The Man Who Saved the Union (93 page)

In their exhaustion the delegates did what delegates often do in such circumstances: they turned to a compromise candidate. No one held much against
James Garfield, the competent but uncharismatic congressman from Ohio, and so on the thirty-sixth ballot the convention tapped him to head the ticket.
Chester Arthur of New York was nominated for vice president.

“
Individually, I am much relieved at the result, having grown weary of constant abuse,” Grant wrote Roscoe Conkling, whom he thanked for his “magnificent and generous support” during the convention. “I have no presentiment as to what is likely to be the result of the labors of the convention or the result of the election which is to follow, but I hope for the best to the country.”

J
ulia was more disappointed than her husband at the outcome of the convention. She had greatly enjoyed her eight years as the president’s wife and had surrendered the White House most reluctantly. “
Oh, Ulys,” she had cried, “I feel like a waif, like a waif on the world’s wide common.” (Gallantly he answered: “I, too, am a waif. So you are not alone.”) The excitement surrounding their return from abroad had caused her to look forward to a third term
as First Lady. She urged Grant, amid the deadlock, to take the unprecedented step of appearing before the convention in person to plead his case. He replied that he would cut off his right arm before he would do any such thing. “
Do you not desire success?” she asked. “Yes, of course,” he said. “Since my name is up, I would rather be nominated, but I will do nothing to further that end.” “Oh, Ulys,” she said, “how unwise—what mistaken chivalry.… Go, go tonight, I beseech you.” He looked at her. “Julia, I am amazed at you,” he said.

He didn’t expect to participate in the campaign, and for a time after the Democrats, trying to steal a military march on the Republicans, nominated Winfield Scott Hancock for president, he resisted getting
involved. “
I have nothing to say against General Hancock,” he told a reporter testing a story that he did have something to say. “I have known him for forty years. His personal, official, and military record is good.” But he
was
a Democrat. “The record of the party which has put him in nomination is bad.”

Grant’s diffidence eroded as he pondered the prospect of a Democratic capture of the White House. He didn’t believe that the Democrats, as heavily dependent on the South as they were, had fully accepted the outcome of the war and Reconstruction. In
Congress the Democrats could be contained, but if they took the presidency they could roll back much of what Grant had spent the best years of his life working to secure. “
I feel a very deep interest in the success of the Republican ticket,” he told
James Garfield in August, “and have never failed to say a good word in favor of the party and its candidates when I felt I could do any good. I shall not fail in the future.”

He was better than his word, taking to the stump on behalf of Garfield as he had never done for himself. He presented himself as the antithesis of the politician. “
I have never made a Republican speech in my life, or any kind of a political speech,” he told an audience in Galena. “I am sure it would require some time and much preparation to make one of any length.… I never voted a Republican presidential ticket in my life, and but one Democratic ticket, and that was many years ago when I was quite a young man.” But he was certainly going to vote this time. “Although I shall be some distance from you in November next, I shall return to Galena to cast a Republican vote for president of the United States. And I hope that the city of Galena will cast a Republican vote such as it never cast before.”

He caught a touch more of the campaign fever as the weeks passed. “
I am a Republican, as the two great political parties are now divided, because the Republican party is a national party seeking the greatest good for the greatest number of citizens,” he told a rally in Ohio. “There is not a precinct in this vast nation where a Democrat cannot cast his ballot and have it counted as cast. No matter what the prominence of the opposite party, he can proclaim his political opinions, even if he is only one among a thousand, without fear and without proscription on account of his opinions.” Sadly, such tolerance was not bipartisan. “There are fourteen states and localities in some other states where Republicans have not this privilege.” He was a Republican for other reasons as well. “The Republican party is a party of progress and of liberality toward its
opponents. It encourages the poor to strive to better their condition, the ignorant to educate their children, to enable them to compete successfully with their more fortunate associates, and, in fine, it secures an entire equality before the law of every citizen, no matter what his race, nationality, or previous condition. It tolerates no privileged class. Everyone has the opportunity to make himself all he is capable of.”

