throughout the government. A large portion
of the Republican party, realizing his unfitness for the office, opposed
his renomination, and when they saw his nomination was inevitable, broke
away and named a ticket of their own, but Grant's victory was a sweeping
one.

With this stamp of public approval, the boodlers became bolder and great
scandals followed, involving many members of Congress and even some
members of the cabinet, but not the President himself, of whose personal
honesty there was never any doubt, and in 1873, came the worst panic the
country had ever experienced. A political reaction followed, and in 1874
the Democrats carried the country, gaining the House of Representatives
by a majority of nearly a hundred.

Following his retirement from office in 1877, Grant made a tour of the
world, returning in 1879, to be again a candidate for the presidency,
and coming very near to getting the nomination. It was characteristic of
the man's egotism that, even yet, he did not realize his unfitness for
the office, but thought himself great enough to disregard the precedent
which Washington had established. He lived five years longer, the last
years of his life rendered miserable by cancer of the throat, which
finally killed him.

In the summer of 1876, the Republicans nominated Rutherford B. Hayes,
at that time Governor of Ohio, as their candidate for President--a
nomination which was a surprise to the country, which had confidently
expected that of James G. Blaine. Hayes was by no means a national
figure, although he had served in the Union army, had been in Congress,
and, as has been said, was governor of Ohio at the time of his
nomination. Nor was he a man of more than very ordinary ability,
upright, honest, and mediocre. The Democratic candidate was Samuel J.
Tilden, a political star of the first magnitude, and the contest which
followed was unprecedented in American history.

Tilden received a popular majority of half a million votes, and 184
electoral votes, out of the 185 necessary to elect, without counting the
votes from Florida, South Carolina and Louisiana, all of which he had
carried on the face of the returns. The Republicans disputed the vote in
these states, however, and by the inexorable use of party machinery and
carpet-bag government, declared Hayes elected. For a time, so manifest
was the partisan bias of this decision, the country seemed on the verge
of another Civil War, but Tilden led in wis