My Memories of Eighty Years
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Title: My Memories of Eighty Years
Author: Chauncey M. Depew
Release date: January 1, 2000 [eBook #2045]
Most recently updated: December 31, 2020
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MY MEMORIES OF EIGHTY YEARS ***
MY MEMORIES OF EIGHTY YEARS
BY
CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW
TO MY WIFE MAY PALMER DEPEW
THIS BOOK GREW FROM HER ENCOURAGEMENT
FOREWORD
For many years my friends have insisted upon my putting in
permanent form the incidents in my life which have interested
them. It has been my good fortune to take part in history-making
meetings and to know more or less intimately people prominent
in world affairs in many countries. Every one so situated has
a flood of recollections which pour out when occasion stirs the
memory. Often the listeners wish these transcribed for their
own use.
My classmate at Yale in the class of 1856, John D. Champlin, a man
of letters and an accomplished editor, rescued from my own
scattered records and newspaper files material for eight volumes.
My secretary has selected and compiled for publication two volumes
since. These are principally speeches, addresses, and contributions
which have appeared in public. Several writers, without my
knowledge, have selected special matter from these volumes
and made books.
Andrew D. White, Senator Hoar, and Senator Foraker, with whom
I was associated for years, have published full and valuable
autobiographies. I do not attempt anything so elaborate or
complete. Never having kept a diary, I am dependent upon a good
memory. I have discarded the stories which could not well be
published until long after I have joined the majority.
I trust and earnestly hope there is nothing in these recollections
which can offend anybody. It has been my object so to picture
events and narrate stories as to illumine the periods through
which I have passed for eighty-eight years, and the people whom
I have known and mightily enjoyed.
C.M.D.
CONTENTS
I. CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH
II. IN PUBLIC LIFE
III. ABRAHAM LINCOLN
IV. GENERAL GRANT
V. ROSCOE CONKLING
VI. HORACE GREELEY
VII. RUTHERFORD B. HAYES AND WILLIAM M. EVARTS
VIII. GENERAL GARFIELD
IX. CHESTER A. ARTHUR
X. GROVER CLEVELAND
XI. BENJAMIN HARRISON
XII. JAMES G. BLAINE
XIII. WILLIAM McKINLEY
XIV. THEODORE ROOSEVELT
XV. UNITED STATES SENATE
XVI. AMBASSADORS AND MINISTERS
XVII. GOVERNORS OF NEW YORK STATE
XVIII. FIFTY-SIX YEARS WITH THE NEW YORK CENTRAL RAILROAD COMPANY
XIX. RECOLLECTIONS FROM ABROAD
XX. ORATORS AND CAMPAIGN SPEAKERS
XXI. NATIONAL REPUBLICAN CONVENTIONS
XXII. JOURNALISTS AND FINANCIERS
XXIII. ACTORS AND MEN OF LETTERS
XXIV. SOCIETIES AND PUBLIC BANQUETS
INDEX [not included]
MY MEMORIES OF EIGHTY YEARS
I. CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH
It has occurred to me that some reminiscences of a long life
would be of interest to my family and friends.
My memory goes back for more than eighty years. I recall
distinctly when about five years old my mother took me to the
school of Mrs. Westbrook, wife of the well-known pastor of the
Dutch Reformed church, who had a school in her house, within
a few doors. The lady was a highly educated woman, and her
husband, Doctor Westbrook, a man of letters as well as a preacher.
He specialized in ancient history, and the interest he aroused
in Roman and Greek culture and achievements has continued with me
ever since.
The village of Peekskill at that time had between two and three
thousand inhabitants. Its people were nearly all Revolutionary
families who had settled there in colonial times. There had been
very little immigration either from other States or abroad;
acquaintance was universal, and in the activities of the churches
there was general co-operation among the members. Church
attendance was so unanimous that people, young or old, who failed
to be in their accustomed places on Sunday felt the disapproval
of the community.
Social activities of the village were very simple, but very
delightful and healthful. There were no very rich nor very poor.
Nearly every family owned its own house or was on the way to
acquire one. Misfortune of any kind aroused common interest
and sympathy. A helping hand of neighborliness was always extended
to those in trouble or distress. Peekskill was a happy community
and presented conditions of life and living of common interest,
endeavor, and sympathy not possible in these days of restless
crowds and fierce competition.
The Peekskill Academy was the dominant educational institution,
and drew students not only from the village but from a distance.
It fitted them for college, and I was a student there for about
twelve years. The academy was a character-making institution,
though it lacked the thoroughness of the New England preparatory
schools. Its graduates entering into the professions or business
had an unusual record of success in life. I do not mean that they
accumulated great fortunes, but they acquired independence and were
prominent and useful citizens in all localities where they settled.
I graduated from the Peekskill Academy in 1852. I find on the
programme of the exercises of that day, which some old student
preserved, that I was down for several original speeches, while
the other boys had mainly recitations. Apparently my teachers
had decided to develop any oratorical talent I might possess.
I entered Yale in 1852 and graduated in 1856. The college of that
period was very primitive compared with the university to which
it has grown. Our class of ninety-seven was regarded as unusually
large. The classics and mathematics, Greek and Latin, were the
dominant features of instruction. Athletics had not yet appeared,
though rowing and boat-racing came in during my term. The
outstanding feature of the institution was the literary societies:
the Linonia and the Brothers of Unity. The debates at the weekly
meetings were kept up and maintained upon a high and efficient
plane. Both societies were practically deliberative bodies and
discussed with vigor the current questions of the day. Under this
training Yale sent out an unusual number of men who became
eloquent preachers, distinguished physicians, and famous lawyers.
While the majority of students now on leaving college enter business
or professions like engineering, which is allied to business,
at that time nearly every young man was destined for the ministry,
law, or medicine. My own class furnished two of the nine judges
of the Supreme Court of the United States, and a large majority
of those who were admitted to the bar attained judicial honors.
It is a singular commentary on the education of that time that the
students who won the highest honors and carried off the college
prizes, which could only be done by excelling in Latin, Greek,
and mathematics, were far outstripped in after-life by their
classmates who fell below their high standard of collegiate
scholarship but were distinguished for an all-around interest
in subjects not features in the college curriculum.
My classmates, Justice David J. Brewer and Justice Henry Billings Brown,
were both eminent members of the Supreme Court of the United States.
Brewer was distinguished for the wide range of his learning and
illuminating addresses on public occasions. He was bicentennial
orator of the college and a most acceptable one. Wayne MacVeagh,
afterwards attorney-general of the United States, one of the leaders
of the bar, also one of the most brilliant orators of his time,
was in college with me, though not a classmate. Andrew D. White,
whose genius, scholarship, and organization enabled Ezra Cornell
to found Cornell University, was another of my college mates.
He became one of the most famous of our diplomats and the author
of many books of permanent value. My friendship with MacVeagh
and White continued during their lives, that is, for nearly sixty
years. MacVeagh was one of the readiest and most attractive of
speakers I ever knew. He had a very sharp and caustic wit, which
made him exceedingly popular as an after-dinner speaker and as a
host in his own house. He made every evening when he entertained,
for those who were fortunate enough to be his guests, an occasion
memorable in their experience.
John Mason Brown, of Kentucky, became afterwards the leader of
the bar in his State, and was about to receive from President Harrison
an appointment as justice of the Supreme Court when he died
suddenly. If he had been appointed it would have been a remarkable
circumstance that three out of nine judges of the greatest of
courts, an honor which is sought by every one of the hundreds
of thousands of lawyers in the United States, should have been
from the same college and the same class.
The faculty lingers in my memory, and I have the same reverence
and affection for its members, though sixty-five years out of
college, that I had the day I graduated. Our president,
Theodore D. Woolsey, was a wonderful scholar and a most inspiring
teacher. Yale has always been fortunate in her presidents, and
peculiarly so in Professor Woolsey. He had personal distinction,
and there was about him an air of authority and reserved power
which awed the most radical and rebellious student, and at the
same time he had the respect and affection of all. In his
historical lectures he had a standard joke on the Chinese, the
narration of which amused him the more with each repetition. It
was that when a Chinese army was beleaguered and besieged in a
fortress their provisions gave out and they decided to escape.
They selected a very dark night, threw open the gates, and as
they marched out each soldier carried a lighted lantern.
In the faculty were several professors of remarkable force and
originality. The professor of Greek, Mr. Hadley, father of the
distinguished ex-president of Yale, was more than his colleagues
in the thought and talk of the undergraduates. His learning and
pre-eminence in his department were universally admitted. He had a
caustic wit and his sayings were the current talk of the campus.
He maintained discipline, which was quite lax in those days, by
the exercise of this ability. Some of the boys once drove a calf
into the recitation-room. Professor Hadley quietly remarked:
"You will take out that animal. We will get along to-day with
our usual number." It is needless to say that no such experiment
was ever repeated.
At one time there was brought up in the faculty meeting a report
that one of the secret societies was about to bore an artesian
well in the cellar of their club house. It was suggested that such
an extraordinary expense should be prohibited. Professor Hadley
closed the discussion and laughed out the subject by saying from
what he knew of the society, if it would hold a few sessions over
the place where the artesian well was projected, the boring would
be accomplished without cost. The professor was a sympathetic
and very wise adviser to the students. If any one was in trouble
he would always go to him and give most helpful relief.
Professor Larned inspired among the students a discriminating
taste for the best English literature and an ardent love for its
classics. Professor Thacher was one of the most robust and
vigorous thinkers and teachers of his period. He was a born
leader of men, and generation after generation of students who
graduated carried into after-life the effects of his teaching and
personality. We all loved Professor Olmstead, though we were not
vitally interested in his department of physics and biology. He
was a purist in his department, and so confident of his principles
that he thought it unnecessary to submit them to practical tests.
One of the students, whose room was immediately over that of
the professor, took up a plank from the flooring, and by boring
a very small hole in the ceiling found that he could read the
examination papers on the professor's desk. The information
of this reaching the faculty, the professor was asked if he had
examined the ceiling. He said that was unnecessary, because
he had measured the distance between the ceiling and the surface
of his desk and found that the line of vision connected so far
above that nothing could be read on the desk.
Timothy Dwight, afterwards president, was then a tutor. Learning,
common sense, magnetism, and all-around good-fellowship were
wonderfully united in President Dwight. He was the most popular
instructor and best loved by the boys. He had a remarkable talent
for organization, which made him an ideal president. He possessed
the rare faculty of commanding and convincing not only the students
but his associates in the faculty and the members of the corporation
when discussing and deciding upon business propositions and
questions of policy.
The final examinations over, commencement day arrived. The
literary exercises and the conferring of degrees took place in the
old Center Church. I was one of the speakers and selected for
my subject "The Hudson River and Its Traditions." I was saturated
from early association and close investigation and reading with the
crises of the Revolutionary War, which were successfully decided
on the patriots' side on the banks of the Hudson. I lived near
Washington Irving, and his works I knew by heart, especially
the tales which gave to the Hudson a romance like the Rhine's.
The subject was new for an academic stage, and the speech made
a hit. Nevertheless, it was the saddest and most regretful day of
my life when I left Yale.
My education, according to the standard of the time, was completed,
and my diploma was its evidence. It has been a very interesting
question with me how much the academy and the college contributed
to that education. Their discipline was necessary and their
training essential. Four years of association with the faculty,
learned, finely equipped, and sympathetic, was a wonderful help.
The free associations of the secret and debating societies, the
campus, and the sports were invaluable, and the friendships formed
with congenial spirits added immensely to the pleasures and
compensations of a long life.
In connection with this I may add that, as it has been my lot
in the peculiar position which I have occupied for more than
half a century as counsel and adviser for a great corporation
and its creators and the many successful men of business who
have surrounded them, I have learned to know how men who have
been denied in their youth the opportunities for education feel
when they are in possession of fortunes, and the world seems
at their feet. Then they painfully recognize their limitations,
then they know their weakness, then they understand that there
are things which money cannot buy, and that there are gratifications
and triumphs which no fortune can secure. The one lament of all
those men has been: "Oh, if I had been educated I would sacrifice
all that I have to obtain the opportunities of the college, to be
able to sustain not only conversation and discussion with the
educated men with whom I come in contact, but competent also
to enjoy what I see is a delight to them beyond anything which
I know."
But I recall gratefully other influences quite as important to
one's education. My father was a typical business man, one of
the pioneers of river transportation between our village and
New York, and also a farmer and a merchant. He was a stern man
devoted to his family, and, while a strict disciplinarian, very
fond of his children.
My mother was a woman of unusual intellect bordering upon genius.
There were no means of higher education at that period, but her
father, who was an eminent lawyer, and her grandfather, a judge,
finding her so receptive, educated her with the care that was
given to boys who were intended for a professional life. She was
well versed in the literature of the time of Queen Elizabeth and
Queen Anne, and, with a retentive memory, knew by heart many
of the English classics. She wrote well, but never for publication.
Added to these accomplishments were rare good sense and prophetic
vision. The foundation and much of the superstructure of all that
I have and all that I am were her work. She was a rigid Calvinist,
and one of her many lessons has been of inestimable comfort to
me. Several times in my life I have met with heavy misfortunes
and what seemed irreparable losses. I have returned home to find
my mother with wise advice and suggestions ready to devote herself
to the reconstruction of my fortune, and to brace me up. She
always said what she thoroughly believed: "My son, this which
you think so great a calamity is really divine discipline.
The Lord has sent it to you for your own good, because in His
infinite wisdom He saw that you needed it. I am absolutely
certain that if you submit instead of repining and protesting,
if you will ask with faith and proper spirit for guidance and
help, they both will come to you and with greater blessings than
you ever had before." That faith of my mother inspired and
intensified my efforts and in every instance her predictions
proved true.
Every community has a public-spirited citizen who unselfishly
devotes himself or herself to the public good. That citizen of
Peekskill in those early days was Doctor James Brewer. He had
accumulated a modest competence sufficient for his simple needs
as bachelor. He was either the promoter or among the leaders of
all the movements for betterment of the town. He established
a circulating library upon most liberal terms, and it became an
educational institution of benefit. The books were admirably
selected, and the doctor's advice to readers was always available.
His taste ran to the English classics, and he had all the standard
authors in poetry, history, fiction, and essay.
No pleasure derived in reading in after-years gave me such delight
as the Waverley Novels. I think I read through that library and
some of it several times over.
The excitement as the novels of Dickens and Thackeray began
to appear equalled almost the enthusiasm of a political campaign.
Each one of those authors had ardent admirers and partisans.
The characters of Dickens became household companions. Every one
was looking for the counterpart of Micawber or Sam Weller, Pecksniff
or David Copperfield, and had little trouble in finding them either
in the family circle or among the neighbors.
Dickens's lectures in New York, which consisted of readings from
his novels, were an event which has rarely been duplicated for
interest. With high dramatic ability he brought out before the
audience the characters from his novels with whom all were
familiar. Every one in the crowd had an idealistic picture in
his mind of the actors of the story. It was curious to note that
the presentation which the author gave coincided with the idea
of the majority of his audience. I was fresh from the country
but had with me that evening a rather ultra-fashionable young
lady. She said she was not interested in the lecture because
it represented the sort of people she did not know and never
expected to meet; they were a very common lot. In her subsequent
career in this country and abroad she had to her credit three
matrimonial adventures and two divorces, but none of her husbands
were of the common lot.
Speaking of Dickens, one picture remains indelibly pressed upon
my memory. It was the banquet given him at which Horace Greeley
presided. Everybody was as familiar with Mr. Pickwick and his
portrait by Cruikshank in Dickens's works as with one's father.
When Mr. Greeley arose to make the opening speech and introduce
the guest of the evening, his likeness to this portrait of Pickwick
was so remarkable that the whole audience, including Mr. Dickens,
shouted their delight in greeting an old and well-beloved friend.
Another educational opportunity came in my way because one of
my uncles was postmaster of the village. Through his post-office
came several high-class magazines and foreign reviews. There
was no rural delivery in those days, and the mail could only be
had on personal application, and the result was that the subscribers
of these periodicals frequently left them a long time before they
were called for. I was an omnivorous reader of everything
available, and as a result these publications, especially the
foreign reviews, became a fascinating source of information and
culture. They gave from the first minds of the century criticisms
of current literature and expositions of political movements and
public men which became of infinite value in after-years.
Another unincorporated and yet valuable school was the frequent
sessions at the drug store of the elder statesmen of the village.
On certain evenings these men, representing most of the activities
of the village, would avail themselves of the hospitable chairs
about the stove and discuss not only local matters but the general
conditions of the country, some of them revolving about the
constitutionality of various measures which had been proposed
and enacted into laws. They nearly all related to slavery,
the compromise measures, the introduction of slaves into new
territories, the fugitive slave law, and were discussed with much
intelligence and information. The boys heard them talked about
in their homes and were eager listeners on the outskirts of this
village congress. Such institutions are not possible except in the
universal acquaintance, fellowship, and confidences of village
and country life. They were the most important factors in forming
that public opinion, especially among the young, which supported
Mr. Lincoln in his successful efforts to save the Union at whatever
cost.
A few days after returning home from Yale I entered the office
of Edward Wells, a lawyer of the village, as a student. Mr. Wells
had attained high rank in his profession, was a profound student
of the law, and had a number of young men, fitting them for the
bar under his direction.
I was admitted to the bar in 1858, and immediately opened an
office in the village. My first client was a prosperous farmer
who wanted an opinion on a rather complicated question. I prepared
the case with great care. He asked me what my fee was, and
I told him five dollars. He said: "A dollar and seventy-five is
enough for a young lawyer like you." Subsequently he submitted
the case to one of the most eminent lawyers in New York, who
came to the same conclusion and charged him five hundred dollars.
On account of this gentleman's national reputation the farmer
thought that fee was very reasonable. In subsequent years I have
received several very large retainers, but none of them gave so
much satisfaction as that dollar and seventy-five cents, which I had
actually earned after having been so long dependent on my father.
After some years of private practice Commodore Vanderbilt sent
for me and offered the attorneyship for the New York and Harlem
Railroad. I had just been nominated and confirmed United States
minister to Japan. The appointment was a complete surprise to me,
as I was not an applicant for any federal position. The salary was
seven thousand five hundred dollars and an outfit of nine thousand.
The commodore's offer of the attorneyship for the Harlem Railroad,
which was his first venture in railroading, was far less than
the salary as minister. When I said this to the commodore, he
remarked: "Railroads are the career for a young man; there is
nothing in politics. Don't be a damned fool." That decided me,
and on the 1st of January, 1921, I rounded out fifty-five years in
the railway service of this corporation and its allied lines.
Nothing has impressed me more than little things, and apparently
immaterial ones, which have influenced the careers of many people.
My father and his brothers, all active business men, were also
deeply interested in politics, not on the practical side but in
policies and governmental measures. They were uncompromising
Democrats of the most conservative type; they believed that
interference with slavery of any kind imperilled the union of
the States, and that the union of the States was the sole salvation
of the perpetuity of the republic and its liberties. I went to
Yale saturated with these ideas. Yale was a favorite college
for Southern people. There was a large element from the
slaveholding States among the students. It was so considerable
that these Southerners withdrew from the great debating societies
of the college and formed a society of their own, which they
called the Calliopean. Outside of these Southerners there were
very few Democrats among the students, and I came very near being
drawn into the Calliopean, but happily escaped.
