There were very serious obstacles to Grant’s nomination for the Presidency by the Republicans in 1868. First, he was not a Republican and never had been. He had never voted a Republican ticket, and he never cast a Republican ballot until after he had been eight years a Republican President. His last vote before he re-entered the army was cast for a radical pro-slavery Democrat, and he did not even sympathize with Stephen A. Douglas in 1860, although he lived in Illinois, the home of the great Democratic leader of that day. Second, he was resolutely averse to being a candidate for the Presidency. He was General of the Army, with freedom to retire without diminution of pay; he had no political training, and felt himself unfitted for a political career. He was honest and apparently fixed in his purpose not to become a candidate. These objections at first appeared to be insuperable obstacles to Grant’s nomination, but he was human, and had he declined the Presidency when it was apparently within his reach, he would have stood as the only man in the history of the Republic who had refused its crown. [Illustration: U. S. GRANT] The Democrats were in a hopeless condition, and they at once began a systematic movement to make him their candidate. This alarmed the Republicans, and they made equally earnest and methodical efforts to make him their leader. It is doubtful upon which side General Grant would have fallen had it not been for the early estrangement between President Johnson and himself. Johnson made repeated attempts to overslaugh him either directly or indirectly. He ordered Grant to Mexico to get him out of the country, but Grant refused to go, and he afterward made an earnest effort to supersede Grant by calling General Thomas to the command of the army, but Thomas stubbornly refused to consider the call. As the Republicans were then in bitter warfare against Johnson, Grant logically found sympathy in Republican circles, and finally, with visible reluctance, he agreed to become the candidate of the Republicans. Had he been nominated by the Democrats he would have been elected, but his administration would have greatly conserved and liberalized the Democratic teachings of that day. His final assent to become the Republican candidate for President was obtained by the late Colonel Forney.