by Ron Chernow
Presented to a special Senate session in early May, the treaty was so imaginatively fair-minded that even Sumner, that eternal skeptic, couldn’t fault it. The American press registered enthusiastic support and on May 24, it won Senate approval by a lopsided margin. Its ratification ushered in a new era of closer relations between the United States and Great Britain while offering a precedent for settling disputes peacefully among leading nations. Enshrined as a milestone in diplomatic annals, it established Hamilton Fish as one of the most innovative secretaries of state in American history and Grant as a major mediator and consensus builder. Grant felt liberated from the curse of Charles Sumner, who had choked off treaties and other pressing diplomatic measures. After the agreement passed, Fish wrote to Simon Cameron, “Since you took charge in the Senate of the business from this Department, I have felt that important measures . . . were no longer to be smothered, & pigeonholed in the Committee Room.”53
For much of Grant’s first term, Fish had been restless, periodically threatening to quit. Grant could be abrupt and impulsive, and Fish, with his smooth professionalism and thorough preparation, had saved him from many errors. From the outset, Fish had expected to serve only a brief period and knew the Alabama settlement would qualify as the high-water mark of his tenure. Once the Senate approved it, he told Grant he would like to depart on August 1. Grant, who knew Fish’s worth, was taken aback and pleaded with him to reconsider, saying he would rather forfeit any other cabinet member. “I urge reasons for my resigning,” Fish recounted in his diary, “& he meets them, by admitting that it involves great sacrifice, to me, to remain, but he could not replace me to his own satisfaction.”54 Grant admitted to Vice President Colfax that he kept Fish in his cabinet through sheer persistence, but “seeing as I do that he is suffering in health, I have not the heart to urge him stronger than has already been done to remain longer than he has consented to.”55 Though a newcomer to politics, Grant had learned the lesson of heeding professional counsel.
Already meditating a second term, Grant prevailed upon Fish to stay past the November elections. Congressional Republicans also applied pressure, fearing he would be succeeded by Senator Oliver P. Morton of Indiana. “If Morton succeeds you or otherwise goes into the Cabinet,” Senator Chandler warned Fish, “it will be impossible for the Republican Party to carry the next Presidential election, for nobody has any confidence in him.”56 In July, Fish complained about the “severe & confining duties of my office” and tendered his resignation anew, only to have Grant rebuff it again.57
With such a capable secretary of state, Grant made sure the American public knew how deeply he himself had been involved in shaping the Treaty of Washington. As he told a reporter, “The facts are that every article of the treaty was submitted to me after it was adopted by the Commission and approved by me; and that each article was in the same way submitted to the British Cabinet and approved by the Ministers of the Crown at once.” The treaty, he boasted, had done nothing less than stave off war with Great Britain. “Settlement or war were the alternatives,” he told one reporter flatly, punctuating his conclusion by brusquely tossing aside his cigar.58
Because only one American would be appointed to the Geneva tribunal, the selection was consequential. At first Grant resisted naming Charles Francis Adams Sr., betraying his old grudge against the Adams clan. “I confess to a repugnance to the appointment of an Adams,” Grant advised Fish, “which I would not feel to the ap[pointmen]t of an out-and-out democrat.”59 In the end, Fish convinced him nobody was better acquainted than Adams with the history of rebel cruisers built in England and Grant bowed to his advice. He balked, however, at appointing William Evarts as counsel to the Geneva tribunal. A suave, masterful lawyer who had served as Andrew Johnson’s private counsel during the impeachment trial, Evarts was too associated with Johnson to be acceptable in Grant’s mind. Yet when Fish cited the imperative need for a distinguished counsel, Grant “yielded all personal feeling, and cordially agreed to his appointment,” said Fish. “As a general rule, he asserted his own views tenaciously and firmly.”60
On December 5, Fish, having drafted instructions for the tribunal counsel, handed Grant his resignation after a cabinet meeting and Grant grew flustered. In his diary, Fish said Grant “was very sorry &c did not know what he should do—referred to the good feeling existing through the Country, & the confidence of the public & of the Republican Senators, & Congressmen in me.”61 Grant didn’t want to force Fish to stay unwillingly, but dreaded his departure. As rumors surfaced that he might resign, Senators Conkling, Cameron, and Frelinghuysen issued strenuous pleas for him to stay. Such was the lofty esteem in which Fish was held that Vice President Colfax, along with forty-four senators, signed a letter begging him to stay in office.
