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Grant's Troubled Presidency: Spoils and Scandals

Ulysses S. Grant

William Marcy Tweed

     Ulysses S. Grant's success as a general failed to prepare him for the presidency. During his two terms in office (elected in 1868 and re-elected in 1872), he rarely challenged congressional dominance of domestic policymaking. He often appointed friends or acquaintances to posts for which they possessed no particular qualifications. He proved unable to form a competent cabinet and faced constant turnover among his executive advisers. Many of his appointees seemed to view their positions as little more than the spoils of party victory, and Grant sometimes proved too willing to believe his appointees' denial of wrongdoing.

     Congress supplied its own fair share of scandal. Visiting Washington in 1869, young Henry Adams (great-grandson of President John Adams) was surprised to hear a member of the cabinet bellow: "You can't use tact with a Congressman! A Congressman is a hog! You must take a stick and hit him on the snout!" Too many members of Congress behaved in a way that confirmed such a cynical view. In 1868, before Grant became president, several prominent congressional leaders became stockholders in the Crédit Mobilier, a construction company created by the chief shareholders in the Union Pacific Railroad. The Union Pacific officers awarded to Crédit Mobilier a generous contract to build the railroad. Thus the company's chief shareholders paid themselves handsomely for constructing their own railroad. To protect this arrangement from congressional scrutiny, the company sold shares as cut-rate prices to key members of Congress. Purchasers included some leading Republicans. Revelations of these arrangements in 1872 and 1873 scandalized the nation. No sooner did the furor pass than Congress voted itself a fifty percent pay raise and made the increase two years retroactive. Only after widespread public protest did Congress repeal its "salary grab."

     Public disgrace and corruption was not limited to the federal government or to the Republicans. In New York City, the so-called Tweed Ring supplied a seemingly endless string of scandals involving city and state officials. At the center was William Marcy "Boss" Tweed, whose name became synonymous with political corruption. Tweed became head of the Tammany Hall organization in 1863. By 1868, the organization dominated the local Democratic Party and also controlled much of the city and state government. Tweed and his associates built public support by spending tax funds on various charities, and they gave to the poor from their own pockets--pockets often lined with public funds or bribes. Under Tweed's direction, city government launched major construction projects: new public buildings, street improvements, parks, sewers, and docks. Much of the construction was riddled with corruption. Between 1868 and 1871, the Tweed Ring may have systematically plundered $200 million from the city, mostly by giving bloated construction contracts to businesses that returned a kickback to the Ring. In 1871 evidence of corruption led to Tweed's indictment and ultimately his conviction and imprisonment.

     Though Grant had been re-elected without difficulty in 1872, the mid-term elections of 1874 were a different story. The congressional scandals alienated many voters. Moreover, the depression that began in 1873 gave urban Democrats a barbed response for Republican candidates who claimed to belong to the party of prosperity. These factors and more gave the Democrats widespread gains in the House of Representatives. For the next twenty years, from 1874 to 1894, the Democrats generally commanded a majority in the House. Even though Republicans generally won the presidency, Democratic control of the House made it difficult or impossible for the Republicans to push through major legislation. The resulting gridlock, or stalemate, helps explain the general lack of any meaningful legislation during this period.

Rutherford B. Hayes and the Politics of Stalemate

Rutherford B. Hayes

Rutherford B. Hayes became president after a contested election in 1876. His personal integrity and principles stand on issues helped restore the reputation of the Republican Party after the humiliations of the Grant administration, but any hope for significant change ran up against the Democratic majority in the House of Representatives and significant opposition within his own party. His harshest critic was Senator Roscoe Conkling of New York. Conkling, boss of that state's large and hungry Republican organization, became especially hostile to Hayes after the latter refused to install several of Conkling's supporters in key federal patronage positions.

