Grant's administration prosecuted Mormon polygamists in 1871, vice crimes such as pornography, and abortion from 1873 to 1877. The Panic of 1873 plunged the nation into a severe economic depression that allowed the Democrats to win the House majority. In the intensely disputed 1876 presidential election, Grant facilitated the approval by Congress of a peaceful compromise.
With the tour he took in his retirement, Grant became the first president to circumnavigate the world, dining with Queen Victoria and meeting many other prominent foreign leaders. In 1880, Grant was unsuccessful in obtaining the Republican presidential nomination for a third term. In the final year of his life, facing severe financial reversals and dying of throat cancer, he wrote his memoirs, which proved to be a major critical and financial success. They were published in two volumes in 1885 and 1886 by Mark Twain, shortly after Grant's death. Grant biographer Ronald C. White Jr. called the book "one of the finest memoirs in American letters". At the time of his death, he was memorialized as a symbol of national unity. Grant was a modern general and "a skillful leader who had a natural grasp of tactics and strategy".
