RECONSTRUCTION UNDER GRANT.
Before the conventions to nominate candidates for the Presidency met in
1868, I had much intercourse with General Grant, and found him ever
modest and determined to steer clear of politics, or at least not permit
himself to be used by partisans; and I have no doubt that he was
sincere. But the Radical Satan took him up to the high places and
promised him dominion over all in view. Perhaps none but a divine being
can resist such temptation. He accepted the nomination from the
Radicals, and was elected; and though I received friendly messages from
him, I did not see him until near the close of his first administration.
As ignorant of civil government as of the characters on the Moabitish
stone, President Grant begun badly, and went from bad to worse. The
appointments to office that he made, the associates whom he gathered
around him, were astounding. All his own relatives, all his wife's
relatives, all the relatives of these relatives, to the remotest
cousinhood, were quartered on the public treasury. Never, since King
Jamie crossed the Tweed with the hungry Scotch nation at his heels, has
the like been seen; and the soul of old Newcastle, greatest of English
nepotists, must have turned green with envy. The influence of this on
the public was most disastrous. Already shortened by the war, the
standard of morality, honesty, and right was buried out of sight.
For two or three years I was much in the North, and especially in New
York, where I had dear friends. The war had afforded opportunity and
stimulated appetite for reckless speculation. Vast fortunes had been
acquired by new men, destitute of manners, taste, or principles. The
vulgar insolence of wealth held complete possession of public places and
carried by storm the citadels of society. Indeed, society disappeared.
As in the middle ages, to escape pollution, honorable men and refined
women (and there are many such in the North) fled to sanctuary and
desert, or, like early Christians in the catacombs, met secretly and in
fear. The masses sank into a condition that would disgrace Australian
natives, and lost all power of discrimination.
The Vice-President of the United States accepted bribes, and perjured
himself in vain to escape exposure. President Grant wrote him a letter
to assure him of his continued esteem and confidence, and this
Vice-President has since lectured before "Young Men's Christian
Associations." Plunderings by members of the Congress excited no
attention so long as they were confined to individuals or corporations.
It was only when they voted themselves money out of taxes paid by the
people, that these last growled and frightened some of the statesmen
into returning it. A banker, the pet of the Government, holding the same
especial relation to it that the Bank of England held to William of
Orange, discovered that "a great national debt was a blessing," and was
commended and rewarded therefor. With a palace on the shores of the
Delaware, this banker owned a summer retreat on a lovely isle amid the
waters of Lake Erie. A pious man, he filled this with many divines, who
blessed all his enterprises. He contributed largely, too, to the support
of an influential Christian journal to aid in disseminating truth to
Jew, Gentile, and heathen. The divines and the Christian journal were
employed to persuade widows and weak men to purchase his rotten
securities, as things too righteous to occasion loss.
The most eloquent preacher in the land, of a race devoted to adoration
of negroes, as Hannibal to hatred of Rome, compromised the wife of a
member of his congregation. Discovered by the husband, he groveled
before him in humiliation as before "his God" (his own expression).
Brought before the public, he swore that he was innocent, and denied the
meaning of his own written words. The scandal endured for months and
gave an opportunity to the metropolitan journals to display their
enterprise by furnishing daily and minute reports of all details to
their readers. The influence of the preacher was increased by this. His
congregation flocked to him as the Anabaptists to John of Leyden, and
shopkeepers profitably advertised their wares by doubling their
subscriptions to augment his salary. Far from concealing this wound
inflicted on his domestic honor, the injured husband proclaimed it from
the housetops, clothed himself in it as in a robe of price, and has
successfully used it to become a popular lecturer.
