Four More Years: Ulysses Grant
After leaving office, either because of defeat in election, because they did not secure their party's nomination, or because the decided to retire (before the two term limit became part of the constitution), a number of presidents decided that they didn't like the label of "ex-president" or "former president" and decided to take a run at another term. This month we'll look at these, beginning with Ulysses Grant.
Grand had been the leading Union General in the Civil War, he was a two term president, and he also had a very interesting life after leaving the presidency, that included an attempt to win a third term in office after a four year absence. At 42 years of age he became the 6th Commanding General of the Union Army. Just before his 47th birthday be became President. After his presidency he embarked on a round-the-world tour, then came back and ran for president. He was later the victim of a swindler and he worked hard to repay other investors who were similarly swindled by a man trading on his name. He faced a race against a painful death at age 63 from throat cancer, struggling to write his memoirs in order to provide for his family, before meeting his maker.
Grant left the presidency with his once tremendous popularity having dwindled significantly. Although he was cheered when he spoke at the opening of the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in May of 1876, by this time his administration had been tarnished by a number of scandals, the result of Grant putting his trust in the wrong people. The country was suffering from a weak economy, the hangover from the "Panic of 1873". Democratic gains in the House led many in the Republican party to turn against Grant in June. Many Republicans were afraid that Grant would run for a third term, but Grant too could read the writing on the wall and he declined to run. When the 1876 Republican Party nominating convention chose Governor Rutherford Hayes of Ohio, a reformer, as its candidate, the nation experienced the closest and most controversial election in its history. Voting irregularities in three Southern states caused the election that year to remain undecided for several months. Grant received a report that southern Democrats were threatening violence and if Hayes won, and that Grant would be assassinated. Grant told Congress to settle the matter through legislation and assured both sides that he would only use the army to force a result, if it was necessary to prevent violence. On January 29, 1877, he signed legislation forming an Electoral Commission to decide the matter. The Commission ruled that the disputed votes belonged to Hayes. Republicans agreed to the Compromise of 1877, in which the last troops were withdrawn from Southern capitals. The Republicans had won the election, but Grant's efforts at Reconstruction of the south were over.
Grant attended his successor's inauguration before leaving the White House. He and his family stayed with at the home of his Secretary of State Hamilton Fish in New York for two months before heading off on what became a famous world tour. In preparation for the tour, the Grants arrived in Philadelphia on May 10, 1877, where they were honored with celebrations during the week before their departure. On May 16, Ulysses and Julia Grant sailed for England aboard the SS Indiana. Their first stop was in Liverpool in May, where they were greeted by very large crowds. He was praised for more his Civil War exploits than for his presidency. He was called the "Hero of Appomattox" and the Union general who defeated the Confederacy by his hosts. The Grants dined with Queen Victoria at Windsor Castle, and Grant gave several speeches in London. The Hayes administration received news of Grant's popularity in Europe, and Hayes encouraged Grant to extend his tour and voyage around the world to strengthen American interests abroad.
After a tour on the continent, the Grants visited Scotland. They also spent time in Southampton with their daughter Nellie. During Grant's presidency, she had married an Englishman named Algernon Sartoris, in a White House ceremony. Grant and Julia next traveled to Paris. They next went to Italy, visiting Naples, Pompeii and Mount Vesuvius. The Grants spent Christmas 1877 aboard USS Vandalia, a warship docked in Palermo. They cruised the Mediterranean and next traveled through Egypt and the Holy Land. They were in Constantinople on March 3, 1878 at the time of the signing of the Treaty of San Stefano. They next went to Greece, and then on to the Vatican where they met with Pope Leo XIII. Later, in 1878, they visited the Netherlands before moving on to Germany, where Grant discussed military matters with Chancellor Otto von Bismarck. Grant traveled on to Russia, where Grant met Czar Alexander II. Grant headed west again, touring Spain, stopping in Paris and then returning to England. From England, the Grants left by private ship, sailing into the Mediterranean and stopping at Marseilles, then across to Alexandria, Egypt. The ship went on through the Suez Canal to India.
