The Life of Lyman Trumbull Part 31

After h.o.a.r was rejected, the President asked for his resignation as Attorney-General without a.s.signing any reason therefor, and when it was handed to him he appointed an obscure but respectable lawyer from Georgia of the name of Akerman as Attorney-General, to please the carpet-baggers; but this move did not secure a sufficient number of votes to ratify the treaty, nor was it ever ratified.

FOOTNOTES:

[114] _Cong. Globe_, March 10, 1871, p. 48.

[115] _Cong. Globe_, 1871, p. 51.

[116] E. L. Pierce, in his _Life of Sumner_, says that the position was first offered to Frelinghuysen, of New Jersey, and that he was confirmed by the Senate on the last day of the session. Evidently he did not accept it.

[117] Mr. Charles F. Adams has shown in a recent essay that the British Ministry were perfectly aware that the capture of Mason and Slidell was justifiable by British custom and precedent, but that public opinion was so inflamed on the subject that they were swept off their feet, and could not have faced Parliament an hour if they had not demanded the surrender of the prisoners. On the other hand, our practice and precedents were directly opposite. The American doctrine was "free ships make free goods" and _a fortiori_ free persons, but so inflamed was public opinion on this side of the water that the British demand for the surrender of the prisoners would have been refused even at the risk of war, if we had not had one war on hand already. Both nations "flopped"

simultaneously. _The Trent Affair--an Historical Retrospect._ By Charles Francis Adams. Boston, 1912.

[118] Washington letter in the _Nation_, January 6, 1870.

CHAPTER XXIII

THE LIBERAL REPUBLICANS

The Liberal Republican movement of 1872 took its start in Missouri.

During the war between the states, Missouri had been a prey to a real civil war, in which much blood had been spilled, and where churches, communities, and particular families had been torn asunder. In the agricultural districts and small towns, which were nine tenths of the whole, n.o.body, whether Secessionist, or Unionist, or neutral, could feel certain, when he went to bed, whether he should sleep till morning, or be awakened after midnight by a guerilla raid or a burning roof. The contending forces were not unequally divided. The Confederates were the stronger half in wealth and influence, although not in numbers, but the proximity of the Federal armies and their actual occupation of the soil gave a preponderance to the Unionists and strangled secession in its infancy. When the war came to an end, all the heart-burning that it had engendered was still raging. Not only were the Republicans in power, but the most radical of them had control within the party. Lincoln was not sufficiently advanced for them. They had refused to vote for his renomination in the Convention of 1864.

In the state const.i.tution, adopted in 1865, disfranchis.e.m.e.nt and test oaths abounded. In the succeeding four years there had been a gradual slackening of recrimination and intestine strife; and a line of cleavage broke in the Republican ranks in 1869 which resulted in the election of General Carl Schurz as United States Senator, on the issue of reenfranchis.e.m.e.nt of the ex-rebels. The leader of the "party of eternal hate," as it was styled by its opponents, was Charles D. Drake, his colleague in the Senate. The seat taken by Schurz was that formerly held by John B. Henderson, who had lost it by his vote against impeachment.

Schurz was a torch-bearer wherever he went, and his entry into the Senate gave a new impetus to the party of peace and amnesty not only in his own state, but throughout the country. In the autumn of 1870 a battle royal was fought in Missouri, beginning in the Republican state convention, which was split on the issue of reenfranchis.e.m.e.nt. The Liberals, under the lead of Schurz, nominated a full state ticket with B. Gratz Brown for governor. The radicals nominated Joseph McClurg for governor and a full ticket. The Democrats made no nominations, but supported the Liberal nominees. The election resulted in a sweeping victory for the Liberals. The platform on which Brown was chosen declared that the time had come "for removing all disqualifications from the disfranchised people of Missouri and conferring equal political rights and privileges on all cla.s.ses." The other platform favored reenfranchis.e.m.e.nt "as soon as it could be done with safety to the state."

Both sections adopted a resolution saying: "We are opposed to any system of taxation which will tend to the creation of monopolies and benefit one industry at the expense of another." This was interpreted by the _Missouri Democrat_, the leading Republican newspaper of the state, as an anti-tariff deliverance. Its editor, Colonel William M. Grosvenor, was a party organizer of keen intelligence and tireless activity, as effective in his own field as Schurz was in his. He was a free-trader, and he gave the first impulse which brought the revenue reformers of that period as a distinctive element into the Liberal movement. The only organization then existing which offered any resistance to the demands of the protected cla.s.ses was the New York Free-Trade League, of which Mahlon Sands was secretary. On the 10th of November, Sands sent out an invitation to persons whom he took to be like-minded with himself, including Carl Schurz, David A. Wells, Jacob D. c.o.x, William Cullen Bryant, E. L. G.o.dkin, Charles F. Adams, Jr., General Brinkerhoff, Edward Atkinson, and others to a conference to be held in New York on the 22d of that month. The declared object of this meeting was "to determine whether an effort may not, with advantage, be made to control the new House of Representatives by a union of Western Revenue Reform Republicans with Democrats." The meeting took place at the date mentioned and received the following notice in the _Nation_ of December 1:

