Perley's Reminiscences Part 39

CHAPTER XXVII.

CORRUPTION IN OFFICIAL LIFE.

The Democrats, having secured possession of the House of Representatives, organized upward of fifty committees of investigation, which cast their drag-nets over every branch of the administration, hoping to find some evidence of corruption in which the President had shared; but he most searching investigation failed to connect the name or fame of General Grant with any of this traditional "picking and stealing." Witnesses were summoned by the score, reams of paper were covered with short-hand notes of testimony, and some of the committees traveled far and wide in search of the evidence they desired. They found nothing, but they reminded Ma.s.sachusetts men of old Captain Starbuck, of Nantucket, a philosophical old sea-dog, who never permitted bad luck to dampen his faith or his good spirits.

Returning home from a three years' whaling voyage, with an empty hold, he was boarded by the pilot, an old acquaintance, who asked:

"Waal, Cap'n Starbuck, how many bar'ls? Had a good v'yage?"

"Not 'zackly," responded the Captain, "I haint got a bar'l of ile aboard, but I'll tell ye, I've had a mighty good sail."

Just as they were about to give up in despair, a jealous woman revealed the fact that Caleb P. Marsh, of New York, had received the appointment of post-trader at Fort Sill through the endeavors of his wife with the wife of the Secretary of War, General Belknap.

Marsh made a contract with the trader already there, permitting him to continue, in consideration of twelve thousand dollars of the annual profits, divided in quarterly installments. The money thus received was divided with the Secretary of War for two years by remittances to Mrs. Belknap, but subsequently a reduced amount of six thousand dollars a year, agreed on with the post-trader, was similarly divided by remittances direct to the Secretary.

When General Belknap was transplanted from a revenue collector's office in Iowa to the Department of War, he brought his wife with him to Washington, and they occupied the house just before vacated by Secretary Seward. Other Cabinet officers gave parties, and so did the Belknaps, but they had been too liberal with their invitations, especially to the young officers just fresh from army life, and there was a great deal of disorder, with accompanying damage to curtains, carpets, and furnishings. The result was that the Belknaps were either obliged to retire from society and inhabit a cheap boarding-house, or replenish the family coffers. Alas! the tempting Marsh appeared on the stage, and the temptation could not be resisted. Mrs. Belknap died not long afterward, but her sister, the widow of Colonel Bowers, of the Confederate service, inherited her "spoils of war," was a mother to her child, and in due time became the wife of her husband.

In the interval of time required by decorum Mrs. Bowers traveled in Europe, accompanied by Mrs. Marsh and escorted by George H.

Pendleton, of Ohio. Returning home, Mrs. Bowers was married to General Belknap on the 11th of December, 1875, Mr. Pendleton giving the bride away. A handsomer or an apparently happier couple never came to Washington in their honeymoon, and they were at once recognized among the leaders of society. Her dresses and jewels were among the favorite themes of the industrious lady journalists who get up marvelous accounts of Washington entertainment, and they were worthy of comment. I well remember having seen her one night wearing one of Worth's dresses, of alternate stripes of white satin embroidered with ivy leaves, and green satin embroidered with golden ears of wheat, with a sweeping train of green satin bordered with a heavy embroidered garland of ivy and wheat. A cl.u.s.ter of these in gold and emerald was in her black hair, and she wore a full set of large emeralds, set in Etruscan gold. The costume was faultless, and fitted to adorn the queenlike woman.

No one who had seen Mrs. Belknap wondered at the fascination she exercised over her husband, or thought it strange that he who seemed so sternly scrupulous about the expenditure of public money, should have sacrificed his reputation that she might be known as the best- dressed woman in Washington society. Perhaps, too, it was remembered that he had brought from the camp one of its legacies. Few post commanders refused the original delicacies for the mess-table at head-quarters from the post sutler who desired to keep on the right side of those in authority. Why, then, could not the Secretary of War permit his wife to receive a _douceur_ from one of those cormorants, who always grow rich, and who may without harm be made to lay down a fraction of their extortionate gains?