From India, the Grants toured Burma, Siam (where Grant met with King Chulalongkorn), Singapore, Cochinchina (Vietnam), and Hong Kong. From there they went on to visit Canton, Shanghai, and Peking, China. He did not meet with the Guangxu Emperor, who was then a child of seven, but he did meet with the head of government, Prince Gong, and Li Hongzhang, a leading general. They discussed China's dispute with Japan over the Ryukyu Islands, and Grant agreed to serve as a mediator in the dispute. After crossing over to Japan on the USS Richmond and meeting the Emperor Meiji, Grant unsuccessfully tried to convince Japan to make peace with the Chinese. It was to no avail, as Japan had the superior military. The Japanes annexed the disputed islands a few weeks after Grant left the country.
The Grants left Japan sailing on a ship known as the City of Tokio, escorted by a Japanese man-of-war. They crossed the Pacific and landed in San Francisco in September 1879, greeted by cheering crowds. After a visit to Yosemite Valley, they finally returned to their home in Philadelphia on December 16, 1879. Their two-year and seven-month voyage around the world had finally come to an end. One of the benefits of the journey was to increase Grant's popularity and to make him appear to be an attractive option for the Republican nomination for 1880. Rutherford Hayes had pledged not to seek a second term and many Republicans thought that Grant could win a third term as President
The Stalwart faction of the Republican party was led by Grant's old political ally, Senator Roscoe Conkling of New York. Stalwarts had been shut out of power by Hayes and they saw Grant's renewed popularity as a way for their faction to regain power. Grant's opponents criticized his candidacy as a violation of the two-term rule that had been a precedent set by George Washington. Conkling and Illinois Senator (and former Union General) John A. Logan began to organize delegates for Grant. When the convention convened in Chicago in June, there were more delegates pledged to Grant than to any other candidate, but he was still short of a majority vote to capture the nomination. At the convention, Conkling nominated Grant. He said in his nomination speech, "When asked which state he hails from, our sole reply shall be, he hails from Appomattox and its famous apple tree."
370 votes were needed to win the nomination. On the first ballot Grant had 304, James G. Blaine had 284, and John Sherman had 93. Subsequent ballots followed with roughly the same result. After thirty-six ballots, Blaine's delegates deserted him and combined with those of other candidates to nominate a compromise candidate: Representative James A. Garfield of Ohio. Delegates agreed to make the vote unanimous for Garfield, who accepted the nomination. Grant campaigned for Garfield, though he refused to criticize the Democratic nominee, Winfield Scott Hancock, a general who had served under him in the Army of the Potomac. Garfield won the election. Grant gave Garfield his public support and convinced him to include Stalwarts in his administration. The Stalwart Chester Alan Arthur was selected as Garfield's running mate. On July 2, 1881, Garfield was shot by an assassin and died on September 19. On learning of Garfield's death from a reporter, Grant wept bitterly.
Grant's world tour had depleted most of his savings. He needed to earn money and find a new home. Wealthy friends bought him a home on Manhattan's Upper East Side. Jay Gould, and former Mexican Finance Secretary Matías Romero chartered the Mexican Southern Railroad, with plans to build a railroad from Oaxaca to Mexico City. Grant urged Chester A. Arthur, who had succeeded Garfield as president in 1881, to negotiate a free trade treaty with Mexico. Arthur and the Mexican government agreed, but the United States Senate rejected the treaty in 1883. The railroad was unsuccessful, falling into bankruptcy the following year.
At around this time, Grant's son Ulysses Jr. had opened a Wall Street brokerage house with Ferdinand Ward. Ward was seen as a rising star and the firm, Grant & Ward, was initially very successful. In 1883, Grant joined the firm and invested $100,000 of his own money. To encourage investment, Ward paid investors exceptionally high interest. He pledged the company's securities on multiple loans. Ward kept the true state of the company's affairs secret from bank examiners. He removed the firm's securities from the company's bank vault. When multiple loans came due, all backed up by the same collateral, the company was ruined. Ulysses Grant was unaware of Ward's dishonesty, but it is unclear how much his son knew. In May 1884, Ward told Grant of the impending failure, but falsely assured Grant that this was a temporary shortfall. Grant approached businessman William Henry Vanderbilt, who gave him a personal loan of $150,000. He invested the money in the firm, but it was not enough to save it from failure.
