Something of Men I Have Known Part 25

"General Fry, you and I have been friends a life-time. We hooked watermelons, hunted c.o.o.ns, and attended all the frolics together when we were boys. We slept under the same blanket, belonged to the same mess, and fought side by side at Palo Alto and Cerro Gordo; we shed our blood on the same battlefields when fighting to save this glorious Union. I have loved you, General Fry, like a brother, but this is too much, it is putting friendship to a turrible test; it is a little more than flesh and blood can stand."

Pausing for a moment, he apparently recovered himself from the deep emotion he had just shown, then quietly resuming, he said, "What I have said about the way they treated old Jeff is true, and here is my witness." He called out, "Bill, tell the General what you saw them do with old Jeff."

Bill, a tall, lank, one-gallowsed mountaineer, leaning against a sapling near by, promptly deposed that he was present at the time, saw old Jeff led out, tied to a stake and finally disappear in a puff of smoke. At this, General Fry, without the formality of a farewell, immediately shook the mountain dust from his feet, mounted his horse, and, looking neither to the right nor to the left, retraced his steps to Danville, and without delay informed the State Committee that if they wanted _any further joint debates with old Frank Woolford,_ they would have to send some one else.

Years after, seated at my desk in the Postoffice Department in Washington, after I had appointed a few cross-road postmasters for Congressman Woolford, I ventured to inquire of him whether he had ever had a joint debate with General Fry. With a suppressed chuckle, and a quaint gleam of his remaining eye, he significantly replied, _"It won't do, Colonel, to believe everything you hear!"_

XXII THE SAGE OF THE BAR

WITTY SAYINGS OF MR. EVARTS--HE DEFENDS PRESIDENT JOHNSON BEFORE THE COURT OF IMPEACHMENT--DIFFERENT OPINIONS AS TO THE REAL CHARACTER OF THAT TRIBUNAL--MR. BOUTWELL'S ATTEMPT TO INDICATE THE PUNISHMENT MERITED BY THE PRESIDENT--MR. EVARTS'S REPLY--EXCHANGE OF COURTESIES BY MEMBERS OF THE HOUSE.

The late William M. Evarts, at one time the head of the American bar, said many things in his lighter moments worthy of remembrance.

Upon his retirement from the bar to accept the position of Secretary of State, a farewell dinner was given him by prominent lawyers of New York. The appointments, viands, etc., it is needless to observe were all after the most approved style. Somewhat out of wont, however, a magnificent goose with all its appurtenances and suitably dished was placed immediately in front of the guest of honor.

The grosser part of the feast concluded, the toast was proposed: "The Sage of the Bar." Slowly arising, Mr. Evarts surveyed for a moment the dish before him, and began: "What a wonderful transition! An hour ago you beheld a goose stuffed with sage; _you now behold a sage stuffed with goose!"_

It is not entirely forgotten that during the administration of which Mr. Evarts was a part, total abstinence was faithfully enforced in the great dining-room of the Executive Mansion upon all occasions.

To those who knew the Secretary of State, it is hardly necessary to say that he had little sympathy with this arrangement, that to him it was a custom "more honored in the breach than the observance."

Now it so happened that at a state dinner, upon a time, a mild punch in thimbleful instalments was served to the guests in lieu of more generous beverages. Raising the tiny vessel and bowing to the Austrian Amba.s.sador at his side, Mr. Evarts in undertone significantly observed, "Life-saving station!"

To a "candid friend"--from whom G.o.d preserve us--who once took him to task for his lengthy and somewhat involved sentences, Evarts replied, "Oh, you are not the first man I ever encountered _who objected to a long sentence."_

During his official term above mentioned, Mr. Evarts accompanied a prominent member of the British Parliament to Mount Vernon.

Standing in front of the old mansion, so dear to all American hearts, the distinguished visitor, looking across to the opposite sh.o.r.e, remarked: "I read in a history that when Washington was a boy he threw a dollar across the Potomac; remarkable indeed that he could have thrown a dollar so far, a mile away across the Potomac; very remarkable indeed, I declare." "Yes," replied Evarts, "but you must remember that _a dollar would go a great deal farther then than it does now."_

This incident being told to a member of Congress of Hibernian antecedents, he immediately replied: "Yes, he might have told the Britisher that when Washington was a boy he sure enough threw a dollar across the Potomac, and when he got to be a grown-up man, _he threw a sovereign across the Atlantic."_

Mr. Evarts was counsel for President Johnson in his famous arraignment before the Senate, sitting as a High Court of Impeachment. His speech, lasting many hours, was an able and exhaustive discussion of the salient questions involved in the trial. The leading managers upon the part of the House of Representatives were Benjamin F.

Butler, George S. Boutwell, and John A. Bingham. The retort courteous was freely indulged in many times by the managers and counsel from the beginning to the close of the long-drawn-out prosecution.

