In 1870 he sent to the Senate a treaty that the administration had negotiated with President Baez for the annexation of Santo Domingo as a territory of the United States, and also one for leasing to the United States the peninsula and bay of Samana. These treaties, it was said, had already been ratified by a popular vote early in 1870. The scheme precipitated a conflict that divided the Republican party into administration and anti-administration factions, the latter being led by Charles Sumner and Carl Schurz. Sumner had long been chairman of the Senate committee on foreign relations, but he was degraded through the influence of the President's friends in the Senate. Bitter personal animosities were aroused in this contest which never were healed. It was alleged that the sentiment of the people of Santo Domingo had not been fairly taken, and that they were in fact opposed to annexation. A commission composed of B. F. Wade, of Ohio, Andrew D. White, of New York, and Samuel G. Howe, of Massachusetts, was sent on a naval vessel to investigate the actual conditions. This committee reported in favor of annexation; but the hostile sentiment in Congress and among the people was so strong that the treaties were never ratified. By many it was considered a wrong to the colored race to so extinguish the experiment of negro self-government. Others were opposed to annexing such a population, thinking this country already had race troubles enough. Others regarded the whole business as a speculation of jobbers, and the stain of jobbery then pervading government circles was so notorious that the presumption was not without warrant. The annexation scheme brought to a head and gave occasion for an outbreak of indignant hostile criticism of the President and the administration. In this term Grant appointed the first board of civil service commissioners, with George William Curtis at its head. The commissioners were to inquire into the condition of the civil service and devise a scheme to increase its efficiency. This they did; but later the President himself balked at the enforcement of their rules, and, in 1873, Mr. Curtis resigned.