Hiram Ulysses Grant, as he was originally named, was born on April 27, 1822, in a two-room cabin at Point Pleasant, Ohio, about twenty-five miles up the Ohio River from Cincinnati. His father, Jesse Root Grant, was a verbose and grasping tanner and dresser of hides who prospered, amassing the then considerable fortune of $150,000. Hannah Simpson Grant, his mother, was just the opposite: silent, reserved, and deeply religious. Not long after the boy's birth, the family moved to Georgetown, Ohio, where he and his five younger siblings were raised.

Young Grant received a rudimentary education in the local schools and later, away from home, in boarding schools. He liked mathematics and performed acceptably in other subjects. Shy and reticent, he received little affection from his rather remote parents and had few friends. The boy developed a phobia against retracing his steps; if he walked past a destination, he would continue on until he came to a crossroad and work his way back to his original target rather than turn back.

From an early age, he demonstrated a marked talent for handling horses and assumed all the chores requiring their use. He hauled wood, cleared and plowed fields, and carried passengers-anything to keep from being put to work in his father's tannery, where the bloodcaked hides made him sick. Paradoxically, in view of his later career, Grant could not stand the sight of animal blood. He did not hunt, even as a boy, and, nauseated by rare steak, insisted his meat be served well done. In Mexico, he was sickened by a bullfight.

Without consulting him, Jesse Grant, in 1839, arranged for his son's appointment to West Point by Rep. Thomas L. Hamer. Young Grant, fearing failure, did not wish to leave home, but finally ended his resistance, undoubtedly to escape an unappealing future in the tannery. The elder Grant looked with favor on a West Point education for his son because it was free and would provide him with a job after graduation.

Before Grant's departure, someone had the bright idea of putting his initials on his trunk with tacks, but when he saw the result - 'H.U.G.', he was appalled and reversed the first two letters and went off to West Point bearing the name Ulysses Hiram Grant. By mistake, however, Congressman Hamer had enrolled him as Ulysses Simpson Grant. Always willing to go along, the youth raised no objection, and that, henceforth, was his name. To his fellow cadets, he was known first as Uncle Sam and then as Sam.

West Point had no appeal for the diffident youngster, and he became even more withdrawn. He did not excel in any subject, although he did his best work in mathematics and was a good horseman. Always homesick, he later confessed that he had frequently prayed that a talked-of plan in Congress to abolish the academy would pass. Some authorities claim that because of his lack of social graces, he also developed a sense of inferiority to the more polished members of his class, especially those from the South, that persisted throughout his life. In his four years at West Point, he never went to a dance, had a date with a girl, or was a guest in a private home.

Grant numbered among his friends and acquaintances fifty cadets who later served as generals in the Civil War. Knowing the strengths and weaknesses of these men, both friend and foe, helped him in battle. But he had no interest in a military career. "The truth is I am more of a farmer than a soldier," he told Otto von Bismarck during a glittering review staged at Potsdam in the touring ax-president's honor. "I take little or no interest in military affairs." Earlier, upon meeting the son of the Duke of Wellington [who defeated Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo], he innocently observed, "They tell me, my Lord, that your father was also a military man."

Following his graduation in 1843, twenty-first in a class of thirty-nine, newly minted Second Lieutenant Grant proudly returned to his home in Ohio in full uniform with a sense of accomplishment. He was crestfallen to find the stableman at the village tavern strutting about with cotton stripes sewed down the sides of his blue pantaloons in obvious imitation of the young officer. From then on, his uniform meant little to him, and eventually he was known for the slovenliness of his dress.

Grant had requested service with the cavalry in view of his skill with horses, but with typical military logic, he was detailed to the Fourth Infantry, at Jefferson Barracks near St. Louis. The young officer developed a friendly relationship with the family of Fred Dent, his West Point roommate, who lived on a nearby plantation called White Haven. The senior Dent, a slaveholder and self-styled "colonel," prided himself on his hospitality. But the main attraction for Grant was eighteen-year old Julia Dent. She was bright, vivacious, and an excellent horsewoman, and the bashful Grant, who scarcely noticed a slight crossing of her eyes, was captivated.

