Presidant Grant

President Grant was born in April 27th 1822 In Point Pleasant, Ohio. He was the 18th president of the United States and was in office from 1869-1877. Proir to him being in office he was the general of the Nothern army in the civil war. President Grant was determined to run the government just as he ran his army. Also, he brought many of the people he was with in the army back into office with him to help run the country. He was a republican president and gave people hope for an end to the turmoil. Grant was veiwed as one of the greater presidents along with Washington and Lincon.

President Grant had a very wide range of acheievements through out his time in office such as help fixing the most serious fiscal problems the nation had ever faced, he pursued policies that stopped inflation, raised the nations credit, and reduced taxes and the national debt by over $300 million and $435 million respectively. President Grant wanted peace throughout the counrty and was willing to do anything for it. He signed a reform that would eventually let the natives have some citizenship in the United States. However important these issues may seem, the traditional evaluation of Grant as president nevertheless pays far less attention to them than to the issue of corruption. Unlike other cases of presidents charged with allowing corruption, however, the corruption that reformers condemned during Grant's two terms, for the most part, was merely the practice of making appointments through the spoils system. As Benedict points out, scholars have tended to accept the judgment of the anti-Grant reformers that the patronage system was inherently corrupt, but that is a very questionable conclusion, and reformers had concealed, political motives for going through with the reforms.

The most famous of all President Grants scandels which most people were shocked by was The Credit Mobilier. This scandel was the most conspicuous of Grant’s scandals, was in fact only uncovered scandel by the administration. The corrupt activity had occurred in 1867-1868, before Grant even became president. Nowhere else in the American political tradition is a president held accountable for corruption going all the way back to a previous administration. The reformers also charged such figures as cabinet members George H. Williams and George M. Robeson with corruption, and although the record showed the baselessness of such charges, historians evidently see this minor point as negligible. No major study of the Grant presidency makes the connection between the untrustworthiness and utter damage of the reformers' accusations and Grant's adverse behavior toward such reformers as Secretary of the Treasury Benjamin Bristow, who made serious allegations concerning the president's private secretary, Orville Babcock, without sufficient evidence.

In 1873 Grant is re- elected president and begins his second term in office. In 1874 grant passes a bill to increase the amount of legal tender currency. Grant's strong stand against inflation leads to a bill on June 20, 1874 limiting the amount of legal tender currency and providing for its retirement. In 1985 a group of distort government people and bussiness men from around the country is exposed by the Saint Louis Democrat. An investigation ordered by Secretary of the Treasury Benjamin H. Bristow