There has been a good deal of activity among the Revenue reformers during the week. On the 23d ult. they held a private meeting in this city, which was attended by Mr. D. A. Wells, Mr. George Walker, Mr. Horace White, of the Chicago _Tribune_, Mr. Bryant, Mr. Bowles, of the Springfield _Republican_, and others, and at which, after a good deal of talk, the conclusion was reached that things were looking very well; that the legislative debates of the coming winter would, under the influence of the late elections, probably do a great deal to educate the public and prepare the monopolists and jobbers for what is certainly coming; and that the question of civil service reform was closely connected with that of the reform of the revenue, and ought to be discussed and pushed with it; and it was resolved finally to charge a committee with the work of looking after the interest of both in a general way during the winter, with power to make arrangements for the calling of a national convention in the spring, in case the course of Congress proved unsatisfactory. The usual distribution of "British gold" did not take place, it must be confessed to the regret of all present. Indeed, the desire for it, and as much of it as possible, was avowed with the greatest effrontery. The open display of such feelings at a reform meeting was a curious sign of the times. Why the British should have cut off the supply was not explained, but we presume they were unable to withstand the repeated exposures in the _Tribune_, which have doubtless made Minister Thornton wince a little.

The Speaker of the House, James G. Blaine, got wind of the Sands circular and sought an interview with myself, coming to Chicago for that purpose. He said that he recognized the drift of public sentiment on the tariff question, that he desired to avert anything like a split in the Republican ranks, and that he intended to give the tariff reformers a majority of the Committee on Ways and Means in the new Congress. He submitted that they could not gain more than that by a fight, and that it was the part of wisdom to be satisfied with that. He said that he would allow us to name two Republican members who, in conjunction with the Democrats, would const.i.tute a majority. I reported this fact to the members of the New York Conference and it was agreed that no other steps should be taken in reference to the organization of the House. G. A.

Finkelnburg, of Missouri, and H. C. Burchard, of Illinois, were selected as our preference for membership of the committee. The names were communicated to Blaine and they were appointed by him. He even went beyond his promise by prompting his friends on the floor to favor tariff reform. Eugene Hale, of Maine, was especially zealous in this behalf. He introduced a bill to make salt free of duty, and accepted an amendment putting coal in the same category and advocated it with earnestness and ability and carried it through the House, but it was strangled in the Senate. Dawes, of Ma.s.sachusetts, a protectionist, was made chairman, but the majority of the committee was against him. Protection, at that time, meant the highest rate of duty on imports that anybody desired, and free trade meant any opposition to protection as thus interpreted. These definitions are not wholly obsolete at the present day.

In the eyes of President Grant the Liberal movement in Missouri was something in the nature of a new rebellion, and most of the Republican politicians shared his views. The necessity of keeping the party in power by fair means or foul had become a kind of religious tenet. The spectre of a solid South and a divided North had been terrifying from the start. What would happen if the example of Missouri should overspread all of the reconstructed states? Seymour had carried New York and New Jersey in the last election. The solid South added to these would have made him President of the United States. No wonder that such Senators as Morton, Chandler, Conkling, and the Southern carpet-baggers, at the opening of Congress in December, 1870, gave a chilling reception to all who had taken part in the Liberal campaign of Missouri, or who sympathized with it. Anything in the nature of investigation of frauds, or of reform in the civil service, was frowned upon by them. All who favored such steps were accused of seeking to split the party and build a new one upon its ruins. This was a false accusation. The Administration could have averted the coming revolt by removing its causes. The _Nation_ of December 8, 1870, said with truth:

What has been taken for a desire or design to found a new party has been simply a design to make the old party attend to the proper business of the party in power, by legislating for the necessities of the time. There is a strong disposition on the part of the old hacks not to do this, but to go on infusing "economy and efficiency in the collection of the revenue," and nothing would please them better than that those who are not satisfied with this should take themselves off and try to establish a little concern of their own, and give no further trouble. We believe the intention of the malcontents, however, is, and always has been, to stay where they are and give all the trouble they can. Whenever the time comes to establish a new party, it will make its appearance, whether anybody charges himself with the special work of getting it up or not.

