Fifty Years of Public Service Part 16

I placed him in nomination for President at the National Convention which met at Chicago in 1884. In _The Washington National Tribune_ appears the following report:

"The next State that responded was Illinois, and as Senator Cullom mounted the platform to present the name of General John A. Logan, cheer after cheer followed him. When he was at last allowed to proceed, he began by referring to the nominations of Lincoln and Grant, both from Illinois, and both nominated at Chicago:

'In 1880, the party, a.s.sembled again at Chicago, achieved success by nominating Garfield; and now in 1884, in the same State, Illinois, which has never wavered in its adherence to the Republican party, presents, as the standard-bearer of that party, another son, one whose name would be recognized from one end of the land to the other as an able statesman, a brilliant soldier, and an honest man --John A. Logan.'

"The announcement of General Logan's name was received with a wild burst of applause, a great many persons rising to their feet, waving their hats and handkerchiefs, and the thousands of people in the gallery joining in the roars of applause. The cheers were renewed again and again. The speaker resumed:

'A native of the State which he represents in the Council of the Nation, reared among the youth of a section where every element of manhood is early brought into play, he is eminently a man of the people. The safety, the permanency, and the prosperity of the Nation depend upon the courage, the integrity, and the loyalty of its citizens. . . . Like Douglas, he believed that in time of war men must be either patriots or traitors, and he threw his mighty influence on the side of the Union; and Illinois made a record second to none in the history of States in the struggle to preserve the Union. . . .

'During the long struggle of four years he commanded, under the authority of the Government, first a regiment, then a brigade, then a division, then an army corps, and finally an army. He remained in the service until the war closed, when at the head of his army, with the scars of battle upon him, he marched into the capital of the Nation, and with the brave men whom he had led on a hundred hard-fought fields was mustered out of the service under the very shadow of the Capitol building which he had left four years before as a member of Congress to go and fight the battles of his country.

'When the war was over and peace victoriously restored, he was again invited by his fellow-citizens to take his place in the Councils of the Nation. In a service of twenty years in both Houses of Congress he has shown himself to be no less able and distinguished as a citizen than he was renowned as a soldier. Conservative in the advocacy of measures involving the public welfare, ready and eloquent in debate, fearless--yes, I repeat again, fearless--in defence of the rights of the weak against the oppression of the strong, he stands to-day closer to the great ma.s.s of the people of this country than almost any other man now engaging public attention.'"

At the conclusion of my speech there was a tremendous demonstration, and General Prentiss seconded the nomination. General Logan received sixty-three and one-half votes on the first ballot, and sixty-one votes on the second and third ballots.

Immediately after the third ballot, I received this telegram from General Logan, who was in Washington:

"Washington, D. C., _June 6, 1884_.

"To Senator Cullom, Convention Hall, Chicago, Ill.:"

"The Republicans of the States that must be relied upon to elect the President having shown a preference for Mr. Blaine, I deem it my duty not to stand in the way of the people's choice, and recommend my friends to a.s.sist in his nomination.

"John A. Logan."

When Illinois was called on the fourth ballot, I attempted to read the telegram to the convention, but a point of order was raised by Senator Burrows, which the Chair sustained. It was thoroughly well understood in the convention that I had such a telegram, and after the chair sustained the point of order I made the following statement: "The Illinois delegation withdraws the name of General John A.

Logan, and gives for Blaine thirty-four votes, for Logan seven, and for Arthur three."

This announcement was punctuated with another deafening outburst, and Blaine was nominated amidst great enthusiasm. After I withdrew General Logan's name and cast the vote for Blaine the result was a foregone conclusion.

There was immediately a strong disposition to place Logan on the ticket as our candidate for Vice-President. There was considerable doubt as to whether he would accept. Finally he sent a telegram in which he said: "The Convention must do what they think best under the circ.u.mstances."

He was then nominated for Vice-President without much opposition.

It was a superb ticket, and every one thought it would sweep the country. Blaine, in the opinion of many people, was the most popular statesman since the days of Henry Clay; Logan, the greatest volunteer officer of the Civil War.

I do not, however, believe that Blaine and Logan got along very well together in the campaign. In my opinion Logan felt that he would have been a stronger candidate for the Presidency than Blaine, as after events proved that he would. Had Logan headed the ticket, there would have been none of the scandal nor charges of corruption that were made in the campaign with Blaine at the head. There would have been no "Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion," which in the opinion of many people resulted in the defeat of Blaine and Logan.

Whatever the causes, the ticket was defeated; and then came Logan's famous fight for re-election to the Senate, continuing three and a half months, the Legislature being tied; but the fight ended by a rather clever trick on the part of Dan Shepard and S. H. Jones of Springfield, in electing by a "still hunt" a Republican in the thirty-fourth District to succeed a Democrat who died during the session, and finally on May 19, 1885, I received a telegram from Logan while in New York saying, "I have been elected."

