ne 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.

The most conspicuous achievement of General Grant's first term was the
settlement of the controversy with Great Britain growing out of the
destruction of American commerce by Confederate States cruisers during
the war. A joint high commission of five British and five American
members met in Washington, February 17, 1871, and on May 8 a treaty was
completed and signed, providing peaceable means for a settlement of the
several questions arising out of the coast fisheries, the northwes