Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs Volume II Part 16

There are now on deposit more than twelve million dollars; but I hope it will be reduced very fast next month. Had you not sent over the last ten million of bonds, we should have been able to close up very soon. I hope now that you will make another call of twenty million at least, because I think it would enable us to purchase more rapidly.

I annex: (1) Copy of declaration of trust.

(2) Copy of instructions for drawing checks.

(3) Copy of letter from Cashier of Bank of England, stating that the account would be considered personal.

(4) Copy of my letter to the Governor of the Bank, asking that your name might be joined.

(5) Copy of reply to last mentioned letter.

I am, very respectfully, Your obedient servant, (Signed) WILLIAM A. RICHARDSON.

When Cooke & Co. had completed their undertaking, the deposits in the Bank of England exceeded fifteen million dollars, and for three months they were for the most part unavailable, as the five-twenty bonds which had not matured under the calls that had been made were above par in the market. It was a condition of the loan that the five-twenty bonds redeemed should equal the 5 per cent bonds that had been issued, both issued to be reckoned at their par value.

In the month of April, 1872, the Commissioners who had been designated under the Treaty of Washington of 1871 to ascertain and determine the character and magnitude of the claims that had been preferred by the United States against Great Britain, growing out of the depredations committed by the "Alabama" and her a.s.sociate cruisers, were about to meet at Geneva for the discharge of their duties.

The administration had appointed the Hon. J. C. Bancroft Davis, the most accomplished diplomatist of the country, as the agent of the United States, and the preparation of "the Case of the United States"

was placed in his hands.

The British Ministry discovered--or they fancied that there was concealed in covert language--a claim for damages, known as "consequential or indirect damages"--in other words, a claim to compensation for the value of American shipping that had been driven from the ocean and made worthless through fear of the cruisers that had been fitted out in British ports.

This claim, in the extreme form in which it had been presented by Mr.

Sumner, had been relinquished by the Administration, and a present reading of "the Case of the United States" may not justify the construction that was put upon it by the British Ministry.

Nevertheless, the Administration received notice that Great Britain would not be represented at the Geneva Conference.

The subject was considered by the President and Cabinet on three consecutive days at called sessions. At the final meeting I handed a memorandum to the President, which he pa.s.sed to the Secretary of State. The memorandum was not read to the Cabinet.

Mr. Adams, the Commissioner for the United States, had not then left the country. By a despatch from the Secretary of State Mr. Adams was asked to meet me at the Parker House in Boston, on the second day after the day of the date of the despatch.

What occurred at the meeting may be best given through an extract from the diary of Mr. Adams, which has been placed in my hands by Mr.

Charles Francis Adams, Jr., with the privilege of its full and free use by me.

The first entry is under date of Sat.u.r.day, April 20, 1872, and is in these words: "Charles brought me a telegram from Governor Fish, desiring me to meet Mr. Boutwell, who will be at the Parker House at eleven o'clock on Monday." The second entry is under date of "Monday, 22d of April."

"At eleven o'clock called on Mr. Boutwell, the Secretary of the Treasury, at Parker's Hotel, according to agreement. Found him alone in his minute bedroom. He soon opened his subject--handed over to me a packet from Governor Fish, and said that it was the desire of the Government, it I could find it consistent with what they understood to be my views of the question of indirect damages, that I would make such intimation of them to persons of authority in London as might relieve them of the difficulty which had been occasioned by them. I told them of my conversation held with the Marquis of Ripon, in which I had a.s.sumed the heavy responsibility of a.s.suring him that the Government would not press them. I was glad now to find that I had not been mistaken. I should cheerfully do all in my power to confirm the impressions consistently with my own position."

Thus, through Mr. Adams, the claim for "indirect damages" was relinquished. When the fact of the disturbed relations between the United States and Great Britain became public there was a panic in the London stock market, and in the brief period of eight and forty hours our deposit of twelve million or more in the Bank of England was converted into five-twenty United States 6 per cent bonds, purchased at par.

In my annual report for December, 1872, I was able to make this statement:

"Since my last annual report the business of negotiating two hundred million of 5 per cent bonds, and the redemption of two hundred million 6 per cent five-twenty bonds has been completed and the accounts have been settled by the accounting officers of the Treasury.

