by Ron Chernow
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RIGHT BEFORE THE CHICAGO CONVENTION, a filthy man in ragged clothes walked the city streets, making a public spectacle of himself. “I am U.S. Grant’s brother,” the drunken derelict told startled pedestrians, “don’t I look like him?”43 The shabby vagrant was Orvil Grant, and he spoke the plain truth. With a wife and four children, Orvil was a genial man with a full beard, large forehead, and close-set blue eyes. Right before Grant became president, Orvil’s vindictive wife had tried to borrow money from Julia and gotten a rough reprimand. As she recalled, Julia “became indignant, she had a hot temper mind you, and said that Orvil had gotten a great deal of money from father Grant, that Ulysses had gotten none because he had ‘earned his way,’ and if Orvil had squandered such riches, that was not her fault and she would not make up the difference.”44 In 1872, after Grant appointed James McLean, Orvil’s partner in the Galena leather business, collector of the port of Chicago, he was stunned to discover that McLean had forked over kickbacks to Orvil to procure the job. “I did not dream that such obligation existed,” Grant protested.45 Despite bad blood, he had promised a year later to give his younger brother $5,000 or $10,000 when he entered a new business. Still, Orvil proved an embarrassment, cutting shady deals for Indian trading posts, and he also seemed to share his brother’s problematic drinking history. He was firmly in the mold of Jesse Root Grant, working every angle to exploit his brother’s celebrity.
Orvil’s erratic behavior acquired new significance in September 1878 when the Grant family had him committed to the State Asylum for the Insane in Morristown, New Jersey. Two constables grabbed him at a train station, a reporter describing him as “a rather tall man, who wore a somewhat seedy black beaver hat, and whose clothes were untidy.”46 Accompanied by a family physician, Dr. Morton, the constables hustled off a dazed Orvil to the Elizabeth jail and then to the asylum, where he feverishly paced the floor, jabbering about speculative ventures. The press exploded with stories about hallucinations that had seized him, all revolving around crazy moneymaking schemes. The outcast brother had turned into a walking caricature of Jesse Root Grant at his most avaricious. He imagined he had bought enormous quantities of calf skin or pianos or sewing machines or wheat, cornering the market. Dr. Morton called the delusions “purely an intellectual aberration” and denied they were related to alcohol.47
To discuss Orvil’s case, a New York Times reporter sought out Hannah Grant, then living with the Corbins in Elizabeth:
She is a gentle-mannered old lady, with an abundance of silver-gray hair, and a face as kind and motherly as it is delicate and finely cut. Mrs. Grant said that her son Orville [sic] had been a trouble to the family for some time. If he could have been persuaded to remain quietly at home, no restraint would have been put upon his actions, for he was a kind husband and father, and there was no apprehension that his mania would take a violent turn. His insanity consisted in a monomania for immense transactions without any capital . . . he had spent or invested in unremunerative enterprises nearly or quite all the $50,000 he had formerly made in the timber business, and she did not think there would be anything left for the maintenance of the family.48
According to the article, Grant had taken Orvil’s case to a “distinguished alienist” who concluded that “quiet surveillance” by friends would suffice instead of forcible restraint.49 During his global trip, Grant monitored Orvil’s behavior at the asylum, finding nothing to hearten him. “I am sorry to say that I do not get favorable news from Orvil,” he told a relative in December 1878. “He does not seem to improve.”50
For reasons that are murky, weeks after Grant wrote this letter, Orvil was released from the asylum and turned up on Philadelphia’s streets, boasting of big business plans ahead in San Francisco. “Not only was he going to open a great restaurant,” reported The New York Times, “but he had several hundred thousand dollars invested in a Pacific slope tannery, another immense sum in a brewery, and was in partnership with several parties in other concerns.”51 Although shut up in a dream world, Orvil was affable as he endeavored to strike business deals, but his clothes were shabby, his shoes begrimed with mud. By August, he had drifted to Chicago, where he showed up right before the Republican convention, presenting a public relations nightmare for his brother. As one Grant supporter wrote, “‘Brother Orville’ [sic] is here & you ought to see him. A perfect wreck from liquor, and in a ragged, drunken, collarless [state], almost without shoes, & his clothes in the most disgusting condition. He walks the street, and is observed of everybody. It is an outrage upon the American people that the General should permit this.”52 Grant didn’t spurn his brother, and his willingness to tolerate his presence typified his reaction to his most trying family members: whatever they did, he stuck loyally by them, or at least did not disown them. But Grant showed no enduring affection for his brother, who had disappointed him so many times. When Orvil died in August 1881, at age forty-six, Ulysses did not attend the funeral.