Three or four days before General Logan's death he and Mrs. Logan were at my house to dinner, to meet some friends--General and Mrs.

Henderson and Senator Allison. After dinner, we were in the smoking- room. General Logan was talking about the book he had recently written, showing a conspiracy on the part of the South, ent.i.tled "The Great Conspiracy." He had sent each of us a copy of the book, and he remarked that he ventured to say that neither of us had read a word of it; the truth was that we had not, and we admitted it.

General and Mrs. Logan went home a little early, because he was then suffering with rheumatism. They invited Mrs. Cullom and me to dinner the following Sunday evening. General Logan had grown worse, and he could not attend at the table, but rested on a couch in an adjoining room. He never recovered, and pa.s.sed away some two or three days afterward. I was present at his death-bed. The last words he uttered were, "Cullom, I am terribly sick."

The death of no other General, with the possible exception of General Grant, was so sorrowfully and universally mourned by the volunteer soldiery of the Union as was the death of General Logan.

CHAPTER XIII GENERAL JOHN M. PALMER

General Palmer had a long, varied, and honorable career, beginning as an Anti-Nebraska Democrat in the State Senate of Illinois, in 1855, and ending as a Gold Democrat in the United States Senate in 1897, after being for a time a Republican.

I first met him as a member of the State Senate, in which service he showed considerable ability. His one leading characteristic, I should say, was his independence, without any regard to what party he might belong to or what the question might be. He would not yield his own convictions to his party. If the party to which he belonged differed from him on any question, he did not hesitate to abandon it and join the opposition party; and this change he did make several times during his public career. He was one of the four Anti-Nebraska Democrats in the Legislature of 1855, who might be said to have defeated Lincoln for the Senate by supporting Trumbull, until it became apparent that if Lincoln continued as a candidate, Governor Matteson would be elected. Lincoln sacrificed himself to insure the election of Judge Trumbull, a Free-soiler.

The other Anti-Nebraska Democrats, who with General Palmer, elected Trumbull, were Norman B. Judd, Burton C. Cook, G. T. Allen, and Henry S. Baker, the last two from Madison County.

For some reason or other General Palmer resigned from the Senate.

He was one of the first to join the Republican party. He was a delegate to the first Republican State Convention of Illinois. I attended that convention, and recall that General Palmer made quite an impression on the a.s.semblage, in discussing some question with General Turner, himself quite an able man, and then Speaker of the House of Representatives of the Illinois Legislature. Intellectually, General Palmer was a superior man, but he lacked stability of judgment. You were never quite sure that you could depend on him, or feel any certainty as to what course he would take on any question.

His qualifications as a lawyer were not exceptional, nevertheless I would rather have had him as my attorney to try a bad case than almost any lawyer I ever knew; his talent for manipulating a jury nearly, if not quite, offset all his legal shortcomings.

General Palmer was well known as the friend of the colored people, both individually and as a race. His sympathy for them was so thoroughly understood, that whenever a colored man had an important case, or whenever there was a case involving the rights of the colored people--such, for instance, as the school question of Alton --General Palmer was appealed to, and he would take the case, no matter how much trouble and how little remuneration there would be in it for him.

He started out as a Democrat, but became a strong Republican, and so continued for many years; but finally he became dissatisfied with the Republican party and left it to support Tilden for President.

He continued a Democrat, being elected to the United State Senate as such; but he left the regular organization of that party, and became the head of the Gold Democracy, was its candidate for President, and as such advised his friends to vote for McKinley.

He was the Republican Governor of Illinois during the great Chicago fire. He acted with the poorest kind of judgment in his controversy with General Sheridan and the National Administration, for using the Federal troops in Chicago to protect the lives and property of the people of that stricken city. He had visited Chicago, witnessed the splendid work which the troops were doing, seemed to be satisfied, returned to Springfield, and commenced a quarrel with General Sheridan and President Grant over the right of the National Administration to send troops into Chicago, and this quarrel finally became so bitter that it was one of the reasons for his leaving the Republican party.

