My first official duty was to witness, with the Senate, the inauguration of General Grant as President of the United States. I stood near the same spot from which, eight years before, I had witnessed the inauguration of Abraham Lincoln. It was a remarkable contrast--then the anxious patriot, in the hour 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 offered 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. It was not unnatural that in the absolute absence of political experience he should not only have had much to learn concerning the nature and conduct of civil government, but that he should also have had much to unlearn of the mental habits and the ways of thinking he had acquired in the exercise of almost unlimited military command. This was strikingly illustrated by some remarkable incidents. _A. T. Stewart and the Law of the Treasury_