Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume I Part 11

This reminds me that some years later, my old college friend, Colonel William Preston Johnston, president of Tulane University, told me a story which throws light upon that collapse of the Confederacy. Colonel Johnston was at that period the military secretary of President Davis, and, as the catastrophe approached, was much vexed at the interminable debates in the Confederate Congress. Among the subjects of these discussions was the great seal of the Confederacy. It had been decided to adopt for this purpose a relief representing Crawford's statue of Washington at Richmond, with the Southern statesmen and soldiers surrounding it; but though all agreed that Washington, in his Continental costume, and holding in his hand his c.o.c.ked hat, should retain the central position, there were many differences of opinion as to the surrounding portraits, the result being that motions were made to strike out this or that revolutionary hero from one State and to replace him by another from another State, thus giving rise to lengthy eulogies of these various personages, so that the whole thing resembled the discussions in metaphysical theology by the Byzantines at the time when the Turks were forcing their way through the walls of Constantinople. One day, just before the final catastrophe, Mr. Judah Benjamin, formerly United States senator, but at that time the Confederate secretary of state, pa.s.sed through Colonel Johnston's office, and the following dialogue took place.

Colonel Johnston: ''What are they doing in the Senate and House, Mr. Secretary?''

Mr. Benjamin: ''Oh, simply debating the Confederate seal, moving to strike out this man and to insert that.''

Colonel Johnston: ''Do you know what motion I would make if I were a member?''

Mr. Benjamin: ''No, what would you move?''

Colonel Johnston: ''I would move to strike out from the seal everything except the c.o.c.ked hat.''

Colonel Johnston was right; the Confederacy was ''knocked into a c.o.c.ked hat'' a few days afterward.

In the autumn of that year, September, 1870, I was sent as a delegate to the State Republican Convention, and presented as a candidate for the lieutenant-governorship a man who had served the State admirably in the National Congress and in the State legislature as well as in great business operations, Mr. DeWitt Littlejohn of Oswego. I did this on the part of sundry gentlemen who were anxious to save the Republican ticket, which had at its head my old friend General Woodford, but though I was successful in securing Mr. Littlejohn's nomination, he soon afterward declined, and defeat followed in November.

The only part which I continued to take in State politics was in writing letters and in speaking, on sundry social occasions of a political character, in behalf of harmony between the two factions which were now becoming more and more bitter. At first I seemed to have some success, but before long it became clear that the current was too strong and that the bitterness of faction was to prevail. I am so const.i.tuted that factious thought and effort dishearten and disgust me. At many periods of my life I have acted as a ''buffer'' between conflicting cliques and factions, generally to some purpose; now it was otherwise. But, as Kipling says, ''that is another story.''

The hard work and serious responsibilities brought upon me by the new university had greatly increased.

They had worn deeply upon me when, in the winter of 1870-71, came an event which drew me out of my university life for a time and gave me a much needed change: --I was sent by the President as one of the three commissioners to Santo Domingo to study questions relating to the annexation of the Spanish part of that island which was then proposed, and to report thereupon to Congress.

While in Washington at this time I saw much of President Grant, Mr. Sumner, and various other men who were then leading in public affairs, but some account of them will be given in my reminiscences of the Santo Domingo expedition.

I trust that it may be allowed me here to recall an incident which ought to have been given in a preceding chapter. During one of my earlier visits to the National Capital, I made the acquaintance of Senator McDougal.

His distorted genius had evidently so dazzled his fellow- citizens of California that, in spite of his defects, they had sent him to the highest council of the Nation. He was a martyr to conviviality, and when more or less under the sway of it, had strange ideas and quaint ways of expressing them. His talk recalled to me a time in my child- hood when, having found a k.n.o.b of gla.s.s, twisted, striated with different colors, and filled with air bubbles, I enjoyed looking at the landscape through it. Everything became grotesquely transfigured. A cabbage in the foreground became opalescent, and an ear of corn a ma.s.s of jewels, but the whole atmosphere above and beyond was lurid, and the chimneys and church spires were topsy-turvy.

The only other person whose talk ever produced an impression of this sort on me was Tolstoy, and he will be discussed in another chapter.

McDougal's peculiarity made him at last unbearable; so much so that the Senate was obliged to take measures against him. His speech in his own defense showed the working of his mind, and one pa.s.sage most of all. It remains probably the best defense of drunkenness ever made, and it ran as follows:

''Mr. President,--I pity the man who has never viewed the affairs of this world, save from the poor, low, miserable plane of ordinary sobriety.''