General Palmer had a fairly good record as an officer during the Civil War; but he did far better at the head of the Department of Kentucky than he did as a fighting general. He was a native Kentuckian, understood the people, was a man of good nature and considerable tact, and handled that trying situation very much to the satisfaction of Mr. Lincoln. He might have had a brilliant record as a general had it not been for his unfortunate controversy with General Sherman at the capture of Atlanta, which resulted in his resigning his command as the head of the Fourteenth Army Corps, and being granted leave to return to Illinois, there to await further orders. General Sherman says of this incident in his memoirs:

"I placed the Fourteenth Corps (Palmer's) under General Schofield's orders. This corps numbered at the time 17,288 infantry and 826 artillery; but General Palmer claimed to rank General Schofield in the date of commission as Major-General, and denied the latter's right to exercise command over him. General Palmer was a man of ability, but was not enterprising. His three divisions were compact and strong, well commanded, admirable on the defensive but slow to move or to act on the offensive. His corps had sustained up to the time fewer hard knocks than any other corps in the whole army, and I was anxious to give it a chance. I always expected to have a desperate fight to get possession of the Macon Road, which was then the vital objective of the campaign. Its possession by us would in my judgment result in the capture of Atlanta and give us the fruits of victory. . . . On the fourth of August I ordered General Schofield to make a bold attack on the railroad, anywhere about East Point, and ordered General Palmer to report to him for duty. He at once denied General Schofield's right to command him; but, after examining the dates of their respective commissions, and hearing their arguments, I wrote to General Palmer:

'From the statements made by yourself and General Schofield to-day, my decision is, that he ranks you as a Major-General, being of the same date of present commission, by reason of his previous superior rank as a brigadier-general. The movements of to-morrow are so important that the orders of the superior on that flank must be regarded as military orders and not in the nature of co-operation.

I did hope that there would be no necessity for my making this decision, but it is better for all parties interested that no question of rank should occur in actual battle. The Sandtown Road and the railroad if possible must be gained to-morrow if it costs half your command. I regard the loss of time this afternoon as equal to the loss of two thousand men.'

"I also communicated the substance of this to General Thomas, to whose army Palmer's corps belonged, who replied on the fifth:

'I regret to hear that Palmer has taken the course he has, and I know that he intends to offer his resignation as soon as he can properly do so. I recommend that his application be granted.'

"On the fifth I again wrote to General Palmer, arguing the point with him, as a friend, not to resign at that crisis lest his motives might be misconstrued and because it might damage his future career in civil life; but at the same time I felt it my duty to say to him that the operations on that flank during the fourth and fifth had not been satisfactory, not imputing to him any want of energy or skill, but insisting that the events did not keep pace with my desires. . . .

"I sanctioned the movement and ordered two of Palmer's divisions to follow in support of Schofield, and summoned General Palmer to meet me in person. He came on the sixth to my headquarters and insisted on his resignation being accepted, for which formal act I referred him to General Thomas. He then rode to General Thomas's camp, where he made a written resignation of his office as commander of the Fourteenth Corps and was granted the usual leave of absence to go to his home in Illinois, there to await further orders."

I quote freely from General Sherman on this incident, as I do not want to do General Palmer an injustice. No one for a moment doubted General Palmer's bravery, and I must say that it took a brave man, and I might add an extraordinarily stubborn man, to resign a magnificent command just before one of the great movements of the war on a mere question of some other general's outranking him.

I happened to be on the same ferry-boat crossing from St. Louis with General Palmer when he was taken home ill. He had brought a colored servant with him, who accompanied him to his home in Carlinville. It created considerable excitement, and General Palmer was indicted for bringing the colored man into the State. There was not much disposition to try him, but he insisted on being placed on trial, conducted his own defence, and was acquitted.

He made an honest, conscientious Governor, but did not work in harmony with the Legislature. He vetoed more bills than any Governor before or since. His vetoes became too common to bear any influence, and a great many of the bills were pa.s.sed over his veto.

I was very much opposed to his renomination. I supported Governor Oglesby, and I prepared a letter, to be signed by members of the Legislature, asking Governor Oglesby to be a candidate. Furthermore, an agent was employed to go to Decatur to remain there until the obtained a favorable reply from Oglesby, and then go to Chicago and have the letter and reply published in the Chicago papers.

The scheme worked successfully. Governor Oglesby was nominated and elected.

Oglesby, Palmer, Logan, and Yates were all ambitious to go to the Senate, and were rivals for the place at one time or another, and they all succeeded in their ambition, Palmer being the last. When Governor Yates was a candidate, in 1865, Senator Palmer thought that he should have been elected. I liked Governor Yates and believed that his record as Governor ent.i.tled him to a seat in the Senate. Governor Palmer complained of me for taking any active part in the contest, and thought that as I was a member of Congress I should remain neutral. In those days Governor Palmer and I were not on very friendly terms, although after he came to the Senate we became quite intimate. He had a struggle in securing his election as Senator. It was a long contest, but he was finally successful.

General Palmer was very popular with his colleagues in the Senate.

He was one of the best _raconteurs_ in the Senate, and he delighted to sit in the smoking-room, or in his committee room, entertaining those about him with droll stories. During his term he made some very able speeches, and was always sound on the money question.

He was consistently in harmony with President Cleveland, and consequently he controlled the patronage in the State. He was a man of great good heart, full of generosity and good humor; and altogether it would have been impossible to have a more agreeable colleague.