Among the sources of discontent disfranchis.e.m.e.nt was the most pressing, since it was believed to be the chief cause of the shocking conditions in the South. Other things could wait. This was the "house-on-fire"; it must be put out at once. The Liberals said that universal amnesty with impartial suffrage was the true cure. The ruling powers at Washington maintained that the Southern whites were still rebellious and that a new law, backed by adequate military power, was needed to deal with the Ku-Klux Klans, which were terrorizing the blacks in order to prevent them from voting. The President sent a special message of twenty lines to Congress on March 23, calling attention to this condition of affairs and recommending some action, he did not say what. The brevity and indecision of it betokened reluctance on his part to send any message at all. Congress, however, took the subject in earnest and pa.s.sed the Ku-Klux Bill of 1871, which authorized suspension of the writ of _habeas corpus_ and the employment of military force in dealing with the Ku-Klux outrages. Trumbull and Schurz opposed the bill by speech and by vote, the former on the ground of unconst.i.tutionality, the latter chiefly on the ground of impolicy, although he also considered it unconst.i.tutional.

Trumbull contended that the Const.i.tution never contemplated that the ordinary administration of criminal law in the states should be in the hands of the Federal Government and that the Fourteenth Amendment did not change the lodgment of that power from the state to the federal authorities. He did not make a set speech on the bill, but in an impromptu debate he said:

Show me that it is necessary to exercise any power belonging to the Government of the United States in order to maintain its authority and I am ready to put it forth. But, sir, I am not willing to undertake to enter the states for the purpose of punishing individual offences against their authority committed by one citizen against another. We, in my judgment, have no const.i.tutional authority to do that. When this Government was formed, the general rights of person and property were left to be protected by the states and there they are left to-day.

Whenever the rights that are conferred by the Const.i.tution of the United States on the Federal Government are infringed upon by the states, we should afford a remedy.... If the Federal Government takes to itself the entire protection of the individual in his rights of person and property what is the need of the State Governments? It would be a change in our form of Government and an unwise one, in my judgment, because I believe that the rights of the people, the liberties of the people, the rights of the individual, are safest among the people themselves, and not in a central government extending over a vast region of country. I think that the nearer you can bring the administration of justice between man and man to the people themselves, the safer the people will be in their rights of person and property.[119]

He objected also to the clause of the bill authorizing the President to suspend the writ of _habeas corpus_, as in conflict with the clause of the Const.i.tution which limits suspension to cases of invasion or rebellion where the public safety requires it. There was no present invasion to justify it and no rebellion in the proper definition of that term. He quoted authorities showing that rebellion meant an armed uprising against the Government, such as existed in 1861 and continued till the end of the war. No such condition existed now.

Schurz's speech, delivered on the 14th of April, was a masterpiece of political philosophy, not inferior to anything in the orations of Edmund Burke. It was a plea for the abrogation of all political disabilities.

It occupies three pages of the _Congressional Globe_. Among other things he said:

On the whole, sir, let us not indulge in the delusion that we can eradicate all the disorders that exist in the South by means of laws and by the application of penal statutes. Laws are apt to be especially inefficacious when their const.i.tutionality is, with a show of reason, doubted, and when they have the smell of partisanship about them; and however pure your intentions may be (and I know they are), in that light a law like this, unless greatly modified, will appear suspicious. If we want to produce enduring effects there, our remedies must go to the root of the evil; and in order to do that, they must operate upon public sentiment in the South. I admit that in that respect the princ.i.p.al thing cannot be done by us: it must be done by the Southern people themselves. But at any rate, we can in a great measure facilitate it.[120]

Edmunds and Carpenter, of the Judiciary Committee, held that the Fourteenth Amendment of the Const.i.tution gave power to the federal authorities to enforce the ordinary criminal law as between persons in the states. Some years later a case, arising under this Ku-Klux Law in Tennessee, reached the Supreme Court, where it was p.r.o.nounced unconst.i.tutional and void. The court held that the three latest amendments of the Const.i.tution prohibited the states from discriminating against citizens on account of race or color, but did not change the administration of the criminal law in the states. That jurisdiction remained with the states exclusively. Here Trumbull's position was sustained almost in his own words.[121]

