XXI. POLITICAL CORRUPTION
John Jay said that the greatest achievements of diplomacy were often little noted by history and that their authors got, in general, little credit. He compared it to the work of levelling uneven ground of which the face of the earth will show no trace when it is done. The same thing is true of successful battles with political corruption in high places, the most formidable peril to any Government and, if it be not encountered and overcome, fatal to a Republic. A nation will survive a corrupt minister or monarch, but a corrupt people must surely and speedily perish. We have had sporadic examples of corruption in high office at several periods in our history. The first sixteen years after the inauguration of the Constitution, including the Administrations of Washington, John Adams, and the first four years of Jefferson, were by no means free from it. But it never got so dangerous a hold upon the forces of the Government, or upon a great political party, as in the Administration of General Grant.
General Grant was an honest and wise man. History has assigned him a place among our great Presidents. He showed almost unerring judgment in military matters. He rarely, I suppose, if ever, made a mistake in his estimate of the military quality of a subordinate, or in a subordinate's title to confidence. But he was very easily imposed upon by self-seeking and ambitious men in civil life. Such men studied his humors and imposed upon him, if not by flattery, yet by the pretence of personal devotion. He had been himself bitterly and most unjustly assailed by partisan and sectional hostility. When any person to whom he had once given his confidence was detected in any low or corrupt action Grant was very unwilling to believe or even to listen to the charge. He seemed to set his teeth and to say to himself: "They attack this man as they attack me. They attack him because he is my friend. I will stand by him." So it happened that attempts to secure pure and unselfish administration got little help from him, and that designing and crafty men whose political aims were wholly personal and selfish got his ear and largely influenced his appointments to office.
Hamilton Fish, the Secretary of State, always retained his influence with President Grant. He was a wise, able and thoroughly honest man. But as was fit, and indeed necessary, he kept himself to the great interests which belonged to his Department, and took little share, so far as the public knew, in other questions.
General Cox, of Ohio, was an able, brave and upright man. He resigned from President Grant's Cabinet, alleging as his reason that he was not supported in the fight with corruption. Judge Hoar strenuously insisted that the Judges of the newly created Circuit Courts of the United States should be made up of the best lawyers, without Senatorial dictation. President Grant acted in accordance with his advice. The constitution of the Circuit Courts gave great satisfaction to the public. But leading and influential Senators, whose advice had been rejected, and who were compelled by the high character of the persons nominated to submit, and did not venture upon a controversy with the President, were intensely angry with the Attorney-General. The result was that when he was nominated by the President for the office of Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, he was rejected by the Senate. A few Senators avowed as a pretext for their action that there was no Judge on that Bench from the South, and that the new appointee ought to reside in the Southern Circuit. But these gentlemen all voted for the confirmation of Mr. Justice Bradley, a most admirable appointment, to whom the same objection applied. Judge Hoar never doubted that the service of a clean, able, upright Circuit Court, appointed without political influence, and entirely acceptable to the public, was well worth the sacrifice. Indeed the expression of public regard which came to him abundantly in his lifetime, and which was manifested in the proceedings of the Bar of Massachusetts, and the Massachusetts Historical Society, and in the press of the country after his death, was more valued by those to whom his memory is dear, than a thousand offices.
When I entered Congress in 1869 the corridors of the Capitol and the Committee rooms were crowded with lobbyists. The custom of the two Houses permitted their members to introduce strangers on the floor. It would not be profitable to revive all the scandals of that time. In general the men elected to the Senate and the House were honest and incorruptible. There were some exceptions. Adroit and self-seeking men were often able in the multitude of claims which must necessarily be disposed of by a rapid examination, to impose on Committees of the two Houses.
As one of the managers of the Belknap trial, I alluded to some of the more prominent and undisputed examples of corruption, in the following words:
"I said a little while ago that the Constitution had no safeguards to throw away. You will judge whether the public events of to-day admonish us to look well to all our securities to prevent or power to punish the great guilt of corruption in office. We must not confound idle clamor with public opinion, or accept the accusations of scandal and malice instead of proof. But we shall make a worse mistake if, because of the multitude of false and groundless charges against men in high office, we fail to redress substantial grievances or to deal with cases of actual guilt. The worst evil resulting from the indiscriminate attack of an unscrupulous press upon men in public station is not that innocence suffers, but that crime escapes. Let scandal and malice be encountered by pure and stainless lives. Let corruption and bribery meet their lawful punishment.
"My own public life has been a very brief and insignificant one, extending little beyond the duration of a single term of Senatorial office; but in that brief period I have seen five judges of a high court of the United States driven from office by threats of impeachment for corruption or maladministration. I have heard the taunt, from friendliest lips, that when the United States presented herself in the East to take part with the civilized world in generous competition in the arts of life, the only product of her institutions in which she surpassed all others beyond question was her corruption. I have seen in the State in the Union foremost in power and wealth four judges of her courts impeached for corruption, and the political administration of her chief city become a disgrace and a by- word throughout the world. I have seen the chairman of the Committee on Military Affairs in the House, now a distinguished member of this court, rise in his place and demand the expulsion of four of his associates for making sale of their official privilege of selecting the youths to be educated at our great military school. When the greatest railroad of the world, binding together the continent and uniting the two great seas which wash our shores, was finished, I have seen our national triumph and exultation turned to bitterness and shame by the unanimous reports of three committees of Congress--two of the House and one here--that every step of that mighty enterprise had been taken in fraud. I have heard in highest places the shameless doctrine avowed by men grown old in public office that the true way by which power should be gained in the Republic is to bribe the people with the offices created for their service, and the true end for which it should be used when gained is the promotion of selfish ambition and the gratification of personal revenge. I have heard that suspicion haunts the footsteps of the trusted companions of the President.
"These things have passed into history. The Hallam or the Tacitus or the Sismondi or the Macaulay who writes the annals of our time will record them with his inexorable pen. And now when a high Cabinet officer, the Constitutional adviser of the Executive, flees from office before charges of corruption, shall the historian add that the Senate treated the demand of the people for its judgment of condemnation as a farce, and laid down its high functions before the sophistries and jeers of the criminal lawyer? Shall he speculate about the petty political calculations as to the effect on one party or the other which induced his judges to connive at the escape of the great public criminal? Or, on the other had, shall he close the chapter by narrating how these things were detected, reformed and punished by Constitutional processes which the wisdom of our fathers devised for us, and the virtue and purity of the people found their vindication in the justice of the Senate?"
This passage was quoted very extensively by the Democratic speakers all over the country, and was circulated as a campaign document. I was reproached by some of my Republican associates for furnishing ammunition for the enemy. But I was satisfied, and I am now, that in saying what I did I rendered a great service to the Republican Party. What was said helped to arouse public attention, and the masses of the people--always pure and incorruptible--set themselves earnestly and successfully to reform the abuses.
It never occurred to me that these abuses furnished any reason for placing the powers of the Government in the hands of the Southern Democracy, or their ally, Tammany Hall. If the men who saved the Union were not to be trusted to keep it pure; if the men who abolished slavery could not carry on a Government in freedom and in honor, certainly it was not likely that the men of Tammany Hall, or the men who had so lately attempted to overthrow the Government, would do it any better.
I happened to be at lunch with General Garfield just after the Belknap trial. He spoke of my argument, and expressed his strong sympathy and approval. I told him that I had been looking into the history of the first sixteen years of the Government, which included the Administrations of Washington and John Adams and the first term of Jefferson, and that in my opinion there was not only more corruption in proportion then than there had been under Grant, but there had been more in amount, notwithstanding the difference in population. I stated to him a good many instances. He urged me to make a speech in which I should say publicly what I had said to him. I acted on his advice, and in the course of a speech, in reply to Mr. Lamar, of Mississippi, I spoke as follows:
"The Republican Party, as I have said, has controlled the Government for sixteen years, a term equal to that which covers the whole Administration of Washington, the whole Administration of John Adams, and the first term of Jefferson. It has been one of those periods in which all experience teaches us to expect an unusual manifestation of public corruption, of public disorder, and of evils and errors of administration. A great war; the time which follows a great war; great public debts; currency and values inflated; the exertion of new and extraordinary powers for the safety of the State; the sudden call of millions of slaves to a share in the Government--any one of these things would be expected to create great disturbances, and give rise to great temptations and great corruptions. Our term of office has seen them all combined. And yet I do not scruple to affirm that not only has there been less dishonesty and maladministration in the sixteen years of Republican rule proportionally to the numbers and wealth of the people than in the first sixteen years after the inauguration of Washington, but there has been less absolutely of those things.
"Now, Mr. Speaker, I do not wish to be misunderstood. I do not wish to be misrepresented in this matter. Let no man assert that I refer to the evils of those days as either excuse or palliation for the evils of ours. That generation was a frugal and honest generation in the main, and they would have visited with the swiftest condemnation and punishment, every breach of public trust, whether through dishonesty or usurpation. But they did not send to England for Benedict Arnold. They did not restore the Tories to power. They did not go down on their knees to George III. and ask him to take them back into favor. They believed that if the Constitution could not be administered honestly by a majority of the friends of the Constitution, it could not be administered honestly by a majority of its enemies; that if liberty were not safe and pure in the hands of those who loved her, then liberty was a failure upon the earth, and they did not think of intrusting her to the hands of those who hated her. So in this generation, had they lived to-day, they would have done simply what a distinguished president of the convention in my own State, whom the gentleman quotes, recommended; they would have taken the Government from the hands of the lovers of liberty who are dishonest and put it into the hands of men who entertain the same sentiments but who are honest. It never would have occurred to them that because among one hundred thousand men there are found some few who will not keep the eighth commandment, 'Thou shalt not steal,' which is a mandate for all the public service, they should put in power men who have no regard for the sixth, 'Thou shalt not kill.'"
There were several conspicuous instances of corruption with which I had personally to deal.
1. One was the Credit Mobilier.
Two Committees were appointed to investigate the affairs of the Union Pacific Railroad Company, and the Credit Mobilier of America. One Committee investigated the conduct of some members of the two Houses of Congress against whom some charges had been made. Of that Committee Judge Poland of Vermont was the Chairman. The other Committee investigated the history of the Union Pacific Railroad Company to report whether its charter had been forfeited. Of that Committee Jeremiah M. Wilson of Indiana, a very able lawyer and accomplished gentleman, was Chairman. The next member to him on the Committee was Judge Shellabarger of Ohio. Owing to reasons, stated later, it fell to me as the next in rank to conduct the greater part of the examination, and to make the report.
2. Another was the impeachment and trial of General William W. Belknap, Secretary of War, for receiving a bribe for the appointment of a Post Trader.
3. A third example of the prevalent laxity of morals that occurred was the case of the Sanborn contracts. I was a member of the House when they were investigated, but took no special part in the proceedings.
4. A fourth example was the claim of Senators and Representatives which had been asserted in Andrew Johnson's Administration, and to which General Grant had partly yielded, to dictate the appointment of executive officers. In that way a vast army of public servants, amounting to more than one hundred thousand in number, who were appointed and removed at the pleasure of the Executive, became first the instrument of keeping the dominant party in power, and afterward became not so much the instruments and servants of party as the political followers of ambitious men to whom they owed their office, and on whose pleasure they depended for maintaining them. I made, in a speech at West Newton in 1876, an earnest attack on this system, and afterward in the Senate had a good deal to do with framing the Civil Service Law, as it was called, which put an end to it.
5. Perhaps the most dangerous attack upon the purity of the Government was the attempt of General Butler to get possession of the political power in Massachusetts, and ultimately that of the country. What I was able to do to resist and baffle that attempt is the most considerable part of the public service of my life, if it has been of any public service.
I shall speak of each of these a little more fully.
The responsibility for three of these, I regret to say, rested upon Massachusetts men, members of the Republican Party. The Union Pacific Railroad Company and the Credit Mobilier were made up largely of prominent Massachusetts men for whom General Butler acted as counsel. When Mr. Ames was on trial before the House of Representatives General Butler, then a member of the House, appeared as a member and took part and made the extraordinary statement to the House that he was there as counsel for Mr. Ames.
Sanborn, who made the contracts, was a Massachusetts man. His profits were used largely in affecting elections in Massachusetts. The Treasury officials who were in fault, whether through carelessness or corruption, were Massachusetts men, and the arch contriver of the scheme was a Massachusetts man.
Yet the lesson which these things have taught me is that the American statesman who believes that the doctrines of his party are sound should never abandon his principles or quit political life because of its corruption. Let him never for any political advantage support or tolerate a corrupt man, or vote for a corrupt candidate. If a man whose principles are good will yield to an evil motive, it is not likely that the man whose principles are bad will resist it. The American people are upright and honest. They will vindicate and stand by any man in the contest for honesty and uprightness, be he Democrat or Republican, so long as they believe that the ends for which he is striving are for the public good. They will not sustain a man whose counsel they think bad, however honest he may be in his own conduct, or however much he may desire to secure honesty in the conduct of others. No man ever yet accomplished much good by abandoning his party while he continued to hold its principles. Many men have accomplished a great deal of good by striving to purify it.
Every account of political history from the inside will exhibit abundant evidence of wickedness, wrongdoing, and petty personal motives, of low ambitions, of bargains and sales, of timidity, of treachery. The reverse of the most costly tapestry looks mean and cheap. It is said that no man is a hero to his valet. The reason is not that the hero is mean or base, but that the valet cannot see anything that is great and noble, but only what is mean and base. The history of no people is heroical to its Mugwumps. But, thank God, what is petty and personal is also temporary and perishable. The voice of all history, especially the voice of the history of our Republic, speaks to us the lesson which our great philosopher taught and so implicitly believed,
Saying, What is excellent, As God lives, is permanent.
XXII. CREDIT MOBILIER
During the election of 1872 many rumors appeared in the press of the country that there had been great corruption in the management of the affairs of the Union Pacific Railroad. It was charged that the members of the House and Senate, some of whom were named, had been bribed by gifts of stock in the Credit Mobilier to secure their influence in legislation affecting the Union Pacific Railroad.
The Credit Mobilier Co. had been formed to take the contract for building the Union Pacific Railroad. The stockholders of the two companies were identical. Each stockholder of the Credit Mobilier owned a number of shares of the Union Pacific Railroad proportional to his holding in the former company.
The Union Pacific Railroad Company and Central Pacific Railroad Company received liberal land grants from the Government of the United States, that they might each build a part of the line which should connect the Atlantic States with the Pacific Ocean. In addition to the land grants, each road was to receive a loan of Government bonds, payable in thirty years, of $27,000,000, for which the Government was to pay interest, which interest was not required to be repaid by the roads. The roads were also authorized to give a mortgage on their properties for a like amount, of $27,000,000 each, which mortgage was to be prior to the Government's lien for its loan. The charter of the Union Pacific Railroad was granted by the Government of the United States. That of the Central Pacific was from the State of California. The Government undertook to remove all Indian titles from the public land granted to the Union Pacific Railroad for a space of 200 feet in width on each side of its entire route, and conferred the right to appropriate by eminent domain necessary private land for depots, turnouts, etc., and public lands to the amount of ten alternate sections per mile, within the limits of twenty miles on each side of the road. It was required by the charter of the Union Pacific Railroad that its stock should be paid in full in cash, and that the interests of the Government should be specially protected by the appointment by the President of five Government Directors. The Government bonds were to be handed over on the certificate of an officer appointed by the President, as the road advanced to completion. It was required that a Government Director should be a member of every Committee, standing or select.
The managers of the Union Pacific Railroad acquired the franchise of a Pennsylvania Company, known as the Credit Mobilier, divided its stock among themselves in proportion to their ownership in the Union Pacific Railroad, mortgaged the road to the extent permitted by the act of Congress, being a little more than $27,000,000 and mortgaged their land grants for a further sum of $10,000,000. Then they made a contract with the Credit Mobilier Company to construct the road at a price which would exhaust all the resources of the road, including the proceeds of the bonds of all kinds, and divided the proceeds among themselves as dividends on the stock of the Credit Mobilier. This left the Union Pacific Railroad to begin business mortgaged to its full value, without any resources for its operation, and utterly stripped of the ample endowment which the bounty of the Government had provided for it.
Congress supposed when this munificent grant of land and loan of credit was made it would create a great public highway across the continent for the use of the Government and the people, in war and peace, which should be a strong, solvent corporation, ready for every emergency, and as secure for the public use as New York Harbor, or as the Pacific Ocean.
The devisers of this scheme soon got to quarrelling among themselves. One faction was made up largely of Boston capitalists, and the other of men belonging in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. The former wanted to have the headquarters of the corporation in Boston, with a Boston man for President; and the latter desired to have the management in New York. A suit in equity was brought, and the Boston men, headed by Oakes Ames, a member of Congress, and his brother Oliver, both eminent and highly respected business men of Massachusetts, were enjoined from voting at a stockholders' meeting held in New York for the election of officers. The injunction was issued by Judge Barnard, who was afterward impeached, and removed from office. On the day of the stockholders' meeting General Butler, counsel for the Ames faction, found Judge Barnard at lunch, and got him so to modify the injunction as to permit that the votes might be cast, the result of the election not to be declared until the further order of the Court. The other faction who had rested with fancied security under their injunction were taken by surprise.
The Ames ticket had a majority. Thereupon one of the other faction wrote a letter to Elihu B. Washburn, at Washington. He was an influential member of the House of Representatives, known as the "Watch Dog of the Treasury." The letter was put in the post-office. It exposed the whole transaction. He then informed his opponents what he had done. They knew very well that if Washburn moved an investigation by the House of Representatives, which was likely, the game was up. No further bonds would come from the United States Treasury. Judicial proceedings would in all likelihood be taken at once to annul the charter, or restrain further action under it. They instantly came to terms. The two factions agreed on a Board of Directors. The letter to Washington was withdrawn from the mail. Oakes Ames received a quantity of the stock of the Credit Mobilier, which he was to distribute among influential members of Congress at par, "putting it," according to his testimony given before a Committee afterward, "where it would do the most good." A list of members of the two Houses was agreed upon, to whom the stock should be offered. It was expected that they would pay for it at par. But there had been already a large dividend assigned to it, which with the dividend expected to be paid shortly, would amount to much more than the nominal par value of the stock. So the purchase of one of the shares was like purchasing for $1,000 a bank account which already amounted to, or shortly would amount to, more than double that sum.
A list of the men who were to be induced to take this stock was made out with wonderful and prophetic sagacity. It contained some of the ablest and most influential men in the two Houses of Congress, representing different parts of the country. It included men as conspicuous for integrity as ability. Each of them occupied already a great place in the respect of his countrymen, and nearly every one of them attained a much greater place afterward. This is the list of the members of Congress to whom stock was to be conveyed:
LIST OF MEMBERS OF CONGRESS TO WHOM STOCK WAS TO BE SOLD AGREED UPON IN NEW YORK, ENTERED IN OAKES AMES'S MEMORANDUM BOOK, AND TAKEN BY HIM TO WASHINGTON
James G. Blaine of Maine. Senator James W. Patterson of New Hampshire. Senator Henry Wilson of Massachusetts. Schuyler Colfax of Indiana. Thomas D. Eliot of Massachusetts. Henry L. Dawes of Massachusetts. George S. Boutwell of Massachusetts. James A. Garfield of Ohio. Glenni W. Schofield of Pennsylvania. William D. Kelley of Pennsylvania. Joseph F. Fowler of Tennessee. John A. Bingham of Ohio. Senator James A. Bayard of Delaware. William B. Allison of Iowa. James F. Wilson of Iowa. Roscoe Conkling of New York. James Brooks of New York. John A. Logan of Illinois.
When Mr. Ames got to Washington he added the names of several Senators to his list, some of whom took the stock.