Mrs. Lincoln, it was well known, had accepted a shawl worth one thousand dollars from A. T. Stewart when he was supplying large amounts of clothing and blankets to the arms, and she had also been liberally remembered by those who had sold a steamer at an exorbitant price to the Government. General Grant had been the recipient of many presents, and the epoch had been styled by Charles Sumner one of "gift enterprises."

General Belknap had promptly resigned, but it became politically necessary that he should be impeached. He had as his counsel three able lawyers whose personal appearance was very dissimilar. Ex- Senator Carpenter, who was leading counsel, was a man of very elegant presence, though his short neck and high shoulders made it impossible for him to be cla.s.sed as a handsome man. His fine head, with abundant iron-gray hair, tossed carelessly back from his forehead, his keen eyes and expressive mouth, shaded by a black moustache, made up a very noticeable portrait, and his voice was so musical and penetrating that it lent a charm to the merest trifle that he uttered. Judge Jeremiah S. Black was a tall, broad-shouldered man, with a clean-shaven, rugged face, a bright-brown wig, and a sharp pair of eyes that flashed from under snow-white brows, which made the brown wig seem still more brown. He chewed tobacco constantly, and the restless motion of his jaws, combined with the equally restless motion of his eyes made his a remarkable countenance.

Montgomery Blair was a plain-looking man, as "lean as a racer,"

and evidently as eager for the work before him, though his manner was very quiet, and his bearing had none of the keen intentness that characterized his a.s.sociates. The trio carried General Belknap safely through his troubles. The evidence was very remarkable and gave a curious picture of "Vanity Fair." The bargain made by Marsh with the first wife; the huckstering and business matters growing out of it, talked about and discussed over her coffin; the marriage of the Secretary soon after with the sister of the then dead wife; the frequent and enormous sums paid by Marsh to him; the ominous hints whispered about the mysterious interviews at the Arlington; the hurried exposure; the frantic efforts to avoid it; the malignant gratification shown by the Marshses, "we built the foundation on which they grew; we'll hurl them from it into a quicksand from which they will never emerge;" the admissions of guilt made by the unhappy Secretary at a moment when, as it had been suggested, he was contemplating suicide; the imprisonment in his own house; their style of living; the fact of their appearance at a large dinner- party at the Freeman Mansion, adjoining the Arlington, where, the very day after the testimony of the Marshes had been taken, their haggard looks and nervous manner excited general comment, which was not entirely silenced by their early departure on the plea of indisposition; the first effort of manliness on the part of the fallen Secretary, begging that the women might be spared, and he alone be allowed to a.s.sume the responsibility; his appearance one day at a Cabinet meeting and the next day held as a prisoner in the dock of the police court, waiting for five long hours the appearance of friends to bail him out;--all these presented elements of such a character as to give the case a singular and sad peculiarity which we look for in vain in that of any other known to our records of criminal jurisprudence. Nor was all this palliated in any way by the conduct and manner of the alleged criminal. He saw the point and smiled sympathetically at every effort of his counsel to be witty and amusing, while another party at home claimed sympathy from her friends by the strange announcement that "it was such a shame that the politicians should be allowed to prosecute such a man as General B. in such a manner; the President ought to interfere and prevent it."

The "Whisky Ring" was the creation of Cornelius Wendell and other noted Washington lobbyists. It became necessary to raise money at the time of the impeachment of Andrew Johnson, and the revenue officers, having been called on to contribute, conceived the idea of making the distillers pay a percentage on their ill-gotten gains.

Secretary Bristow's efforts to break up these fraudulent and unlawful transactions showed the immensity of the combination of capital and ingenuity employed in cheating the Government. The weekly payments to the Ring amounted to millions, and for some years some of the partic.i.p.ants pocketed four or five hundred dollars a week as their share.

Senator Henderson, of Missouri, who had become provoked against President Grant, having been retained as counsel for the prosecution of some of the Missouri distillers, reported that General O. E.