Out driving in a buggy one day, the young couple came to a bridge flooded by a suddenly swollen creek. Julia was reluctant to cross but Grant assured her it was safe. Unconvinced, she grasped his arm, saying, "I'm going to cling to you no matter what happens." After crossing safely, Grant turned to her and asked, "How would you like to cling to me the rest of your life?" Julia accepted the proposal and they embarked on a four-year engagement that included a separation caused by the Mexican War.

"I do not think there ever was a more wicked war than that waged by the United States on Mexico," Grant wrote later. "I thought so at the time, when I was a youngster, only I had not moral courage to resign." Nevertheless, he did creditable service as a regimental quartermaster and participated in most of the war's battles. But he failed to win the distinction gained by Robert E. Lee and others and emerged from the struggle still only a lieutenant. Once the war was over, he returned to Missouri, where he and Julia were married. James Longstreet, future Confederate general and one of Grant's army comrades, was best man. Throughout the years ahead, from poverty to riches and then back to poverty again, the couple remained in love-often holding hands in public, a shy, prosaic pair whose romance was the only passion of their lives.

Grant had hoped for an appointment as a mathematics instructor at West Point but was sent, instead, to a series of dreary garrison posts, finally in Oregon and northern California, where Julia and their growing family could not accompany him. Lonely and depressed, he took to the bottle. The evidence indicates that he was not the heavy drinker of legend. Apparently, he had a weak head and little more than a sniff of the cork would make him drunk. Although Grant had been promoted to captain, in 1854, his commanding officer gave him the choice of resigning from the army or a court-martial because of his drinking. He resigned. It was a squalid end to his military career and left him penniless at the age of thirty-two.

Bitter failure dogged Grant over the next seven years. He tried farming a plot of land near St. Louis given him by Julia's father and, to provide cash, peddled firewood in the streets of the city. Many people later recalled him as a shabby, mud-spattered figure in an old army overcoat and the beginnings of a beard. The Dents despised him and were reluctant to continue supporting the couple's growing brood of children. Old friends from whom he had borrowed money avoided him. One Christmas, he was reduced to pawning his watch to buy presents for his family. Finally, in 1858, Grant acknowledged his failure as a farmer and abjectly accepted a $50-a-month clerkship in his father's leather and hardware shop in Galena, Illinois.

The Civil War gave Grant a new start in life. Upon the outbreak of hostilities, he sought to retrieve his commission but heard nothing from the War Department. Years later, the letter was found tucked away unread in a dusty file. Instead, he was taken on as drillmaster of a regiment of newly mustered Illinois volunteers. Stumpy, badly shaved, and with only a part of a uniform, Colonel Grant did not inspire confidence at first sight, but he hammered the raw farm boys into a semblance of soldiers. Somehow, this nondescript fellow who had never wanted to be an officer and always disliked soldiering was good at it.

Near the end of his life, Grant would open his memoirs with these lines: "Man proposes and God disposes. There are but few important events in the affairs of men brought about by their own choice." Chance certainly played a role in his life because within a month he was recommended to the War Department as one of the four volunteer brigadier generals to which Illinois was entitled. Resolute and dogged rather than brilliant, he showed a reluctance to retreat in the face of adversity-perhaps a throwback to his schoolboy superstition about retracing his steps-that was in vivid contrast to most Union generals.

Grant's response to a request from General Simon Bolivar Buckner for surrender terms at Fort Donelson, which controlled the Cumberland River-"No terms except an unconditional surrender can be accepted. I propose to immediately move upon your works"-captured the imagination of the dispirited North at a time when it desperately needed heroes. "U.S." now stood for "unconditional surrender." Newspapers reported the coolness with which he had prepared to attack, cigar clenched between his teeth, and admirers sent him some 10,000 boxes of cigars. Some he gave away; the rest he smoked at a rate of twenty a day-laying the groundwork for the throat cancer that eventually caused his death.