To represent the country at the capital of an ancient monarchy, a man
was selected whom, it is no abuse of language to declare, Titus Oates
after his release from the pillory would have blushed to recognize. On
the eve of his departure, as one may learn from the newspapers of the
day, all that was richest and best in New York gathered around a banquet
in his honor, congratulated the country to which he was accredited, and
lamented the misfortune of their own that it would be deprived, even
temporarily, of such virtue. Another was sent to an empire which is
assured by our oft-succeeding envoys that it is the object of our
particular affection. To the aristocracy of the realm this genial person
taught the favorite game of the mighty West. A man of broad views,
feeling that diplomatic attentions were due to commons as well as to
crown and nobles, he occasionally withdrew himself from the social
pleasures of the "West End" to inform the stags of Capel Court of the
value of American mines. Benefactors are ever misjudged. Aristocracy and
the many-antlered have since united to defame him; but Galileo in the
dungeon, Pascal by his solitary lamp, More, Sidney, and Russell on the
scaffold, will console him; and in the broad bosom of his native Ohio he
has found the exception to the rule that prophets are not without honor
but in their own country.
The years of Methuselah and the pen of Juvenal would not suffice to
exhaust the list, or depict the benighted state into which we had
fallen; but it can be asserted of the popular idols of the day that
unveiled, they resemble Mokanna, and can each exclaim:
"Here, judge if hell, with all its power to damn,
Can add one curse to the foul thing I am!"
The examples of thousands of pure and upright people in the North were
as powerless to mitigate the general corruption as song of seraphim to
purify the orgies of harlots and burglars; for they were not in harmony
with the brutal passions of the masses.
In Boston, July, 1872, as co-trustees of the fund left by the late Mr.
Peabody for the education of the poor in the Southern States, President
Grant and I met for the first time since he had accepted the nomination
from the Radical party. He was a candidate for reelection, and much
worshiped; and, though cordial with me, his general manner had something
of "I am the State." Stopping at the same inn, he passed an evening in
my room, to which he came alone; and there, avoiding public affairs, we
smoked and chatted about the Nueces, Rio Grande, Palo Alto, etc.--things
twenty-five years agone, when we were youngsters beginning life. He was
reelected in November by a large majority of electoral votes; but the
people of Louisiana elected a Democratic Governor and Assembly. When, in
January following, the time of meeting of the Assembly arrived, the
country, habituated as it was to violent methods, was startled by the
succeeding occurrences.
The night before the Assembly was to meet, the Federal Judge in the city
of New Orleans, a drunken reprobate, obtained from the commander of the
United States troops a portion of his force, and stationed it in the
State House. In the morning the members elect were refused admittance,
and others not elected, many not even candidates during the election,
were allowed to enter. One Packard, Marshal of the Federal Court, a
bitter partisan and worthy adjunct of such a judge, had provided for an
Assembly to suit himself by giving tickets to his friends, whom the
soldiers passed in, excluding the elected members. The ring-streaked,
spotted, and speckled among the cattle and goats, and the brown among
the sheep, were turned into the supplanters' folds, which were filled
with lowing herds and bleating flocks, while Laban had neither horn nor
hoof. There was not a solitary return produced in favor of this Packard
body, nor of the Governor subsequently installed; but the Radicals
asserted that their friends would have been elected had the people voted
as they wished, for every negro and some whites in the State upheld
their party. By this time the charming credulity of the negroes had
abated, and they answered the statement that slave-drivers were
murdering their race in adjacent regions by saying that slave-drivers,
at least, did not tell them lies nor steal their money.
All the whites and many of the blacks in Louisiana felt themselves
cruelly wronged by the action of the Federal authorities. Two Assemblies
were in session and two Governors claiming power in New Orleans.
Excitement was intense, business arrested, and collision between the
parties imminent. As the Packard faction was supported by Federal
troops, the situation looked grave, and a number of worthy people urged
me to go to Washington, where my personal relations with the President
might secure me access to him. It was by no means a desirable mission,
but duty seemed to require me to undertake it.
