Grant was in Mexico that spring, whence he wrote in May: "I am completely disgusted with Garfield's course. It is too late now for him to do anything to restore him to my confidence. I will never again lend my active aid to the support of a presidential candidate who has not strength enough to appear before a convention as a candidate.... Garfield has shown that he is not possessed of the backbone of an angleworm. I hope his nominations may be defeated." His feeling against Garfield was generally known through personal letters which slipped into print. When Garfield was shot, Grant for a time, like Conkling, was a target for the people's wrath, which had hardly died away when in September he followed Garfield's coffin, as he had followed those of Sumner, Motley, and Greeley each in turn.

now held by General Badeau; another is chargé d'affaires to Denmark, held by Mr. Cramer; another is the mission to Switzerland, held by Mr. Fish, a son of the former distinguished Secretary of State.... All these officers save only Mr. Cramer are citizens of New York. It was proposed to displace them all, not for any al-. leged fault of theirs, or for any alleged need or advantage of the public service, but in order to give the great office of Collector of the Port of New York to Mr. William H. Robertson as a "reward" for certain acts of his said to have "aided in making the nomination of General Garfield possible." The chain of removals thus proposed was broken by General Badeau's promptly declining to accept the new place to which he was sent.' A protest against the change in collectorship signed by Arthur, Conkling, Platt, Postmaster-General James, and Governor Cornell, had been addressed to the President and ignored." (A. R. Conkling, Life and Letters of R. Conkling, pp. 639-40.)

With Arthur he was at first on cordial terms and Arthur freely asked him for advice. At his suggestion Frelinghuysen was appointed Secretary of State, and Governor Morgan of New York was asked to take the Treasury. Morgan declined, and Grant proposed John Jaccb Astor, first for the Treasury and then for Minister to England, but neither suggestion was adopted. Before long Arthur came to shun his Stalwart friends, perhaps because he felt that they presumed on old association. He wanted to be President in his own right, and to accomplish this, saw the necessity for different ties. That was a trait entirely foreign to Grant's nature, the sort of thing he could not understand. Through all his life he had been loyal to his friends even to the peril of his own good

name.

Invited to the White House for a visit, he was beset by satellites and relatives begging him to urge upon the President their claims for office or for favor, and he good-naturedly yielded to their importunities till Arthur plainly showed displeasure and at times evaded him. He wanted his friend General Beale made Secretary of the Navy. Arthur appointed in his stead William E. Chandler, who as the friend of Blaine had been a leading factor in the defeat of Grant for a third term. After that the coolness between Grant and Arthur grew. "He seems more

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afraid of his enemies and through this fear more influenced by them than guided either by his judgment, personal feelings, or friendly influences," Grant wrote in February, 1883, and a year later, on the eve of the National Convention, he wrote: "Arthur will probably go into the convention second in the number of supporters, when he would not probably have a single vote if it was not for his army of officials and the vacancies he has to fill."

He had a grievance, not due to patronage, but to Arthur's failure to right what Grant had come to look on as a wrong- his own refusal while President to allow Fitz John Porter a second trial. Since then, through a more thorough study of the evidence, he had become convinced that Porter was innocent of the charge of which he had been convicted by courtmartial during the war. The sentence having been reversed at last by the board of which Schofield was the head, Grant worked hard to put the bill through Congress authorizing the President to restore Porter to his former rank, and when Arthur vetoed the bill on the ground that Congress had infringed upon the executive prerogative in designating a person by name whom the President was to appoint, Grant did not hesitate publicly to criticize the motive behind the veto. As between Blaine and Arthur in 1884, Grant preferred the nomination of Blaine, but owing