Babc.o.c.k, who had served on General Grant's staff during the closing years of the war, and had since been one of the private secretaries at the White House, was deeply implicated. The result was that General Babc.o.c.k was tried before the United States Court for the Eastern District of Missouri. The trial showed that General Babc.o.c.k had had more intimate relations with the Whisky Ring in St. Louis than any political necessity could justify, and the correspondence revealed an almost culpable indiscretion in one occupying a high position near the President. The trial occupied fourteen days.

No portion of the evidence was kept back from the jury, and the verdict of "not guilty" under such circ.u.mstances was as complete an exoneration from the charge of conspiring to defraud the Government as the most ardent friends of General Babc.o.c.k could have desired.

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Matt H.Carpenter MATTHEW H. CARPENTER was born at Moretown, Vermont, in 1824; was at the Military Academy, at West Point, 1843-1845; studied law with Rufus Choate; was admitted to the bar, and commenced practice at Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1848; was a United States Senator from Wisconsin, March 4th, 1869 - March 3d, 1875, and again March 18th, 1879, until his death at Washington City, February 24th, 1881.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

THE CENTENNIAL GLORY.

The Centennial year of the Republic was ushered in at Washington with unusual rejoicings, although the weather was damp and foggy.

There were nocturnal services in several of the Episcopal churches and watch meetings at the Methodist churches. Several of the temperance organizations continued in session until after midnight, and there was much social visiting. Just before twelve o'clock, the chime of bells of the Metropolitan Methodist church played "Pleyel's Hymn." The fire-alarm bells then stuck 1-7-7-6 a few moments later, and as the Observatory clock sounded the hour of twelve, the fire-alarm bells struck 1-8-7-6; at the same moment the brilliant light in the tholus which surmounts the dome of the Capitol was lighted by electricity, casting its beams over the entire metropolis. A battery of light artillery, stationed on the Armory lot, thundered forth a national salute of thirty-seven guns.

The Metropolitan bells chimed a national centennial march, introducing the favorite tunes of this and other nations, and there was general ringing of bells, large and small, with firing of pistols and blowing of horns. There were similar demonstrations at Alexandria and at Georgetown, and the ceremonies at the White House were in accordance with time-honored usage.

The first entertainment ever given in Washington to an Emperor and Empress was at the British Legation, early in June, 1876, when Sir Edward and Lady Thornton entertained Dom Pedro and Donna Teresa, of Brazil. The s.p.a.cious hall, the grand staircase, and the drawing- rooms of the Legation were profusely ornamented with flowers, a life-sized portrait of Victoria I, Empress of India and Queen of England, which faced the staircase, apparently welcoming the guests.

Many of those invited had been on an excursion to Mount Vernon and did not arrive until eleven o'clock.

The ladies' dresses were very elaborate. The Empress wore a vert d'eau silk trained skirt and basque high at the back and cut V- shape in front, the sleeves long; the rarest point lace nearly covered both skirt and basque, set on in successive rows, headed with plaits of the material; a broad black velvet ribbon, from which depended a pendant thickly studded with large diamonds, encircled her throat. She wore large diamond ear-rings, and her light-brown hair was combed down on her face, parted through the middle, and covering her ears, a Grecian knot confining her hair at the back of her head.

Lady Thornton wore a white satin trained skirt and basque, trimmed with puffings of tulle, held in place by bands and bows of the darkest shade of ruby velvet, interspersed with fine white flowers.

The Misses Thornton wore charming gowns of Paris muslin and Valenciennes lace, relieved with bows of pink gros grain ribbons.

Mme. Borges, the wife of the Brazilian Minister, wore a mauve silk gown, trimmed with lace, and very large diamonds. Countess Hayas, the wife of the Austrian Minister, wore Paris muslin and Valenciennes lace over pale blue silk, which was very becoming to her blonde complexion and youthful face and form, and a profusion of diamonds.