"Further negotiations of 5 per cent bonds can now be made on the basis of the former negotiation."

x.x.xVII GENERAL GRANT'S ADMINISTRATION

The greatness of General Grant in war, in civil affairs, and in personal qualities which at once excite our admiration and deserve our commendation, was not fully appreciated by the generation to which he belonged, nor can it be appreciated by the generations that can know of him only as his life and character may appear upon the written record. He had weaknesses, and of some of them I may speak; but they do not qualify in any essential manner his claim to greatness in the particulars named. He was not fortunate in the circ.u.mstances incident to the appointment of his Cabinet. The appointment of Mr. Washburne as Secretary of State for the brief period of one or two weeks was not a wise opening of the administration, if the arrangement was designed, and was a misfortune, if the brief term was due to events not antic.i.p.ated. The selection of Mr. Fish compensated, and more than compensated, for the errors which preceded his appointment. The country can never expect an administration of the affairs of the Department of State more worthy of approval and eulogy than the administration of Mr. Fish. Apparently we were then on the verge of war with Great Britain, and demands were made in very responsible quarters which offered no alternative but war. The treaty of 1871, which was the outcome of Mr. Fish's diplomacy, re-established our relations of friendship with Great Britain, and the treaty was then accepted as a step in the direction of general peace.

In the month of February, 1869, I received an invitation from General Grant to call upon him on an evening named and at an hour specified.

At the interview General Grant asked me to take the office of Secretary of the Interior. As reasons for declining the place, I said that my duties and position in the House were agreeable to me and that my services there might be as valuable to the Administration as my services in the Cabinet. General Grant then said that he intended to give a place to Ma.s.sachusetts, and it might be the Secretary of the Interior or the Attorney-Generalship. He then asked for my advice as to persons, and said that if he named an Attorney-General from Ma.s.sachusetts, he had in mind Governor Clifford, whom he had met.

Governor Clifford was my personal friend, he had been the Attorney- General of the State during my term as Governor, he was a gentleman of great urbanity of manner, a well-equipped lawyer, and as an advocate he had secured and maintained a good standing in the profession and through many years. He had come into the Republican Party from the Webster wing of the Whig Party. To me he was a conservative, and I was apprehensive that his views upon questions arising, or that might arise, from our plan of reconstruction might not be in harmony with the policy of the party. Upon this ground, which I stated to General Grant, I advised against his appointment. I named Judge h.o.a.r for Attorney-General and Governor Claflin for the Interior Department. I wrote the full address of Judge h.o.a.r upon a card, which I gave to General Grant. Judge h.o.a.r was nominated and confirmed.

At the same time, Alexander T. Stewart, of New York, was nominated and confirmed as Secretary of the Treasury. It was soon discovered that Mr. Stewart, being an importer, was ineligible for the office.

Mr. Conkling said there were nine statutes in his way. A more effectual bar was in the reason on which the statutes rested, namely, that no man should be put in a situation to be a judge in his own cause. The President made a vain effort to secure legislation for the removal of the bar. Next, Judge Hilton, then Mr. Stewart's attorney, submitted a deed of trust by which Mr. Stewart relinquished his interest in the business during his term of office. The President submitted that paper to Chief Justice Cartter of the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia. The Chief Justice gave a brief, adverse, oral opinion, and in language not quotable upon a printed page.

We have no means of forming an opinion of Mr. Stewart's capacity for administrative work, and I do not indulge in any conjectures. His nomination was acceptable to the leading business interests of the country, and in the city of New York it was supported generally. He was a successful man of business and an acc.u.mulator of wealth, and at that time General Grant placed a high estimate upon the presence of talents by which men acquire wealth.

Following these events, there were early indications that Mr. Stewart's interest in the President had been diminished, and gradually he took on a dislike to me. When I knew of his nomination, or when I knew it was to be made, I met him in Washington and a.s.sured him of my disposition to give my support to his administration. On two occasions when I was in New York I made calls of civility upon him, but, as he made no recognition in return, my efforts in that direction came to an end.

At a dinner given by merchants and bankers in the early part of September, 1869, at which I was a guest, Mr. Stewart made a speech in which he criticized my administration of the Treasury. In the canva.s.s of 1872 the rumor went abroad that Mr. Stewart had given $25,000 to the Greeley campaign fund. In the month of October of that year, the twenty-eighth day, perhaps, I spoke at the Cooper Union. Upon my arrival in New York, I received a call from a friend who came with a message from Mr. Stewart. Mr. Stewart would not be at the meeting, although except for the false rumor in regard to his subscription to the Greeley fund, he should have taken pleasure in being present. As General Grant was to be elected, his attendance at the meeting might be treated by the public as an attempt to curry favor with General Grant and the incoming Administration.