The slavery question in all its phases of fugitive slave law and
its enforcement, the extension of slavery into the new territories,
or its prohibition, and of the abolition of the institution by
purchase or confiscation were subjects of discussion on the campus,
in the literary societies, and in frequent lectures in the halls in
New Haven by the most prominent and gifted speakers and advocates.
That was a period when even in the most liberal churches the pulpit
was not permitted to preach politics, and slavery was pre-eminently
politics. But according to an old New England custom, the pastor
was given a free hand on Thanksgiving Day to unburden his mind
of everything which had been bubbling and seething there for
a year. One of the most eminent and eloquent of New England
preachers was the Reverend Doctor Bacon, of Center Church,
New Haven. His Thanksgiving sermon was an event eagerly anticipated
by the whole college community. He was violently anti-slavery.
His sermons were not only intently listened to but widely read,
and their effect in promoting anti-slavery sentiment was very great.
The result of several years of these associations and discussions
converted me, and I became a Republican on the principles
enunciated in the first platform of the party in 1856. When I came
home from Yale the situation in the family became very painful,
because my father was an intense partisan. He had for his party
both faith and love, and was shocked and grieved at his son's
change of principles. He could not avoid constantly discussing
the question, and was equally hurt either by opposition or silence.
II. IN PUBLIC LIFE
The campaign of 1856 created an excitement in our village which
had never been known since the Revolutionary War. The old
families who had been settled there since colonial days were
mainly pro-slavery and Democratic, while the Republican party was
recruited very largely from New England men and in a minority.
Several times in our national political campaigns there has been
one orator who drew audiences and received public attention and
reports in the newspapers beyond all other speakers. On the
Democratic side during that period Horatio Seymour was pre-eminent.
On the Republican side in the State of New York the attractive
figure was George William Curtis. His books were very popular,
his charming personality, the culture and the elevation of his
speeches put him in a class by himself.
The Republicans of the village were highly elated when they had
secured the promise of Mr. Curtis to speak at their most important
mass meeting. The occasion drew together the largest audience
the village had known, composed not only of residents but many from
a distance. The committee of arrangements finally reported to
the waiting audience that the last train had arrived, but
Mr. Curtis had not come.
It suddenly occurred to the committee that it would be a good
thing to call a young recruit from a well-known Democratic family
and publicly commit him. First came the invitation, then the
shouting, and when I arose they cried "platform," and I was
escorted to the platform, but had no idea of making a speech.
My experience for years at college and at home had saturated me
with the questions at issue in all their aspects. From a full
heart, and a sore one, I poured out a confession of faith.
I thought I had spoken only a few minutes, but found afterwards
that it was over an hour. The local committee wrote to the State
committee about the meeting, and in a few days I received a letter
from the chairman of the State committee inviting me to fill
a series of engagements covering the whole State of New York.
The campaign of 1856 differed from all others in memory of men
then living. The issues between the parties appealed on the
Republican side to the young. There had grown up among the young
voters an intense hostility to slavery. The moral force of the
arguments against the institution captured them. They had no
hostility to the South, nor to the Southern slaveholders; they
regarded their position as an inheritance, and were willing to
help on the lines of Mr. Lincoln's original idea of purchasing
the slaves and freeing them. But the suggestion had no friends
among the slaveholders. These young men believed that any
extension or strengthening of the institution would be disastrous
to the country. The threatened dissolution of the Union, secession,
or rebellion did not frighten them.
Political conventions are the most interesting of popular gatherings.
The members have been delegated by their fellow citizens to
represent them, and they are above the average in intelligence,
political information of conditions in the State and nation, as
the convention represents the State or the republic. The belief
that they are generally boss-governed is a mistake. The party
leader, sometimes designated as boss, invariably consults with
the strongest men there are in the convention before he arrives
at a decision. He is generally successful, because he has so well
prepared the way, and his own judgment is always modified and
frequently changed in these conferences.
In 1858 I had the first sensation of the responsibility of public
office. I was not an applicant for the place; in fact, knew
nothing about it until I was elected a delegate to the Republican
State convention from the third assembly district of Westchester
County. The convention was held at Syracuse. The Westchester
delegates arrived late at night or, rather, early in the morning,
and we came to the hotel with large numbers of other delegates
from different sections who had arrived on the same train. It was
two o'clock, but the State leader, Thurlow Weed, was in the lobby
of the hotel to greet the delegates. He said to me: "You are
from Peekskill. With whom are you studying law?" I answered:
"With Judge William Nelson." "Oh," he remarked, "I remember
Judge Nelson well. He was very active in the campaign of 1828."
It was a feat of memory to thus recall the usefulness of a local
politician thirty years before. I noticed, as each delegate was
introduced, that Mr. Weed had some neighborhood recollections
of the man which put a tag on him.
The next day, as we met the leader, he recalled us by name, the
places where we lived, and the districts represented. Mr. Blaine
was the only other man I ever met or knew who possessed this
extraordinary gift for party leadership.
There was a revolt in the convention among the young members,
who had a candidate of their own. Mr. Weed's candidate for
governor was Edwin D. Morgan, a successful New York merchant,
who had made a good record as a State senator. I remember one
of Mr. Weed's arguments was that the Democrats were in power
everywhere and could assess their office-holders, while the
Republicans would have to rely for campaign funds upon voluntary
contributions, which would come nowhere so freely as from Mr. Morgan
and his friends. When the convention met Mr. Weed had won over
a large majority of the delegates for his candidate. It was
a triumph not only of his skill but of his magnetism, which were
always successfully exerted upon a doubtful member.
I was elected to the assembly, the popular branch of the New York
Legislature, in 1861. I was nominated during an absence from
the State, without being a candidate or knowing of it until my
return. Of course, I could expect nothing from my father, and
my own earnings were not large, so I had to rely upon a personal
canvass of a district which had been largely spoiled by rich
candidates running against each other and spending large amounts
of money. I made a hot canvass, speaking every day, and with
an investment of less than one hundred dollars for travel and
other expenses I was triumphantly elected.
By far the most interesting member of the legislature was the
speaker, Henry J. Raymond. He was one of the most remarkable
men I ever met. During the session I became intimate with him,
and the better I knew him the more I became impressed with his
genius, the variety of his attainments, the perfection of his
equipment, and his ready command of all his powers and resources.
Raymond was then editor of the New York Times and contributed
a leading article every day. He was the best debater we had
and the most convincing. I have seen him often, when some other
member was in the chair of the committee of the whole, and we were
discussing a critical question, take his seat on the floor and
commence writing an editorial. As the debate progressed, he would
rise and participate. When he had made his point, which he always
did with directness and lucidity, he would resume writing his
editorial. The debate would usually end with Mr. Raymond carrying
his point and also finishing his editorial, an example which seems
to refute the statement of metaphysicians that two parts of the mind
cannot work at the same time.
Two years afterwards, when I was secretary of state, I passed much
of my time at Saratoga, because it was so near Albany. Mr. Raymond
was also there writing the "Life of Abraham Lincoln." I breakfasted
with him frequently and found that he had written for an hour or
more before breakfast. He said to me in explanation that if one
would take an hour before breakfast every morning and concentrate
his mind upon his subject, he would soon fill a library.
Mr. Raymond had been as a young man a reporter in the United States
Senate. He told me that, while at that time there was no system
of shorthand or stenography, he had devised a crude one for
himself, by which he could take down accurately any address of
a deliberate speaker.
Daniel Webster, the most famous orator our country has ever
produced, was very deliberate in his utterances. He soon discovered
Raymond's ability, and for several years he always had Raymond
with him, and once said to him: "Except for you, the world would
have very few of my speeches. Your reports have preserved them."
Mr. Raymond told me this story of Mr. Webster's remarkable memory.
Once he said to Mr. Webster: "You never use notes and apparently
have made no preparation, yet you are the only speaker I report
whose speeches are perfect in structure, language, and rhetoric.
How is this possible?" Webster replied: "It is my memory. I can
prepare a speech, revise and correct it in my memory, and then
deliver the corrected speech exactly as finished." I have known
most of the great orators of the world, but none had any approach
to a faculty like this, though several could repeat after second
reading the speech which they had prepared.
In 1862 I was candidate for re-election to the assembly. Political
conditions had so changed that they were almost reversed. The
enthusiasm of the war which had carried the Republicans into power
the year before had been succeeded by general unrest. Our armies
had been defeated, and industrial and commercial depression
was general.
The leader of the Democratic Party in the State was Dean Richmond.
He was one of those original men of great brain-power, force, and
character, knowledge of men, and executive ability, of which that
period had a number. From the humblest beginning he had worked
his way in politics to the leadership of his party, to the presidency
of the greatest corporation in the State, the New York Central
Railroad Company, and in his many and successful adventures
had accumulated a fortune. His foresight was almost a gift of
prophecy, and his judgment was rarely wrong. He believed that
the disasters in the field and the bad times at home could be
charged up to the Lincoln administration and lead to a Democratic
victory. He also believed that there was only one man in the party
whose leadership would surely win, and that man was Horatio Seymour.
But Seymour had higher ambitions than the governorship of New York
and was very reluctant to run. Nevertheless, he could not resist
Richmond's insistence that he must sacrifice himself, if necessary,
to save the party.
The Republicans nominated General James W. Wadsworth for governor.
Wadsworth had enlisted at the beginning of the war and made a most
brilliant record, both as a fighting soldier and administrator.
The Republican party was sharply divided between radicals who
insisted on immediate emancipation of the slaves, and conservatives
who thought the time had not yet arrived for such a revolution.
The radicals were led by Horace Greeley, and the conservatives
by Thurlow Weed and Henry J. Raymond.
Horatio Seymour made a brilliant canvass. He had no equal in the
State in either party in charm of personality and attractive
oratory. He united his party and brought to its ranks all the
elements of unrest and dissatisfaction with conditions, military
and financial. While General Wadsworth was an ideal candidate,
he failed to get the cordial and united support of his party.
He represented its progressive tendencies as expressed and
believed by President Lincoln, and was hostile to reaction.
Under these conditions Governor Seymour carried the State.
The election had reversed the overwhelming Republican majority
in the legislature of the year before by making the assembly a tie.
I was re-elected, but by reduced majority. The assembly being
a tie, it was several weeks before it could organize. I was the
candidate in the caucus of the Republican members for speaker,
but after the nomination one of the members, named Bemus, threatened
to bolt and vote for the Democratic candidate unless his candidate,
Sherwood, was made the nominee. So many believed that Bemus
would carry out his threat, which would give the organization of
the House to the Democrats by one majority, that I withdrew in
favor of Sherwood. After voting hopelessly in a deadlock, day
after day for a long period, a caucus of the Republican members
was called, at which Sherwood withdrew, and on his motion I was
nominated as the party candidate for speaker.
During the night a Democratic member, T.C. Callicot, of Kings County,
came to my bedroom and said: "My ambition in life is to be speaker
of the assembly. Under the law the legislature cannot elect
the United States senator unless each House has first made a
nomination, then the Senate and the House can go into joint
convention, and a majority of that convention elect a senator.
You Republicans have a majority in the Senate, so that if the
House nominates, the legislature can go into joint convention
and elect a Republican senator. As long as the House remains
a tie this cannot be done. Now, what I propose is just this:
Before we meet tomorrow morning, if you will call your members
together and nominate me for speaker, the vote of your party and
I voting for myself will elect me. Then I will agree to name
General Dix, a Democrat, for United States senator, and if your
people will all vote with me for him he will be the assembly
nominee. The Senate has already nominated Governor Morgan.
So the next day the legislature can go into joint convention and,
having a Republican majority, elect Governor Morgan United States
senator." I told Mr. Callicot that I would present the matter
to my party associates.
In the early morning Saxton Smith and Colonel John Van Buren,
two of the most eminent Democrats in the State and members of
the legislature, came to me and said: "We know what Callicot
has proposed. Now, if you will reject that proposition we will
elect you speaker practically unanimously."
This assured my election for the speakership. I had a great
ambition to be on that roll of honor, and as I would have been
the youngest man ever elected to the position, my youth added
to the distinction. On the other hand, the government at Washington
needed an experienced senator of its own party, like Edwin D. Morgan,
who had been one of the ablest and most efficient of war governors,
both in furnishing troops and helping the credit of the country.
I finally decided to surrender the speakership for myself to gain
the senatorship for my party. I had difficulty in persuading my
associates, but they finally agreed. Callicot was elected speaker
and Edwin D. Morgan United States senator.
The event was so important and excited so much interest, both in
the State and in the country, that representative men came to
Albany in great numbers. The rejoicing and enthusiasm were intense
at having secured so unexpectedly a United States Senator for
the support of Mr. Lincoln's administration.
That night they all united in giving me a reception in the ballroom
of the hotel. There was a flood of eulogistic and prophetic
oratory. I was overwhelmed with every form of flattery and
applause, for distinguished service to the party. By midnight
I had been nominated and elected Governor of the State, and an hour
later I was already a United States senator. Before the morning
hour the presidency of the United States was impatiently waiting
for the time when I would be old enough to be eligible. All this
was soon forgotten. It is a common experience of the instability
of promises and hopes which come from gratified and happy
enthusiasts, and how soon they are dissipated like a dream! I have
seen many such instances, and from this early experience deeply
sympathize with the disillusionized hero.
The Democrats of the assembly and also of the State were determined
that Mr. Callicot should not enjoy the speakership. They started
investigations in the House and movements in the courts to prevent
him from taking his seat. The result was that I became acting
speaker and continued as such until Mr. Callicot had defeated
his enemies and taken his place as speaker in the latter part of
the session.
I was also chairman of the committee of ways and means and the
leader of the House. The budget of my committee was larger than
usual on account of the expenses of the war. It was about seven
million dollars. It created much more excitement and general
discussion than does the present budget of one hundred and forty
millions. The reason is the difference in conditions and public
necessities of the State of New York in the winter of 1863 and
now. It is also partly accounted for by the fact that the expenses
of the State had then to be met by a real-estate tax which affected
everybody, while now an income tax has been adopted which is
capable of unlimited expansion and invites limitless extravagance
because of the comparatively few interested.
Eighteen hundred and sixty-three was an eventful year; the early
part was full of gloom and unrest. Horatio Seymour, as governor,
violently antagonized President Lincoln and his policies. Seymour
was patriotic and very able, but he was so saturated with State
rights and strict construction of the Constitution that it marred
his judgment and clouded his usually clear vision. In the critical
situation of the country Mr. Lincoln saw the necessity of support
of the State of New York. The president said: "The governor has
greater power just now for good than any other man in the country.
He can wheel the Democratic party into line, put down the rebellion
and preserve the government. Tell him from me that if he will
render this service to his country, I shall cheerfully make way
for him as my successor." To this message, sent through
Thurlow Weed, Governor Seymour made no reply. He did not believe
that the South could be defeated and the Union preserved.
Later President Lincoln sent a personal letter to the governor.
It was a very human epistle. The president wrote: "You and I
are substantially strangers, and I write this that we may become
better acquainted. In the performance of duty the co-operation
of your State is needed and is indispensable. This alone is
sufficient reason why I should wish to be on a good understanding
with you. Please write me at least as long a letter as this,
of course saying in it just what you think fit."
Governor Seymour made no reply. He and the other Democratic
leaders thought the president uncouth, unlettered, and very weak.
The phrase "please write me at least as long a letter as this"
produced an impression upon the scholarly, cultured, cautious,
and diplomatic Seymour which was most unfavorable to its author.
Seymour acknowledged the receipt of the letter and promised to
make a reply, but never did.
Seymour's resentment was raised to fever heat when General Burnside,
in May, 1863, arrested Clement L. Vallandigham. The enemies of
the war and peace at any price people, and those who were
discouraged, called mass meetings all over the country to protest
this arrest as an outrage. A mass meeting was called in Albany
on the 16th of May. Erastus Corning, one of the most eminent
Democrats in the State, presided.
I was in Albany at the time and learned this incident. One of
Governor Seymour's intimate friends, his adviser and confidant
in personal business affairs was Charles Cook, who had been
comptroller of the State and a State senator. Cook was an active
Republican, a very shrewd and able man. He called on the governor
and tried to persuade him not to write a letter to the Vallandigham
meeting, but if he felt he must say something, attend the meeting
and make a speech. Cook said: "Governor, the country is going
to sustain ultimately the arrest of Vallandigham. It will be proved
that he is a traitor to the government and a very dangerous man
to be at large. Whatever is said at the meeting will seriously
injure the political future of the authors. If you write a letter
it will be on record, so I beg you, if you must participate, attend
the meeting and make a speech. A letter cannot be denied; it can
always be claimed that a speech has been misreported."
The Governor wrote the letter, one of the most violent of his
utterances, and it was used against him with fatal effect when
he ran for governor, and also when a candidate for president.
On July 11th the draft began in New York City. It had been
denounced as unconstitutional by every shade of opposition to
Mr. Lincoln's administration and to the prosecution of the war.
The attempt to enforce it led to one of the most serious riots
in the history of the city, and the rage of the rioters was against
the officers of the law, the headquarters of the draft authorities,
and principally against the negroes. Every negro who was caught
was hung or burned, and the negro orphan asylum was destroyed
by fire. The governor did his best to stop the rioting. He issued
a proclamation declaring the city in a state of insurrection, and
commanded obedience to the law and the authorities.
In this incident again the governor permitted his opposition to
the war to lead him into political indiscretion. He made a speech
from the steps of the City Hall to the rioters. He began by
addressing them as "My friends." The governor's object was to
quiet the mob and send them to their homes. So instead of saying
"fellow citizens" he used the fatal words "my friends." No two
words were ever used against a public man with such fatal effect.
Every newspaper opposed to the governor and every orator would
describe the horrors, murders, and destruction of property by
the mob and then say: "These are the people whom Governor Seymour
in his speech from the steps of the City Hall addressed as
'my friends.'"
The Vallandigham letter and this single utterance did more harm
to Governor Seymour's future ambitions than all his many eloquent
speeches against Lincoln's administration and the conduct of the war.
The political situation, which had been so desperate for the
national administration, changed rapidly for the better with
the victory at Gettysburg, which forced General Lee out of
Pennsylvania and back into Virginia, and also by General Grant's
wonderful series of victories at Vicksburg and other places which
liberated the Mississippi River.
Under these favorable conditions the Republicans entered upon
the canvass in the fall of 1863 to reverse, if possible, the
Democratic victory the year before. The Republican State ticket was:
Secretary of State ..... Chauncey M. Depew.
Comptroller ..... Lucius Robinson.
Canal Commissioner ..... Benjamin F. Bruce.
Treasurer ..... George W. Schuyler.
State Engineer ..... William B. Taylor.
Prison Inspector ..... James K. Bates.
Judge of the Court of Appeals ..... Henry S. Selden.
Attorney-General ..... John Cochran.
The canvass was one of the most interesting of political campaigns.
The president was unusually active, and his series of letters
were remarkable documents. He had the ear of the public; he
commanded the front page of the press, and he defended his
administration and its acts and replied to his enemies with skill,
tact, and extreme moderation.
Public opinion was peculiar. Military disasters and increasing
taxation had made the position of the administration very critical,
but the victories which came during the summer changed the situation.
