Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume I Part 15

In politics I took very little part. During the summer my main thoughts were directed toward a controversy before the Board of Regents, in regard to the system of higher education in the State of New York, with my old friend President Anderson of Rochester, who had vigorously attacked some ideas which seemed to me essential to any proper development of university education in America; and this was hardly finished when I was asked to take part in organizing the American Historical a.s.sociation at Saratoga, and to give the opening address. This, with other pursuits of an academic nature, left me little time for the political campaign.

But there occurred one little incident to which I still look back with amus.e.m.e.nt. My old friends and const.i.tuents in Syracuse had sent me a general invitation to come over from the university and preside at some one of their Republican ma.s.s-meetings. My answer was that as to the ''hack speakers'' of the campaign, with their venerable gags, stale jokes, and nauseating slanders, I had no desire to hear them, and did not care to sit on the platform with them; but that when they had a speaker to whom I cared to listen I would gladly come. The result was that one day I received a letter inviting me to preside over a ma.s.s-meeting at Syracuse, at which Mr. McKinley was to make the speech. I accepted gladly and on the appointed evening arrived at the Syracuse railway station. There I found the mayor of the city ready to take me in his carriage to the hall where the meeting was to be held; but we had hardly left the station when he said to me: ''Mr.

White, I am very sorry, but Mr. McKinley has been de- layed and we have had to get another speaker.'' I was greatly disappointed, and expressed my feelings somewhat energetically, when the mayor said: ''But this speaker is really splendid; he carries all before him; he is a thorough Kentucky orator.'' My answer was that I knew the breed but too well, and that if I had known that Mr. McKinley was not to come I certainly would not have left my work at the university. By this time we had arrived at the door of the Globe Hotel, whence the speaker entered the carriage.

He was a tall, st.u.r.dy Kentuckian, and his appearance and manner showed that he had pa.s.sed a very convivial day with the younger members of the committee appointed to receive him.

His first words on entering the carriage were not very rea.s.suring. No sooner had I been introduced to him than he asked where he could get a gla.s.s of brandy. ''For,''

said he, ''without a good drink just before I go on the platform I can't make a speech.'' I attempted to quiet him and to show him the difficulties in the case. I said: ''Colonel ----, you have been with our young men here all day, and no doubt have had a fairly good time; but in our meetings here there is just now need of especial care.

You will have in your audience to-night a large number of the more sedate and conservative citizens of Syracuse, church members, men active in the various temperance societies, and the like. There never was a campaign when men were in greater doubt; great numbers of these people have not yet made up their minds how they will vote, and the slightest exhilaration on your part may cost us hundreds of votes.'' He answered: ''That's all very well, but the simple fact is that I am here to make a speech, and I can't make it unless I have a good drink beforehand.'' I said nothing more, but, as he still pressed the subject on the mayor and the other member of the committee, I quietly said to them as I left the carriage: ''If that man drinks anything more before speaking, I will not go on the stage with him, and the reason why I don't will speedily be made known.'' The mayor rea.s.sured me, and we all went together into the large room adjoining the stage, I keeping close watch over the orator, taking pains to hold him steadily in conversation, introducing as many leading men of the town to him as possible, thus preventing any opportunity to carry out his purpose of taking more strong drink, and to my great satisfaction he had no opportunity to do so before we were summoned into the hall.

Arrived there, I made my speech, and then the orator of the evening arose. But just before he began to speak he filled from a water-pitcher a large gla.s.s, and drank it off. My thought at the moment was that this would dilute some of the stronger fluids he had absorbed during the day and cool him down somewhat. He then went on in a perfectly self-possessed way, betrayed not the slightest effect of drinking, and made a most convincing and effective speech, replete with wit and humor; yet, embedded in his wit and humor and rollicking fun, were arguments appealing to the best sentiments of his hearers. The speech was in every way a success; at its close I congratulated him upon it, and was about to remind him that he had done very well on his gla.s.s of cold water, when he suddenly said to me: ''Mr. White, you see that it was just as I told you: if I had n't taken that big gla.s.s of gin from the pitcher just before I started, I could not have made any speech.''