It will be seen by an examination that men of great ability and influence were very skilfully selected. Two of them afterward became Vice-Presidents of the United States. One of them became President of the United States. Another became Secretary of the Treasury. Two others became Speakers of the House. Five others were very prominent candidates for the Presidency. Another was Chairman of the Judiciary Committee of the House. Another became Chairman of the Committee on Appropriations and subsequently of Ways and Means. Nine of these gentlemen, then members of the House, were afterward elected to the Senate.
Mr. Blaine, Mr. Eliot, Mr. Bayard, Mr. Conkling and Mr. Boutwell refused absolutely to have anything to do with the transaction. All the others were fully acquitted on investigation, by the judgment of the House, of any corrupt purpose or any desire to make money or get private advantage by reason of their official influence, or of any expectation that they would be likely to be called upon to take or refuse any action by reason of their relation to these corporations. It was thought that they had been careless in that they had not been put on their guard by the fact that so large a dividend was to be paid on the stock. In all cases the amounts received were very small, in general not amounting to more than $1,000. In two or three instances the people thought there was want of candor or frankness in telling the full transaction to the public, when the newspaper charges first made their appearance.
Henry Wilson never had any of the stock. But some of his friends made a present of a small sum of money to Mrs. Wilson, and the persons having the matter in charge invested a portion of it in Credit Mobilier stock. As soon as Wilson heard of it, he directed that the stock be reconveyed to the person from whom it had been received, and gave his wife a small sum of money to make up the difference of what turned out to be the value of the stock and the value of the investment which had been made in its place. There was no lack of the most scrupulous integrity in the transaction. Wilson met at a great public meeting Gen. Hawley, who was one of the speakers. Hawley told Wilson on the platform just before his speech that he understood that his name had been mentioned in the papers as the owner of Credit Mobilier stock. Wilson answered that he never had any of it. Thereupon Hawley in his speech alluded to that matter and said he was authorized by Mr. Wilson to say that he never owned any of the stock. Mr. Wilson did not get up and say, No, I never owned any. But my wife once had a present of a little money which was invested in it, and as soon as I heard of it, I immediately had it returned to the person from whom it came, and I made up the loss to my wife myself. Such, however, was the public excitement that his omission to do that was held in some quarters as culpable want of frankness.
All the persons who received any of the stock and told the story frankly at the investigation were acquitted of any wrongdoing whatever, and never in the least suffered in esteem in consequence.
But Schuyler Colfax and Senator Patterson of New Hampshire were found by the Committee, and believed by the people to have been disingenuous in their account of the transaction. The Senate Committee of investigation reported a resolution for the expulsion of Senator Patterson. The case was a very hard one indeed for him. The Senate adjourned, and his term expired without any action on the resolution, or any opportunity to defend himself.
Schuyler Colfax was also held to have given an untruthful story of the transaction. But the public attention was turned from that by the discovery, in the investigation of his accounts which the Committee made, that he had received large sums of money from a person for whom he had obtained a lucrative Government contract. But his term of office as Vice-President expired before any action could be taken, and he died soon after.
Mr. Ames, whose character as a shrewd and skilful investor and manager of property stood deservedly high, recommended to his friends the stock of the Credit Mobilier as a safe investment, and one in his judgment very sure to prove profitable.
It has been often asked how the managers of the Credit Mobilier could be guilty of bribing men when nobody was guilty of being bribed. But the answer is easy. The managers of the Credit Mobilier knew that they had violated the law, and that an investigation would ruin their whole concern. The men who received the stock were in ignorance of this fact. It was as if the managers of a railroad whose route under State laws is to be determined by a city council, or a board of selectmen or some other public body, should induce the members of such a board to take stock in their enterprise, intending afterward to petition the body to which the subscribers belonged to adopt a route very near land owned by them, which would much increase its value, the receivers of the stock being ignorant of their scheme. The person who should do that would be justly chargeable with bribery, while the persons who received the stock would be held totally innocent. That was the judgment of the House of Representatives which acquitted the members who had received the stock, but held Ames, who had conducted the transaction, censurable. A large number of the members voted for his expulsion. Ames was a successful business man. He was regarded by his neighbors as a man of integrity. He was generous and public spirited. But he and his associates in the Union Pacific Railroad seemed, in this matter, to be utterly destitute of any sense of public duty or comprehension of the great purposes of Congress. They seemed to treat it as a purely private transaction, out of which they might get all the money they could, without any obligation to carry out the act according to its spirit, or even according to its letter, if they could only do so without being detected. They seemed to have thought they were the sole owners of the Union Pacific Railroad and of the Credit Mobilier corporation, and that the transaction between the two concerned themselves only and not the public. They treated it as if they were transferring money from one pocket to another.
When Congress met in December, Mr. Blaine, the Speaker, who had been one of the persons implicated by public rumor, although in fact he had refused absolutely to have anything to do with the transaction, left the Chair, and, calling Mr. Cox of New York to his place, introduced a resolution calling for an investigation of the affairs of the Union Pacific Railroad.
Two Committees were appointed. One, of which Judge Poland was Chairman, undertook to deal with the charges against the members of the House of Representatives. The other, of which Jeremiah M. Wilson of Indiana was Chairman, was directed to inquire into the entire management of the affairs of the Union Pacific Railroad and the Credit Mobilier. I was a member of this last Committee. A Committee was appointed also in the Senate, with direction to inquire into the charges so far as they affected Senators. The whole country was profoundly excited by the affair.
I stood third on the Committee on which I was a member. It was thought best that Mr. Wilson, the Chairman, who was a very able and distinguished lawyer, should go to Boston where the books of the Companies were kept, and make a searching examination of their books and accounts. Mr. Shellabarger of Ohio, the second member on the Committee, one of the ablest lawyers in the House, was in poor health. He consented to serve only on the condition that he should not be compelled to do any duty requiring any considerable labor. So I had to a large degree the charge of the investigation in Washington, where the witnesses were examined, and in the end the duty of preparing the report.
We did not deal in our report with the alleged misconduct of the individual members of the House, but solely with the two corporations. The report sets forth the transaction at length, and contains the following summary of the Committee's conclusions:
The purpose of the whole act was expressly declared to be "to promote the public interest and welfare by the construction of said railroad and telegraph line, and keeping the same in working order, and to secure the Government at all times, but particularly in time of war, the use and benefit of the same for postal, military, and other purposes."
Your committee cannot doubt that it was the purpose of Congress in all this to provide for something more than a mere gift of so much land, and a loan of so many bonds on the one side, and the construction and equipment of so many miles of railroad and telegraph on the other.
The United States was not a mere creditor, loaning a sum of money upon a mortgage. The railroad corporation was not a mere contractor, bound to furnish a specified structure and nothing more. The law created a body politic and corporate, bound, as a trustee, so to manage this great public franchise and endowment that not only the security for the great debts due the United States should not be impaired, but so that there should be ample resources to perform its great public duties in time of commercial disaster and in time of war.
This act was not passed to further the personal interests of the corporators, nor for the advancement of commercial interests, nor for the convenience of the general public, alone; but in addition to these the interests, present and future, of the Government, as such, were to be subserved. A great highway was to be created, the use of which for postal, military, and other purposes was to be secured to the Government "at all times," but particularly in time of war. Your committee deem it important to call especial attention to this declared object of this act, to accomplish which object the munificent grant of lands and loan of the Government credit was made. To make such a highway and to have it ready at "all times," and "particularly in time of war," to meet the demands that might be made upon it; to be able to withstand the loss of business and other casualties incident to war and still to perform for the Government such reasonable service as might under such circumstances be demanded, required a strong, solvent corporation; and when Congress expressed the object and granted the corporate powers to carry that object into execution, and aided the enterprise with subsidies of lands and bonds, the corporators in whom these powers were vested and under whose control these subsidies were placed, were, in the opinion of your committee, under the highest moral, to say nothing of legal or equitable obligations, to use the utmost degree of good faith toward the Government in the exercise of the powers and disposition of the subsidies.
Congress relied for the performance of these great trusts by the corporators upon their sense of public duty; upon the fact that they were to deal with and protect a large capital of their own which they were to pay in money; upon the presence of five directors appointed by the President especially to represent the public interests, who were to own no stock; one of whom should be a member of every Committee, standing or special; upon the commissioners to be appointed by the President, who should examine and report upon the work as it progressed; in certain cases upon the certificate of the chief engineer, to be made upon his professional honor; and lastly, upon the reserved power to add to, alter, amend, or repeal the act.
Your committee find themselves constrained to report that the moneys borrowed by the corporation, under a power given them, only to meet the necessities of the construction and endowment of the road, have been distributed in dividends among the corporators; that the stock was issued, not to men who paid for it at par in money, but who paid for it at not more than thirty cents on the dollar in road making; that of the Government directors some of them have neglected their duties and others have been interested in the transactions by which the provisions of the organic law have been evaded; that at least one of the commissioners appointed by the President has been directly bribed to betray his trust by the gift of $25,000; that the chief engineer of the road was largely interested in the contracts for its construction; and that there has been an attempt to prevent the exercise of the reserved power in Congress by inducing influential members of Congress to become interested in the profits of the transaction. So that of the safeguards above enumerated none seems to have been left but the sense of public duty of the corporators.
The Judge Poland Committee investigated the conduct of the members who were suspected and acquitted all but two. The House accepted their decision. They recommended the expulsion of Mr. Ames and of James Brooks, one of the Democratic members. There were some special circumstances in the case of Brooks, which it is not necessary to recite. Brooks died before a vote on his case was taken. The House by a majority amended the resolution reported by the Committee in the case of Mr. Ames, and recommended a vote of censure, which was passed. Ames felt the disgrace very keenly, and did not live very long afterward.
These disclosures did much to bring about the uneasy condition of the public mind which led to the Republican defeat in the election of members of the House of Representatives in the fall of 1874, and brought Tilden so near to an election in 1876.
But it may fairly, I think, be said for the majority of the Republican Party in both houses of Congress, and the majority of the Republican Party in the country, that they did their very best to deal firmly and directly with any fraud or wrongdoing that came to light, even if their own political associates were the guilty parties. The political atmosphere has been purified as compared with the condition of those days. The lobbyist is not seen in the Committee Room or the Corridor of the Capitol, as was the case when I entered Congress in 1869. I ought perhaps to say that I think the acquittal of Belknap on the ground that the Senate has no jurisdiction to render judgment against a civil officer on process of impeachment after he has left office, was influenced by political feeling. I do not think most of the Republican Senators who voted that way would have so voted if the culprit had been a Democrat. But there were many able lawyers who thought the opinion of these Senators right.
XXIII. THE SANBORN CONTRACTS
The forty-second Congress, at its second session, repealed all laws which provided for the payment of moieties, or commissions, to informers, so far as related to internal revenue taxes. But a provision was inserted by the Conference Committee, which attracted no attention, providing that the Secretary of the Treasury might employ not more than three persons to assist the proper officers of the Government in discovering and collecting any money belonging to the United States whenever the same might be for the interest of the United States. The Secretary was to determine the conditions of the contract, and to pay no compensation except out of money received. No person was to be employed who did not file a written statement, under oath, stating the character of the claim under which the money was withheld or due, and the name of the person alleged to withhold the same.
Under this law John D. Sanborn of Massachusetts, an active supporter of General Butler, applied for a contract which he obtained on the 15th of July, 1872, for the collection of taxes illegally withheld by thirty-nine distillers, rectifiers and purchasers of whiskey. He was then himself an employee of the Government as Special Agent for the Treasury Department. Secretary Boutwell being then absent or otherwise unable to attend to his duties, this contract was signed by Assistant Secretary William A. Richardson. Sanborn had already been employed to work up certain whiskey cases for which he had been paid $3,000 by the Government, and these cases were included in the foregoing contract.
On the 25th of October, 1872, Sanborn made application to have added to his contract the names of 760 persons, alleged to have withheld taxes imposed on legacies, successions and incomes. An additional contract for that purpose was signed by the Assistant Secretary Richardson. On the 19th of March, 1873, Sanborn applied to have the names of more than 2,000 other like persons added to his contract, which Mr. Richardson permitted. On the 1st day of July, 1873, Sanborn again asked to amend his contract, and Assistant Secretary Richardson signed the contract by which the names of 592 railroad companies were included. That was substantially a complete list of the railroad companies of the country. Some of them had been examined by Government officials before the day of the contract, and the claims had been brought to light and found due. Sanborn had no knowledge of any delinquency, except as to about 150 of them. When he so represented to the officers of the Treasury Department he was told that it did not make any difference, and to put them all in. Thereupon he took oath that they were all delinquent, and had them added to the contract.
The form of this contract was taken, in part, from one prepared by Secretary Boutwell, which he had carefully considered with Mr. Kelsey, a subordinate in the Treasury, in June, 1872. That prepared by Mr. Boutwell, if adhered to, would have amply protected the Government. But it was departed from in essential particulars. Under Secretary Boutwell's contract only a small number of claims was included. Sanborn collected, in the course of a year or two, $427,000, on which sum he received 50 per cent.
The unanimous report of the Committee of the House who investigated the matter was written by Charles Foster of Ohio, afterward Governor, and Secretary of the Treasury. The Committee comprised the following gentlemen: Henry L. Dawes of Massachusetts; W. D. Kelly of Pennsylvania; Horatio C. Burchard of Illinois; Ellis H. Roberts of New York; John A. Kasson of Iowa; Henry Waldron of Michigan; Lionel A. Sheldon of Louisiana; Charles Foster of Ohio; James B. Beck of Kentucky; William E. Niblack of Indiana; Fernando Wood of New York.
The Committee found that a large percentage of the $427,000 was not a proper subject for contract under the law, and that it would have been collected by the Internal Revenue Bureau in the ordinary discharge of its duty. The law provided that the person with whom it was made should assist the Treasury officials in discovering and collecting, so that the collections were to be made by the Treasury. But the contract in fact signed authorized Sanborn to make the collections, and required the Treasury officials to assist him.
The Committee further called attention to the fact that the law provided that no person should be employed who should not have fully set forth in a written statement under oath the character of the claim out of which he proposed to recover or assist in recovering the moneys for the United States, the laws by the violation of which the same had been withheld, and the name of the person, firm or corporation having withheld such moneys. This provision was disregarded utterly.
The Committee found that the Commissioner of Internal Revenue was not consulted in the matter, nor was any official of his Bureau, nor was he advised as to the making of the contracts or of the character of the claims, although the proper officials of the Government, referred to in the statute, could only have been the officials of the Internal Revenue Bureau. It was shown that the Commissioner of Internal Revenue wrote a letter protesting against the manner of these collections to the Secretary of the Treasury, which was never answered. The Committee found that the Commissioner was studiously ignored by the Secretary of the Treasury and the officials in his office.
The wicked and fraudulent character of the transactions is shown in the report.
When the Committee made their report the matter was debated in the House of Representatives by Governor Foster and other gentlemen who had taken part in the investigation. All these Sanborn transactions were with the Assistant Secretary in Mr. Boutwell's absence, until later Mr. Richardson became Secretary of the Treasury. The Committee unanimously agreed to report a resolution that the House had no confidence in the Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. Richardson, and demanded his removal. President Grant was notified of this conclusion. He sent for the members of the Committee and personally urged them to withhold the resolution, and offered that the Secretary should resign, and that he should be provided for in some other department of the public service. To this the Committee agreed. It was never thought that the Secretary himself profited corruptly by the transaction, but only that he had suffered himself to be hoodwinked. It was unfortunate that nearly all the persons who were connected with this transaction were from New England, most of them from Massachusetts, and several of them from Lowell.
XXIV. BENJAMIN F. BUTLER
No person can adequately comprehend the political history of Massachusetts for the thirty-five years beginning with 1850 without a knowledge of the character, career and behavior of Benjamin F. Butler. It is of course disagreeable and in most cases it would seem unmanly to speak harshly of a political antagonist who is dead. In the presence of the great reconciler, Death, ordinary human contentions and angers should be hushed. But if there be such a thing in the universe as a moral law, if the distinction between right and wrong be other than fancy or a dream, the difference between General Butler and the men who contended with him belongs not to this life alone. It relates to matters more permanent than human life. It enters into the fate of republics, and will endure after the fashion of this world passeth away.
I cannot tell the story of my life at a most important period without putting on record my estimate of him, and the nature of his influence over the youth of the Commonwealth. Besides, it is to be remembered that he took special pains to write and to leave behind him a book in which he gave his own account of the great controversies in which he engaged, and bitterly attacked some of the men who thwarted his ambitions. This book he sent to public libraries, including that of the British Museum, where he had good reason to expect it would be permanently preserved.
I shall say nothing of him which I did not say in public speeches or published letters while he was living and in the fulness of his strength, activity and power. History deals with Benedict Arnold, with Aaron Burr, with the evil counsellors of Charles I. and Charles II., with Robespierre, with Barere and with Catiline, upon their merits, and draws from their lives examples, or warnings, without considering the fact that they are dead. This especially is a duty to be performed fearlessly, though with due caution, when it is proposed in some quarters to erect monuments of statues to such men for the admiration of the youth of future generations.
Benjamin F. Butler was born November 5, 1818. He was graduated at Waterville College, now Colby University, in the year 1838. He began the practice of law in Lowell. Compared with other men of equal ability and distinction, he was never a very successful advocate. Quiet and modest men who had the confidence of the courts and juries used to win verdicts from him in fairly even cases. He was fertile in resources. He liked audacious surprises. He was seldom content to try a simple case in a simple way. So that while he succeeded in some desperate cases, he threw away a good many which with wise management he might have gained.
Butler's practice in the beginning was chiefly in the defence of criminals, or in civil cases where persons of that class were parties. There was very likely to be a dramatic scene in court when he was for the defence. His method of defence was frequently almost as objectionable as the crime he was defending. He attacked the character of honest witnesses, and of respectable persons, victims of his guilty clients, who were seeking the remedy of the law. He had many ingenious fashions of confusing or browbeating witnesses, and sometimes of misleading juries. He once asked a medical expert who undertook to testify about human anatomy, in a case of physical injury, this question: "State the origin and insertion of all the muscles of the forearm and hand from the elbow to the tips of the fingers"; and another, "Give a list of the names and the positions of all the bones in the body." This was something like asking a man who claimed to know the English language to give off hand all the words of the English language beginning with a. But it confused a worthy and respectable country doctor, and misled the jury. The best citizen of a country village, or his wife or daughter, who had to testify against a thief or burglar who had broken into a house had to encounter his ruffianly treatment on the witness stand. So Butler became a terror, not to evil-doers but to the opponents of evil-doers throughout the county of Middlesex. Few lawyers liked to encounter his rough speech and his ugly personalities.
He was a Democrat in politics and became quite popular with the poorer class of foreign immigrants who gathered in manufacturing towns and cities like Lowell. He had at first little success in politics for the reason that his party was a small minority in Massachusetts. He was elected to the House of Representatives for the Legislature of 1853. During that session there was a memorable struggle on the part of the Whigs to repeal so much of the act providing for an election of delegates to a Constitutional convention as required the election to be by secret ballot. There was also, as an incident of this struggle, an angry contest in the joint convention of the two Houses held for the purpose of electing some officers required by the Constitution to be chosen by joint ballot. The dispute related to the extent of the authority of the President of the Senate, as presiding officer, to control the joint assembly. Butler was conspicuous in that scene of turbulence and disorder. On the occasion of some ruling by the Whig Speaker, Mr. George Bliss, a worthy and respectable old gentleman, Butler called out in a loud voice: "I should like to knife that old cuss." That utterance was quoted not only all over the Union, but in foreign countries, in England, and on the continent, and in the West Indies, as a proof of the degradation and licentiousness of popular governments. It is a singular fact that a like question as to the authority of the presiding officer of a joint convention of two legislative bodies came up in Congress when the electoral vote was counted, at the time of the election of General Grant in 1868. Butler repeated on a larger stage his disorderly conduct, until Schuyler Colfax, Speaker of the House--although Mr. Wade, President of the Senate, was then presiding over the joint convention--resumed the chair of the House, in order, as Mr. Blaine described it afterward, "to chastise the insolence of the member from Massachusetts."