Grant's capture of Vicksburg, the last rebel bastion on the Mississippi, cut the Confederacy in two. Following the fall of Chattanooga, which opened the way for an invasion of Georgia, Lincoln called him to Washington in March 1864 to take command of all Union troops. Possessing an overwhelming preponderance in men and armaments, Grant ground down the Confederates in a relentless war of attrition that produced such heavy casualties that the Northern press branded him "Grant the Butcher." But all was forgotten when General Lee surrendered at Appomattox on April 9, 1865. In victory, Grant was magnanimous and offered lenient terms that treated the defeated with dignity. It was his finest hour.

It was an incredible rise. Only a few years before, Grant had been all but down-and-out. Now he was engulfed by a tide of adulation. Congress named him the first full general since George Washington. Wealthy and powerful men sought his friendship and opened their bankrolls to him. The grateful citizenry of Galena, who had not long before taunted him as "Useless Grant," gave him a new home; a group of New Yorkers presented him with a check for $105,000; Philadelphia provided a.lavishly furnished mansion; and "fifty solid men of Boston" bought him a $75,000 library-a real extravagance because he rarely read anything. Horses, carriages, and other expensive gifts poured in. Having known poverty, Grant and his wife partook of the good life with unrestrained pleasure. "Since Richmond's capitulation the stern soldier has spent his days and eked his nights in conjugating the transitive verb to receive," grumbled the New York Tribune.

The taciturn Grant had little to say in response to the cheers that greeted him everywhere, being "entirely unaccustomed to public speaking and without the desire to cultivate the power." Once, when a crowd clamored for a speech and the general was his usual tongue-tied self, his son, seven-year-old Jesse Grant, leaped into the breach by reciting "The Boy Stood on the Burning Deck."

Such popularity inevitably carried Grant into politics. Originally, he brushed off talk of the presidency with the comment, "I should like to be mayor of Galena long enough to build a new sidewalk from my house to the depot." Others purported to see through these pleasantries. Gideon Welles, the crusty secretary of the navy and no admirer of Grant's, confided in his diary that he had found the general "very ambitious, has low cunning, and is unreliable."

Much against his will, Grant was drawn into the vicious political struggle between Lincoln's successor, Andrew Johnson, and Congress over the reintegration of the former Confederate states into the Union. No one quite knew where Grant, the army's ranking officer, stood as this witch's brew boiled over-probably not even Grant himself. At first, he seemed to side with Johnson, and then, convinced the president's policies were resulting in the sacrifice of all for which so many had died, he supported the Radicals. Johnson later claimed he had been betrayed by Grant's shiftiness. The career officer's traditional view that Congress is the boss in the American system may have been the determining factor in Grant's decision.

Orders come from the executive, but Congress confirms or rejects promotions, passes appropriations bills, and declares war. Everything in his background and experience told Grant that Congress must be the final authority. For him, the struggle between Johnson and the Radicals provided an object lesson in what can happen when a president and Congress are at odds, and it governed his view of the role of the president when he got to the White House. It also presents an enduring illustration of the riskiness of putting a professional soldier in the presidency-paradoxically, not because he will try to assume too much authority, but because he may hesitate to use the authority he has.

In May 1868, as the Senate sat in solemn judgment on President Johnson, the Republicans were having their convention in Chicago to nominate their presidential candidate. The Senate acquitted Johnson of "high crimes and misdemeanors" in a parliamentary cliff-hanger, while on the first roll call, the Republicans embraced U. S. Grant-"the strong, silent man from Appomattox"-as their nominee. Compared with the other possibilities, he seemed cloaked in innocence. More in keeping with the temper of the times was the vice-presidential choice: Schuyler "Smiler" Colfax, a sticky-fingered Indiana congressman and Speaker of the House who, it was said, brought new meaning to the word vice.

