure as that of Lincoln or of Andrew Johnson. He was the son of an Irish farm laborer named Colbath, and his own name was Jeremiah Jones Colbath. Not liking his name, he had it changed by the state legislature to Henry Wilson. Election of pointed unerringly to the reëlection of Grant. The election came, and Grant swept the country overwhelmingly, receiving the votes of every state in the North, and of all but six in the South. Since the reëlection of Monroe in 1820, but twice (in 1852 and in 1864) had there been such a sweeping victory. Greeley's elements of weakness were two: tens of thousands of old-time Democrats refused to support him and remained away from the polls; and a great many Republicans, who were at first in full sympathy with the Liberals, finding themselves in Democratic company, hastened before election day to get back into the Republican fold. Greeley's defeat came upon him with a shock. It was not simply the defeat, for that was not unexpected, even by him, but the overwhelming vastness of it, that was crushing. Greeley had come to believe, from his great editorial success and from his influence in national councils, that he was one of the most highly honored among his countrymen; and now to have his idol shattered at one fell blow was more than his sensitive nature could endure. He could not see that thousands of his friends had voted against him because they feared that a change in the government at that time would not be well for the country, and that they were still his friends. He did not foresee that his countrymen, for generations after he was gone, would honor his memory as one of the ablest and noblest men of his times. He saw only the result of the election, and it crushed him. Moreover, the last weeks of the campaign he spent at the bedside of his dying wife, the companion of his long struggles. Her death occurred just before the election, and the double blow proved too heavy. Greeley's reason was dethroned, and he was sent to an insane asylum. Death of Ere the month that brought his great defeat had closedwhile the shouts of victory for his successful rival were still resounding and the bonfires were still burning — Horace Greeley was dead. The whole nation mourned at the sad end of Greeley, one of the noblest of men with all his political antagonisms; and men of every political shade, including President Grant, stood sorrowing about the grave when his body was laid to rest. EXECUTIVE DEMORALIZATION The sweeping victory of Grant in 1872 gave the Republican party a feeling of security, a belief that it was more strongly intrenched in power than ever before. This condition was an unwholesome one, DISHONEST GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS 827 and it led the party more than ever to disregard the accusations of corruption that had been so freely made in the campaign. The prophecies of evil, freely made by the Democrats, were soon amply justified. General Grant proved utterly incapable of cleaning the Augean stables, and during his second term the demoralization in public life was more widespread than ever before in the history of the government. If Grant were not utterly without a knowledge of the responsibilities of the great office, he was hopelessly egotistical. This was shown by his appointing his first Cabinet without consulting any of the leaders of his party. And he maintained this attitude throughout the eight years. Nor was he a good judge of character; the political adventurer could gain his ear as readily as the long-tried statesman of well-known probity, and many of his appointments were made without consultation with his Cabinet. The result was that every branch of the government became infested with men who sought only plunder. The most notable of the resulting scandals was that known as the Crédit Mobilier case. The Crédit Mobilier was a corporation, which in 1864 became a company to construct the transcontinental railroad. During the presidential campaign of 1872 the Democratic leaders charged various Republican leaders with holding. stock in the Crédit Mobilier Company. For members of Congress to be interested in a company whose profits and fortunes depended mainly on friendly acts of Congress was considered highly improper. A searching investigation revealed that the charges were founded on facts. Many reputations were blasted, and two members of the House were severely censured. Crédit Mobilier. The "Whiskey Ring" was exposed by Secretary of the Treasury Bristow. In many western towns- St. Louis, Chicago, Milwaukee, and others the manufacturers of whiskey corrupted the government officials, and in two years defrauded the government of over $4,000,000. More than fifty United States officials were arrested, but most of them escaped punishment. Belknap. The corrupt practices were not confined to the lower officials. In 1876, Secretary of War W. W. Belknap was accused of offering to sell the control of the post-tradership at Fort Sill, Indian Territory. An investigation followed, and the most glaring frauds were unearthed. Belknap was shown to have received at least $24,000 by "farming out" contracts. He was speedily impeached by the House of Representatives; but before he could be tried by the Senate, and indeed, a few hours before the impeachment |