Accompanied by Thomas F. Bayard, Senator from Delaware, my first step in
Washington was to call on the leader of the Radicals in the Senate,
Morton of Indiana, when a long conversation ensued, from which I derived
no encouragement. Senator Morton was the Couthon of his party, and this
single interview prepared me for one of his dying utterances to warn the
country against the insidious efforts of slave-driving rebels to regain
influence in the Government. The author of the natural history of
Ireland would doubtless have welcomed one specimen, by describing which
he could have filled out a chapter on snakes; and there is temptation to
dwell on the character of Senator Morton as one of the few Radical
leaders who kept his hands clean of plunder. But it may be observed that
one absorbing passion excludes all others from the human heart; and the
small portion of his being in which disease had left vitality was set on
vengeance. Death has recently clutched him, and would not be denied;
and he is bewailed throughout the land as though he had possessed the
knightly tenderness of Sir Philip Sidney and the lofty patriotism of
Chatham.
The President received me pleasantly, gave much time to the Louisiana
difficulty, and, in order to afford himself opportunity for full
information, asked me frequently to dine with his immediate family,
composed of kindly, worthy people. I also received attention and
hospitality from some members of his Cabinet, who with him seemed
desirous to find a remedy for the wrong. More especially was this true
of the Secretary of State, Hamilton Fish, with whom and whose refined
family I had an acquaintance. Of a distinguished Revolutionary race,
possessor of a good estate, and with charming, cultivated surroundings,
this gentleman seemed the Noah of the political world. Perhaps his
retention in the Cabinet was due to a belief that, under the new and
milder dispensation, the presence of one righteous man might avert the
doom of Gomorrah. An exception existed in the person of the
Attorney-General, a man, as eminent barristers declare, ignorant of law
and self-willed and vulgar. For some reason he had much influence with
the President, who later appointed him Chief Justice of the United
States; but the Senatorial gorge, indelicate as it had proved, rose at
this, as the easy-shaving barber's did at the coal-heaver, and rejected
him.
Weeks elapsed, during which I felt hopeful from the earnestness
manifested in my mission by the President and several of his Cabinet.
Parties were in hostile array in New Orleans, but my friends were
restrained by daily reports of the situation at Washington. Only my
opinion that there was some ground for hope could be forwarded.
Conversations at dinner tables or in private interviews with the
Executive and his advisers could not, then or since, be repeated; and
this of necessity gave room for misconstruction, as will appear. At
length, on the day before the Congress was by law to adjourn, the
President sent a message to the Senate, informing that body that, in the
event the Congress failed to take action on the Louisiana matter, he
should esteem it his duty to uphold the Government created by the
Federal Judge. I left Washington at once, and did not revisit it for
nearly four years.
I believe that President Grant was sincere with me, and went as far as
he felt it safe. No doubt the Senatorial hyenas brought him to
understand these unspoken words: "We have supported your acts, confirmed
your appointments, protected and whitewashed your friends; but there are
bones which we can not give up without showing our teeth, and Louisiana
is one of them."
The failure to obtain relief for the State of my birth, and whose soil
covered the remains of all most dear, was sad enough, and the attempt
had involved much unpleasant work; but I had my reward. Downfall of
hope, long sustained, was bitter to the people, especially to the
leaders expectant of office; and I became an object of distrust.
"Nothing succeeds like success," and nothing fails like failure, and the
world is quite right to denounce it. The British Ministry shot an
admiral for failing to relieve Minorca--to encourage others, as Voltaire
remarked. Byng died silent, without plaint, which was best. The drunken
Federal Judge, author of the outrages, was universally condemned, with
one exception, of which more anon. Both branches of the Congress,
controlled by Radicals, pronounced his conduct to have been illegal and
unjust, and he was driven from the bench with articles of impeachment
hanging over him. Nevertheless, the Government evolved from his
unjudicial consciousness was upheld by President Grant with Federal
bayonets.
Two years later the people of Louisiana elected an Assembly, a majority
of whose members were opposed to the fraudulent Governor, Kellogg. The
President sent United States soldiers into the halls of the Assembly to
expel members at the point of the bayonet. Lieutenant-General Sheridan,
the military maid of all (such) work, came especially to superintend
this business, and it was now that he expressed the desire to
exterminate "banditti." The destruction of buildings and food in the
Valley of Virginia, to the confusion of the crows, was his Salamanca;
but this was his Waterloo, and great was the fame of the
Lieutenant-General of the Radicals.