He was chosen in 1860, when the Democratic Party was divided between the supporters of Douglas and the supporters of Breckenridge, a delegate to the National Convention at Charleston, South Carolina, by the Douglas Democrats of Massachusetts, under instructions to vote for Douglas. Instead, he voted thirty- seven times for Jefferson Davis. There has been but one other instance, I believe, in the history of Massachusetts of such a betrayal of trust. That other related not to candidates but to principles.
Under our political arrangements the presidential elector is but a scribe. He exercises no discretion, but only records the will of the people who elect him. The real selection of the president is made by the nominating conventions. The nominee of the party having a majority becomes the president. A breach of trust by a delegate to a nominating convention is an act of dishonor of the same class with that to which no presidential elector in the United States has yet stooped-- a breach of trust by an elector.
General Butler's career upon the national stage began with the episode at Charleston. From that time until his death he was a very conspicuous figure in the eyes of the whole country. There are two or three public services for which he deserves credit. They ought not to be omitted in any fair sketch of his life and character.
First. When, in the earlier days of the Rebellion, there was a doubt whether the Democratic Party would rally to the support of the country, he promptly offered his services. His example was of great importance in determining the question whether the war of sections was also to be a war of parties. He had a large clientage, especially among that class of Irish Americans who were apt in Massachusetts to vote with the Democratic Party. His conduct so far was in honorable contrast with that of some of his influential political associates, and that of some of the old Whigs who never got over their chagrin at the success of the Republican Party.
Second. When the question what would be the treatment of the negroes by the commanders of the Union army was doubtful, and when many persons wished to conciliate the old slaveholders in the border states by disclaiming any purpose of meddling with the institution of slavery, General Butler made a bright and important contribution to the discussion by declaring the negro "contraband of war." I do not know whether this phrase was original with him or no. It has been claimed that he borrowed it. But he undoubtedly made it famous. This tended somewhat to obliterate the effect of the shock caused to the lovers of liberty by his offer to the Governor of Maryland on the day his regiment landed at Annapolis, of his own services and those of the forces under his command, to put down any slave insurrection, in case the negro people should attempt to assert their heaven-born rights.
Governor Andrew wrote to General Butler censuring his offer of the use of the Massachusetts troops, as the first operation of the war, to improve the security of rebels that they might prosecute with more energy their attacks upon the Federal government. The Governor adds: "I can perceive no reason of military policy why a force summoned to the defence of the Federal Government, at this moment of all others, should be offered or diverted from its immediate duty to help rebels, who stand with arms in their hands, in obstructing its progress toward the city of Washington." General Butler answered that "if the contest were to be prosecuted by letting loose the slaves, some instrument other than myself must be found to carry it on." He had been, with a large part of his party, an advocate and supporter of the Fugitive Slave Law, in the days before the war.
Third. He governed the rebel city of New Orleans with great vigor. He understood how to deal with a turbulent and ugly populace. He was not imposed upon by shams or pretences, and treated the old Southern Democracy with little respect. It is probable that his vigorous remedy saved the city from yellow fever.
Fourth. Another thing should be added to his credit, not of moral quality, but of that quality which accounts largely and naturally for his influence with the people. He had a gift of clear, racy and simple speech. He could convey his thought to the apprehension of common men without any loss in the process. His style was of the same class with that of William Cobbett and Horace Greeley, without ornament, not very copious, but simple, clear and vigorous. When these things have been said, nothing remains to be said in his favor.
He had a ready, though rough and coarse wit, suited to the tastes of illiterate audiences and to that class of men who are always delighted when anything is said in disparagement of anybody. I recall two or three examples. He was rather fond of appropriating the bright sayings of others, whether jesting or serious, and claiming credit for them. But he also had a capacity of his own for such things.
I heard him argue a case involving the constitutionality of the bill to annex Charlestown to Boston, before the Supreme Court of Massachusetts. He was interrupted by the Mayor, who was on the other side, a fussy and self-important little person. Butler made the point that the meetings at which the citizens had voted for annexation had not been legal, the notice being not sufficient. The Mayor, who had said it was the practice in Charlestown to hold public meetings on a notice not longer than the one in question. He added: "We only gave a week's notice for our election of Mayor." Butler looked at him a moment, and said: "I should think they got up their Mayor on short notice."
His thrust at S. S. Cox in the House of Representatives attracted the attention of the country. It was in a five-minute debate. Cox had attacked Butler savagely. Butler replied, taking up nearly the whole five minutes with arguing the question before the House, taking no notice of Cox till just he was about to finish. He then said: "There is no need for me to answer the gentleman from New York. Every negro minstrel just now is singing the answer, and the hand organs are playing the tune, 'Shoo Fly, don't bodder me.'"
In the Constitutional Convention of Massachusetts twenty- seven different schemes for a system of representation were pressed. Somebody moved to refer them all to a committee to consist of the persons who had proposed the schemes. "As well refer twenty-seven babies to their twenty-seven mothers to decide which is the prettiest," exclaimed Butler.
His military career was, with the exception I have stated, disgraceful to himself and unfortunate to the country. From the beginning of Butler's recruiting for the war, wherever he was in command came rumors of jobs, frauds, trading with the rebels through the lines, and the putting of unfit persons in responsible positions. The scandal became so great that Governor Andrew--than whom there was never a truer, nobler, braver or more upright man in the executive chair of any State in this country--was compelled to put on public record his indignant denunciation. He said in a letter to Charles Sumner and Henry Wilson, Senators in Congress, December 21, 1861:
"I am compelled to declare with great reluctance and regret, that the course of proceeding under Major-General Butler in this Commonwealth seems to have been designed and adapted simply to afford means to persons of bad character to make money unscrupulously, and to encourage men whose unfitness had excluded them from any appointment by me to the volunteer militia service, to hope for such appointment over Massachusetts troops from other authority than that of the Executive himself."*
[Footnote] * Schouler's "Massachusetts in the War," Vol. I., p. 276. [End of Footnote]
The first considerable military operation of which he took charge was a movement upon the rebel forces at Big Bethel. It was rash, unskiful, blundering and lacking both in perseverance and courage. His troops were repulsed with great and needless slaughter.
It is a doubtful and debated question whether General Butler was personally to blame for this terrible and disgraceful repulse. If it were only his misfortune, it is a sample of the misfortunes which attended him throughout the war. It would not have happened to a great or even a fairly good general officer. The best that can be said for him is that if he were without personal blame, that it is the chief incident of a campaign which he went through without credit.
But the worst example of timidity and inefficiency in American military history, not excepting Hull's surrender, was the attempt and repulse at Fort Fisher. I do not mean when I say timidity, personal cowardice. But I mean the fear of the ordinary risks which accompany every bold and successful operation in war. This timidity is not infrequently, as it was in this case, characteristic of men who thrust themselves into places for which they are not fit.
It was highly important to capture Wilmington, of which Fort Fisher was the key. It was the last remaining gateway for the admission of necessary supplies and ammunitions of war to the rebellious States from the outer world. It was a military position of great importance, a chief centre of the rebellion, and a great object in our military operations. General Butler entered upon this undertaking with every advantage. He had special detailed instructions from Grant, the greatest living military commander; and he had under him and to cooperate with him Admiral Porter who, with one possible exception, was the ablest naval commander in our service.
Wilmington was stripped of troops. The fort was garrisoned by four companies of infantry and one light battery. With all the reinforcements which the enemy could muster but a thousand and seventy-seven men were in the fort. The greatest armada ever in American waters was under Butler's command-- fifty vessels, thirty-three for attack and seventeen in reserve, including four iron-clads. The iron-clads opened fire upon the fort, throwing one hundred and fifteen shells a minute.
"Fort Fisher replied at once with all its guns. But those on the northeast face were silenced almost as soon as the monitors opened their terrific fire, and by the time the last of the large vessels had anchored and got their batteries into play, only one or two of the enemy's guns were able to reply. The shower of shells had driven the gunners to the bomb-proofs. In one hour and fifteen minutes after the first gun was fired, not a shot came from the fort. Two magazines had been blown up, and the fort set on fire in several places. Such a torrent of missiles was falling and bursting that it was impossible for anything human to stand."*
[Footnote] * Badeau's "Military History of General Grant," Vol. 3, p. 314. [End of Footnote]
In this condition of things General Butler arrived upon the scene. Not a soldier had been hurt on the Union side.
"General Curtis was now within fifty yards of the fort, and sent word to General Ames that he could take the work, whereupon Ames, not knowing Butler's determination, gave orders for an assault. Curtis at once moved forward, but by the time he reached his position, night had come on, and the fleet had nearly ceased its fire .... At this juncture Butler's orders to reembark arrived, and no assault was made. Curtis and the officers with him, declared that the fort could have been carried; that at the moment they were recalled, they virtually had possession, having actually approached so close that a rebel flag had been snatched from the parapet and a horse brought away from the inside stockade.
"That night Butler informed the Admiral that he and Weitzel were of the opinion that the place could not be carried by assault .... I shall therefore sail, he said, for Hampton Roads as soon as the transport fleet can be got in order."*
[Footnote] * Ibid., p. 317. [End of Footnote]
"Porter replied that he could fire much faster than he had been doing, and would keep the enemy from showing himself until our men were within twenty yards of the fort, and he begged that Butler would leave some brave fellows like those who had snatched the flag from the parapet and taken the horse from the fort."
Butler was unchangeable. He got all his troops aboard, except Curtis's brigade, and started back. In doing this Butler made a fearful mistake. "My instructions to the officer who went in command of the expedition," says General Grant, "were explicit in the statement that to effect a landing would be of itself a great victory, and if one should be effected, the foothold must not be relinquished; on the contrary, a regular siege of the fort must be commenced and, to guard against interference by reason of storms, supplies of provisions must be laid in as soon as they could be got on shore. But Butler seems to have lost sight of this part of his instructions, and was back at Fort Monroe on the 28th."*
[Footnote] * Grant's "Memoirs," Vol. II., p. 394. [End of Footnote]
The Admiral, however, was of a different mind from Butler and replied to him: "I have ordered the largest vessels to proceed off Beaufort, and fill up with ammunition, to be ready for another attack, in case it is decided to proceed with this matter by making other arrangements. We have not commenced firing rapidly yet, and could keep any rebels inside from showing their heads, until an assaulting column was within twenty yards of the works. I wish some more young gallant fellows had followed the officer who took the flag from the parapet, and the brave fellow who brought the horse from the fort. I think they would have found it an easier conquest than is supposed."*
[Footnote] * Ibid., Badeau, p. 318. [End of Footnote]
"The Wilmington expedition has proven a gross and culpable failure. Many of the troops are back here. Delays and free talk of the object of the expedition enabled the enemy to move troops to Wilmington to defeat it. After the expedition started from Fort Monroe, three days of fine weather were squandered, during which the enemy was without a force to protect himself. Who is to blame, will, I hope, be known."*
[Footnote] * Ibid., p. 318. [End of Footnote]
Grant's statement, just quoted, was made when he had heard Butler's side of the story alone. What he thought when he had heard the whole story will appear a little later.
Admiral Porter said, in his official dispatch: "My dispatch of yesterday will give you an account of the operations, but will scarcely give you an idea of my disappointment at the conduct of the army authorities in not attempting to take possession of the fort . . . . Had the army made a show of surrounding it, it would have been ours; but nothing of the kind was done. The men landed, reconnoitred, and, hearing that the enemy were massing troops somewhere, the orders were given to reembark . . . . There never was a fort that invited soldiers to walk in and take possession more plainly than Fort Fisher . . . . It can be taken at any moment in one hour's time if the right man is sent with the troops."
On the 30th of December Grant sent this message to Porter:
"Please hold on wherever you are for a few days, and I will endeavor to be back again, with an increased force, and without the former commander."
Grant at once took measures for renewing the attack and for changing the commander. On the 31st of December the Secretary of the Navy telegraphs to Porter: "Lieutenant-General Grant will send immediately a competent force, properly commanded, to cooperate in the capture of the defences of Federal Point."
So in every instance in which the head of the military or naval department of this country issued an order to cooperate in this expedition he found it necessary to assure the officer to whom he gave his orders that the expedition would be properly commanded. The Secretary adds in his dispatch to Admiral Porter: "The Department is perfectly satisfied with your efforts thus far." On the next day Porter writes to General Grant: "I have just received yours of December 30th. I shall be all ready; and thank God we are not to leave here with so easy a victory at hand. Thank you for so promptly trying to rectify the blunder so lately committed. I knew you would do it." He adds, speaking of the late expedition: "We lost one man killed. You may judge what a simple business it was."
On the 2d of January Grant directs that Terry, who is to command this new expedition, be sent to City Point to see him. "I cannot go myself," he adds to the Secretary of War, "so long as Butler would be left in command."
January 4th, the next day but one, Grant asks for the removal of Butler. He says: "I am constrained to request the removal of Major-General Butler from the command of the department of Virginia and North Carolina. I do this with reluctance, but the good of the service requires it. In my absence General Butler necessarily commands, and there is a lack of confidence felt in his military ability, making him an unsafe commander for a large army. His administration of the affairs of his department is also objectionable."
Stanton had just left the capital on a visit to Sherman, at Savannah, and this letter at first received no answer; but Grant was very much in earnest, and on the sixth he telegraphed direct to the President: "I wrote a letter to the Secretary of War, which was mailed yesterday, asking to have General Butler removed from command. Learning that the Secretary left Washington yesterday, I telegraph you asking that prompt action be taken in this matter."
That was practically the end of Butler's military service. He never received another command.
There is no country in the world, other than ours, where an officer guilty of such conduct, whether it came from incapacity or cowardice, would not have been promptly cashiered and probably shot. This would have been true, as in the case of Admiral Keppel, if his fault had been merely a failure to attack. But Butler's fault was an express disobedience of orders. The order which he disobeyed was unknown to the subordinate on whose advice he claimed to have relied. General Grant expressly ordered him that in case of failure to attack the fort by assault, he should remain and entrench his troops on the peninsula, and cooperate with the fleet for the reduction of the place. When Grant learned the circumstances he declared that, in leaving after he had landed, Butler had violated his express orders.
It is a source of just pride that a New England commander, and one of Massachusetts descent, General Terry, was successful in the new attempt. Grant's instructions to him said: "I have served with Admiral Porter, and know that you can rely on his judgment and his nerve to undertake what he proposes . . . . The first object to be attained is to get a firm position on the spit of land on which Fort Fisher is built, from which you can operate against the fort. You want to look to the practicability of receiving your supplies, and to defending yourself against superior forces sent against you by any of the avenues left open to the enemy. If such a position can be obtained, the siege of Fort Fisher will not be abandoned until its reduction can be accomplished, or another plan of campaign is ordered from these headquarters."
The fort which had enabled 397 vessels to pass the blockade was taken by a great New England Captain, and largely by New England troops. Butler made one contribution, and only one, to that victory. That contribution was his absence. It was a curious coincidence which would have brought a blush of shame upon any forehead but his, that when he was testifying before an investigating committee of Congress, who were inquiring into the cause of his great and shameful failure to take the fort, and just after he had testified that Fort Fisher was impregnable and that it was impossible for any Union force to take it, a dispatch was received in the Committee Room announcing its fall.
General Grant says in his "Memoirs":
"I had no idea of General Butler accompanying the expedition until the evening before it got off from Bermuda Hundred, and then did not dream but that General Weitzel had received all the instructions, and would be in command. I rather formed the idea that General Butler was actuated by a desire to witness the effect of the explosion of the powder-boat. The expedition was detained several days at Hampton Roads, waiting the loading of the powder-boat. The importance of getting the Wilmington expedition off without any delay, with or without the powder- boat, had been urged upon General Butler. The powder-boat was exploded on the morning of the 24th, before the return of General Butler from Beaufort; but it would seem, from the notice taken of it in the Southern newspapers, that he enemy were never enlightened as to the object of the explosion until they were informed by the Northern press."*
[Footnote] * "Personal Memoirs, U. S. Grant," p. 604 appendix. [End of Footnote]
"General Butler, in direct violation of the instructions given, ordered the reembarkation of the troops and the return of the expedition."*
[Footnote] * Ibid., p. 605. [End of Footnote]
"I advised Admiral Porter to hold on, and that I would send a force and make another attempt to take the place. This time I selected Major-General A. H. Terry to command the expedition." "At my request Major-General B. F. Butler was relieved."*
[Footnote] * Ibid., p. 607. [End of Footnote]
I will not undertake to give a detailed account of the blundering strategy of what General Grant aptly called the "Bottling up at Bermuda Hundred" which enabled a powerful Union army to be held in check by a small Confederate force, leaving free the bulk of their army for hostile operations against the Union forces.
So the contribution of General Butler's military genius to the success of the United States in the war consisted of a scheme to blow up a powder-boat in the capture of Fort Fisher, somewhat after the Chinese fashion of warfare, which General Grant said hardly had the effect to excite the curiosity of the occupants of the fort which it had been intended to demolish; and of his scheme of engineering at Dutch Gap and Bermuda Hundred.
General Grant got tired of him at last and ordered him to report at Lowell. So ended the military career of incompetence, boasting and failure.
Massachusetts soldiers from those of the humblest origin to those who came from the most cultivated circles have always had the reputation of gentlemen. I know of but one conspicuous exception in her entire military history. During the trial of Andrew Johnson, Butler, who was one of the managers, employed spies to visit, in his absence, the room of William M. Evarts, counsel for the President, and to search his waste basket in the hope of spying upon his correspondence. Of this he shamelessly afterward boasted. Later he employed dishonest persons to get from the wires the private telegraphic dispatches of Henry L. Pierce, then his colleague in the House of Representatives, sent to the Hon. W. W. Rice at Worcester.
But this is not all. Wherever Butler is found in military command there were constant rumors of the same story which Governor Andrew told in the beginning. It is like the ointment of the hand which bewrayeth itself. Jobs, fraudulent contracts, trading through the lines, relatives enriched by public plunder, corrupt understanding with the enemy. These stories pursued him to New Orleans and from New Orleans back to Lowell. Is there another Union General, at least was there ever another Massachusetts General to whose integrity such suspicion attached? He scarcely undertook to discuss the matter himself. After the war a New Orleans bank, on which Butler had made a requisition for eighty thousand dollars in gold, employed the late Edwards Pierpont to bring an action against General Butler on the ground that the money had never been paid over to the Government, but that he had kept it himself. Butler saw the counsel for the plaintiffs and said he had received the money in an official capacity and had paid it over to the United States. Mr. Pierpont answered: "If you will show that, it will constitute a good defence." In the course of the conversation Pierpont said: "Your neighbors in Lowell will not think very well of it when they see you riding in your carriage through the streets, and know it was paid for out of the money you have taken unlawfully from this bank." Before the time came for the trial Butler surrendered and paid over the money. After the matter was settled he said to Mr. Pierpont: "Well, you beat me. But I want to tell you that you made one mistake. You said the people of Lowell would not think very highly of me when they saw me riding through the streets in my carriage and knew it was paid for by the money of this bank. The people would think I was a fool for not having taken twice as much."
General Butler was appointed treasurer of the National Soldiers' Home. He mingled the money of that institution with his own, got the use of it, got interest upon it, for which he never accounted. An attempt was made to investigate his accounts and he refused on the ground that he could not do it without showing his private account books, which he was not compelled to do.
He had a powerful political influence which made him an object of terror to timid and ambitious men. So, much to the shame of our public authorities, the investigation was not pressed. He was allowed to pay over only such sum as he himself admitted to be due.