As I was pa.s.sing to the hall, a paper was placed into my hands by a person who gave no other means of recognizing his presence. When I reached the hall and opened the paper, I found that it was a summons to appear as a defendant in an action brought by a man named Galvin, who claimed damages in the sum of $3,000,000. At the close of the meeting and when the fact became known one gentleman said to me: "I do not see how you could have spoken after such a summons."

I said in reply: "If the suit had been for $3,000 only, it might have given me some uneasiness, as a recovery would have involved payment.

A judgment of $3,000,000 implies impossibility of payment."

I had no knowledge of Galvin, but his letters of advice were found on the files of the Treasury. Even after the suit, I did not examine them for the purpose of forming an opinion of their value or want of value.

Galvin alleged in his declaration that he had furnished the financial policy that I had adopted, that it had benefitted the country to the amount of $300,000,000 and more, and that a claim of $3,000,000 was a moderate claim. Under the statute, the Department of Justice a.s.sumed the defence. The case lingered, Galvin died, and the case followed.

At the election of 1872, I voted at Groton in the morning, and in the afternoon I went to New York, to find that General Grant had been re-elected by a sufficient majority. On the morning of the next day, I left the hotel with time for a call upon General Dix, who had been elected Governor, and for a call upon Thurlow Weed. General Dix was not at home. Notwithstanding the criticisms of Thurlow Weed as a manager of political affairs in the State of New York and in the country, I had reasons for regarding him with favor, although I had never favored the aspirations of Mr. Seward, his chief. When I was organizing the Internal Revenue Office in 1862-1863, Mr. Weed gave me information in regard to candidates for office in the State of New York, including their relations to the factions that existed--usually Seward and anti-Seward--and with as much fairness as he could have commanded if he had had no relation to either faction.

As I had time remaining at the end of my call upon Mr. Weed, and as I had in mind Mr. Stewart's message at the Cooper Union meeting, I drove to his down-town store, where I found him. He received me with cordiality, but in respect to his health he seemed to be already a doomed man. He was anxious chiefly to give me an opportunity to comprehend the nature and magnitude of his business. As I was about to leave, he took hold of my coat b.u.t.ton and said: "When you see the President, you give my love to him, and say to him that I am for him and that I always have been for him." Still holding me by the b.u.t.ton, he said: "Who buys the carpets for the Treasury?"

I said: "Mr. Saville is the chief clerk, and he buys the carpets."

Mr. Stewart said: "Tell him to come to me; I will sell him carpets as cheap as anybody."

When I repeated Mr. Stewart's message to the President he made no reply, and he gave no indication that he was hearing what I was saying.

In regard to Judge h.o.a.r's relations to President Grant, the public has been invited to accept several errors, the appointment to the bench of the Supreme Court of Justices Bradley and Strong, by whose votes the first decision of the court in the Legal Tender cases was overruled, and the circ.u.mstances which led to the retirement of Judge h.o.a.r from the Cabinet. First of all I may say that President Grant was attached to Judge h.o.a.r, and, as far as I know, his attachment never underwent any abatement. Whatever bond there may be in the smoking habit, it was formed without delay at the beginning of their acquaintance. While General Grant was not a teller of stories, he enjoyed listening to good ones, and of these Judge h.o.a.r had a large stock always at command.

General Grant enjoyed the society of intellectual men, and Judge h.o.a.r was far up in that cla.s.s. General Grant had regrets for the retirement of Judge h.o.a.r from his Cabinet, and for the circ.u.mstances which led to his retirement. His appointment of Judge h.o.a.r upon the Joint High Commission and the nomination of Judge h.o.a.r to a seat upon the bench of the Supreme Court may be accepted as evidence of General Grant's continuing friendship, and of his disposition to recognize it, notwithstanding the break in official relations.

Judge h.o.a.r's professional life had been pa.s.sed in Ma.s.sachusetts, and he had no personal acquaintance with the lawyers of the circuit from which Justices Strong and Bradley were appointed. Strong and Bradley were at the head of the profession in the States of New Jersey and Pennsylvania, and in truth there was no debate as to the fitness of their appointment. Judge h.o.a.r was not responsible for their appointment, and I am of the opinion that the nomination would have been made even against his advice, which a.s.suredly was not so given.

Judge Strong, as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, had sustained the const.i.tutionality of the Legal Tender Act, and it was understood that Bradley was of the same opinion. As the President and Cabinet were of a like opinion, it may be said that there could have been no "packing" of the Supreme Court except by the exclusion of the two most prominent lawyers in the circuit and the appointment of men whose opinions upon a vital question were not in harmony with the opinion of the person making the appointment.

