LINCOLN AND HIS SUCCESSORS
And so we have come down through the years to Abraham Lincoln--that
patient and gentle man whose memory ranks with Washington's as America's
priceless heritage. A blessing and an inspiration--a mystery, too; an
enigma among men, lonely and impressive; not fully understood nor
understandable to the depths of that great heart of his; not fully
explainable, for what strange power was it lifted that ignorant,
ill-bred, uncouth, backwoods boy to a station among the stars?
Seldom has any man who started so low mounted so high. Abraham Lincoln's
early life was of the most miserable description. His father, Thomas
Lincoln, was a worthless rover; his mother, Nancy Hanks, was of a "poor
white" Virginia family with an unenviable record. His birthplace was a
squalid log cabin in Washington County, Kentucky. His surroundings were
such as are commonly encountered in a coarse, low, ignorant,
poverty-stricken family. His father was at the very bottom of the social
scale, so ignorant he could scarcely write his name. His mother
inherited the shiftlessness and carelessness which is part and parcel of
"poor white." These things are incontestable, they must be looked in
the face. And yet, in spite of them, in spite of such a handicap as few
other great men even approximated, Abraham Lincoln emerged to be the
leader of a race.
In 1816, Thomas Lincoln decided he would remove to Indiana. Abraham was
at that time seven years old, and for a year after the removal, the
family lived in what was called a "half-faced camp," fourteen feet
square--that is to say, a covered shed of three sides, the fourth side
being open to the weather. Then the family achieved the luxury of a
cabin, but a cabin without floor or door or window. Amid this
wretchedness, Lincoln's mother died, and was laid away in a rough coffin
of slabs at the edge of the little clearing. Three months later, a
passing preacher read the funeral service above the grave.
Thomas Lincoln soon married again and, strangely enough, made a wise
choice, for his new wife not only possessed furniture enough to fill a
four-horse wagon, but, what was of more importance, was endowed with a
thrifty and industrious temperament. That she should have consented to
marry the ne'er-do-well is a mystery; perhaps he was not without his
redeeming virtues, after all. She made him put a floor and windows in
his cabin, and she was a better mother to his children than their real
one had ever been. For the first time, young Abraham got some idea of
the comforts and decencies of life, and, as his step-mother put it,
"began to look a little human." He was not an attractive object, even at
best, for he was lanky and clumsy, with great hands and feet, and a
skin prematurely wrinkled and shrivelled. By the time he was seventeen,
he was six feet tall, and he soon added two more inches to his stature.
Needless to say, his clothes never caught up with him, but were always
too small.
His schooling was of the most meagre description; in fact, in his whole
life, he went to school less than one year. Yet there soon awakened
within the boy a trace of unusual spirit. He actually liked to read. He
saw few books, but such as he could lay his hands on, he read over and
over. That one fact alone set him apart at once from the other boys of
his class. To them reading was an irksome labor.
All this reading had its effect. He acquired a vocabulary. That is to
say, instead of the few hundred words which were all the other boys knew
by which to express their thoughts, he soon had twice as many; besides
that, he soon got a reputation as a wit and story-teller, and his
command of words made him fond of speechmaking. He resembled most boys
in liking to "show off." He had learned, too, that there were comforts
in the world which he need never look for in his father's house, and so,
as soon as he was of age, he left that unattractive dwelling-place and
struck out for himself, making a livelihood in various ways--by
splitting rails, running a river boat, managing a store, enlisting for
the Black Hawk war--doing anything, in a word, that came to hand and
would serve to put a little money in his pocket. He came to know a great
many people and so, in 1832, he proclaimed himself a candidate for the
state legislature for Sangamon County, Illinois, where he had made his
home for some years. No doubt to most people, his candidacy must have
seemed in the nature of a joke, and though he stumped the county
thoroughly and entertained the crowds with his stories and flashes of
wit, he was defeated at the polls.
That episode ended, he returned to store-keeping; but he had come to see
that the law was the surest road to political preferment, and so he
spent such leisure as he had in study, and in 1836 was admitted to the
bar. As has been remarked before, the requirements for admission were
anything but prohibitory, most lawyers sharing the oft-quoted opinion of
Patrick Henry that the only way to learn law was to practise it. Lincoln
decided to establish himself at Springfield, opened an office there, and
for the next twenty years, practised law with considerable success,
riding from one court to another, and gradually extending his circle of
acquaintances. He even became prosperous enough to marry, and in 1842,
after a courtship of the most peculiar description, married a Miss Mary
Todd--a young woman somewhat above him in social station, and possessed
of a sharp tongue and uncertain temper which often tried him severely.
It was inevitable, of course, that he should become interested again in
politics, and he threw in his fortunes with the Whig Party, serving two
or three terms in the state legislature and one in Congress. All of this
did much to temper and chasten his native coarseness and uncouthness,
but he was still just an average lawyer and politician, with no evidence
of greatness about him, and many evidences of commonness. Then,
suddenly, in 1858, he stood forth as a national figure, in a contest
with one of the most noteworthy men in public life, Stephen A. Douglas.
Douglas was an aggressive, tireless and brilliant political leader, the
acknowledged head of the Democratic party, and had represented Illinois
in the Senate for many years. He had a great ambition to be President,
had missed the nomination in 1852 and 1856, but was determined to secure
it in 1860, and was carefully building to that end. His term as senator
expired in 1858, and his re-election seemed essential to his success. Of
his re-election he had no doubt, for Illinois had always been a
Democratic state, though it was becoming somewhat divided in opinion.
The southern part was largely pro-slavery, but the northern part,
including the rapidly-growing city of Chicago, was inclined the other
way. This division of opinion made Douglas's part an increasingly
difficult one, for pro-slave and anti-slave sentiment were as
irreconcilable as fire and water.
Lincoln, meanwhile, had been active in the formation of the new
Republican party in the state, had made a number of strong speeches,
and, on June 16, 1858, the Republican convention resolved that: "Hon.
Abraham Lincoln is our first and only choice for United States senator
to fill the vacancy about to be created by the expiration of Mr.
