A Political History of the State of New York Volume III Part 14

The division in the party spread with the rapidity of a rising thunder cloud. On February 6 Congress pa.s.sed the Freedman's Bureau Bill, designed to aid helpless negroes, which the President vetoed. A month later his treatment of the Civil Rights Bill, which set in motion the necessary machinery to enforce the Thirteenth Amendment, shattered the confidence of the party. "Surely," declared Senator Trumbull of Illinois, "we have authority to enact a law as efficient in the interest of freedom as we had in the interest of slavery."[1051] But the President promptly vetoed it, because, he said, it conferred citizenship on the negro, invaded the rights of the States, had no warrant in the Const.i.tution, and was contrary to all precedent.

[Footnote 1051: _Congressional Globe_, p. 474.]

The President had developed several undesirable characteristics, being essentially obstinate and conceited, the possessor of a bad temper, and of a coa.r.s.e and vulgar personality. His speech on February 22, in which he had invoked the wild pa.s.sions of a mob, modified the opinions even of conservative men. "It is impossible to conceive of a more humiliating spectacle," said Sherman.[1052] "During the progress of events," wrote Weed, "the President was bereft of judgment and reason, and became the victim of pa.s.sion and unreason."[1053] But up to this time the party had hoped to avoid a complete break with the Executive.

Now, however, the question of pa.s.sing the Civil Rights Bill over his veto presented itself. Not since the beginning of the government had Congress carried an important measure over a veto. Besides, it meant a complete and final separation between the President and his party.

Edwin D. Morgan so understood it, and although he had heretofore sustained the President, he now stood with the Radicals. Raymond also knew the gravity of the situation. But Raymond, who often wavered and sometimes exhibited an astonishing fickleness,[1054] saw only one side to the question, and on April 9 when the House, by a vote of 122 to 41, overrode the veto, he was one of only seven Unionists to support the President.[1055]

[Footnote 1052: _Congressional Globe_, Appendix, p. 124.]

[Footnote 1053: T.W. Barnes, _Life of Thurlow Weed_, Vol. 1, p. 630.]

[Footnote 1054: Augustus Maverick, _Life of Henry J. Raymond_, p. 225.

Apropos of Raymond's fickleness Stevens remarked, when the former appealed to his friends on the floor to furnish him a pair, that he saw no reason for it, since he had observed that the gentleman from New York found no difficulty in pairing with himself.--William M.

Stewart, _Reminiscences_, pp. 205-206.

At another time when an excited member declared that Stevens commands us to "go it blind," Hale of New York, with an innocent expression, asked the meaning of the phrase. Instantly Stevens retorted: "It means following Raymond." The hit was doubly happy since Hale had followed Raymond in his support of Johnson.--Boutwell, _Reminiscences_, Vol. 2, p. 11.]

[Footnote 1055: Edward McPherson, _History of the Reconstruction_, p.

81.]

After the pa.s.sage of the Civil Rights Bill the President's friends proposed to invoke, through a National Union convention to be held at Philadelphia on August 14, the support of conservative Republicans and Democrats. Weed told Raymond of the project and Seward urged it upon him. Raymond expressed a disinclination to go to the convention because it seemed likely to fall into the hands of former Confederates and their Northern a.s.sociates, and to be used for purposes hostile to the Union party, of which, he said, he was not only a member, but the chairman of its national committee. Seward did not concur in this view. He said it was not a party convention and need not affect the party standing of those who attended it. He was a Union man, he declared, and he did not admit the right of anybody to turn him out of the Union party. Moreover, he wanted Raymond to attend the convention to prevent its control by the enemies of the Union party.

Raymond, still undecided, called with Seward upon the President, who favoured neither a new party nor the restoration to power of the Democratic party, although the movement, he said, ought not to repel Democrats willing to act with it. He wanted the matter settled within the Union party, and thought the proposed convention, in which delegates from all the States could again meet in harmony, would exert a wholesome influence on local conventions and nominations to Congress.[1056] Raymond, however, was still apprehensive. He deemed the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments "reasonable, wise, and popular;"

thought the President had "made a great mistake in taking grounds against them;" and declared that notwithstanding the peppery method of their pa.s.sage "the people will not be stopped by trifles." The outcome of the convention also worried him. "If it should happen to lay down a platform," he continued, "which shall command the respect of the country, it would be such a miracle as we have no right to expect in these days. However," he concluded, "I shall be governed in my course toward it by developments. I do not see the necessity of denouncing it from the start, nor until more is known of its composition, purposes, and actions."[1057]

[Footnote 1056: The above statement is based upon the diary of Raymond, published by his son.]

[Footnote 1057: Letter of July 17.--Augustus Maverick, _Life of Raymond_, pp. 173-174.]

