His appeals secured the passage of the law of March 3, 1871, under which he appointed a civil service commission.  This commission framed rules, which were approved by the President.  They provided for open competitive examination, and went into effect January 1, 1872; and out of these grew the present civil-service rules.  One of his most important papers was the message vetoing the “inflation bill.”

The closing months of his public life covered the stormy and exciting period following the Presidential election of 1876, when the result as between Mr. Tilden and Mr. Hayes was so long in doubt.  There is very little, however, in any Presidential paper of that period to indicate the great peril to the country and the severe strain to which our institutions were subjected in that memorable contest.

The Administration of Mr. Hayes, though it began amid exciting scenes and an unprecedented situation which threatened disasters, was rather marked by moderation and a sympathy with what he considered true reform.  Some of his vetoes are highly interesting, and indicate independence of character and that he was not always controlled by mere party politics.  One of the most famous and best remembered of his messages is that vetoing the Bland-Allison Act, which restored the legal-tender quality to the silver dollar and provided for its limited coinage.

Other papers of interest are his message recommending the resumption of specie payments; vetoes of a bill to restrict Chinese immigration, of an Army appropriation bill, of a legislative, executive, and judicial appropriation bill, and of the act known as the “funding act of 1881.”  It was during Mr. Hayes’s Administration, when the Forty-fifth Congress met in extraordinary session on March 18, 1879, that for the first time since the Congress that was chosen with Mr. Buchanan in 1856 the Democratic party was in control of both Houses.

James D. Richardson,

February 22, 1898.

Ulysses S. Grant

March 4, 1869, to March 4, 1877

Ulysses S. Grant

Ulysses S. Grant was born at Point Pleasant, Clermont County, Ohio, April 27, 1822.  He was of Scotch ancestry, but his family had been American in all its branches for several generations.  Was a descendant of Mathew Grant, who arrived at Dorchester, Mass., in May, 1630.  His father was Jesse R. Grant and his mother Hannah Simpson; they were married in Clermont County, Ohio, in June, 1821.  In the fall of 1823 his parents removed to Georgetown, the county seat of Brown County, Ohio.  Ulysses, the eldest of six children, spent his boyhood in assisting his father on the farm, which was more congenial than working in the tannery of which his father was proprietor.  From an early age until 17 years old attended the subscription schools of Georgetown, except during