As to myself, I had never accepted the original decision as sound law under the Const.i.tution, nor as a wise public policy, if there had been no Const.i.tution. By the decision the Government was shorn of a part of its financial means of defence in an exigency. When the Supreme Court had reached a conclusion, Chief Justice Chase called upon me and informed me of that fact, about two weeks in advance of the delivery of the opinion. He gave as a reason his apprehension of serious financial difficulties due to a demand for gold by the creditor cla.s.s. Not sharing in that apprehension, I said: "The business men are all debtors as well as creditors, and they cannot engage in a struggle over gold payments, and the small cla.s.s of creditors who are not also debtors will not venture upon a policy in which they must suffer ultimately." The decision did not cause a ripple in the finances of the country.

Pursuing the conversation, I asked the Chief Justice where he found authority in the Const.i.tution for the issue of non-legal-tender currency. He answered in the power to borrow money and in the power given to Congress to provide for the "general welfare of the United States." I then said, having in mind the opinion in the case of MacCulloch and Maryland, in which the court held that where a power was given to Congress, its exercise was a matter of discretion unless a limitation could be found in the Const.i.tution: "Where do you find a limitation to the power to borrow money by any means that to Congress may appear wise?" The Chief Justice was unable to specify a limitation, and the question remains unanswered to this day.

When the case of Hepburn and Griswold was overruled in the Legal Tender cases, the Chief Justice was very much disturbed, and with the exhibition of considerable feeling, he said: "Why did you consent to the appointment of judges to overrule me?" I a.s.sured him that there was no personal feeling on the part of the President, and that as to my own unimportant part in the business, he had known from the time of our interview in regard to the former action of the court that I entertained the opinion that the decision operated as a limitation of the const.i.tutional powers of Congress and that its full and final recognition might prove injurious to the country whenever all its resources should be required. At the time of the reversal, the Chief Justice did not conceal his dissatisfaction with his life and labors on the bench, and at the interview last mentioned he said that he should be glad to exchange positions with me, if it were possible to make the exchange.

Various reasons have been a.s.signed for the step which was taken by President Grant in asking Judge h.o.a.r to retire from the Cabinet. Some have a.s.sumed that the President was no longer willing to tolerate the presence of two members from the same State. That consideration had been pa.s.sed upon by the President at the outset, and he had overruled it or set it aside. In my interview with Mr. Washburne the Sunday before my nomination, I had said to him that Judge h.o.a.r and I were not only from the same State, but that we were residents of the same county, and within twenty miles of each other. Moreover, any public dissatisfaction which had existed at the beginning had disappeared.

In the meantime the President had become attached to Judge h.o.a.r. Nor is there any justifying foundation for the conjecture that a vacancy was created for the purpose of giving a place in the Cabinet to another person, or to another section of the country. General Grant's attachment to his friends was near to a weakness, and the suggestion that he sacrificed Judge h.o.a.r to the low purpose of giving a place to some other person is far away from any true view of his character.

Judge h.o.a.r had had no administrative experience on the political side of the government, and he underestimated the claims, and he undervalued the rights, of members of Congress. As individuals the members of Congress are of the Government, and in a final test the two Houses may become the Government. More than elsewhere the seat of power is in the Senate, and the Senate and Senators are careful to exact a recognition of their rights. They claim, what from the beginning they have enjoyed, the right to be heard by the President and the heads of departments in their respective States. They do not claim to speak authoritatively, but as members of the Government having a right to advise, and under a certain responsibility to the people for what may be done.

It was claimed by Senators that the Attorney-General seemed not to admit their right to speak in regard to appointments, and that appointments were made of which they had no knowledge, and of which neither they nor their const.i.tuents could approve. These differences reached a crisis when Senators (I use the word in the plural) notified the President that they should not visit the Department of Justice while Judge h.o.a.r was Attorney-General. Thus was a disagreeable alternative presented to the President, and a first impression would lead to the conclusion that he ought to have sustained the Attorney- General. a.s.suming that the complaints were well founded, it followed that the Attorney-General was denying to Senators the consideration which the President himself was recognizing daily.

President Grant looked upon members of his Cabinet as his family for the management of civil affairs, as he had looked upon his staff as his military family for the conduct of the army, and he regarded a recommendation for a Cabinet appointment as an interference. His first Cabinet was organized upon that theory somewhat modified by a reference to locality. Mr. Borie who became Secretary of the Navy was a most excellent man, but he had had no preparation either by training or experience for the duties of a department. Of this he was quite conscious, and he never attempted to conceal the fact. He often said: