Nation: THE LAST MESSAGE-AND ADIEU

Mistakes have been made, as all can see and I admit. But I leave comparisons to history, claiming only that I have acted in every instance from a conscientious desire to do what was right, constitutional, within the law, and for the very best interests of the whole people. Failures have been errors of judgment, not of intent.

IT was not Lyndon Johnson who spoke those self-justifying words, but Ulysses S. Grant in his farewell annual message on the State of the Union in 1876. The Grant Administration was pockmarked with scandal and ineptitude, and Grant's standing among scholars of the presidency...