I have never known in any canvass any one incident which had
greater effect than Sheridan's victory in the Shenandoah Valley,
and never an adventure which so captured the popular imagination
as his ride from Washington to the front; his rallying the retreating
and routed troops, reforming them and turning defeat into victory.
The poem "Sheridan's Ride," was recited in every audience, from
every platform, and from the stage in many theatres and created
the wildest enthusiasm.
My friend, Wayne MacVeagh, who was at Yale College with me,
had succeeded as a radical leader in defeating his brother-in-law,
Don Cameron, and getting control for the first time in a generation
against the Cameron dynasty of the Republican State organization
of Pennsylvania. He had nominated a radical ticket, with
Andrew G. Curtin as a candidate for governor.
MacVeagh wrote to me, saying: "You are running at the head of
the Republican ticket in New York. Your battle is to be won
in Pennsylvania, and unless we succeed you cannot. Come over
and help us."
I accepted the invitation and spent several most exciting and
delightful weeks campaigning with Governor Curtin and his party.
The meetings were phenomenal in the multitudes which attended
and their interest in the speeches. I remember one dramatic
occasion at the city of Reading. This was a Democratic stronghold;
there was not a single Republican office-holder in the county.
The only compensation for a Republican accepting a nomination
and conducting a canvass, with its large expenses and certain
defeat, was that for the rest of his life he was given as an
evidence of honor the title of the office for which he ran, and so
the county was full of "judges, Mr. District Attorneys, State
Senators, and Congressmen" who had never been elected.
We arrived at Reading after midday. The leading street, a very
broad one, was also on certain days the market-place. A friend
of the governor, who had a handsome house on this street, had
the whole party for luncheon. The luncheon was an elaborate
banquet. Governor Curtin came to me and said: "You go out and
entertain the crowd, which is getting very impatient, and in about
twenty minutes I will send some one to relieve you." It was
raining in torrents; the crowd shouted to me encouragingly: "Never
mind the rain; we are used to that, but we never heard you." As
I would try to stop they would shout: "Go ahead!" In the meantime
the banquet had turned into a festive occasion, with toasts and
speeches. I had been speaking over two hours before the governor
and his party appeared. They had been dining, and the Eighteenth
Amendment had not been dreamed of. I was drenched to the skin,
but waited until the governor had delivered his twenty-minute
speech; then, without stopping for the other orators, I went over
to the house, stripped, dried myself, and went to bed.
Utterly exhausted with successive days and nights of this experience,
I did not wake until about eight o'clock in the evening. Then
I wandered out in the street, found the crowd still there, and
the famous John W. Forney making a speech. They told me that
he had been speaking for four hours, delivering an historical address,
but had only reached the administration of General Jackson. I never
knew how long he kept at it, but there was a tradition with our party
that he was still speaking when the train left the next morning.
Governor Curtin was an ideal party leader and candidate. He was
one of the handsomest men of his time, six feet four inches in
height, perfectly proportioned and a superb figure. He never
spoke over twenty minutes, but it was the talk in the familiar
way of an expert to his neighbors. He had a cordial and captivating
manner, which speedily made him the idol of the crowd and a most
agreeable companion in social circles. When he was minister
to Russia, the Czar, who was of the same height and build, was
at once attracted to him, and he took a first place among the
diplomats in influence.
When I returned to New York to enter upon my own canvass, the State
and national committees imposed upon me a heavy burden. Speakers
of State reputation were few, while the people were clamoring for
meetings. Fortunately I had learned how to protect my voice. In
the course of the campaign every one who spoke with me lost his
voice and had to return home for treatment. When I was a student
at Yale the professor in elocution was an eccentric old gentleman
named North. The boys paid little attention to him and were
disposed to ridicule his peculiarities. He saw that I was specially
anxious to learn and said: "The principal thing about oratory
is to use your diaphragm instead of your throat." His lesson
on that subject has been of infinite benefit to me all my life.
The programme laid out called upon me to speak on an average
between six and seven hours a day. The speeches were from ten
to thirty minutes at different railway stations, and wound up with
at least two meetings at some important towns in the evening,
and each meeting demanded about an hour. These meetings were
so arranged that they covered the whole State. It took about four
weeks, but the result of the campaign, due to the efforts of the
orators and other favorable conditions, ended in the reversal
of the Democratic victory of the year before, a Republican majority
of thirty thousand and the control of the legislature.
In 1864 the political conditions were very unfavorable for the
Republican party, owing to the bitter hostility between the
conservative and radical elements. Led by such distinguished men
as Thurlow Weed and Henry J. Raymond, on the one side, and
Horace Greeley, with an exceedingly capable body of earnest
lieutenants on the other, the question of success or defeat depended
upon the harmonizing of the two factions.
Without having been recognized by the politicians or press of
the State, Reuben E. Fenton, who had been for ten years a congressman
from the Chatauqua district, had developed in Congress remarkable
ability as an organizer. He had succeeded in making Galusha A. Grow
speaker of the House of Representatives, and had become a power
in that body. He had behind him the earnest friendship and support
of the New York delegation in the House of Representatives and had
not incurred the enmity of either faction in his own State. His
nomination saved the party in that campaign.
As an illustration how dangerous was the situation, though the
soldiers' vote in the field was over one hundred thousand and
almost unanimously for the Republican ticket, the presidential and
gubernatorial candidates received less than eight thousand
majority, the governor leading the president.
The re-election of Mr. Lincoln and the election Reuben E. Fenton
over Governor Seymour made our State solidly Republican, and
Governor Fenton became at once both chief executive and party
leader. He had every quality for political leadership, was a shrewd
judge of character, and rarely made mistakes in the selection
of his lieutenants. He was a master of all current political
questions and in close touch with public opinion. My official
relations with him as secretary of state became came at once
intimate and gratifying. It required in after-years all the
masterful genius of Roscoe Conkling and the control of federal
patronage granted to him by President Grant to break Fenton's
hold upon his party.
Governor Fenton was blessed with a daughter of wonderful executive
ability, singular charm, and knowledge of public affairs. She made
the Executive Mansion in Albany one of the most charming and
hospitable homes in the State. Its influence radiated everywhere,
captured visitors, legislators, and judges, and was a powerful
factor in the growing popularity and influence of the governor.
One of the most interesting of political gatherings was the
Democratic convention, which met at Tredwell Hall in Albany
in the fall of 1864, to select a successor to Governor Seymour.
The governor had declared publicly that he was not a candidate,
and that under no conditions would he accept a renomination. He
said that his health was seriously impaired, and his private affairs
had been neglected so long by his absorption in public duties
that they were in an embarrassing condition and needed attention.
The leaders of the convention met in Dean Richmond's office and
selected a candidate for governor and a full State ticket. When
the convention met the next day I was invited to be present as
a spectator. It was supposed by everybody that the proceedings
would be very formal and brief, as the candidates and the platform
had been agreed upon. The day was intensely hot, and most of
the delegates discarded their coats, vests, and collars, especially
those from New York City.
When the time came for the nomination, the platform was taken
by one of the most plausible and smooth talkers I ever heard.
He delivered a eulogy upon Governor Seymour and described in
glowing terms the debt the party owed him for his wonderful public
services, and the deep regret all must have that he felt it necessary
to retire to private life. He continued by saying that he acquiesced
in that decision, but felt it was due to a great patriot and
the benefactor of the party that he should be tendered a
renomination. Of course, they all knew it would be merely a
compliment, as the governor's position had been emphatically
stated by himself. So he moved that the governor be nominated by
acclamation and a committee appointed to wait upon him at the
Executive Mansion and ascertain his wishes.
When Mr. Richmond was informed of this action, he said it was
all right but unnecessary, because the situation was too serious
to indulge in compliments.
In an hour the delegation returned, and the chairman, who was
the same gentleman who made the speech and the motion, stepped
to the front of the platform to report. He said that the governor
was very grateful for the confidence reposed in him by the
convention, and especially for its approval of his official actions
as governor of the State and the representative of his party at
the national convention, that in his long and intense application
to public duties he had impaired his health and greatly embarrassed
his private affairs, but, but, he continued with emphasis. . . He
never got any further. Senator Shafer, of Albany, who was unfriendly
to the governor, jumped up and shouted: "Damn him, he has accepted!"
The convention, when finally brought to order, reaffirmed its
complimentary nomination as a real one, with great enthusiasm
and wild acclaim.
When the result was reported to Mr. Richmond at his office, I was
told by one who was present that Richmond's picturesque vocabulary
of indignation and denunciation was enriched to such a degree
as to astonish and shock even the hardened Democrats who listened
to the outburst.
A committee was appointed to wait on the governor and request him
to appear before the convention. In a little while there stepped
upon the platform the finest figure in the State or country.
Horatio Seymour was not only a handsome man, with a highly
intellectual and expressive face of mobile features, which added
to the effect of his oratory, but he never appeared unless perfectly
dressed and in the costume which was then universally regarded
as the statesman's apparel. His patent-leather boots, his
Prince Albert suit, his perfectly correct collar and tie were
evidently new, and this was their first appearance. From head to
foot he looked the aristocrat. In a few minutes he became the idol
of that wild and overheated throng. His speech was a model of
tact, diplomacy, and eloquence, with just that measure of restraint
which increased the enthusiasm of the hearers. The convention,
which had gathered for another purpose, another candidate, and
a new policy, hailed with delight its old and splendid leader.
Commodore Vanderbilt had a great admiration for Dean Richmond.
The commodore disliked boasters and braggarts intensely. Those
who wished to gain his favor made the mistake, as a rule, of boasting
about what they had done, and were generally met by the remark:
"That amounts to nothing." Mr. Tillinghast, a western New York man
and a friend of Richmond, was in the commodore's office one day,
soon after Richmond died. Tillinghast was general superintendent
of the New York Central and had been a sufferer from being stepped
on by the commodore when he was lauding his own achievements and
so took the opposite line of extreme moderation. The commodore
asked Tillinghast, after praising Mr. Richmond very highly, "How
much did he leave?" "Oh," said Tillinghast, "his estate is a
great disappointment, and compared with what it was thought to be
it is very little." "I am surprised," remarked the commodore,
"but how much?" "Oh, between five or six millions," Tillinghast
answered. For the first time in his life the commodore was thrown
off his guard and said: "Tillinghast, if five or six million
of dollars is a disappointment, what do you expect in western
New York?" At that time there were few men who were worth that
amount of money.
Governor Seymour made a thorough canvass of the State, and I was
appointed by our State committee to follow him. It was a singular
experience to speak and reply to the candidate the day after his
address. The local committee meets you with a very complete report
of his speech. The trouble is that, except you are under great
restraint, the urgency of the local committee and the inevitable
temptations of the reply under such conditions, when your adversary
is not present, will lead you to expressions and personalities which
you deeply regret.
When the canvass was over and the governor was beaten, I feared
that the pleasant relations which had existed between us were
broken. But he was a thorough sportsman. He sent for and received
me with the greatest cordiality, and invited me to spend a week-end
with him at his home in Utica. There he was the most delightful
of hosts and very interesting as a gentleman farmer. In the
costume of a veteran agriculturist and in the farm wagon he drove
me out mornings to his farm, which was so located that it could
command a fine view of the Mohawk Valley. After the inspection
of the stock, the crops, and buildings, the governor would spend
the day discoursing eloquently and most optimistically upon
the prosperity possible for the farmer. To his mind then the food
of the future was to be cheese. There was more food value
in cheese than in any known edible article, animal or vegetable.
It could sustain life more agreeably and do more for longevity
and health.
No one could have imagined, who did not know the governor and
was privileged to listen to his seemingly most practical and
highly imaginative discourse, that the speaker was one of the
ablest party managers, shrewdest of politicians, and most eloquent
advocates in the country, whose whole time and mind apparently
were absorbed in the success of his party and the fruition of
his own ambitions.
As we were returning home he said to me: "You have risen higher
than any young man in the country of your age. You have a talent
and taste for public life, but let me advise you to drop it and
devote yourself to your profession. Public life is full of
disappointments, has an unusual share of ingratitude, and its
compensations are not equal to its failures. The country is full
of men who have made brilliant careers in the public service and
then been suddenly dropped and forgotten. The number of such men
who have climbed the hill up State Street to the capitol in Albany,
with the applause of admiring crowds whom none now can recall,
would make a great army."
He continued by telling this story: "In the war of 1812 the
governor and the legislature decided to bring from Canada to
Albany the remains of a hero whose deeds had excited the admiration
of the whole State. There was an imposing and continuous
procession, with local celebrations all along the route, from
the frontier to the capital. The ceremonies in Albany were attended
by the governor, State officers, legislature, and judges, and the
remains were buried in the capitol park. No monument was erected.
The incident is entirely forgotten, no one remembers who the hero
was, what were his deeds, nor the spot where he rests."
Years afterwards, when the State was building a new capitol and
I was one of the commissioners, in excavating the grounds
a skeleton was found. It was undoubtedly the forgotten hero
of Governor Seymour's story.
When my term was about expiring with the year 1865 I decided
to leave public life and resume the practice of my profession.
I was at the crossroads of a political or a professional career.
So, while there was a general assent to my renomination, I
emphatically stated the conclusion at which I had arrived.
The Republican convention nominated for my successor as secretary
of state General Francis C. Barlow, a very brilliant soldier in
the Civil War. The Democratic convention adopted a patriotic
platform of advanced and progressive views, and nominated at the
head of their ticket for secretary of state General Henry W. Slocum.
General Slocum had been a corps commander in General Sherman's
army, and came out of the war among the first in reputation and
achievement of the great commanders. It was a master stroke on
the part of the Democratic leaders to place him at the head of
their ticket. He was the greatest soldier of our State and very
popular with the people. In addition to being a great commander,
he had a charming personality, which fitted him for success
in public life.
The Democrats also on the same ticket nominated for attorney-general
John Van Buren. He was a son of President Van Buren and a man
of genius. Although he was very erratic, his ability was so great
that when serious he captured not only the attention but the judgment
of people. He was an eloquent speaker and had a faculty of
entrancing the crowd with his wit and of characterization of his
opponent which was fatal. I have seen crowds, when he was
elaborately explaining details necessary for the vindication of his
position, or that of his party which did not interest them,
to remain with close attention, hoping for what was certain to come,
namely, one of those sallies of wit, which made a speech of
Van Buren a memorable thing to have listened to.
Van Buren was noted for a reckless disregard of the confidences
of private conversation. Once I was with him on the train for
several hours, and in the intimacy which exists among political
opponents who know and trust each other we exchanged views in
regard to public measures and especially public men. I was very
indiscreet in talking with him in my criticism of the leaders of
my own party, and he equally frank and delightful in flaying alive
the leaders of his party, especially Governor Seymour.
A few days afterwards he made a speech in which he detailed what
I had said, causing me the greatest embarrassment and trouble.
In retaliation I wrote a letter to the public, stating what he had
said about Governor Seymour. The Democratic ticket was beaten
by fifteen thousand in a very heavy vote, and Van Buren always
charged it to the resentment of Governor Seymour and his friends.
In our country public life is a most uncertain career for a young
man. Its duties and activities remove him from his profession or
business and impose habits of work and thought which unfit him
for ordinary pursuits, especially if he remains long in public
service. With a change of administration or of party popularity,
he may be at any time dropped and left hopelessly stranded.
On the other hand, if his party is in power he has in it a position
of influence and popularity. He has a host of friends, with many
people dependent upon him for their own places, and it is no easy
thing for him to retire.
When I had decided not to remain any longer in public life and
return home, the convention of my old district, which I had
represented in the legislature, renominated me for the old position
with such earnestness and affection that it was very difficult
to refuse and to persuade them that it was absolutely necessary
for me to resume actively my profession.
Our village of Peekskill, which has since grown into the largest
village in the State, with many manufacturing and other interests,
was then comparatively small. A large number of people gathered
at the post-office every morning. On one occasion when I arrived
I found them studying a large envelope addressed to me, which
the postmaster had passed around. It was a letter from
William H. Seward, secretary of state, announcing that the president
had appointed me United States minister to Japan, and that the
appointment had been sent to the Senate and confirmed by that
body, and directing that I appear at the earliest possible moment
at his office to receive instructions and go to my post. A few
days afterwards I received a beautiful letter from Henry J. Raymond,
then in Congress, urging my acceptance.
On arriving in Washington I went to see Mr. Seward, who said to me:
"I have special reasons for securing your appointment from the
president. He is rewarding friends of his by putting them in
diplomatic positions for which they are wholly unfit. I regard
the opening of Japan to commerce and our relations to that new
and promising country so important, that I asked the privilege
to select one whom I thought fitted for the position. Your youth,
familiarity with public life, and ability seem to me ideal for this
position, and I have no doubt you will accept."
I stated to him how necessary it was that after long neglect in
public life of my private affairs I should return to my profession,
if I was to make a career, but Mr. Seward brushed that aside by
reciting his own success, notwithstanding his long service in our
State and in Washington. "However," he continued, "I feared that
this might be your attitude, so I have made an appointment for you
to see Mr. Burlingame, who has been our minister to China, and
is now here at the head of a mission from China to the different
nations of the world."
Anson Burlingame's career had been most picturesque and had
attracted the attention of not only the United States but of
Europe. As a member of the House of Representatives he had
accepted the challenge of a "fire-eater," who had sent it under
the general view that no Northern man would fight. As minister
to China he had so gained the confidence of the Chinese Government
that he persuaded them to open diplomatic relations with the Western
world, and at their request he had resigned his position from
the United States and accepted the place of ambassador to the great
powers, and was at the head of a large delegation, composed of
the most important, influential, and representative mandarins of
the old empire.
When I sent up my card to his room at the hotel his answer was:
"Come up immediately." He was shaving and had on the minimum
of clothes permissible to receive a visitor. He was expecting me
and started in at once with an eloquent description of the attractions
and importance of the mission to Japan. With the shaving brush
in one hand and the razor in the other he delivered an oration.
In order to emphasize it and have time to think and enforce a new
idea, he would apply the brush and the razor vigorously, then pause
and resume. I cannot remember his exact words, but have a keen
recollection of the general trend of his argument.
He said: "I am surprised that a young man like you, unmarried
and with no social obligations, should hesitate for a moment
to accept this most important and attractive position. If you
think these people are barbarians, I can assure you that they
had a civilization and a highly developed literature when our
forefathers were painted savages. The western nations of Europe,
in order to secure advantages in this newly opened country for
commerce, have sent their ablest representatives. You will meet
there with the diplomats of all the western nations, and your
intimacy with them will be a university of the largest opportunity.
You will come in contact with the best minds of Europe. You can
make a great reputation in the keen rivalry of this situation
by securing the best of the trade of Japan for your own country
to its western coasts over the waters of the Pacific. You will
be welcomed by the Japanese Government and the minister of
foreign affairs will assign you a palace to live in, with a garden
attached so perfectly appointed and kept as to have been the envy
of Shenstone. You will be attended by hundreds of beautiful and
accomplished Japanese maidens."
When I repeated to a large body of waiting office-seekers who had
assembled in my room what Mr. Burlingame had said, they all became
applicants for the place.
