My Memories of Eighty Years Part 8

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 ill.u.s.tration 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 cla.s.s 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 embarra.s.sed 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 a.s.sistance 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 canva.s.s 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 grat.i.tude 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 a.s.sent 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 a.n.a.lysis.

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 inst.i.tution 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 canva.s.s Garfield had succeeded in making the tariff the leading issue, General Hanc.o.c.k 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 Hanc.o.c.k's campaign had a crack which was never mended.

There never were two more picturesque opponents than General Garfield and General Hanc.o.c.k. Hanc.o.c.k 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: "Hanc.o.c.k 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 a.s.sa.s.sination 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 impa.s.sioned appeal to hopefulness notwithstanding the tragedy, exclaimed impulsively: "G.o.d 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 pa.s.sengers. 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 pa.s.sed 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 princ.i.p.alship 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 canva.s.s, 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 att.i.tude 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 canva.s.s 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 a.s.sembly 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 canva.s.s.