A testament to his integrity, Grant repaid as much of the investors as he could by selling his Civil War mementos and his other assets. Vanderbilt took title to Grant's home as security for his loan, although he allowed the Grants to continue to reside there. He pledged to donate the souvenirs to the federal government and told Grant that he considered the debt to be paid in full. Grant was devastated by Ward's fraudulent activities. In March 1885, as his health was failing, he testified against Ward at Ward's criminal trial. Ward was convicted of fraud in October 1885, months after Grant's death, and served six and a half years in prison.
To try to restore his family's income and his own reputation, Grant wrote several articles on his Civil War campaigns for The Century Magazine. He was paid $500 for each of these. The articles were well received by critics, and the editor, Robert Underwood Johnson, suggested that Grant write a book of memoirs, as William Tecumseh Sherman and others had done. It was suggested that Grant's articles would serve as the basis for several chapters.
In the summer of 1884, Grant complained of a very bad sore throat. He delayed seeing a doctor until late October when he learned that he had throat cancer. It was believed to have been cause by his frequent cigar smoking. Grant did not reveal the seriousness of his condition to his wife, but she soon found out from Grant's doctor. Before being diagnosed, Grant was invited to attend a Methodist service for Civil War veterans in Ocean Grove, New Jersey, on August 4, 1884. He received a standing ovation from more than ten thousand veterans and others. It would be his last public appearance.
In March of the following year, the New York Times announced that Grant was dying of cancer. Knowing of Grant's financial difficulties, Congress restored him to the rank of General of the Army with full retirement pay. (When Grant became President in 1869 he was required to he resign his commission and forfeit his pension).
Despite his painful illness, Grant worked diligently on his memoirs at his home in New York City. His former staff member Adam Badeau assisted him with much of the research, and his son Fred located documents and did much of the fact checking. Because of the summer heat, his doctors recommended that he move upstate to a cottage at the top of Mount McGregor, offered by a family friend. It was there that Grant finished his memoirs, just days before he died. Grant's memoirs discuss his early life and his service in the Mexican-American War briefly and cover his life up to the end of the Civil War. Century magazine offered Grant a book contract with a 10 percent royalty, but Grant accepted a better offer from his friend, Mark Twain, who proposed a 75 percent royalty. The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant, was a critical and commercial success. The book is still a popular autobiography. Julia Grant received about $450,000 in royalties. Grant's successful autobiography became a method for ex-presidents and former generals to earn money. Mark Twain called the Memoirs a "literary masterpiece."
After a year-long struggle with cancer, Ulysses Grant died at 8 o'clock in the morning in the Mount McGregor cottage on July 23, 1885, in the presence of his family. He was 63 years old. His former subordinate Philip Sheridan, who was the Commanding General of the Army at the time of Grant's death, ordered a day-long tribute to Grant on all military posts. President Grover Cleveland ordered a thirty-day nationwide period of mourning. After private services, the honor guard placed Grant's body on a special funeral train. The body traveled to West Point and New York City. A quarter of a million people viewed it in the two days before the funeral. Tens of thousands of men, many of them veterans from the Grand Army of the Republic marched with Grant's casket drawn by two dozen horses to Riverside Park in the Morningside Heights neighborhood of Upper Manhattan. His pallbearers included Union generals Sherman and Sheridan, Confederate generals Simon Bolivar Buckner and Joseph E. Johnston, Admiral David Dixon Porter, and Senator John A. Logan. Following the casket in the seven-mile-long procession were President Cleveland, the two living former presidents Hayes and Arthur, all of the President's Cabinet, as well as the justices of the Supreme Court.