There is no more striking evidence of the wonderful advance in
every way of the Japanese Empire and its people than the conditions
existing at that time and now. Then it took six months to reach
Japan and a year for the round trip. Of course, there was no
telegraphic or cable communication, and so it required a year
for a message to be sent and answered. The Japanese army at that
time was mostly clad in armor and its navy were junks.
In fifty years Japan has become one of the most advanced nations
of the world. It has adopted and assimilated all that is best of
Western civilization, and acquired in half a century what required
Europe one thousand years to achieve. Its army is unexcelled
in equipment and discipline, and its navy and mercantile marine are
advancing rapidly to a foremost place. It demonstrated its prowess
in the war with Russia, and its diplomacy and power in the recent war.
Japan has installed popular education, with common schools,
academies, and universities, much on the American plan. It has
adopted and installed every modern appliance developed by
electricity--telegraph, cable, telephone, etc.
While I was greatly tempted to reverse my decision and go,
my mother, who was in delicate health, felt that an absence so
long and at such distance would be fatal, and so on her account
I declined.
As I look back over the fifty years I can see plainly that four
years, and probably eight, in that mission would have severed
me entirely from all professional and business opportunities
at home, and I might have of necessity become a place holder
and a place seeker, with all its adventures and disappointments.
If I had seriously wanted an office and gone in pursuit of one,
my pathway would have had the usual difficulties, but fickle
fortune seemed determined to defeat my return to private life
by tempting offers. The collectorship of the port of New York
was vacant. It was a position of great political power because
of its patronage. There being no civil service, the appointments
were sufficiently numerous and important to largely control the
party in the State of New York, and its political influence reached
into other commonwealths. It was an office whose fees were
enormous, and the emoluments far larger than those of any position
in the country.
The party leaders had begun to doubt President Johnson, and they
wanted in the collectorship a man in whom they had entire
confidence, and so the governor and State officers, who were all
Republicans, the Republican members of the legislature, the State
committee, the two United States senators, and the Republican
delegation of New York in the House of Representatives unanimously
requested the president to appoint me.
President Johnson said to me: "No such recommendation and
indorsement has ever been presented to me before." However,
the breach between him and the party was widening, and he could
not come to a decision.
One day he suddenly sent for Senator Morgan, Henry J. Raymond,
Thurlow Weed, and the secretary of the treasury for a consultation.
He said to them: "I have decided to appoint Mr. Depew." The
appointment was made out by the secretary of the treasury, and the
president instructed him to send it to the Senate the next morning.
There was great rejoicing among the Republicans, as this seemed
to indicate a favorable turn in the president's mind. Days and
weeks passed, however, and when the veto of the Civil Rights Bill
was overridden in the Senate and, with the help of the votes
of the senators from New York, the breach between the president
and his party became irreconcilable, the movement for his
impeachment began, which ended in the most sensational and perilous
trial in our political history.
On my way home to New York, after the vote of the New York senators
had ended my hope for appointment, I had as a fellow traveller
my friend, Professor Davies, from West Point. He was a brother
of that eminent jurist, Henry E. Davies, a great lawyer and
chief justice of our New York State Court of Appeals. Professor
Davies said to me: "I think I must tell you why your nomination
for collector was not sent to the Senate. I was in Washington
to persuade the president, with whom I am quite intimate, to make
another appointment. I was calling on Secretary Hugh McCulloch
and his family in the evening of the day when the conference decided
to appoint you. Secretary McCulloch said to me: 'The contest
over the collectorship of the port of New York is settled, and
Chauncey Depew's name will be sent to the Senate to-morrow
morning.' I was at the White House," continued the professor,
"the next morning before breakfast. The president received me
at once because I said my mission was urgent and personal. I told
him what the secretary of the treasury had told me and said:
'You are making a fatal mistake. You are going to break with
your party and to have a party of your own. The collectorship
of the port of New York is the key to your success. Depew is
very capable and a partisan of his party. If you have any doubt,
I beg of you to withhold the appointment until the question
comes up in the Senate of sustaining or overriding of the veto
of the Civil Rights Bill. The votes of the two New York senators
will decide whether they are your friends or not.' The president
thought that was reasonable, and you know the result."
There was at least one satisfaction in the professor's amazingly
frank revelation: it removed all doubt why I had lost a great
office and, for my age and circumstances, a large fortune.
President Andrew Johnson differed radically from any President
of the United States whom it has been my good fortune to know.
This refers to all from and including Mr. Lincoln to Mr. Harding.
A great deal must be forgiven and a great deal taken by way of
explanation when we consider his early environment and opportunities.
In the interviews I had with him he impressed me as a man of
vigorous mentality, of obstinate wilfulness, and overwhelming
confidence in his own judgment and the courage of his convictions.
His weakness was alcoholism. He made a fearful exhibition of
himself at the time of his inauguration and during the presidency,
and especially during his famous trip "around the circle" he
was in a bad way.
He was of humble origin and, in fact, very poor. It is said of him
that he could neither read nor write until his wife taught him.
He made a great career both as a member of the House of Representatives
and a senator, and was of unquestionable influence in each branch.
With reckless disregard for his life, he kept east Tennessee
in the Union during the Civil War.
General Grant told me a story of his own experience with him.
Johnson, he said, had always been treated with such contempt
and ignored socially by the members of the old families and slave
aristocracy of the South that his resentment against them was
vindictive, and so after the surrender at Appomattox he was
constantly proclaiming "Treason is odious and must be punished."
He also wanted and, in fact, insisted upon ignoring Grant's parole
to the Confederate officers, in order that they might be tried
for treason. On this question of maintaining his parole and
his military honor General Grant was inflexible, and said he would
appeal not only to Congress but to the country.
One day a delegation, consisting of the most eminent, politically,
socially, and in family descent, of the Southern leaders, went to
the White House. They said: "Mr. President, we have never
recognized you, as you belong to an entirely different class
from ourselves, but it is the rule of all countries and in all ages
that supreme power vested in the individual raises him, no matter
what his origin, to supreme leadership. You are now President
of the United States, and by virtue of your office our leader,
and we recognize you as such." Then followed attention from
these people whom he admired and envied, as well as hated,
of hospitality and deference, of which they were past masters.
It captivated him and changed his whole attitude towards them.
He sent for General Grant and said to him: "The war is over
and there should be forgiveness and reconciliation. I propose
to call upon all of the States recently in rebellion to send
to Washington their United States senators and members of the House,
the same as they did before the war. If the present Congress
will not admit them, a Congress can be formed of these Southern
senators and members of the House and of such Northern senators
and representatives as will believe that I am right and acting
under the Constitution. As President of the United States, I will
recognize that Congress and communicate with them as such.
As general of the army I want your support." General Grant replied:
"That will create civil war, because the North will undoubtedly
recognize the Congress as it now exists, and that Congress will
assert itself in every way possible." "In that case," said the
president, "I want the to support the constitutional Congress
which I am recognizing." General Grant said: "On the contrary,
so far as my authority goes, the army will support the Congress
as it is now and disperse the other." President Johnson then
ordered General Grant to Mexico on a mission, and as he had
no power to send a general of the army out of the United States,
Grant refused to go.
Shortly afterwards Grant received a very confidential communication
from General Sherman, stating that he had been ordered to Washington
to take command of the army, and wanted to know what it meant.
General Grant explained the situation, whereupon General Sherman
announced to the president that he would take exactly the same
position as General Grant had. The president then dropped
the whole subject.
III. ABRAHAM LINCOLN
The secretaryship of the State of New York is a very delightful
office. Its varied duties are agreeable, and the incumbent is
brought in close contact with the State administration,
the legislature, and the people.
We had in the secretary of state's office at the time I held
the office, about fifty-eight years ago, very interesting archives.
The office had been the repository of these documents since
the organization of the government. Many years afterwards they
were removed to the State Library. Among these documents were
ten volumes of autograph letters from General Washington to
Governor Clinton and others, covering the campaign on the Hudson
in the effort by the enemy to capture West Point, the treason of
Arnold and nearly the whole of the Revolutionary War. In the course
of years before these papers were removed to the State Library,
a large part of them disappeared. It was not the fault of the
administration succeeding me, but it was because the legislature,
in its effort to economize, refused to make appropriation for the
proper care of these invaluable historic papers. Most of
Washington's letters were written entirely in his own hand, and
one wonders at the phenomenal industry which enabled him to do
so much writing while continuously and laboriously engaged in
active campaigning.
In view of the approaching presidential election, the legislature
passed a law, which was signed by the governor, providing machinery
for the soldiers' vote. New York had at that time between three
and four hundred thousand soldiers in the field, who were scattered
in companies, regiments, brigades, and divisions all over the South.
This law made it the duty of the secretary of state to provide
ballots, to see that they reached every unit of a company, to gather
the votes and transmit them to the home of each soldier. The State
government had no machinery by which this work could be done.
I applied to the express companies, but all refused on the ground
that they were not equipped. I then sent for old John Butterfield,
who was the founder of the express business but had retired and
was living on his farm near Utica. He was intensely patriotic and
ashamed of the lack of enterprise shown by the express companies.
He said to me: "If they cannot do this work they ought to retire."
He at once organized what was practically an express company,
taking in all those in existence and adding many new features
for the sole purpose of distributing the ballots and gathering
the soldiers' votes. It was a gigantic task and successfully
executed by this patriotic old gentleman.
Of course, the first thing was to find out where the New York
troops were, and for that purpose I went to Washington, remaining
there for several months before the War Department would give
me the information. The secretary of war was Edwin M. Stanton.
It was perhaps fortunate that the secretary of war should not only
possess extraordinary executive ability, but be also practically
devoid of human weakness; that he should be a rigid disciplinarian
and administer justice without mercy. It was thought at the time
that these qualities were necessary to counteract, as far as
possible, the tender-heartedness of President Lincoln. If the boy
condemned to be shot, or his mother or father, could reach the
president in time, he was never executed. The military authorities
thought that this was a mistaken charity and weakened discipline.
I was at a dinner after the war with a number of generals who
had been in command of armies. The question was asked one of
the most famous of these generals: "How did you carry out the
sentences of your courts martial and escape Lincoln's pardons?"
The grim old warrior answered: "I shot them first."
I took my weary way every day to the War Department, but could
get no results. The interviews were brief and disagreeable and
the secretary of war very brusque. The time was getting short.
I said to the secretary: "If the ballots are to be distributed
in time I must have information at once." He very angrily refused
and said: "New York troops are in every army, all over the enemy's
territory. To state their location would be to give invaluable
information to the enemy. How do I know if that information would
be so safeguarded as not to get out?"
As I was walking down the long corridor, which was full of hurrying
officers and soldiers returning from the field or departing for it,
I met Elihu B. Washburne, who was a congressman from Illinois
and an intimate friend of the president. He stopped me and said:
"Hello, Mr. Secretary, you seem very much troubled. Can I help you?"
I told him my story.
"What are you going to do?" he asked. I answered: "To protect
myself I must report to the people of New York that the provision
for the soldiers' voting cannot be carried out because the
administration refuses to give information where the New York
soldiers are located."
"Why," said Mr. Washburne, "that would beat Mr. Lincoln. You don't
know him. While he is a great statesman, he is also the keenest
of politicians alive. If it could be done in no other way, the
president would take a carpet-bag and go around and collect those
votes himself. You remain here until you hear from me. I will
go at once and see the president."
In about an hour a staff officer stepped up to me and asked: "Are
you the secretary of state of New York?" I answered "Yes."
"The secretary of war wishes to see you at once," he said. I found
the secretary most cordial and charming.
"Mr. Secretary, what do you desire?" he asked. I stated the case
as I had many times before, and he gave a peremptory order to one
of his staff that I should receive the documents in time for me
to leave Washington on the midnight train.
The magical transformation was the result of a personal visit of
President Lincoln to the secretary of war. Mr. Lincoln carried
the State of New York by a majority of only 6,749, and it was
a soldiers' vote that gave him the Empire State.
The compensations of my long delay in Washington trying to move
the War Department were the opportunity it gave me to see
Mr. Lincoln, to meet the members of the Cabinet, to become intimate
with the New York delegation in Congress, and to hear the wonderful
adventures and stories so numerous in Washington.
The White House of that time had no executive offices as now,
and the machinery for executive business was very primitive.
The east half of the second story had one large reception-room,
in which the president could always be found, and a few rooms
adjoining for his secretaries and clerks. The president had very
little protection or seclusion. In the reception-room, which was
always crowded at certain hours, could be found members of Congress,
office-seekers, and an anxious company of fathers and mothers
seeking pardons for their sons condemned for military offenses,
or asking permission to go to the front, where a soldier boy was
wounded or sick. Every one wanted something and wanted it very
bad. The patient president, wearied as he was with cares of state,
with the situation on several hostile fronts, with the exigencies
in Congress and jealousies in his Cabinet, patiently and
sympathetically listened to these tales of want and woe. My position
was unique. I was the only one in Washington who personally did
not want anything, my mission being purely in the public interest.
I was a devoted follower of Mr. Seward, the secretary of state,
and through the intimacies with officers in his department I learned
from day to day the troubles in the Cabinet, so graphically described
in the diary of the secretary of the navy Gideon Welles.
The antagonism between Mr. Seward and Mr. Chase, the secretary
of the treasury, though rarely breaking out in the open, was
nevertheless acute. Mr. Seward was devoted to the president and
made every possible effort to secure his renomination and election.
Mr. Chase was doing his best to prevent Mr. Lincoln's renomination
and secure it for himself.
No president ever had a Cabinet of which the members were so
independent, had so large individual followings, and were so
inharmonious. The president's sole ambition was to secure the
ablest men in the country for the departments which he assigned
to them without regard to their loyalty to himself. One of
Mr. Seward's secretaries would frequently report to me the acts
of disloyalty or personal hostility on the part of Mr. Chase with
the lament: "The old man--meaning Lincoln--knows all about it
and will not do a thing."
I had a long and memorable interview with the president. As
I stepped from the crowd in his reception-room, he said to me:
"What do you want?" I answered: "Nothing, Mr. President, I only
came to pay my respects and bid you good-by, as I am leaving
Washington." "It is such a luxury," he then remarked, "to find
a man who does not want anything. I wish you would wait until
I get rid of this crowd."
When we were alone he threw himself wearily on a lounge and was
evidently greatly exhausted. Then he indulged, rocking backward
and forward, in a reminiscent review of different crises in his
administration, and how he had met them. In nearly every instance
he had carried his point, and either captured or beaten his
adversaries by a story so apt, so on all fours, and such complete
answers that the controversy was over. I remember eleven of
these stories, each of which was a victory.
In regard to this story-telling, he said: "I am accused of telling
a great many stories. They say that it lowers the dignity of the
presidential office, but I have found that plain people (repeating
with emphasis plain people), take them as you find them, are more
easily influenced by a broad and humorous illustration than in any
other way, and what the hypercritical few may think, I don't care."
In speaking Mr. Lincoln had a peculiar cadence in his voice, caused
by laying emphasis upon the key-word of the sentence. In answer
to the question how he knew so many anecdotes, he answered:
"I never invented story, but I have a good memory and, I think,
tell one tolerably well. My early life was passed among pioneers
who had the courage and enterprise to break away from civilization
and settle in the wilderness. The things which happened to these
original people and among themselves in their primitive conditions
were far more dramatic than anything invented by the professional
story-tellers. For many years I travelled the circuit as a lawyer,
and usually there was only one hotel in the county towns where
court was held. The judge, the grand and petit juries, the lawyers,
the clients, and witnesses would pass the night telling exciting
or amusing occurrences, and these were of infinite variety and
interest." He was always eager for a new story to add to his
magazine of ammunition and weapons.
One night when there was a reception at the executive mansion
Rufus F. Andrews, surveyor of the port of New York, and I went
there together. Andrews was a good lawyer and had been a
correspondent in New York of Mr. Lincoln, while he was active
at the bar in Illinois. He was a confidential adviser of the
president on New York matters and frequently at the executive
mansion. As the procession moved past the president he stopped
Andrews and, leaning over, spoke very confidentially to him.
The conversation delayed the procession for some time. When
Andrews and I returned to the hotel, our rooms were crowded with
newspaper men and politicians wanting to know what the confidential
conversation was about. Andrews made a great mystery of it and so
did the press. He explained to me when we were alone that during
his visit to the president the night before he told the president
a new story. The president delayed him at the reception, saying:
"Andrews, I forgot the point of that story you told me last night;
repeat it now."
While Mr. Lincoln had the most logical of minds and his letters
and speeches on political controversies were the most convincing
of any statesman of his period, he rarely would enter into a long
discussion in conversation; he either would end the argument by
an apt story or illustration enforcing his ideas.
John Ganson, of Buffalo, was the leader of the bar in western
New York. Though elected to the House of Representatives as
a Democrat, he supported the war measures of the administration.
He was a gentleman of the old school, of great dignity, and always
immaculately dressed. He was totally bald and his face also
devoid of hair. It was a gloomy period of the war and the reports
from the front very discouraging. Congressman Ganson felt it his
duty to see the president about the state of the country. He made
a formal call and said to Mr. Lincoln: "Though I am a Democrat,
I imperil my political future by supporting your war measures.
I can understand that secrecy may be necessary in military
operations, but I think I am entitled to know the exact conditions,
good or bad, at the front."
Mr. Lincoln looked at him earnestly for a minute and then said:
"Ganson, how clean you shave!" That ended the interview.
The first national convention I ever attended was held in Baltimore
in 1864, when Mr. Lincoln was renominated. I have since been four
times a delegate-at-large, representing the whole State, and many
times a delegate representing a congressional district. Judge
W. H. Robertson, of Westchester County, and I went to the convention
together. We thought we would go by sea, but our ship had a
collision, and we were rescued by a pilot boat. Returning to
New York, we decided to accept the security of the railroad.
Judge Robertson was one of the shrewdest and ablest of the Republican
politicians in the State of New York. He had been repeatedly
elected county judge, State senator, and member of Congress, and
always overcoming a hostile Democratic majority.
We went to Washington to see Mr. Seward first, had an interview
with him at his office, and dined with him in the evening. To dine
with Secretary Seward was an event which no one, and especially
a young politician, ever forgot. He was the most charming of hosts
and his conversation a liberal education.
There was no division as to the renomination of Mr. Lincoln, but
it was generally conceded that the vice-president should be a war
Democrat. The candidacy of Daniel S. Dickinson, of New York,
had been so ably managed that he was far and away the favorite.
He had been all his life, up to the breaking out of the Civil War,
one of the most pronounced extreme and radical Democrats in the
State of New York. Mr. Seward took Judge Robertson and me into
his confidence. He was hostile to the nomination of Mr. Dickinson,
and said that the situation demanded the nomination for vice-president
of a representative from the border States, whose loyalty had been
demonstrated during the war. He eulogized Andrew Johnson, of
Tennessee, and gave a glowing description of the courage and
patriotism with which Johnson, at the risk of his life, had advocated
the cause of the Union and kept his State partially loyal.
He said to us: "You can quote me to the delegates, and they will
believe I express the opinion of the president. While the president
wishes to take no part in the nomination for vice-president, yet
he favors Mr. Johnson."
When we arrived at the convention this interview with Mr. Seward
made us a centre of absorbing interest and at once changed the
current of opinion, which before that had been almost unanimously
for Mr. Dickinson. It was finally left to the New York delegation.