Once Grant had accepted the nomination with a brief speech which was unmemorable except for the final words-"Let us have peace"-he retired to his gift house in Galena and said nothing, maintaining the image of the simple soldier awaiting the call of duty. Now the politicians and the spoilsmen swung into action. Tycoons A. T. Stewart , Collis Huntington, William B. Astor, Commodore Vanderbilt, and William B. Dodge, among others, were lobbied for campaign contributions. The discredited Andrew Johnson tried to win the Democratic nomination, but New York governor Horatio Seymour was chosen instead. Seymour, who had opposed the draft during the war, and his party were tagged as supporters of secession and treason. With the backing of black voters in the South, Grant carried all but eight states. Andrew Johnson angrily refused to attend his inauguration.

At forty-six, Grant was the youngest man yet to become president. Vigorous and at the height of his popularity, he took the oath as the nation's eighteenth president on March 4, 1869, amid hope that his would be an administration of conciliation and reform. As a national hero, he owed the politicians nothing. Thus, it was reasoned, he would have a free hand to surround himself with able men rather than spoilsmen and to establish policies in the spirit of Appomattox. Like many others, the youthful Henry Adams expected great things from the new president. "Grant represented order. He was a great soldier, and the soldier always represented order," he wrote. "A general who had organized and commanded half a million or a million men in the field must know how to administer."

The announcement of Grant's cabinet brought instant disillusionment. Without qualifications for his office, the new president's only hope for success lay in the wisdom and integrity of his advisers. Instead, most of the places went to friends from Galena, Army cronies, and wealthy men who had financed his campaign or given him lavish gifts. Their names "had the singular effect of making the hearer ashamed, not so much of Grant, as of himself," for hoping the new administration would do better, said Adams. With the exception of a few men of ability-and Grant soon broke with them-his choice of advisers seemed based mostly on the desire to have no one about who would overshadow him.

Over the next eight years, cabinet officers came and went with unsettling rapidity-and the abler they were the faster they went. With the exception of Hamilton Fish, a Knickerbocker aristocrat who became secretary of state and stayed the course, Grant was largely surrounded by an array of nonentities and downright crooks. Few had any experience in government or politics, nor were they known for talent or intellect. Although a leader of men, Grant was not a good judge of them. Starved for affection in boyhood and the victim of thirty years of failure, he looked hungrily for friendship wherever he could find it. He was an easy mark for men who flattered him, told him what he wanted to hear, and filled his mind with their own pet schemes.

Like most Americans, the president was dazzled by the new "captains of industry," the promoters and go-getters. A. T. Stewart was named secretary of the treasury but the appointment had to be withdrawn because of rampant conflict of interest. Adolf E. Borie, the head of the fund drive for Grant's Philadelphia house, was appointed secretary of the navy. Borie found the job claimed more of his time than it warranted and resigned after only three months. General John Rawlins, Grant's former chief of staff, became secretary of war. Rawlins died before the year was out, and it was discovered he had accepted $28,000 in bonds from a lobbyist who represented a Cuban revolutionary junta that was seeking U.S. support against Spain.

Grant's legislative team was also a bit questionable. Senator Roscoe Conkling, New York's flamboyant Republican boss-who favored white flannel trousers, florid vests, and a "turkey-gobbler strut"-became the administration's spokesman in the Senate. Michigan's facile Senator Zachary Chandler managed its backroom operations. They were assisted by Senator Oliver Morton of Indiana, a masterful practitioner of the politics of spoils. Simon Cameron, the Pennsylvania boss who had been dropped from Lincoln's wartime cabinet on grounds that he was a crook, was one of Grant's favorite companions. Cross-eyed Benjamin Butler, whose incompetence and scrupulous dishonesty during the war had aroused Grant's ire, was now forgiven his trespasses and welcomed into the inner circle.