This _Governor_ Kellogg is the Senator recently seated, of whom mention
has been made, and, if a lesser quantity than zero be conceivable, with
a worse title to the office than he had to that of Governor of
Louisiana. So far as known, he is a commonplace rogue; but his party has
always rallied to his support, as the "Tenth Legion" to its eagles.
Indeed, it is difficult to understand the qualities or objects that
enlist the devotion and compel the worship of humanity. Travelers in the
Orient tell of majestic fanes, whose mighty walls and countless columns
are rich with elaborate carvings. Hall succeeds hall, each more
beautifully wrought than the other, until the innermost, the holy of
holies, is reached, and there is found enshrined--a shriveled ape.
The sole exception referred to in the case of the drunken Federal Judge
was a lawyer of small repute, who had been Democratic in his political
tendencies. Languishing in obscurity, he saw and seized his opportunity,
and rushed into print in defense of the Judge and in commendation of the
President for upholding such judicial action. It is of record that this
lawyer, in the society of some men of letters, declared Dante to be the
author of the Decameron; but one may be ignorant of the Italian poets
and thoroughly read in French memoirs. During the war of the Spanish
succession, the Duke of Vendome, filthiest of generals, not excepting
Suvaroff, commanded the French army in Italy. To negotiate protection
for their States, the Italian princes sent agents to Vendome; but the
agents sent by the Duke of Parma were so insulted by the bestialities of
the French commander as to go back to their master without negotiating,
and no decent man would consent to return. A starving little abbe
volunteered for the service, and, possessing a special aptitude for
baseness, succeeded in his mission. Thus Alberoni, afterward Cardinal
and Prime Minister of Spain, got his foot on the first rung of the
ladder of fame. The details of the story are too gross to repeat, and
the Memoirs of the Duke of St. Simon must be consulted for them; but
our lawyer assuredly had read them. Many may imitate Homer, however
feebly; one genius originated his epics.
Having entered on this lofty career, our Alberoni stuck to it with the
tenacity of a ferret in pursuit of rabbits, and was rewarded, though not
at the time nor to the extent he had reason to expect. The mission to
England was promised him by the reigning powers, when, on the very eve
of securing his prize, a stick was put in the wheels of his progress,
and by a brother's hand. Another legal personage, practicing at the same
bar, that of New York, and a friend, did the deed. "Chloe was false,
Chloe was common, but constant while possessed"; but here Chloe was
without the last quality. In 1868, General Grant's election pending,
Chloe was affiliated with the Democratic party, and had been chosen one
of the captains of its citadel, a sachem of Tammany. Scenting success
for Grant, with the keenness of the vulture for his prey, he attended a
Radical meeting and announced his intention to give twenty thousand
dollars to the Radical election fund. This sum appears to have been the
market value of a seat in the Cabinet, to which ultimately he was
called. When the English mission became vacant by the resignation of the
incumbent, disgusted by British ingratitude, Chloe quitted the Cabinet
to take it, and Alberoni was left wearing weeds. Yet much allowance is
due to family affection, the foundation of social organization.
Descended from a noble stock, though under a somewhat different name,
Chloe from mystic sources learned that his English relatives pined for
his society, and devotion to family ties tempted him to betray his
friend. Subsequently Alberoni was appointed to a more northern country,
where he may find congenial society; for, in a despotism tempered only
by assassination, the knees of all become pliant before power.
It is pleasant to mark the early steps of nascent ambition. In the time
of the great Napoleon every conscript carried the baton of a marshal in
his knapsack; and in our happy land every rogue may be said to have an
appointment to office in his pocket. This is also pleasant.
Since the spring of 1873, when he gave himself up to the worst elements
of his party, I have not seen President Grant; but his career suggests
some curious reflections to one who has known him for thirty-odd years.