The meeting of the delegates from New York was a stormy one and
lasted until nearly morning. Mr. Dickinson had many warm friends,
especially among those of previous democratic affiliation, and
the State pride to have a vice-president was in his favor. Upon
the final vote Andrew Johnson had one majority. The decision
of New York was accepted by the convention and he was nominated
for vice-president.
This is an instance of which I have met many in my life, where
the course of history was changed on a very narrow margin. Political
histories and the newspapers' discussions of the time assigned
the success of Mr. Johnson to the efforts of several well-known
delegates, but really it was largely if not wholly due to the
message of Mr. Seward, which was carried by Judge Robertson and
myself to the delegates.
The year of 1864 was full of changes of popular sentiment and
surprises. The North had become very tired of the war. The people
wanted peace, and peace at almost any price. Jacob Thompson
and Clement C. Clay, ex-United States senators from the South,
appeared at Niagara Falls, on the Canadian side, and either they
or their friends gave out that they were there to treat for peace.
In reference to them Mr. Lincoln said to me: "This effort was
to inflame the peace sentiment of the North, to embarrass the
administration, and to demoralize the army, and in a way it was
successful. Mr. Greeley was hammering at me to take action for
peace and said that unless I met these men every drop of blood
that was shed and every dollar that was spent I would be responsible
for, that it would be a blot upon my conscience and soul. I wrote
a letter to Mr. Greeley and said to him that those two ex-United
States senators were Whigs and old friends of his, personally and
politically, and that I desired him to go to Niagara Falls and find
out confidentially what their credentials were and let me know."
The president stated that instead of Mr. Greeley doing it that
way, he went there as an ambassador, and with an array of reporters
established himself on the American side and opened negotiations
with these two alleged envoys across the bridge. Continuing,
Mr. Lincoln said: "I had reason to believe from confidential
information which I had received from a man I trusted and who had
interviewed Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy,
that these envoys were without authority, because President Davis
had said to this friend of mine and of his that he would treat on
no terms whatever but on absolute recognition of the independence
of the Southern Confederacy. The attention of the whole country
and of the army centred on these negotiations at Niagara Falls,
and to stop the harm they were doing I recalled Mr. Greeley and
issued my proclamation 'To Whom It May Concern,' in which I stated
if there was anybody or any delegation at Niagara Falls, or anywhere
else, authorized to represent the Southern Confederacy and to treat
for peace, they had free conduct and safety to Washington and
return. Of course, they never came, because their mission was
a subterfuge. But they made Greeley believe in them, and the
result is that he is still attacking me for needlessly prolonging
the war for purposes of my own."
At a Cabinet meeting one of the members said to Mr. Lincoln:
"Mr. President, why don't you write a letter to the public stating
these facts, and that will end Mr. Greeley's attacks?" The president
answered: "Mr. Greeley owns a daily newspaper, a very widely
circulated and influential one. I have no newspaper. The press
of the country would print my letter, and so would the New York
Tribune. In a little while the public would forget all about it,
and then Mr. Greeley would begin to prove from my own letter that
he was right, and I, of course, would be helpless to reply." He
brought the Cabinet around to unanimous agreement with him by
telling one of his characteristic stories.
This affair and the delays in the prosecution of the war had
created a sentiment early in 1864 that the re-election of Mr. Lincoln
was impossible. The leaders of both the conservative and the
radical elements in the Republican party, Mr. Weed, on the one
hand, and Mr. Greeley, on the other, frankly told the president
that he could not be re-elected, and his intimate friend,
Congressman Elihu B. Washburne, after a canvass of the country,
gave him the same information.
Then came the spectacular victory of Farragut at Mobile and the
triumphant march of Sherman through Georgia, and the sentiment
of the country entirely changed. There was an active movement
on foot in the interest of the secretary of the treasury, Chase,
and fostered by him, to hold an independent convention before
the regular Republican convention as a protest against the
renomination of Mr. Lincoln. It was supported by some of the most
eminent and powerful members of the party, who threw into the
effort their means and influence. After these victories the effort
was abandoned and Mr. Lincoln was nominated by acclamation.
I recall as one of the excitements and pleasures of a lifetime
the enthusiastic confidence of that convention when they acclaimed
Lincoln their nominee.
Governor Seymour, who was the idol of his party, headed the
New York delegation to the national Democratic convention to
nominate the president, and his journey to that convention was
a triumphal march. There is no doubt that at the time he had
with him not only the enthusiastic support of his own party but
the confidence of the advocates of peace. His own nomination
and election seemed inevitable. However, in deference to the war
sentiment, General McClellan was nominated instead, and here
occurred one of those little things which so often in our country
have turned the tide.
The platform committee, and the convention afterwards, permitted
to go into the platform a phrase proposed by Clement C. Vallandigham,
of Ohio, the phrase being, "The war is a failure." Soon after
the adjournment of the convention, to the victories of Farragut
and Sherman was added the spectacular campaign and victory of
Sheridan in the Valley of Shenandoah. The Campaign at once took
on a new phase. It was the opportunity for the orator.
It is difficult now to recreate the scenes of that campaign.
The people had been greatly disheartened. Every family was
in bereavement, with a son lost and others still in the service.
Taxes were onerous and economic and business conditions very bad.
Then came this reaction, which seemed to promise an early victory
for the Union. The orator naturally picked up the phrase, "The war
is a failure"; then he pictured Farragut tied to the shrouds of his
flag-ship; then he portrayed Grant's victories in the Mississippi
campaign, Hooker's "battle above the clouds," the advance of the
Army of Cumberland; then he enthusiastically described Sheridan
leaving the War Department hearing of the battle in Shenandoah
Valley, speeding on and rallying his defeated troops, reforming
and leading them to victory, and finished with reciting some of
the stirring war poems.
Mr. Lincoln's election under the conditions and circumstances
was probably more due to that unfortunate phrase in the Democratic
platform than to any other cause.
The tragedy of the assassination of Mr. Lincoln was followed by
the most pathetic incident of American life--his funeral. After
the ceremony at Washington the funeral train stopped at Philadelphia,
New York, and Albany. In each of these cities was an opportunity
for the people to view the remains.
I had charge in my official capacity as secretary of state of
the train after it left Albany. It was late in the evening when
we started, and the train was running all night through central
and western New York. Its schedule was well known along the route.
Wherever the highway crossed the railway track the whole population
of the neighborhood was assembled on the highway and in the fields.
Huge bonfires lighted up the scene. Pastors of the local churches
of all denominations had united in leading their congregations
for greeting and farewell for their beloved president. As we
would reach a crossing there sometimes would be hundreds and
at others thousands of men, women, and children on their knees,
praying and singing hymns.
This continuous service of prayer and song and supplication lasted
over the three hundred miles between Albany and Buffalo, from
midnight until dawn.
IV. GENERAL GRANT
The fairies who distribute the prizes are practical jokers.
I have known thousands who sought office, some for its distinction,
some for its emoluments, and some for both; thousands who wanted
promotion from places they held, and other thousands who wanted to
regain positions they had lost, all of whom failed in their search.
I probably would have been in one of those classes if I had been
seeking an office. I was determined, however, upon a career in
railroad work until, if possible, I had reached its highest rewards.
During that period I was offered about a dozen political
appointments, most of them of great moment and very tempting,
all of which I declined.
Near the close of President Grant's administration George Jones,
at that time the proprietor and publisher of the New York Times,
asked me to come and see him. Mr. Jones, in his association with
the brilliant editor, Henry J. Raymond, had been a progressive and
staying power of the financial side of this great journal. He was
of Welsh descent, a very hardheaded, practical, and wise business
man. He also had very definite views on politics and parties, and
several times nearly wrecked his paper by obstinately pursuing
a course which was temporarily unpopular with its readers and
subscribers. I was on excellent terms with Mr. Jones and admired
him. The New York Times became under his management one of
the severest critics of General Grant's administration and of
the president himself.
I went to his house and during the conversation Jones said to me:
"I was very much surprised to receive a letter from the president
asking me to come and see him at the White House. Of course I
went, anticipating a disagreeable interview, but it turned out
absolutely the reverse. The president was most cordial, and his
frankness most attractive. After a long and full discussion,
the president said the Times had been his most unsparing critic,
but he was forced to agree with much the Times said; that he had
sent for me to make a request; that he had come to the presidency
without any preparation whatever for its duties or for civic
responsibilities; that he was compelled to take the best advice he
could find and surround himself with men, many of whom he had
never met before, and they were his guides and teachers; that he,
however, assumed the entire responsibility for everything he had
done. He knew perfectly well, in the retrospect and with the
larger experience he had gained, that he had made many mistakes.
'And now, Mr. Jones,' he continued, 'I have sent for you as
the most powerful as well as, I think, the fairest of my critics,
to ask that you will say in your final summing up of my eight years
that, however many my errors or mistakes, they were faults of
judgment, and that I acted conscientiously and in any way I thought
was right and best.'
"I told the president I would be delighted to take that view in
the Times. Then the president said that he would like to show
his appreciation in some way which would be gratifying to me.
I told him that I wanted nothing for myself, nor did any of my
friends, in the line of patronage. Then he said he wanted my
assistance because he was looking for the best man for United States
district attorney for the district of New York. With my large
acquaintance he thought that I should be able to tell him whom
among the lawyers would be best to appoint. After a little
consideration I recommended you.
"The president then said: 'Mr. Depew supported Greeley, and
though he is back in the party and doing good service in the
campaigns, I do not like those men. Nevertheless, you can tender
him the office and ask for his immediate acceptance.'"
I told Mr. Jones what my determination was in regard to a career,
and while appreciating most highly both his own friendship and
the compliment from the president, I must decline.
General Grant's mistakes in his presidency arose from his possession
of one of the greatest of virtues, and that is loyalty to one's
friends. He had unlimited confidence in them and could not see,
or be made to see, nor listen to any of their defects. He was
himself of such transparent honesty and truthfulness that he
gauged and judged others by his own standard. Scandals among
a few of the officials of his administration were entirely due
to this great quality.
His intimacy among his party advisers fell among the most extreme
of organization men and political machinists. When, under the
advice of Senator Conkling, he appointed Thomas Murphy collector
of the port of New York, it was charged in the press that the
collector removed employees at the rate of several hundred per
day and filled their places with loyal supporters of the organization.
This policy, which was a direct reversal of the ideas of
civil-service reform which were then rapidly gaining strength,
incurred the active hostility of civil-service reformers, of whom
George William Curtis was the most conspicuous.
When General Grant came to reside in New York, after his tour
around the world, he was overwhelmed with social attentions.
I met him at dinners several times a week and was the victim
of a characteristic coldness of manner which he had towards
many people.
One St. Patrick's Day, while in Washington, I received an earnest
telegraphic request from Judge John T. Brady and his brother-in-law,
Judge Charles P. Daly, president of the Society of the Friendly
Sons of St. Patrick, saying: "The Sons are to have their greatest
celebration because they are to be honored by the presence of
General Grant, who will also speak, and it is imperative that you
come and help us welcome him."
I arrived at the dinner late and passed in front of the dais to my
seat at the other end, while General Grant was speaking. He
was not easy on his feet at that time, though afterwards he became
very felicitous in public speaking. He paused a moment until
I was seated and then said: "If Chauncey Depew stood in my shoes,
and I in his, I would be a much happier man."
I immediately threw away the speech I had prepared during the six
hours' trip from Washington, and proceeded to make a speech on
"Who can stand now or in the future in the shoes of General Grant?"
I had plenty of time before my turn came to elaborate this idea,
gradually eliminating contemporary celebrities until in the future
the outstanding figure representing the period would be the hero
of our Civil War and the restoration of the Union.
The enthusiasm of the audience, as the speech went on, surpassed
anything I ever saw. They rushed over tables and tried to carry
the general around the room. When the enthusiasm had subsided
he came to me and with much feeling said: "Thank you for that
speech; it is the greatest and most eloquent that I ever heard."
He insisted upon my standing beside him when he received the
families of the members, and took me home in his carriage.
From that time until his death he was most cordial, and at many
dinners would insist upon my being assigned to a chair next to him.
Among strangers and in general conversation General Grant was
the most reticent of men, but among those whom he knew a most
entertaining conversationalist. He went over a wide field on such
occasions and was interesting on all subjects, and especially
instructive on military campaigns and commanders. He gave me as
his judgment that among all the military geniuses of the world
the greatest was General Philip Sheridan, and that Sheridan's
grasp of a situation had no parallel in any great general of whom
he knew.
I was with General Grant at his home the day before he went from
New York to Mount McGregor, near Saratoga, where he died.
I learned of the trip and went immediately to see him, and was
met by his son, General Frederick D. Grant. I said to him:
"I learn that your father is going to Mount McGregor to-morrow,
and I have come to tender him a special train."
After all the necessary arrangements had been made he asked me
to go in and see the general. Before doing this I asked: "How
is he?" "Well," he answered, "he is dying, but it is of infinite
relief to him to see people whom he knows and likes, and I know
he wants to see you. Our effort is to keep his mind off from
himself and interest him with anything which we think will be
of relief to him, and if you have any new incidents do not fail
to tell him."
When I entered the room the general was busy writing his "Memoirs."
He greeted me very cordially, said he was glad to see me, and
then remarked: "I see by the papers that you have been recently
up at Hartford delivering a lecture. Tell me about it."
In reply I told him about a very interesting journey there;
the lecture and supper afterwards, with Mark Twain as the presiding
genius, concerning all of which he asked questions, wanting more
particulars, and the whole story seemed to interest him. What
seemed to specially please him was the incident when I arrived
at the hotel, after the supper given me at the close of my lecture.
It was about three o'clock in the morning, and I went immediately
to bed, leaving a call for the early train to New York. At five
o'clock there was violent rapping on the door and, upon opening
it, an Irish waiter stood there with a tray on which were a bottle
of champagne and a goblet of ice.
"You have made a mistake," I said to the waiter.
"No, sir," he answered, "I could not make a mistake about you."
"Who sent this?" I asked.
"The committee, sir, with positive instructions that you should
have it at five o'clock in the morning," he answered.
"Well, my friend, I said, is it the habit of the good people of
Hartford, when they have decided to go to New York on an early
train to drink a bottle of champagne at five o'clock in the morning?"
He answered: "Most of them do, sir."
(Nobody at that time had dreamed of the Eighteenth Amendment
and the Volstead law.)
With a smile General Grant then said: "Well, there are some
places in Connecticut where that could not be done, as local
option prevails and the towns have gone dry. For instance, my
friend, Senator Nye, of Nevada, spoke through Connecticut in
my interest in the last campaign. Nye was a free liver, though
not a dissipated man, and, as you know, a very excellent speaker.
He told me that when he arrived at one of the principal manufacturing
towns he was entertained by the leading manufacturer at his big
house and in magnificent style. The dinner was everything that
could be desired, except that the only fluid was ice-water. After
a long speech Nye, on returning to the house, had a reception,
and the supper was still dry, except plenty of ice-water.
"Nye, completely exhausted, went to bed but could not sleep,
nor could he find any stimulants. So, about six o'clock in the
morning he dressed and wandered down to the dining-room. The head
of the house came in and, seeing him, exclaimed: 'Why, senator,
you are up early.' Nye replied: 'Yes, you know, out in Nevada we
have a great deal of malaria, and I could not sleep.' 'Well,'
said the host, 'this is a temperance town. We find it an excellent
thing for the working people, and especially for the young men,
but we have some malaria here, also, and for that I have a private
remedy.' Whereupon he went to a closet and pulled out a bottle
of brandy.
"After his host had left, Nye continued there in a refreshed and
more enjoyable spirit. Soon his hostess came in and, much
surprised, said: 'Why, senator, you are up early!' 'Yes,' he
said, 'out in Nevada we have a great deal of malaria, and while
I am on these speaking tours I have sharp attacks and cannot
sleep. I had one last night.'
"'Well,' she remarked, 'this is a temperance town, and it is
a good thing for the working people and the young men, but I have
a touch of malaria now and then myself.' Then she went to the
tea-caddy and pulled out a bottle of brandy. The senator by this
time was in perfect harmony with himself and the whole world.
"When the boys came in (sons of the entertainer) they said:
'Senator, we hear that you are an expert on livestock, horses,
cattle, etc. Won't you come out in the barn so we can show you
some we regard as very fine specimens?' The boys took him out
to the barn, shut the door, locked it, and whispered: 'Senator,
we have no live stock, but we have a bottle here in the hay mow
which we think will do you good.' And the senator wound up his
narrative by saying: 'The wettest place that I know of is a dry
town in Connecticut.'"
The next day General Grant went to Mount McGregor and, as we
all know, a few days afterwards he lost his voice completely.
V. ROSCOE CONKLING
For a number of years, instead of taking my usual vacation in
travel or at some resort, I spent a few weeks in the fall in the
political canvass as a speaker. In the canvass of 1868 I was
associated with Senator Roscoe Conkling, who desired an assistant,
as the mass meetings usually wanted at least two and probably
three hours of speaking, and he limited himself to an hour.
General Grant was at the height of his popularity and the audiences
were enormous. As we had to speak every day and sometimes several
times a day, Mr. Conkling notified the committees that he would not
speak out of doors, and that they must in all cases provide a hall.
When we arrived at Lockport, N. Y., the chairman of the committee,
Burt Van Horn, who was the congressman from the district, told
the senator that at least twenty thousand people from the town,
and others coming from the country on excursion trains, had filled
the Fair Grounds. Conkling became very angry and told the
congressman that he knew perfectly well the conditions under which
he came to Lockport, and that he would not speak at the
Fair Grounds. A compromise was finally effected by which the
senator was to appear upon the platform, the audience be informed
that he would speak in the Opera House, and I was to be left to
take care of the crowd. The departure of the senator from the
grounds was very dramatic. He was enthusiastically applauded
and a band preceded his carriage.
For some reason I never had such a success as in addressing that
audience. Commencing with a story, which was new and effective,
I continued for two hours without apparently losing an auditor.
Upon my return to the hotel I found the senator very indignant.
He said that he had gone to the Opera House with the committee;
that, of course, no meeting had been advertised there, but a band
had been placed on the balcony to play, as if it were a dime
museum attraction inside; that a few farmers' wives had straggled
in to have an opportunity to partake from their baskets their
luncheons, and that he had left the Opera House and returned
to the hotel. The committee coming in and narrating what had
occurred at the Fair Grounds, did not help his imperious temper.
The committee begged for a large meeting, which was to be held in
the evening, but Conkling refused and ordered me to do the same,
and we left on the first train. The cordial relations which had
existed up to that time were somehow severed and he became
very hostile.
General Grant, as president, of course, never had had experience
or opportunity to know anything of practical politics. It was
said that prior to his election he had never voted but once, and
that was before the war, when he voted the Democratic ticket
for James Buchanan.
All the senators, representatives, and public men who began to
press around him, seeking the appointment to office of their
friends, were unknown to him personally. He decided rapidly
whom among them he could trust, and once having arrived at that
conclusion, his decision was irrevocable. He would stand by a
friend, without regard to its effect upon himself, to the last ditch.
Of course, each of the two United States senators, Conkling and
Fenton, wanted his exclusive favor. It is impossible to conceive of
two men so totally different in every characteristic. Grant liked
Conkling as much as he disliked Fenton. The result was that he
transferred the federal patronage of the State to Senator Conkling.
