A livelier and more variegated omnium-gatherum was never assembled.
They had already begun to straggle in when I arrived. There were
long-haired and spectacled doctrinaires from New England, spliced by
short-haired and stumpy emissaries from New York—mostly friends of
Horace Greeley, as it turned out. There were brisk Westerners from
Chicago and St. Louis. If Whitelaw Reid, who had come as Greeley’s
personal representative, had his retinue, so had Horace White and Carl
Schurz. There were a few rather overdressed persons from New Orleans
brought up by Governor Warmouth, and a motely array of Southerners of
every sort, who were ready to clutch at any straw that promised relief
to intolerable conditions. The full contingent of Washington
correspondents was there, of course, with sharpened eyes and pens to
make the most of what they had already begun to christen a conclave of
cranks.
Bowles and Halstead met me at the station, and we drove to the St.
Nicholas Hotel, where Schurz and White were awaiting us. Then and there
was organized a fellowship which in the succeeding campaign cut a
considerable figure and went by the name of the Quadrilateral. We
resolved to limit the Presidential nominations of the convention to
Charles Francis Adams, Bowles’ candidate, and Lyman Trumbull, White’s
candidate, omitting altogether, because of specific reasons urged by
White, the candidacy of B. Gratz Brown, who because of his Kentucky
connections had better suited my purpose.
The very next day the secret was abroad, and Whitelaw Reid came to me
to ask why in a newspaper combine of this sort the New York Tribune had
been left out.
To my mind it seemed preposterous that it had been or should be, and I
stated as much to my new colleagues. They offered objection which to me
appeared perverse if not childish. They did not like Reid, to begin
with. He was not a principal like the rest of us, but a subordinate.
Greeley was this, that and the other. He could never be relied upon in
any coherent practical plan of campaign. To talk about him as a
candidate was ridiculous.
I listened rather impatiently and finally I said: “Now, gentlemen, in
this movement we shall need the New York Tribune. If we admit Reid we
clinch it. You will all agree that Greeley has no chance of a
nomination, and so by taking him in we both eat our cake and have it.”
On this view of the case Reid was invited to join us, and that very
night he sat with us at the St. Nicholas, where from night to night
until the end we convened and went over the performances and
developments of the day and concerted plans for the morrow.
As I recall these symposiums some amusing and some plaintive memories
rise before me.
The first serious business that engaged us was the killing of the boom
for Judge David Davis, of the Supreme Court, which was assuming
definite and formidable proportions. The preceding winter it had been
incubating at Washington under the ministration of some of the most
astute politicians of the time, mainly, however, Democratic members of
Congress.
A party of these had brought it to Cincinnati, opening headquarters
well provided with the requisite commissaries. Every delegate who came
in that could be reached was laid hold of and conducted to Davis’
headquarters.
We considered it flat burglary. It was a gross infringement upon our
copyrights. What business had the professional politicians with a great
reform movement? The influence and dignity of journalism were at stake.
The press was imperilled. We, its custodians, could brook no such
deflection, not to say defiance, from intermeddling office seekers,
especially from broken-down Democratic office seekers.
The inner sanctuary of our proceedings was a common drawing-room
between two bedchambers, occupied by Schurz and myself. Here we
repaired after supper to smoke the pipe of fraternity and reform, and
to save the country. What might be done to kill off “D. Davis,” as we
irreverently called the eminent and learned jurist, the friend of
Lincoln and the only aspirant having a “bar’l”? That was the question.
We addressed ourselves to the task with earnest purpose, but
characteristically. The power of the press must be invoked. It was our
chief if not our only weapon. Seated at the same table each of us
indited a leading editorial for his paper, to be wired to its
destination and printed next morning, striking D. Davis at a
prearranged and varying angle. Copies of these were made for Halstead,
who having with the rest of us read and compared the different scrolls
indited one of his own in general commentation and review for
Cincinnati consumption. In next day’s Commercial, blazing under vivid
headlines, these leading editorials, dated “Chicago” and “New York,”
“Springfield, Mass.,” and “Louisville, Ky.,” appeared with the
explaining line “The Tribune of to-morrow morning will say—” “The
Courier-Journal”—and the Republican—will say to-morrow morning—”
Wondrous consensus of public opinion! The Davis boom went down before
it. The Davis boomers were paralyzed. The earth seemed to have risen
and hit them midships. The incoming delegates were arrested and
forewarned. Six months of adroit scheming was set at naught, and little
more was heard of “D. Davis.”
We were, like the Mousquetaires, equally in for fighting and
foot-racing, the point with us being to get there, no matter how; the
end—the defeat of the rascally machine politicians and the reform of
the public service—justifying the means. I am writing this nearly fifty
years after the event and must be forgiven the fling of my wisdom at my
own expense and that of my associates in harmless crime.
Some ten years ago I wrote: “Reid and White and I the sole survivors;
Reid a great Ambassador, White and I the virtuous ones, still able to
sit up and take notice, with three meals a day for which we are
thankful and able to pay; no one of us recalcitrant. We were wholly
serious—maybe a trifle visionary, but as upright and patriotic in our
intentions and as loyal to our engagements as it was possible for older
and maybe better men to be. For my part I must say that if I have never
anything on my conscience worse than the massacre of that not very
edifying yet promising combine I shall be troubled by no remorse, but
to the end shall sleep soundly and well.”
Alas, I am not the sole survivor. In this connection an amusing
incident throwing some light upon the period thrusts itself upon my
memory. The Quadrilateral, including Reid, had just finished its
consolidation of public opinion before related, when the cards of Judge
Craddock, chairman of the Kentucky Democratic Committee, and of Col.
Stoddard Johnston, editor of the Frankfort Yeoman, the organ of the
Kentucky Democracy, were brought from below. They had come to look
after me—that was evident. By no chance could they find me in more
equivocal company. In addition to ourselves—bad enough, from the
Kentucky point of view—Theodore Tilton, Donn Piatt and David A. Wells
were in the room.
When the Kentuckians crossed the threshold and were presented seriatim
the face of each was a study. Even a proper and immediate application
of whisky and water did not suffice to restore their lost equilibrium
and bring them to their usual state of convivial self-possession.
Colonel Johnston told me years after that when they went away they
walked in silence a block or two, when the old judge, a model of the
learned and sedate school of Kentucky politicians and jurists, turned
to him and said: “It is no use, Stoddart, we cannot keep up with that
young man or with these times. ‘Lord, now lettest thou thy servant
depart in peace!’”