Hayes promised to serve only one term and probably could not have secured a second nomination had he sought one. His handling of patronage annoyed many Republicans, and he estranged reformers by not seeking full-scale revision of the spoils system. When the White House stopped serving alcohol, Hayes' opponents blamed his wife, Lucy, dubbing here "Lemonade Lucy." By the mid-1880s, Hayes seemed to welcome the end of his presidency.

Presidents Garfield and Arthur

James Garfield

Roscoe Conkling

James G. Blaine

Chester A. Arthur

     As Rutherford B. Hayes neared the end of his term as president--a term made difficult by his conflicts with Roscoe Conkling and the Great Railway Strike of 1877--Republican leaders looked for a presidential candidate who could lead them to victory in 1880. James G. Blaine of Maine, a spell-binding orator who attracted loyal supporters and bitter enemies, sought the party's nomination. Conkling and his followers, calling themselves the Stalwarts, tried to nominate former president Grant instead. Few major policy differences separated Blaine and Conkling, though Conkling showed more commitment to the spoils system and the defense of Southern black voters, while Blaine took more interest in the protective tariff and economic policies. Conkling dismissed Blaine and his supporters as Half-Breeds--not real Republicans.

     The most persistent critics of the spoils systems--and those who most loudly claimed credit for the Pendleton Act--were a group known as the Mugwumps to their contemporaries. Centered in Boston and New Yrok, most of these reformers were Republicans of high social status. They traced many of the defects of the spoils system, and they argued that eliminating patronage would drive out the machines and opportunists. Only then, they insisted, could corruption be eliminated and political decency restored. Instead of basing appointments in political loyalty, Mugwumps advocated a merit system based on a job-seeker's ability to pass a comprehensive examination. Educated, dedicated civil servants, they believed, would stand above party politics and provide honest and capable administration.

     After a frustrating convention deadlock, the Republicans compromised by nominating James A. Garfield, a congressman from Ohio. Born in a log cabin, Garfield had grown up in poverty. A minister, college president, and lawyer before the Civil War, he became the Union's youngest major general. For vice president, the delegates tried to placate the Stalwarts and secure New York's electoral votes by nominating Conkling's chief lieutenant, Chester A. Arthur.

     The Democrats nominated Winfield Scott Hancock, a former Civil War general with little political experience. Both candidates worked hard at avoiding matters of substance during the campaign. Garfield won the popular vote by only half a percentage point. However, he won the electoral vote convincingly, even though he had failed to win a single Southern state. Republicans, it seemed, could win the White House without a single Southern black vote--a lesson that would have important ramifications for the future of black voters in the South.

     Garfield brought to the presidency a solid understanding of Congress and a careful and studious approach to the issues. Hoping to work cooperatively with both Stalwarts and Half-Breeds, he appointed Blaine secretary of state, the most prestigious post in the cabinet. Discord soon threatened when Conkling demanded the right to name his supporters to federal positions. In response, Garfield showed himself to be shrewder politically than any president since Lincoln. When Conkling acknowledged defeat by resigning from the Senate, Garfield scored a victory for a stronger presidency.

     On July 2, 1881, four months after he took the oath of office, a mentally unstable religious fanatic, Charles Guiteau, shot Garfield as the president walked through a Washington railroad station. Calling himself a "Stalwart of the Stalwarts," Guiteau claimed he had acted to save the Republican Party. Two months after the shooting, Garfield died from his wounds.

     Upon Garfield's untimely death, Chester A. Arthur, Conkling's associate, became president. Arthur was best known as a capable administrator and a dapper dresser. However, as one of his former associates said: "He isn't `Chet' Arthur anymore; he's the President." In 1882, doctors diagnosed the president as suffering from Bright's disease, a kidney condition that produced fatigue, depression, and eventually death. Arthur kept the news secret from all but his family and closest friends. Overcoming both political liabilities and his own physical limitations, Arthur proved a competent president.

