THE REMINISCENCES OF CARL SCHURZ
of stress, with pathetic tenderness appealing to the wayward children of the nation, now the victorious soldier speaking in the name of the restored national authority. General Grant's inaugural address, evidently his own work, was somewhat crude in style, but breathed a rugged honesty of purpose. With particular rigor it emphasized our obligations to the national creditor—in striking contrast to Mr. Johnson's last annual message, which had stopped little short of advising downright repudiation. On the whole, General Grant's accession to the presidency was welcomed by almost everybody with a sense of relief. It put an end to the unseemly, not to say scandalous, brawl between the executive and the legislative branches of the National Government, which at times came near threatening the peace of the country. It was justly expected to restore the Government to its proper dignity and to furnish, if not a brilliant, at least a highly decent and efficient business administration. As General Grant had really not owed his nomination to any set of politicians, nor even, strictly speaking, to his identification with a political party, he enjoyed an independence of position which gave him peculiarly favorable possibilities for emancipating the public service from the grasp of the spoils politician, and the friends of civil service reform looked up to him with great hope.
His personal popularity was then at its meridian. The great services he had rendered to the country as a soldier received unstinted appreciation. With regard to him the Republic was certainly not ungrateful. Citizens of every rank or condition vied with one another in manifesting their sense of thankful obligation to him by showering upon him presents as well as praise. Everybody wished him well—even his political opponents, who remembered the generosity of his treatment of the defeated enemy, and who were sympathetically
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