Grant's body was laid to rest in Riverside Park, first in a temporary tomb, and then-twelve years later, on April 17, 1897-in the General Grant National Memorial, also known as "Grant's Tomb", the largest mausoleum in North America. The inscription above Grant's Tomb contains his campaign slogan of 1868: "Let us have peace."
Grand had been the leading Union General in the Civil War, he was a two term president, and he also had a very interesting life after leaving the presidency, that included an attempt to win a third term in office after a four year absence. At 42 years of age he became the 6th Commanding General of the Union Army. Just before his 47th birthday be became President. After his presidency he embarked on a round-the-world tour, then came back and ran for president. He was later the victim of a swindler and he worked hard to repay other investors who were similarly swindled by a man trading on his name. He faced a race against a painful death at age 63 from throat cancer, struggling to write his memoirs in order to provide for his family, before meeting his maker.
Grant left the presidency with his once tremendous popularity having dwindled significantly. Although he was cheered when he spoke at the opening of the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in May of 1876, by this time his administration had been tarnished by a number of scandals, the result of Grant putting his trust in the wrong people. The country was suffering from a weak economy, the hangover from the "Panic of 1873". Democratic gains in the House led many in the Republican party to turn against Grant in June. Many Republicans were afraid that Grant would run for a third term, but Grant too could read the writing on the wall and he declined to run. When the 1876 Republican Party nominating convention chose Governor Rutherford Hayes of Ohio, a reformer, as its candidate, the nation experienced the closest and most controversial election in its history. Voting irregularities in three Southern states caused the election that year to remain undecided for several months. Grant received a report that southern Democrats were threatening violence and if Hayes won, and that Grant would be assassinated. Grant told Congress to settle the matter through legislation and assured both sides that he would only use the army to force a result, if it was necessary to prevent violence. On January 29, 1877, he signed legislation forming an Electoral Commission to decide the matter. The Commission ruled that the disputed votes belonged to Hayes. Republicans agreed to the Compromise of 1877, in which the last troops were withdrawn from Southern capitals. The Republicans had won the election, but Grant's efforts at Reconstruction of the south were over.
Grant attended his successor's inauguration before leaving the White House. He and his family stayed with at the home of his Secretary of State Hamilton Fish in New York for two months before heading off on what became a famous world tour. In preparation for the tour, the Grants arrived in Philadelphia on May 10, 1877, where they were honored with celebrations during the week before their departure. On May 16, Ulysses and Julia Grant sailed for England aboard the SS Indiana. Their first stop was in Liverpool in May, where they were greeted by very large crowds. He was praised for more his Civil War exploits than for his presidency. He was called the "Hero of Appomattox" and the Union general who defeated the Confederacy by his hosts. The Grants dined with Queen Victoria at Windsor Castle, and Grant gave several speeches in London. The Hayes administration received news of Grant's popularity in Europe, and Hayes encouraged Grant to extend his tour and voyage around the world to strengthen American interests abroad.
After a tour on the continent, the Grants visited Scotland. They also spent time in Southampton with their daughter Nellie. During Grant's presidency, she had married an Englishman named Algernon Sartoris, in a White House ceremony. Grant and Julia next traveled to Paris. They next went to Italy, visiting Naples, Pompeii and Mount Vesuvius. The Grants spent Christmas 1877 aboard USS Vandalia, a warship docked in Palermo. They cruised the Mediterranean and next traveled through Egypt and the Holy Land. They were in Constantinople on March 3, 1878 at the time of the signing of the Treaty of San Stefano. They next went to Greece, and then on to the Vatican where they met with Pope Leo XIII. Later, in 1878, they visited the Netherlands before moving on to Germany, where Grant discussed military matters with Chancellor Otto von Bismarck. Grant traveled on to Russia, where Grant met Czar Alexander II. Grant headed west again, touring Spain, stopping in Paris and then returning to England. From England, the Grants left by private ship, sailing into the Mediterranean and stopping at Marseilles, then across to Alexandria, Egypt. The ship went on through the Suez Canal to India.
