Ulysses S. Grant Suite

Grant was the 18th President of the United States and served two terms from March 4, 1869, to March 3, 1877. He was chosen as the Republican presidential candidate at the Republican National Convention in Chicago, Illinois, on May 20, 1868, with no real opposition. In his letter of acceptance to the party, Grant concluded with “Let us have peace,” which became the Republican campaign slogan. In the general election that year, he won against former New York Governor Horatio Seymour with a slim majority of 3,012,833 out of a total of 5,716,082 votes cast, but by a commanding 214 Electoral College votes to 80. When he entered the White House he was politically inexperienced and, at age 46, the youngest man yet elected president. He easily won reelection by a wide margin in 1872 against Horace Greeley.

Grant’s presidency—particularly his second term—was plagued with scandals, such as the Black Friday gold-speculation financial crisis in September 1869, the Sanborn Incident at the Treasury, and problems with U.S. Attorney Cyrus I. Scofield. The most famous scandal was the Whiskey Ring of 1875, exposed by Secretary of the Treasury Benjamin H. Bristow, in which over $3 million in taxes were defrauded from the federal government with the aid of high government officials. Orville E. Babcock, the private secretary to the President, was indicted as a member of the ring and escaped conviction only because of a presidential pardon. When it became clear that Babcock was involved in the scandal, Grant regretted his earlier statement, “Let no guilty man escape.” After the Whiskey Ring, Grant’s Secretary of War, William W. Belknap, was involved in an investigation that revealed that he had taken bribes in exchange for the sale of Native American trading posts. Grant foolishly accepted the resignation of Belknap; when Belknap was impeached by Congress for his actions, he escaped conviction since he was no longer a government official.