In 1869 Ulysses S. Grant named Creswell postmaster general--the only Republican from a southern state in Grant's first cabinet. Creswell managed to be effective and to avoid the taint of scandal that touched some of his colleagues. He worked to make the postal service faster and less expensive, especially international mail. He reduced the cost of carrying mail by steam and rail, increased the number of mail routes and postal employees, introduced the penny postal card, and worked with Secretary of State Hamilton Fish to revise postal treaties.

Originally a Whig, when the party broke up Creswell shifted allegiances to the Democratic party for a short while and in 1856 was a delegate to its presidential nominating convention. In the secession winter of 1860-1861, he declared for the Union, and as a member of the House of Delegates, he served to keep Maryland from seceding in 1861. The following year he was appointed assistant adjutant general for the state. In the fall of 1862 he won election as a Republican to Congress, beating incumbent John W. Crisfield.

Following his nomination in 1860 by the northern wing of the Democratic party, Douglas selected Belmont to run the presidential campaign as chairman of the Democratic National Committee. Following Douglas's defeat in November and his death the following June, no political heir appeared; most of the veteran Democrats in Congress were southerners who had seceded with their states. Belmont then assumed the party's national leadership in his position as chief executive officer of the existing organization and held it for twelve years.

With unlimited energy and ambition and a willingness to spend money, Belmont set out early on a career in politics. Influenced mainly by his wife's uncle, John Slidell, a powerful Louisiana politician of the antebellum and Civil War periods, Belmont became the New York manager of James Buchanan's unsuccessful campaign for the 1852 Democratic presidential nomination. Franklin Pierce, the eventual nominee, won the presidency and rewarded Belmont, who had contributed generously to Pierce's presidential campaign, by appointing him minister to the Netherlands.

John McClintock was born October 27, 1814 in Philadelphia to Irish immigrants, John and Martha McClintock. He began as a clerk in his father's store, and then became a bookkeeper in the Methodist Book Concern in New York. Here he converted to Methodism and considered joining the ministry. McClintock entered the University of Pennsylvania in 1832 and graduated with high honors three years later. Subsequently, he was awarded a doctorate of divinity degree from the same institution in 1848.