by Ron Chernow
With Cox’s resignation and the loss of Ebenezer Hoar, Grant had sacrificed members of the high-minded liberal reform wing of the Republican Party who opposed party bosses, thereby exposing profound new fault lines in the party. It was a watershed moment for Grant, who had to deal with a widening split common to parties long in power. Writing privately to Cox about his resignation, Congressman James Garfield didn’t mince words: “It is a clear case of surrender on the part of the President to the political vermin which infest the government and keep it in a state of perpetual lousiness.”19
To contain the damage of Cox’s departure, Grant made a concerted push for civil service reform in his second annual message to Congress in December 1870: “There is no duty which so much embarrasses [the] Executive, and heads of departments, as that of appointments; nor is there [any such] arduous and thankless labor imposed on Senators and representatives as that of finding places for constituents.”20 Heeding his plea, Congress gave him power to impanel the nation’s first Civil Service Commission, headed by George William Curtis, a New York reformer who had lectured widely on the subject. Born in Rhode Island, Curtis had resided at the utopian community of Brook Farm before becoming a newspaper and magazine editor. Having objected to the departure of Hoar and Cox, he was a daring choice for Grant. Curtis’s board would recommend drastic measures to clean up the civil service, ranging from competitive exams to an end of forced political payments by civil servants. It was still a novel idea to hire civil servants based on pure merit in lieu of party affiliation.
Addressing Congress in December 1871, Grant portrayed himself as an advocate of civil service reform, his naysayers notwithstanding. In transmitting a fifty-page report from Curtis’s advisory group, he adopted many rules it recommended. He asked for an extension of the Civil Service Commission, making it a permanent body that would oversee new civil service exams. Perhaps with an eye on the upcoming race for president, he sounded like a full-fledged convert to reform and even elicited praise from Sumner, but Congress refused to back him up. As The New York Times noted, civil service reform had failed “due to a lack of support from Congress, strong pressure from politicians, and the absence of a sufficiently mature and vigorous public sentiment on the subject.”21 In the end, new guidelines implemented by Grant were more honored in the breach than the observance. Congressmen simply balked at surrendering their most potent source of power—patronage. As Garfield said, party bosses backing Grant were “furious against the Civil Service Report, and the indications are that Grant must back down or offend his defenders.”22
Grant talked a good game on civil service reform despite a multitude of private reservations. When Joseph Medill of the Chicago Tribune attempted to resign from the advisory board, Grant refused to heed his request: “It is my intention that Civil Service reform shall have a fair trial. The great defect in the past custom is that Executive patronage had come to be regarded as the property of individuals of the party in power.”23 On April 11, 1872, Curtis submitted a second report to Grant, stressing that political activity shouldn’t factor into hiring government workers. Within a week, Grant promulgated an executive order adopting civil service regulations that reflected Curtis’s views. No longer would government workers be required to fork over payments to political parties to retain their jobs. “Political assessments . . . have been forbidden within the various Departments . . . honesty and efficiency, not political activity, will determine the tenure of office,” wrote Grant, echoing language long cherished by Curtis.24 Later in the year, when awarding an honorary doctorate to Grant, Harvard president Charles W. Eliot singled out “reforming the civil service” as one reason behind the honor.25 Grant differed from most proponents of civil service reform in believing that competitive exams should be administered after hiring, not before, as a better way to test the fitness of workers for their jobs.
Grant’s reforms never worked out as planned, and he blamed the fact that they were neither binding nor respected by Congress. In future years, he bared his true feelings about civil service reforms, even debunking them as “humbug.”26 Patronage might be the bane of a president’s life, but he came to think of it as a necessary evil in a democratic system: “You cannot call it corruption—it is a condition of our representative form of government—and yet if you read the newspapers, and hear the stories of the reformers, you will be told that any asking for place is corruption.”27 Presidents who wanted government to proceed smoothly, he believed, had to be able to win over congressmen and did so by complying with their patronage demands.