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IN THE PRELUDE to the Republican convention, scheduled to convene in Chicago on June 2, 1880, Ulysses S. Grant exuded a confident air, convinced voters would give him a fresh chance at the White House. “The General is now here feeling first rate,” wrote Elihu Washburne from Galena in late April, “calm as a summer morning and feeling fully assured of success, the same as we all feel.”53 Grant refused to campaign, wanting the nomination to come to him without any unseemly show of desire on his part. The ladylike Julia, by contrast, favored a more bare-knuckled approach. So hopeful were the pro-Grant omens that on May 21 The New York Times termed his nomination “certain,” citing an influential politician who contended he had locked up a commanding 380 convention votes.54
One naysayer was John Russell Young, who met with Grant in late May and tried to convince him he couldn’t be reelected. In response, Grant drafted a letter for the four politicians who would supervise his nomination in Chicago—Conkling, Boutwell, Cameron, and Logan—and volunteered to withdraw if needed to stem any bitterness generated by his candidacy. His one condition was that he would bow out only if James Blaine did so as well. When Julia got wind of this letter, she was irate, telling Young, “If General Grant were not nominated, then let it be so, but he must not withdraw his name—no never.”55 The letter was delivered in a large envelope to Fred Grant, who claimed he passed it on to Conkling. George Boutwell says Grant had already given the four men complete discretion to handle his candidacy as they thought advisable. In the end, Grant never withdrew.
Quite amazing was the ardor with which Julia Grant prodded her husband to take off the kid gloves and fight hard for the nomination. When she urged him to go to Chicago and appear on the convention floor, he said he would rather cut off his right hand. “Do you not desire success?” she asked. “Well, yes, of course,” he answered, “since my name is up, I would rather be nominated, but I will do nothing to further that end.” Julia harrumphed at what she considered misguided chivalry. “For heaven’s sake, go—and go tonight. I know they are already making their cabals against you. Go, go tonight, I beseech you.” Grant grew exasperated. “Julia,” he declared, “I am amazed at you,” and he strolled off to chat with a visitor.56
On June 2, Senator James D. Cameron banged the gavel to open the Chicago convention. The first big floor fight erupted over a procedural point that could theoretically swing the nomination to Grant. With Conkling leading the charge, Grant forces lobbied for the unit rule, which would guarantee that three large states in the Stalwart camp—New York, Illinois, and Pennsylvania—cast all their votes for a single candidate. James A. Garfield predicted a “fierce fight” over this seemingly technical issue.57 In a preview of things to come, the unit rule was defeated by a 449 to 306 vote, substantially lessening Grant’s chances for victory and disclosing the first chinks in his electoral armor.
The most conspicuous delegate on the convention floor was his manager, Roscoe Conkling, a tall, arresting figure who dominat
ed attention. Blaine called him the “master spirit” of Grant’s followers, and, with head held high, he lived up to that designation.58 When several delegates offered to back Conkling instead of Grant, he sharply upbraided them: “I am here as the agent of New York to support General Grant to the end. Any man who would forsake him under such conditions does not deserve to be elected, and could not be elected.”59 Lord Roscoe did not disappoint those who expected a flurry of showmanship. When he rose to nominate Grant, he leapt onto a table reserved for journalists, folded his arms across his chest, then waited until a hush had fallen. He began by softening up the crowd with some light verse: “When asked what state he hails from, / Our sole reply shall be, / He comes from Appomattox, / and its famous apple-tree.”60 This set off an uproarious ten-minute celebration for Grant. “Never defeated in peace or in war,” Conkling resumed, “his name is the most illustrious borne by living man.”61 When he mocked Grant’s opponents and was greeted by derisory shouts, he blithely sucked on a lemon until the uproar had subsided.