Douglas's term of office." A month later, Lincoln challenged Douglas to
a series of joint debates. Douglas at once accepted, never doubting his
ability to overwhelm his obscure opponent, and the famous duel began
which was to rivet national attention and give Lincoln a national
prominence.
The challenge on Lincoln's part was a piece of superb generalship. In
such a contest, he had everything to gain and nothing to lose. Whatever
the result, the fact that he had crossed swords with so renowned a man
as Stephen A. Douglas would give him a kind of reflected glory. But in
addition to that, he had the better side of the question. His course was
simple; he was seeking the support of anti-slavery people; Douglas's
task was much more complex, for he wished to offend neither northern nor
southern Democrats, and he soon found himself offending both. To carry
water on both shoulders is always a risky thing to attempt, and Douglas
soon found himself fettered by the awkward position he was forced to
maintain; while Lincoln, free from any such handicap, could strike with
all his strength.
His stand from the first was a bold one--so bold that many of his
followers regarded it with consternation and disapproval. In his speech
accepting the nomination, he had said, "I believe this government cannot
endure permanently half slave and half free. It will become all one
thing or all the other," and he pursued this line of argument in the
debates alleging that the purpose of the pro-slavery men was to make
slavery perpetual and universal, and pointing to recent history in
proof of the assertion. When asked by Douglas whether he considered the
negro his equal, he answered: "In the right to eat the bread which his
own hand earns, he is my equal, and the equal of Judge Douglas, and the
equal of every living man." He was not an abolitionist, and declared
more than once that he had "no purpose, directly or indirectly, to
interfere with the institution of slavery in the states where it
exists," that he had "no lawful right to do so," but only to prohibit it
in "any new country which is not already cursed with the actual presence
of the evil."
Even so skillful a debater as Douglas soon found himself hard put to it
to answer Lincoln's arguments, without offending one or the other of the
powerful factions whose support he must have to reach the presidency. At
the beginning, his experience and adroitness gave him an advantage,
which, however, Lincoln's earnestness and directness soon overcame. Tens
of thousands of people gathered to hear the debates, they were printed
from end to end of the country, and Lincoln loomed larger than ever
before the nation; but so far as the immediate result was concerned,
Douglas was the victor, for the election gave him a majority of the
legislature, and he was chosen to succeed himself in the Senate.
Yet more than once he must have regretted that he had consented to cross
swords with his lank opponent, for he had been forced into many an
awkward corner. There is a popular tradition that the presidential
nomination came to Lincoln unsought; but this is anything but true. On
the contrary, in those debates with Douglas, he was consciously laying
the foundation for his candidacy two years later. He used every effort
to drive Douglas to admissions and statements which would tell against
him in a presidential campaign, while he himself took a position which
would insure his popularity with the Republican party. So his defeat at
the time was of no great moment to him.
He had gained an entrance to the national arena, and he took care to
remain before the public. He made speeches in Ohio, in Kansas, and even
in New York and throughout New England, everywhere making a powerful
impression. To disunion and secession he referred only once or twice,
for he perceived a truth which, even yet, some of us are reluctant to
admit: that every nation has a right to maintain by force, if it can,
its own integrity, and that a portion of a nation may sometimes be
justified in struggling for independent national existence. The whole
justification of such a struggle lies in whether its cause and basis is
right or wrong. So, beneath the question of disunion, was the question
as to whether slavery was right or wrong. On this question, of course,
northern opinion was practically all one way, while even in the South
there were many enemies of the institution. The world was outgrowing
what was really a survival of the dark ages.
When the campaign for the presidential nomination opened in the winter
of 1859-1860, Lincoln was early in the field and did everything possible
to win support. He secured the Illinois delegates without difficulty,
and when the national convention met at Chicago, in May, the contest
soon narrowed down to one between Lincoln and William H. Seward. Let it
be said, at once, that Seward deserved the nomination, if high service
and party loyalty and distinguished ability counted for anything, and it
looked for a time as though he were going to get it, for on the first
ballot he received 71 more votes than Lincoln. But in the course of his
public career he had made enemies who were anxious for his defeat, his
campaign managers were too confident or too clumsy to take advantage of
opportunity; Lincoln's friends were busy, and by some expert trading, of
which, be it said in justice to Lincoln, he himself was ignorant,
succeeded in securing for him a majority of the votes on the third
ballot.
So, blindly and almost by chance, was the nomination secured of the one
man fitted to meet the crisis. The only other event in American history
to be compared with it in sheer wisdom was the selection of Washington
to head the Revolutionary army--a selection made primarily, not because
of Washington's fitness for the task, but to heal sectional differences
and win the support of the South to a war waged largely in the North.
The nomination, so curiously made, was received with anything but
enthusiasm by the country at large. "Honest Abe, the Rail-Splitter,"
might appeal to some, but there was a general doubt whether, after all,
rail-splitting, however honorable in itself, was the best training for
a President. However, the anti-slavery feeling was a tie that bound
together people of the most diverse opinions about other things, and a
spirited canvass was made, greatly assisted by the final and suicidal
split in the ranks of the Democracy, which placed in nomination two men,
Lincoln's old antagonist, Stephen A. Douglas, representing the northern
or moderate element of the party, and John C. Breckenridge, of Kentucky,
representing the southern, or extreme pro-slavery element. And this was
just the corner into which Lincoln had hoped, all along, to drive his
opponents. Had the party been united, he would have been hopelessly
defeated, for in the election which followed, he received only a little
more than one third of the popular vote; but this was sufficient to give
him the northern states, with 180 electoral votes. But let us remember
that, in 1860, Abraham Lincoln was the choice for President of very much
less than half the people of the country.
The succeeding four months witnessed the peculiar spectacle of the South
leisurely completing its arrangements for secession, and perfecting its
civil and military organization, while the North, under a discredited
ruler of whom it could not rid itself until March 4th, was unable to
make any counter-preparation or to do anything to prevent the diversion
of a large portion of the arms and munitions of the country into the
southern states. It gave the southern leaders, too, opportunity to work
upon the feelings of their people, more than half of whom, in the fall
of 1860, were opposed to disunion. It should not be forgotten that,
however fully the South came afterwards to acquiesce in the policy of
secession, it was, in its inception, a plan of the politicians,
undertaken, to a great extent, for purposes of self-aggrandizement. They
controlled the conventions which, in every case except that of Texas,
decided whether or not the state should secede. "We can make better
terms out of the Union than in it," was a favorite argument, and many of
them dreamed of the establishment of a great slave empire, in which they
would play the leading parts.
