1876 by Gore Vidal

Author:Gore Vidal [Vidal, Gore]
Format: epub, pdf
Published: 2010-05-29T15:49:33.707000+00:00

2

THE LAST FEW DAYS would have brought down any parliamentary government. As it is, the Grant Administration is a shambles, and there is even talk that the President might resign.

Events are moving so rapidly that I have become a sort of writing machine into which Nordhoff pours whatever information I need. He is most generous. But then he is writing every day, while I write, thank God, only once a week.

On March 1, Babcock resigned as the President’s private secretary. Ill-advised as ever, the President has just appointed his own son to take Babcock’s place. Apparently Grant wanted to retain Babcock, but Mr. Fish said that if he did he would then have to find himself a new Secretary of State. But Babcock will not want. The President has rewarded him with the super-intendancy of Washington’s public buildings where he can steal himself a second fortune. Happily, Babcock is about to be indicted for the burglarization of that famous safe in St. Louis and there is still a chance of putting him in prison.

Nordhoff is very grim these days; also, very pleased. The Augean stables of American politics may yet be cleansed once the public sees what condition they are in. Poor Tilden. He will have to play Hercules.

On March 2, Belknap resigned as Secretary of War. I was with the Belknaps earlier today, so I now have their version of what happened. It varies significantly from what Nordhoff thinks happened.

Terrified at the thought of impeachment in the House and trial by the Senate, Belknap went to the White House on the morning of March 2. With him was Secretary of the Interior Zachariah Chandler, a Michigan politician close to the President. This sequence of events was supplied me by Nordhoff and seems plausible.

According to General Grant’s defenders, the President had been so preoccupied with the Babcock affair that he had not been aware of the charges against Belknap ... Just writing these words makes me think that if Grant did not know of this business, then he is indeed the village idiot. I realize that there are those who would consign him to that category, but I am not one of them. No fool could ever command for any length of time a great army, much less defeat a resourceful and splendid enemy. But I must set down the story as Nordhoff tells it.

Shortly before the arrival of Belknap and Chandler, Secretary of the Treasury Bristow (rapidly becoming the President’s nemesis) interrupted General Grant at breakfast with the request that he receive at noon a certain New York congressman who would give the President full details of the Belknap scandal. General Grant agreed to meet the congressman.

Query: Wouldn’t Bristow have mentioned why the congressman wanted to talk to the President? And if he had, then the President must have known that Belknap was on the verge of impeachment The question is crucial.

Bristow departs. The President orders his carriage to take him to the studio of a painter who is doing his portrait.

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