The lately arrived Minister from Sweden, Count Lewenhaupt, was present with his wife, whose dress of the thickest, most l.u.s.trous satin of a peach-blossom tint, covered with deep falls of point lace, was very elegant. Mrs. Franklin Kinney wore a rich mauve satin beneath point applique lace. Mme. Berghmann wore black silk, embroidered in wreaths of invisible purple, and trimmed with Brussels lace. Mrs. Field wore a very becoming vert d'eau silk, handsomely made and trimmed. Mrs. Willis, the wife of the New York Representative, wore white muslin and Valenciennes lace. Her sister, Mrs. G.o.dfrey, wore a similar toilet, and the two ladies attracted universal attention by their beauty and grace. Mrs. Sharpe was very becomingly dressed in white muslin, trimmed with Valenciennes lace and worn over a colored silk. Miss Dodge (Gail Hamilton), over ivory-tinted silk wore the same tint of damasquine.

Supper was served at midnight, and afterward many of the guests were presented to Dom Pedro and Donna Teresa in an informal manner, for the Emperor was, according to his usual custom, wandering about talking to whom he pleased, and the Empress, not being very strong, sat upon a sofa and talked pleasantly with all who were introduced to her.

The Imperial party had rooms at the Arlington Hotel, and the Emperor proved himself to be an indefatigable sight-seer, keeping on the move from morning until night. He would not permit his dinner to be served in courses, but had everything put on the table at the same time, as he could devote only thirty minutes to his repast.

The proceedings of the National Republican Convention, at Cincinnati, had naturally been regarded with deep interest at Washington, and the excitement was intense when, on the Sunday prior to the meeting, it was announced that Mr. Blaine had been stricken by illness on his way to church. He became unconscious, and on being carried home was for some hours in an apparently critical condition, at times hardly able to breathe and unable to take the restoratives administered by his physicians. His condition was p.r.o.nounced one of simple cerebral depression, produced primarily by great mental strain, and, secondarily, by the action of excessive heat. There was no apoplectic congestion or effusion, nor any symptoms of paralysis.

The news of Mr. Blaine's illness was telegraphed to Cincinnati, and undoubtedly had an unfavorable effect upon the Convention.

Mr. Blaine, nevertheless, had gradually gained votes, until on the second day of the Convention he was within a few votes of the coveted prize. The shadows were settling down on the excited crowd, the tellers found it getting too dark to do their work, and gas was demanded. The Blaine men, in an ungovernable frenzy, were determined to resist every effort at adjournment, while the combined opposition were equally bent on postponement in order to kill off Blaine. Then it was that a well-known citizen of Cincinnati sprang to the platform, waved his hat at the Chairman, and during a moment's lull in the fearful suspense made the crushing statement that the building was not supplied with gas. Candles were asked for, but the anti-Blainites had received their cue, and before the Blaine lines could be reformed they carried an adjournment by stampede.

Political lies in this country are presumably white lies, but they are seldom followed with such tremendous results. Delay enabled the opposition to ma.s.s its forces against the favorite, and Hayes, instead of Blaine, pa.s.sed the next four years in the White House.

Nothing could have been more certain in this world than the nomination of Blaine on that eventful evening, if the same gas which burned brightly enough twenty-four hours later for a Hayes' jubilee meeting had not been choked off at a more critical time.

Washington was wild with excitement immediately after the Presidential election. The returns received late on Tuesday night indicated the election of Mr. Tilden, and even the Republican newspapers announced on the following morning the result as doubtful. Senator Chandler, who was at New York, was the only confident Republican, and he telegraphed to the Capitol, "Hayes has one hundred and eighty- five votes and is elected." He also telegraphed to General Grant recommending the concentration of United States troops at the Southern capitals to insure a fair count. General Grant at once ordered General Sherman to instruct the commanding generals in Louisiana and Florida to be vigilant with the forces at their command to preserve peace and good order, and to see that the proper and legal boards of canva.s.sers were unmolested in the performance of their duties. "Should there be," said he, "any grounds of suspicion of fraudulent count on either side, it should be reported and denounced at once. No man worthy of the office of President should be willing to hold it if counted in or placed there by fraud.

Either party can afford to be disappointed by the result. The country cannot afford to have the result tainted by the suspicion of illegal or false returns."

