punish his opponents, and to advance his election to a second term; how all these assumptions have matured in a personal government, semi-military in character and breathing the military spirit, being a species of Cæsarism or personalism, abhorrent to republican institutions, where subservience to the President is the supreme law.

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... I protest against him as radically unfit for the presidential office, being essentially military in nature, without experience in civil life, without aptitude for civil duties, and without knowledge of republican institutions."

Thus "Cæsarism" became the cry against the most diffident and unassuming soldier of his generation, one who signalized his first night at the White House by dispensing with the squad of soldiers detailed there as a night guard and ordering away from Washington all the troops on duty there at the time of his inauguration. "I was trying last night," said Matthew H. Carpenter replying to Sumner's tirade, "to recall a single instance if in conversation in regard to the late war I had heard General Grant allude to himself, and I could not. I have heard him speak in the most glowing terms of his comrades in arms. I have heard him speak of the exploits of Sherman. I have heard him allude to what was done by Logan, McPherson, and many other officers of

the Union army. I never heard him say, speaking of a battle, 'at such a juncture I thought I would do so and so,' or, 'I ordered a battalion this way or that,' or, 'I turned the scale by such a maneuver.' I never heard him allude to himself in connection with the war. I believe you might go to the White House and live with him and converse about the war day after day, and you never would know from anything he said that he was in the war at all."

Such is the uniform testimony of those who knew him best. It is true that his companionships were not all over-nice; that instead of spending his summers in Washington he spent them at the seashore, as has been the habit of almost every President since his day; that he liked to drive fast horses as when a boy on his father's place; that he accepted presents indiscriminately as a thing of course; that he had relatives in the public service; but if these were faults deserving censure, they were faults of judgment, not of malign intent, and history will weigh them lightly.

Grant was keenly sensitive to the attacks upon him, but he never had the slightest doubt of his success, though the most experienced political observers had their blue days. George W. Childs tells how during the campaign Wilson, who had just made a tour of the country, came to his house in Philadelphia greatly depressed. "I went to see General

Grant and I told him about this feeling particularly as coming from Senator Wilson. The General said nothing, but he sent for a map of the United States. He laid the map down on the table and went over it with a pencil and said, 'We will carry this State, that State, and that State; until he nearly covered the whole United States. It occurred to me he might as well put them all in." He wrote to Washburne in August that even if Greeley remained in the field till November, he would not carry a single Northern State.

His foresight was justified. The only States Greeley carried were Maryland, Georgia, Missouri, and Kentucky. Grant received 286 electoral votes out of 349. His popular vote was 3,597,132, an increase over his vote in 1868 of 484,299.

It was a cruel thing for Greeley. He who had rioted all his life in searing Presidents and candidates cringed now when he felt his own soul pressed against the iron. The Scriptural admonition, that he who lives by the sword shall perish by the sword, was never more convincingly exemplified. "I was the worst beaten man who ever ran for high office," he wrote Colonel Tappan, "and I have been assailed so bitterly that I hardly knew whether I was running for President or the Penitentiary. In the darkest hour my suffering wife left me, none too soon, for she

had suffered too deeply and too long. I laid her in the ground with hard, dry eyes. Well, I am used up; I cannot see before me. I have slept little for weeks, and my eyes are still hard to close, while they soon open again." Before the Electoral College met he died broken in heart and mind.

But Grant's great personal triumph had its taste of wormwood too; for he had been through slander and vituperation such as seldom comes to public men. How it had eaten into him became plain to his countrymen a few months later when they read the closing words of his second inaugural: —

"I did not ask for place or position, and was entirely without influence or the acquaintance of persons of influence, but was resolved to perform my part in a struggle threatening the very existence of the nation. I performed a conscientious duty, without asking promotion or command, and without a revengeful feeling toward any section or individual.

"Notwithstanding this, throughout the war, and from my candidacy for my present office in 1868 to the close of the last presidential campaign, I have been the subject of abuse and slander scarcely ever equaled in political history, which to-day I feel that I can afford to disregard in view of your verdict, which I gratefully accept as my vindication."

CHAPTER XL

CRÉDIT MOBILIER

THE BACK PAY GRAB THE

SANBORN CONTRACTS

As we look back upon Grant's early years as President, we see that he was criticized more for the manner than the matter of his deeds. The result in 1872 showed clearly that the conservative forces of the country retained their faith in him. While Greeley had great crowds to hear him speak, so great as for a time to frighten old Republican campaigners, the outcome demonstrated that they were drawn by curiosity to see and hear a man who had been writing to them many years. The "sober second thought" which he invoked brought voters to the polls for his opponent. He was himself submerged in the great "tidal wave" on which his visionary helpers set such store. Grant won because, however much his methods might be questioned, men felt that in the fundamental qualities then needed he was sound. He had sustained the country's credit in finance, had greatly added to America's prestige abroad, and had shown firmness in the execution of the laws both North and South, a trait which led strong men of all political complexions to believe in