By December 20, Fish informed Grant he wouldn’t retire as secretary of state and the president’s relief was immediately visible, as Fish informed his diary: “He replies with great warmth thanking me, & says ‘I cannot express to you what a great gratification it affords me. I could not fill your place—& the Country has as I have the greatest confidence in your Administration of the Foreign Policy of the Govt.”62 Grant’s reaction was understandable. Fish had provided expert judgment, reflecting more credit upon Grant than perhaps any other cabinet member. He stood as a one-man rebuke to charges of mediocrity leveled at the administration. On Reconstruction issues, Grant operated from deep knowledge and long experience, but when it came to the niceties of diplomacy, he was an amateur at sea, sorely needing a veteran hand. For Grant, Fish was the ideal cabinet member because he never hesitated to disagree or warn of dangers inherent in a given course of action. At the same time, once Grant made up his mind he was unshakable, and Fish loyally carried out his directives, whether he supported them or not.
No sooner did the arbitration tribunal hold its inaugural session in mid-December at the Hôtel de Ville in Geneva—an American, a Briton, a Swiss, a Brazilian, and an Italian composed the polyglot crew—than it foundered on the explosive issue of indirect damages. American representatives pointed out that the treaty had stipulated that all issues could be presented for arbitration. Aside from seeking payment for vessels directly damaged by the Alabama and other raiders, the United States wanted Great Britain to foot the bill for the entire war cost after Gettysburg, some $2 billion, the logic being that after Gettysburg, the Confederacy had abandoned offensive operations, except at sea. If the British hadn’t provided naval aid, the South couldn’t have prolonged the war and Great Britain was therefore liable for the extra astronomical expenses incurred. The ghost of Charles Sumner, who ranted that Great Britain had extended the war by two years, reared its ugly head in Geneva. Despite private reservations on the issue, Grant knew his reelection chances would be imperiled if he retreated entirely on indirect damages. As for Fish, he knew the Senate would recoil at any agreement that ignored it.
As American demands cropped up in the London press, they met with a shrill outcry from the Tory opposition, fostering an almost warlike mood. Prime Minister Gladstone gave his opinion to Queen Victoria “that the conduct of the American Government in this affair is the most disreputable he has ever known in his recollection of diplomacy.”63 His cabinet sent a stinging protest to Washington while Gladstone reassured the British public that it would be “insane to accede to demands which no nation with a spark of honour or spirit left could submit to even at the point of death.”64 Benjamin Moran, secretary of the American legation in London, was stunned by the decline of American support even among Britons who had fervently embraced the Union cause: “They look upon this claim for consequential damages as dishonest and as confirming the popular English opinion . . . that we are a tricky people.”65
On February 6, 1872, with stock markets gyrating wildly, Grant’s cabinet met to ponder the British protest and refused to yield on indirect claims. “We must go on,” Grant intoned, prompting unanimous nods from his department heads. “I want you, Mr. Fish,�
�� he added, “to instruct Mr. Adams to remain and sign the award alone if all the others withdraw!”66 Ever truthful, Fish reminded Grant that the treaty required approval of the majority of the tribunal. Writing to Badeau, Orville Babcock explained that the presidential campaign had strengthened Grant’s hard line on indirect claims: “If England backs out all our people will stand by the President. If she stands by the treaty, all will say ‘it is because Grant stood firm.’”67
In the end, Grant instructed Charles Francis Adams to travel to London and offer quiet guarantees to the British that the United States wouldn’t insist on gigantic payments for indirect damages, but would settle for a tribunal statement that it possessed the right to pass judgment on the question. As the Geneva agreement came to a vote in May 1872, Grant showed a growing mastery of the legislative process, inviting members of the Senate and House Foreign Relations Committees to meet him at the State Department, where they pored over diplomatic correspondence from Switzerland. Eager to show that he sought advice and consent from the Senate, he accepted an invitation from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to consult with them. On May 18, Grant climbed into his carriage and was about to depart for the Capitol when Fish intercepted him and advised “that as a mere matter of Etiquette & courtesy the Comm[ittee] should call upon him, not he on them.” At the time, presidents weren’t supposed to dabble in legislation in this way and Fish worried that treaty opponents would charge Grant with exerting “undue influence” over its passage.68 After considering, Grant dismounted from the carriage.
