Mrs. Clay, of Alabama, in her “Belle of the Fifties” has given a
graphic picture of life in the national capital during the
administrations of Pierce and Buchanan. The South was very much in the
saddle. Pierce, as I have said, was Southern in temperament, and
Buchanan, who to those he did not like or approve had, as Arnold Harris
said, “a winning way of making himself hateful,” was an aristocrat
under Southern and feminine influence.
I was fond of Mr. Pierce, but I could never endure Mr. Buchanan. His
very voice gave offense to me. Directed by a periodical publication to
make a sketch of him to accompany an engraving, I did my best on it.
Jacob Thompson, the Secretary of the Interior, said to me: “Now, Henry,
here’s your chance for a foreign appointment.”
I now know that my writing was clumsy enough and my attempt to play the
courtier clumsier still. Nevertheless, as a friend of my father and
mother “Old Buck” might have been a little more considerate than he was
with a lad trying to please and do him honor. I came away from the
White House my _amour propre_ wounded, and though I had not far to go
went straight into the Douglas camp.
Taking nearly sixty years to think it over I have reached the
conclusion that Mr. Buchanan was the victim of both personal and
historic injustice. With secession in sight his one aim was to get out
of the White House before the scrap began. He was of course on terms of
intimacy with all the secession leaders, especially Mr. Slidell, of
Louisiana, like himself a Northerner by birth, and Mr. Mason, a
thick-skulled, ruffle-shirted Virginian. It was not in him or in Mr.
Pierce, with their antecedents and associations, to be uncompromising
Federalists. There was no clear law to go on. Moderate men were in a
muck of doubt just what to do. With Horace Greeley Mr. Buchanan was
ready to say “Let the erring sisters go.” This indeed was the extent of
Mr. Pierce’s pacifism during the War of Sections.
A new party risen upon the remains of the Whig Party—the Republican
Party—was at the door and coming into power. Lifelong pro-slavery
Democrats could not look on with equanimity, still less with
complaisance, and doubtless Pierce and Buchanan to the end of their
days thought less of the Republicans than of the Confederates. As a
consequence Republican writers have given quarter to neither of them.
It will not do to go too deeply into the account of those days. The
times were out of joint. I knew of two Confederate generals who first
tried for commissions in the Union Army; gallant and good fellows too;
but they are both dead and their secret shall die with me. I knew
likewise a famous Union general who was about to resign his commission
in the army to go with the South but was prevented by his wife, a
Northern woman, who had obtained of Mr. Lincoln a brigadier’s
commission.
V
In 1858 a wonderful affair came to pass. It was Mrs. Senator Gwin’s
fancy dress ball, written of, talked of, far and wide. I did not get to
attend this. My costume was prepared—a Spanish cavalier, Mrs. Casneau’s
doing—when I fell ill and had with bitter disappointment to read about
it next day in the papers. I was living at Willard’s Hotel, and one of
my volunteer nurses was Mrs. Daniel E. Sickles, a pretty young thing
who was soon to become the victim of a murder and world scandal. Her
husband was a member of the House from New York, and during his
frequent absences I used to take her to dinner. Mr. Sickles had been
Mr. Buchanan’s Secretary of Legation in London, and both she and he
were at home in the White House.
She was an innocent child. She never knew what she was doing, and when
a year later Sickles, having killed her seducer—a handsome,
unscrupulous fellow who understood how to take advantage of a husband’s
neglect—forgave her and brought her home in the face of much obloquy,
in my heart of hearts I did homage to his courage and generosity, for
she was then as he and I both knew a dying woman. She did die but a few
months later. He was by no means a politician after my fancy or
approval, but to the end of his days I was his friend and could never
bring myself to join in the repeated public outcries against him.
Early in the fifties Willard’s Hotel became a kind of headquarters for
the two political extremes. During a long time their social intercourse
was unrestrained—often joyous. They were too far apart, figuratively
speaking, to come to blows. Truth to say, their aims were after all not
so far apart. They played to one another’s lead. Many a time have I
seen Keitt, of South Carolina, and Burlingame, of Massachusetts, hobnob
in the liveliest manner and most public places.
It is certainly true that Brooks was not himself when he attacked
Sumner. The Northern radicals were wont to say, “Let the South go,” the
more profane among them interjecting “to hell!” The Secessionists liked
to prod the New Englanders with what the South was going to do when
they got to Boston. None of them really meant it—not even Toombs when
he talked about calling the muster roll of his slaves beneath Bunker
Hill Monument; nor Hammond, the son of a New England schoolmaster, when
he spoke of the “mudsills of the North,” meaning to illustrate what he
was saying by the underpinning of a house built on marshy ground, and
not the Northern work people.
Toombs, who was a rich man, not quite impoverished by the war, banished
himself in Europe for a number of years. At length he came home, and
passing the White House at Washington he called and sent his card to
the President. General Grant, the most genial and generous of men, had
him come directly up.
[Illustration: W. P. Hardee, Lieutenant General C.S.A.]
“Mr. President,” said Toombs, “in my European migrations I have made it
a rule when arriving in a city to call first and pay my respects to the
Chief of Police.”
The result was a most agreeable hour and an invitation to dinner. Not
long after this at the hospitable board of a Confederate general, then
an American senator, Toombs began to prod Lamar about his speech in the
House upon the occasion of the death of Charles Sumner. Lamar was not
quick to quarrel, though when aroused a man of devilish temper and
courage. The subject had become distasteful to him. He was growing
obviously restive under Toombs’ banter. The ladies of the household
apprehending what was coming left the table.
Then Lamar broke forth. He put Toombs’ visit to Grant, “crawling at the
seat of power,” against his eulogy of a dead enemy. I have never heard
such a scoring from one man to another. It was magisterial in its
dignity, deadly in its diction. Nothing short of a duel could have
settled it in the olden time. But when Lamar, white with rage, had
finished, Toombs without a ruffle said, “Lamar, you surprise me,” and
the host, with the rest of us, took it as a signal to rise from table
and rejoin the ladies in the drawing-room. Of course nothing came of
it.
Toombs was as much a humorist as an extremist. I have ridden with him
under fire and heard him crack jokes with Minié balls flying
uncomfortably about. Some one spoke kindly of him to old Ben Wade.
“Yes, yes,” said Wade; “I never did believe in the doctrine of total
depravity.”
But I am running ahead in advance of events.