''All 's well that ends well,'' and, though the laugh was at my expense, the result was not such as to make me especially unhappy.

But this campaign of 1884 ended as I had expected. Mr.

Cleveland was elected to the Presidency.

CHAPTER XIII

HENDRICKS, JOHN SHERMAN, BANCROFT, AND OTHERS--1884-1891

The following spring, visiting Washington, I met President Cleveland again.

Of the favorable impression made upon me by his career as Governor of New York I have already spoken, and shall have occasion to speak presently of his Presidency. The renewal of our acquaintance even increased my respect for him. He was evidently a strong, honest man, trying to do his duty under difficulties.

I also met again Mr. Cleveland's opponent in the previous campaign--Mr. Blaine. Calling on Mr. William Walter Phelps, then in Congress, whom I had known as minister of the United States at Vienna, and who was afterward my successor at Berlin, I made some reference to Mr. Blaine, when Mr. Phelps said: ''Why don't you go and call upon him?'' I answered that it might be embarra.s.sing to both of us, to which he replied: ''I don't think so. In spite of your opposition to him at Chicago, were I in your place I would certainly go to his house and call upon him.'' That afternoon I took this advice, and when I returned to the hotel Mr.

Blaine came with me, talking in a most interesting way.

He spoke of my proposed journey to Virginia, and discussed Jefferson and Hamilton, admiring both, but Jefferson the most. As to his own working habits, he said that he rose early, did his main work in the morning, and never did any work in the evening; that, having been brought up in strongly Sabbatarian notions during his boyhood in Pennsylvania, he had ever since, from the force of habit, reserved Sunday as a day of complete rest.

Speaking of the customs in Pennsylvania at that time, he said that not even a walk for exercise was allowed, and nothing was ever cooked on the sacred day.

I met him afterward on various occasions, and could not but admire him. At a dinner-party he was vexatiously badgered by a very b.u.mptious professor, who allowed himself to speak in a rather offensive manner of ideas which Mr. Blaine represented; and the quiet but decisive way in which the latter disposed of his pestering interlocutor was worthy of all praise.

Mr. Blaine was certainly the most fascinating man I have ever known in politics. No wonder that so many Republicans in all parts of the country seemed ready to give their lives to elect him. The only other public man in the United States whose personality had ever elicited such sympathy and devotion was Henry Clay. Perhaps his nearest friend was Mr. Phelps, to whom I have referred above,--one of the best, truest, and most winning men I have ever known. He had been especially devoted to Mr. Blaine, with whom he had served in Congress, and it was understood that if the latter had been elected Mr. Phelps would have been his Secretary of State.

Mr. Phelps complained to me, half seriously, half jocosely, of what is really a crying abuse in the United States --namely, that there is no proper reporting of the proceedings of the Houses of Congress in the main journals of the country which can enable the people at large to form any just idea as to how their representatives are conducting the public business. He said: ''I may make a most careful speech on any important subject before Congress and it will not be mentioned in the New York papers, but let me make a joke and it will be published all over the United States. Yesterday, on a wager, I tried an experiment: I made two poor little jokes during a short talk in the House, and here they are in the New York papers of this morning.''

During this visit to Washington I met at the house of my cla.s.smate and dear friend, Randall Gibson, then a senator from Louisiana, a number of distinguished men among them the Vice-President, Mr. Hendricks, and General Butler, senator from South Carolina.

Vice-President Hendricks seemed sick and sore. He had expected to be a candidate for the Presidency, with a strong probability of election, but had accepted the Vice- Presidency; and the subject which seemed to elicit his most vitriolic ill will was reform in the civil service. As we sat one evening in the smoking-room at Senator Gibson's he was very bitter against the system, when, to my surprise, General Butler took up the cudgels against him and made a most admirable argument. At that moment, for the first time, I felt that the war between North and South was over; for all the old issues seemed virtually settled, and here, as regarded this new issue, on which I felt very deeply, was one of the most ardent of Confederate soldiers, a most bitter pro-slavery man before the Civil War, one who, during the war, had lost a leg in battle, nearer me politically than were many of my friends and neighbors in the North.