Raymond did not attend the preliminary State convention held at Saratoga on August 9. He left this work to Weed, who, with the help of Dean Richmond, made an excellent showing in numbers and enthusiasm.

The support of the Democrats was a.s.sured because they would benefit, and the presence of Tilden, Kernan, William H. Ludlow, and Sanford E.

Church created no surprise; but the interest manifested by John A.

Dix, Hamilton Fish, Moses Taylor, Marshall O. Roberts, Francis B.

Cutting, and Richard M. Blatchford amazed the Republicans. Henry J.

Raymond was made a delegate-at-large, with Samuel J. Tilden, John A.

Dix, and Sanford E. Church.

At Philadelphia the convention derived a manifest advantage from having all the States, South as well as North, fully represented, making it the first real "National" convention to a.s.semble, it was said, since 1860. Besides, it was a picturesque convention, full of striking contrasts and unique spectacles. In the hotel lobbies Weed and Richmond, walking together, seemed ubiquitous as they dominated the management and arranged the details. Raymond and Church sat side by side in the committee on resolutions, while the delegates from Ma.s.sachusetts and South Carolina, for spectacular effect, entered the great wigwam arm in arm. This picture of apparent reconciliation evoked the most enthusiastic cheers, and became the boast of the Johnsonians until the wits likened the wigwam to Noah's Ark, into which there went, "two and two, of clean beasts, and of beasts that are not clean, and of fowls, and of everything that creepeth upon the earth."

John A. Dix became temporary chairman, and the resolutions, reciting the issue between the President and the Republicans, laid great emphasis upon the right of every State, without condition, to representation in Congress as soon as the war had ended. But Raymond, presumably to please Southern delegates,[1058] pressed the argument far beyond the scope of the resolutions, maintaining that even if the condition of the Southern States rendered their admission unsafe because still disloyal in sentiment and purpose, Congress had no power to deny them rights conferred by the Const.i.tution. This reckless claim amazed his friends as much as it aroused his enemies, and he at once became the object of most cutting reproaches. "Had he been elected as a Copperhead," said the _Tribune_, "no one could have complained that he acted as a Copperhead, and had Judas been one of the Pharisees instead of one of the Disciples, he would not be the worst example that Presidents and Congressmen can follow."[1059] Ten days later the Republican National committee removed him from the chairmanship, a punishment promptly followed by his removal from the committee.[1060]

Raymond, in his talk with Seward, had antic.i.p.ated trouble of this character, but the humiliation was now doubly deep because it separated him from friends whose staunch support had contributed to his strength. Moreover, in a few weeks he was compelled to abandon the President for reasons that had long existed. "We have tried hard," he wrote, "to hold our original faith in his personal honesty, and to attribute his disastrous action to errors of judgment and infirmities of temper. The struggle has often been difficult, and we can maintain it no longer."[1061] But the change came too late. He had followed too far. It added to the sadness, also, because his popularity was never to return to any considerable extent during the remaining three years of his brilliant life.

[Footnote 1058: New York _Tribune_, August 22, 1866.]

[Footnote 1059: _Ibid._, September 28.]

[Footnote 1060: _Ibid._, September 4 and 6.]

[Footnote 1061: Augustus Maverick, _Life of Raymond_, p. 174.]

Raymond's congressional experience, confined to a single term, added nothing to his fame. He delivered clever speeches, his wide intelligence and courteous manner won him popularity, and to some extent he probably influenced public opinion; but his brief career left no opportunity to live down his fatal alliance with Johnson.

Indeed, it may well be doubted if longer service or more favourable conditions would have given him high standing as a legislator.

Prominence gained in one vocation is rarely transferred to another.

Legislation is a profession as much as medicine or law or journalism, the practice of which, to gain leadership, must be long and continuous, until proposed public measures and their treatment worked out in the drudgery of the committee room, become as familiar as the variety of questions submitted to lawyers and physicians. The prolonged and exacting labour as a journalist which had given Raymond his great reputation, must, in a measure, have been repeated as a legislator to give him similar leadership in Congress. At forty-five he was not too old to accomplish it. Samuel Sh.e.l.labarger of Ohio, who made his greatest speech in reply to Raymond, began his congressional life at forty-nine, and Thaddeus Stevens, the leader of the House, at fifty-seven. But the mental weariness, already apparent in Raymond's face, indicated that the enthusiasm necessary for such preparation had departed. Besides, he lacked the most important qualification for a legislative leader--the rare political sagacity to know the thoughts of people and to catch the tiniest shadow of a coming event.