From India, the Grants toured Burma, Siam (where Grant met with King Chulalongkorn), Singapore, Cochinchina (Vietnam), and Hong Kong. From there they went on to visit Canton, Shanghai, and Peking, China. He did not meet with the Guangxu Emperor, who was then a child of seven, but he did meet with the head of government, Prince Gong, and Li Hongzhang, a leading general. They discussed China's dispute with Japan over the Ryukyu Islands, and Grant agreed to serve as a mediator in the dispute. After crossing over to Japan on the USS Richmond and meeting the Emperor Meiji, Grant unsuccessfully tried to convince Japan to make peace with the Chinese. It was to no avail, as Japan had the superior military. The Japanes annexed the disputed islands a few weeks after Grant left the country.
The Grants left Japan sailing on a ship known as the City of Tokio, escorted by a Japanese man-of-war. They crossed the Pacific and landed in San Francisco in September 1879, greeted by cheering crowds. After a visit to Yosemite Valley, they finally returned to their home in Philadelphia on December 16, 1879. Their two-year and seven-month voyage around the world had finally come to an end. One of the benefits of the journey was to increase Grant's popularity and to make him appear to be an attractive option for the Republican nomination for 1880. Rutherford Hayes had pledged not to seek a second term and many Republicans thought that Grant could win a third term as President
The Stalwart faction of the Republican party was led by Grant's old political ally, Senator Roscoe Conkling of New York. Stalwarts had been shut out of power by Hayes and they saw Grant's renewed popularity as a way for their faction to regain power. Grant's opponents criticized his candidacy as a violation of the two-term rule that had been a precedent set by George Washington. Conkling and Illinois Senator (and former Union General) John A. Logan began to organize delegates for Grant. When the convention convened in Chicago in June, there were more delegates pledged to Grant than to any other candidate, but he was still short of a majority vote to capture the nomination. At the convention, Conkling nominated Grant. He said in his nomination speech, "When asked which state he hails from, our sole reply shall be, he hails from Appomattox and its famous apple tree."
370 votes were needed to win the nomination. On the first ballot Grant had 304, James G. Blaine had 284, and John Sherman had 93. Subsequent ballots followed with roughly the same result. After thirty-six ballots, Blaine's delegates deserted him and combined with those of other candidates to nominate a compromise candidate: Representative James A. Garfield of Ohio. Delegates agreed to make the vote unanimous for Garfield, who accepted the nomination. Grant campaigned for Garfield, though he refused to criticize the Democratic nominee, Winfield Scott Hancock, a general who had served under him in the Army of the Potomac. Garfield won the election. Grant gave Garfield his public support and convinced him to include Stalwarts in his administration. The Stalwart Chester Alan Arthur was selected as Garfield's running mate. On July 2, 1881, Garfield was shot by an assassin and died on September 19. On learning of Garfield's death from a reporter, Grant wept bitterly.
Grant's world tour had depleted most of his savings. He needed to earn money and find a new home. Wealthy friends bought him a home on Manhattan's Upper East Side. Jay Gould, and former Mexican Finance Secretary Matías Romero chartered the Mexican Southern Railroad, with plans to build a railroad from Oaxaca to Mexico City. Grant urged Chester A. Arthur, who had succeeded Garfield as president in 1881, to negotiate a free trade treaty with Mexico. Arthur and the Mexican government agreed, but the United States Senate rejected the treaty in 1883. The railroad was unsuccessful, falling into bankruptcy the following year.
At around this time, Grant's son Ulysses Jr. had opened a Wall Street brokerage house with Ferdinand Ward. Ward was seen as a rising star and the firm, Grant & Ward, was initially very successful. In 1883, Grant joined the firm and invested $100,000 of his own money. To encourage investment, Ward paid investors exceptionally high interest. He pledged the company's securities on multiple loans. Ward kept the true state of the company's affairs secret from bank examiners. He removed the firm's securities from the company's bank vault. When multiple loans came due, all backed up by the same collateral, the company was ruined. Ulysses Grant was unaware of Ward's dishonesty, but it is unclear how much his son knew. In May 1884, Ward told Grant of the impending failure, but falsely assured Grant that this was a temporary shortfall. Grant approached businessman William Henry Vanderbilt, who gave him a personal loan of $150,000. He invested the money in the firm, but it was not enough to save it from failure.
