strong supporter of the Northern cause during the
War of Secession, and by his letters to the London _Daily News_ did
something to enlighten English readers. When the problems of
reconstruction emerged after the war, he suggested lines of action
more moderate than those followed by the Republican leaders, and
during many subsequent years denounced the "carpet-baggers," and
advocated the policy of restoring self-government to the Southern
States and withdrawing Federal troops. Incensed at the corruption of
some of the men who surrounded President Grant during his first
term, he opposed Grant's re-election, as did nearly all the
reformers of those days. By this time he had begun to attack the
"spoils system," and to demand a reform of the civil service, and he
had also become engaged in that campaign against the Tammany
organisation in New York City which he maintained with unabated energy
till the end of his editorial career.[58] In 1884 he led the
opposition to the candidacy of Mr. Blaine for President, and it
was mainly the persistency with which the _Evening Post_ set forth
the accusations brought against that statesman that secured his defeat
in New York State, and therewith his defeat in the election. It
was on this occasion that the nickname of Mugwump[59] was first
applied to Mr. Godkin by the ablest of his antagonists in the press,
Mr. Dana of the _New York Sun_, a title before long extended to the
Independents whom the _Post_ led, and who constituted, during the
next ten or twelve years, a section of opinion important, if not
by its numbers, yet by the intellectual and moral weight of the men
who composed it. When currency questions became prominent, Mr.
Godkin was a strong opponent of bimetallism and of "silverism" in
all its forms, and a not less strenuous opponent of all socialistic
theories and movements. It need hardly be added that he had always
been an upholder of the principles of Free Trade. Like a sound
Cobdenite, he was an advocate of peace, and disliked territorial
extension. He opposed President Grant's scheme for the acquisition
of San Domingo, as he afterwards opposed the annexation of Hawaii.
His close study of Irish history, and his old faith in the principle
of nationality, had made him a strenuous advocate of Home Rule for
Ireland. But no one was farther than he from sharing the feelings of
the American Irish towards England. He condemned the threats
addressed in 1895 to Great Britain over the