In public he hewed to his decision to say nothing against Hancock. In private, reportedly, he asserted that the Democratic nominee lacked the character to be an effective president. “
He is vain, selfish, weak, and easily flattered,” he told two Methodist ministers who visited him in Galena, according to the instantly published recollection of one of them. “He is crazy to be president. The South will easily control him.”

Grant denied using the language attributed to him. He allowed himself to be quoted as saying, “
Hancock is a man who likes to hear himself praised,” but against this he balanced a commendation of Hancock’s courage and forthright character. Yet he never backed down from his assertion that the
election of a Democrat would be a heavy blow to democracy and equality in America.

He spoke in the Midwest, the mid-Atlantic and New England. In
New Jersey he praised the carpetbagger, the Reconstruction-era Yankee gone South who was the bête noire of Southern Democrats, as the quintessential American. Americans had long picked up and followed opportunity, he said. The West, the most dynamic region of the country, was filled with
carpetbaggers. “
Out there they are all carpetbaggers.” He himself was a carpetbagger, having moved to Illinois in search of economic opportunity. “All we ask is that our carpetbag fellow citizens, and our fellow citizens of African descent, and of every other class who may choose to be Republicans, shall have the privilege to go to the polls, even though they are in the minority, and put in their ballot without being burned out of their homes and without being threatened or intimidated.”

He concluded his campaign at the end of October in New York with another call for everyone’s vote to be counted and a prediction as to what the counting would reveal. “
Every Northern state, with the possible exception of two—California and
Nevada—will give a Republican majority.” The South would be solid for the Democrats. “I want you all to remember my prediction on next Tuesday,” he told his audience with a smile. “If it appears that I am right, talk about it as much as you please. If you find that I am wrong, then treat the prediction as private and confidential.”

They soon talked about it a lot. Grant erred only on New Jersey, which Hancock carried by a whisker. The Democratic ticket won the former slave states plus California and Nevada—and New Jersey—while Garfield and the Republicans swept the North minus those three. The totals gave the victory to Garfield by an electoral vote of 214 to 155.

“
I heartily congratulate you and especially the country,” Grant wrote the president-elect. “I feel as sure that the nation has escaped a calamity as one can feel about untried things.” Rumors were alleging that Grant sought a cabinet post in exchange for his support of the ticket. “I want to put your mind entirely at ease on this subject,” he told Garfield. “As an American citizen I felt as much interest in the result of the election as you or anyone else could.” It was for this reason that he had worked hard for the victory. But he wanted nothing in return save the satisfaction of keeping the Democrats at bay another four years. “There is no position within the gift of the President which I would accept. There is no public position which I want. If I can serve the country at any time I will do so freely and without reward.”

83

A
T ONE OF HIS CAMPAIGN STOPS, IN
H
ARTFORD, GRANT WAS INTRODUCED
by
Samuel Clemens. “
By years of colossal labor and colossal achievement you at last beat down a gigantic rebellion and saved your country from destruction,” Clemens said. “Then the country commanded you to take the helm of state. You preferred your great office of general of the army and the rest and comfort which it afforded, but you loyally obeyed and relinquished permanently the ample and well earned salary of the generalship and resigned your accumulating years to the chance mercies of a precarious existence.” Clemens noted, with characteristic wryness, that other countries treated their heroes better. “When Wellington won Waterloo, a battle on a level with some dozen of your victories, sordid England tried to pay him for that service with wealth and grandeur. She made him a duke and gave him four million dollars. If you had done and suffered for any other country what you have done and suffered for your own, you would have been affronted in the same sordid way. But, thank God, this vast and rich and mighty republic is imbued to the core with a delicacy which will forever preserve her from so degrading a deserving son.… Your country stands ready from this day forth to testify her measureless love and pride and gratitude toward you in every conceivable inexpensive way.”