General Butler's chief title to distinction in political life was a scheme which Massachusetts has pronounced a scheme of dishonesty and infamy in every method by which her sentiment can be made known. This scheme was to pay off the national debt and all other debts public and private, including all widows' and soldiers' pensions, in irredeemable paper money. He proposed to issue a series of government bonds bearing interest, payable like the principal, in greenbacks, and providing that the greenbacks should never be redeemed, but that the holder might at any time, on demand, get from the Treasury the equivalent in bonds. This scheme had been announced by General Butler for several years before the Presidential election of 1876. In that year General Butler, who had been defeated for reelection to Congress from the Essex district in 1874, was a candidate for the Republican nomination in the Middlesex district, which included his home in Lowell. There was much opposition to him. But the party feeling was very strong and no other person of large enough reputation or of conspicuous ability could be found to take the Republican nomination. General Butler was accordingly nominated with the distinct promise on his part that he would surrender his plans in regard to finance out of deference to the known wishes of his constituents, and would act with the Republican Party upon financial questions. To this pledge he owed, if not his nomination and election, certainly his great majority in the convention and at the polls. This pledge, as in the case of the trust which had been committed to him by the Douglas Democrats before the war, he most unblushingly and shamelessly violated. He renewed and advocated his fiat money scheme. The result was that at the next convention of the Republican Party in his district the following resolution was passed, without a dissenting vote:
"Resolved, That we warn the people of the Commonwealth, whose votes General Butler is now soliciting by promises to serve them faithfully, that his professions when seeking office have been found in our experience to be easily made and as easily repudiated when the time for redeeming them came.
"That they are neither gold nor good paper, but are a kind of fiat currency, having no intrinsic character, being cheap, delusive, irredeemable and worthless."
This convention represented a large and overwhelming majority of the people of the Middlesex district. It was made up as such conventions in Massachusetts always are made up, of men of high standing and character and of great personal worth. Can there be found in the history of Massachusetts such a record of shameless dishonor and such a terrible indictment and conviction?
A like judgment was expressed a little later by Mr. Edward Avery, a Democrat of high standing, who declared that the Democratic Party had found his promises and pledges could not be trusted.
He was once elected Governor. It so chanced that the Republican Party had been disappointed by the defeat in their State Convention of Mr. Crapo, a gentleman of the highest standing, who had rendered conspicuous service to his country in the National House of Representatives, and who was doubtless the choice of a majority of his party. His successful competitor was a man of much personal worth and highly esteemed. But it was thought that his nomination had been compassed by skilful political management by which the will of the people had been baffled and defeated, and many Republicans declined to vote. There was a certain curiosity, as many men expressed it, to see what Butler would do and to test his professions of reform, with a feeling that he would be quite harmless with a Republican Legislature and Council. So the experiment was tried. The people of the Commonwealth had no desire to try it a second time. The matter of General Butler's title to public respect, if the rest of his record could be erased as by a wet sponge, might be determined by the experience of a single year. There was never such an exhibition as that made by him in the executive chair of Massachusetts. He proceeded to attack, to promote his own ambitions, the fair name and fame of the Commonwealth itself. One of his speeches was so gross in its nature that the principal Democratic paper of Boston refused to print it, declaring it unfit for publication.
General Butler declared in one of his public speeches when a candidate for Governor, thereby insulting the Commonwealth, especially the citizen-soldiery of Massachusetts, that the soldiers of Massachusetts "needed but a word from him to clean out the State House."
But he had his eye on a still higher prize. He hoped to compass the Democratic nomination for the Presidency. That nomination depended on his conciliating the old Democratic, rebel element at the South, then powerful in National Democratic councils. He made an attack upon the administration of the State Almshouse at Tewksbury, in which he declared that "the selling and tanning of human skins was an established industry in Massachusetts." He charged the Commonwealth with desecrating the graves and selling the bodies of deceased inmates of her public institutions for money. General Butler's charges were refuted to the public satisfaction by the simple certificate of Mrs. Clara Leonard, a member of the State Board of Lunacy and Charities, who knew all about the matter, and in whose high integrity and capacity to decide the question everybody had implicit confidence.
There was an investigation, and Butler signally failed to sustain himself. One incident at the hearing revealed perfectly his character and that of his affected sympathy for downtrodden humanity. Some human remains were brought into the presence of the committee, which it was alleged had come from the almshouse. Butler was in an angry mood at something that had occurred and called out peremptorily: "Give me the skin that came off the nigger."
I will not undertake myself to impute the motive which inspired this attack upon his own State. Whether it were anger inspired by the knowledge of the estimate in which the majority of her people held him; whether it were a gross nature with blunted sensibilities; whether these expressions were uttered in haste or anger, I will not say. The Honorable William P. Frye, an able and justly distinguished Representative and Senator from Maine, with an intimate knowledge of General Butler, which came from a long association in the public service, charged General Butler in a public speech in Massachusetts, in the autumn of 1883, in my hearing, what he repeated at many places elsewhere in the Commonwealth--that Butler had made this foul charge against Massachusetts in order that he might win the favor of the slave-holding and rebel Democratic elements of the South by catering to their prejudices against her. If that be true, this charge of General Butler's is the most disgraceful single utterance that ever came from American lips. If it be not true, what must be the nature of which the gentle, charitable and kindly Senator Frye could believe it true after an intimate knowledge so many years?
General Butler was disappointed in his expectation of Democratic support in the country at large. He had thereafter no rest in politics for the sole of his foot. The remainder of his life was spent in speculation and manufacturing enterprises.
I repeat what I said of General Butler in his lifetime, when he was at the height of his power, with a full knowledge of his vindictive character, that the success of his attempt to use and consolidate the political forces of Massachusetts would have been the corruption of her youth, the destruction of everything valuable in her character, and the establishment at the mouth of the Charles River of another New York with its frauds, Tweed rings and scandals.
General Butler made an earnest effort to get the Republican nomination for Governor in 1871. He had built up what was called a Butler party, in which he had had the aid of the National Administration, and of all persons whom he could either seduce by hope of reward or terrify by fear of his vengeance. It was not a question in considering candidacy for office with him whether the man had rendered honest service in civil or in military life, whether he was a man of honor or of good or bad character, but only whether he was a Butler man. He conducted his own campaign for Governor in 1871 and again in 1873. In the former he summoned his adherents to the State Convention, issuing a circular in which he advised them to bring three days' rations in the expectation of a long and angry struggle.
I was invited by the State Central Committee to preside at the Convention of 1871. It was quite likely that the Convention might break up in disorder and the result would be two factions, each claiming to be the regular Republican organization. I told the gentlemen of the State Central Committee, who communicated to me their desire, that I would do it on condition that there should be provided one hundred skilled and trustworthy police officers who would obey my orders, and, if it became necessary, would remove from the hall General Butler or any other person who should defy the authority of the Convention. This the committee promised to do. This promise was in substance kept. The gentleman who made it as the organ of the State Central Committee had himself been for many years a sheriff of the County of Worcester, and had been a General in the Civil War, and was a man of large capacity for handling disorderly assemblies. He came to me afterward and said that in a hall like Mechanics Hall a well-disciplined force of not more than fifty men would be better for the purpose of keeping order than a more numerous one, and he had taken the liberty of departing from our agreement to that extent. To this I assented.
When I went to the Hall that morning in taking leave of my wife I told her that the chances were that I should come home the most disgraced man in Massachusetts. If General Butler succeeded in breaking up the Convention in disorder the blame would be laid upon the presiding officer.
But we got through safely. General Butler had calculated that his opponents, who were divided among several candidates, could not agree upon any one. But such an agreement was effected upon William B. Washburn. His plan then, I supposed, was to find some excuse for breaking up the Convention under circumstances which would enable him to claim to President Grant that he represented the regular Republican organization and that his opponents were the bolters. My duty on the other hand was so to conduct the Convention that there should be no pretext on his part for such a course. The Convention was in continuous session from 11 o'clock in the forenoon until half-past one next morning. There were several contests in which Butler conducted the case on his own side. But his opponents held together and nominated William B. Washburn. With the exception of the National Convention of 1880, at which I also presided, this was the most difficult duty in the way of presiding over a deliberative assembly which ever fell upon any person in this country so far as I know.
In the year 1873 General Butler made another attempt to get the Republican nomination for Governor. A meeting was called at Hamilton Hall, in Boston, of a few persons opposed to his candidacy, which resulted in an address to the people recommending the reelection of Mr. Washburn. I signed the address of which I wrote a few sentences. Judge Hoar made a bright and characteristic speech in which he said that "the people of Massachusetts would not yield the office of Governor to a Tichborne claimant, whether with or without a bond." This name, "the Claimant," stuck to Butler for the rest of his life.
In 1871 my opposition to General Butler and support of Governor Washburn was well known. I announced my preference for the latter in a letter to the Springfield Republican. This did not occasion any personal quarrel with Butler, although our relations were never cordial. But in 1873 he was very angry with the persons who signed the address in favor of the renomination of Governor Washburn. He wrote a letter to the people of Massachusetts in which he angrily attacked many persons in the Republican party whom he believed to be his opponents. Among them he bitterly attacked me. He sent a copy of this letter in the form of a broadside to every newspaper in Massachusetts, I believe, and had it folded into every copy of the paper. I instantly replied, setting forth as well as I could the character and quality of General Butler and the nature of his influence upon the youth of the Commonwealth. The letter contained the following sentences:
"When General Butler proposed to pay off our national debt in irredeemable paper, General Grant silenced him with the ringing sentence in his inaugural, 'Let it be understood that no repudiator of one farthing of our public debt will be trusted in public place,' because he knew that he was trying to tempt this people to escape from a burden by a mean and base act.
"He has quarrelled with Grant and Wilson, and Colfax and Blaine, and Andrew, and Sumner, and the Washburnes, and Bingham, and Schenck, and Dawes, because he is quarrelsome. They have been compelled, each in his own way, to chastise and punish him because he deserved to be whipped.
"Among the unprincipled adventurers who gained favor in the corrupt times of the Stuarts, and whose evil counsels brought Charles the First to his doom, the most notorious was Buckingham. Gaining favor by lending himself as the subservient tool in accomplishing every evil purpose: restless, ambitious, unscrupulous, selfish, revengeful, thrusting himself into military employments for which he was unfit and from which he was compelled to retire in disgrace, getting a 'competent private fortune' by dishonest practices, which he lavished in overcoming the virtue of timid and venal men, his name is the shame of England. Nugent says of him: 'His shrewdness in judging of men was employed only to enable him to found his influence upon their weaknesses and vices; so that, when opposed to men of capacity, or thwarted by what remained of public virtue in the country, he found himself in conflict with weapons of which he knew not the use; and his counsels were dangerous, and his administration unprosperous. His only wisdom was the craft with which he managed weak or bad men, and his only virtue the courage with which he overawed timid ones.' Such counsellors, fatal to a monarch, are full of peril to a republic. Such men can only prosper in times of public corruption.
"General Butler has done, unless he has egregiously imposed upon us, two things well. He out-blackguarded a New York mob in 1864, and with a United States army at his back, he kept down a rebel city in 1862. Massachusetts is not likely soon to stand in need of either of these processes. But he never has accomplished anything else of much importance when his point could not be carried by sheer blustering. The history of all his other attempts may be comprised in three words-- Swagger, quarrel, failure.
"Other men have aspired before now to the office of Governor of Massachusetts. It is an honorable ambition. They were content to leave their claims to be set forth by others, and were glad to waive them if by so doing they could promote the harmony of the party. This man seeks nothing but his own selfish ends, utterly regardless of the wishes, the welfare, or the harmony of the great party to which he professes to belong. The people of Massachusetts have sometimes elected to this high office men who in some particulars are not deserving of respect. But the people respected them, and chose them because they deemed them worthy, and the persons so chosen endeavored to deserve the public confidence. This man, if he is chosen at all, is to be chosen without having the respect of the men to whom he looks for support. It would be harder to find a leading supporter of General Butler who will say that he deems him honest, truthful, disinterested, or incapable of using power to gratify both his ambition and his revenge. The men whom General Butler will beat are the men whom he persuades to support him."
The morning after his defeat in the State Convention each of the principal morning papers in Boston headed its account of the Convention with the words, "Swagger, Quarrel, Failure."
General Butler made no further reply by letter. But he came to Worcester, where I dwelt, and addressed an enormous meeting in Mechanics Hall. I suppose many more people than those that got in were obliged to go away because the Hall would not hold them. The General devoted his speech largely to a powerful and bitter attack upon me. I replied at a meeting at the same place a few days after. My speech ended with the following sentences. After describing the heroism of the youth of Worcester in the battle with slavery and the battle with Rebellion, I added:
"And now, after the war, another enemy, unarmed, but bringing even greater danger, menaces the Republic. The battle with corruption is the duty of the hour. The blow which rebellion aimed at the Nation's life you could ward off. The wounds it inflicted are already in the process of cure. But this poison, this rotting from the core, is far more dangerous to the Republic. There is already danger that the operations of the Tweeds and Goulds in New York may be repeated on a more gigantic scale at the National capital. The mighty railroads to whom our public domain has been so lavishly granted, in some cases I doubt not, wisely, afford infinite opportunity for plunder and corruption. All these are at the cost of the labor of the country. The increased tax falls in the end on the consumer. With the waste of our public land are diminished the resources of the laborer. Following bad precedents Congress has itself been induced to set the pernicious example of which you have heard so much discussion. (This referred to the measure known as the Salary Grab.) The author of the measure tells you that he knew what he was doing, and if you didn't like it you could vote against him. Are you quite ready to declare to the country that in this great contest with extravagance and corruption, wherever the Republicans of the rest of the country may array themselves, the Republicans of Massachusetts fight under the banner of General Butler?
"You are doubtless familiar with Victor Hugo's description of the marine monster said to be found in the vicinity of the Channel islands, and known as the Devil Fish. It is apparently formed of an almost transparent jelly, colorless, almost indistinguishable from the water which surrounds it, armed with long slender limbs, numerous as the feet of the centipede, and strong in their grasp as hands of iron. The bather in those waters habitually provides himself with a long keen blade, which, when he finds himself encountered by one of these monsters, he elevates above his head in his extended right hand. As the creature approaches, the bather feels himself slowly enveloped in the powerful limbs which twine about him, holding him in their iron grasp. Suddenly a head appears, and drawing itself nearer the animal seeks to fasten its mouth upon the lips of the victim and deprive him of life. At this moment the bather strikes with his knife into the head of the monster. Instantly the limbs relax their hold, the hideous creature slowly disappears, and the bather is left unharmed and safe. Our Republic finds itself to- day assailed by a monster as dangerous, unpalpable, soft, horrible but strong--strong as hands of iron. The limbs of this monster of Corruption have seized upon our noble Republic, but at last there is a head coming in sight, and I think the Republicans of Massachusetts are able to bear the knife and strike the blow which will destroy its horrible life so that it shall fall powerless forever!"
That closed the discussion so far as we were concerned for that campaign.
In 1876 Judge Hoar, who had been, very much against his will, elected to Congress from the Middlesex District declined a renomination. General Butler, who had been defeated at the polls in the Essex District two years before was thereupon nominated, having pledged himself to the Republicans that he would abandon his fiat money doctrines in obedience to the declared will of the people; a pledge which as stated above he shamefully violated. There was no expectation of defeating him. But some few Republicans who were unwilling to support him desired a candidate on whom to unite, and they applied to Judge Hoar. He said he had no desire to go to Congress. But he thought there ought to be a Republican candidate against Butler and that he had no right to ask another man to take a position from which he flinched himself, and accordingly he was nominated. But Butler was elected by a large majority.
That however was substantially the end of his relation with the Republican Party. After the Inauguration of President Hayes he tried to have the public officers in his District who had refused to support him removed. On President Hayes's refusal he left the Republican Party and became, a year or two after, the Democratic nominee for Governor for two or three years and, as has been seen, was elected in 1883. I of course supported the Republican candidate and made, I suppose, thirty or forty speeches in each of those years. He had said in explaining and defending his fiat money scheme that the word "fiat" means "let there be." God said "fiat lux," "let there be light," and there was light. He argued that fiat money was excellent from the very fact that it cost nothing and had no intrinsic value. So if a bill were lost or destroyed a new one could be supplied without cost. He also said that it would stay in the country and would not be sunk in the morasses of Asia, especially in China and India, where silver and gold were absorbed and never heard of in civilized nations afterward. I quoted these sentences with the following comment: "That, Fellow-citizens, is precisely the difference between Omnipotence and Humbug, between the Almighty and General Butler. God said let there be light and there was light. General Butler says let there be money and there is--rags. This is the first time in our history that the American workingman has been gravely asked to take for his wages money it costs nothing to make, that it is no loss to lose, that it is no gain to get, and that even a Chinaman won't touch." Butler was very angry and answered, rather irrelevantly, as it seemed to me, by saying that I did not go to the War, to which I replied as follows:
"I see that the Greenback candidate for Governor has seen fit to taunt some persons, including myself, who have ventured to exercise the privilege of free speech in this campaign, that they did not go to the war; while he boasts that he not only went to the war but hung a rebel. Those persons who did not go to the war may, perhaps, possess at least this advantage, that they can form an impartial opinion of the merits of those who did. It is the pride and the honor of this noble Commonwealth of ours, that of the hundred thousand brave soldiers and sailors she sent to the war, there was but one notorious braggart; there was but one capable of parading up and down the Commonwealth, vaunting that he had hung a man; exhibiting himself as the Jack Ketch of the rebellion. I bow reverently to the brave, modest, patriotic soldier, who, without thought of personal gain, gave youth, health, limb, life to save the country which he loved. I am willing to abide by his opinion, and to yield to him every place of honor and of office. But to you, General Butler, whose military career is made up of the blunder and slaughter of Big Bethel; of the powder explosion at Fort Fisher; of the engineering at Dutch Gap; of the "bottling-up" at Bermuda Hundred; of the trading with the rebels through the lines in North Carolina; of the scandals of New Orleans; to you, who were ordered by General Grant to go home in disgrace; to you whose best service had been, if you, too, had stayed at home, I have no such tribute to offer. When Benedict Arnold taunts Jefferson that he did not go into battle in the Revolution, when Aaron Burr taunts John Adams with want of patriotism, then it will be time for you to boast yourself over the men who performed the duties of civil life during the Rebellion."
We have had turbulent and exciting times in our State and National politics before and since that day. But I think there has been nothing in Massachusetts, and so far as I am aware there has seldom been anything in the country anywhere like the years from 1869 until 1877, when General Butler's power was at its height. You could hardly take up a morning paper without dreading that you should read of the removal from some position of honor of some brave honest soldier who had deserved well of his country, and the substitution of some disreputable person in his place. All the dishonesty of the time seemed to be combined and rallied to his support. Three of his trusted lieutenants in different parts of the Commonwealth were convicted of crime and sent to the State Prison. Another was detected in crime punishable by imprisonment in the State Prison, but escaped prosecution by a compromise. Still another was compelled to flee the country for a series of forgeries, finding refuge in a South American State with which we had no treaty of extradition. Still another was indicted for frauds which wrecked a National bank, and escaped conviction by a technicality. Still another was compelled to flee from the Commonwealth by the detection of some notorious frauds. And now more recently, in 1898, another has been arrested, a fugitive from justice, and brought back to Massachusetts, having wrecked two banks and embezzled their funds.
In the autumn of 1883 General Butler was a candidate for reelection. He was so confident that he had prepared his grounds for a magnificent illumination. But he was signally defeated. I took a leading part in the campaign. I give the following extract from my speech at Worcester:
"But we are thinking to-night of the matter of electing a Governor. Character is more important than opinion; good name to the State, as to the citizen, is better than riches. I suppose it is true of each one of you as of myself that among his chief comforts and pleasures in life is his pride in being a Massachusetts citizen. The honor and good fame of our beloved State is far above any question of party. I think I do you no more than justice when I declare that you lament as much as I do the personal character of the contest which is upon us. It has never been the habit of Republicans to deal in personalities. The Republican press and the Republican platform in Massachusetts has been singularly free from these things. What Democratic candidate can be named other than the present Governor to whom the Republicans have not delighted to pay the respect due to honorable and respected opponents. Have Gaston or Thompson or either Adams or Hancock or any of their candidates for Congress, anything to complain of in this respect? If we deal differently with General Butler, it is because the difference is in him. We have selected our own candidate on a very simple principle. In determining on whom we would confer the title, His Excellency, we have sought a man who represented in his own person our standard of excellence. We sought a man whom the fathers and mothers of the Commonwealth would be willing to hold up to their children for imitation. We sought a man, tried and proved in important public trusts, faithful, sincere, upright, downright, who would continue and maintain the honored line of Massachusetts Governors. We have found such a man in George D. Robinson. I will sum up what I have to say of Mr. Robinson by saying that he is in every respect the reverse of his antagonist. We are told that we must not discuss the record of the candidate of our antagonists before his election last year. That was all condoned. I do not concede for myself that truth is necessarily determined by majorities. I have a high respect for the people, but they do not change men's characters by their votes. But, be it so, let bygones be bygones. Let us concede that the career of our present governor as citizen and soldier and statesman furnishes a lofty example of every virtue under heaven. Let us admit that it was love of liberty that advocated the Fugitive Slave Law in the old Democratic days; that it was fidelity that was sent to Charleston, to vote for Douglas, and voted fifty-seven times for Jefferson Davis; that it was patriotism of which Governor Andrew said in 1861: 'I am compelled to declare with great reluctance and regret that the whole course of proceedings under Major General Butler in this Commonwealth seems to have been designed and adopted to afford means to persons of bad character to make money unscrupulously;' that it was good generalship that caused the blunder and slaughter of Big Bethel; that it was skilful engineering that made the canal at Dutch Gap a laughing-stock to the civilized world; that it was a great strategist that was bottled up at Bermuda Hundred; that it was courage that retreated from the uncaptured Fort Fisher; that it was purity that caused the scandals of New Orleans, and integrity that traded through the lines in North Carolina; that it was a great soldier that was ordered by General Grant to report at Lowell; that it was zeal for the public service that defended the Sanborn Contracts; that it was modesty that has gone so often up and down the State blowing his own trumpet; that it was honesty that mingled the funds of the Soldiers' Home with its own; that it was good faith that sought to juggle the public creditor out of his debt; that it was care for the poor and the working men that sought to give our laborers rags for wages and our soldiers waste paper for pensions; that it was a faithful representative that promised the men of the Middlesex District that if he might go once more to fight the Rebel brigadiers he would faithfully represent their opinions on finance and then proposed that marvellous scheme of fiat money, which he represented it would be no loss to lose and no gain to get, and that even a Chinaman would not touch, so that the same constituency demanded his resignation and 'resolved, that we warn the people of the Commonwealth, whose votes General Butler is now soliciting by promises to serve them faithfully, that his professions when seeking office have been found in our experience to be easily made and as easily repudiated when the time for redeeming them came; that they are neither gold nor good paper, but a kind of fiat currency, having no intrinsic value, cheap, delusive, irredeemable and worthless;' that it was an honest Democrat, of whom Mr. Avery, President of this year's Democratic Convention, declared that his promises and pledges could not be trusted; that it was consistency which has belonged to every party in turn. We will put the issue of this election upon the record of the year's administration. He has shown an utter want of understanding of the true theory of the Constitution. This is illustrated in his removal of Warden Earle. He told his friends at the prison that he made the removal because Earle would not obey his orders. He had no more right to give an order to Earle than to you or me. The Governor and the Council have the right to prescribe rules for the government of the prison--not the Governor. The Board of Prison Commissioners have the right to give directions to the Warden, but not the Governor. His telling Earle to obey his orders on pain of dismissal was as flagrant a violation of law and of the fundamental principles of the Constitution, as it was an injustice to as brave an officer, as honest a man as ever tied a sash around his waist. He traduced the Commonwealth in his vile Tewksbury speech. I believe every charge he made broke down on his own evidence or was thoroughly refuted. But if the thing were decent to do, it might be done decently. Those of you who have delighted to listen to the classic eloquence of Everett, to the lofty speech of Sumner, to the noble appeals of Andrew, aye, to the sincere and manly utterances of Robinson, take that speech and read it. He insulted womanhood in the person of a defenceless girl. He insulted purity by a speech so gross that the principal Democratic paper in Boston declares it unfit for circulation, and demands that it be suppressed. He insulted every colored man in the State, when, in an unguarded moment, speaking from his very soul, he called out: 'Give me the skin that came off the nigger.' He insulted the citizen soldiers of Massachusetts when he declared that they needed but a word from him to clean out the State House. He insulted the common school system of Massachusetts when he said that if his witness were a person of immoral character, the school system was responsible. He insulted the whole Commonwealth in trying to cast upon the foul imputation that she was inhuman and indifferent to her poor and unfortunate, and intimated that the tanning of human skins was a recognized Massachusetts industry. Another insult is the menace of fraud that comes from Boston. The law requires the appointment of election officers, to be chosen equally from the two great parties, and every mayor of Boston, Republican and Democrat alike, Pierce, Gaston and Green, have fairly and honorably discharged their duty. It is one of the most important trusts that can be imposed upon a public official, to guard the purity of the vote of their fellow citizens. The Republican Committee this year submitted its lists and the names upon them were changed, and other men substituted, Butler men, Democrats and criminals, all charged to the Republican account. Our neighbor, Judge Nelson, a few years ago, tried at the bar of his court a man whom Governor Butler defended. He was convicted, sentenced and went to jail. He is now out of prison, and has been substituted for a Republican, probably by the influence of his former counsel, to count the ballots of the citizens of Boston. You have heard of such proceedings in other States, but never in Massachusetts. Unless the people of this Commonwealth rise in their might and crush out this attempted fraud, they will have at the mouth of the Charles River another New York, with its frauds, Tweed rings and scandals."
He answered that by an attack on the memory of my father who had died more than twenty-five years before. Thereupon the controversy, so far as it had anything personal in it, ended.
It happened that the year when General Butler was Governor I was elected President of the Harvard Alumni Association. It was the custom of the College to invite the Governor to the dinner of the Alumni on Commencement day as the guest of the University and to confer upon him the degree of Doctor of Laws. It would have been my duty to preside at the dinner and to walk with him at the head of the procession, to have him seated by my side at the table, and to extend to him the courtesies of the University. I hardly knew what I ought to do. I must either walk with him and sit by his side in silence or with a formal and constrained courtesy which would in itself be almost an affront, or on the other hand, I must take his hand, salute him with cordiality as becomes a host on a great occasion in dealing with a distinguished guest, and converse with him as I should have conversed with other persons occupying his high place. It did not seem to me that I ought to do either, especially in the case of a man whose offence had not been merely against me, but who had made a gross and unfounded attack upon the memory of my father, and of whose personal and public character I entertained the opinion I had so often publicly expressed. Accordingly I declined to accept the office of President. My place was filled by Joseph H. Choate, who discharged the duty, of course, very much better than I could have done it.
Mr. James F. Rhodes in his able and most impartial history of the United States, speaking of the events of the summer of 1864 and the disintegrating and discouraging condition of the Army of the Potomac, says:
"Circumstances seemed to indicate the bitterness of disappointment at the failure of the high hopes and expectations which filled the soul of Grant when he crossed the Rapidan. It was commonly believed in the Army that his misfortune had driven him again to drink, and on this account and others Butler with crafty method acquired a hold on him which prevented him from acting for the best interests of the service. It is not a grateful task to relate the story of Butler using Grant as a tool to accomplish his own ends. The picture of such a relation between the two is repulsive, but it may be fraught with instruction as men of the type of Butler are never absent from our political life."*
[Footnote] * Rhodes, "History," Vol. 4, p. 493. [End of Footnote]
"Butler had some hold on the Commander of the Armies of the United States and in the interview of July 9th showed his hand."*
[Footnote] * Rhodes, Ibid., Vol. 4, p.495. [End of Footnote]
I do not suppose the secret of the hold which General Butler had upon General Grant will ever be disclosed. Butler boasted in the lobby of the House of Representatives that Grant would not dare to refuse any request of his because he had in his possession affidavits by which he could prove that Grant had been drunk on seven different occasions. This statement was repeated to Grant by a member of the House who told me of the conversation. Grant replied without manifesting any indignation, or belief or disbelief in the story: "I have refused his requests several times." In the case of almost any other person than President Grant such an answer would have been a confession of the charge. But it ought not to be so taken in his case. Unless he desired to take into his full confidence the person who was speaking to him he was in the habit of receiving most important communications with entire silence or with some simple sentence which indicated his purpose to drop the subject. My own belief is that at some time during the War, or before the War in times of discouragement Grant may have been in the habit of drinking freely and may at some time have done so to excess. During the whole time of his Presidency I had a good opportunity to observe him in personal intercourse. I was familiar with many men who were constantly in his company at all hours of the day and often far into the night. They assured me that there was no foundation for any imputation that he was in the habit of drinking to excess then. If at any time he had formed such a habit he had put it under his feet. For that I think he is entitled to greater honor than if he had never yielded to temptation. My explanation of Butler's influence over Grant is to some extent conjecture. But I believe Grant thought him a powerful political leader and that he was entitled to respect as representing the opinions of large numbers of men. Beside that Butler had a great influence over some ambitious men who were his confederates and over some timid men who were afraid of him. Their influence with Grant was on Butler's side. Then Grant was apt, as I have said in another place, to sympathize with men who were bitterly attacked, especially men who were charged with dishonesty or corruption, because such charges were made against him. So without undertaking to explain Butler's influence with Grant, I content myself with stating it and lamenting it. He led Grant to make some very bad appointments in Massachusetts which were totally repugnant to the feeling of her people. But for those appointments, in my opinion, the strong objection felt by her people to giving any President of the United States a third term would not have prevented her supporting him for renomination in 1880, a support which would have insured his success.
After President Hayes came into power General Butler tested the President's willingness to permit him to control the patronage of Massachusetts. He demanded the appointment of a man recommended by him to the office of Postmaster at Methuen. The term had expired. President Hayes carefully examined the matter in person, got a list of the principal patrons of the office, and compared it with the petitions. He determined to reappoint the incumbent, who was an excellent officer, and a Republican who had refused to vote for General Butler. The man whom General Butler recommended had lost a leg in the War. He had an artificial limb so well made that many people, even those who worked in the same shop with him, did not know that he had lost his leg. Butler went before the Senate Committee on Post Offices to get them to reject President Hayes's nominee, taking his own candidate with him. He had the man leave off his artificial leg and come on crutches to get greater sympathy. He made an earnest and angry speech before the Committee attacking President Hayes. But he made no impression, and the old Postmaster was confirmed and reappointed. Thereupon Butler left the Republican party, first declaring himself an Independent and attempting in that capacity to get elected as Governor of the State. Failing in that he avowed himself a Democrat, and was, as has been already said, elected by the Democrats in the fall of 1882. This transaction terminated his relation to the Republican Party, and his defeat for Governor terminated his political life with the exception that he was the Greenback candidate for the Presidency in 1884. But he received little support.
XXV. BELKNAP IMPEACHMENT
March 3, 1876, a message was sent to the Senate from the House of Representatives, impeaching General Belknap, the Secretary of War. He was charged with having received corruptly a large sum of money, payable in quarterly instalments, for the appointment of a Post Trader, an officer appointed by the Secretary of War. This was a very lucrative position, the profits of which depended very largely upon the Secretary. I was chosen one of the Managers of the Impeachment by the House. There was no serious question of the guilt of the Secretary. But he resigned, and his resignation was accepted, after the discovery of his misconduct, before the proceedings of impeachment were inaugurated. The whole struggle was over the question of the Constitutional right of the Senate to convict a public officer on impeachment proceedings instituted after he had left office. Upon that question I made a careful and elaborate argument. A majority of the Senate (37 to 25) were for sustaining the proceedings. But the Senators who thought the Senate had no jurisdiction to enter a judgment of guilty when the proceedings were commenced after the person left office, deemed themselves constrained to vote Not Guilty as the only mode of giving that opinion effect.
So General Belknap was acquitted for the want of the two- thirds vote for his conviction. Every Democrat voted for conviction except Mr. Eaton of Connecticut. The following Republicans voted for conviction: Booth, Cameron of Pennsylvania, Dawes, Edmunds, Hitchcock, Mitchell, Morrill, Oglesby, Robertson, Sargent, Sherman, and Wadleigh.
It is difficult to believe that the Senators who voted for acquittal were not, perhaps unconsciously, influenced by the desire to shield a political associate from punishment. The power to impeach public officers after leaving office had been exercised in England from time immemorial. It is well settled that when in the Constitution or legislation of the United States a term of English law is used, that the meaning customarily given to the term in English jurisprudence is to ascribed to it here.
The history of this clause as found in the proceedings of the Convention that framed the Constitution, makes very clear the understanding of that body. They first inserted the words: "The Senate of the United States shall have power to try all impeachments, but no person shall be convicted without the concurrence of two-thirds of the members present, which in case of impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from office and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of trust and profit under the United States." The framers of the Constitution regarded the power of impeachment as absolutely essential to the working of the Government.
That clearly gave the two Houses of Congress the common law powers of impeachment, as exercised by Parliament. At a later time there was added: "The Vice-President and all civil officers of the United States shall be removed from office on impeachment and conviction." That was added as a limitation on the tenure of office. It seems incredible that they should have intended, without debate or division, to wholly change and so greatly limit and narrow the clause previously adopted.
It is obvious that impeachment and removal from office will be in many cases an insignificant and unimportant part of the remedy as compared with perpetual disqualification from holding office. It seems incredible that it could ever have been intended that this judgment of perpetual disqualification to hold office could only be rendered when the defendant is willing, and can be avoided by his voluntary resignation.
The framers of the Constitution were very skilful Constitutional mechanics. I am satisfied that the opinion of the majority of the Senate will prevail hereafter, unless the case where the question shall come up be, like that of Belknap, strongly affected by party feeling.
President Monroe said: "The right of impeachment and of trial by the Legislature is the mainspring of the great machine of government. It is the pivot on which it turns. If preserved in full vigor, and exercised with perfect integrity, every branch will perform its duty."
I received a good many letters expressing approval of my argument. Perhaps, without inordinate vanity, I may be permitted to preserve those which follow. The approval of my honored and beloved instructor, Judge Thomas, gave me special satisfaction.
I am led to publish these letters partly because I think the opinion of the writers on the question is worth preserving for future reference, but chiefly, I believe, from what I hope will be deemed a pardonable vanity. Mr. Sumner, in editing the thirteen volumes of his speeches, has given in regard to all of them, letters from friends and correspondents, expressing his approval. I do not suppose it would ever have occurred to Daniel Webster to publish similar certificates as to any speech or act of his.
FROM GEORGE S. BOUTWELL, GOVERNOR; SECRETARY OF THE U. S. TREASURY; U. S. SENATOR, ETC., TO JUDGE E. R. HOAR.
UNITED STATES SENATE, WASHINGTON, May 8th, 1876.
My dear Judge,
It was the opinion of all who heard your brother's argument in the Belknap case that it was the best of the arguments yet given and that it will rank with the best at any time delivered in the Senate.
I do not write this because I was in any degree surprised, but it cannot be otherwise than agreeable to you to know that there is a concurrence in the view I have expressed.
Very truly, GEO. S. BOUTWELL. To The Honble E. R. Hoar, Concord, Mass.
FROM JUDGE BENJAMIN F. THOMAS OF THE SUPREME COURT OF MASSACHUSETTS.
NO. 9 PEMBERTON SQ BOSTON May 25th '76.
My Dear Sir
I am greatly obliged to you for sending me a copy of your admirable argument on the question of jurisdiction in the impeachment case.
The argument is sensible and exhaustive, the style clear, forcible and attractive and the whole tone temper and spirit becoming a jurist and statesman.
Very truly yours BENJ F. THOMAS. Hon Geo F. Hoar
FROM WILLIAM M. EVARTS, SECRETARY OF STATE; UNITED STATES SENATOR, ETC.
NEW YORK, May 22, 1876.
My dear Mr. Hoar,
I am much obliged to you for sending me your speech, as manager, on the question of jurisdiction. I had seen it applauded in the newspapers and am happy to add mine to the general suffrage. It seems to me a very complete and able presentation both of law and reasons of State on your side.
My own opinions are strongly adverse to the jurisdiction, and I should greatly lament its maintenance by the Senate. In ordinary times I should not suppose it possible, and I do not think it probable, now.
I hope the defendant's counsel presented the argument as satisfactorily from their side as you have done for yours. But I have little hope that it is so.
Yours very truly, (Signed) WM M. EVARTS. The Hon'ble Geo F. Hoar.
FROM JUDGE DWIGHT FOSTER OF THE SUPREME COURT OF MASSACHUSETTS.
BOSTON, 20 May, '76.
My Dear Sir:
I have read with satisfaction and admiration your exhaustive and conclusive argument in the Belknap impeachment case. It would have convinced me, if I had not been of your opinion already. In thought I doubted a little at first. My mind was soon satisfied that the narrow construction which left the accused to decide whether to abide his trial or by resignation to defeat the jurisdiction of the court could not possibly be correct.
Congratulating you on your success,
I am
Yours sincerely DWIGHT FOSTER Honble Geo F. Hoar
FROM CHARLES DEVENS, JR., ATTORNEY-GENERAL, ETC.
WORCESTER May 18, '76.
My Dear Hoar
I have just read with the greatest interest and satisfaction your speech on the jurisdiction in the impeachment case. It seems to me most able profound and convincing and I congratulate you immensely on the effort which is spoken of by all who have read it as most vigorous and successful. It could not have been better done.
Yours most truly CHAS DEVENS JR
FROM CHARLES ALLEN, JUDGE OF THE SUPREME COURT OF MASSACHUSETTS.
BOSTON May 18 1876
Dear Mr. Hoar
Thanks for your argument in the Belknap case. Massachusetts is very proud of what you have done in this case; and I, among the rest.
Yours very truly CHARLES ALLEN. Hon. G. F. Hoar.
XXVI. ELECTORAL COMMISSION
When the Presidential election of 1876 was over both sides claimed the victory. When the certificates of the result in the different States reached the President of the Senate, in accordance with the requirement of the Constitution and the law, it turned out that there was one majority for Hayes and Wheeler, upon the face of the returns, if the returns from the State of Oregon were construed in accordance with the Republican claim.
The Governor of Oregon gave a transcript of the record and declared his opinion that it showed one of the lawful electors to have voted for Mr. Tilden. That would have given one majority for Tilden. The Republicans claimed that upon the record the election showed that all the Republican candidates for elector had been chosen in Oregon, and that they had all voted for Hayes and Wheeler.
The Democrats declared that the boards authorized to ascertain and return the result of the election for Presidential electors in South Carolina, Florida and Louisiana had corruptly and unlawfully rejected votes that ought to be counted for them, and counted votes for the Republicans that ought not to be so counted; and had in that way changed the result which, if it had been correctly ascertained and reported, would have shown a Democratic majority in those three States.
The country was deeply excited. Threats of civil war were heard in many quarters. When I went to Washington for the session of December, 1876, while I did not believe there would be a civil war, and supposed there would be some method of escape devised, I confess I saw no such method. I now believe that but for the bitter experience of a few years before, with its terrible lesson, there would have been a resort to arms. It would have been a worse civil war than that of the Rebellion, because the country would have been divided not by sections, but by parties.