A testament to his integrity, Grant repaid as much of the investors as he could by selling his Civil War mementos and his other assets. Vanderbilt took title to Grant's home as security for his loan, although he allowed the Grants to continue to reside there. He pledged to donate the souvenirs to the federal government and told Grant that he considered the debt to be paid in full. Grant was devastated by Ward's fraudulent activities. In March 1885, as his health was failing, he testified against Ward at Ward's criminal trial. Ward was convicted of fraud in October 1885, months after Grant's death, and served six and a half years in prison.
To try to restore his family's income and his own reputation, Grant wrote several articles on his Civil War campaigns for The Century Magazine. He was paid $500 for each of these. The articles were well received by critics, and the editor, Robert Underwood Johnson, suggested that Grant write a book of memoirs, as William Tecumseh Sherman and others had done. It was suggested that Grant's articles would serve as the basis for several chapters.
In the summer of 1884, Grant complained of a very bad sore throat. He delayed seeing a doctor until late October when he learned that he had throat cancer. It was believed to have been cause by his frequent cigar smoking. Grant did not reveal the seriousness of his condition to his wife, but she soon found out from Grant's doctor. Before being diagnosed, Grant was invited to attend a Methodist service for Civil War veterans in Ocean Grove, New Jersey, on August 4, 1884. He received a standing ovation from more than ten thousand veterans and others. It would be his last public appearance.
In March of the following year, the New York Times announced that Grant was dying of cancer. Knowing of Grant's financial difficulties, Congress restored him to the rank of General of the Army with full retirement pay. (When Grant became President in 1869 he was required to he resign his commission and forfeit his pension).
Despite his painful illness, Grant worked diligently on his memoirs at his home in New York City. His former staff member Adam Badeau assisted him with much of the research, and his son Fred located documents and did much of the fact checking. Because of the summer heat, his doctors recommended that he move upstate to a cottage at the top of Mount McGregor, offered by a family friend. It was there that Grant finished his memoirs, just days before he died. Grant's memoirs discuss his early life and his service in the Mexican-American War briefly and cover his life up to the end of the Civil War. Century magazine offered Grant a book contract with a 10 percent royalty, but Grant accepted a better offer from his friend, Mark Twain, who proposed a 75 percent royalty. The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant, was a critical and commercial success. The book is still a popular autobiography. Julia Grant received about $450,000 in royalties. Grant's successful autobiography became a method for ex-presidents and former generals to earn money. Mark Twain called the Memoirs a "literary masterpiece."
After a year-long struggle with cancer, Ulysses Grant died at 8 o'clock in the morning in the Mount McGregor cottage on July 23, 1885, in the presence of his family. He was 63 years old. His former subordinate Philip Sheridan, who was the Commanding General of the Army at the time of Grant's death, ordered a day-long tribute to Grant on all military posts. President Grover Cleveland ordered a thirty-day nationwide period of mourning. After private services, the honor guard placed Grant's body on a special funeral train. The body traveled to West Point and New York City. A quarter of a million people viewed it in the two days before the funeral. Tens of thousands of men, many of them veterans from the Grand Army of the Republic marched with Grant's casket drawn by two dozen horses to Riverside Park in the Morningside Heights neighborhood of Upper Manhattan. His pallbearers included Union generals Sherman and Sheridan, Confederate generals Simon Bolivar Buckner and Joseph E. Johnston, Admiral David Dixon Porter, and Senator John A. Logan. Following the casket in the seven-mile-long procession were President Cleveland, the two living former presidents Hayes and Arthur, all of the President's Cabinet, as well as the justices of the Supreme Court.
Grant's body was laid to rest in Riverside Park, first in a temporary tomb, and then-twelve years later, on April 17, 1897-in the General Grant National Memorial, also known as "Grant's Tomb", the largest mausoleum in North America. The inscription above Grant's Tomb contains his campaign slogan of 1868: "Let us have peace."