A bearded, square-jawed, silent man, he caught the public fancy by two messages, the one of “Unconditional surrender,” with which he had answered the demand for terms on the part of the Confederates whom he had entrapped in Fort Donelson; the other, the famous:  “I propose to fight it out on this line, if it takes all summer,” with which he started his campaign in the Wilderness.  Both were characteristic, and if Grant had retired from public life at the close of the Civil War, or had been content to remain commander-in-chief of the army of the United States, his fame would probably have been brighter than it is to-day.

His training, such as it was, had been wholly military and his inaugural address showed his profound ignorance of the work which lay before him—­an ignorance all the more profound and unreachable because of his serene unconsciousness of it.  He fell at once an easy prey to political demagogues, and before the close of his first administration, demoralization was widespread throughout the government.  A large portion of the Republican party, realizing his unfitness for the office, opposed his renomination, and when they saw his nomination was inevitable, broke away and named a ticket of their own, but Grant’s victory was a sweeping one.

With this stamp of public approval, the boodlers became bolder and great scandals followed, involving many members of Congress and even some members of the cabinet, but not the President himself, of whose personal honesty there was never any doubt, and in 1873, came the worst panic the country had ever experienced.  A political reaction followed, and in 1874 the Democrats carried the country, gaining the House of Representatives by a majority of nearly a hundred.

Following his retirement from office in 1877, Grant made a tour of the world, returning in 1879, to be again a candidate for the presidency, and coming very near to getting the nomination.  It was characteristic of the man’s egotism that, even yet, he did not realize his unfitness for the office, but thought himself great enough to disregard the precedent which Washington had established.  He lived five years longer, the last years of his life rendered miserable by cancer of the throat, which finally killed him.

In the summer of 1876, the Republicans nominated Rutherford B. Hayes, at that time Governor of Ohio, as their candidate for President—­a nomination which was a surprise to the country, which had confidently expected that of James G. Blaine.  Hayes was by no means a national figure, although he had served in the Union army, had been in Congress, and, as has been said, was governor of Ohio at the time of his nomination.  Nor was he a man of more than very ordinary ability, upright, honest, and mediocre.  The Democratic candidate was Samuel J. Tilden, a political star of the first magnitude, and the contest which followed was unprecedented in American history.