Seward shared Raymond's unpopularity. Soon after a.s.suming office President Johnson outlined a severe policy toward the South, violently denouncing traitors, who, he declared, must be punished and impoverished. "The time has arrived," he said, "when the American people should be educated that treason is the highest crime and those engaged in it should suffer all its penalties."[1062] These sentiments, reiterated again and again, extorted from Benjamin F. Wade, the chief of Radicals, an entreaty that he would limit the number to be hung to a good round dozen and no more.[1063] Suddenly the President changed his tone to one of amnesty and reconciliation, and in answering the question, "who has influenced him?" Sumner declared that "Seward is the marplot. He openly confesses that he counselled the present fatal policy."[1064] Blaine also expressed the belief that the Secretary of State changed the President's policy,[1065] a suggestion that Seward himself corroborated in an after-dinner speech at New York in September, 1866. "When Mr. Johnson came into the Presidency," said the Secretary, "he did nothing until I got well, and then he sent for me and we fixed things."[1066]

[Footnote 1062: McPherson's _Reconstruction_, p. 45.]

[Footnote 1063: Blaine's _Twenty Tears of Congress_, Vol. 2, p. 14.]

[Footnote 1064: Edward L. Pierce, _Life of Sumner_, Vol. 4, p. 376; Sumner's _Works_, Vol. 11, p. 19.]

[Footnote 1065: James G. Blaine, _Twenty Years of Congress_, Vol. 2, p.

63.]

[Footnote 1066: New York _Tribune_, September 4, 1866.]

But Seward did more to exasperate Republicans than change a harsh policy to one of reconciliation. He believed in the soundness of the President's const.i.tutional views and the correctness of his vetoes, deeming the course of Congress unwise.[1067] It is difficult, therefore, to credit Blaine's unsupported statement that Seward "worked most earnestly to bring about an accommodation between the Administration and Congress."[1068] The split grew out of the President's veto messages which Seward approved and probably wrote.

[Footnote 1067: Thornton K. Lothrop, _Life of Seward_, p. 424.]

[Footnote 1068: James G. Blaine, _Twenty Years of Congress_, Vol. 2, p.

115.]

Until the spring of 1866 Seward's old friends believed he had remained in the Cabinet to dispose of diplomatic questions which the war left unsettled, but after his speech at Auburn on May 22 the men who once regarded him as a champion of liberty and equality dropped him from their list of saints. He argued that the country wanted reconciliation instead of reconstruction, and denied that the President was unfaithful to the party and its cardinal principles of public policy, since his disagreements with Congress on the Freedman's Bureau and Civil Rights Bills "have no real bearing upon the question of reconciliation." Nor was there any "soundness in our political system, if the personal or civil rights of white or black, free born or emanc.i.p.ated, are not more secure under the administration of a State government than they could be under the administration of the National government."[1069] This sentiment brought severe criticism.

"Mr. Seward once earned honour by remembering the negro at a time when others forgot him," said the _Independent_; "he now earns dishonour by forgetting the negro when the nation demands that the negro should be remembered."[1070]

[Footnote 1069: This speech does not appear in his _Works_, but was published at the time of its delivery in pamphlet form.]

[Footnote 1070: New York _Independent_, May 31, 1866.]

Seward's partic.i.p.ation in the President's tour of the country contributed to destroy his popularity. This Quixotic junketing journey quickly pa.s.sed into history as the "swinging-around-the-circle" trip, which Lowell described as an "advertising tour of a policy in want of a party."[1071] Seward had many misgivings. The memory of the President's condition on inauguration day and of his unfortunate speech on February 22 did not augur well for its success. "But it is a duty to the President and to the country," he wrote, "and I shall go on with right good heart."[1072] In the East the party got on very well, but at Cleveland and other Western cities the President acted like a man both mad and drunk, while people railed at him as if he were the clown of a circus. "He sunk the Presidential office to the level of a grog-house," wrote John Sherman.[1073]

[Footnote 1071: James Russell Lowell, _Political Essays_, p. 296.]

[Footnote 1072: F.W. Seward, _Life of W.H. Seward_, Vol. 3, p. 339.]

[Footnote 1073: Sherman's Letters, p. 278.]

Seward's position throughout was pathetic. His apologies and commonplace appeals for his Chief contrasted strangely with the courageous, powerful, and steady fight against the domination of slavery which characterised his former visits to Cleveland, and the men who had accepted him as their ardent champion deprecated both his acts and his words. It called to mind Fillmore's desertion of his anti-slavery professions, and Van Buren's revengeful action in 1848.

"Distrusted by his old friends," said the _Nation_, "he will never be taken to the bosom of his old enemies. His trouble is not that the party to which he once belonged is without a leader, but that he wanders about like a ghost--a leader without a party."[1074]

[Footnote 1074: New York _Nation_, Vol. 3, p. 234.]