     The Republicans had slim majorities in both House and Senate after 1880, but the Democrats recovered control of the House in 1882. Acting quickly, before the newly elected Democrats took their seats, Republicans enacted the first major tariff revision in eight years and passed the Pendleton Act (1883) reforming the civil service. Both measures had little support from Democrats.

     Named for its sponsor, Senator George Pendleton (an Ohio Democrat), the Pendleton Act had far-reaching consequences, for it brought into being a merit system for filling federal positions to replace the long-criticized spoils system. The new law designated certain federal positions, initially about fifteen percent of the total, as "classified." Classified civil service positions were to be filled only through competitive examinations.

     The law also authorized the president to add positions to the classified list. When an office was first classified, the patronage appointee then holding it was protected from removal for political reasons. Presidents could therefore use the law to entrench their own appointees. When those appointees retired, however, their replacements came through the merit system. Thus the law used patronage in the short run to bring about the long-term demise of the patronage system. Within twenty years, the law applied to forty-four percent of federal employees. Most state and local governments eventually adopted merit systems as well. Arthur's approval of the measure marked his final break with the Stalwarts.

Cleveland and the Democrats

Grover Cleveland

     In the end, Arthur proved more capable than anyone might have predicted. Given his failing health, he exerted little effort to win his party's nomination in 1884. Blaine--charming and quick-witted--secured the Republican nomination. The Democrats nominate Grover Cleveland, who as governor of New York had earned a reputation for integrity and political courage--particularly by attacking Tammany Hall. Many Irish voters, who made up a large component of Tammany Hall, retaliated by supporting Blaine even though they were staunch Democrats.

     The 1884 campaign quickly turned nasty. Many Mugwumps disliked Blaine and revealed an old letter of his urging a cover-up of allegations he had profited from pro-railroad legislation. When the Mugwumps broke with their party, they drew the contempt of most party politicians. Blaine called them "conceited, foolish...pretentious but not powerful." Other party politcians questioned the Mugwumps' manhood, reflecting the extent to which being a loyal party member was closely tiled to the male gender role in the minds of many.

     Blaine supporters gleefully trumpeted that Cleveland had avoided military service during the Civil War and had fathered a child outside marriage. Democrats chanted: "Blaine, Blaine, James G. Blaine! The continental liar from the state of Maine." Republicans shouted back: "Ma! Ma! Where's my pa?"

     The election hinged on New York State, where Blaine expected to cut deeply into the usually Democratic Irish vote. A few days before the election, however, Blaine heard a preacher in New York City call the Democrats the party of "rum, romanism [Catholicism], and rebellion." Blaine ignored this insult to his Catholic supporters until newspapers blasted it the next day. By then the damage was done. Cleveland won New York by a tiny margin, and New York's electoral votes gave him the presidency.

     Cleveland enjoyed support from many who opposed the spoils system, already being whittled away by the Pendleton Act. Though Cleveland did not dismantle the patronage system, he did insist on demonstrated ability in those he appointed to office. He was also deeply committed to minimal government and cutting federal spending. Between 1885 and 1889, Cleveland vetoed 414 bills--most of them granting pensions to Union veterans--twice as many vetoes as all previous presidents combined. Cleveland provided little leadership regarding legislation but did approve several important measures produced by the Democratic House and Republican Senate, including the Interstate Commerce Act.

     The Interstate Commerce Act grew out of political pressures from farmers and small businesses. In the early 1870s, several Midwestern states passed laws regulating railroad freight rates (Granger laws). Though the Supreme Court initally upheld the right of states to regulate these rates in the public interest (Munn v. Illinois in 1877), the Court reversed itself in Wabash v. Illinois (1886), when it severly limited the states' right to regulate railraod rates involving interstate commerce.

     In response to the Wabash decision and continuing protests over railroad rate discrimination, Congress passed the Interstate Commerce Act in 1887. The new law created the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC), the first federal regulatory commission. The law also prohibited pools, rebates, and differential rates for short and long hauls, and it required that rates be "reasonable and just." The ICC had little real power, however, until the Hepburn Act strengthened it in 1906.