Grant laughed with the rest of Clemens’s audience, but the money question—
his
money question—was a serious one. Julia’s distress at her husband’s refusal to pursue the nomination revealed not only her desire to experience again the distinction of being First Lady but also her appreciation that the presidency had afforded them the only financial security they had ever enjoyed. Grant’s mining stocks had provided the
income for their world tour, but mining was a risky business and shares worth hundreds today might be worth tens tomorrow. As Grant cast about for business opportunities during the summer and autumn of 1880 he considered investing in Mexican railroads and taking the presidency of a Colorado mining company. “
One thing is certain,” he wrote
Adam Badeau: “I must do something to supplement my income or continue to live in Galena or on a farm. I have not got the means to live in a city.” Another thing was certain: though Grant might have settled for the rural life, Julia would not. She thrived on being at the center of American life; she would have withered in the country and made Grant’s life miserable in the process.

At least he didn’t have to worry about the children. Nellie was financially secure with
Algernon Sartoris in England. Fred had married the daughter of a successful Chicago developer. Buck had just married the daughter of one of Colorado’s charter senators,
Jerome Chaffee. “
You know Buck is married!” Grant wrote Nellie. “Everyone speaks most highly of the young lady.” Jesse married into a prominent San Francisco family. “I do not know whether anyone has described Jesse’s wife,” Grant wrote Nellie. “She is quite small with beautiful large eyes, a very small face but prominent nose, light auburn hair, and by some thought quite pretty. I do not think her as pretty as either Ida”—Fred’s wife—“or Buck’s wife. But she is very pleasant and not a bit spoiled. The same may be said of all your sisters-in-law.” The boys were prospering. “Buck and Jesse are both doing well in their business and are entirely independent.” Fred was in the army and hence the poorest of the three. “
But he has something outside of his pay”—something from Ida’s family—“which I had not at his age.”

Grant explained to Nellie that he and Julia planned to make their permanent home in New York. “
We are boarding at the Fifth Avenue Hotel for the present, and will continue to do so until I know I am fixed to be entirely independent. I will then purchase or lease a house.” Grant’s friends determined to him. Illinois senator
John Logan introduced a bill to restore Grant to the army’s retired list with the full pay of a general. A similar bill was introduced in the House. Grant disapproved of the special treatment. “
Under no circumstances will I accept the place if the bill passes,” he wrote Logan. His moral veto helped kill the bill. Other admirers stepped privately into the breach.
Anthony Drexel,
George Childs and
J. P. Morgan headed a group of bankers, merchants and industrialists who proposed a fund to assist the Grants financially. “
In any other great nation
such a fund would not be necessary,” Drexel explained to
Edwards Pierrepont, observing that most countries pensioned their heroes. Drexel and the others recommended that twenty persons each subscribe $5,000 toward a “presidential retiring fund.”

The idea caught on. The list of contributors expanded beyond the twenty and the contribution total passed $200,000. The original plan had been to invest the money and let the Grants live off the dividends; in the event, Drexel and the others decided to apply part of it toward the purchase of a home in New York. “
I am sure I turned deathly pale,” Julia recalled of the moment when Drexel and Childs told her the news. The proprietor of the Fifth Avenue Hotel had cut the Grants a deal, but the rent still strained their budget. “I was so startled that I did not respond until Mr. Childs asked, ‘Is not that nice?’ ” She replied, “Oh, yes, yes indeed, but talk with the General first. See if he approves.” “Oh, no,” Childs said. “We have decided it is to be yours. The General has nothing to do with it. It is yours, and what is yours is the General’s.” Julia’s relief and joy were still palpable years later. “So I was to have a beautiful home, all my own,” she wrote.

T
hough Garfield was president, Grant remained the most formidable figure in the Republican party. At fifty-eight he enjoyed solid health, and while Republican politicos had divergent opinions about him, the rank and file of the party adored him. Any slip by Garfield—whose popular margin over Hancock had been less than 2,000 votes out of 900,000 cast—might cause the party to turn once again to the hero of Appomattox.