To the southern leaders, then, the election of Lincoln was the striking
of the appointed hour for rebellion. South Carolina led the way,
declaring, on December 17, 1860, that the "Union now subsisting between
South Carolina and other states, under the name of the United States of
America, is hereby dissolved." Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia,
Louisiana and Texas followed. Opinion at the North was divided as to the
proper course to follow. Horace Greeley, in the New York _Tribune_,
said that the South had as good a right to secede from the Union as the
colonies had to secede from Great Britain, and, as Greeley afterwards
observed, the _Tribune_ had plenty of company in these sentiments.
Meanwhile the Southern Confederacy had been formed, Jefferson Davis
elected President, and steps taken at once for the organization of an
army.
Everyone was waiting anxiously for the inauguration of the new
President--waiting to see what his course would be. They were not left
long in doubt. His inaugural address was earnest and direct. He said,
"The union of these States is perpetual. No State upon its own mere
motion can lawfully get out of the Union. I shall take care that the
laws of the Union are faithfully executed in all the States." It was, in
effect, a declaration of war, and was so received by the South. Whether
or not it was the constitutional attitude need not concern us now.
The story of Lincoln's life for the next five years is the story of the
Civil War. How Lincoln grew and broadened in those fateful years, how he
won men by his deep humanity, his complete understanding, his ready
sympathy; how, once having undertaken the task of conquering rebellion,
he never faltered nor turned back despite the awful sacrifices which the
conflict demanded; all this has passed into the commonplaces of history.
No man ever had a harder task, and no other man could have accomplished
it so well.
[Illustration: LINCOLN]
The emancipation of the slaves, which has loomed so large in history,
was in reality, merely an incident, a war measure, taken to weaken the
enemy and justifiable, perhaps, only on that ground; the preliminary
proclamation, indeed, proposed to liberate the slaves only in such
states as were in rebellion on the following first of January. Nor did
emancipation create any great popular enthusiasm. The congressional
elections which followed it showed a great reaction against
anti-slavery. The Democrats carried Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York,
Illinois. For a time the administration was fighting for its life,
and won by an alarmingly small margin.
Before the year had elapsed, however, there was a great reversal in
public opinion, and at the succeeding election, Lincoln received 212 out
of 233 electoral votes. The end of the Confederacy was by this time in
sight. A month after his second inauguration, Richmond fell, and five
days later, Lee surrendered his army to General Grant. Lincoln at once
paid a visit to Richmond and then returned to Washington for the last
act of the drama.
The fourteenth of April was Good Friday, and the President arranged to
take a small party to Ford's theatre to witness a performance of a farce
comedy called "Our American Cousin." The President entered his box about
nine o'clock and was given a tumultuous reception. Then the play went
forward quietly, until suddenly the audience was startled by a pistol
shot, followed by a woman's scream. At the same instant, a man was seen
to leap from the President's box to the stage. Pausing only to wave a
dagger which he carried in his hand and to shout, "Sic semper tyrannis!"
the man disappeared behind the scenes. Amid the confusion, no efficient
pursuit was made. The President had been shot through the head, the
bullet passing through the brain. Unconsciousness, of course, came
instantly, and death followed in a few hours.
Eleven days later, the murderer, an actor by the name of John Wilkes
Booth, was surrounded in a barn where he had taken refuge; he refused to
come out, and the barn was set on fire. Soon afterwards, the assassin
was brought forth with a bullet at the base of his brain, whether fired
by himself or one of the besieging soldiers was never certainly known.
It is startling to contemplate the fearful responsibility which Booth
assumed when he fired that shot. So far from benefiting the South, he
did it incalculable harm, for the North was thoroughly aroused by the
deed. Thousands and thousands flocked to see the dead President as he
lay in state at the Capitol, and in the larger cities in which his
funeral procession paused on its way to his home in Springfield. The
whole country was in mourning, as for its father; business was
practically suspended, and the people seemed stunned by the great
calamity. That so gentle a man should have been murdered wakened, deep
down in the heart of the North, a fierce resentment; the feelings of
kindliness for a vanquished foe were, for the moment, swept away in
anger; and the North turned upon the South with stern face and shining
eyes. The wild and foolish assassin brought down upon the heads of his
own people such a wrath as the great conflict had not awakened. We shall
see how bitter was the retribution.
Not then so fully as now was Lincoln's greatness understood. He has come
to personify for us the triumphs and glories, the sadness and the
pathos, of the great struggle which he guided. His final martyrdom seems
almost a fitting crown for his achievements. It has, without doubt, done
much to secure him the exalted niche which he occupies in the hearts of
the American people, whom, in a way, he died to save. Had he lived
through the troubled period of Reconstruction which followed, he might
have emerged with a fame less clear and shining; and yet the hand which
guided the country through four years of Civil War, was without doubt
the one best fitted to save it from the misery and disgrace which lay in
store for it. But speculations as to what might have been are vain and
idle. What was, we know; and above the clouds of conflict, Lincoln's
figure looms, serene and venerable. Two of his own utterances reveal him
as the words of no other man can--his address on the battlefield of
Gettysburg, and his address at his second inauguration--but two months
after he was laid to rest, James Russell Lowell, at the services in
commemoration of the three hundredth anniversary of Harvard College,
paid him one of the most eloquent tributes ever paid any man, concluding
with the words:
"Great captains, with their guns and drums;
Disturb our judgment for the hour,
But at last silence comes;
These all are gone, and, standing like a tower,
Our children shall behold his fame,
The kindly-earnest, brave, foreseeing man;
Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not blame;
New birth of our new soil, the first American."