While the Ku-Klux Act was doing its work in South Carolina under suspension of the _habeas corpus_, the Senate on December 20, 1871, took up a bill which had pa.s.sed the House by more than two-thirds majority to remove the legal and political disabilities imposed by the Fourteenth Amendment, except in a few cases. Sumner moved as an amendment a bill which he had previously offered as a separate measure, that all citizens, without distinction of race or color, should have equal rights in steamboats, railway cars, hotels, theatres, churches, jury service, common schools, colleges, and cemeteries, whether under federal or State authority. Trumbull, and the two Senators from South Carolina, besought him not to enc.u.mber the Amnesty Bill, which required a two-thirds vote, with the Equal Rights Bill which required only a majority, since they believed that both could be pa.s.sed separately, but that if his bill were tacked upon the Amnesty Bill, both would fail. Sumner insisted upon his amendment, and a vote was taken on it, February 9, resulting in a tie (Trumbull and Schurz voting in the negative), whereupon the Vice-President (Colfax) voted in the affirmative. The Sumner amendment having been adopted, all the Democrats turned against the bill and it was lost by 33 to 19, not two thirds.

A second attempt, beginning in the House, had the same result. When the bill was taken up in the Senate Sumner again moved his Equal Rights Bill as an amendment, and it was again adopted by the casting vote of the Vice-President, and then the whole was lost by 32 to 22.

In the mean time the Liberal Republican Convention had met at Cincinnati and adopted a platform very emphatic on the subject of amnesty. A sudden change came over the spirit of the regulars. The Amnesty Bill was reintroduced in the House by General Butler, May 13, and pa.s.sed the same day without debate. It was taken up in the Senate, May 21. Sumner's Equal Rights Bill, when offered in a modified form as an amendment, was rejected by 11 to 81, and the bill was pa.s.sed the same day by 38 to 2, the negatives being Sumner and Nye.

FOOTNOTES:

[119] _Cong. Globe_, 1871, pp. 578-79.

[120] _Cong. Globe_, 1871, p. 688.

[121] United States _v._ Harris, 106 U.S. 629.

CHAPTER XXIV

GRANT'S ADMINISTRATION

The demerits of the first Grant Administration were the princ.i.p.al cause of the Liberal uprising of 1872. They were enumerated in detail by Charles Sumner in open Senate, on May 31 of that year. They need not be reiterated here. I have no inclination to rake over the ashes of a dead controversy or to detract from the fame of one who rendered inestimable service to the nation in its greatest crisis, without which all other service might have been unavailing. At the same time, the thread of this narrative requires some notice of the stings planted in the minds of sensitive persons, who were not seeking office, by the man who was then the nation's head.

Grant's shortcomings in civil station were such as might have been expected from one who was suddenly charged with vast responsibilities without his own solicitation or desire and without any previous experience or training for them. His most striking characteristic was tenacity. Whether on the right track or on the wrong, he was deaf and blind to obstacles and opposition, because there was resistance to be overcome. This quality was reflected in his determination "never to desert a friend under fire"--a maxim more generous than wise, fitter for the field than for the forum, and which in his last days brought misfortunes to his own door which were lamented by everybody.

The Republican politicians nominated him for President, not because they deemed him qualified for the position, but because of his military renown. He was elected at a time when military habits and modes of thought were the worst possible equipment for the solution of political problems. Nevertheless, he rendered great service on two occasions--in the settlement of the Alabama Claims and by vetoing the Currency Inflation Bill. In both these cases he was much indebted to Hamilton Fish, his Secretary of State, but the credit is justly his own and the fame thereof will outlast all the scandals that arose from his confidence in, and a.s.sociation with, such characters as Orville Babc.o.c.k, John McDonald, Ben Butler, W. W. Belknap, and Tom Murphy.

The rottenness of the New York Custom-House was a crying evil before Grant became President, and its flavor was not improved by the appointment of Murphy as its chief officer. It was crammed with men who "had to be taken care of," whose work was not needed by the Government, and who were incompetent even if it had been needed--small politicians, district leaders and "heelers," who were useful in carrying primaries and getting delegates elected to conventions. A Joint Committee on Retrenchment, organized as early as 1866 and kept alive by every subsequent Congress, had been investigating frauds and abuses in various quarters. Its chairman, Senator Patterson, of New Hampshire, made a report early in 1871 containing many interesting disclosures.

On December 11, Senator Conkling offered a resolution directing the Committee on Military Affairs to inquire into the defalcation of an army paymaster named Hodge. Trumbull moved as an amendment that the Joint Committee on Retrenchment be reconst.i.tuted and instructed to make a general investigation of the waste and loss of money in the public service. A debate sprang up on the proposed amendment, which continued for a week and aroused keen interest throughout the country. Wilson, the chairman of the Military Committee, sustained the amendment, saying that the Hodge case did not appertain to military matters, but to finance, to the handling of public money. Sumner took the same view.