Some were disposed to wait, with as much patience and good-humor as they could command, the news from the pivotal States, while others shouted frantically about fraud. A number of leading politicians were sent by each party to the State capitals, where the National interest was concentrated, and the telegraph wires vibrated with political despatches, many of them in cipher. Senator Morrill was requested by the Rothschilds to telegraph them who was elected President at as early a time as was convenient. He replied on Wednesday that the canva.s.s was close, with the chances in favor of Tilden; but on Friday he telegraphed again that Hayes was probably elected.

The political telegrams sent over the Western Union wires during the Tilden-Hayes campaign were subsequently surrendered by President Orton, of that company, to the Senate Committee on Privileges and Elections. It was a.s.serted that those likely to prove prejudicial to Republicans were destroyed, and those damaging to Democrats were clandestinely conveyed to a New York paper for publication. These political telegrams showed that the intimate friends of Mr. Tilden were guilty of an attempt to secure the Presidential elections in several States by the use of money. The translation of these cryptogramic messages by a working journalist, and their publication in the New York _Tribune_, was a great success, as it made clear what had previously been unintelligible. When a Committee of the House of Representatives undertook to investigate these cipher telegrams, the princ.i.p.al witness was Colonel Pelton, the nephew and private secretary of Mr. Tilden. His testimony was given in an apparently frank and straightforward manner, though he occasionally seemed perplexed, pondered, and hesitated. He had a loud, hard, and rather grating voice, and delivered his answers with a quick, jerky, nervous utterance, which often jumbled his words so as to render them partially inaudible. Colonel Pelton's tone in reply to the questions propounded to him during the examination-in-chief was loud and emphatic, as though he wanted all the world to understand that he was perfectly ready to answer every question put by the Committee. He sat easily, either throwing one leg over the other, facing the Chairman, or picking his teeth, or blinking his eyes hard, which was one of his peculiar habits, as he kept examining the photo-lithographed copies of the cipher telegrams and the _Tribune_ compilation before him. Sometimes Colonel Pelton's blunt confessions were of such astounding frankness as to elicit an audible whisper and commotion, what the French call a "sensation,"

among the listeners.

Colonel Pelton's loud voice sank very low, and his easy, nonchalant att.i.tude changed very perceptibly, when Messrs. Reed and Hisc.o.c.k, the Republican members, took him in hand and subjected him to one of the most merciless cross-examinations ever heard in a committee room. The two keen cross-questioners evidently started out with the determined purpose to tear Colonel Pelton's testimony to pieces, and to literally not leave a shred behind worthy of credibility.

The respective "points" scored by the Republicans and the Democratic members of the Committee elicited such loud applause on the part of the auditors as to turn for the time the cross-examination into a regular theatrical exhibition. The cipher despatches confirmed the opinion at Washington that Mr. Tilden spent a great deal of money to secure his nomination, and much more during and after the campaign.

Disappointed politicians and place-hunters among the Democrats talked wildly about inaugurating Mr. Tilden by force, while some Republicans declared that General Grant would a.s.sume to hold over until a new election could be ordered. General Grant made no secret of his conviction that Mr. Hayes had been lawfully elected, and he would undoubtedly have put down any revolutionary movement against his a.s.suming the Chief Magistracy on the 4th of March, but there is no evidence that he intended to hold over. Neither did the Republican leaders in the Senate and House intend that he should hold over, in any contingency. There were Republican Congressmen, however, who intended to elect Senator Morton President _pro tempore_ of the Senate, and, in the event of a failure to have a formal declaration of Mr. Hayes' election in the joint Convention, to have had Senator Morton declared President of the United States.

Meanwhile, it was positively a.s.serted, and never authoritatively denied, that a compact had been entered into between representatives of Southern Congressmen and the authorized friends of Mr. Hayes at Wormley's Hotel, in Washington, by which it was agreed that the Union troops were to be withdrawn from the South in consideration of the neutrality of the Southern vote in Congress on all questions involving the inauguration of Mr. Hayes as President of the United States.