On the ticket with Lincoln, the Republicans had placed, as a sop to such
pro-slavery sentiment as still existed at the North, a southerner and
state rights Democrat named Andrew Johnson. By one of those singular
chances of history, Johnson's origin and early years had been very much
like Lincoln's. He, too, was born of a "poor white" family; first seeing
the light in North Carolina about six weeks before Abraham Lincoln
opened his eyes in that rude log cabin in Kentucky. His condition was,
if anything, even more hopeless and degraded than Lincoln's, and if any
one had prophesied that these two ignorant and poverty-stricken children
would one day rise, side by side, to the greatest position in the
Republic, he would have been regarded, and justly, as a hopeless madman.
But not even to a madman did any such wild idea occur. "Poor whites"
were despised throughout the South, even by the slaves; if there was, in
the whole United States, any law of caste, it was against these ignorant
and shiftless people; and Andrew Johnson, at the age of fifteen, was
little better than a young savage. He had never gone to school, he had
never seen a book. But one day, he heard a man reading aloud, and the
wonder of it quickened a new purpose within him. He induced a friend to
teach him the alphabet, and then, borrowing the book, he laboriously
taught himself to read. So there was something more than "poor white" in
him, after all.
By the time he was eighteen, he had had enough of his shiftless
surroundings, and struck out for himself, journeyed across the mountains
to Greenville, Tennessee, met there a girl of sixteen named Eliza
McCardle, and, with youth's sublime improvidence, married her! As it
happened, he did well, for his wife had a fair education, and night
after night taught him patiently, until he could read fairly well and
write a little. I like to think of that family group, so different from
most, and to admire that girl-wife teaching her husband the rudiments of
education.
Already, as a result of his lowly birth and the class prejudice he
everywhere encountered, young Johnson had conceived that hatred of the
ruling class at the South which was to influence his after life so
deeply. He had a certain rude eloquence which appealed to the lower
classes of the people, and, in 1835, succeeded in gaining an election to
the state legislature. He nursed his political prospects carefully, and
eight years later, was sent to Congress. He was afterwards twice
governor of Tennessee.
It has been said that secession was, in the beginning, a policy of the
ruling class in the South and not of the people. It is not surprising,
then, that Johnson should have arrayed himself against it, and fought it
with all his might. This position made him so prominent, that on March
4, 1862, Lincoln appointed him military-governor of Tennessee--a
position which was exactly to Johnson's taste and which he filled well.
In this position, he seemed the embodiment of the Union element of the
South, and at their national convention in 1864, the Republicans decided
that the President's policy of reconstruction for the South would be
greatly aided by the presence of a southern man on the ticket, and
Johnson was thereupon chosen for the office of Vice-President. On the
same day that Lincoln was inaugurated for the second time, Johnson took
the oath of office in the Senate chamber, and delivered a speech which
created a sensation. He declared, in effect, that Tennessee had never
been out of the Union, that she was electing representatives who would
soon mingle with their brothers from the North at Washington, and that
she was entitled to every privilege which the northern states enjoyed.
Three hours after the death of the President, Andrew Johnson took the
oath of office as his successor, but he was regarded with suspicion at
both North and South--at the North, because he was believed to be at
heart pro-slavery; at the South because of his well-known animosity
toward the aristocratic and ruling class. He was also known to be
stubborn, high-tempered and intemperate, and he and Congress were soon
at sword's point. Johnson was of the opinion that the question of
suffrage for the negroes should be left to the several states; a
majority of Congress were determined to exact this for their own
protection. This was embodied in the so-called Civil Rights Bill,
conferring citizenship upon colored men. It was promptly vetoed by the
President, and was passed over his veto; soon afterwards the fourteenth
amendment was passed, conferring the suffrage upon all citizens of the
United States without regard to color or previous condition of
servitude. It also was vetoed, and passed over the veto. Johnson was
hailed as a traitor by Republicans, and the campaign against him
culminated in his impeachment by Congress early in 1868. The trial
which followed was the most bitter in the history of the Senate, but
Andrew Johnson was acquitted by the failure of the prosecution to secure
the two-thirds vote necessary for conviction by a single vote,
thirty-five senators voting for conviction and nineteen for acquittal.
Johnson's friends were jubilant, but his power had vanished. The seceded
states one by one came back into the Union in accordance with the
Reconstruction act which Johnson had vetoed. He failed of the nomination
on the Democratic ticket, and after the inauguration of his successor,
at once returned to his old home in Tennessee. There he attempted to
secure the nomination for United States senator, but his influence was
gone and he was defeated. So ended his public life.
It has been rather the fashion to picture Johnson, as an intemperate and
bull-headed ignoramus, but such a characterization is far from fair. But
for Lincoln's assassination, some such policy of reconstruction as
Johnson advocated would probably have been carried out, instead of the
policy of fanatics like Thaddeus Stevens, which left the South a prey to
the carpet-bagger and the ignorant negro for over a decade. Johnson
himself might have accomplished more if he had been of a less violent
disposition; but he was ignorant of diplomacy, incapable of compromise,
and so was worsted in the fight. However we may disagree with his policy
and dislike his character, let us at least not forget that picture of
the "poor white" boy teaching himself to read; and that other of the
girl-wife patiently instructing him in the rudiments of writing.
* * * * *
A successful war inevitably gives to its commanders a tremendous popular
prestige. We have seen how the battle of New Orleans made Andrew Jackson
a national hero, how William Henry Harrison loomed large after the
battle of Tippecanoe, and how Zachary Taylor was chosen President as a
result of his victories in Mexico. The country was now to undergo
another period of military domination, longer lived than those others,
as the Civil War was greater than them--a period from which it has even
yet not fully recovered.
In 1868, the Republican party nominated unanimously for President the
general who had pushed the war to a successful finish, and who had
received Lee's surrender, Ulysses Simpson Grant, and he was elected by
an overwhelming majority. For the first time in the history of the
country, a man had been elected President without regard to his
qualifications for the office, for even Jackson had had many years'
experience in public affairs. Of such qualifications, Grant had very
few. He was egotistical, a poor judge of men, without experience in
statesmanship, and unwilling to submit to guidance. As a result, his
administration was marked by inefficiency and extravagance, and ended in
a swirl of scandal.
Born in Ohio in 1822, and graduated at West Point, he had served through
the war with Mexico, resigned from the army, remained in obscurity for
six years, during which he made an unsuccessful attempt to support
himself in civil life, and entered the army again at the outbreak of the
Civil War. From the first he was successful more than any other of the
Union generals, not so much because of military genius as from a certain
tenacity of purpose with which he fairly wore out the enemy. But a
people discouraged by reverses were not disposed to inquire too closely
into the reason of his victories, and early in 1864, after a brilliant
campaign along the Mississippi, he had been appointed commander-in-chief
of the Union army, and began that series of operations against Richmond
which cost the North so dear, but which resulted in the fall of the
capital of the Confederacy and in Lee's surrender.
A bearded, square-jawed, silent man, he caught the public fancy by two
messages, the one of "Unconditional surrender," with which he had
answered the demand for terms on the part of the Confederates whom he
had entrapped in Fort Donelson; the other, the famous: "I propose to
fight it out on this line, if it takes all summer," with which he
started his campaign in the Wilderness. Both were characteristic, and if
Grant had retired from public life at the close of the Civil War, or had
been content to remain commander-in-chief of the army of the United
States, his fame would probably have been brighter than it is to-day.
His training, such as it was, had been wholly military and his inaugural
address showed his profound ignorance of the work which lay before
him--an ignorance all the more profound and unreachable because of his
serene unconsciousness of it. He fell at once an easy prey to political
demagogues, and before the close of his first administration,
demoralization was widespread throughout the government. A large portion
of the Republican party, realizing his unfitness for the office, opposed
his renomination, and when they saw his nomination was inevitable, broke
away and named a ticket of their own, but Grant's victory was a sweeping
one.
With this stamp of public approval, the boodlers became bolder and great
scandals followed, involving many members of Congress and even some
members of the cabinet, but not the President himself, of whose personal
honesty there was never any doubt, and in 1873, came the worst panic the
country had ever experienced. A political reaction followed, and in 1874
the Democrats carried the country, gaining the House of Representatives
by a majority of nearly a hundred.
Following his retirement from office in 1877, Grant made a tour of the
world, returning in 1879, to be again a candidate for the presidency,
and coming very near to getting the nomination. It was characteristic of
the man's egotism that, even yet, he did not realize his unfitness for
the office, but thought himself great enough to disregard the precedent
which Washington had established. He lived five years longer, the last
years of his life rendered miserable by cancer of the throat, which
finally killed him.
In the summer of 1876, the Republicans nominated Rutherford B. Hayes,
at that time Governor of Ohio, as their candidate for President--a
nomination which was a surprise to the country, which had confidently
expected that of James G. Blaine. Hayes was by no means a national
figure, although he had served in the Union army, had been in Congress,
and, as has been said, was governor of Ohio at the time of his
nomination. Nor was he a man of more than very ordinary ability,
upright, honest, and mediocre. The Democratic candidate was Samuel J.
Tilden, a political star of the first magnitude, and the contest which
followed was unprecedented in American history.
Tilden received a popular majority of half a million votes, and 184
electoral votes, out of the 185 necessary to elect, without counting the
votes from Florida, South Carolina and Louisiana, all of which he had
carried on the face of the returns. The Republicans disputed the vote in
these states, however, and by the inexorable use of party machinery and
carpet-bag government, declared Hayes elected. For a time, so manifest
was the partisan bias of this decision, the country seemed on the verge
of another Civil War, but Tilden led in wiser council, and Hayes was
permitted to take his seat. It is the only instance in a national
election where the will of the people at the polls has been defied and
overridden.
Hayes was a sincere and honest man, and he felt keenly the cloud which
the manner of his election cast over his administration. He was never
popular with his party, and no doubt he felt that the debt he owed it
for getting him his seat was a doubtful one. His administration was
noteworthy principally because he destroyed the last vestiges of
carpet-bag government in the South, and left the southern states to work
out their own destiny unhampered. He was not even considered for a
renomination, and spent the remainder of his life quietly in his Ohio
home.
Hayes's successor was another so-called "dark horse," that is, a man of
minor importance, whose nomination, was due to the fact that the party
leaders could not agree upon any of the more prominent candidates. They
were Grant, Blaine and John Sherman, and after thirty-five ballots, it
was evident that a "dark horse" must be found. The choice fell upon
James Abram Garfield, who was not prominent enough to have made any
enemies, and who was as astonished as was the country at large when it
heard the news.
Garfield was born in Ohio in 1831, in a little log cabin and to a
position in the world not greatly different to Lincoln's. While laboring
at various rough trades, he succeeded in preparing himself for college,
worked his way through, got into politics, served through the Civil War,
and later for eighteen years in Congress, where he made a creditable but
by no means brilliant record. He was elected President by a small
majority, and enraged the many enemies of James G. Blaine by selecting
that astute politician as his secretary of state. One of these, a
rattle-brained New Yorker named Charles J. Guiteau, approached the
President on July 2, 1881, as he was waiting at a railroad station in
Washington, about to start on a journey, and shot him through the body.
Death followed, after a painful struggle, two months later.
Obscure, in a sense, as Garfield had been, the man who succeeded him was
immeasurably more so. Chester Alan Arthur was a successful New York
lawyer, who had dabbled in politics and held some minor appointive
offices, his selection as Vice-President being due to the desire of the
Republican managers to throw a sop to the Empire State. His
administration, however, while marked by no great or stirring event, was
for the most part wise and conservative, but James G. Blaine had by this
time secured complete control of the party, and Arthur had no chance for
the nomination for President. He died of apoplexy within two years of
his retirement.
* * * * *
The Republican party had been supreme in the national government for a
quarter of a century, and there seemed no reason to doubt that Blaine,
its candidate in the campaign of 1884, would at last realize his
consuming ambition to be elected President. He had an immense personal
prestige, he had outlived the taint of corruption attached to him during
the administration of Grant, and he had for years been preparing and
strengthening himself for this contest. So he entered it confidently.
But a new issue had arisen--that of the protective tariff, which,
originally a war revenue measure, had been formally adopted as a
principle of Republicanism, which was hailed by its adherents as a new
and brilliant economic device for enriching everybody at nobody's
expense, and which had really enriched a few at the expense of the many.
The Democrats, with considerable hesitation and ambiguity, pronounced
against it, arraigned the Republican party for corruption, and named as
their nominee Grover Cleveland, of New York.
Cleveland was born in New Jersey in 1837, the son of a clergyman whose
early death threw him upon his own resources. He started west in search
of employment, stopped at Buffalo, and afterwards made it his home. He
studied law while working as a clerk and copyist, was admitted to the
bar in 1859, and in the late seventies was elected mayor of Buffalo on a
reform ticket. Almost at once, the country's eyes were fastened upon
him. Elected as a reform mayor, he continued to be one after his
induction into office. He actually seemed to think that the promises and
pledges made by him during his campaign were still binding upon him, and
astounded the politicians by proceeding to carry those promises out. So
scathing were the veto messages he sent in, one after another, to a
corrupt council, that they awakened admiration and respect even among
his opponents. The messages, written in the plainest of plain English,
aroused the people of the city to the way in which they had been robbed
by dishonest officials, they rallied behind him, and his reputation was
made. In 1882, his party wanted a reform candidate for governor, and
they naturally turned to Cleveland, and he was elected by a plurality of
two hundred thousand.
He found the same condition of things on a larger scale at Albany as at
Buffalo--a corrupt machine paying political debts with public money--and
here, again, he showed the same astonishing regard for pre-election
pledges, the same belief in his famous declaration that "a public office
is a public trust," and bill after bill was vetoed, while the people
applauded. And with every veto came a message stating its reasons in
language which did not mince words and which all could understand. He
showed himself not only to be entirely beyond the control of the
political machine of his own party, but also to possess remarkable moral
courage, and he became naturally and inevitably the Democratic candidate
for President, since the Democratic platform was in the main an
arraignment of Republican corruption and moral decay. The campaign which
followed was a bitter one; but Blaine had estranged a large portion of
his party, he made a number of bad blunders, and Cleveland was elected.
The old party founded by Jefferson, which, beginning with Jefferson's
administration, had ruled the country uninterruptedly for forty years,
was returned to power, and on an issue which would have delighted
Jefferson's heart.
Much to the dismay and disappointment of the politicians, the new
President made no clean sweep of Republican officeholders. He took the
unheard-of ground that, in the public service, as in any other, good
work merited advancement, no matter what the politics of the individual
might be. He made some changes, as a matter of course, but he was from
the first sturdily in favor of civil service reform. It is worth
remarking that a Democratic President was the first to take a decided
stand against the principle of "to the victors belong the spoils," first
put into practice by another Democratic President, Andrew Jackson, over
fifty years before.
His stand, too, on the pension question was startling in its audacity.
The shadow of the Civil War still hung over the country; the soldiers
who had served in that war had formed themselves into a great,
semi-political organization, known as the Grand Army of the Republic,
and worked unceasingly for increased pensions, which Congress had found
itself unable to refuse. More than that, the members of Congress were in
the habit of passing hundreds of special bills, giving pensions to men
whose claims had been rejected by the pension department, as not coming
within the law. Cleveland took the stand that, unless the soldier had
been disabled by the war, he had no just claim to government support,
and he vetoed scores of private pension bills, many of which were shown
to be fraudulent.
In other ways, his remarkable strength of personality soon became
apparent, and his determination to do what he thought his duty,
regardless of consequences. His message of December, 1887, fairly
startled the country. It was devoted entirely to a denunciation of the
high tariff laws, a subject on which the Democratic leaders had deemed
it prudent to maintain a discreet silence since the preceding election,
and which many of them hoped would be forgotten by the public. But
Cleveland's message brought the question squarely to the front, and made
it the one issue of the campaign which followed. Cleveland would have
been elected but for the traitorous conduct of the leaders in New York,
who had never forgiven him for the way in which, as governor, he had
scourged them. New York State was lost to him, and his opponent,
Benjamin Harrison, was elected, although his popular vote fell below
that of Cleveland by over a hundred thousand.
But Cleveland had his revenge four years later, when, in spite of the
protests of the leaders from his own state of New York, he was again
nominated on a platform denouncing the tariff, and defeated Harrison by
an overwhelming majority. And now came one of those strange instances of
party perfidy and party suicide, of which the country has just witnessed
a second example. In accordance with the platform pledges, a bill to
lower the tariff was at once framed in the House and adopted; but the
Senate, although Democratic in complexion, so altered it that it fell
far short of carrying out the party pledges. The leader in the Senate
was Arthur P. Gorman, of Maryland, and to him chiefly was due this act
of treachery. The President refused to sign the bill, and it became a
law without his signature. There can be little question that it was the
failure of the Democratic party to fulfil its pledges at that critical
time which led to its subsequent disruption and defeat.
Twice more did Cleveland startle the country with his extraordinary
decision of character. In the summer of 1894, a great railroad strike,
centering at Chicago, occasioned an outbreak of violence, which the
governor of Illinois did nothing to quell. The President, therefore,
declaring that the rioters had no right to interfere with the United
States mails, ordered national troops to the scene to maintain order. A
year later, when the British Government, involved in a boundary dispute
with Venezuela, declared that it did not accept the Monroe Doctrine and
would not submit the dispute to arbitration, the President sent a
message to Congress, declaring that the Monroe Doctrine must be upheld
at whatever cost. The country was thrilled from end to end, the
President's course approved, and Great Britain at last consented to
arbitration.
[Illustration: CLEVELAND]
And yet, when Cleveland left the presidential chair for the second time,
he had entirely lost control of and sympathy with his own party. He had
shown little tact in his dealings with the party leaders. He seemed to
forget that, after all, these leaders had certain rights and privileges
which should be respected; he sometimes blundered through very anxiety
to be right. You have heard some men called so upright that they leaned
over backward--well, that, occasionally, was Cleveland's fault. He
was subjected to such a storm of abuse as no other ex-President ever had
to endure. That he felt it keenly there can be no question; but in the
years which followed, his sturdy and unassailable character came to be
recognized and appreciated, and his death, in the summer of 1908, was
the occasion of deep and widespread sorrow.
* * * * *
We have told how, in 1888, Cleveland was defeated for the presidency by
Benjamin Harrison. Harrison was a grandson of the old warrior of
Tippecanoe, William Henry Harrison, the successful candidate of the Whig
party forty-eight years before. He was an able but not brilliant man,
had served through the Civil War, and was afterwards elected senator
from Indiana, to which state he had removed from Ohio at an early age.
The platform on which he was elected pledged the party to the protective
tariff principle, and a high tariff measure, known as the McKinley Bill,
was passed, raising duties to a point higher than had ever before been
known in the history of the United States.
The Dependent Pension Bill, which Cleveland had vetoed, and which gave a
pension to every Union soldier who was from any cause unable to earn a
living, was also passed. But these policies did not appeal to the
public; besides which, Harrison, although a man of integrity and
ability, was popular with neither the rank nor file of his party,
through a total lack of personal magnetism, and though he received the
nomination, Cleveland easily defeated him. The remainder of his life
was passed quietly at his Indiana home.
* * * * *
We have seen how Cleveland's independence and want of tact estranged him
from his party, and the party itself was soon to run upon virtual
shipwreck, under the guidance of strange leaders. A word must be said,
in this place, of the extraordinary man who led it three times to
defeat.
When the Democratic national convention met in Chicago in 1896, one of
the delegates from Nebraska was a brilliant and eloquent lawyer named
William Jennings Bryan. He had gained some prominence in his state, and
had served in Congress for four years, but he was practically unknown
when he arose before the convention and made a free-silver speech which
fairly carried the delegates off their feet. Good oratory is rare at any
time; its power can hardly be overestimated, especially in swaying a
crowd; and Bryan was one of the greatest orators that ever addressed a
convention.
His nomination for the Presidency followed, and the result was the
practical dismemberment of the Democratic party. For Bryan was a
Populist, as far as possible removed from the fundamental principles of
Democracy, advocating strange socialistic measures; and the conservative
element of the party regarded him and his theories with such distrust
that it put another ticket in the field, and he was badly beaten. Twice
more he led the party in presidential campaigns, each time being
defeated more decisively than the last. His engaging personality, his
ready oratory, and his supreme gifts as a politician won for him a vast
number of devoted friends, who believed, and who still believe, in him
absolutely; but the country at large, apparently, will have none of him.
* * * * *
The Republican nominee in 1896 was William McKinley, of Ohio, best known
as the framer of the McKinley tariff bill. Born in Ohio in 1843, he had
served through the Civil War, had been a member of Congress and twice
governor of Ohio. He was a thorough party man, and modified his former
views on the silver question to conform with the platform on which he
was nominated; his campaign manager, Mark Hanna, was one of the most
astute politicians the country had ever produced, and raised a campaign
fund of unprecedented magnitude; all of which, combined with the
disintegration of the Democratic party, gave McKinley a notable victory.
The great event of his first administration was the war with Spain,
undertaken to free Cuba, into which McKinley, be it said to his credit,
was driven unwillingly by public clamor, cunningly fostered by a portion
of the press. Its close saw the purchase of the Philippines, and the
entrance of the United States upon a colonial policy believed by many to
be wholly contrary to the spirit of its founders.
There was never any question of McKinley's renomination, for his
prestige and personal popularity were immense, and his victory was
again decisive. He had broadened rapidly, had gained in statesmanship,
had acquired a truer insight into the country's needs, and was now
freed, to a great extent, from party obligations. Great hopes were built
upon his second administration, and they would no doubt have been
fulfilled, in part at least; but a few months after his inauguration, he
was shot through the body by an irresponsible anarchist while holding a
public reception at Buffalo, and died within the week. The years which
have elapsed since his death enable us to view him more calmly than was
possible while he lived, and the country has come to recognize in him an
honest and well-meaning man, of more than ordinary ability, who might
have risen to true statesmanship and won for himself a high place in the
country's history had he been spared.
On the ticket with McKinley, a young New Yorker named Theodore Roosevelt
had been elected Vice-President. Roosevelt had long been prominent in
his native state as an enthusiastic reformer, had made a sensational
record in the war with Spain, and, on his return home, had been elected
governor by popular clamor, rather than by the will of the politicians,
to whom his rough-and-ready methods were extremely repugnant. So when
the national convention was about to be held, they conceived the great
idea of removing him from state politics and putting him on the shelf,
so to speak, by electing him Vice-President, and the plan was carried
out in spite of Roosevelt's protests. Alas for the politicians! It was
with a sort of poetic justice that he took the oath as President on the
day of McKinley's death, September 14, 1901, while they were still
rubbing their eyes and wondering what had happened.
His evident honesty of purpose, combined with an impulsive and energetic
temperament, which led him into various indiscretions, soon made him a
popular hero. He was a sort of Andrew Jackson over again, and in 1904,
he was sent back to the presidency by an overwhelming majority. For a
time he was, indeed, the central figure of the republic. His energy was
remarkable; he had a hand in everything; but many people, after a time,
grew weary of so tumultuous and strenuous a life, and drew away from
him, while still more were estranged by the undignified and violent
controversies in which he became entangled. It is too soon, however, to
attempt to give a true estimate of him. Indeed, he is as yet only in
mid-career; and what his years to come will accomplish cannot be even
guessed.
Despite his controversies with the leaders of his party, he retained
sufficient power to dictate the nomination of his successor, William
Howard Taft, an experienced jurist and administrator, who is but just
entering upon his work as these lines are written, but to whom the
American people are looking hopefully for a wise and moderate
administration.
* * * * *
So stands the history of the rulers of the nation. As one looks back at
them, one perceives a certain rhythmical rise and fall of merit and
attainment, which may roughly be represented thus:
[Illustration]
Washington freed us from the power of England; Lincoln freed us from the
power of slavery; the third man in this great trio will be he who will
solve the vast economic problems which are the overshadowing issues of
our day. Will he be a Democrat or Republican--or of some new party yet
to be born? In any event, let us hope that Fate will not long withhold
him!