What the waiting-woman promised in jest, Dame Fortune has seriously
bestowed on this Malvolio, and his political cross-garterings not only
find favor with the Radical Olivia, but are admired by the Sir Tobys of
the European world. Indeed, Fortune has conceits as quaint as those of
Haroun al-Raschid. The beggar, from profound sleep, awoke in the
Caliph's bed. Amazed and frightened by his surroundings, he slowly
gained composure as courtier after courtier entered, bowing low, to
proclaim him King of kings, Light of the World, Commander of the
Faithful; and he speedily came to believe that the present had always
existed, while the real past was an idle dream. Of a nature kindly and
modest, President Grant was assured by all about him that he was the
delight of the Radicals, greatest captain of the age, and saviour of the
nation's life. It was inevitable that he should begin by believing some
of this, and end by believing it all. Though he had wasted but little
time on books since leaving West Point, where in his day the curriculum
was limited, he had found out to the last shilling the various sums
voted by Parliament to the Duke of Wellington, and spoke of them in a
manner indicating his opinion that he was another example of the
ingratitude of republics. The gentle temper and sense of justice of
Othello resisted the insidious wiles of Iago; but ignorance and
inexperience yielded in the end to malignity and craft. President Grant
was brought not only to smother the Desdemona of his early preferences
and intentions, but to feel no remorse for the deed, and take to his
bosom the harridan of radicalism. As Phalaris did those of Agrigentum
opposed to his rule, he finished by hating Southerners and Democrats.
During the struggle for the Presidency in the autumn of 1876, he
permitted a member of his Cabinet, the Secretary of the Interior, to
become the manager of the Radicals and use all the power of his office,
established for the public service, to promote the success of his
party's candidate.
Monsieur Fourtou, Minister of the Interior, removed prefects and mayors
to strengthen the power of De Broglie; whereupon all the newspapers in
our land published long essays to show and lament the ignorance of the
French and their want of experience in republican methods. One might
suppose these articles to have been written by the "seven sleepers," so
forgetful were they of yesterday's occurrences at home; but beams near
at hand are ever blinked in our search of distant motes. The election
over, but the result in dispute, President Grant, in Philadelphia,
alarmed thoughtful people by declaring that "no man could take the great
office of President upon whose title thereto the faintest shadow of
doubt rested," and then, with all the power of the Government,
successfully led the search for this non-existing person. To insure
fairness in the count, so that none could carp, he requested eminent
statesmen to visit South Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana, the electoral
votes of which were claimed by both parties; but the statesmen were,
without exception, the bitterest and most unscrupulous partisans,
personally interested in securing victory for their candidate, and have
since received their hire. Soldiers were quartered in the capitals of
the three States to aid the equitable statesmen in reaching a correct
result by applying the bayonet if the figures proved refractory. With
equity and force at work, the country might confidently expect justice;
and justice was done--that justice ever accorded by unscrupulous power
to weakness.
But one House of the Congress was controlled by the Democrats, and
these, Herod-like, were seeking to slay the child, the Nation. To guard
against this, President Grant ordered other troops to Washington and a
ship of war to be anchored in the Potomac, and the child was preserved.
Again, the 4th of March, appointed by law for the installation of
Presidents, fell on Sunday. President Grant is of Scotch descent, and
doubtless learned in the traditions of the land o' cakes. The example of
Kirkpatrick at Dumfries taught him that it was wise to "mak sicker"; so
the incoming man and the Chief Justice were smuggled into the White
House on the sabbath day, and the oath of office was administered. If
the chair of George Washington was to be filched, it were best done
under cover. The value of the loot inspired caution.
In Paris, at a banquet, Maitre Gambetta recently toasted our
ex-President "as the great commander who had sacredly obeyed and
preserved his country's laws." Whether this was said in irony or
ignorance, had General Grant taken with him to Paris his late Secretary
of the Interior, the accomplished Z. Chandler, the pair might have
furnished suggestions to Marshal MacMahon and Fourtou that would have
changed the dulcet strains of Maitre Gambetta into dismal howls.