Regarding the White House as his rightful prerogative, Grant, who as a candidate had murmured support of civil service reform, lost no time in doling out jobs to family members. Fred Dent, his brother-in-law, became the chief White House usher. His father-in-law, "Colonel" Dent, wandered around the executive mansion drinking juleps and sounding off about the damn Yankees. His father Jesse Grant and the president's brother Orvil came to town to sniff out deals. A cousin, Silas A. Hudson, an Oregon cattle trader, was made minister to Guatemala, and the Reverend M. J. Cramer, a brother-in-law, became consul in Leipzig. Julia's brother-in-law, James F. Casey, was named to the lucrative post of collector of customs in New Orleans. In all, some forty relatives of either the president or first lady were scattered about the government or earned large fees from influence peddling. "No president was ever 'got in the family way' so soon after the inauguration," observed John Bigelow, a New York newspaper editor. Grant's mother was his only relative who never set foot in the White House.

Grant was neither hardworking nor conscientious. He "does not intend to labor like a drudge ... does not propose to study public affairs, has no taste for books or intellectual employment," observed Gideon Welles. Faced with an aggressive Congress and believing in the theory that it best expressed the will of the people, Grant was content to let the legislature determine the policies that he was to administer.

Usually, Grant began his working day at 10 A.M. and ended it at 3 P.M. He would then visit the presidential stables where he would relax in the company of his horses. He was the first president to take long vacations-usually at the expense of rich friends. Julia, now at the top of the social heap after so many lean years, entertained lavishly in the ostentatious style of those she and her husband admired. Soon, the Grants thought nothing of sitting down with thirty-six guests for a dinner of twenty-five dishes and a different wine with every third course.

Phlegmatic at best and haunted by years of poverty and humiliation before the war, Grant froze up in the presence of men of talent, learning, and culture. These men, awed in turn by his reputation and position, found it almost impossible to break down the barrier, and an uncomfortable standoff usually resulted. On one occasion, Mark Twain, then still largely unknown, was introduced to Grant. Grant maintained his usual taciturnity after they shook hands, and Twain couldn't think of a word to say. At last the writer stammered, "General, I'm embarrassed. Are you?"

Grant's presidency was not a total loss. In some ways, he accomplished a good deal enough for him, at least, to look back on his record in the White House with pride. The economic wreckage of the war was largely cleared away. Inflation was brought under control and a stable currency created. A major financial panic was overcome, and the West was opened to settlement by the completion of the transcontinental railroad. The South was reintegrated into the Union-although at the cost of the fundamental rights of the ex-slaves. And under the steady hand of Hamilton Fish, all the outstanding claims against Britain resulting from the depredations of the Alabama and other British-built Confederate commerce raiders were liquidated with the award of $15.5 million to the United States.

Yet these successes are overshadowed by the corruption that besmirched Grant's administration. While most of the scandals that gave his regime its notoriety were not exposed until he was well into his second term, scandal was an early caller at the White House and made itself comfortably at home. Only a few months into his term, Grant found himself, as a result of his ethical obtuseness, assisting Jay Gould and Jim Fisk, an unsavory pair of financial buccaneers, in a conspiracy to corner the gold market and scoop in millions for themselves.

To make certain that the government would not foil their scheme by selling gold from the Treasury reserves if things got tight, the pair employed another of Grant's ubiquitous brothers-in-law, a shady Wall Street operator named Abel R. Corbin, to exert his influence upon the president. In exchange for a $25,000 fee and a promised share of the loot, Corbin tried to persuade Grant that higher gold prices would be good for American farm exports. Gould and Fisk also arranged to be seen entertaining the president, spurring speculation that not only Grant but Julia and some White House aides were in on the deal. Had Grant any sense of the propriety of his office, he would never have allowed himself to be seen with such characters.