SUMMARY
LINCOLN, ABRAHAM. Born in Hardin County, Kentucky, February 12, 1809;
served in Black Hawk war, 1832; admitted to the bar, 1836; began
practice of law at Springfield, Illinois, 1837; Whig member Illinois
legislature, 1834-42; member of Congress, 1847-49; Republican candidate
for United States senator and held series of debates with Stephen A.
Douglas, 1858; elected President, 1860; inaugurated, March 4, 1861;
re-elected President, 1864; began second term, March 4, 1865; entered
Richmond with Federal army, April 4, 1865; shot by John Wilkes Booth, at
Ford's Theatre, Washington, April 14, 1865, and died the following day.
JOHNSON, ANDREW. Born at Raleigh, North Carolina, December 29, 1808;
member of Congress from Tennessee, 1843-53; governor of Tennessee,
1853-57; United States senator, 1857-62; military governor of Tennessee,
1862-64; inaugurated Vice-President, March 4, 1865; succeeded Lincoln as
President, April 15, 1865; impeached by Congress for high crimes and
misdemeanors, but acquitted after a trial lasting from March 23 to May
26, 1868; United States senator from Tennessee, 1875; died in Carter
County, Tennessee, July 31, 1875.
GRANT, ULYSSES SIMPSON. Born at Point Pleasant, Clermont County, Ohio,
April 27, 1822; graduated at West Point, 1843; served through Mexican
war, 1846-48; left the army in 1854, and settled in St. Louis; removed
to Galena, Illinois, 1860; appointed colonel, June 17, 1861;
brigadier-general, August 7, 1861; captured Fort Donelson, February 16,
1862; promoted to major-general of volunteers and made commander of the
Army of the District of West Tennessee, March, 1862; gained battle of
Shiloh, April 6-7, 1862; captured Vicksburg, July 4, 1863, and made
major-general in the regular army; won battle of Chattanooga, November
23-25, 1863; made lieutenant-general and commander-in-chief of American
armies, March, 1864; took up his headquarters with the Army of the
Potomac, fought battles of Wilderness, and received Lee's surrender at
Appomattox Court House, April 9, 1865; made general, July 25, 1866;
elected President, 1868, and re-elected, 1872; made tour of the world,
1877-79; unsuccessful candidate for nomination for presidency, 1880;
made general on the retired list, March 4, 1885; died at Mount McGregor,
New York, July 23, 1885.
HAYES, RUTHERFORD BIRCHARD. Born at Delaware, Ohio, October 4, 1822;
served in the Union army during the Civil War, being brevetted
major-general of volunteers in 1864; member of Congress from Ohio,
1865-67; governor of Ohio, 1868-72 and 1876; Republican candidate for
President, 1876; declared elected by the Electoral Commission, March 2,
1877, and served, 1877-81; died at Fremont, Ohio, January 17, 1893.
GARFIELD, JAMES ABRAM. Born at Orange, Cuyahoga County, Ohio, November
19, 1831; instructor in and later president of Hiram College, Ohio,
1856-61; joined the Union army as lieutenant-colonel of volunteers,
1861; defeated General Humphrey Marshall at the battle of Middle Creek,
January 10, 1862; promoted brigadier-general, 1862; promoted
major-general, 1863; member of Congress, 1863-80; elected United States
senator, 1880; elected President, 1880; inaugurated, March 4, 1881; shot
in Washington by Guiteau, July 2, 1881; died at Elberon, New Jersey,
September 19, 1881.
ARTHUR, CHESTER ALAN. Born at Fairfield, Vermont, October 5, 1830;
graduated at Union College, 1848; taught school and practiced law in New
York City; inspector-general of New York troops, 1862; collector of the
port of New York, 1871-78; elected Vice-President, 1880; succeeded
Garfield as President, September 20, 1881, serving to March 4, 1885;
defeated for Republican nomination, 1884; died at New York, November
18, 1886.
CLEVELAND, GROVER. Born at Caldwell, Essex County, New Jersey, March 18,
1837; studied law at Buffalo, New York, and admitted to the bar, 1859;
assistant district attorney of Erie County, 1863-66; sheriff of Erie
County, 1871-74; Democratic mayor of Buffalo, 1882; governor of New
York, 1883-84; elected President, 1884; served as President, 1885-89;
advocated a reduction of the tariff in his message to Congress in
December, 1887; defeated for re-election, 1888; re-elected President,
1892; served, 1893-97; died at Princeton, New Jersey, June 24, 1908.
HARRISON, BENJAMIN. Born at North Bend, Ohio, August 20, 1833; graduated
at Miami University, 1852; studied law and practiced at Indianapolis;
served in Civil War and was brevetted brigadier-general; United States
senator, 1881-87; elected President, 1888; defeated for re-election,
1892; died at Indianapolis, March 13, 1901.
MCKINLEY, WILLIAM. Born at Niles, Trumbull County, Ohio, January 29,
1844; served in the Civil War, attaining the rank of major; member of
Congress, 1877-91; elected governor of Ohio, 1891; re-elected, 1893;
elected President, 1896; re-elected, 1900; shot by an assassin at
Buffalo, New York, and died there, September 14, 1901.
ROOSEVELT, THEODORE. Born at New York City, October 27, 1858; graduated
at Harvard, 1880; New York state assemblyman, 1882-84; resided on North
Dakota ranch, 1884-86; national Civil Service Commissioner, 1889-95;
president New York Police Board, 1895-97; assistant secretary of the
navy, 1897-98; resigned to organize regiment of Rough Riders and served
through war with Spain; governor of New York, 1899-1900; elected
Vice-President, 1900; succeeded to presidency on death of McKinley,
September 14, 1901; elected President, 1904; retired from presidency,
March 4, 1909.
TAFT, WILLIAM HOWARD. Born at Cincinnati, Ohio, September 15, 1857;
graduated at Yale, 1878; admitted to bar, 1880; judge Superior Court,
1887-90; solicitor-general of the United States, 1890-92; United States
circuit judge, 1892-1900; President Philippine Commission, 1900-04;
secretary of war, 1904-08; elected President, 1908; inaugurated, March
4, 1909.
* * * * *