My absence in the West Indies covered the first three months of the year 1871, and then the commission returned to Washington and made its report; but regarding this I shall speak at length in the chapter of my diplomatic experiences, devoted to the Santo Domingo question.

CHAPTER X

THE GREELEY CAMPAIGN--1872

Having finished my duties on the Santo Domingo Commission, I returned to the University in May of 1871, devoted myself again to my duties as president and professor, and, in the ma.s.s of arrears which had acc.u.mulated, found ample occupation. I also delivered various addresses at universities, colleges, and elsewhere, keeping as remote from politics as possible.

In June, visiting New York in order to take part in a dinner given by various journalists and others to my cla.s.smate and old friend, George Washburne Smalley, at that time the London correspondent of the ''New York Tribune,'' I met, for the first time, Colonel John Hay, who was in the full tide of his brilliant literary career and who is, as I write this, Secretary of State of the United States. His clear, thoughtful talk strongly impressed me, but the most curious circ.u.mstance connected with the affair was that several of us on the way to Delmonico's stopped for a time to observe the public reception given to Mr. Horace Greeley on his return from a tour through the Southern States. Mr. Greeley, undoubtedly from the purest personal and patriotic motives, had, with other men of high standing, including Gerrit Smith, attached his name to the bail bond of Jefferson Davis, which released the ex-president of the Confederacy from prison, and, in fact, freed him entirely from anything like punishment for treason. I have always admired Mr. Greeley's honesty and courage in doing this. Doubtless, too, an equally patriotic and honest desire to aid in bringing North and South together after the war led him to take an extensive tour through sundry Southern States. He had just returned from this tour and this reception was given him in consequence.

It had already been noised abroad that there was a movement on foot to make him a candidate for the Presidency, and many who knew the characteristics of the man, even those who, like myself, had been greatly influenced by him and regarded him as by far the foremost editorial writer that our country had ever produced, looked upon this idea with incredulity. For of all patriotic men in the entire country who had touched public affairs Horace Greeley seemed the most eminently unfit for executive duties. He was notoriously, in business matters, the easy prey of many who happened to get access to him;-- the ''long-haired men and short-haired women'' of the country seemed at times to have him entirely under their sway; his hard-earned money, greatly needed by himself and his family, was lavished upon ne'er-do-weels and cast into all sorts of impracticable schemes. He made loans to the discarded son of the richest man whom the United States had at that time produced, and in every way showed himself an utterly incompetent judge of men. It was a curious fact that lofty as were his purposes, and n.o.ble as were his main characteristics, the best men of the State--men like Seward, Weed, Judge Folger, Senator Andrews, General Leavenworth, Elbridge Spaulding, and other really thoughtful, solid, substantial advisers of the Republican party--were disliked by him, and yet no other reason could be a.s.signed than this:--that while they all admired him as a writer, they could not be induced to pretend that they considered him fit for high executive office, either in the State or Nation. On the other hand, so far as politics were concerned, his affections seemed to be lavished on politicians who flattered and coddled him.

Of this the rise of Governor Fenton was a striking example. Doubtless there were exceptions to this rule, but it was the rule nevertheless. This was clearly and indeed comically shown at the reception given him in Union Square on the evening referred to. Mr. Greeley appeared at a front window of a house on the Broadway side and came out upon a temporary platform. His appearance is deeply stamped upon my memory. He was in a rather slouchy evening dress, his white hair thrown back off his splendid forehead, and his broad, smooth, kindly features as serene as the face of a big, well-washed baby.

There was in his appearance something at the same time nave and impressive, and the simplicity of it was increased by a bouquet, huge and gorgeous, which some admirer had attached to his coat, and which forced upon the mind of a reflective observer the idea of a victim adorned for sacrifice.

He gave scant attention to his audience in the way of ceremonial greeting, and plunged at once into his subject; --beginning in a high, piping, falsetto voice which, for a few moments, was almost painful. But the value of his matter soon overcame the defects of his manner; the speech was in his best vein; it struck me as the best, on the whole, I had ever heard him make, and that is saying much. Holding in his hands a little package of cards on which notes were jotted down, he occasionally cast his eyes upon them, but he evidently trusted to the inspiration of the hour for his phrasing, and his trust was not misplaced. I never heard a more simple, strong, lucid use of the English language than was his on that occasion. The speech was a very n.o.ble plea for the restoration of good feeling between North and South, with an effort to show that the distrust felt by the South toward the North was natural. In the course of it he said in substance:

''Fellow Citizens: The people of the South have much reason to distrust us. We have sent among them during the war and since the war, to govern them, to hold office among them, and to eat out their substance, a number of worthless adventurers whom they call ''carpet-baggers.''