Senator Jones of Florida, who was present, gave us some character sketches, and among others delineated admirably General Williams, known in the Mexican War as ''Cerro Gordo Williams,'' who was for a time senator from Kentucky. He said that Williams had a wonderful gift of spread-eagle oratory, but that, finding no listeners for it among his colleagues, he became utterly disgusted and went about saying that the Senate was a ''d----d frigid, respectable body that chilled his intellect.''

This led my fellow-guests to discuss the characteristics of the Senate somewhat, and I was struck by one remark in which all agreed--namely, that ''there are no politics in executive session.''

Gibson remarked that the best speech he had ever heard in the Senate was made by John Sherman.

As regards civil-service matters, I found on all sides an opinion that Mr. Cleveland was, just as far as possible, basing his appointments upon merit. Gibson mentioned the fact that a candidate for an important office in his State, who had committed three murders, had secured very strong backing, but that President Cleveland utterly refused to appoint him.

With President Cleveland I had a very interesting interview. He referred to his visit to Cornell University, said that he would have liked nothing so well as to go more thoroughly through its various departments, and, as when I formerly saw him, expressed his regret at the loss of such opportunities as an inst.i.tution of that kind affords.

At this time I learned from him and from those near him something regarding his power for hard work. It was generally understood that he insisted on writing out all important papers and conducting his correspondence in his own hand, and the result was that during a considerable period of the congressional sessions he sat at his desk until three o'clock in the morning.

It was evident that his up-and-down, curt, independent way did not at all please some of the leading members of his party; in fact, there were signs of a serious estrangement caused by the President's refusals to yield to senators and other leaders of the party in the matter of appointments to office. To ill.u.s.trate this feeling, a plain, bluff Western senator, Mr. Sawyer of Wisconsin, told me a story.

Senator Sawyer had built up a fortune and gained a great influence in his State by a very large and extensive business in pine lumber, and he had a sort of rough, quaint woodman's wit which was at times very amusing.

He told me that, some days before, two of his most eminent Democratic colleagues in the Senate were just leaving the Capitol, and from something they said he saw that they were going to call upon the President. He therefore asked them, ''How do you like this new President of yours?'' ''Oh,'' answered the senators in chorus, ''he is a very good man--a very good man indeed.'' ''Yes,''

said Senator Sawyer, ''but how do you LIKE him?'' ''Oh,''

answered the senators, ''we like him very much--very much indeed.'' ''Well,'' said Sawyer, ''I will tell you a story before you go to the White House if you will agree when you get back, to tell me--'honest Injun'--whether it suits your case.'' Both laughingly agreed, and Mr. Sawyer then told them the following story: When he was a young man with very small means, he and two or three other young wood-choppers made up an expedition for lumber-cutting. As they were too poor to employ a cook for their camp, they agreed to draw lots, and that the one on whom the lot fell should be cook, but only until some one of the company found fault; then the fault- finder should become cook in his turn. Lots being drawn, one of them, much to his disgust, was thus chosen cook, and toward the close of the day he returned to camp, before the others, to get supper ready. Having taken from the camp stores a large quant.i.ty of beans, he put them into a pot boiling over the fire, as he had seen his mother do in his boyhood, and then proceeded to pour in salt. Unfortunately the salt-box slipped in his hand, and he poured in much more than he had intended--in fact, the whole contents of the box. On the return of the woodmen to the cabin, ravenously hungry, they proceeded to dish out the boiled beans, but the first one who put a spoonful in his mouth instantly cried out with a loud objurgation, ''Thunder and lightning! this dish is all salt''; but, in a moment, remembering that if he found fault he must himself become cook, he said very gently, ''BUT I LIKE SALT.''

