Because I believed the sacredness of contracts, the stability of wealth, the success of business enterprise, and the prosperity of the whole country depended on the election of Grant for President. If the reader wants to get at the selfish motive, as all readers do, I shall be perfectly candid with him in that respect also. Of course I knew that Wall Street business would boom in the wake of this general prosperity. That was the selfish motive, from which no man is free. Of course, I expected to share in Wall Street’s consequent prosperity. I did not want office, as several of the highest were offered me which I respectfully declined; and no office in the gift of the people would have compensated me financially; and moreover, my highest ambition has been satisfied in my own line of business. I went to work then in the interest of Grant for the second term. I employed numerous canvassers at my own expense, to find out the minds of the representative business men on the subject, and to talk the matter up with those interested in Republican success. These men reported to me daily, and in a short time I had sounded the minds of that part of the business community who had the greatest stake in the country, and whose influence is always most felt when any important achievement is to be compassed. I sent out a petition, and obtained the names of a splendid array of merchants and business men of all shades of opinion and politics in favor of Grant. Following is the heading of the petition: “A PUBLIC MEETING. “To the merchants, bankers, manufacturers and other business men in favor of the re-election of General Grant: “The undersigned, desiring publicly to express their earnest confidence in the sagacity, fidelity, energy and unfaltering patriotism, so signally displayed by Ulysses S. Grant in securing the restoration of peace at home, upholding national rights abroad, and in maintaining throughout the world the honor of the American name, do hereby invite their fellow citizens to assemble in mass meeting at the Cooper Institute, on Wednesday evening, the 17th of April, 1872.” This call was chiefly the result of the personal canvass which I had instituted a few weeks previously. I selected the names of the persons to be called on from day to day, and kept these men working the matter up, until I had secured almost all the reputable business firms in the city of New York. The following, whose original signatures I have still in my possession, were prominent in the list: