1881-1884
On July 2, 1881, an attempt was made to assassinate President Garfield,
at the Pennsylvania Station, Washington, where he was about to board a
train. I heard the news first on the railroad train at Williamstown,
Mass., where the President was expected in three or four days.
"Absurd, impossible," I said. Why should anyone want to kill him? He had
nothing but that which he had earned with his own brain and hand. He had
fought his own way up from country home to college hall, and from
college hall to the House of Representatives, and from House of
Representatives to the Senate Chamber, and from the Senate Chamber to
the Presidential chair. Why should anyone want to kill him? He was not a
despot who had been treading on the rights of the people. There was
nothing of the Nero or the Robespierre in him. He had wronged no man. He
was free and happy himself, and wanted all the world free and happy. Why
should anyone want to kill him? He had a family to shepherd and educate,
a noble wife and a group of little children leaning on his arm and
holding his hand, and who needed him for many years to come.
Only a few days before, I had paid him a visit. He was a bitter
antagonist of Mormonism, and I was in deep sympathy with his Christian
endeavours in this respect. I never saw a more anxious or perturbed
countenance than James A. Garfield's, the last time I met him. It seemed
a great relief to him to turn to talk to my child, who was with me. He
had suffered enough abuse in his political campaign to suffice for one
lifetime. He was then facing three or four years of insult and contumely
greater than any that had been heaped upon his predecessors. He had
proposed greater reforms, and by so much he was threatened to endure
worse outrages. His term of office was just six months, but he
accomplished what forty years of his predecessors had failed to do--the
complete and eternal pacification of the North and the South. There were
more public meetings of sympathy for him, at this time, in the South
than there were in the North. His death-bed in eight weeks did more for
the sisterhood of States than if he had lived eight years--two terms of
the Presidency. His cabinet followed the reform spirit of his
leadership. Postmaster General James made his department illustrious by
spreading consternation among the scoundrels of the Star Route, saving
the country millions of dollars. Secretary Windom wrought what the
bankers and merchants called a financial miracle. Robert Lincoln, the
son of another martyred President, was Secretary of War.
Guiteau was no more crazy than thousands of other place-hunters. He had
been refused an office, and he was full of unmingled and burning
revenge. There was nothing else the matter with him. It was just this:
"You haven't given me what I want; now I'll kill you." For months after
each presidential inauguration the hotels of Washington are roosts for
these buzzards. They are the crawling vermin of this nation. Guiteau
was no rarity. There were hundreds of Guiteaus in Washington after the
inauguration, except that they had not the courage to shoot. I saw them
some two months or six weeks after. They were mad enough to do it. I saw
it in their eyes.
They killed two other Presidents, William Henry Harrison and Zachary
Taylor. I know the physicians called the disease congestion of the lungs
or liver, but the plain truth was that they were worried to death; they
were trampled out of life by place-hunters. Three Presidents sacrificed
to this one demon are enough. I urged Congress at the next session to
start a work of presidential emancipation. Four Presidents have
recommended civil service reform, and it has amounted to little or
nothing. But this assassination I hoped would compel speedy and decisive
action.
James A. Garfield was prepared for eternity. He often preached the
Gospel. "I heard him preach, he preached for me in my pulpit," a
minister told me. He preached once in Wall Street to an excited throng,
after Lincoln was shot. He preached to the wounded soldiers at
Chickamauga. He preached in the United States Senate, in speeches of
great nobility. When a college boy, camped on the mountains, he read the
Scriptures aloud to his companions. After he was shot, he declared that
he trusted all in the Lord's hand--was ready to live or die.
"If the President die, what of his successor?" was the great question of
the hour. I did not know Mr. Arthur at that time, but I prophesied that
Mr. Garfield's policies would be carried out by his successor.
I consider President Garfield was a man with the most brilliant mind
who ever occupied the White House. He had strong health, a splendid
physique, a fine intellect. If Guiteau's bullet had killed the President
instantly, there would have been a revolution in this country.
He lingered amid the prayers of the nation, surrounded by seven of the
greatest surgeons and physicians of the hour. Then he passed on. His son
was preparing a scrap-book of all the kind things that had been said
about his father, to show him when he recovered. That was a tender
forethought of one who knew how unjustly he had suffered the slanders of
his enemies. There was much talk about presidential inability, and in
the midst of this public bickering Chester A. Arthur became president.
He took office, amid severe criticism. I urged the appointment of
Frederick T. Frelinghuysen to the President's Cabinet, feeling that. Mr.
Arthur would have in this distinguished son of New Jersey, a devout,
evangelical, Christian adviser. In October I paid a visit, to Mr.
Garfield's home in Mentor, Ohio. On the hat-rack in the hall was his
hat, where he had left it, when the previous March he left for his
inauguration in Washington. I left that bereaved household with a
feeling that a full explanation of this event must be adjourned to the
next state of my existence.
The new President was gradually becoming, on all sides, the bright hope
of our national future. In after years I learned to know him and admire
him.
In the period of transition that followed the President's assassination
we lost other good men.
We lost Senator Burnside of Rhode Island, at one time commander of the
Army of the Potomac, and three times Governor of his State. I met him at
a reception given in the home of my friend Judge Hilton, in Woodlawn,
at Saratoga Springs. He had an imperial presence, coupled with the
utterance of a child. The Senator stood for purity in politics. No one
ever bought him, or tried to buy him. He held no stock in the Credit
Mobilier. He shook hands with none of the schemes that appealed to
Congress to fleece the people. He died towards the close of 1881.
A man of greater celebrity, of an entirely different quality, who had
passed on, was about this time to be honoured with an effigy in
Westminster Abbey--Dean Stanley. I still remember keenly the afternoon I
met him in the Deanery adjoining the abbey. There was not much of the
physical in his appearance. His mind and soul seemed to have more than a
fair share of his physical territory. He had only just enough body to
detain the soul awhile on earth.
And then we lost Samuel B. Stewart. The most of Brooklyn knew him--the
best part of Brooklyn knew him. I knew him long before I ever came to
Brooklyn. He taught me to read in the village school. His parents and
mine were buried in the same place. A few weeks later, the Rev. Dr.
Bellows of New York went. I do not believe that the great work done by
this good man was ever written. It was during that long agony when the
war hospitals were crowded with the sick, the wounded, and the dying. He
enlisted his voice and his pen and his fortune to alleviate their
suffering. I was on the field as a chaplain for a very little while, and
a little while looking after the sick in Philadelphia, and I noticed
that the Sanitary Commission, of which Dr. Bellows was the presiding
spirit, was constantly busy with ambulances, cordials, nurses,
necessaries and supplies. Many a dying soldier was helped by the mercy
of this good man's energies, and many a farewell message was forwarded
home. The civilians who served the humanitarian causes of the war, like
Dr. Bellows, have not received the recognition they should. Only the
military men have been honoured with public office.
The chief menace of the first year of President Arthur's administration
was the danger of a policy to interfere in foreign affairs, and the
danger of extravagance in Washington, due to innumerable appropriation
bills. There was a war between Chili and Peru, and the United States
Government offered to mediate for Chili. It was a pitiable interference
with private rights, and I regretted this indication of an unnecessary
foreign policy in this country. In addition to this, there were enough
appropriation bills in Washington to swamp the nation financially. I had
stood for so many years in places where I could see clearly the ungodly
affairs of political life in my own country, that the progress of
politics became to me a hopeless thing.
The political nominations of 1882 involved no great principles. In New
York State this was significant, because it brought before the nation
Mr. Grover Cleveland as a candidate for Governor against Mr. Folger. The
general opinion of these two men in the unbiassed public mind was
excellent. They were men of talent and integrity. They were not merely
actors in the political play. I have buried professional politicians,
and the most of them made a very bad funeral for a Christian minister to
speak at. I always wanted, at such a time, an Episcopal prayer book,
which is made for all eases, and may not be taken either as invidious or
too assuring.
There was another contest, non-political, that interested the nation in
1882. It was the Sullivan-Ryan prize-fight. I had no great objection to
find with it, as did so many other ministers. It suggested a far better
symbol of arbitration between two differing opinions than war. If Mr.
Disraeli had gone out and met a distinguished Zulu on the field of
English battle, and fought their national troubles out, as Sullivan and
Ryan did, what a saving of life and money! How many lives could have
been saved if Napoleon and Wellington, or Moltke and McMahon had
emulated the spirit of the Sullivan-Ryan prize fight! I saw no
reasonable cause why the law should interfere between two men who
desired to pound one another in public; I stood alone almost among my
brethren in this conclusion.
The persecution of the Jews in Russia, which came to us at this time
with all its details of cruelty and horror, was the beginning of an
important chapter in American history. Dr. Adler, in London, had
appealed for a million pounds to transport the Jews who were driven out
of Russia to the United States. It seemed more important that
civilisation should unite in an effort to secure protection for them in
their own homes, than compel them to obey the will of Russia. This was
no Christian remedy. We might as well abuse the Jews in America, and
then take up a collection to send them to England or Australia. The Jews
were entitled to their own rights of property and personal liberty and
religion, whether they lived in New York, or Brooklyn, or London, or
Paris, or Warsaw, or Moscow, or St. Petersburg. And yet we were
constantly hearing of the friendly feeling between Russia and the United
States.