Thus, while Grant paid lip service to reform and became the first president to urge creation of a professional civil service, he ended up willy-nilly a captive of the spoils system. His detractors sensed that his heart wasn’t really in reform and that he privately questioned their methods. For reformers, Grant came to embody the system they despised. Whatever his inward dismay at the patronage mess, he learned to manipulate the levers at his disposal to get things accomplished on Capitol Hill. After personal betrayals suffered over the Santo Domingo treaty, he decided to reward loyalty above ideology and came to view reformers as two-faced troublemakers while party bosses, however corrupt, at least stuck to their word. By March 1873, as appointments were made that violated the spirit of new civil service regulations, George William Curtis handed in his resignation and Grant accepted it. Grant had made a genuine effort at civil service reform and deserves credit as the first president to do so, but he hadn’t produced lasting change. Only with the 1883 Pendleton Act would competitive exams be required to fill a portion of federal jobs.
The ideals behind Grant’s presidency were often enlightened, even if the backroom tactics sometimes seemed ignoble. He had to thrust himself into the middle of byzantine political maneuvering, becoming the true son of his father and accepting the spoils system for the sake of party unity. Grant has suffered from a double standard in the eyes of historians. When Lincoln employed patronage for political ends, which he did extensively, they have praised him as a master politician; when Grant catered to the same spoilsmen, they have denigrated him as a corrupt opportunist.
Part of Grant’s need to placate party bosses was that he presided over government in the heyday of senatorial power. Senators were still elected by state legislatures controlled by party machines and business interests. The new political machines, many concentrated in northern cities, made politics a lucrative business for their acolytes. Meanwhile, safely entrenched in their posts, senators ruled Washington like feudal barons, jealously guarding their turf from presidential interference. Not having to face voters for reelection, they stood as formidable barriers to any progressive legislation.
During Grant’s presidency, the Radical Republicans who dominated the Senate under Lincoln and Johnson gave way to Stalwart Republicans, men of a different stripe. Such power brokers as Roscoe Conkling of New York, Oliver Morton of Indiana, Zachariah Chandler of Michigan, and Simon Cameron of Pennsylvania were motivated less by ideology than amassing power. “I fear that such advisors as Chandler, Cameron and Conkling are too influential with Grant,” Rutherford B. Hayes complained in May 1871. “They are not safe counselors.”28 Their ascent reflected the Republican Party’s gradual metamorphosis from the party of abolition to a more business-oriented one. Once the maverick party of outsiders, the Republicans had evolved into the comfortable political establishment, with all the corruption that goes with the territory. Grant cooperated with the Stalwart Republicans not only because they supported him but because they shared his fundamental view of the Democratic Party as battling against southern Republicans and trying to reverse the outcome of the war, fostering the need for a solidly Republican North. Many of the party bosses boasted fine records on Reconstruction.
Of all the Stalwarts with whom Grant forged an alliance, perhaps the most improbable was Roscoe Conkling, a foe of civil service reform. Born in Albany, Conkling had trained as a lawyer and served as mayor of Utica befor
e being elected to the House in 1858 and the Senate in 1867. Grant made peace with Conkling at a time when New York’s large block of electoral votes was critical to winning national elections. Tall and handsome with a theatrical air, Conkling was a strutting peacock with foppish curls. He wore white flannel trousers and yellow vests and strolled about with his nose in the air, betraying a dandified sense of his own grandeur. An early fitness buff, he liked to ride and box and slug a punching bag drooping from his office ceiling. His female conquests were so numerous that John Hay derided him as “a patriot of the flesh-pots.”29 Conkling was an eloquent orator who could be charming with friends, but he was a relentless enemy when crossed. Master of numerous patronage jobs, he laughed at morality as something that bound lesser mortals.