Both senators laughed and agreed that they would give an honest report of their feelings to Senator Sawyer when they had seen the President. On their return, Sawyer met them and said, ''Well, honest Injun, how was it?''

They both laughed and said, ''Well, we like salt.''

Among many interesting experiences I recall especially a dinner at the house of Mr. Fairchild, Secretary of the Treasury. He spoke of the civil service, and said that a short time previously President Cleveland had said to him, regarding the crowd pressing for office: ''A suggestion to these office-seekers as to the good of the country would make them faint.''

During this dinner I happened to be seated between Senators John Sherman of Ohio and Vance of Georgia, and presently Mr. Vance--one of the jolliest mortals I have ever met--turned toward his colleague, Senator Sherman, and said, very blandly: ''Senator, I am glad to see you back from Ohio; I hope you found your fences in good condition.'' There was a general laugh, and when it was finished Senator Sherman told me in a pleasant way how the well-known joke about his ''looking after his fences'' arose. He said that he was the owner of a large farm in Ohio, and that some years previously his tenant wrote urging him most earnestly to improve its fences, so that finally he went to Ohio to look into the matter.

On arriving there, he found a great crowd awaiting him and calling for a speech, when he excused himself by saying that he had not come to Ohio on political business, but had merely come ''to look after his fences.''

The phrase caught the popular fancy, and ''to look after one's fences'' became synonymous with minding one's political safeguards.

I remember also an interesting talk with Mr. Bayard, who had been one of the most eminent senators in his time, who was then Secretary of State, and who became, at a later period, amba.s.sador of the United States to Great Britain. Speaking of office-seeking, he gave a comical account of the developing claims of sundry applicants for foreign missions, who, he said, ''are at first willing to go, next anxious to go, and finally angry because they cannot go.''

On another social occasion, the possibility of another attempt at secession by States being discussed, General Butler of South Carolina said: ''No more secession for me.'' To this, Senator Gibson, who also had been a brigadier- general in the Confederate service, and had seen much hard fighting, said, ''And no more for me.'' Butler rejoined, ''We may have to help in preventing others from seceding one of these days.'' I was glad to note that both Butler and Gibson spoke thoroughly well of their former arch-enemy, General Grant.

Very interesting was it to meet again Mr. George Bancroft. He referred to his long service as minister at Berlin, expressed his surprise that Bismarck, whom he remembered as fat, had become bony, and was very severe against both clericals and liberals who had voted against allowing aid to Bismarck in the time of his country's greatest necessity.

I also met my Cornell colleague Goldwin Smith, the former Oxford professor and historian, who expressed his surprise and delight at the perfect order and decorum of the crowd, numbering nearly five thousand persons, at the presidential levee the night before. In order to understand what an American crowd was like, instead of going into the White House by the easier way, as he was ent.i.tled by his invitation to do, he had taken his place in the long procession far outside the gate and gradually moved through the grounds into the presidential presence, taking about an hour for the purpose. He said that there was never any pressing, crowding, or impatience, and he compared the crowd most favorably with any similar body in a London street.

Chief Justice Waite I also found a very substantial interesting man; but especially fascinating was General Sheridan, who, at a dinner given by my Berlin predecessor, Mr. Bancroft Davis, described the scene at the battle of Gravelotte when, owing to a rush by the French, the Emperor of Germany was for a time in real danger and was reluctantly obliged to fall back. He said that during the panic and retreat toward Thionville he saw the Emperor halt from time to time to scold soldiers who threw away their muskets; that very many German soldiers, during this panic, cast aside everything except the clothes they wore--not only their guns, but their helmets; that afterward the highways and fields were strewn thickly with these, and that wagons were sent out to collect them.

He also said that Bismarck spoke highly to him regarding the martial and civil qualities of the crown prince, afterward the Emperor Frederick, but that regarding the Red Prince, Frederick Charles, he expressed a very different opinion.