These emissaries of ours pretend to be patriotic and pious; they pull long faces and say 'Let us pray'; but they spell it p-r-E-y. The people of the South hate them, and they ought to hate them.''

At this we in the audience looked at each other in amazement; for, standing close beside Mr. Greeley, at that very moment, most obsequiously, was perhaps the worst ''carpet-bagger'' ever sent into the South; a man who had literally been sloughed off by both parties;-- who, having been become an unbearable nuisance in New York politics, had been ''unloaded'' by Mr. Lincoln, in an ill-inspired moment, upon the hapless South, and who was now trying to find new pasture.

But this was not the most comical thing; for Mr.

Greeley in substance continued as follows:

''Fellow Citizens: You know how it is yourselves.

There are men who go to your own State Capitol, nominally as legislators or advisers, but really to plunder and steal. These men in the Northern States correspond to the 'carpet-baggers' in the Southern States, and you hate them and you ought to hate them.'' Thus speaking, Mr.

Greeley poured out the vials of his wrath against all this cla.s.s of people; blissfully unconscious of the fact that on the other side of him stood the most notorious and corrupt lobbyist who had been known in Albany for years;-- a man who had been chased out of that city by the sheriff for attempted bribery, had been obliged to remain for a considerable time in hiding to avoid criminal charges of exerting corrupt influence on legislation, and whom both political parties naturally disowned. Comical as all this was, it was pathetic to see a man like Greeley in such a cave of Adullam.

During this summer of 1871 occurred the death of one of my dearest friends, a man who had exercised a most happy influence over my opinions and who had contributed much to the progress of anti-slavery ideas in New England and New York. This was the Rev.

Samuel Joseph May, pastor of the Unitarian Church in Syracuse, a friend and a.s.sociate of Emerson, Garrison, Phillips, Gerrit Smith, and one of the n.o.blest, truest, and most beautiful characters I have ever known.

Having seen the end of slavery, and being about eighty years of age, he felt deeply that his work was done, and thenceforward declared that he was happy in the idea that his life on this planet was soon to end. I have never seen, save in the case of the Hicksite Quaker at Ann Arbor, referred to elsewhere, such a living faith in the reality of another world. Again and again Mr. May said to me in the most cheerful way imaginable, ''I am as much convinced of the existence of a future state as of these scenes about me, and, to tell you the truth, now that my work here is ended, I am becoming very curious to know what the next stage of existence is like.'' On the afternoon of the 1st of July I paid him a visit, found him much wearied by a troublesome chronic complaint, but contented, cheerful, peaceful as ever.

Above him as he lay in his bed was a portrait which I had formerly seen in his parlor. Thereby hung a curious tale. Years before, at the very beginning of Mr. May's career, he had been a teacher in the town of Canterbury, Connecticut, when Miss Prudence Crandall was persecuted, arrested, and imprisoned for teaching colored children.

Mr. May had taken up her case earnestly, and, with the aid of Mr. Lafayette Foster, afterward president of the United States Senate, had fought it out until the enemies of Miss Crandall were beaten. As a memorial of this activity of his, Mr. May received this large, well painted portrait of Miss Crandall, and it was one of his most valued possessions.

On the afternoon referred to, after talking about various other matters most cheerfully, and after I had told him that we could not spare him yet, that we needed him at least ten years longer, he laughingly said, ''Can't you compromise on one year?'' ''No,'' I said, ''nothing less than ten years. ''Thereupon he laughed pleasantly, called his daughter, Mrs. Wilkinson, and said, ''Remember; when I am gone this portrait of Prudence Crandall is to go to Andrew White for Cornell University, where my anti-slavery books already are.'' As I left him, both of us were in the most cheerful mood, he appearing better than during some weeks previous. Next morning I learned that he had died during the night. The portrait of Miss Crandall now hangs in the Cornell University Library.

My summer was given up partly to recreation mingled with duties of various sorts, including an address in honor of President Woolsey at the Alumni dinner at Yale and another at the laying of the corner stone of Syracuse University.

Noteworthy at this period was a dinner with Longfellow at Cambridge, and I recall vividly his showing me various places in the Craigie house connected with interesting pa.s.sages in the life of Washington when he occupied it.