In taking a tough stance on the Alabama claims, Grant played a winning hand with the American public. Thomas Nast published a cartoon in which Grant and Fish stood beneath a sign warning: “No More Concessions. U.S. Grant—Let Us Have Peaceful Arbitration.” At their foot crouched a big, whimpering British lion and the caption: “Our President Puts His Foot Down, and the British Lion Will Have to Wriggle Out.”69 Grant achieved a historic diplomatic triumph. In September, the Geneva tribunal handed down a judgment that Great Britain was culpable in allowing the Alabama and other raiders to be built in British shipyards and owed the United States $15.5 million. The indemnity helped Grant redeem outstanding public debt left from the war and he basked in the immense success of the outcome. “We are quite content with the Geneva Award,” Fish informed Elihu Washburne. “It decides that Great Britain was culpable.”70
Settling the Alabama claims is an obscure episode that has receded in history and sounds a trifle dated and musty, of interest only to professional historians. Yet its dramatic importance cannot be overstated, for it showed the value of international arbitration, banished lingering ill will between the United States and Great Britain, and launched a new fraternal relationship of major consequence. As the United States emerged as the world’s foremost industrial power, Great Britain served as the premier banker to American railways and factories, powering the country’s economic growth at a time when American finance could not have managed the feat alone. Adam Badeau noted that while much credit for the Alabama settlement belonged to Fish, Adams, Evarts, and other American diplomats, “Grant was the head; it was for him always to decide. If he had been backward or uncertain, if he had failed in judgment or nerve or sagacity or decision—the achievement would have been impossible. If there were no other measure of his Administration worthy of praise, this one makes it well for America that Grant was President.”71
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
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Vindication
IT IS SADLY IRONIC that Grant’s presidency became synonymous with corruption, since he himself was impeccably honest. Some found Grant truthful to a fault. “In the White House one day he was busy and a stranger called,” a visitor remembered. “The man on duty, knowing that Grant was busy, said to the servant at the door, ‘Tell the gentleman that the President is out.’” Grant, overhearing this, said, ‘No, don’t tell him that. Tell him I am engaged and must be excused. I never lie for myself and do not want anybody to lie for me.’”1
The mystery of Grant’s presidency is how this upright man tolerated some of the arrant rascals collected around him. Again and again he was stunned by scandals because he could not imagine subordinates guilty of such sleazy behavior. “He thought every man as sincere as himself,” said childhood friend Eliza Shaw.2 This reputation for credulity had clung to him through the rigors of war. “The soul of honor himself,” said James Longstreet, “he never suspected others either then or years afterward.”3 Grant was a strange amalgam of wisdom and naïveté about human nature. As he admitted, “I could never bear to think illy of anyone whom I had selected for responsible positions, unless proven guilty.”4
Grant’s record in selecting colleagues was uneven, mixing brilliant and disastrous choices. “He sometimes seemed to know men marvelously well . . . but at other times he was absolutely blind to arts and traits . . . apparent to many lookers on,” Badeau observed.5 Occasionally susceptible to flattery, Grant didn’t guard himself with a shell of protective cynicism against venal people. If slow to make friends, once he admitted them into his inner circle, they could perform no wrong in his eyes.