Despite his superior manner, Conkling’s political acumen made him a useful mentor for Grant, who detected virtues in Conkling that escaped others, regarding him “as the greatest mind . . . that has been in public life since the beginning of the government.”30 Hamilton Fish understood the attraction, saying Conkling’s advice to Grant was always smart, if distinctly partisan.31 The journalist John Russell Young noted how Conkling and Grant grew strangely enamored of each other: “For Conkling Grant has a romantic affection, and this was returned by Conkling in a manner almost womanly, which was curious considering his imperious, high-toned, impetuous, yet noble character.”32 Grant’s son Jesse echoed this assessment: “Conkling and my father loved each other. They were devoted; and Conkling’s devotion was quite unselfish.”33 Even Julia Grant shared her husband’s fawning admiration for Conkling, once urging his selection as chief justice because she thought his fair curls would look stunning when set off against black judicial robes.34
Conkling typified Stalwart Republican contradictions in the 1870s. Though a quintessential party boss, he had been a vocal abolitionist, a supporter of civil rights, and a draftsman of the Fourteenth Amendment who saw eye-to-eye with Grant on Reconstruction. By no accident Frederick Douglass alluded to Conkling as a great senator and would eulogize him at a memorial service after his death. Conkling fully reciprocated Grant’s admiration for him, telling a friend in August 1871: “He has made a better President than you and I, when we voted for him, had any right to expect . . . He has given the country the best practical administration, in many respects, [that] we have had for a quarter of a century and people know it.”35
The biggest favor Grant bestowed upon Conkling was control of the New York Custom House, which generated a huge chunk of customs revenues, its fifteen hundred jobs making it the richest fountain of patronage in the federal system. The immense sums that flowed through its corridors could be siphoned off by crooked officials. Power over the custom house made any politician kingpin of New York’s machine politics and Conkling was determined to seize that power.
On July 1, 1870, Grant nominated Thomas Murphy as New York customs collector. He was a genial Irishman and lover of horse flesh whom Grant had befriended in Long Branch, but he had a reputation as a shady wartime contractor. When New York senator Reuben Fenton contested the nomination, Conkling spotted an opportunity to ingratiate himself with Grant by throwing his support to Murphy. A massive power struggle ensued. The New York Times described Murphy’s nomination as “the sensation of the Capitol” and reported that “Senator Fenton and his friends seem to accept it as a direct blow at them.”36 Cynical about this intramural battle of spoilsmen, the paper concluded: “On both sides the contest at Washington has been conducted with[out] the slightest possible reference to the wishes and welfare of this City, or even the welfare of the Republican party. The whole affair has narrowed down to a struggle for . . . advantage between the two New York Senators.”37
Politics was played as an unforgiving blood sport in the Gilded Age and Conkling resorted to character assassination. When the Senate went into executive session to ponder Murphy’s nomination, Fenton dug up newspaper clippings that chronicled his sordid business adventures. Not to be outdone, Conkling secretly unearthed a startling discovery: Fenton, as a youth, had stolen $12,000 that he was supposed to carry from New York to Albany. He had pretended to be robbed and stashed the money in his bedclothes. In rising to defend Murphy, Conkling said, “It is true that Thomas Murphy is a mechanic, a hatter by trade; that he worked at his trade in Albany supporting an aged father and mother and a crippled brother. And while he was thus engaged there was another who visited Albany and played a very different role.”38 At this point, Conkling withdrew with a flourish the incriminating court documents from his pocket and Fenton, understanding their meaning, slumped over at his desk in defeat. With that gesture, the Murphy nomination won handily. In reviewing the imbroglio, The Nation credited the “skill and ferocity” with which Conkling had joined the fray but condemned Tom Murphy as “a hack politician, unfit for any trust.”39
