1874 and subsequent drive for what became the Resumption Act of 1875 shocked many who looked to Congress to cure the nation's economic ills, and the panic of 1873 came to an abrupt end when the act went into effect in 1879. The successful arbitration of the Alabama and Virginus disputes mark not only foreign policy victories for the United States, but a significant precursor to the future course of international affairs. The establishment of the principle of the international arbitration through the Treaty of Washington, would later be embodied in the Hague Tribunal, the League of Nations, the World Court, and the United Nations. Grant's desire for peace was evident to me from the beginning of my research, but I did not realize how far-reaching it was until I noted the steadiness and rectitude he displayed throughout the presidential electoral crisis of 1876-77, which could have become a disaster. Also remarkable to me was Grant's "Quaker" Indian Peace Policy: on the eve of what could have become the complete genocide of the American Indian, Grant acted decisively to begin two decades of reform that for the first time promoted the welfare of Indians as individuals and broke ground for their eventual citizenship. 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 this (patronage) system was inherently corrupt, but that is a very questionable conclusion, and reformers had ulterior, political motives for making the charge. The matter of whether patronage is necessarily synonymous with corrupti...