Early in the autumn, while thus engrossed in everything but political matters, I received a letter from my friend Mr. A. B. Cornell, a most energetic and efficient man in State and national politics, a devoted supporter of General Grant and Senator Conkling, and afterward governor of the State of New York, asking me if I would go to the approaching State convention and accept its presidency. I wrote him in return expressing my reluctance, dwelling upon the duties pressing upon me in connection with the university, and asking to be excused. In return came a very earnest letter insisting on the importance of the convention in keeping the Republican party together, and in preventing its being split into factions before the approaching presidential election. I had, on all occasions, and especially at various social gatherings at which political leaders were present, in New York and elsewhere, urged the importance of throwing aside all factious spirit and harmonizing the party in view of the coming election, and to this Mr. Cornell referred very earnestly. As a consequence I wrote him that if the delegates from New York opposed to General Grant could be admitted to the convention on equal terms with those who favored him, and if he, Mr. Cornell, and the other managers of the Grant wing of the party would agree that the anti-Grant forces should receive full and fair representation on the various committees, I would accept the presidency of the convention in the interest of peace between the factions, and would do my best to harmonize the differing interests in the party, but that otherwise I would not consent to be a member of the convention. In his answer Mr. Cornell fully agreed to this, and I have every reason to believe, indeed to know, that his agreement was kept.

The day of the convention having arrived (September 27, 1871), Mr. Cornell, as chairman of the Republican State committee, called the a.s.semblage to order, and after a somewhat angry clash with the opponents of the administration, nominated me to the chairmanship of the convention.

By a freak of political fortune I was separated in this contest from my old friend Chauncey M. Depew; but though on different sides of the question at issue, we sat together chatting pleasantly as the vote went on, neither of us, I think, very anxious regarding it, and when the election was decided in my favor he was one of those who, under instructions from the temporary chairman, very courteously conducted me to the chair. It was an immense a.s.semblage, and from the first it was evident that there were very turbulent elements in it. Hardly, indeed, had I taken my seat, when the chief of the Syracuse police informed me that there were gathered near the platform a large body of Tammany roughs who had come from New York expressly to interfere with the convention, just as a few years before they had interfered in the same place with the convention of their own party, seriously wounding its regular chairman; but that I need have no alarm at any demonstration they might make; that the police were fully warned and able to meet the adversary.

In my opening speech I made an earnest plea for peace among the various factions of the party, and especially between those who favored and those who opposed the administration; this plea was received with kindness, and shortly afterward came the appointment of committees.

Of course, like every other president of such a body, I had to rely on the standing State committee. Hardly one man in a thousand coming to the presidency of a State convention knows enough of the individual leaders of politics in all the various localities to distinguish between their shades of opinion. It was certainly impossible for me to know all those who, in the various counties of the State, favored General Grant and those who disliked him. Like every other president of a convention, probably without an exception, from the beginning to the present hour, I received the list of the convention committees from the State committee which represented the party, and I received this list, not only with implied, but express a.s.surances that the agreement under which I had taken the chairmanship had been complied with;--namely, that the list represented fairly the two wings of the party in convention, and that both the Grant and the anti-Grant delegations from New York city were to be admitted on equal terms.

I had no reason then, and have no reason now, to believe that the State committee abused my confidence. I feel sure now, as I felt sure then, that the committee named by me fairly represented the two wings of the party; but after their appointment it was perfectly evident that this did not propitiate the anti-administration wing. They were deeply angered against the administration by the fact that General Grant had taken as his adviser in regard to New York patronage and politics Senator Conkling rather than Senator Fenton. Doubtless Senator Conkling's manner in dealing with those opposed to him had made many enemies who, by milder methods, might have been brought to the support of the administration. At any rate, it was soon clear that the anti-administration forces, recognizing their inferiority in point of numbers, were determined to secede. This, indeed, was soon formally announced by one of their leaders; but as they still continued after this declaration to take part in the discussions, the point of order was raised that, having formally declared their intention of leaving the convention, they were no longer ent.i.tled to take part in its deliberations. This point I ruled out, declaring that I could not consider the anti-administration wing as outside the convention until they had left it. The debates grew more and more bitter, Mr. Conkling making, late at night, a powerful speech which rallied the forces of the administration and brought them victory. The anti- administration delegates now left the convention, but before they did so one of them rose and eloquently tendered to me as president the thanks of his a.s.sociates for my impartiality, saying that it contrasted most honorably with the treatment they had received from certain other members of the convention. But shortly after leaving they held a meeting in another place, and, having evidently made up their minds that they must declare war against everybody who remained in the convention, they denounced us all alike, and the same gentleman who had made the speech thanking me for my fairness, and who was very eminent among those who were known as ''Tammany Republicans,'' now made a most violent harangue in which he declared that a man who conducted himself as I had done, and who remained in such an infamous convention, or had anything to do with it, was ''utterly unfit to be an instructor of youth.''

