Was President Grant a Naive Victim?

By Philip Leigh · Originally published November 2017 · p. 17

Although most modern biographies attribute the Grant Administration’s reputation for corruption to venal advisors who took advantage of the President’s innocent naivety, they tend to ignore early examples of Grant’s own dubious conduct that set low ethical standards for his Administration to follow. One incident was the sale of his “I” Street residence in Washington shortly before he moved into the White House on his March 4, 1869, inauguration day. He had purchased the four-story structure only three years earlier for $30,000 with part of a $100,000 purse raised on subscription for him by wealthy New Yorkers arranged by former Gen. Daniel Butterfield. His wife, however, was angry about the sale because she anticipated the home would be their permanent residence after Grant’s presidency ended. She also seemed to be annoyed at the $40,000 sales price. In response, at Grant’s urging, Butterfield and Treasury Secretary designee Alexander Stewart led a subscription to buy the furnished house for Gen. William T. Sherman at a price of $65,000. Once the money was raised, Grant repudiated his written agreement with the first buyer, pocketed the $35,000 profit, and soon appointed Butterfield as head of the vital New York City sub-Treasury office where he would soon become involved in the Grant Administration’s first major scandal. Although Grant returned his $1,000 deposit, the first buyer of the home felt cheated and threatened to embarrass the President with a breach of contract suit during Grant’s second election campaign in 1872. Grant set a second bad example by taking a genteel form of bribery when he accepted a vacation home as a gift only a few months after becoming President. During his first six months in office, he spent at least two months on vacation. One of his favorite spots was the seaside village of Long Branch, N.J., where seven donors bought him a $35,000 “cottage” with twenty-eight rooms. One donor owned a Philadelphia newspaper; another owned the Pullman Company, which manufactured railroad cars. Grant later appointed a third donor, Thomas Murphy, to the notoriously lucrative and corrupt post of New York’s Customs Collector. Even when he was in his White House office, Grant worked only an estimated four hours daily. He was on vacation when the administration’s first big scandal was hatched and on another vacation when it climaxed. In sum, the notorious corruption during Grant’s presidency appears to be foreshadowed early in his administration by the President’s own dubious conduct, which seems to underscore what everyone learned as a child, “Followers are guided by what their leaders do, not what they say.” Sources: • Joseph Rose, Grant Under Fire • Ron White, American Ulysses • William McFeely, Grant • William Hesseltine, Grant the Politician Philip Leigh contributed twenty-four articles to The New

York Times Disunion blog, which commemorated the Civil War Sesquicentennial. Westholme Publishing has released four of his Civil War books, which are distributed through the University of Chicago Press. A fifth, Southern Reconstruction, will be released in May 2017.

Southern Reconstruction (2017) The Confederacy at Flood Tide (2016) Lee’s Lost Dispatch and Other Civil War Controversies (2015) Trading With the Enemy (2014) Co. Aytch: Illustrated and Annotated (2013) Phil has lectured a various Civil War forums, including the 23rd Annual Sarasota Conference of the Civil War Education Association in 2015 and assorted Civil War Roundtables. He also ghostwrites biographies and memoirs for wealthy senior citizens for a fee. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from Florida Institute of Technology and an MBA from Northwestern University.