Conkling was a born leader, very autocratic and dictatorial. He
immediately began to remove Fenton officials and to replace them
with members of his own organization. As there was no civil
service at that time and public officers were necessarily active
politicians, Senator Conkling in a few years destroyed the
organization which Fenton had built up as governor, and became
master of the Republican party in the State.
The test came at the State convention at Saratoga. Senator Conkling
at that time had become hostile to me, why I do not know, nor
could his friends, who were most of them mine also, find out.
He directed that I must not be elected a delegate to the convention.
The collector of the port of New York, in order to make that
decree effective, filled my district in Westchester County with
appointees from the Custom House.
Patronage, when its control is subject to a popular vote, is
a boomerang. The appointment of a citizen in a town arouses
the anger of many others who think they are more deserving.
I appealed to the farmers with the simple question whether old
Westchester should be controlled by federal authority in a purely
State matter of their own. The result of the appeal was
overwhelming, and when the district convention met, the Custom
House did not have a single delegate.
The leader of the Custom House crowd came to me and said: "This
is a matter of bread-and-butter and living with us. It is nothing
to you. These delegates are against us and for you at the
convention. Now, we have devised a plan to save our lives. It is
that the three delegates elected shall all be friends of yours.
You shall apparently be defeated. A resolution will be passed
that if either delegate fails to attend or resigns, the other two
may fill the vacancy. One of these will resign when the convention
meets and you will be substituted in his place. In the meantime
we will send out through the Associated Press that you have been
defeated." I did not have the heart to see these poor fellows
dismissed from their employment, and I assented to the proposition.
When we arrived at the convention Governor Cornell, then State
chairman, called to order. I arose to make a motion, when he
announced: "You, sir, are not a member of this convention." My
credentials, however, under the arrangement made in Westchester,
convinced him that he was misinformed. The Conkling side selected
for their chairman Andrew D. White, and the other side selected
me. Upon careful canvass of the votes we had a clear majority.
There were several delegations which were controlled by federal
office-holders. It is at this point that patronage becomes
overwhelmingly effective. Several of those office-holders were
shown telegrams from Washington, which meant their removal unless
they did as directed by Senator Conkling. When the convention
met the next day, the office-holders kept their heads on their
shoulders, and my dear and valued old friend, Andrew D. White,
was elected chairman of the convention.
I asked the leader of the federal crowd from Westchester how he
explained my getting into the convention. "Oh," he said, "that
was easy. Our people gained so many delegates by offers of
patronage and threats of removal that when I told them you had
bought my delegates away from me, they believed it without
question, and we are all safe in our places in the Custom House."
My success was entirely due to the farmers' indignation at federal
dictation, and the campaign did not cost me a dollar.
Roscoe Conkling was created by nature for a great career. That
he missed it was entirely his own fault. Physically he was the
handsomest man of his time. His mental equipment nearly approached
genius. He was industrious to a degree. His oratorical gifts
were of the highest order, and he was a debater of rare power and
resources. But his intolerable egotism deprived him of vision
necessary for supreme leadership. With all his oratorical power
and his talent in debate, he made little impression upon the country
and none upon posterity. His position in the Senate was a masterful
one, and on the platform most attractive, but none of his speeches
appear in the schoolbooks or in the collections of great orations.
The reason was that his wonderful gifts were wholly devoted to
partisan discussions and local issues.
His friends regarded his philippic against George W. Curtis at
the Republican State convention at Rochester as the high-water
mark of his oratory. I sat in the seat next to Mr. Curtis when
Conkling delivered his famous attack. His admirers thought this
the best speech he ever made, and it certainly was a fine effort,
emphasized by oratory of a high order, and it was received by them
with the wildest enthusiasm and applause.
The assault upon Mr. Curtis was exceedingly bitter, the denunciation
very severe, and every resource of sarcasm, of which Mr. Conkling
was past master, was poured upon the victim. His bitterness was
caused by Mr. Curtis's free criticism of him on various occasions.
The speech lasted two hours, and it was curious to note its effect
upon Mr. Curtis. Under the rules which the convention had adopted,
he could not reply, so he had to sit and take it. The only feeling
or evidence of being hurt by his punishment was in exclamations
at different points made by his assailant. They were: "Remarkable!"
"Extraordinary!" "What an exhibition!" "Bad temper!" "Very
bad temper!"
In the long controversy between them Mr. Curtis had the advantages
which the journalist always possesses. The orator has one
opportunity on the platform and the publication the next day in
the press. The editor--and Mr. Curtis was at that time editor
of Harper's Weekly--can return every Saturday and have an exclusive
hearing by an audience limited only by the circulation of his
newspaper and the quotations from it by journalistic friends.
The speech illustrated Conkling's methods of preparation. I used
to hear from the senator's friends very frequently that he had
added another phrase to his characterization of Curtis. While
he was a ready debater, yet for an effort of this kind he would
sometimes devote a year to going frequently over the ground, and
in each repetition produce new epigrams, quotable phrases, and
characterizations.
There used to be an employee of the State committee named Lawrence.
He was a man of a good deal of receptive intelligence and worshipped
the senator. Mr. Conkling discovered this quality and used
Lawrence as a target or listening-post. I have often had Lawrence
come to my office and say: "I had a great night. The senator
talked to me or made speeches to me until nearly morning." He told
me that he had heard every word of the Curtis philippic many times.
Lawrence told me of another instance of Conkling's preparation for
a great effort. When he was preparing the speech, which was to
bring his friends who had been disappointed at the convention
to the support of General Garfield, he summoned Lawrence for
clerical work at his home. Lawrence said that the senator would
write or dictate, and then correct until he was satisfied with the
effort, and that this took considerable time. When it was completed
he would take long walks into the country, and in these walks
recite the whole or part of his speech until he was perfect
master of it.
This speech took four hours in delivery in New York, and he held
the audience throughout this long period. John Reed, one of
the editors of the New York Times, told me that he sat on the
stage near Conkling and had in his hands the proofs which had
been set up in advance and which filled ten columns of his paper.
He said that the senator neither omitted nor interpolated a word
from the beginning to the end. He would frequently refer apparently
to notes on his cuffs, or little memoranda, not that he needed
them, but it was the orator's always successful effort to create
impression that his speech is extemporaneous, and the audience
much prefer a speech which they think is such.
Senator Conkling held an important position in a critical period
of our country's history. If his great powers had been devoted
in the largest way to the national constructive problems of the
time, he would have been the leader of the dominant party and
president of the United States. Instead, he became the leader
of a faction in his own State only, and by the merciless use
of federal patronage absolutely controlled for twelve years the
action of the State organization.
All the young men who appeared in the legislature or in county
offices who displayed talent for leadership, independence, and
ambition were set aside. The result was remarkable. While prior
to his time there were many men in public life in the State with
national reputation and influence, this process of elimination
drove young men from politics into the professions or business,
and at the close of Senator Conkling's career there was hardly
an active member of the Republican party in New York of national
reputation, unless he had secured it before Mr. Conkling became
the autocrat of New York politics. The political machine in the
Republican party in his Congressional district early in his career
became jealous of his growing popularity and influence, both at
home and in Congress. By machine methods they defeated him and
thought they had retired him permanently from public life.
When I was elected secretary of state I received a note from
Mr. Conkling, asking if I would meet him. I answered: "Yes,
immediately, and at Albany." He came there with Ward Hunt,
afterwards one of the associate justices of the Supreme Court
of the United States. He delivered an intense attack upon machine
methods and machine politics, and said they would end in the
elimination of all independent thought, in the crushing of all
ambition in promising young men, and ultimate infinite damage
to the State and nation. "You," he said, "are a very young man for
your present position, but you will soon be marked for destruction."
Then he stated what he wanted, saying: "I was defeated by the
machine in the last election. They can defeat me now only by
using one man of great talent and popularity in my district. I want
you to make that man your deputy secretary of state. It is the
best office in your gift, and he will be entirely satisfied."
I answered him: "I have already received from the chiefs of the
State organization designations for every place in my office,
and especially for that one, but the appointment is yours and
you may announce it at once."
Mr. Conkling arose as if addressing an audience, and as he stood
there in the little parlor of Congress Hall in Albany he was
certainly a majestic figure. He said: "Sir, a thing that is
quickly done is doubly done. Hereafter, as long as you and I
both live, there never will be a deposit in any bank, personally,
politically, or financially to my credit which will not be subject
to your draft."
The gentleman whom he named became my deputy. His name was
Erastus Clark. He was a man of ability and very broad culture,
and was not only efficient in the performance of his duties, but
one of the most delightful of companions. His health was bad,
and his friends were always alarmed, and justifiably so, about him.
Nevertheless, I met him years afterwards in Washington, when
he was past eighty-four.
At Mr. Conkling's request Mr. Clark made an appointment for a
mutual visit to Trenton Falls, a charming resort near Utica. We
spent the week-end there, and I saw Mr. Conkling at his best.
He was charming in reminiscence, in discussion, in his
characterization of the leading actors upon the public stage,
and in varying views of ambitions and careers.
When the patronage all fell into his hands after the election of
General Grant, he pressed upon me the appointment of postmaster
of the city of New York. It was difficult for him to understand
that, while I enjoyed politics and took an active part in
campaigns, I would not accept any office whatever. He then
appointed one of the best of postmasters, who afterwards became
postmaster-general, but who was also one of the most efficient
of his lieutenants, General Thomas L. James.
When Mr. Conkling was a candidate for United States senator I was
regarded as a confidential friend of Governor Fenton. The governor
was one of the most secretive of men, and, therefore, I did not
know his views to the candidate, or whether he had preferences.
I think he had no preferences but wished Conkling defeated, and
at the same time did not want to take a position which would incur
the enmity of him or his friends.
One night there was a great public demonstration, and, being
called upon, I made a speech to the crowd, which included the
legislature, to the effect that we had been voiceless in the
United States Senate too long; that the greatest State in the
Union should be represented by a man who had demonstrated his
ability to all, and that man was Mr. Conkling. This created an
impression that I was speaking for the governor as well as myself,
and the effect upon the election was great. Mr. Conkling thought
so, and that led to his pressing upon me official recognition.
How the breach came between us, why he became persistently hostile
during the rest of his life, I never knew. President Arthur,
Governor Cornell, and other of his intimate friends told me that
they tried often to find out, but their efforts only irritated him
and never received any response.
Senator Conkling's peculiar temperament was a source of great
trouble to his lieutenants. They were all able and loyal, but
he was intolerant of any exercise on their part of independent
judgment. This led to the breaking off of all relations with the two
most distinguished of them--President Arthur and Governor Cornell.
A breach once made could not be healed. A bitter controversy
in debate with Mr. Blaine assumed a personal character. In the
exchanges common in the heat of such debates Blaine ridiculed
Conkling's manner and called him a turkey-cock. Mutual friends
tried many times to bring them together. Blaine was always
willing, but Conkling never.
Conkling had a controversy which was never healed with Senator Platt,
who had served him long and faithfully and with great efficiency.
During the twenty years in which Platt was leader, following
Senator Conkling, he displayed the reverse qualities. He was
always ready for consultation, he sought advice, and was tolerant
of large liberty of individual judgment among his associates. He
was always forgiving, and taking back into confidence those with
whom he had quarrelled.
One summer I was taking for a vacation a trip to Europe and had
to go aboard the steamer the night before, as she sailed very
early in the morning. One of my staff appeared and informed me
that a very serious attack upon the New York Central had been
started in the courts and that the law department needed outside
counsel and asked whom he should employ. I said: "Senator
Conkling." With amazement he replied: "Why, he has been bitterly
denouncing you for months." "Yes, but that was politics," I said.
"You know the most brilliant lawyer in the United States might come
to New York, and unless he formed advantageous associations with
some of the older firms he could get no practice. Now, this suit
will be very conspicuous, and the fact that Senator Conkling is
chief counsel for the Central will give him at once a standing
and draw to him clients." His appearance in the case gave him
immediate prominence and a large fee.
Senator Conkling's career at the bar was most successful, and
there was universal sorrow when his life ended in the tragedy
of the great blizzard.
VI. HORACE GREELEY
While secretary of state of New York, the decennial State census
was taken, and the appointment of three thousand census takers
involved as much pressure from congressmen, State senators,
assemblymen, and local leaders as if the places had been very
remunerative and permanent. I discovered what a power political
patronage is in party organization, because it developed that
the appointment of this large number of men, located in every town
in the State, could easily have been utilized for the formation
of a personal organization within the party.
I was exceedingly fond, as I am still and always have been,
of political questions, issues affecting the general government,
the State, or localities, party organizations, and political
leaders. So, while devoted to my profession and its work and
increasingly enjoying its labor and activities, politics became
an interesting recreation. With no desire for and with a
determination not to take any public office, to be called into
party councils, to be at an occasional meeting of the State
committee and a delegate to conventions were happy relief and
excursions from the routine of professional work, as golf is to
a tired business man or lawyer.
The nomination of General Grant for president by the Republicans
and of Horatio Seymour by the Democrats had made New York the
pivotal State in the national election. John T. Hoffman, the most
popular among the younger Democrats, was their nominee for governor.
The Republicans, with great unanimity, agreed upon John A. Griswold,
a congressman from the Troy district. Griswold was the idol
of his colleagues in the New York delegation in Congress, and
his attractive personality and demonstrated business ability had
made him a great favorite with politicians, business men, and
labor. The canvass for his nomination had been conducted with
great ardor by enthusiastic friends in all parts of the State, and
the delegations were nearly all practically pledged to his
nomination. No one dreamed that there would be an opposition
candidate.
On the train to the convention John Russell Young, then managing
editor of the New York Tribune under Mr. Greeley, came to me and
said: "Mr. Greeley has decided to be a candidate at the convention
for the nomination for governor. You are his friend, he lives in
your assembly district in Westchester County, and wishes you
to make the nomination speech."
I tried to argue the question with Young by portraying to him
the situation and the utter hopelessness of any attempt to break
the slate. He, however, insisted upon it, saying that all pledges
and preferences would disappear because of Greeley's services
to the party for so many years.
When we arrived at Syracuse and stated our determination to present
Mr. Greeley's name, it was hilariously received as a joke. Efforts
were made by friends of Greeley to persuade him not to undertake
such an impossible task, but they could produce no effect.
Mr. Griswold was put in nomination by Mr. Demers, one of the most
eloquent young men in the ministry of the State, and afterwards
an editor of power, and his speech filled every requirement.
Then I presented Mr. Greeley. At first the audience was hostile,
but as the recital of the great editor's achievements grew in
intensity and heat, the convention began to applaud and then
to cheer. A delegate hurled at me the question: "How about
Greeley signing the bail of Jefferson Davis?" The sentiment
seemed to change at once and cheers were followed by hisses.
Then there was supreme silence, and I immediately shouted:
"There are spots on the sun."
The effect was electrical. Delegates were on their feet, standing
on chairs, the air was full of hats, and the cheers deafening for
Greeley for some minutes. Mr. Demers, the preacher delegate,
lost his equilibrium, rushed up to me, shaking his fist excitedly,
and shouted: "Damn you! you have nominated him and beaten Griswold."
A recess was taken, and when the convention reconvened the ballot
demonstrated that if the organization is given time it can always
reform its shattered lines and show the efficiency of discipline.
When I met Mr. Greeley soon after, he said: "I cannot understand
why I desired the nomination for governor, nor why anybody should
want the office. There is nothing in it. No man now can name the
ten last governors of the State of New York."
Having tried that proposition many times since on the average
citizen, I have found that Mr. Greeley was absolutely right.
Any one who does not think so can try to solve that problem himself.
The meeting of the Electoral College at the Capitol at Albany
in 1864 was one of the most picturesque and interesting gatherings
ever held in the State. People came from all parts of the country
to witness the formality of the casting of the vote of New York
for Abraham Lincoln. The members of the college were, most of
them, men of great distinction in our public and civic life.
Horace Greeley was elected president of the college. The meeting
was held in the Senate chamber. When Mr. Greeley took the chair,
the desk in front of him made only his bust visible and with his
wonderfully intellectual face, his long gray hair brushed back, and
his solemn and earnest expression, he was one of the most impressive
figures I ever saw occupying the chair as a presiding officer.
One of the electors had failed to appear. Most of us knew that
under pressure of great excitement he was unable to resist his
convivial tendencies, but no one supposed that Mr. Greeley could
by any possibility know of his weakness. After waiting some
time one of the electors moved that the college take a recess for
half a day. Mr. Greeley turned very pale and, before putting
the question, made a little speech, something like this, in a voice
full of emotion, I might almost say tears: "My brethren, we are
met here upon the most solemn occasion of our lives in this crisis
of the republic. Upon the regularity of what we do here this day
may depend whether the republic lives or dies. I would, therefore,
suggest that we sit here in silence until our absent brother, who
is doubtless kept from us by some good reason, shall appear and
take his seat."
The effect of this address upon the Electoral College and the
surrounding audience was great. Many were in tears, and the
women spectators, most of whom were in mourning for those lost
during the war, were all crying.
As secretary of state it was my duty to have the papers all
prepared for execution as soon as the college had voted, and
to attach to them the great seal of the State, and then they were
sent by special messenger to Washington to be delivered to the
House of Representatives. Mr. Greeley, at the opening of the
session, said to me: "Chauncey, as I am not very familiar with
parliamentary law, I wish you would take a seat on the steps
beside me here, so that I can consult you if necessary." After
this effective and affecting speech he leaned down until he was
close to my ear, and said: "Chauncey, how long do you think it
will be before that d---- drunken fool will be able to return and
take his seat?"
General Grant's administration soon aroused great opposition.
Carl Schurz, Charles Francis Adams, and other leaders became
very hostile to the administration and to a second term. The
country was longing for peace. The "carpet-bag" governments
of the South were full of corruption and incompetence and imposed
upon the Southern States intolerable burdens of debt. The feeling
was becoming general that there should be universal amnesty in
order that the best and most capable people of the South could
return to the management of their own affairs.
This led to the calling of a convention of the Republicans, which
nominated Horace Greeley for president. I had no desire nor
the slightest intention of being involved in this controversy, but
was happily pursuing my profession, with increasing fondness for
private life.
One day Commodore Vanderbilt, who had a strong friendship for
Mr. Greeley, but took no interest in politics, said to me:
"Mr. Greeley has been to see me and is very anxious for you to
assist him. If you can aid him in any way I wish you would."
Afterwards Mr. Greeley called at my house. "Chauncey," he said
(he always called me Chauncey), "as you know, I have been nominated
by the Liberal Republican convention for President of the United
States. If I can get the indorsement of the Democratic party my
election is assured. My Democratic friends tell me that in order
to accomplish that I must demonstrate that I have a substantial
Republican following. So we have called a meeting at Rochester,
which is the capital of the strongest Republican counties of the
State. It is necessary to have for the principal speaker some
Republican of State and national reputation. I have selected
you for that purpose."
To my protest that I did not wish to enter into the contest nor
to take any part in active politics, he said, very indignantly:
"I have supported you in my paper and personally during the whole
of your career. I thought that if anybody was capable of gratitude
it is you, and I have had unfortunate experiences with many."
I never was able to resist an appeal of this kind, so I said
impulsively: "Mr. Greeley, I will go."