Some of this trust came from a soldierly loyalty to his comrades. “It was a principle with [Grant] never to abandon a comrade ‘under fire,’” said West Point classmate James B. Fry, “and a friend in disgrace, as well as a friend in trouble, could depend upon him until Grant himself found him guilty.”6 He stood by people whom he thought unjustly slandered, giving them the benefit of the doubt. “I have made it the rule of my life,” he said, “to trust a man long after other people gave him up.”7 This noble trait was bound to be abused by unscrupulous types. “In political life the more bitterly his friends were attacked the more stoutly he clung to them,” said his son Fred. “This was at times most unfortunate.”8 Grant reacted defensively when friends were attacked, often retreating into hurt silence, and he never learned to develop a thick rind in the face of such criticism. When he realized he had been duped by valued associates, he was invariably crestfallen. “He was sincere and devoted in his friendships,” said Boutwell, “but when he discovered that his confidence had been misplaced, a reconciliation became impossible.”9
Grant had the misfortune of presiding over America in the corrupt Gilded Age. Syndicates known as “rings” reigned in many areas of society, and newspapers covered their larcenous escapades with relish. The corruption arose from numerous sources: the enormous wartime expansion of government; the unbridled growth of heavy industry; the buccaneering tactics of big business; the rise of ruthless political machines; the protracted rule of the Republican Party; helter-skelter settlement of the West. The railroads represented a festering source of corruption, issuing free passes to Grant and other public figures, who accepted such largesse as legitimate perks of their jobs. With the postwar boom and a universal thirst for riches came a complete breakdown of public and private morality. Grant couldn’t inoculate his administration against this epidemic, which infected both parties and every state legislature.
In many ways, Grant should have been a natural convert to civil service reform. From the time he was a boy, he had exhibited a meritocratic streak as he reacted against his father’s chronic wire-pulling; as president-elect, he had distanced himself from congressional pressure in assembling his first cabinet. Once sworn in, he was deluged with patronage requests, which consumed the bulk of his correspondence. Such was the daily crush of office seekers that he said he scarcely had time “to read the current news of the day.”10 The wholesale hunt for government jobs submerged him in the minutiae of local politics, forcing him to arbitrate among warring factions. He had to deal with job seekers and their congressional patrons, whose support he needed for legislation. “The real vice of the present system is the patronage of members of Congress,” wrote Amos Akerman. “Many of them think that their business here is not to make laws but to make appointments.”11
With so many appointments based on connectio
ns, civil service reform was a contentious issue. One of its foremost proponents was Secretary of the Interior Jacob D. Cox, who favored competitive exams for selected positions. The interior secretary saw Grant as the victim of artful politicians who cajoled him with their “skillful advocacy and impassioned manner.”12 Cox ran afoul of party bosses when he implemented a merit system at Interior; rebuffed demands that political appointees make mandatory party contributions; and resisted lawmakers wishing to meddle with Indian agent appointments. His days were numbered when he disobeyed Grant’s orders about a patent dispute on mineral lands that Grant thought involved frauds on both sides. Defending his action, Cox told Grant that as he “only fought fraud with such vigor as I could, I can make no compromise, & if I fail to secure to the fullest extent your approval of my course, I must beg you to relieve me at once.”13 Proud of his integrity, Grant said Cox’s blatant insinuation that he was corrupt “cut him severely.”14
In October 1870, he accepted Cox’s resignation. “My views of the necessity of reform in the civil service have brought me more or less into collision with the plans of some of our active political managers,” Cox wrote to him, “and my sense of duty has obliged me to oppose some of their methods of action through the Department.”15 In reply, Grant paid tribute to “the zeal and ability” shown by Cox in discharging his duties.16 Under the surface, he thought Cox the victim of a swollen ego: “The trouble was that General Cox thought the Interior Department was the whole government, and that Cox was the Interior Department.”17 Cox was replaced by Columbus Delano, an Ohio politician who would presumably be more submissive. Subsequently Cox took every opportunity to malign Grant, telling Sumner he had “no confidence in any real purpose of Civil Service Reform on the part of President Grant.”18