But, as I have related elsewhere, a majority in Congress agreed to submit the question to a Commission composed of five Senators, five Representatives, and five Judges of the Supreme Court, who, proceeding in accordance with an ingenious and skilfully devised mechanism, were to determine the case.
I believe that as time goes on, the great self-restraint of the American people in dealing with the momentous peril of 1877, and the constructive ability which created the simple but perfect mechanism of the Electoral Commission, will receive, as they deserve, the admiration of mankind. There was at the time, as would be expected, some anger and disappointment at the result. Occasionally some bigot who can find nothing but evil in the history and life of his country, generally some recluse who has little knowledge of affairs, charges the Commission with having wickedly deprived the majority of the people of the fruits of an honest and lawful victory. But, in general, wherever I go I find that intelligent men of both parties are satisfied with the righteousness of the decision, and admit that a different judgment would have wrought the destruction of the Republic.
When the decision of the Electoral Commission was accepted every Democratic vote in the two Houses was against it, and every Republican vote, save two, given in its favor. Of these two, one shortly afterward left the Republican party and became a bitter and angry Democrat. The other, a most admirable and excellent college president, told me that he thought the Commission were technically right. But he thought it better for the effect on the country that the Democratic contention should be sustained. As if in a question of Constitutional proceeding, or rather a question of Constitutional power, a determination could be technically right, and wrong upon the merits. If Congress, technically, that is according to the mandate of the Constitution, had no power to decide the result of the elections in the States, but that power was committed to State tribunals, how was it possible that any member of either House of Congress, who had sworn to support the Constitution, could usurp that power without being forsworn? Beside, it must be conceded by everybody to be utterly impossible that the power of investigating disputed questions, as to the choice of presidential electors by the States, should be exercised by Congress. There is no time for such an investigation by Congress. It could only be done where a few precincts or votes were in dispute, in places near the seat of Government. It would have been impossible to do it in time for the inauguration of the new President before the day of railroads and telegraphs for any State in the country. It would be impossible now to do it in parts of the country distant from the seat of Government. The choice of electors takes place in November. The result must be ascertained; the electors must meet; their votes must be given; they must be certified to Congress; the count must be made and result declared in Congress before the 4th of March, a period of less than four months. If there should be a contest made in each of the forty-five States, an investigation might be demanded for every election precinct in the country.
It seems to me clear that the power to judge of elections, returns, and qualifications of presidential electors is not given by the Constitution to the two Houses of Congress, or either of them. The power which it was deemed necessary carefully to express in regard to their own members, it could hardly have been intended to bestow by implication from the right to be present when the certificates are opened, or even from the right to count the votes. It is a power which it is utterly impracticable for Congress to exercise between the time when the certificates are brought officially to its knowledge, and the time when it must be determined who has been chosen President. Indeed, the distinguished counsel who closed the case for the Tilden electors* conceded this difficulty, to which his only answer was the suggestion that such an inquiry, like the right to the writ of quo warranto, must be limited by discretion; in other words, that the two Houses may go as far into the inquiry, who were duly chosen electors in any State, as they in their discretion think fit, or as time will permit.
[Footnote] * Mr. Charles O'Connor. [End of Footnote]
The statement of this position seems to be its refutation. We are now discussing a question of jurisdiction. In whom is the power to determine who have been appointed electors --in Congress or in the State? It was gravely answered that it is in Congress when the State to be investigated is near the seat of Government, or the inquiry to a few election precincts only, but it is to be left to the State in other cases; that Congress may exert a power of inquiry into an election in Delaware which is impossible as to California, or may inquire into one election district in New York, but cannot into twenty or a hundred. This claim would never have arisen in any man's mind before the days of railroads and telegraphs. Such investigations, possible only to the most limited extent now, would have been wholly impossible as to most of the States when the Constitution was adopted.
It is asked, is there no remedy if the officers to whom the States intrust the power of ascertaining and declaring the result of the election act fraudulently or make mistakes? The answer is that the Constitution of the United States gives no jurisdiction to Congress, when the certificates are opened and the votes are to be counted, to correct such mistakes or frauds. A like question may be put as to every public authority in which a final power of decision is lodged. The danger of mistake or fraud is surely quite as great if the final power be lodged in Congress, and the framers of the Constitution acted in nothing more wisely than in removing from Congress all power over the election of President.
There was never yet a political party in this country, or in England, which decided ordinary election cases, except in the clearest case, on other than party considerations. In England and Canada it has been found necessary to commit to the courts the consideration of election cases. It is seldom that either House of Congress has resisted partisan temptation in election cases, when one seat only was the prize of the contest. Is it likely that public virtue would withstand the temptation of the Presidency?
The simple doctrine on which the Commission proceeded was that the right to determine absolutely and finally who are the duly chosen presidential electors is committed by the Constitution to the States. The judgment of the tribunal established by the State for that purpose is conclusive on all the world. Congress is only to count the votes of the officials found by the State to have the right to cast them.
It is said that in the Oregon case the Commission departed from this principle, which they had acted upon in the case of South Carolina, Florida and Louisiana. But there is not the slightest truth in that suggestion. In all of those three cases the laws of the State had established a tribunal with absolute right to determine all questions arising out of the election. The tribunal had the right to reject votes, or count votes, according as they found the votes to be lawful or unlawful. They had the right to reject returns from election precincts where they found there could have been no lawful or orderly election by reason of violence, or where they found the returns untrustworthy by reason of fraud. This power they exercised, and from it there was no appeal.
On the other hand the laws of Oregon did not provide for a board of State canvassers, but provided that the Secretary of State should canvass the votes in the presence of the Governor, and prepare duplicate lists thereof, which lists should be singed by the Governor and Secretary. These lists, certified by the Secretary, were before the Electoral Commission, and disclosed the choice of Republican electors. The Governor, however, undertook to declare his opinion of the result. That opinion was that a Democrat was chosen who had received less than a majority of the votes, or to use the phrase of the Governor, "received the highest number of votes cast for persons eligible," because his Republican competitor was not eligible; and he, therefore, certified that the Democrat had the largest number of votes cast for persons eligible. That Democratic elector proceeded then to hold a meeting, at which he was the only person present, and as the two Republicans whom everybody admitted were lawfully chosen, did not meet with him, he proceeded to fill two vacancies himself.
The Secretary of State made the canvass required by law, recorded it and filed it in his office. He made that canvass in the presence of the Governor. He could not change it. He could not tamper with it. He had completed his official duty when he had completed it. So that the Governor's certificate as to the effect of the election was of no more official character than a like certificate of the Governor-General of India would have been.
There was no claim or pretence in any quarter that the Republicans did not have a lawful majority of the votes cast for electors in Oregon. The only claim was that one of the electors was postmaster, and that he did not lawfully resign before he was chosen elector. He was postmaster at the time of the election, but resigned a few days later. He was also chosen after he had resigned to fill the vacancy in the Electoral College, if his ineligibility created a vacancy, in the regular form according to the laws of Oregon. There was no question or pretence in any quarter that the will of the people of Oregon was not given due effect by the judgment of the Electoral Commission.
I do not believe that there are any considerable number of intelligent persons in the country, now that the excitement of the time has gone by, who doubt that the will of the people of South Carolina and Florida and Louisiana was carried into effect by the judgment of the Commission; and that their judgment baffled an unscrupulous conspiracy to deprive the majorities in those States of their lawful rights in the election because those majorities were made up largely of negroes.
XXVII. FOUR NATIONAL CONVENTIONS 1876
It has been my fortune to be a delegate from Massachusetts in four National Conventions for the nomination of President and Vice-President--those of 1876, 1880, 1884 and 1888. In the first I was a delegate from the Worcester district, which I then represented in Congress. In the other three I was at the head of the delegation at large. I presided over that of 1880.
The history of these conventions is of great interest. It shows the rudeness of the mechanism by which the Chief Executive of this country is selected, and what apparently slight and trivial matters frequently determine the choice. As is well known, the framers of the Constitution, after considering very seriously the question of entrusting the power of choosing the President to the Senate, determined to commit that function to electoral colleges, chosen in the several States in such manner as their legislatures should determine, all the electors to give their votes on the same day. It is generally stated that the President and Vice-President cannot be from the same State. That is not true. The Constitutional provision is that electors in their respective States shall vote by ballot for President and Vice-President, one of whom, at least, shall not be an inhabitant of the same State with themselves.
It was intended that the choice of the President should not be a direct act of the people. It was to be committed to the discretion of men selected for patriotism, wisdom and sobriety, and removed as far as might be from all the excitements of popular passion.
The Constitution further provides that no Senator or Representative, or person holding an office of trust or profit under the United States, shall be appointed an elector. It was undoubtedly the chief object of this last provision to prevent the perpetuation of power in the same hands, or under the same influences, by removing the choice of President wholly from the control of persons wielding National authority. In a considerable measure this purpose has been defeated. The elector, in practice, is a mere agent or scribe. He records and executes the will of the nominating convention of the party to which he belongs, in which the real power of selection is in fact lodged. In these conventions members of Congress, and holders of National office, take frequently an active and influential share. It is remarkable, however, how often the nominating conventions have discarded the candidates who were favored by the holders of executive office or the two Houses of Congress. And where such candidates have been nominated by the convention of either party, they have often been defeated at the polls. General Harrison, in 1840, was nominated instead of Webster or Clay, who were the leaders of the Whig Party, and doubtless the favorites at Washington. In 1844, when Mr. Clay received the Whig nomination, he was defeated by Mr. Polk, who had, I suppose, hardly been heard of as a candidate in political circles at the Capital. In 1848 the popular feeling again compelled the nomination of a candidate, General Taylor, over the favorite leaders at the Capital. In 1852 Fillmore and Webster were both rejected by the Whigs for General Scott, and General Pierce was summoned from private life for the Democratic nomination. In 1860 Seward was rejected for Lincoln. And in 1876 Hayes, whose National service had consisted of but one term in the House of Representatives, was chosen as the result of a contest in which Blaine, Conkling, Morton and Bristow, distinguished National statesmen, were the defeated competitors. So, in 1880, Garfield, who had not been much thought of in official circles, was selected as the result of a mighty struggle in which Grant and Blaine were the principal champions, and in which Edmunds and Sherman, who had long been prominent in the Senate, were also candidates.
Republican National Conventions since the War of the Rebellion have been embarrassed by another influence, which I hope will disappear. In many of the Southern States the Democratic Party consists almost entirely of whites who have possessed themselves of the forces of government by criminal processes, which have been a reproach not only to this country, but to civilization itself. The Republicans, however numerous, and although having a majority of lawful voters in most of these States, have been excluded from political power. They have however, of course, had their full proportionate representation in the National Convention of the Republican Party. Their delegates have too often been persons who had no hope for political advancement in their own States, and without the ambition to commend themselves to public favor by honorable public service, of which that hope is the parent. They have been, therefore, frequently either National office-holders who may reasonably be supposed to be under the influence of the existing Administration, or likely to be governed by a hope of receiving a National office as a reward for their action in the convention; or persons who can be influenced in their actions by money. This Southern contingent has been in several of our National Conventions an uncertain and an untrustworthy force.
The Republican nominating convention of 1876 was held at Cincinnati on June 14. The delegates from Massachusetts were:
At Large.--E. R. Hoar, Richard H. Dana, Jr., Paul A. Chadbourne, John M. Forbes.
From Districts.--William T. Davis, Robert T. Davis, John E. Sandford, Edward L. Pierce, Henry D. Hyde, J. Felt Osgood, Alpheus Hardy, C. R. McLean, James M. Shute, James F. Dwinal, George B. Loring, Henry Carter, William A. Russell, C. H. Waters, James Freeman Clarke, James Russell Lowell, A. J. Bartholomew, George F. Hoar, James F. Moore, William Whiting, Edward Learned, S. R. Phillips.
The struggle for the nomination equalled in bitterness and in importance many of the contests between different political parties that had preceded it. While the great majority of the Republicans retained confidence in the personal integrity and patriotism of President Grant, it had become painfully manifest that he was often an easy victim to the influence of unscrupulous and designing men. Grant never lost his hold upon the hearts of the Northern people. Wherever there was a contest in any State for political supremacy the least worthy faction frequently got his ear and his confidence. He never wavered in his attachment to the doctrines of his party-- protection, sound principles of finance and currency, honesty in elections. But the old political leaders, whom the people most trusted, were more and more strangers to his presence, and ambitious and designing men, adventurers who had gone South to make fortunes by holding office, men interested in jobs and contracts, thronged the ante-chambers of the White House. The political scandals, always likely to follow a great war, seemed to be increasing rather than diminishing during his second term of office.
I never though that the proper way to put an end to this state of things was to abandon what I deem sound political principles, or to abandon the party that was formed to establish them. I should as soon have thought of turning Tory because of like complaints in the Revolutionary War, or of asking George III. to take us into favor again because of like scandals which existed during the Administrations of Washington and John Adams. But I thought, in common with many others, that a party of sound principles could be made and should be made a party of pure politics.
The two divisions in the Republican Party, which I have indicated, marshalled their forces for the struggle in the convention of 1876. The friends of Mr. Blaine were generally those Republicans who had been dissatisfied with the conduct of the Administration. They embraced, also, the larger number of the enthusiastic young Republicans, who were attracted by Blaine's brilliant qualities, as were those who had come in contact with him by the marvellous personal charm of his delightful and gracious manners. Roscoe Conkling was regarded as the leader of the other party. The House of Representatives, by an almost unanimous vote, had adopted the resolution declaring that it was contrary to sound principle to elect a President for a third term. So General Grant himself was not a candidate.
But as the time for the convention drew near, there had been an investigation in the House of Representatives into the affairs of the Little Rock and Fort Smith Railroad, which had resulted in some uncomfortable revelations with reference to Mr. Blaine. He was charged with having acquired stocks in railroads which were to be affected by National legislation, either without consideration or for a consideration far below their true value, and of having eagerly sought to acquire other similar stocks, the real consideration which he paid, or expected to pay, being the use of his official influence in behalf of these corporations. This investigation, ordered by the Democratic House of Representatives, was conducted by a majority of the committee charged with it, in a spirit of bitter hostility. The investigation was still in progress when the Republican Convention met. The facts, which were distorted and discolored in public report, impressed many excellent persons unfavorably to Mr. Blaine, and a few with a belief of his guilt. They were used dexterously by his political opponents and by his rivals in his own party, and by some conspicuous persons who had, or thought they had, personal grievances against him, to excite the public mind. On the other hand, as is natural in such cases, the great body of Mr. Blaine's friends clung all the closer to him from a belief that he was the object of unjust and malignant slander.
I did not think it, under the circumstances, wise to nominate Mr. Blaine, either in 1876 or later. I believed then, and now believe, that he would have been an admirable President of the United States. But I did not think it wise to put at the head of a movement for reform and for purity of administration, a man whose supporters must defend him against such charges, and who must admit that he had most unwisely of his own accord put himself into a position where such charges were not only possible, but plausible. But I was exceedingly anxious that a candidate should be found who would be not only agreeable to Mr. Blaine and his supporters, but whom, if possible, they should have a large influence in selecting.
Such a candidate, it was hoped, might be found in Mr. Bristow. He was a great favorite in his own State. He was a man of spotless integrity and great ability. He had been a Union soldier. He was from Kentucky, and his selection as a candidate would remove the charge of sectionalism from the Republican Party, and tend to give it strength with the white people of the South. He had made an admirable Attorney-General, and an admirable Secretary of the Treasury. He had been appointed to the Cabinet by Grant. He had not been long enough in public service to have encountered the enmities which almost always attach themselves to men long in office, and he represented no clique or faction. He was a man of clean hands and of pure heart. For a good while it seemed as if the rival aspirations of Blaine and Bristow might exist without ill-feeling, so that when the time came, the supporters of either might easily give their support to the other, or agree without difficulty in the support of some third person. I gave a banquet at Wormley's in the spring of 1876, which I hoped might have some tendency toward this desired harmony. There were about forty guests. Mr. Blaine sat on my right hand as the guest of honor, and Mr. Bristow on the left. They talked together, as I sat between them, during the whole evening in the most friendly and delightful way, telling humorous anecdotes relating to their own campaigns, as pleasantly as if they had been describing the canvass of some third person whom they were both supporting. I do not believe there was at that time in the heart of either a tinge of anger against the other.
But as the contest went on, Mr. Blaine seems to have become possessed with a belief that the bitter public attacks upon him were instigated by Bristow. Some of the Kentucky papers had been specially bitter. The Republican Convention opened in Cincinnati, Wednesday, June 14. The Sunday morning before Mr. Blaine fell in a swoon on the steps of the church at the corner of G and Tenth Streets in Washington. He was carried to his house on Fifteenth Street. Bristow was in his office in the Treasury Department when a friend called upon him, and gave him the news of Blaine's attack, and said: "Would it not be well for you to go round and express your interest?" Bristow took his hat, and the two friends went together to Mr. Blaine's house.
An occurrence took place there which satisfied them both that the feeling against Bristow on the part of Mr. Blaine and his near friends was exceedingly strong and implacable. The story was immediately telegraphed in cipher to Mr. Bristow's principal manager at Cincinnati, from whom I had it a day or two before committing it to paper. The facts were communicated by him in confidence to members of the Kentucky delegation.
On the first six ballots the total number of votes cast was 754. Three hundred and seventy-eight were necessary for a choice. Mr. Blaine received votes varying from 285 on the first ballot to 308 on the sixth. On all these ballots, but two, Bristow had the second largest number, ranging from 111 to 126. On the first and second ballot he was led by Morton, who had 124 and 120 votes, and was closely followed by Conkling, whose highest vote was 99. At the end of the sixth ballot it had become manifest that the opponents of Blaine, if they expected to succeed, must unite on a candidate. A portion of the Pennsylvania delegation had already voted for Blaine, who was a native of that State. Others had been held in restraint from voting for him with difficulty, by the influence of Don Cameron, chairman of the delegation and a strong adherent of Grant. The New York Conkling men and the majority of the Pennsylvania delegation, led by Cameron, determined to cast their votes for Hayes, of Ohio, to prevent the nomination of Blaine. In doing that they were to unite with their most earnest antagonists and give their support to a candidate who probably sympathized with them less than any other on the list. It was manifest to the Kentucky delegation that they must make their choice between Blaine and Hayes, and that their choice would decide the nomination. They had a hurried consultation and determined to vote unanimously for Hayes. The going over of Kentucky to Hayes was followed by the other States that had opposed Blaine. Hayes had on the final ballot 384 votes, Blaine 351, and there were 21 cast for Bristow, which had been cast by States standing earlier in alphabetical order on the roll, who had cast their votes before the stampede began. If Kentucky had cast her 24 votes for Blaine, he would have been nominated. I was told by the close friend of Bristow, of whom I have spoken, and I have no doubt he is right, that the Kentucky Republicans had felt very kindly toward Blaine, and their action was determined by the knowledge of the transaction I have just related. They thought that if this bitterness and anger and dislike of Mr. Bristow existed in the mind of Mr. Blaine, it was hardly worth while for Bristow's friends and supporters to clothe him with the Presidential office. If Bristow had not visited Blaine's house that Sunday morning, Blaine would, in my opinion, have been the Republican candidate for the Presidency.
What would have been the result if Mr. Blaine had been nominated in 1876, it is now idle to speculate. I am satisfied, in looking back, that I myself underrated his strength as a candidate. But it seems likely that he would have had the votes of all the States which President Hayes received, and would have been stronger than Hayes in New York.
Mr. Hayes came to the Presidency under circumstances of great difficulty and embarrassment. He was in my judgment one of the wisest, sincerest and most honest and patriotic men who ever held the office.
