John Harrison Wilson, The life of Charles Henry Dana

General Grant was specially commended as having early “set his face against any increase of the public expenses,” as well as against “the encouragement of schemes of doubtful utility,” or of such “as ought to rely on their own resources, although they might justly claim to be beneficial to the public.”

There was, perhaps not unnaturally, a pronounced tendency at that time on every hand to transfer all sorts of business to the general government; but this tendency received no support from Dana. To the contrary, he declared that all efforts in that direction “demand the closest scrutiny from the sincere friends of liberty,” and that “hands off” is the true doctrine in a republic towards the government on all subjects which can be managed by individual enterprise. These ideas received additional support from the utterances of E. B. Washburne, who, as the representative from Grant's home district, was regarded as the spokesman of the new administration, both in and out of Congress. On the strength of his speeches, as well as on account of a notable one delivered by General Rawlins at Galena, their common home, the Sun inferred that the cardinal measures of Grant's policy would be rigid economy, searching retrenchment, strict accountability on the part of every office-holder, especially on the part of those charged with the collection and disbursement of the public moneys, the supremacy of the laws, and their rigid enforcement in every branch of the government and in every section of the Union.

In the belief that the operations of the Federal government should be minimized rather than enlarged, Dana instinctively took strong ground against the creation of new executive departments and the exercise of new powers by the national administration. In condemnation of this idea, he contended that the time had come to start once again upon the true Democratic theory of simplifying the