Puffing on his usual Havana-and probably mystified by all this talk about the price of gold-Grant said nothing. But a few days later, he ordered the Treasury not to follow its usual practice of selling gold to stabilize the price. Word apparently leaked out-possibly from General Daniel Butterfield, another presidential crony who was in charge of the subtreasury in New York and was in on the scheme-and Gould and Fisk bought gold with a will. The price was driven up from $135 an ounce until it reached $163.50 on September 24, 1869, a date known in financial annals as Black Friday. Panic raged on Wall Street, and the stability of the nation's commerce was threatened. Appalled and tardily realizing that he had been duped, Grant ordered the Treasury to sell $4 million in federal gold reserves, which sent the price plummeting back down to $133 in only fifteen minutes.

Gould and Fisk went off to other financial adventures, but the affair hung around Grant's neck like a golden albatross. A House investigating committee looked into it, but the Republican majority adroitly fended off the question of presidential involvement and blocked Democratic demands for testimony from the president and his wife. Few believed that Grant was guilty of overt wrongdoing, but his unthinking association with Gould and Fisk raised questions about his judgment. "Everyone dreaded to press [the] inquiry," commented Henry Adams, because they "feared finding too much."

Also in 1869, Grant was deeply involved in an effort to annex what was then called Santo Domingo. The project was originally cooked up by a pair of Yankee fortune hunters and the bankrupt Caribbean nation's president with the hope of reaping a rich monetary harvest from the takeover. Powerful financial and commercial interests were also involved, along with such ethically challenged figures as John Rawlins, Ben Butler, and Grant's personal secretary, Colonel Orville E. Babcock. Grant, who desired a naval base at Samana Bay at the eastern end of the country, was an enthusiastic supporter of the proposal. Moreover, he had a visionary plan both to end racial tensions in the United States and do justice to the ex-slaves by resettling them on the island where several all-black states could be established.

To the end of his days, Grant thought this dubious scheme one of the best ideas he had ever had. Nevertheless, he went about it in such an ineffective way as to doom any chance for success. Rather than have Secretary of State Fish negotiate a treaty of annexation, Grant dispatched Babcock, his secretary, to Santo Domingo to work things out. Babcock returned to Washington with a treaty in his pocket, which was duly submitted to the Senate for ratification. Grant, however, had antagonized Senator Charles Sumner, the imperious chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee-for one thing Grant had absentmindedly referred to him as chairman of the Judiciary Committee-and the agreement was voted down. After that, Grant never passed the Massachusetts senator's home without shaking his fist."

The gold conspiracy and the Santo Domingo affair were of little importance in themselves, but they revealed just how easily Grant could be manipulated by dubious characters. Although the full measure of the corruption that honeycombed his administration was unknown as his first term ended, enough was suspected to outrage reformers and liberals. "It looks as though the Republican party is going to the dogs," said former senator James W. Grimes of Iowa. "It has become corrupt and I believe that it is today the [most] corrupt and debauched political party that ever existed."

When the regular Republicans nominated Grant for a second term in 1872, the reformers, unable to stomach him for another four years, broke ranks and chose Horace Greeley, the editor of the New York Tribune, as the candidate of the Liberal Republican party. Despite Greeley's antislavery record, the Democrats also nominated him with the forlorn hope of avoiding four more years of Grant. A Greeley victory was thought unlikely, but about six weeks before the election, the nation was rocked by the Credit Mobilier scandal, which should have improved his chances.

The Credit Mobilier was used by the promoters of the Union Pacific Railroad to skim off huge profits from the federal funds allocated for construction. To protect themselves from the possibility of a congressional inquiry, they doled out shares in the company that paid dividends of 350 percent to several prominent members of Congress, including "Smiler" Colfax, then House Speaker; James A. Garfield, his successor as Speaker and later president, and numerous others. Grant was not involved in the scandal, which had occurred mostly before his presidency, but reformers saw it as one more sign of the easy morality prevailing in Washington. Many people agreed with a cabinet officer-possibly Hamilton Fish-who told Henry Adams, "You can't reason with a Congressman! A Congressman is a hog! You must take a stick and hit him on the snout."