But President Hayes's Administration was embarrassed by the disputes about his title. The House of Representatives was against him in the first Congress of his term, and in the second Congress the Senate and House were in the hands of his political opponents. He also throughout the whole term had to encounter the hardly disguised hostility of nearly all the great leaders of his own party in both Houses of Congress. Conkling never spoke of him in public or private without a sneer. I suppose he did not visit the White House or any Department during President Hayes's term. Mr. Blaine was much disappointed by President Hayes's refusal to give Mr. Frye a place in the Cabinet, which he desired as a means of composing some incipient jealousies in Maine. Hamlin, who was a very influential Senator, was much disgusted by the President's inclination to reform the civil service. This feeling was largely shared by Simon Cameron, of Pennsylvania, an able and patriotic man, who ruled the Republican Party in that State with a despotic hand, and had as little respect for the doctrines of the civil service reformers as you might expect from one of his Highland ancestors who ruled over the Clan Cameron in the days of the Scotch Stuarts. Cameron had also a personal grievance, although I do not think that made any difference in his feeling. He had been proposed by the Pennsylvania delegation for the appointment to the English Mission. But the proposition had not been received with favor by President Hayes. Under these difficulties, it is greatly to his honor that so much of public good was accomplished in his time, and that he handed over the Government to a Republican successor.
XXVIII. FOUR NATIONAL CONVENTIONS 1880
As the time approached for the Republican Convention of 1880, it had become clear that it would witness a mighty struggle. Conkling, Don Cameron, who had succeeded to his father's power in Pennsylvania, and Logan, of Illinois, the most distinguished volunteer soldier of the war, and a great favorite with his old comrades, were the most conspicuous leaders of the party who desired to restore the old Grant regime. They were seconded by Howe, formerly Senator from Wisconsin and later Postmaster- General under President Arthur, Creswell, of Maryland, Postmaster- General in Grant's first term, Governor Boutwell, of Massachusetts, who had a very distinguished public career as Governor, member of the House of Representatives, Secretary of the Treasury, and Senator. They selected as their candidate their old chieftain, General Grant. He was strong not only in the powerful support of these great political leaders, but in the solid confidence of the great Methodist denomination to which he belonged, in the love of the old soldiers, in the memory of his great public service, both in war and peace, and the general respect of the whole American people. Against this was the unwritten, but well-understood, rule of action by which the people had been governed since the time of Washington, that no person should be elected to the office of President for more than two terms. Against him, also, was the feeling that his judgment, which had been sound and unerring in the selection of fit men for good military service, was very much at fault in choosing men in whom he should confide in civil affairs. There was a further feeling that the influence of unworthy politicians, which had been powerful with him during his second term, would be more powerful if he should go back to the Presidency with their aid.
Mr. Blaine's old popularity had been increased in the four years since his former defeat. Many people believed that he had been not only unjustly but cruelly treated, and were eager to record their verdict of acquittal from the malignant charges which had been made against him since 1876. There was a third class, of whom I was one, who felt that it would be unwise to nominate either General Grant or Mr. Blaine. While they had a great respect for the character of Grant, they dreaded the influences which would be sure to surround him, if he should come to the Presidency again. While they had the kindliest feeling for Mr. Blaine and shared the public indignation at the character of the attacks of which he had been the victim, they did not like to have a candidate who would be so handicapped. Mr. Blaine's own imprudence had unquestionably given an opportunity and a plausibility to these slanders. They thought, also, that the nomination of either Grant or Blaine would create a feeling of anger and disappointment in the supporters of the defeated candidate, which would seriously endanger the election. They looked about, therefore, for a person who might not be obnoxious to either the Blaine men or the Grant men, and found such a person in Mr. Edmunds of Vermont. He was a man of ability and long public service. He was not a person calculated to inspire much popular enthusiasm, but answered very well as a standard-bearer, although his supporters were ready to transfer their support to another candidate, other than Blaine or Grant, on whom a majority of the Convention should be brought to unite. Mr. Sherman had also a considerable body of supporters who respected him for his eminent talents and long and valuable services.
General Grant had a peculiarly strong hold on the Republicans of Massachusetts. They shared with all patriotic men throughout the country a profound gratitude for his illustrious military services. They had been impressed by a feeling of great respect for his personal qualities. The modesty which led him to refuse to enter Richmond in triumph at the close of the war; the simplicity of his behavior; the magnanimity which led him to claim so little praise for himself and give so much of the credit to which he was entitled to Sheridan and Sherman, and others of his military associates; his incorruptible personal honesty; his soundness and firmness in dealing with all questions affecting the public credit, the integrity of the currency, and the rights of citizenship, had endeared him to the people of a Commonwealth which ever valued such traits in her public men. The Methodist denomination, always large in Massachusetts and powerful in her Republican councils, was proud that this statesman and warrior was of its fold. As the time for the convention approached, four ex-Governors, men of great personal influence, leaders in the Republican Party, yet of highly different character, who represented very different shades of Republican opinion--Boutwell, Bullock, Claflin and Rice-- declared themselves in favor of nominating him again. Nothing could have prevented his carrying Massachusetts as by a great wave, but the fact that he had been, in his second term, subject to a most unworthy influence in the matter of appointments to public office. The whole National executive patronage in Massachusetts seemed given up to advancing the personal fortunes of General Butler. Brave soldiers, honored Republicans, were turned out of post-offices, to be replaced by incompetent and dishonorable adventurers, odious in the neighborhoods from which they came, to please this ambitious and unscrupulous man. This excited a deep indignation which culminated when William A. Simmons was made Collector of Boston. No personal respect for General Grant could induce the Massachusetts Republicans to run the risk of having again a President who was subjected to personal influences like these. But for the appointment of Simmons as the principal Federal officer in Massachusetts, I think she would have supported Grant for a third term. The Edmunds movement would never have been made, and his nomination at Chicago would have been certain.
The State Convention passed resolutions in favor of Mr. Edmunds, and elected as Delegates-at-Large, George F. Hoar, Worcester; Charles B. Codman, Boston; John E. Sanford, Taunton; and Julius H. Seelye, Amherst.
The District Delegates were: Charles W. Clifford, New Bedford; Azariah Eldridge, Yarmouth; William C. Lovering, Taunton; F. A. Hobart, Braintree; Phineas Pierce, Boston; Choate Burnham, Boston; Eustice C. Fitz, Chelsea; Daniel Russell, Melrose; Dudley Porter, Haverhill; N. A. Horton, Salem; George S. Boutwell, Groton; George A. Marden, Lowell; R. M. Morse, Jr., Boston; George W. Johnson, Milford; W. S. B. Hopkins, Worcester; William Knowlton, Upton; Alpheus Harding, Athol; Timothy Merrick, Holyoke; Wellington Smith, Lee; M. B. Whitney, Westfield.
Of these, three were in favor of Grant, namely, Boutwell, Eldridge, Marden; two were in favor of Sherman, and one for Washburn.
The others voted for Mr. Edmunds in the beginning, meaning to defeat both Grant and Blaine if they could, and were ready to agree on any man of respectable character and capacity by whom that defeat could be accomplished.
George F. Edmunds had a high reputation in the country as an able lawyer, and a faithful and independent Senator. He had unquestionably rendered great public service in the Senate. If elected, I believe he would have administered the Presidency on the principles which a large majority of the people of Massachusetts hold. He was an excellent debater. He was very fond of criticising and objecting to what was proposed by other men. He seemed never so happy as when in opposition to the majority of his associates. But he possessed what persons of that temper commonly lack, great capacity for constructive statesmanship. Any measure of which he was the author would be likely to accomplish its purpose, and to stand fire.
David Davis, who was President pro tempore of the Senate, used to say he could always compel Edmunds to vote in the negative on any question by putting the question in the old New England fashion, "Contrary-minded will say no," for Edmunds was always contrary-minded. I once told him, borrowing a saying of an Englishman, that if George Edmunds were the only man in the world, George would object to everything Edmunds proposed.
The morning after the Massachusetts Convention of 1880, when the convention passed resolutions, proposing Edmunds as a candidate for the Presidency, and placing me first on the delegation at large, Edmunds came to me and said, I have no doubt with absolute sincerity: "I have seen the proceedings of your convention yesterday. If I know myself, I have no desire to be President of the United States. I do not think I am fit for it, and if I were, I should much prefer my present service as Senator. I would say so in a public letter, but I suppose the chances of my nomination are so slight that it might seem ridiculous to decline." I said: "But, Edmunds, just think of the fun you would have vetoing bills." He smiled, and his countenance beamed all over with satisfaction at the idea, and he replied, with great feeling: "Well, that would be good fun."
So while, as I have said, the Massachusetts delegates, most of them, supported Mr. Edmunds as a person likely to hold some votes until the opposition to Grant might be concentrated on some other candidate to be agreed on as the proceedings of the convention went on, and while I think he would have made an excellent President if he had been chosen, his candidacy was never a very strong one.
This convention was menaced by a very serious peril. A plan was devised which, if it had been successful, would, in my judgment, have caused a rupture in the convention and the defeat of the Republican Party in the election. The Chairman of the Republican National Committee was Don Cameron of Pennsylvania, then and for some years afterward a Senator of the United States from that State. He was an ardent supporter of President Grant and had been Secretary of War in his Cabinet, as his father had been in the Cabinet of President Lincoln. Like his father before him, he had ruled the Republican Party of Pennsylvania with a strong hand. He was not given to much speaking. He was an admirable executive officer, self-reliant, powerful, courageous and enterprising, with little respect for the discontent of subordinates. He was supported by a majority of the delegates from Pennsylvania, although Blaine, who was a native of that State, had a large following there. The New York delegation was headed by Roscoe Conkling, who had great influence over Grant when he was President, and expected to retain that influence if he became President again. The Maryland delegation was headed by J. A. J. Creswell, who had been Postmaster-General more than five years in Grant's two Administrations. On the Massachusetts delegation, as I have said, was Governor Boutwell, Grant's Secretary of the Treasury during nearly the whole of his first term, and on that from Illinois John A. Logan. These men had a large following over the whole country. There were three hundred and eight persons in the convention who could be counted on to support Grant from beginning to end, and about a dozen more were exceedingly disposed to his candidacy. The State Conventions of the three largest and most powerful States, New York, Pennsylvania and Illinois, and possibly one or two others, that I do not now remember, had instructed their delegates to vote as a unit for the candidate who should be agreed upon by the majority. Grant had a majority in each of these States. But there was a minority of 18 in Illinois, 26 in Pennsylvania, and 19 in New York, who were for other candidates than Grant. If their votes had been counted for him it would have given Grant on the first ballot 367 votes, 13 less than the number necessary for a choice. As his votes went up on one of the ballots to 313, it is pretty certain that counting these 63 votes for Grant would have insured his nomination. But there were several contests involving the title of their seats of 16 delegates from the State of Louisiana, 18 from Illinois, and three others. In regard to these cases the delegates voted in accordance with their preference for candidates. This was beside several other contests where the vote was not determined by that consideration. Now if the vote of Illinois, Pennsylvania and New York had each been cast as a unit, in accordance with the preference of the majority of the delegation in each case, these 37 votes would have been added to Grant's column and subtracted from the forces of his various antagonists; and the 63 votes of the minority of the delegations in these three States would also have been added to the Grant column, which would have given him a total vote of more than 400, enough to secure his nomination. So the result of the convention was to be determined by the adaption or rejection of what was called the unit rule.
Don Cameron, the Chairman of the National Committee, left the Senate for Chicago about ten days, I think, before the day fixed for the meeting of the convention. It was whispered about before his departure that a scheme had been resolved upon by him and the other Grant leaders, which would compel the adoption of the unit rule, whatever might be the desire of the convention itself. It was his duty, according to established custom, to call the convention to order and to receive nominations for temporary presiding officer. He was pledged, upon those nominations, as it was understood, to hold that the unit rule must be applied. In that way the sitting members from the disputed States and districts would be permitted to vote, and the votes of the three States would be cast without dissent for the Grant candidate. When the temporary President took his place he would rule in the same way on the question of the choice of a permanent President, and the permanent President would rule in the same way on the conflicting votes, for the appointment of committees, for determining the seats of delegates, and finally the nomination of the candidates for President and Vice-President. If the minority claimed the right to vote and took an appeal from his decision, he was to hold that on the vote on that appeal the same unit rule was to apply. If a second point of order were raised, he would hold, of course, that a second point of order could not be raised while the first was pending. So the way seemed clear to exclude the contesting delegates, to cast the votes of the three great States solid for Grant, and compel his nomination.
But the majority of the National Committee, of which Cameron was Chairman, was opposed to Grant. They met, I think, the day before the meeting of the convention to make the preliminary arrangements. Mr. Cameron, the Chairman, was asked whether it was his purpose to carry out the scheme I have indicated. He refused to answer. A motion was then made that the Chairman, after calling the convention to order, be instructed to receive the vote of the individual delegates without regard to the instruction of the majority of their delegation. Cameron refused to receive motions on that question, saying that it was a matter beyond the jurisdiction of the committee. A large part of the entire day was spent in various attempts to induce Cameron either to give a pledge or permit a resolution to be entertained by the committee, instructing him as to his action. He was supported by Mr. Gorham, of California, who I believe was not a member of the committee, but was present either as Secretary or as Amicus Curiae. He was an experienced parliamentarian, and for a long time had been Secretary of the Senate of the United States. The discussion for the majority was conducted largely by Mr. Chandler, of New Hampshire, afterward Secretary of the Navy, and later Senator. After spending a large part of the day in that discussion, some time in the afternoon an intimation was made, informally, and in a rather veiled fashion, that, unless they had more satisfactory pledges from Mr. Cameron, he would be removed from the office of Chairman, and a person who would carry out the wishes of the committee be substituted. The committee then adjourned until the next morning. Meantime the Grant managers applied to Colonel Strong, of Illinois, who had been already appointed Sergeant-at-Arms by the committee, and who was a supporter of Grant, to ascertain whether, if the committee were to remove Cameron and appoint another chairman, he would recognize him as a person entitled to call the convention to order and preside until a temporary Chairman was chosen, and would execute his lawful orders, or whether he would treat them as without effect and would execute the orders of Cameron. He desired time of consideration, which was conceded. He consulted Senator Philetus Sawyer of Wisconsin, who was himself in favor of General Grant, but who desired above all things the success of the Republican Party, and was not ready for any unlawful or revolutionary action. Mr. Sawyer was a business man of plain manners, and though of large experience in public life, was not much versed in parliamentary law. He called into consultation ex-Senator Timothy O. Howe, of Wisconsin, formerly Senator from that State, and afterward Postmaster- General under Arthur. He was a very able and clear-headed lawyer, and had a high reputation for integrity. He advised Mr. Strong that the committee might lawfully depose their Chairman and appoint another, and that it would be his duty, as Sergeant-at-Arms, to recognize the new Chairman and obey his lawful orders. Strong was under great obligations to Sawyer, who had aided him very largely in business matters, and had a high respect for his judgment. He gave his response to the Grant leaders in accordance with the advice of Mr. Howe, in which Senator Sawyer concurred. They had intended to make General Creswell the President of the convention. But finding it impossible to carry their plans into effect, in order to prevent the severe measure of deposing the Chairman of the committee, they consented that the assurances demanded should be given. There was then a negotiation between the leaders on the side of Grant and of Blaine for an agreement upon a presiding officer. It was well known that I was not in favor of the nomination of either. Senator Hamlin, formerly Vice-President and then a Senator, proposed my name to Mr. Conkling as a person likely to be impartial between the two principal candidates. Mr. Conkling replied that such a suggestion was an insult. Hamlin said: "I guess I can stand the insult." But on consultation of the Grant men and the Blaine men it was agreed that I should be selected, which was done accordingly. I was nominated orally from the floor when Mr. Cameron called the convention to order, and chosen temporary President by acclamation and unanimously. As proceedings went on it was thought best not to have any division or question as to a permanent Chairman and it was at the proper time ordered, also without objection, that I should act as permanent President.
But the Grant leaders were still confident. They felt sure that none of their original votes, numbering three hundred and more, would desert them, and that it would be impossible for the rest of the convention, divided among so many candidates, to agree, and that they would in the end get a majority.
I was myself exceedingly anxious on this subject. I also felt that if the followers of Grant could get any pretext for getting an advantage by any claim, however doubtful, that they would avail themselves of it, even at the risk of breaking up the convention in disorder, rather than be baffled in their object. So the time to me was one of great and distressing responsibility. The forces of Grant were led on the floor of the convention by Roscoe Conkling, who nominated him in a speech of great power and eloquence. The forces of Blaine were led, as they had been in 1876, very skilfuly by Senators Hale and Frye. Garfield was the leader of the supporters of Mr. Sherman. One of the greatest oratoric triumphs I ever witnessed was obtained by Garfield. There had been a storm of applause, lasting, I think, twenty-five minutes, at the close of Conkling's nominating speech. It was said there were fifteen thousand persons in the galleries, which came down very near the level of the floor. The scene was of indescribable sublimity. The fate of the country, certainly the fate of a great political party, was at stake, and, more than that, the selection of the ruler of a nation of fifty millions of people--a question which in other countries could not have been determined, under like circumstances, without bloodshed or civil war. I do not think I shall be charged with exaggeration when I speak of it in this way. I can only compare it in its grandeur and impressiveness to the mighty torrent of Niagara. Perhaps I cannot give a satisfactory reason for so distinguishing it from other like assemblies that have gathered in this country. But I have since seen a great number of persons from all parts of the country who were present as members or spectators, and they all speak of it in the same way. A vast portion of the persons present in the hall sympathized deeply with the supporters of Grant. Conkling's speech, as he stood almost in the centre of that great assembly on a platform just above the heads of the convention, was a masterpiece of splendid oratory. He began:
And when asked what State he hails from, Our sole reply shall be, He comes from Appomattox, And its famous apple-tree.
It was pretty difficult for Garfield to follow this speech in the tempest of applause which came after it. There was nothing stimulant or romantic in the plain wisdom of John Sherman. It was like reading a passage from "Poor Richard's Almanac" after one of the lofty chapters of the Psalms of David. Garfield began, quietly:
"I have witnessed the extraordinary scene of this convention with deep solicitude. Nothing touches my heart more quickly than a tribute of honor to a great and noble character. But as I sat in my seat and witnessed this demonstration, this assemblage seemed to me a human ocean in a tempest. I have seen the sea lashed into fury and tossed into spray, and its grandeur moves the soul of the dullest man; but I remember that it is not the billows, but the calm level of the sea from which all heights and depths are measured. When the storm has passed and the hour of calm settles on the ocean, when the sunlight bathes its peaceful surface, then the astronomer and surveyor take the level from which they measure all terrestrial heights and depths.
"Gentlemen of the Convention, your present temper may not mark the healthful pulse of our people. When your enthusiasm has passed, when the emotions of the hour have subsided, we shall find below this storm and passion that calm level of public opinion from which the thoughts of a mighty people are to be measured, and by which their final action will be determined.
"Not here, in this brilliant circle where fifteen thousand men and women are gathered, is the destiny of the Republic to be decreed for the next four years--not here, where I see the enthusiastic faces of seven hundred and fifty-six delegates, waiting to cast their lot into the urn and determine the choice of the Republic; but by four millions of Republican firesides, where the thoughtful voters, with wives and children about them, with the calm thoughts inspired by love of home and country, with the history of the past, the hopes of the future, and reverence for the great men who have adorned and blessed our nation in days gone by, burning in their hearts--there God prepares the verdict which will determine the wisdom of our work to-night. Not in Chicago, in the heat of June, but at the ballot-boxes of the Republic, in the quiet of November, after the silence of deliberate judgment, will this question be settled."