Chandler objected to a joint committee with power to investigate all the executive departments. He preferred to have each department investigated by a separate committee, if it needed investigation. In the course of the debate extracts were read from the Patterson Report, together with the testimony of witnesses. Weighers in the custom-house testified that men were sent to them by the collector as a.s.sistants for whom there was no work to do. They were simply put on the pay-roll and did nothing but draw their salaries. In the weighers' department alone $50,000 per year was thus squandered. Collector Murphy was quoted as saying, in answer to a remonstrance about unnecessary help in the custom-house, "There were certain people who had to be taken care of: it was well known that they had to be taken care of, and n.o.body in the party would say anything about his taking care of them, and he would do it."[122]

Trumbull said that he did not denounce officers of the Government indiscriminately. He merely wished to have some system introduced by which appointments should be made with regard to the fitness of the appointees and the need of their services. As the debate enlarged, a line of cleavage was disclosed among Senators similar to that which occurred on the deposition of Sumner; Morton, Conkling, Chandler, Edmunds, and Sherman opposing, and Schurz, Sumner, Logan, Tipton, and Wilson supporting, the Trumbull amendment. Finally the Republican Senatorial Caucus took the matter in hand and adopted a subst.i.tute to the Trumbull Resolution, which was offered in the Senate by Anthony and adopted by 29 to 18. It provided for a select committee to investigate only such subjects as the Senate should designate.

One of the things stumbled on by the Patterson Committee was the "general order" system in the New York Custom-House, which led up to the Leet and Stocking scandal, one of the most exasperating incidents of the Grant regime. Leet had been a member of General Grant's staff. The Patterson Committee found that he was enjoying the rank and pay of a colonel in the army, and also of a clerk in the War Department, and was receiving an additional income, estimated at $50,000 per year, for the warehousing of imported goods in New York, without the expenditure of any labor or capital of his own and without even his personal presence in New York, he being a resident of Washington City. All goods arriving by the Cunard and Bremen lines were sent by the collector's order to the Leet and Stocking warehouse, and were required to pay one month's storage whether they remained there a month or only a day, the cost being not less than $1.50 per package. This "general order" system had been devised before the Republican party came into power. It was flourishing in 1862.[123] Collector Grinnell, Grant's first appointee to that position, found it in force when he came into office. Before it was devised the arriving goods had been stored temporarily in warehouses belonging to the steamship companies, adjacent to the docks, without cost to the owners.

When the Patterson Committee made this discovery they reported the facts personally to the Secretary of the Treasury (Boutwell), who appointed a board of three officers of the department to make an independent investigation. This board made a report sustaining the findings of the Patterson Committee. Boutwell thereupon wrote to Collector Murphy, who had succeeded Grinnell as collector, advising him to discontinue the "general order" system altogether and go back to the old system, no good reasons for the former change, but many objections to it, having been found. Months pa.s.sed after Boutwell's letter was sent, but the "general order" system was still flourishing and the coffers of Leet and Stocking were still receiving an income, at least double that of the President of the United States, as a reward for putting an obstruction in the pathway of lawful commerce. A. T. Stewart, Grant's first choice for Secretary of the Treasury, testified that the "general order" system was a damage to honest traffic and a general nuisance. William E. Dodge testified that he had been compelled by it to curtail his imports at New York and to use other ports of entry to avoid the delays and exactions of the "general order" system.

The indifference of the only man higher up than Secretary Boutwell--the only man who had power to remove Collector Murphy or to choke off Leet--was incomprehensible. Schurz made comments on the case which the Administration Senators could not answer and dared not leave unanswered.

On the 18th of December, Conkling introduced a resolution directing the Committee on Investigation and Retrenchment to make an inquiry into the Leet and Stocking scandal. This resolution was preceded by a preamble quoting the words of Schurz as a reason for making the inquiry, in the following form:

Whereas it has been declared in the Senate that at the port of New York there exists and is maintained by officers of the United States under the name of the "General Order business" a monstrous abuse fraudulent in character, and whereas the following statement has been made by a Senator: "It was intimated by some of the witnesses that Mr. Leet, who pockets the enormous profits arising from that business, had some connection with the White House; but General Porter was examined, Mr. Leet himself was examined, and they both testified that it was not so, and, counting the number of witnesses, we have no right to form a different conclusion. But the fact remains that this scandalous system of robbery is sustained--is sustained against the voice of the merchants of New York--is sustained against the judgment and the voice of the Secretary of the Treasury himself. I ask you how is it sustained? Where and what is the mysterious power that sustains it? The conclusion is inevitable that it is stronger than decent respect for public opinion, nay, a power stronger than the Secretary of the Treasury himself":