With Murphy’s appointment, Grant dealt a crushing blow to the Fenton forces and installed Roscoe Conkling as the supreme power in New York. The subsequent messages Murphy received from the White House telegraphed mixed signals. Babcock advised Murphy that he had a batch of letters asking for administration support to obtain jobs in the New York Custom House: “I do not wish to embarrass you . . . and I have therefore given [you] no such letters, nor shall I do so.”40 This sounded scrupulously honest. But Horace Porter sent a far more ambiguous message, stating that “my only desire is to see you distribute the patronage of your office as to render the most efficient service to the country and the cause of the Administration”—which sounded unashamedly political.41 In November, Grant met with Murphy and applauded “his efforts to secure the success of the Republican ticket in the late campaign in New York,” reported the New York Tribune.42
Shadowed by corruption charges, Murphy staffed the New York Custom House with Republican operatives beholden to Conkling. After the November 1871 elections, he left office against a backdrop of scandal. Showing a pattern he later repeated, Grant defended Murphy until the critical chorus became insupportable. In accepting his resignation, Grant praised the “efficiency, honesty and zeal” with which he had fulfilled his duties.43 Seeking a replacement, Grant turned to another henchman of Conkling’s, Chester Arthur, who was more efficient than Murphy and a capable lawyer, launching the career of a future president. Seated on his new patronage throne, Arthur would make $50,000 a year, a salary equal to the president’s. Increasingly disgruntled with Grant, Horace Greeley snorted that the new collector of customs was “Tom Murphy under another name.”44
Appointing Arthur didn’t silence the hubbub over the New York Custom House, and Garfield denounced Stalwarts supporting Grant as “super-serviceable lackeys that sneeze whenever their master takes snuff.”45 Amid a growing furor, congressional investigators launched a probe of New York’s port, which Republicans suspected was politically motivated to sway the 1872 elections. One villain investigated was George K. Leet, formerly on Grant’s wartime staff, whose firm enjoyed the custom house monopoly on warehousing imported goods. Shocked by committee disclosures, Grant ordered his treasury secretary and attorney general to prosecute “all persons in New York, who have testified that they gave bribes to Govt Officials,” Fish noted in his diary.46 Despite this, the hearings damaged Grant as Greeley testified that approximately a hundred Fenton men were cashiered to make room for Conkling minions. The patronage war seemed to mock Grant’s modest pretensions to being a civil service reformer and the press gleefully ballyhooed his troubles. “The New York World and the New York Tribune have entered into a partnership for the throwing of dirt at Grant,” George Templeton Strong noted. “They merely disgust and alienate the public.”47
In the lengthy roll of corruption cases, perhaps the most distressing for Grant centered on Ely Parker, whom he had appointed as commissioner of Indian affairs to extirpate corruption among Indian agents. Instead, Parker ended up being trailed by accusations of fraud. Grant’s Indian advisory board, headed by reformer William Welsh, accused him of fail
ing to open Indian contracts to competitive bidding; in response, Parker cited emergency conditions that warranted this approach. Welsh’s charges seem to have been part of a racially inspired vendetta. As a beef contractor recalled, Welsh spoke of Parker as “the representative of a race only one generation from barbarism, and he did not think that he should be expected to be able to withstand the inducements of parties who were his superiors in matters of business.”48 In February 1871, a House investigating committee uncovered “irregularities, neglect, and incompetency . . . in the Indian Department,” but exonerated Parker of wrongdoing.49 Nevertheless, hurt by the unfair charges, Parker submitted his resignation and on July 13, 1871, Grant accepted it with regret: “Accepting it severs official relations which have existed between us for eight consecutive years, without cause of complaint as to your entire fitness for either of the important places which you have had during that time.”50
While Parker may have exhibited bad judgment, his behavior had been far from egregious and he had admitted to gaffes from inexperience. Welsh believed Grant allowed personal fondness and abiding loyalty to cloud his judgment. “Parker was . . . an infatuation heightened by a sentiment in favor of an Indian civilizing his brethren,” he told Cox.51 A few years later, Welsh published an open letter to Grant that portrayed him as irredeemably blinded by his love for friends: “Every suggestion I ever made to you was promptly responded to, save only the investigation of frauds allowed by your appointees. Even this lamentable trait I believe springs from a distorted virtue. Your protection of General Parker . . . seems wholly unaccountable, except on the hypothesis that love in you is blind.”52