Similar attacks continued to appear in the anti- administration papers for a considerable time afterward, and at first they were rather trying to me. I felt that nothing could be more unjust, for I had strained to the last degree my influence with my a.s.sociates who supported General Grant in securing concessions to those who differed from us. Had these attacks been made by organs of the opposite political party, I would not have minded them; but being made in sundry journals which had represented the Republican party and were constantly read by my old friends, neighbors, and students, they naturally, for a time, disquieted me. One of the charges then made has often amused me as I have looked back upon it since, and is worth referring to as an example of the looseness of statement common among the best of American political journals during exciting political contests. This charge was that I had ''sought to bribe people to support the administration by offering them consulates.'' This was echoed in various parts of the State.

The facts were as follows: An individual who had made some money as a sutler in connection with the army had obtained control of a local paper at Syracuse, and, through the influence thus gained, an election to the lower house of the State legislature. During the winter which he pa.s.sed at Albany he was one of three or four Republicans who voted with the Democrats in behalf of the measures proposed by Tweed, the munic.i.p.al arch-robber afterward convicted and punished for his crimes against the city of New York. Just at this particular time Tweed was at the height of his power, and at a previous session of the legislature he had carried his measures through the a.s.sembly by the votes of three or four Republicans who were needed in addition to the Democratic votes in order to give him the required majority. Many leading Republican journals had published the names of these three or four men with black lines around them, charging them, apparently justly, with having sold themselves to Tweed for money, and among them the person above referred to. Though he controlled a newspaper in Syracuse, he had been unable to secure renomination to the legislature, and, shortly afterward, in order to secure rehabilitation as well as pelf, sought an appointment to the Syracuse postmastership. Senator Conkling, mindful of the man's record, having opposed the appointment, and the President having declined to make it, the local paper under control of this person turned most bitterly against the administration, and day after day poured forth diatribes against the policy and the persons of all connected with the actual government at Washington, and especially against President Grant and Senator Conkling.

The editor of the paper at that time was a very gifted young writer, an old schoolmate and friend of mine, who, acting under instructions from the managers of the paper, took a very bitter line against the administration and its supporters.

About the time of the meeting of the convention this old friend came to me, expressed his regret at the line he was obliged to take, said that both he and his wife were sick of the whole thing and anxious to get out of it, and added: ''The only way out, that I can see, is some appointment that will at once relieve me of all these duties, and in fact take me out of the country. Cannot you aid me by application to the senator or the President in obtaining a consulate?'' I answered him laughingly, ''My dear ----, I will gladly do all I can for you, not only for friendship's sake, but because I think you admirably fitted for the place you name; but don't you think that, for a few days at least, while you are applying for such a position, you might as well stop your outrageous attacks against the very men from whom you hope to receive the appointment?''

Having said this, half in jest and half in earnest, I thought no more on the subject, save as to the best way of aiding my friend to secure the relief he desired.

So rose the charge that I was ''bribing persons to support the administration by offering them consulates.''

But strong friends rallied to my support. Mr. George William Curtis in ''Harper's Weekly,'' Mr. G.o.dkin in ''The Nation,'' Mr. Charles Dudley Warner and others in various other journals took up the cudgels in my behalf, and I soon discovered that the attacks rather helped than hurt me. They did much, indeed, to disgust me for a time with political life; but I soon found that my friends, my students, and the country at large understood the charges, and that they seemed to think more rather than less of me on account of them. In those days the air was full of that sort of onslaught upon every one supposed to be friendly to General Grant, and the effect in one case was revealed to me rather curiously. Matthew Carpenter, of Wisconsin, was then one of the most brilliant members of the United States Senate, a public servant of whom his State was proud; but he had cordially supported the administration and was consequently made the mark for bitter attack, day after day and week after week, by the opposing journals, and these attacks finally culminated in an attempt to base a very ugly scandal against him upon what was known among his friends to be a simple courtesy publicly rendered to a very worthy lady. The attacks and the scandal resounded throughout the anti-administration papers, their evident purpose being to defeat his relection to the United States Senate.