It is a singular fact, and to this generation renders the entire proceeding measurably farcical, that the managers upon the part of the House, and the counsel for the impeached President, were at cross-purposes from the beginning as to the real character of the tribunal before which they were appearing. The latter regarded it as a court, and constantly addressed its presiding officer, the Chief Justice of the United States, as "Your Honor"; while the former insisted that it was only the Senate, and continually addressed the Chief Justice as "Mr. President."

The issues involved were likewise argued by the opposing counsel from wholly different standpoints. The contention of the defence as stated by counsel was:

"We are then in a court. What are you to try? You are to try the charges contained in these articles of impeachment, and nothing else. Upon what are you to try them? Not upon common fame; not upon the price of gold in New York, or upon any question of finance; not upon newspaper rumor; not upon any views of party policy; you are to try them upon the evidence offered here and nothing else, by the obligation of your oaths."

The contrary contention as stated by one of the managers was as follows:

"We define, therefore, an impeachable high crime or misdemeanor, to be one in its nature or consequences subversive of some fundamental or essential principle of government, or highly prejudicial to the public interest; and this may consist of a violation of the Const.i.tution, of law, or of duty by an act committed or omitted, or without violating positive law, by the abuse of discretionary powers from improper motives, or for any improper purpose."

With gulf as broad between managers and counsel as that separating Dives and Lazarus, not only as to the issues to be tried, but as to the nature of the functions and designation of the tribunal before which they were appearing, and with the decision of the Chief Justice upon questions of law arising continually over-ruled by the majority of the Senators, it may reasonably be supposed that there was much in the way of "travelling out of the record" in the heated discussion which followed.

The a.s.sociates of Mr. Evarts--Stanberry, Curtis, Groesbeck, and Nelson--were the most solemn of men, and whatever there was "bright with the radiance of utterance" to lessen the tension of the protracted struggle, came from his own lips.

Near the close of his speech, Manager Boutwell, in attempting to indicate the punishment merited by the accused, said:

"Travellers and astronomers inform us that in the southern heavens near the Southern Cross there is a vast s.p.a.ce which the uneducated call a hole in the sky, where the eye of man, with the aid of the telescope, has been unable to discover nebula, or asteroid, planet, comet, star or sun. In that dreary, cold, dark region of s.p.a.ce, which is only known to be less than infinite by the evidences of creations elsewhere, the Great Author of celestial mechanism has left the chaos which was in the beginning. If this earth were capable of the sentiments and emotions of justice and virtue which in human mortal beings are the evidences and the pledge of our divine origin and immortal destiny, it would heave and throw with the energy of the elemental forces of nature, and project this enemy of two races of men into that vast region, there forever to exist in a solitude eternal as life, or as the absence of life, emblematical of, it not really, that outer darkness of which the Saviour of Man spoke in warning to those who are the enemies of themselves, of their race, and of their G.o.d."

To the above Mr. Evarts replied:

"I may as conveniently at this point of the argument as at any other pay some attention to the astronomical punishment which the learned and honorable manager, Mr. Boutwell, thinks would be applied to this novel case of impeachment of the President. Cicero, I think it is, who says that a lawyer should know everything, for sooner or later there is no fact in history, in science, or of human knowledge, that will not come into play in his argument.

Painfully sensible of my ignorance, being devoted to a profession which sharpens and does not enlarge the mind, I yet can admit without envy the superior knowledge evinced by the honorable manager.

Indeed, upon my soul, I believe he is aware of an astronomical fact of which many professors of that science are wholly ignorant.

Nevertheless, while some of his honorable colleagues were paying attention to an unoccupied and unappropriated island on the surface of the seas, Mr. Manager Boutwell, more ambitious, had discovered an untenanted and unappropriated region in the skies reserved, he would have us think, in the final counsels of the Almighty as the place of punishment for convicted and deposed American Presidents. At first I thought that his mind had become so enlarged that it was not sharp enough to discover that the Const.i.tution had limited the punishment, but on reflection I saw that he was as legal and logical as he was ambitious and astronomical, for the Const.i.tution has said 'removal from office,' and has put no distance to the limit of removal, so that it may be, without shedding a drop of his blood, or taking a penny of his property, or confining his limbs, instant removal from office, and transportation to the skies. Truly this is a great undertaking and if the learned manager can only get over the obstacles of the laws of nature, the Const.i.tution will not stand in his way. He can contrive no method but that of a convulsion of the earth, that shall project the deposed President to this infinitely distant s.p.a.ce; but a shock of nature of so vast energy and for so great a result on him, might unsettle even the footing of the firm members of Congress. We certainly need not resort to so perilous a method as that. How shall we accomplish it? Why, in the first place, n.o.body knows where that s.p.a.ce is but the learned manager himself, and _he is the necessary deputy to execute the judgment of the court."_

Two of the managers, Butler and Bingham, were at sword's points, and had but recently a.s.sailed each other with great bitterness in the House. How all this was turned to account by the counsel will now appear. In vindicating the President against the charge of undignified utterances and impropriety of speech in recent public addresses, Mr. Evarts candidly admits that the Executive, whose early educational advantages had been meagre indeed, and who was confessedly untaught of the schools, "had gotten into trouble by undertaking to be logical with a metaphor."