Greeley tried to make the most of the scandal, and Colfax was dropped from the Republican ticket, but most voters discounted the story as one concocted for campaign purposes. With the assistance of campaign funds from the usual assortment of robber barons, and the votes of the freedmen and former soldiers, Grant buried Greeley in a landslide and looked upon the election as a personal vindication. But a headline in the New York Sun told a different story: "Four Years More of Fraud and Corruption."

As if to reinforce the charges of the reformers, as soon as the election was over, Grant was inundated by a rising landfill of allegations of wrongdoing. Almost every department of the government was found to be undermined by corruption. Grant's reaction, like that of chief executives before and since, was to blindly defend his appointees and claim the charges against them were really aimed at him and obviously politically inspired.

Navy Secretary George M. Robeson amassed a fortune of $320,000 by shaking down contractors doing business with his department. Funds for refitting ships went into his pocket, and it was hardly safe to send a vessel to sea in Robeson's day. Columbus Delano, the secretary of the interior, solicited bribes to enter fraudulent land grants in the records. Treasury Secretary William A. Richardson connived with a political sharper linked to Ben Butler to turn the collection of delinquent taxes into a racket. Mrs. Grant's brother-in-law, James F. Casey, looted the New Orleans Customs House and was reappointed to the job by the president despite a House report that found him totally corrupt.

James Watson Webb, the U.S. minister to Brazil, extorted $100,000 from the Brazilian government for a false claim and pocketed it. General T. B. Van Buren shook down American concessionaires at an international fair in Vienna. Robert C. Schenck, the American minister in Great Britain, touted shares in a fraudulent Utah silver mine that hoodwinked British investors. He wrapped himself in diplomatic immunity to escape arrest. Attorney General George H. Williams, whose qualifications for his job were questionable, used government money to supply himself with an expensive carriage and liveried servants. Fred Dent listened at the keyhole to cabinet meetings and peddled the information so gained. "What a nasty crew to have about one!" raged Fish. "Drunken, stupid, lying, venal, brainless."

Worse was still to come. The Democrats won the congressional elections for the first time since the Civil War in 1874 and launched a fresh series of investigations with a whoop and a holler. William W. Belknap, the secretary of war, was found to have raked in as much as $100,000 a year by selling licenses to disburse supplies, usually of shoddy quality, to the Indians herded together on government reservations. In short, both the government and the luckless Indians were robbed. The president's brother Orvil was found to have shared in the plunder. Grant tried to block attempts to impeach Belknap by accepting his resignation "with great regret" in a tearful scene in the White House. Did this mean he regretted Belknap's dishonesty? Or the loss of a crony?

The exposure of the "Whiskey Ring" finally brought the dirty linen into the White House. For years, distillers in the Middle West had, with the connivance of federal agents, been robbing the Treasury of millions of dollars in unpaid liquor taxes. In St. Louis alone, the take was $1.2 million a year. In 1874, Grant himself was lavishly entertained there by the Ring's chief for ten days and accepted the gift of a matched team of horses and expensive harness. Despite these favors the president righteously proclaimed, "Let no guilty man escape," when an inquiry into the Ring's activities began. But he quickly changed his tune upon learning that his favorite, the ineffable Colonel Babcock, was deeply involved.

Only with some difficulty was Grant restrained from racing halfway across the country to testify in his aide's behalf. Instead, he did everything he could to ensure that Babcock would escape conviction. Federal attorneys were instructed not to follow the usual practice of offering immunity to small fry to get at the main offenders, and Grant made a sworn deposition used at Babcock's trial that testified fulsomely to the defendant's integrity. Despite the overwhelming weight of the evidence, Grant's deposition and his obvious eagerness for the acquittal of his aide had great influence with the jury. Babcock was the only one of the 110 persons charged in the whiskey frauds to be found innocent.

Grant's greatest failure, however, was in protecting the rights of the former slaves, who had voted for him in overwhelming numbers. Throughout the South, white supremacists systematically organized campaigns of intimidation aimed at black voters. Legal efforts to enforce civil rights legislation in the courts also failed. In some cases, black political rallies were disrupted and people were killed. In September 1875, the Republican governor of Mississippi appealed to Washington for federal troops to restore order, but Grant refused. Although angered by the murders, he was reluctant to send troops out of fear of the greater bloodshed of a race war. As a result, the white counterrevolution succeeded-ending black hopes and aspirations in the South for a century.

Finally, it was all over, but Grant did not go quietly. Having gotten used to the White House and being blind to his ineptitude, he maneuvered for a draft in 1876 that would challenge the hallowed no-third term tradition. But the House administered a stinging rebuke to the president by passing an anti-third-term resolution by an overwhelmingly bipartisan vote of 233 to 18. And so the Grant years drew to a close with, fittingly enough, the first stolen presidential election in American history. And why not? Everything else had been stolen.

The rest of the story can be quickly told. On their own for the first time since 1861, the restless Grants embarked on a two-and-a-half-year world tour. It carried them on an aimless path across Europe, the Middle East, and the Far East, in which they were feted like royalty. Today, it is remembered only for the former president's offhand comment to a young Englishwoman that "Venice would be a fine city if only it were drained."

Newspaper reports of Grant's triumphant tour helped him regain some of his lost luster and, supported by the spoilsmen who were savoring the prospect of "four more years of good stealing," he tried in 1880 to capture the Republican presidential nomination. Although he ran ahead on the first thirty-five ballots, the deadlocked convention eventually stampeded to the dark-horse candidacy of James Garfield, who despite his well-publicized ties to the Credit Mobilier, won the presidency. In a turnabout, Garfield espoused the cause of reform- but did more for civil service by being fatally shot by a dissatisfied spoilsman than by anything he could have done alive.

Grant's last years were a mixture of tragedy and triumph. There was one more swindle, in which he was the chief victim. He had invested all his savings in the Wall Street investment firm of Grant & Ward in which one of his sons was a partner, but its chief was a crook. The firm went bankrupt in 1884, and Grant found himself broke again at the age of sixty-two. Going through his pockets, he found $80; Julia had $130 in the house-all that was left of their fortune. He also learned that he was suffering from throat cancer. Facing death and the prospect of leaving his wife penniless, Grant began work on his memoirs. Mark Twain, who agreed to publish the book, gave him a contract in which he was to receive an unheard-of 75 percent of all domestic sales.

With the same obstinacy with which he had pounded Lee's army two decades before, Grant raced with death to finish his book. The first part of the manuscript was dictated to a secretary, but as the cancer advanced, the pain became too great. He wrote out the remainder, line by line, page by page, in longhand while sustained by ever-larger doses of painkilling cocaine. The present faded and dissolved and he again saw the lines of muddied blue troops rallying on the bluffs of Shiloh ... the night ripped apart by shells and rockets as Union gunboats sped past Vicksburg ... the lines at Lookout Mountain wavering, reforming, and continuing their climb into the clouds ... And finally, he saw Lee, correct and imperturbable in his best uniform, in the parlor of the McLean House at Appomattox.

From afar, the nation watched with fascination as Ulysses Grant fought his last battle, and its heart went out to him. He died on July 23, 1885, about a week after putting the finishing touches on the manuscript. Through his courage and steadfastness, he had not only won a final victory, but in doing so, had won back the respect and admiration of the American people.

Source: Nathan Miller, Star-Spangled Men: America's Ten Worst Presidents (New York: Scribner, 2008), 111-27.