Speaking of a statement that some one had invented armor which would ward off a rifle-ball, Sheridan said that during the Civil War an officer who wore a steel vest beneath his coat was driven out of decent society by general contempt; and at this Goldwin Smith told a story of the Duke of Wellington, who, when troubled by an inventor of armor, nearly scared him to death by ordering him to wear his own armor and allow a platoon of soldiers to fire at him.

During the course of the conversation Sheridan said that soldiers were braver now than ever before--braver, indeed, than the crusaders, as was proved by the fact that in these days they wear no armor. To this Goldwin Smith answered that he thought war in the middle ages was more destructive than even in our time. Sheridan said that breech-loading rifles kill more than all the cannon.

At a breakfast given by Goldwin Smith at Wormley's, Bancroft, speaking of Berlin matters, said that the Emperor William did not know that Germany was the second power in the world so far as a mercantile navy was concerned until he himself told him; and on the ignorance of monarchs regarding their own domains, Goldwin Smith said that Lord Malmesbury, when a.s.sured by Napoleon III that in the plebiscite he would have the vote of the army, which was five hundred thousand, answered, ''But, your majesty, your army numbers seven hundred thousand,'' whereupon the Emperor was silent. The in- ference was that his majesty knew a large part of his army to be merely on paper.

At this Mr. John Field, of Philadelphia, said that on the breaking out of the Franco-Prussian War he went to General Grant at Long Branch, and asked him how the war was likely to turn out, to which the general answered, ''As I am President of the United States, I am unable to answer.'' ''But,'' said Field, ''I am a citizen sovereign and ask an opinion.'' ''Well,'' said General Grant, ''confidentially, the Germans will beat the French thoroughly and march on Paris. The French army is a mere sh.e.l.l.''

This reminded me that General Grant, on my own visit to him some weeks before, had foretold to me sundry difficulties of Lord Wolseley in Egypt just as they afterward occurred.

At a dinner with Senator Morrill of Vermont I met General Schenck, formerly a leading member of Congress and minister to Brazil and to England. He was very interesting in his sketches of English orators; thought Bright the best, Gladstone admirable, and Sir Stafford Northcote, with his everlasting hawing and humming, intolerable. He gave interesting reminiscences of Tom Corwin, his old preceptor, and said that Corwin's power over an audience was magical. He added that he once attended a public dinner in Boston, and, sitting near Everett, who was the chief speaker, noticed that when the waiters sought to clear the table and were about to remove a bouquet containing two small flags, Everett would not allow them to do it, and that later in the evening, during his speech, just at the proper point, he caught up these flags, as if accidentally, and waved them. He said that everything with Everett and Choate seemed to be cut and dried; that even the interruptions seemed prepared beforehand.

Senator Morrill then told a story regarding Everett's great speech at the opening of the Dudley Observatory at Albany, which I had heard at the time of its delivery.

In this speech Everett said: ''Last night, crossing the Connecticut River, I saw mirrored in its waters Arcturus, then fully at the zenith, and I thought,'' etc., etc.; ''but,''

said Morrill, ''some one looked into the matter and found that Everett, before leaving home, had evidently turned the globe in his study wrong side up, for at that time Arcturus was not at the zenith, but at the nadir.''

At the Cornell commencement of this year (1885) I resigned my presidency of the university. It had nominally lasted eighteen years, but really more than twenty, since I had taken the lead in the work of the university even before its charter was granted, twenty years previously, and from that day the main charge of its organization and of everything except providing funds had been intrusted to me. Regarding this part of my life I shall speak more fully in another chapter.

Shortly after this resignation two opportunities were offered me which caused me considerable thought.

As to the first, President Cleveland was kind enough to write me an autograph letter asking whether I would accept one of the positions on the new Interstate Railway Commission. I felt it a great honor to be asked to act as colleague with such men as Chief Justice Cooley, Mr.