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JamesGBlaine JAMES GILLESPIE BLAINE was born in Washington County, Pennsylvania, January 31st, 1830; adopted the editorial profession; was a member of the Maine Legislature, 1859-1862; was a Representative from Maine, 1863-1876; was United States Senator from Maine, 1876-1880; was Secretary of State under Presidents Garfield and Arthur, March 5th, 1881 - December 12th, 1881; was nominated for President by the Republican Convention, at Chicago, June 3d-6th, 1884, and was defeated.

CHAPTER XXIX.

THE ELECTORAL COMMISSION.

The Electoral Commission was a cunningly devised plan for declaring Mr. Hayes legally elected President. In the then feverish condition of parties at the Capitol, with no previously arranged plan for adjusting controverted questions, it was evident that some plan should be devised for a peaceful solution of the difficulty.

Republicans conceived the idea of an Electoral Commission, to be composed of five Senators, five Representatives, and five a.s.sociate Justices of the Supreme Court. No sooner had Mr. Tilden and his conservative friends agreed to the Commission, in which he would have had one majority, than Judge David Davis, of the Supreme Court, was elected a United States Senator. This made it necessary to select Judge Bradley as the man who was to hold the balance of power.

The debate in the Senate on the bill establishing the Electoral Commission was deeply interesting, as several of those who partic.i.p.ated were prominent candidates for the Presidency. There was an especial desire to hear Senator Conkling, who had "sulked in his tent" since the Cincinnati Convention, and the galleries were crowded with noted men and women, diplomats, politicians, soldiers and journalists from all sections of the Republic.

Mr. Conkling took the floor late in the afternoon. Tall, well proportioned, with his vest opening down to the waist and displaying his full chest and broad shoulders to the best advantage, his hair tossed back from his ma.s.sive brow with studied carelessness, his white and slender hands set off by spotless linen, he looked every inch a Senator. Before him, on the desk, were his notes, daintily inscribed on gilt-edged, cream-tinted paper; but he did not refer to them, having committed his remarks so thoroughly that many believed them to have been extemporaneous. His speech was p.r.o.nounced by good judges as the greatest specimen of "the art which conceals art" that has ever been delivered in this country. With apparent candor, good nature, and disinterested statesmanship, he adroitly stated his side of the case, reviewing what had been done at previous Presidential elections, and showing that he had given the subject careful study. As dinner-time approached, Senator Edmunds stated that Mr. Conkling was not physically able to finish his speech, and moved that the Senate go into the consideration of executive business.

The next day the Senator from New York was not present, and after a recess had been taken for ten minutes, in the hope that he would arrive, Senator Sargent, of California, took the floor. Mr. Conkling finally came in, and when he began to speak, appeared to be in better health than on the day previous, and he again uttered his well-rounded sentences as if without premeditation. Once he forgot himself, when, to give additional emphasis to a remark, he advanced across the aisle toward Senator Morton. The Senator from Indiana retreating, Mr. Conkling exclaimed, in the most dramatic tone, "I see that the Senator retreats before what I say!" "Yes," replied Senator Morton, in his blunt way, "I retreated as far as I could from the false doctrine taught by the gentleman from New York."

"Mr. President," said Senator Conkling, evidently disconcerted, "the honorable Senator observes that he has retreated as far as he could. That is the command laid on him by the common law. He is bound to retreat to the wall before turning and rending an adversary."

When Mr. Dawes reminded the Senator that the Commission should be made as exact as it would in the State of Ma.s.sachusetts, he replied that it would not be possible. "The Queen of Sheba," said Mr.

Conkling, "said that she never realized the glory of Solomon until she entered the inner Temple. The idea that the Representatives of other States could breathe the upper air, or tread the milky way, never entered into the wildest and most presumptuous flight of the imagination. Oh! no, Mr. President. Whenever the thirty- seven other States attain to the stature of the grand old Commonwealth, the time will come when no problem remains to be solved, and when even contested Presidential votes will count themselves. Then, in every sphere and orbit, everything will move harmoniously, by undeviating and automatic processes."