With his round-the-world tour, Conkling said, Grant had added knowledge and experience to profound common sense. He laughed at criticisms leveled at Grant—“The shafts and the arrows have all been aimed at him, and they lie broken and harmless at his feet”—then confronted head-on the view that no president should be entitled to a third term. “Who dares . . . to put fetters on that free choice and judgment which is the birthright of the American people?”62 Conkling transported the delirious crowd beyond Grant’s checkered presidency to the glory days of the Civil War, arousing them with military imagery. Such was the hysterical enthusiasm, a reporter wrote, that “the friends of Grant threw away the characteristics of age and became boys once more.”63 For all his glittering flashes of oratory, Conkling’s presence played into the hands of those who thought Grant the cat’s-paw of party bosses. For them, the messenger trumped the message. After Conkling spoke, Garfield delivered a fine speech for John Sherman that somewhat cooled off Grant mania sweeping the hall.
In the past, Conkling had clashed with Blaine, the darling of the Half-Breeds, taunting him for “his haughty disdain, his grandiloquent swell, his majestic, supereminent, overpowering, turkey-gobbler strut.”64 A politician to his fingertips, with a sonorous voice and magnetic personality, Blaine was cordial but calculating. Sometimes Grant viewed him charitably as “a very able man, I think a perfectly honest man, fit for any place.”65 But at other times he called Blaine “a very smart man, and when I say that I do not mean talented, but smart.”66 Grant blamed Blaine for venomous attacks launched against him and their friendship didn’t survive the convention. Grant had never warmed to John Sherman, who reciprocated the feeling, warning that Grant’s nomination “would be fatal to us in the election.”67 Moving silently in the background was Elihu Washburne, who claimed to favor Grant’s nomination. Then articles surfaced in The St. Louis Globe-Democrat that the two-faced Washburne secretly promoted his own candidacy, leaving Grant hurt and dumbfounded. “Mr. Washburne is my friend,” Grant told a reporter. “He has always been a very warm and sincere friend to me, and was [at] such a time when his friendship was so valuable that, no matter what happens, I can never forget it nor cease to remember it with gratitude.”68
The winning candidate needed 379 votes. On the first ballot, Grant drew a narrow lead of 304 votes versus 284 for Blaine, 93 for Sherman, 34 for George F. Edmunds of Vermont and—confirming Grant’s worst fears—30 for Washburne. These last votes, the unkindest cut for Grant, denied him an insuperable lead. The convention then wore on through many wearisome ballots, marked by trifling changes in the vote count. On the third ballot, two new names appeared with a single vote apiece: the Indiana politician Benjamin Harrison and Congressman James A. Garfield. Finally came the fateful thirty-sixth ballot, which produced a political earthquake. Perhaps feeling the tremors, Conkling admonished the Grant delegates: “Keep steady, boys, Grant is going to win on this ballot.”69 During the roll call, Maine deserted Blaine, its favorite son, and switched all its votes to Garfield, setting off a delegate stampede in his direction. Grant’s votes remained firm as Blaine and Sherman supporters alike defected to Garfield. When the counting ended, Garfield had 399 votes, Grant 306, Blaine 42, Elihu Washburne 5, and John Sherman 3. It was a startling victory for Garfield, who had never declared his candidacy, had stood foursquare behind Sherman, and was the most reluctant of dark horse nominees.
