ared his
purpose to conduct it on business principles. He attacked effectively a
system long in vogue known as "straw-bids" for mail-carrying contracts.
He introduced the railway post-office system, that has been of so much
use in facilitating promptness of transmitting correspondence. But he
also insisted on conducting his office with respect of its personnel as
a business man would, that is, by making appointments and promotions for
merit rather than for political influence. This was intolerable to the
spoilsmen in politics; and within two years he was summarily dismissed
in a manner as graceless and cruel as any President, no matter how
unfortunately bred, was ever guilty of. Jewell was succeeded by James N.
Tyner, an entirely complaisant official. In 1875 Congress neglected to
make any appropriation for the civil service reform commission, and its
work was suspended.

During this time affairs in the Southern States were, as a rule, growing
worse and worse. The unreasonable arrogance and oppressive extravagance
of the freedmen where they were in control, under the leadership of
reckless carpet-baggers, and still more reckless and malicious white
natives, had produced a revulsion in the minds of all at the North who
regarded justice, honor, and honesty as essentials of good government.
There were exceptions, like oases in the desert of ignorance and vice.
The administration of Governor Chamberlain in South Carolina was an
instance of an earnest and partially successful endeavor to educe good
government from desperate conditions. The colored race abused its
privilege of the ballot with suicidal persistency. The experiment of
maintaining bad State governments by the presence and activity of
federal troops did not tend to social pacification. Reconstruction in
its earlier fruits was an obvious failure; and again, if the apparent
paradox can be understood, lawless violence began asserting itself as
the only hopeful means of preserving property, civil rights, and
civilization itself.

During the second term the report was persistently circulated that Grant
and those who followed his star were scheming for another term, in order
to give him in civil office, as in military rank, a distinction higher
than Washington or any American had obtained. The proposal shocked the
public sense of propriety; but its treatment by those who alone could
repudiate it became ominous. The Republican State Convention of 1875 in
Pennsylvania b