It was not without reason that serious men were fearful in the years in which military heroes dominated in politics, and in which commerce struggled with its revolution. Had they foreseen the course of the next generation, noted the progress of new ideas in government, the extension of philanthropy and social relief, and the passion for education that swept the country, they need not have despaired. Godkin, himself, could not have made a living from his _Nation_, with its high ideals, its criticism, and its despondency, in a land that was wholly rotten. The young college presidents of the period could not have found a livelihood in a country that was not fundamentally sound. At Harvard, Charles William Eliot broke down the old technique of culture and enlarged its range; at Michigan, James Burrill Angell proved it possible to maintain sound, scholarly, and non-political education, in a public institution supported by taxation; in a new university a private benefactor, Johns Hopkins, gave to Daniel Coit Gilman a chance to show that creative scholarship can flourish in a democracy. But the essential soundness of the Republic was as much obscured in 1868 as its wealth had been in 1861, and for the present the objects on the surface, brought there by violent convulsion, represented its less creditable part. The years of Grant's Presidency were filled with unsightly episodes, that were scandalous then and have been discouraging always. In his first year of office, Jay Gould and James Fisk, tempted by the premium on gold, tried to corner the market, and Grant's public association with the speculators brought upon him fair reproach. Tweed, exposed and jailed after a long fight, revealed the close alliance between crooked politics and business in the cities, and became a national disgrace. Less prominent than these but far from proper were Schenck and Fremont. The latter was arrested in France, charged with promoting a railroad on the strength of land grants that did not exist. He had been close to the old Republican organization, and the figurehead of the radicals in 1864, so that his notoriety was great. Schenck, while Minister in London, posed as director of a mining company, and borrowed from the promoters of the scheme the money with which he bought his shares. When the company proved insolvent, and perhaps fraudulent, Grant was forced to recall him. Critics who saw dishonesty or low ethical standards in these men were ready to see in the carnival of the Reconstruction Governments wholesale proofs of decadence.