Grant was in the office of William Rowley of his wartime staff when he learned his last presidential hopes were snuffed out. He stepped outside, puffed thoughtfully on a cigar, then told friends, “I can’t say that I regret my own defeat. By it I shall escape four years of hard work and four years of abuse, and gentlemen, we can all support the candidate.”70 One side of Grant was likely relieved, Grant telling Conkling he had “grown weary of constant abuse,” much of it emanating from “former professed friends.”71 Buck told how his father had reacted to Conkling’s speech and the thunderous ovation it received. As they walked home afterward, an uneasy Grant turned and said a little sadly, “I am afraid I may be nominated.”72 Buck claimed his father lost the nomination because he refused to cut a side deal to retain John Sherman as treasury secretary. That Grant felt his defeat deeply grew clear when he failed to send a congratulatory message to Garfield. He felt duped by his backers, telling friends he would never have allowed his name to be used if he thought victory uncertain: “My friends were not just to me in saying that it was only a matter of form.”73 With this defeat behind him, Grant would endorse a constitutional amendment limiting the president to one seven-year term. Julia Grant felt bitterly the injustice of her husband’s loss. Having been received with grand ceremony by monarchs and prime ministers around the world, she could not contemplate comfortably the return to a mundane, civilian life. “I take it as a personal grievance,” she said of Garfield’s victory, “and I am down on Washburne & the whole ‘Caboodle’ of them.”74 She told one friend, “You know I’m a Democrat. What’s more, I’m Secesh, particularly as the Republicans wouldn’t nominate Ulysses for a third term.”75
Grant’s loss perhaps owed less to insufficient popularity than to heavy-handed methods wielded by his henchmen Conkling, Logan, and Cameron, who ended up splitting the Republican Party. As Hayes wrote, “The immediately valuable result is the condemnation of the machine as organized by Conkling and Cameron . . . I greatly regret that Grant, our first soldier and a man of many sterling qualities, should be so humiliated and degraded as he has been by his unprincipled supporters.”76 The Stalwarts could claim one victory in Chicago: the choice of Conkling’s protégé Chester Arthur, the former collector for the port of New York, as the vice presidential nominee, a consolation prize to Conkling. Arthur, having stuck by Grant to the last minute, refused to rebuff the overture from the Garfield forces. When he informed Conkling about the job, the latter grew outraged that Arthur would even consider such a disloyal thing. “Well, sir,” Conkling roared, “you should drop it as you would a red hot shoe from the forge.” Arthur, pained, would not be browbeaten. “The office of the Vice President is a greater honor than I ever dreamed of attaining . . . In a calmer moment you will look at this differently.” Conkling was not appeased. Declaring his independence, Arthur accepted the nomination and his decision would shortly transform a New York political hack into a president of the United States.
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A BIG, ROBUST MAN with a long beard, James Abram Garfield was a remarkable autodidact, born in a log cabin in Ohio. An industrious student who worked at menial jobs to pay his way through school, he ended up a professor of ancient language, literature, and math and a college president at age twenty-six. After Fort Sumter, his ascent in the Union army was no less rapid as he fought at Shiloh and Chickamauga and served as chief of staff for General Rosecrans. In 1863, soon after becoming a major general of volunteers, he resigned to serve in Congress and wound up a champion of emancipation and civil rights for blacks.
Though Garfield had long been a faithful Republican, Grant had never especially warmed to him, but neither had he criticized him. “He is a good man,” Grant commented after the convention in a less than rousing endorsement. “Garfield has always been right.”77 During his southern tour, Grant had come to believe he could dent Democratic dominance in the region whereas he saw no chance of Garfield making such inroads. When Democrats gathered in Cincinnati in late June and nominated Winfield Scott Hancock as their standard-bearer, Grant’s attraction to Garfield intensified overnight. To a reporter, he sardonically recalled Hancock’s vainglorious reaction to receiving a single vote at the 1864 Democratic convention, recalling how “from that time [Hancock] had had the Presidential bee in his bonnet.”78 Mocking Hancock as an inexperienced political lightweight, Republicans printed up a pamphlet entitled “Hancock’s Political Achievements,” a work that contained nothing but blank pages.79