     Cleveland considered the nation's greatest problem to be the federal budget surplus. After the Civil War, the tariff usually generated more income than the country needed to pay federal expenses. Throughout the 1880s, the annual surplus often exceeded $100 million. Worried that the surplus encouraged wasteful spending, Cleveland demanded in 1887 that Congress cut tariff rates. He hoped not only to reduce federal income but also, by reducing prices on raw materials, to encourage companies to compete with recently developed monopolies.

     Cleveland's action provoked a serious division within his own party. So long as Democrats did not have responsibility for the tariff, they could criticize Republican policies without restraint. Urged to take positive action by their own party chief, however, they failed. Cleveland exerted little leadership, leaving the initiative to congressional leadership. In the end, Congress adjourned without voting on a bill, and Cleveland's call for tariff reform came to nothing.

Harrison and the Fifty-first Congress

Benjamin Harrison

     In the 1888 presidential election, the Democrats renominated Cleveland, but he backed off from the tariff issue and did little campaigning. The Republicans nominated Benjamin Harrison, senator from Indiana and a former Civil War general. Known as thoughtful and cautious, Harrison also impressed many as cool and distant. The Republicans launched a vigorous campaign focused on the virtues of the protective tariff. They raised unprecedented amounts of campaign money. Harrison received fewer popular votes than Cleveland (47.9 percent to Cleveland's 48.7 percent), but he won in the Electoral College. As important for Republicans as their narrow presidential victory, however, were the majorities they secured in both the House and Senate.

     With Harrison in the White House and Republican majorities in both houses of Congress, the Republicans set out to do a lot and do it quickly. When the fifty-first session of Congress opened late in 1889, Harrison worked more closely with congressional leaders of his own party than any other president in memory. Democrats in the House tried to delay progress on the administration's agenda, but Speaker Thomas B. Reed announced new rules designed to speed up house business.

     The Republicans' first major task was tariff revision--to cut down the troublesome federal surplus without reducing protection. Led by Representative William McKinley of Ohio, the House Ways and Means Committee drafted a tariff bill that moved some items to the free list but raised rates on other items. The House passed the McKinley Tariff in May 1890 and sent it to the Senate. The Senate, meanwhile, labored over two measures named for Senator John Sherman of Ohio: the Sherman Anti-Trust Act and the Sherman Silver Purchase Act. The Sherman Silver Purchase Act increased the amount of silver being coined into dollars, but stopped short of approving the coinage of all available silver. The Sherman Anti-Trust Act, the work of several Republican senators, was created in response to growing public concern about the new trusts and monopolies. The law declared that "every contract, combination in the form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce among the several states, or with foreign nations, is hereby declared illegal." Republicans thereby tried to be responsive to the concerns about monopoly power, and the United States became the first industrial nation to attempt to prevent monopolies. In fact, the law proved difficult to interpret or enforce, and it had little effect on companies for more than ten years.

     The passage of the McKinley Tariff and the Sherman acts were the first in a series of Republican successes. Among the bills passed were ones increasing disability pensions for Union veterans and their dependents, admission to statehood of Idaho and Wyoming, creation of a territorial government for Oklahoma, and appropriations that laid out the basis for a modern navy. Republicans hoped they had finally broken the pattern of stalemate that had prevailed since 1875. However, even as Congress labored in Washington, new currents began to roil state and local politics.

Sources

Excerpted, with minor omissions and additions, from: Chapter 17, "An Industrial Order Emerges, 1860-1880," Chapter 18, "Becoming an Urban Industrial Society, 1880-1890," and Chapter 20, "Economic Crash and Political Upheaval, 1890-1900," in Berkin, et al., Making America: A History of the United States, Vol. II from 1865, 3rd edition (Boston and New York, 2003).