Grant's administration wrecked men by thousands, but
profited few. Perhaps Mr. Fish was the solitary exception. One
might search the whole list of Congress, Judiciary, and Executive
during the twenty-five years 1870 to 1895, and find little but
damaged reputation. The period was poor in purpose and barren in
results.
Henry Adams, if not the rose, lived as near it as any
politician, and knew, more or less, all the men in any way
prominent at Washington, or knew all about them. Among them, in
his opinion, the best equipped, the most active-minded, and most
industrious was Abram Hewitt, who sat in Congress for a dozen
years, between 1874 and 1886, sometimes leading the House and
always wielding influence second to none. With nobody did Adams
form closer or longer relations than with Mr. Hewitt, whom he
regarded as the most useful public man in Washington; and he was
the more struck by Hewitt's saying, at the end of his laborious
career as legislator, that he left behind him no permanent result
except the Act consolidating the Surveys. Adams knew no other man
who had done so much, unless Mr. Sherman's legislation is
accepted as an instance of success. Hewitt's nearest rival would
probably have been Senator Pendleton who stood father to civil
service reform in 1882, an attempt to correct a vice that should
never have been allowed to be born.
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