Conkling, while exciting the admiration of all men for his dexterity and ability, lost ground at every step. He made a foolish attempt to compel the passage of a resolution depriving of their rights to vote delegates who refused to pledge themselves to support the choice of the convention whoever it might be. His speech nominating Grant contained a sneer at Blaine. So, while he held his forces together to the last, he made it almost impossible for any man who differed from him in the beginning to come to him at the end. On the contrary everything that Garfield said was marked by good nature and good sense. I said on the first day of the convention that in my opinion if the delegates could be shut up by themselves and not permitted to leave the room until they agreed, the man on whom they would agree would be General Garfield. This desire became more and more apparent as the convention went on. At last, on the thirty-sixth ballot, and the sixth day of the convention, the delegates who had previously voted for other candidates than Grant, began to wheel into line for Garfield. Garfield had one vote from the State of Pennsylvania in previous ballots. But on the thirty-fourth ballot Wisconsin, the last State to vote in alphabetical order, had given him her sixteen votes, and on the thirty-sixth ballot she was joined by the delegates who had voted for other candidates than Grant. Grant held together his forces till the last, receiving three hundred and thirteen votes on the thirty-fifth ballot, and three hundred and six on the thirty-sixth. It was a sublime moment, which it was hoped would determine the destiny of the Republic for many years, a hope which was cruelly disappointed by Garfield's untimely death. It was, as might be well believed, a moment of sublime satisfaction to me. Garfield had been my friend for many years. I had sat close to him in the House of Representatives for three terms of Congressional service. He had been my guest at my house in Worcester; and I had been his colleague on the Electoral Commission in 1876. He had been educated at a Massachusetts college. He was of old Middlesex County stock. We were in thorough accord in our love for New England, our firm faith in her hereditary principles, and our pride in her noble history.
Garfield has been charged, in accepting the nomination for the Presidency, with having been untrue to the interests of John Sherman, who was the candidate of Ohio, and whom Garfield had supported faithfully through every ballot. The charge is absolutely unjust. Mr. Sherman's nomination was seen by everybody to have been absolutely impossible long before the final result. I was in constant consultation with leaders of the different delegations who were trying to unite their forces. There never was any considerable number of those persons who thought the nomination of Mr. Sherman practicable, notwithstanding the high personal respect in which they held him. At the close of the thirty-fourth ballot, when Garfield received seventeen votes, he rose, and the following incident took place:
Mr. Garfield, of Ohio: "Mr. President, ----" The President: "For what purpose does the gentleman rise?" Mr. Garfield: "I rise to a question of order." The President: "The gentleman from Ohio rises to a question of order." Mr. Garfield: "I challenge the correctness of the announcement. The announcement contains votes for me. No man has a right, without the consent of the person voted for, to announce that person's name, and vote for him, in this convention. Such consent I have not given." The President: "The gentleman from Ohio is not stating a question of order. He will resume his seat. No person having received a majority of the votes cast, another ballot will be taken. The Clerk will call the roll."
This verbatim report is absolutely correct, except that where there is a period at the end of Mr. Garfield's last sentence there should be a dash, indicating that the sentence was not finished. I recollect the incident perfectly. I interrupted him in the middle of his sentence. I was terribly afraid that he would say something that would make his nomination impossible, or his acceptance impossible, if it were made. I do not believe it ever happened before that anybody who attempted to decline the Presidency of the United States was to be prevented by a point of order, or that such a thing will ever happen again.
During the thirtieth ballot a vote was cast by a delegate from the Territory of Wyoming for General Philip H. Sheridan. General Sheridan, who was upon the platform as a spectator, came forward instantly, and said: "I am very much obliged to the delegate from Wyoming for mentioning my name in this convention, but there is no way in which I could accept a nomination from this convention, if it were possible, unless I should be permitted to turn it over to my best friend." The President said: "The Chair presumed the unanimous consent of the convention to permit the illustrious soldier who has spoken to interrupt its order for its purpose. But it will be a privilege accorded to no other person whatever." The General's prompt suppression of this attempt to make him a candidate was done in a direct and blunt soldierly fashion. I did not think it best to apply to him the strictness of parliamentary law; and in that I was sure of the approval of the convention. But the precedent of permitting such a body to be addressed under any circumstances by a person not a member would be a dangerous one, if repeated. Perhaps I may with propriety add one thing of a personal nature. It has been sometimes charged that the delegates from Massachusetts were without great influence in shaping the result of this convention. They moved, and carried, against a formidable opposition, the civil service plank, which embodied the doctrine of civil service reform as among the doctrines of the Republican Party. Of whatever value may be attributed to the humble services of the President of the Convention, they are entitled to the credit. They had, I think, more to do than any other delegation with effecting the union upon Garfield. Of course the wishes of Mr. Blaine had very great influence indeed. I think he preferred Garfield to any other person except Robert Lincoln, of Illinois, of whom he spoke to me as a person from whom it would be impossible to keep the votes of the colored delegates from the South, and who would be, by reason of the respect felt for his father's memory, highly acceptable through the country. But Mr. Lincoln, under the circumstances, could not have got the support of his own State, and without it it seemed unwise to attempt a union upon him.
But to continue with what is personal to myself and the delegation from Massachusetts. When I got back to the Capitol, as I went into the cloak-room of the Senate to leave my hat, Don Cameron sat there surrounded by a group of interested listeners. He was relating to them the story of the great contest. As I approached the group he looked up and said:
"There comes Massachusetts. There were twenty-three men from Massachusetts who went there to keep six hundred men from doing what they wanted to. And, by God, they did it."
A few Sundays after his inauguration, during the spring session of the Senate, President Garfield invited Mrs. Hoar and myself to dinner at the White House. President Hopkins, his old friend and teacher, and Mrs. Hopkins were there. There were no other guests, except Judge Nott and his wife, President Hopkins's daughter, President Garfield's mother, and, I think, Mr. Archibald Hopkins, President Hopkins's son. President Garfield asked me to remain after President Hopkins had taken his leave. I had a long and interesting conversation with him about his plans and purposes, and especially the difficulties which were then showing themselves in regard to the great New York appointments. Before I went upstairs, he gave his arm to my wife and walked with her about the East room. He said to her: "I hope I may live to repay your husband for all he has done for me." Perhaps I am indulging in an unpardonable vanity in relating this testimony of two of the most interested parties and most competent observers as to the value of the work of the Massachusetts delegation in that convention.
I hope that somewhere before I die I may put on record my estimate of James A. Garfield, when I can say some things which ought to be said, and for which there is not room in this book and was not room in the eulogy delivered just after his death. It is the fashion, even among his friends, to speak of him as a person timid if not time-serving, and as easily swayed and moulded by a strong will. I have heard men who knew him very well say that when he led the House on the Republican side, and had led his party into a position which excited sharp conflict, they never could be sure that he would not get wrong at the last moment, or have some private understanding with the Democrats and leave his own side in the lurch. This was attributed to moral timidity. I feel very sure that this is a great mistake. Garfield's hesitation, want of certainty in his convictions, liability to change his position suddenly, were in my opinion the result of intellectual hesitation and of a habit of going down to the roots of his subject before he made up his mind. He had a great deference for other men's opinions. When, after he had expressed his opinion, some strong and positive man came to him with a confident utterance of a different opinion, unless Garfield had gone to the bottom of the subject himself, he was very likely to defer, to hesitate, to think himself mistaken. But when he had had time and had thought the thing out and made up his mind, nobody and no consideration of personal interest or advantage would stir him an inch. I suppose his courage and genius as a soldier have never been questioned. He performed some very important military exploits. He gave a thorough investigation into the military conditions of Tennessee and Kentucky, and his letter to the Department of War accomplished a great deal toward putting things in a better way. He was a thorough lover of his country. He hesitated long as to the doctrine of protection, and undoubtedly made some inconsistent utterances before he took the ground which he held at last. But he studied the financial question, especially the great subjects of currency and the standard of value, to the very bottom. He stood like a rock when Ohio and the whole West seemed to be going against him, and when the statesmanship even of John Sherman was of the willow and not of the oak. When his District Convention met and passed resolutions in favor of paying interest on the Government bonds with paper, Garfield declared that he would not take the nomination on such a platform. The good fight he made in Ohio turned the scale in that great struggle. I do not believe he wold have been a tool or servant in the Presidency. He would have mastered for himself the great subjects to be dealt with in our foreign policy, as well as in domestic administration and legislation. His will would, in my opinion, if he had been spared to us, have been the dominant will in our Government for eight fortunate and happy years. Next to the assassination of Lincoln, his death was the greatest national misfortune ever caused to this country by the loss of a single life.
I have not the slightest respect for the suggestion that General Garfield in the least violated his honor or good faith in consenting to accept the nomination after he had been elected as a delegate in the interest of Mr. Sherman. The office of the President is not personal. There can be no such thing as a personal claim upon it, or a personal obligation in regard to it. President Garfield got no advantage whatever from the fact that he had favored Mr. Sherman. Mr. Sherman's nomination was an impossibility from the beginning. That the majority of the convention united upon Garfield was due to the fact that he had no enemies or antagonists in the convention or among the people and, to some degree undoubtedly, also to the admiration felt by his fellow-delegates for the tact, sense and good nature which he showed in its discussions-- qualities which were in marked contrast with those of his very able and powerful antagonist, Mr. Conkling.
Beside, when the voting for Garfield in the Convention began, a dispatch was received from Mr. Sherman urging his friends to unite in Garfield's support. That was before Garfield had taken any action, except an earnest attempt to decline the nomination which, as I have already stated, was suppressed by a peremptory exercise of the authority of the chair.
I have given more than once my estimate of James A. Garfield, although not as fully as I should like. Shortly after his death I delivered a eulogy before the people of Worcester at the request of the City Government. I was asked by John Sherman, who more than anybody else had the matter in charge, to deliver the eulogy before the two Houses of Congress. But Mr. Sherman had spoken without due authority. The Committee of the two Houses determined to invite Mr. Blaine, then Secretary of State. That arrangement was required by every consideration of propriety, and was in all respects the best possible. Mr. Blaine's address on Garfield is one of the treasures of our literature. It would have been a great public misfortune if that noble oration had been lost to the world.
I knew Garfield very intimately. For six of the eight years I served in the House with him my seat was so near his that we could converse with each other in whispers. By a singular chapter of accidents our families had been closely associated in several generations, although neither of us knew it until long after our friendship began.
The land of Captain John Sherman and the land of Captain John Prescott, both my ancestors on the mother's side, adjoined the land of Edward Garfield, the ancestor of the President, in Watertown. His land lay on both sides of what is now the line between Waltham and Watertown. Captain Benjamin Garfield, who may be properly called the founder of Waltham, was the leader of an earnest and protracted controversy in Watertown in which my great-great-grandfather, Joseph Sherman, was leader on the other side.
Lieutenant Thomas Garfield, another of the President's ancestors in the direct line, built a house in that part of Watertown, afterward Weston, which later still was incorporated with parts of Concord and Lexington as the town of Lincoln. He and his son Thomas were among the first incorporators, of whom my great-grandfather, John Hoar, was also one. Thomas Garfield built a house now standing at the end of a grass- grown lane about forty rods from the high road leading from Lincoln to Waltham and about two miles south from the centre of Lincoln. It is a secluded spot of great beauty. The house, a square, unpainted, two-story house with a great chimney in the middle, stands surrounded by old elms and apple trees, in a tract of fertile meadow, with the Lincoln hill in the distance. This estate passed from Lieutenant Thomas Garfield to his son Thomas, Jr., from him to his daughter Rebecca, wife of David Fiske, from her to her son Elijah Fiske, and from him to his children. One of these children married my cousin. I attended the wedding in my boyhood in the old Garfield house.
Abram Garfield, son of the second Thomas, the President's great-uncle, from whom his middle name came to him, was a soldier at Concord Bridge on the 19th of April, 1775, in the Lincoln Company of which my grandfather, Samuel Hoar, was Lieutenant and my two great-grandfathers served as privates. The depositions of Abram Garfield and John Hoar as to the facts of the Concord fight were taken with others by the patriots and sent to England for their vindication. This Abram Garfield died in the summer of 1775, a few months after the battle at Concord. His grave, with that of his father and grandfather, the President's direct ancestors, is close to the graves of my own ancestors in the Lincoln burial-ground.
The President's great-grandfather settled in Westminster. His land was close by the land of my wife's great-grandfather, and not far from the spot where her father was born. His house is still standing in Westminster. My grandfather's uncle, Daniel Hoar, was one of the founders of that town and owned land not far off.
So our friendship came by lawful inheritance. I discovered myself many of these facts relating to his ancestry which had been previously unknown to him. I have from him a letter written the day before he was assassinated in which he promises after visiting Williams College and the White Mountains to meet me at Concord and to spend the night with my brother there and visit the dwelling and burial places of his ancestors in Lincoln and then to come to Worcester as my guest.
James A. Garfield was a man of indefatigable industry and vast information. He seemed constantly possessed by an intelligent curiosity in regard to all subjects. He had a tenacious memory. Its stores were always ready at hand for his use on all occasions. There has been no man in public life in my time, except Charles Sumner, who was always so glad to render any service in his power to literature and science. He was a great friend of the Congressional Library, and helped largely to increase its appropriations. I got his powerful aid in procuring the purchase of the Margry papers, at the instance of Parkman, the historian.
During Garfield's service in the House he was the leader of its best thought. Everything he did and said manifested the serious, reverent love of excellence. He was ever grave, earnest, addressing himself only to the reason and conscience of his auditors. You will search his speeches in vain for an appeal to a base motive or an evil passion. He was remarkably independent in forming his judgments and inflexible in adhering to them on all grand and essential questions. His friend and Commander, General Thomas, whose stubborn courage saved the day in the battle for the possession of Tennessee, was well called The Rock of Chickamauga. In the greater battle in 1876 for the Nation's honor Garfield well deserves to be called The Rock of Ohio. There has been hardly any single service to this country in recent times greater than that rendered by him when he stood against the fiat money movement in Ohio.
XXIX. FOUR NATIONAL CONVENTIONS 1884
It happened to me again to be put at the head of the Massachusetts delegation in the convention of 1884. The leading candidates were Mr. Blaine and President Arthur. Mr. Arthur had, in many respects, made a very satisfactory President. He was a man of pleasant manners and skilled in the subtle ways of New York politicians. He had been one of the chief representatives of a faction in the Republican Party, and he never seemed able to shake off the influences which had surrounded him before his election. At a dinner shortly after he was chosen Vice-President, he made an apparently approving allusion to what he called the use of soap, which was understood to mean the use of money for corrupt purposes. He made a fatal mistake, as it always seemed to me, in permitting the resignation of President Garfield's Cabinet and filling their places with men who, like himself, belonged to the Grant faction. If he had said that he would not allow the act of an assassin to make a change in the forces that were to control the Administration so far as could be helped and that he would carry into effect the purposes of his predecessor, wherever he could in conscience do so, he would have maintained himself in the public esteem. But that was not his only mistake. Inconsiderately he lent himself to the popular prejudice against the policy of river and harbor improvements, and, in vetoing a bill passed by large majorities in both Houses of Congress, he sent in a message in which he said in substance that the more corrupt the measure the more votes it was likely to get in Congress. When in the next winter he was asked to specify the objectionable items in the bill he had vetoed, which appropriated about $18,000,000, he was able to point out less than five per cent. of all the appropriations which he could say he thought were for purposes not required by the interests of international or interstate commerce. And his claim was thoroughly refuted even in regard to the items which he specified. He also made some very bad appointments, which deeply offended the best Republican sentiment in many of the States. It is a little singular that the appointment of the Collector of the Port of Boston should have cost two Presidents of the United States a renomination. Yet so it is. The old feeling in Massachusetts that it was not, on the whole, desirable to nominate Mr. Blaine existed in great strength. The business men liked Arthur. They thought their interests were safe with him. But the honest Republican sentiment of Massachusetts was deeply outraged by the appointment to the office of Collector of Boston, of Mr. Roland Worthington, against the protest of her Senators and Representatives in Congress. He had been known only as an unscrupulous supporter of General Butler, and as the editor of a scurrilous newspaper which bitterly attacked the opponents of that person even where they were honest and trusted Republicans. To give this place to Mr. Worthington the President refused to reappoint Mr. Beard, who had made an admirable Collector, and who was supported by a large majority of the best men of Boston. It was believed that this appointment had been made in exchange for assurances of General Butler's support in the approaching election. Worthington made a poor Collector, and, at the State election after his appointment, voted for Butler against the candidate of the Republican Party. But for the indignation caused by this appointment, I think the delegation from Massachusetts, with three exceptions, would have supported Mr. Arthur for reelection. There would have been no movement for Mr. Edmunds, and but for that movement Mr. Arthur would have received the Republican nomination. Upon the final ballot the vote of Massachusetts was seven for Arthur, three for Blaine and eighteen for Edmunds.
A somewhat interesting incident occurred which shows the depth of a feeling, which I think was largely a prejudice, which is still manifesting itself as a disturbing element in American politics. There was a great desire on the part of those who were opposed to both Arthur and Blaine, to find a candidate upon whom they could unite, of such popularity and national distinction as to make it impossible for the managers for these candidates to hold their forces together. We thought that General Sherman was the person that we wanted. It was known that he had written a letter to Mr. Blaine declining to have his name used, and that a telegram had been received from him by a delegate during the session of the convention to the same effect. But it was thought that if he were once nominated he would find it impossible to decline, and that his previous refusal would be an element of strength and not of weakness in the country. After the adjournment, which was at 11:45 A. M., on Friday, June 6, the day before the balloting, I made an arrangement to meet Mr. George William Curtis, the Chairman of the New York delegation, and one or two other gentlemen of the same way of thinking, from one or two other States, and we agreed that when the convention came in again we would cast the votes of our delegates who agreed with us for General Sherman. I had been authorized by a large majority of the Massachusetts delegation to have this interview, and I knew that I represented their opinions, although they had not, all of them, spoken to me about General Sherman. When I got back to the next meeting of the convention, I made known to them what I had done. I was told by several of them that they would stand by me, but that it would cause great dissatisfaction when they got home.
"What is the matter?" I said. "Our people do not want a Father Confessor in the White House," was the answer. Although General Sherman was a Protestant, it is well known that his wife was a Catholic. Soon after, Mr. Curtis came over to my seat and said: "Mr. Hoar, I cannot carry out our agreement." "What is the matter?" said I. "There is an insurrection in the New York delegation," was his reply. "They do not want a Father Confessor in the White House." So we agreed we should have to give it up. When I came back to Washington, I called at John Sherman's house and talked over the convention with him. I told him the story I have just related. He said he was not surprised, and that he believed the unwillingness to have the religious faith of his wife made matter of public discussion had a good deal to do with his brother's refusal to permit himself to be a candidate.
While the convention of 1884 did not nominate the candidate favored by the Republicans of Massachusetts, the action of the State, in my opinion, was decisive in defeating the nomination of President Arthur. But for that there would have been no movement for Edmunds, and his support would have gone to the President. Mr. Blaine, who was nominated, was defeated at the election. The event proved him a much stronger candidate than I had supposed, and his subsequent career in the Department of State, I believe, satisfied a majority of his countrymen that he would have made an able and discreet President. I suppose it would hardly be denied now by persons acquainted with the details of the management of the Democratic campaign, at any rate I have heard the fact admitted by several very distinguished Democrats, members of the Senate of the United States, that the plurality of the vote of New York was really cast for Mr. Blaine, and that he was unjustly deprived of election by the fraud at Long Island City by which votes cast for the Butler Electoral Ticket were counted for Cleveland. I suppose also that but for the utterances of a foolish clergyman named Burchard, Mr. Blaine's majority in that State would have been so large that these frauds would have been ineffectual.