He insisted, however, that the President should be bound by no higher standard of propriety of speech than that set by the House of which the Honorable Managers were members. The rule governing the House in such matters will readily appear from a recent exchange of courtesies between the two distinguished members referred to above, Mr. Bingham and Mr. Butler. The former said:

"I desire to say, Mr. Speaker, that it does not become a gentleman who recorded his vote fifty times for Jefferson Davis as his candidate for President of the United States, to undertake to damage this cause by attempting to cast an imputation either upon my integrity or my honor. I repel with scorn and contempt any utterance of that sort from any man, _whether he be the hero of Fort Fisher, not taken, or of Fort Fisher, taken!"_

To which Mr. Butler replied:

"But if during the war, the gentleman from Ohio did as much as I did in that direction, I shall be glad to recognize that much done.

But the only victim of the gentleman's prowess that I know of was an innocent woman on the scaffold, one Mrs. Surratt. I can sustain the memory of Fort Fisher if he and his present a.s.sociates can sustain him in shedding the blood of a woman tried by a military commission _and convicted, in my judgment, without sufficient evidence!"_

To which Mr. Bingham replied: "I challenge the gentleman, I dare him anywhere, in this tribunal or any tribunal, to a.s.sert that I spoliated or mutilated any book. Why, sir, such a charge without one t.i.ttle of evidence is only fit to come from a man _who lives in a bottle, and is fed with a spoon!"_

"Now, what under heavens that means," protested Evarts, "I do not know, but it is within the common law of courtesy in the judgment of the House of Representatives."

XXIII "THE GENTLEMAN FROM MISSISSIPPI"

JOHN ALLEN, MEMBER OF CONGRESS--HE PAYS A COMPLIMENT TO GENERAL WHEELER--HIS MODEST LUNCH--A SOUTHERNER'S VIEW OF PREDESTINATION --A SKULKER'S OBJECTION TO BE SHOT BY A "LOW-DOWN YANKEE"--JOHN ALLEN'S TILT WITH COLONEL FELLOWS.

The subject of this brief sketch is still in life, very much so; and that he

"Shall live the lease of nature, pay his breath To time and mortal custom"

is the prayer of friends and political foes alike. Who does not know or has not heard of "Private John Allen," the sometime member of Congress from Mississippi? A more charming gentleman or delightful companion for the hours of recreation and gladness has rarely appeared in this old world. He was, while in his teens, a private soldier in the Confederate army, later was a practising lawyer, and in time "reluctantly yielding to the earnest solicitations of his friends," generously consented to serve a few terms in Congress. From his first entrance into the House, he was well known to all its members. No one needed an introduction--they all knew John Allen.

Upon the conclusion of his first speech, which possibly referred to the improvement of the Tombigbee River, he modestly remarked: "Now I am through my speech for this time, Mr. Speaker, _and will immediately retire to the cloak-room to receive the congratulations of my friends."_

Speaker Reed, with whom he was a great favorite, never failed to "recognize" John, and in fact by common consent he was always ent.i.tled to the floor. This fact will shed some light upon the following incident. During the roll-call of the House upon a motion to adjourn at a late hour of a night session, Mr. Allen pa.s.sed down the aisle, with hat and overcoat upon his arm, and, stopping immediately in front of the Clerk's desk, said "Mr. Speaker, ----"

"For what purpose," said Reed, "does the gentleman from Mississippi interrupt the roll-call?"

"Mr. Speaker," continued Allen, "I rise to a parliamentary inquiry.

I want to know how General Wheeler voted on this motion." To this "parliamentary inquiry" the Speaker after ascertaining the fact replied that the gentleman from Alabama had voted "aye."

"Well, then, Mr. Speaker," said John, "just put me down the same way with General Wheeler; I followed him four years, and _he never led me into danger yet."_

Seated one day in the Senate restaurant, I observed Mr. Allen standing at the entrance. Upon my invitation, he took a seat at my table. "What will you have, John?" said I. With an abstracted air, and the appearance of being extremely embarra.s.sed by his surroundings, he replied, "It makes mighty little difference about me anyway," and turning to a waiter he slowly drawled out, "Bring me some terrapin and champagne." Then, in an apologetic tone he quietly observed, "I got used to that durin' the Wah."