The meeting was a marvellous success for the purpose for which
it was called. It was purely a Republican gathering. The crowd
was several times larger than the hall could accommodate.
Henry R. Selden, one of the judges of the Court of Appeals and
one of the most eminent and respected Republicans of the State,
presided. The two hundred vice-presidents and secretaries upon
the platform I had known intimately for years as Republican leaders
of their counties and districts. The demonstration so impressed
the Democratic State leaders that at the national Democratic
convention Mr. Greeley was indorsed.
There were two State conventions held simultaneously that year,
one Democratic and one Liberal Republican. In the division of
offices the Democratic party, being the larger, was given the
governorship and the Liberal Republicans had the lieutenant-governorship.
I was elected as the presiding officer of the Liberal Republican
convention and also was made unanimously its nominee for
lieutenant-governor. The Democratic convention nominated Francis
Kernan, one of the most distinguished lawyers of the State, and
afterwards United States senator.
If the election had been held early in the canvass there is little
doubt but that Mr. Greeley would have carried the State by an
overwhelming majority. His difficulty was that for a quarter of a
century, as editor of the New York Tribune, he had been the most
merciless, bitter, and formidable critic and opponent of the
Democratic party. The deep-seated animosity against him was
fully aroused as the campaign proceeded by a propaganda which
placed in the hands of every Democrat these former slashing
editorials of the New York Tribune. Their effect upon the Democratic
voters was evident after a while, and when in the September election
North Carolina went Republican, a great mass of Republicans, who
had made up their minds to support Mr. Greeley, went back to their
party, and he was overwhelmingly defeated.
In the early part of his canvass Mr. Greeley made a tour of the
country. There have been many such travels by presidential
candidates, but none like this. His march was a triumphal
procession, and his audiences enormous and most enthusiastic.
The whole country marvelled at his intellectual versatility. He
spoke every day, and often several times a day, and each speech
was absolutely new. There seemed to be no limit to his originality,
his freshness, or the new angles from which to present the issues
of the canvass. No candidate was ever so bitterly abused and
so slandered.
A veteran speaker has in the course of his career original
experiences. The cordiality and responsiveness of his audience
is not always an index of their agreement with his argument.
During the campaign Mr. Greeley came to me and said: "I have
received encouraging accounts from the State of Maine. I have
a letter from such a place"--naming it--"from the principal of the
academy there. He writes me that the Congregational minister,
who has the largest church in town, the bank president, the
manufacturer, the principal lawyer, and himself are lifelong
readers of the Tribune, and those steadfast Republicans intend
to support me. He thinks if they can have a public meeting with
a speaker of national reputation, the result might be an overturn in
my favor in this community, which is almost unanimously Republican,
that it may influence the whole State, and," continued Mr. Greeley,
"he suggests you as the speaker, and I earnestly ask you to go."
When I arrived at the place I was entertained by the manufacturer.
The audience crowded the largest hall in the town. The principal
of the academy presided, the Congregational minister opened
the exercises with a prayer, and I was introduced and received
with great cordiality.
For such an audience my line of talk was praising General Grant
as the greatest general of modern times, and how largely the
preservation of the Union depended upon his military genius.
Then to picture the tremendous responsibilities of the presidency
and the impossibility of a man, however great as a soldier, with
a lifetime of military education, environment, and experiences,
succeeding in civil office, especially as great a one as the
presidency of the United States. Then came, naturally, a eulogium
of Horace Greeley, the maker of public opinion, the moulder of
national policies, the most eloquent and resourceful leader of
the Republican party since its formation. The audience cheered
with great enthusiasm all these allusions to General Grant,
and responded with equal fervor to my praise of Horace Greeley.
When I concluded they stood up and gave me cordial cheers, and
the presiding officer came forward and said: "I now suggest that
we close this meeting with three rousing cheers for Horace Greeley."
The principal of the academy, the manufacturer, the minister,
the lawyer, a very few of the audience, and several women responded.
After this frost a farmer rose gradually, and as he began to let
out link after link of his body, which seemed about seven feet
tall, he reached his full height, and then in a voice which could
be heard a mile shouted: "Three cheers for General Grant!" The
response nearly took the roof off the house. I left the State
the next morning and told Mr. Greeley that he could not carry Maine.
Among the amusing episodes of the campaign was one which occurred
at an open-door mass meeting at Watertown, N. Y. John A. Dix had
been nominated for governor on the Republican ticket, and I was
speaking of him and his career. He had changed from one party to
the other five or six times in the course of his long career, and
each time received an office. There was great doubt as to his
age, because in the American Encyclopaedia the date of his birth
was given as of a certain year, and in the French Encyclopaedia,
which published his biography when he was minister to France,
a widely different date was given. In the full tide of partisan
oratory I went over these changes of political activity, and how
each one had been rewarded, also the doubt as to his age, and
then I shouted: "I have discovered among the records of the
Pilgrim Fathers that when they landed on Plymouth Rock they found
John A. Dix standing on the rock and announcing that unless they
made him justice of the peace he would join the Indians." An
indignant farmer, who could not hold his wrath any longer, shouted:
"That's a lie! The Pilgrims landed more than two hundred and
fifty years ago." I saw that my interrupter had swallowed my
bait, hook, and line, bob and sinker, pole and all, and shouted
with great indignation: "Sir, I have narrated that historical
incident throughout the State, from Montauk Point to Niagara Falls,
and you are the first man who has had the audacity to question it."
Another farmer stepped up to the heckler and said: "Here is my
hat, neighbor. You can keep it. I am going bareheaded for the
rest of my life." In his uproarious laughter the crowd all joined.
It was years before the questioning farmer could visit Watertown
without encountering innumerable questions as to when the Pilgrims
landed on Plymouth Rock.
The last meeting of the campaign was held at Mr. Greeley's home
at Chappaqua in Westchester County. We all knew that the contest
was hopeless and defeat sure. I was one of the speakers, both
as his neighbor and friend, and accompanied him to New York.
A rough crowd on the train jeered him as we rode along. We went
to his office, and there he spoke of the lies that had been told
about him, and which had been believed by the public; of the
cartoons which had misrepresented him, especially those of Tom Nast,
and of which there were many lying about. Leaning upon his desk,
a discouraged and hopeless man, he said: "I have given my life
to the freeing of the slaves, and yet they have been made to
believe that I was a slave driver. It has been made to appear,
and people have been made to believe, that I was wrong or faithless,
or on the other side of the reforms which I have advocated all my
life. I will be beaten in the campaign and I am ruined for life."
He was overcome with emotion, and it was the saddest interview
I ever had with any one. It was really the breaking of a great
heart. He died before the votes were counted.
There was instantly a tremendous revulsion of popular feeling
in the country. He had lost his wife during the campaign, and
the people woke up suddenly to the sorrows under which he had
labored, to his genius as a journalist, to his activity as a
reformer, and to a usefulness that had no parallel among his
contemporaries. The president-elect, General Grant, and the
vice-president-elect, Schuyler Colfax, attended the funeral, and
without distinction of party his death was universally mourned.
After the election, in consultation on railroad affairs,
Commodore Vanderbilt said to me, "I was very glad you were
defeated," which was his way of saying that he did not want me
either to leave the railroad or to have other duties which would
impair my efficiency.
With the tragic death of Mr. Greeley the Liberal Republican
movement ended. Most of us who had followed him resumed at once
our Republican party relations and entered actively into its work
in the next campaign. The revolt was forgiven, except in very few
instances, and the Greeley men went back to their old positions
in their various localities and became prominent in the official
life of the State. I, as usual, in the fall took my vacation on
the platform for the party.
VII. RUTHERFORD B. HAYES AND WILLIAM M. EVARTS
It is one of the tragedies of history that in the procession of
events, the accumulation of incidents, year by year and generation
by generation, famous men of any period so rapidly disappear.
At the close of the Civil War there were at least a score of
generals in the North, and as many in the South, whose names
were household words. About fifty-five years have passed since
the war closed, and the average citizen knows only two of
them--Grant and Lee.
One of the last acts of General Grant was to tender to
Senator Conkling the position of chief justice of the Supreme Court
of the United States. Conkling had gained from the senatorship
and the leadership of his party a great reputation, to which
subsequent service in the Senate could add little or nothing.
He was in his early forties, in the prime of his powers, and he
would have had before him, as chief justice of this great court,
a long life of usefulness and distinction.
Conkling was essentially an advocate, and as an advocate not
possessing the judicial temperament. While there was a great
surprise that he declined this wonderful opportunity, we can see
now that the environment and restrictions of the position would
have made it impossible for this fiery and ambitious spirit. It
was well known that General Grant, so far as he could influence
the actions of the national Republican convention, was in favor
of Senator Conkling as his successor. The senator's friends
believed, and they made him believe, that the presidency was
within his grasp.
When the national convention met it was discovered that the
bitterness between the two leaders, Blaine and Conkling, made
harmony impossible. The bitterness by that time was on Conkling's
side against Blaine. With the latter's make-up, resentment could
not last very long. It is an interesting speculation what might
have happened if these two leaders had become friends. It is
among the possibilities that both might have achieved the great
object of their ambitions and been presidents of the United States.
The outstanding feature of that convention in the history of those
interesting gatherings was the speech of Colonel Robert G. Ingersoll,
nominating Mr. Blaine. In its effect upon the audience, in its
reception by the country, and by itself as an effort of that kind,
it stands unprecedented and unequalled.
As usual in popular conventions, where the antagonism of the
leaders and the bitterness of their partisanship threatens the
unity of the party, the result was the nomination of a "dark horse,"
and the convention closed its labors by presenting to the country
General Rutherford B. Hayes.
President Hayes, although one of the most amiable, genial, and
companionable of our presidents, with every quality to attach men
to him and make warm friendships, was, nevertheless, one of the
most isolated. He inherited all the business troubles, economic
disorganization, and currency disturbances which grew out of the
panic of 1873. He was met with more bankruptcy than had ever
occurred in our business history.
With rare courage and the most perfect good nature, he installed
essential reforms, which, in the then condition of party organization
and public sentiment, practically offended everybody. He threw
the extreme radicals of his party into a frenzy of rage by wiping
out the "carpet-bag" governments and restoring self-government
for the South. He inaugurated civil-service reform, but in doing
so antagonized most of the senators and members of the House.
When he found that the collector of the port of New York,
Chester A. Arthur, and the surveyor, Alonzo B. Cornell, were
running their offices with their vast patronage on strictly machine
lines, and that this had the general approval of party leaders,
he removed them and appointed for their successors General
Edwin A. Merritt and Silas W. Burt, with instructions to remove
no one on account of politics, and to appoint no one except for
demonstrated efficiency for the place. He pursued the same policy
in the Internal Revenue and Post-Office Departments. This policy
threatened the primacy of the Conkling machine.
President Hayes had a very strong Cabinet. The secretary of state,
William M. Evarts, and the secretary of the treasury, John Sherman,
were two of the ablest men in the country. Evarts was the leader
of the national bar, and in crystallized mentality had no equal in
the profession or outside of it. Sherman was the foremost and
best-informed economist, and also a great statesman. In close
consultation with Sherman, Hayes brought about the resumption
of specie payment. The "green-backers," who were for unlimited
paper, and the silver men, who were for unlimited coinage of
silver, and who were very numerous, joined the insurgent brigade.
While Mr. Hayes retired from the presidency by what might be called
unanimous consent, he had created conditions which made possible
the success of his party in 1880.
It was a refreshing experience to meet the president during these
troublous times. While everybody else was excited, he was perfectly
calm. While most of the great men at the Capitol were raging, he,
at the other end of the avenue, was placid and serene. He said
once to me: "It is a novel experience when you do what you think
right and best for the country to have it so generally criticised
and disapproved. But the compensation is that you expect antagonism
and disapproval and would think something was the matter with your
decisions if you did not receive them."
The general abuse to which he was subjected from so many sources
affected the public's view of him. After he had left the presidency
he told me that he thought it was the duty of an ex-president to
utilize the prestige which belonged to the office in the aid of
education. "I have found," he said, "that it helps enormously in
colleges and schools to have lectures, lessons, etc., in history
and patriotism, and behind them the personality of an ex-president
of the United States."
As an illustration of how distinguished men, when out of power, no
longer interest our people, I remember I met Mr. Hayes one day
in front of a fruit display of a well-known grocery establishment,
and after greeting said to the groceryman: "That is ex-President
Hayes. Don't you want to meet him?" The groceryman replied:
"I am not interested in him, but I have the finest collection of
pears in the city and want to sell you some."
The Capitol was full of the rich and racy characterizations,
epigrams, and sarcasms which Senator Conkling was daily pouring
out upon President Hayes, and especially Secretary Evarts. By
all the rules of senatorial courtesy in those machine days, a
member of the Cabinet from New York should have been a friend of
its United States senator. Mr. Evarts was too big a man to be
counted in any other class or category except his own. Of course,
all these criticisms were carried to both the president and the
secretary of state. The president never mentioned them, and I never
heard Evarts, though I met him frequently, make any reply but once.
Dining with Mr. Evarts, who entertained charmingly, a very
distinguished English jurist among the guests, here on a special
mission, said: "Mr. Secretary, I was at the Senate to-day and
heard Senator Conkling speaking. His magnificent personal
appearance, added to his fine oratory, must make him one of the
most formidable advocates at your bar and in your courts." The
English judge thought, of course, that Mr. Evarts, as the leader
of the American Bar and always in the courts, would know every
lawyer of distinction. Mr. Evarts dryly replied: "I never saw
Mr. Conkling in court."
It is always dangerous to comment or narrate a racy story which
involves the personal affliction of anybody. Dining with Mr. Evarts
one night was also a very distinguished general of our Civil War,
who had been an important figure in national politics. He was very
curious to know about Mr. Tilden, and especially as to the truth
of a report that Mr. Tilden had a stroke of paralysis, and appealed
to me, as I was just from New York. I narrated a story which was
current at the time that Mr. Tilden had denied the report by saying
to a friend: "They say I cannot lift my left hand to my head." He
then put his right hand under the left elbow and shot the left one
easily up to his face and said: "See there, my left has reached
its goal."
I saw that Mr. Evarts was embarrassed at the anecdote and discovered
afterwards that the distinguished guest had recently had a similar
stroke on his left side and could propel his left arm and hand
only with the assistance of his right.
My old bogie of being put into office arose again in the senatorial
election of 1882. The legislature, for the first time in a
generation, was entirely leaderless. The old organization had
disappeared and a new one had not yet crystallized.
Mr. Evarts was anxious to be senator, and I pledged him my
support. Evarts was totally devoid of the arts of popular appeal.
He was the greatest of lawyers and the most delightful of men, but
he could not canvass for votes. Besides, he was entirely independent
in his ideas of any organization dictation or control, and resented
both. He did not believe that a public man should go into public
office under any obligations, and resented such suggestions.
A large body of representative men thought it would be a good
thing for the country if New York could have this most accomplished,
capable, and brilliant man in the United States Senate. They
urged him strongly upon the legislature, none of whose members
knew him personally, and Mr. Evarts would not go to Albany.
The members selected a committee to come down to New York and
see Mr. Evarts. They went with the idea of ascertaining how far
he would remember with gratitude those who elected him. Their
visit was a miserable failure. They came in hot indignation to my
office and said they did not propose to send such a cold and
unsympathetic man as their representative to Washington and
earnestly requested my consent to their nominating me at the caucus
the next morning.
The committee telephoned to Albany and received the assent of
every faction of their party to this proposition. Then they
proposed that when the caucus met, Mr. Evarts, of course, should
receive complimentary speeches from his friends. Meanwhile others
would be nominated, and then a veteran member, whom they designated,
should propose me in the interest of harmony and the union of
the party, whereat the sponsors of the other candidate would
withdraw their man, and I be nominated by acclamation. My answer
was a most earnest appeal for Mr. Evarts. Then Mr. Evarts's
friends rallied to his support and he was elected.
I place Mr. Evarts in the foremost rank as a lawyer, a wit, and a
diplomat. He tried successfully the most famous cases of his
time and repeatedly demonstrated his remarkable genius. As a
general railway counsel and, therefore, as an administrator in
the retaining of distinguished counsels, I met with many of the
best men at the bar, but never any with such a complete and
clarified intellect as William M. Evarts. The mysteries of the
most complicated cases seemed simple, the legal difficulties plain,
and the solution comprehensible to everybody under his analysis.
Mr. Evarts was the wittiest man I ever met. It is difficult to
rehabilitate in the sayings of a wit the complete flavor of the
utterance. It is easier with a man of humor. Evarts was very
proud of his efforts as a farmer on his large estate in Vermont.
Among his prizes was a drove of pigs. He sent to Chief Justice
Morrison R. Waite a copy of his eulogy on Chief Justice
Salmon P. Chase, Waite's predecessor, and at the same time a ham,
saying in his letter: "My dear Chief Justice, I send you to-day
one of my prize hams and also my eulogy on Chief Justice Chase,
both the products of my pen."
The good things Mr. Evarts said would be talked of long after
a dinner. I remember on one occasion his famous partner,
Mr. Choate, who was a Harvard man, while Evarts was a graduate
from Yale, introduced Mr. Evarts by saying that he was surprised
that a Yale man, with all the prejudices of that institution
against the superior advantages of Harvard, should have risked
the coats of his stomach at a Harvard dinner. Mr. Evarts replied:
"When I go to a Harvard dinner I always leave the coats of my
stomach at home."
Mr. Evarts once told me when I was visiting him at his country
place that an old man whom he pointed out, and who was sawing
wood, was the most sensible philosopher in the neighborhood.
Mr. Evarts said: "He is always talking to himself, and I asked
him why." His answer was: "I always talk to myself in preference
to talking to anybody else, because I like to talk to a sensible
man and to hear a man of sense talk."
VIII. GENERAL GARFIELD
The triumph of the Democrats in Maine in the September election,
1880, had a most depressing effect upon the Republicans and an
equally exhilarating one upon the Democrats. The paralyzing effect
of the simple utterances in popular elections almost makes one
think that every candidate should follow Matthew Quay's famous advice
to his candidate for governor: "Beaver, keep your mouth shut."
In the campaign when General Winfield Scott ran for the presidency,
he began an important communication by stating that he would answer
as soon as he had taken a hasty plate of soup. That "hasty plate
of soup" appeared in cartoons, was pictured on walls, etc., in every
form of ridicule, and was one of the chief elements of his defeat.
When towards the close of the canvass Garfield had succeeded
in making the tariff the leading issue, General Hancock was asked
what were his views on the tariff. (You must remember that the
general was a soldier and had never been in politics.) The general
answered: "The tariff was a purely local issue in Pennsylvania."
The whole country burst into a gale of laughter, and Hancock's
campaign had a crack which was never mended.
There never were two more picturesque opponents than General Garfield
and General Hancock. Hancock was the idol of the Army of the
Potomac, and everybody remembered McClellan's despatch after one
of the bloodiest battles of the Peninsula campaign: "Hancock was
superb to-day." He was an exceedingly handsome man and one of
the finest figures in uniform in the whole country.
General Garfield also presented a very fine appearance. He was
a large man, well-proportioned, and with very engaging manners.
He also had an unusual faculty for attractive public addresses,
not only on politics, but many subjects, especially education and
patriotism. I never can forget when the news of Lincoln's
assassination reached New York. The angry and dangerous crowd
which surged up and down Broadway and through Wall Street threatened
to wreck the banking and business houses which were supposed
to be sympathetic with the Confederates.
Garfield suddenly appeared on the balcony of the Custom House
in Wall Street and succeeded in stilling the crowd. With a voice
that reached up to Trinity Church he urged calmness in thought
and action, deprecated any violence, and then, in an impassioned
appeal to hopefulness notwithstanding the tragedy, exclaimed
impulsively: "God reigns and the Republic still lives."
I was requested by some friends to visit General Garfield and
see how he felt on the political situation, which during the
campaign of 1880 did not look hopeful. I took the next train,
spent the day with him, and was back in New York the following
day.
When I left the train at Cleveland in the morning the newsboys
pushed at me a Cleveland Democratic daily, with a rooster's picture
covering the whole front page, and the announcement that the
Democrats had carried Maine. The belief was universal then that
"as Maine goes so goes the Union," and whichever party carried
that State in the September election, the country would follow
in the presidential contest in November.
I took the next train to Mentor, the residence of General Garfield.
I found at the station a score or more of country wagons and
carriages waiting for passengers. I said to the farmers: "Will
any of you take me up to General Garfield's residence?" One of
them answered: "We will all take you up this morning, but if you
had come yesterday you would have had to wait your turn."
It was a startling instance of the variableness of public opinion.
Delegations from everywhere, on their way to extend greetings
to the candidate, had read the morning papers and turned back,
deciding not to go.
I found Garfield struggling bravely to overcome the depression
which he felt. He was in close touch with the situation everywhere,
and discussed it with discrimination and hopefulness.
The most affecting incident occurred while I was talking with him.
His mother passed through the room and, patting him on the back,
said: "James, the neighbors think it is all right; they are raising
a banner at the corner."
Two old soldier friends came in, and the noonday dinner was a rare
intellectual feast. The general was a brilliant conversationalist.
His mind turned first to the accidents of careers. He asked me if
there was not a time in my early struggles when if Providence had
offered a modest certainty I would not have exchanged the whole
future for it, and then continued: "There was a period in my early
struggles as a teacher when, if I had been offered the principalship
of an endowed academy, with an adequate salary, with the condition
that I must devote myself to its interests and abandon everything
else, I am quite sure I would have accepted."
Of course, the hopeful application of this incident to the Maine
defeat was that, no such offer having been made or accepted, he
had made a glorious career in the army, rising to the head of the
General Staff, and for twenty years had been the leading figure
in the House of Representatives, and was now a recently elected
United States senator and chosen candidate for president.
Then he turned to the instances where victory had been plucked
from defeat in battles. After citing many instances he gave a word
picture of the Battle of Chickamauga which was the finest thing of
the kind I have ever heard or ever read.
After his two comrades left I told him of the interest which my
friends were taking in his canvass, and that I would add their
contribution to the campaign committee. The general instantly
was exultant and jubilant. He fairly shouted: "Have I not proved
to you all day that there is always a silver lining to the cloud,
and that the darkest hour is just before dawn?"
It was one of the sources of General Garfield's success as an
orator that he was very emotional and sentimental. He happily
carried with him amid all struggles and disappointments, as well
as successes in the making of a career, the buoyant, hopeful,
companionable, and affectionate interests which characterize
the ambitious senior who has just left college to take his plunge
into the activities of life.
So far as our State was concerned, a great deal turned upon the
attitude of Senator Conkling. His great and triumphant speech
of four hours at the Academy of Music in New York brought all
his friends into line, but the greatest help which General Garfield
received was from the generous, unselfish, and enthusiastic support
of General Grant.
General Grant had been the leading candidate in the convention
which finally nominated Garfield, but he voluntarily appeared upon
the platform in several States and at Garfield's home. His brief
but most effective speeches gathered around Garfield not only the
whole of the old-soldier vote but those who had become disaffected
or indifferent because of the result of the national Republican
convention.
There probably was no canvass where the Republican orator ever
had so many opportunities for the exercise of every faculty which
he possessed. His candidate had made an excellent record as
a soldier in the field and as a statesman in Congress, as an
educator and a popular speaker on questions of vital interest,
while the opposition presented abundant opportunities for attack.
After the presidential election came the meeting of the New York
State legislature for the choosing of a United States senator.
The legislature was overwhelmingly Republican, and the organization
or machine Republicans were in a large majority. The assembly was
organized and the appointment of committees used to make certain
the election of an organization man.
A very unusual thing happened. The forces of the organization
were divided between two candidates: Thomas C. Platt and
Richard Crowley. Mr. Conkling had not declared his preference
for either, as they were both devoted friends of his, though he had
the power to have made a selection and have that selection accepted
by the legislature. Vice-President-elect Chester A. Arthur appeared
as manager for Mr. Crowley. Platt conducted his own canvass.
I was called to a meeting in New York, where Mr. Blaine, secretary
of state, was present. Mr. Blaine said that administration managers
had made a thorough canvass of the legislature and they had found
that I was the only one who could control enough anti-organization
votes to be elected, and, therefore, General Garfield and his
friends had decided that I must enter the race. I did not want
to do it, nor did I want the senatorship at that time. However,
it seemed a plain duty. A canvass showed that Mr. Platt,
Mr. Crowley, and myself had about an equal number of votes.
Of course, Mr. Blaine's object was, knowing that Senator Conkling
would be hostile to the administration, to prevent his having
a colleague who would join with him, and thus place the State
of New York against the policies of the incoming president.
After the canvass had been going on for some time, Mr. Platt came
to me and asked why I was in it. I told him frankly that I was in
it to see, if possible, that the senator-elect should support
the administration. He said: "Very well, I will do that."
I immediately called together my supporters. Mr. Platt appeared
before them and stated that if elected he would support the
president and his administration in every respect. He was asked
if he would vote for the confirmation of appointees whom the
president might select who were specially in disfavor with
Senator Conkling, conspicuously Senator William H. Robertson.
Mr. Platt said, "Yes, I will." My friends all went over to him
and he was elected.
General Garfield was inaugurated in March, 1881, and his
difficulties began with his Cabinet. Senator Conkling, who saw
clearly that with Blaine in the Cabinet his organization was in
danger in New York, did not want any of his friends to accept
a Cabinet position. The navy was offered to Levi P. Morton, but
at the request of Senator Conkling he declined.
When the time came for appointments in the Custom House of New York,
General Garfield sent in the name of William H. Robertson, who was
the leader of the anti-machine forces in the State. Mr. Conkling
at once demanded that Mr. Platt should join with him in inducing
the Senate to reject the nomination. Under the rule of senatorial
courtesy the Senate would undoubtedly have done this if the two
New York senators had acted together. Mr. Platt told Mr. Conkling
of his pledge to the members of the legislature, and that he must
abide by it, and, as he told me, suggested to Mr. Conkling that,
as he always had been his friend and did not want any breach
with him, the only thing to be done, consistent with honor, was
for both of them to resign and go back to the legislature for
re-election, with a mandate which should enable them to reject
the appointment of Judge Robertson and all similar appointments.
As the legislature was overwhelmingly Republican, and the organization
had a large majority, it seemed to both senators that they would
be returned immediately. But it is singular how intense partisanship
will blind the ablest and shrewdest politicians. Senators Conkling
and Platt were among the ablest and most capable political managers
of their time. What they did not reckon with was that the people
of the State of New York, or, rather, the Republicans of the State,
having just elected a president, would not view favorably the
legislature of the State sending two senators to embarrass their
own administration. There was hardly a newspaper in the State
or in the country that did not take a hostile attitude.
Mr. Blaine again came to New York and insisted upon my entering
the canvass, and that I was the only one who could get the whole
of the anti-organization vote.
With the Democrats voting for their own candidate, and the
anti-organization men voting for me, it was impossible for any
one to have a majority. The fight was most bitter. The ineffectual
ballotting went on every day for months. Then Garfield was
assassinated. The leader of the Conkling forces came to me and
said: "You have a majority of the Republican members now voting
for you. Of course, the antagonism has become so great on your
candidacy that we cannot vote for you, but if you will withdraw,
we will go into caucus."
I instantly accepted the proposition, saw my own people, and we
selected Warner Miller to represent the administration, and
Congressman Lapham, a very able and capable lieutenant of
Mr. Conkling, to represent the organization. The caucus unanimously
nominated them and they were elected. Senator Conkling immediately
settled in New York to practise law and retired from political
activities.
It is the irony of fate that General Garfield, who did more than
any other statesman to bring the public from its frenzy after
the murder of Lincoln back to a calm and judicious consideration
of national conditions, should himself be the victim, so soon
after his inauguration, of an assassin.
Lincoln was assassinated in April, after his second inauguration
in March, while Garfield was shot in the railway station at
Washington July 2, following his inauguration. The president
was removed to a cottage at Long Branch, N. J., and lingered
there with great suffering for over two months.
I was living at Long Branch that summer and going up and down
every day to my office in New York. The whole country was in
alternate emotions of hope and despair as the daily bulletins
announced the varying phases of the illustrious patient's condition.
The people also were greatly impressed at his wonderful self-control,
heroic patience, endurance, and amiability.
It was the experience of a lifetime in the psychology of human
nature to meet, night after night, the people who gathered at
the hotel at Long Branch. Most of them were office-seekers.
There were those who had great anticipations of Garfield's recovery,
and others, hidebound machinists and organization men, who thought
if Garfield died and Vice-President Arthur became president, he
would bring in the old order as it existed while he was one of its
chief administrators.
There were present very able and experienced newspaper men,
representing every great journal in the country. The evening
sessions of these veteran observers of public men were most
interesting. Their critical analysis of the history and motives
of the arriving visitors would have been, if published, the most
valuable volume of "Who's Who" ever published. When President
Garfield died the whole country mourned.
IX. CHESTER A. ARTHUR
Chester A. Arthur immediately succeeded to the presidency. It
had been my good fortune to know so well all the presidents,
commencing with Mr. Lincoln, and now the occupant of the White House
was a lifelong friend.
President Arthur was a very handsome man, in the prime of life,
of superior character and intelligence, and with the perfect
manners and courtesies of a trained man of the world. A veteran
statesman who had known most of our presidents intimately and
been in Congress under many of them said, in reviewing the list
with me at the recent convention at Chicago: "Arthur was the
only gentleman I ever saw in the White House."
Of course, he did not mean exactly that. He meant that Arthur was
the only one of our presidents who came from the refined social
circles of the metropolis or from other capitals, and was past
master in all the arts and conventionalities of what is known as
"best society." He could have taken equal rank in that respect
with the Prince of Wales, who afterwards became King Edward VII.
The "hail-fellow-well-met" who had been on familiar terms with
him while he was the party leader in New York City, found when
they attempted the old familiarities that, while their leader was
still their friend, he was President of the United States.
Arthur, although one of the most rigid of organization and machine
men in his days of local leadership, elevated the party standards
by the men whom he drew around himself. He invited into party
service and personal intimacy a remarkable body of young,
exceedingly able and ambitious men. Many of those became
distinguished afterwards in public and professional life. The
ablest of them all was a gentleman who, I think, is now universally
recognized both at home and abroad as the most efficient and
accomplished American diplomat and lawyer--Elihu Root.
There is no career so full of dramatic surprises as the political.
President Hayes put civil-service reform upon its feet, and without
the assistance of necessary laws vigorously enforced its principles.
Among the victims of his enforcement was General Arthur, whom he
relieved as collector of the port of New York. To the surprise of
every one and the amazement of his old friends, one of the first
acts of President Arthur was to demand the enactment of a
civil-service law, which had originated with the Civil Service
Association, and whose most prominent members were George William
Curtis and Carl Schurz.
The president's urgency secured the passage of the measure. He
then appointed a thoroughgoing Civil Service Commission, and
during his term lived up to every requirement of the system. In
doing this he alienated all his old friends, and among them
General Grant, ex-Senator Conkling, Thomas C. Platt, and also
Mr. Blaine, whom he had asked to remain in the Cabinet as
secretary of state. Among them was also John Sherman, whom he
had equally wished to retain as secretary of the treasury.
Arthur's administration, both in domestic affairs and in its
foreign policies, meets the approval of history and the impartial
judgment of posterity. But he was not big enough, nor strong
enough, to contend with the powerful men who were antagonized,
especially by his civil-service-reform tendencies. When the
Republican convention met in 1884 and nominated a new ticket,
it was universally recognized by everybody, including the president,
that his political career had closed.
President Arthur was one of the most delightful of hosts, and he
made the White House the centre of refined hospitality and social
charm. He was a shrewd analyst of human nature and told stories
full of humor and dramatic effect of some of his contemporaries.
General Arthur, while Republican party leader in New York, invited
me to a dinner given him by a friend who had just returned from
a hunting trip with a large collection of fine game. With the
exception of myself, all the guests were active leaders in the
State machine.
During the dinner the general said to me: "While we draft you
every fall to help in our canvass, after we have nominated our
ticket we miss you in our councils and we need you."
"Well," I replied, "I do not know what the matter is, nor why
Senator Conkling should have a continuing hostility, which I only
feel when the time comes around to elect delegates to the State
convention."
The general continued: "We are unable to find out either. However,
it is absurd, and we are going to see that you are a delegate
to the national convention, and we want you to be at the State
convention at Utica."
I went to Albany, knowing that there would be a conference at the
Executive Mansion, with General Arthur, Governor Cornell, and
Senator Conkling, to lay out a programme for the convention. I met
the then secretary of the State committee, Mr. Johnson, and told
him about my conversation with General Arthur. He said he was
going to attend the conference and would report to me.
When Mr. Johnson returned he told me that General Arthur,
Governor Cornell, and others had strongly urged my being a delegate,
and that Senator Conkling became very indignant and said that he
did not want me back in the organization, and that it was a matter
of indifference on what side I was. It is needless to say that
I did not attend the convention at Utica.
Mr. Johnson also told me that among other things decided upon was
that if General Grant should be nominated for a third term, the
old machine under Senator Conkling would be made stronger than
ever; that the men who had come to the front during President Hayes's
administration as members of the State Senate and assembly and
of Congress would be retired, and that another State paper would
be established which would wipe out the Albany Evening Journal,
because it had sustained President Hayes and his policies.
While the convention was in session at Utica I had an interview with
Mr. George Dawson, who was editor of the Albany Evening Journal
and he became convinced that he had nothing to lose by entering
at once into an open antagonism, if there was any way by which it
could be made effective.
I said to Mr. Dawson: "The only salvation for those who have been
benefited during the era of liberty occasioned by President Hayes's
civil-service policies is to prevent the national convention
adopting the unit rule."
The unit rule is that if the majority of the delegates from any
State make a decision, the chairman of the delegation shall cast
the entire vote of the delegation from the State for the result
arrived at by the majority, whether it be a candidate or a policy.
Under the unit rule I have seen a bare majority of one vote for
a candidate, and then the chairman of the delegation cast the entire
vote for the candidate, though the minority were very hostile to him.
The delegates of the State convention at Utica returned to Albany
that night. Many of them were State senators whose decapitation
was assured if the old machine supported by federal patronage was
revived. State Senator Webster Wagner was one of them. He and I
chartered a train and invited the whole State delegation to go with
us to Chicago. In the preliminary discussions, before the national
convention met, twenty-six out of seventy-eight delegates decided
to act independently.
Wayne MacVeagh, a lifelong friend of mine, had a strong following
in the Pennsylvania delegation, and after he learned our position
brought over also his people. Emory Storrs, who led the Illinois
delegation, came to me and said that if we would not boom
Elihu B. Washburne, who was a candidate for the nomination, we
would have the Illinois vote. The result of the canvass was that
the convention decided against the unit rule. This released so
many individual delegates to independent action that the field
was cleared and nobody had majority. The leading candidates were
General Grant, James G. Blaine, and John Sherman.
In the history of convention oratory the nominating speeches of
Senator Conkling for General Grant, and James A. Garfield for
John Sherman take the highest rank. Conkling took a lofty position
on the platform. His speech was perfectly prepared, delivered
with great dramatic effect, and received universal applause on
the floor and in the gallery.
General Garfield, on the other hand, also a fine-looking man and
a practised orator, avoided the dramatic element, in which he
could not compete with Conkling, but delivered a speech along
the line of the average thought and general comprehension of his
audience that made a great impression. It was a common remark:
"He has nominated himself."
There were among the audience thousands of Blaine enthusiasts.
No public man since Lincoln ever had such enthusiastic, devoted,
and almost crazy followers as Mr. Blaine. These enthusiasts were
waiting to raise the roof and secure the nomination of their
candidate when the chosen orator should present their favorite.
The gentleman selected to present Mr. Blaine was eminent in business
and great enterprises, but I doubt if he had ever spoken before
except to a board of directors. Of course, in that vast hall such
a man was fearfully handicapped and could not be very well heard.
He closed by naming his candidate somewhat like this: "I now have
the pleasure and honor of proposing as the candidate of this
convention that eminent statesman, James S. Blaine." Nearly
every one in the convention knew that Mr. Blaine's middle name
was Gillespie.
The Blaine followers, whose indignation had been growing throughout
the speech, because they expected the very highest type of oratory
for their favorite, shouted in chorus, "G., you fool, G!"
When General Garfield was voted for, he indignantly repudiated
the votes as an imputation upon his honor, as he was there to
nominate his friend, John Sherman. Senator George F. Hoar, of
Massachusetts, presided at the convention. He interrupted Garfield
by calling him to order, as it was not in order to interrupt the
calling of the roll, and he did so for fear that Garfield would go
so far as to say he would not accept the nomination if it were
made. On the last ballot State after State, each striving to get
ahead of the other, changed its vote from Sherman or Blaine to
Garfield, and he was nominated.
I sat close to him as a visitor to the Ohio delegation. It was
a curious exhibit of the ambition of a lifetime suddenly and
unexpectedly realized by a highly sensitive and highly wrought-up
man. He was so overcome that he practically had to be carried
out of the convention by his friends.
Senator Conkling was very indignant at the result and expressed
his anger with his usual emphasis and picturesqueness. The Ohio
leaders were then anxious to placate New York, but Conkling would
have nothing to do with them. They then came to us, who had been
opposed to the unit rule, and wanted suggestions as to which
New Yorker they should select for vice-president. Levi P. Morton
was suggested. Mr. Morton said he would accept if Senator Conkling
was willing to agree to it, and that he would not act without the
senator's acquiescence, as he was an organization man. The senator
refused his consent, and told Mr. Morton that no friend of his
would go on the ticket.
It was then suggested that they try General Arthur, who was
Conkling's first lieutenant and chairman of the Republican State
Committee of New York. Senator Conkling made the same answer
to General Arthur, but he frankly said to Conkling: "Such an honor
and opportunity comes to very few of the millions of Americans,
and to that man but once. No man can refuse it, and I will not."
And so General Arthur was nominated for vice-president.
X. GROVER CLEVELAND
Grover Cleveland was a remarkable man. He had more political
courage of the General Jackson type than almost any man who ever
held great responsible positions. He defied Tammany Hall while
governor of the State, and repeatedly challenged the strongest
elements of his party while president. Threats of defeat or
retaliation never moved him. If he had once made up his mi
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