In after years I was privileged personally to address the Czar and his
family, in a private audience, and questions of the Russian problem were
discussed; but the Jews flocked to America, and we welcomed them, and
they learned to be Americans very rapidly. Their immigration to this
country was a matter of religious conscience, in which Russia had no
interest.
A man's religious convictions are most important. I remember in October,
1882, what criticism and abuse there was of my friend Henry Ward
Beecher, when he decided to resign from the religious associations of
which he was a member. I was asked by members of the press to give my
opinion, but I was out when they called. Mr. Beecher was right. He was a
man of courage and of heart. I shall never forget the encouragement and
goodwill he extended to me, when I first came to Brooklyn in 1869 and
took charge of a broken-down church. Mr. Beecher did just as I would
have done under the same circumstances. I could not nor would stay in
the denomination to which I belonged any longer than it would take me to
write my resignation, if I disbelieved its doctrines. Mr. Beecher's
theology was very different from mine, but he did not differ from me in
the Christian life, any more than I differed from him. He never
interfered with me, nor I with him. Every little while some of the
ministers of America were attacked by a sort of Beecher-phobia, and they
foamed at the mouth over something that the pastor of Plymouth Church
said. People who have small congregations are apt to dislike a preacher
who has a full church. For thirteen years, or more, Beecher's church and
mine never collided. He had more people than he knew what to do with,
and so had I. I belonged to the company of the orthodox, but if I
thought that orthodoxy demanded that I must go and break other people's
heads I would not remain orthodox five minutes. Brooklyn was called the
city of churches, but it could also be called the city of short
pastorates. Many of the churches, during fifteen years of my pastorate,
had two, three, and four pastors. Dr. Scudder came and went; so did Dr.
Patten, Dr. Frazer, Dr. Buckley, Dr. Mitchell, Dr. Reid, Dr. Steele, Dr.
Gallagher, and a score of others. The Methodist Church was once famous
for keeping a minister only three or four years, but it is no longer
peculiar in this respect. Mr. Beecher had been pastor for thirty-six
years in Brooklyn when, in the summer of 1883, he celebrated the
anniversary of his seventieth birthday.
Every now and then, for many years, there was an investigation of some
sort in Brooklyn. Our bridge was a favourite target of investigation.
"Where has the money for this great enterprise been expended?" was the
common question. I defended the trustees, because people did not realise
the emergencies that arose as the work progressed and entailed greater
expenditures. Originally, when projected, it was to cost $7,000,000, but
there was to be only one waggon road. It was resolved later to enlarge
the structure and build two waggon roads, and a place for trains,
freight, and passenger cars. Those enlarged plans were all to the
ultimate advantage of the growth of Brooklyn. It was at first intended
to make the approaches of the bridge in trestle work, then plans were
changed and they were built of granite. The cable, which was originally
to be made of iron, was changed to steel. For three years these cables
were the line on which the passengers on ferry-boats hung their jokes
about swindling and political bribery. No investigation was able to
shake my respect for the integrity of Mr. Stranahan, one of the bridge
trustees. He did as much for Brooklyn as any man in it. He was the
promoter of Prospect Park, designed and planned from his head and
heart. With all the powers at my disposal I defended the bridge trustee.
There was an attempt in New York, towards the close of 1882, to present
the Passion Play on the stage of a theatre. A licence was applied for.
The artist, no matter how high in his profession, who would dare to
appear in the character of the Divine Person, was fit only for the Tombs
prison or Sing-Sing. I had no objection to any man attempting the role
of Judas Iscariot. That was entirely within the limitations of stage
art. Seth Low was Mayor of Brooklyn, and Mr. Grace was Mayor of New
York--a Protestant and a Catholic--and yet they were of one opinion on
this proposed blasphemy.
I think everyone in America realised that the Democratic victory in the
election of Grover Cleveland, by a majority of 190,000 votes, as
Governor of New York, was a presidential prophecy. The contest for
President came up, seriously, in the spring of 1883, and the same
headlines appeared in the political caucus. Among the candidates was
Benjamin F. Butler, Governor of Massachusetts. I believed then there was
not a better man in the United States for President than Chester A.
Arthur. I believed that his faithfulness and dignity in office should be
honoured with the nomination. There was some surprise occasioned when
Harvard refused to confer an LL.D. on Governor Butler, a rebuke that no
previous Governor of Massachusetts had suffered. After all, the country
was chiefly impressed in this event with the fact that an LL.D., or a
D.D., or an F.R.S., did not make the man. Americans were becoming very
good readers of character; they could see at a glance the difference
between right and wrong, but they were tolerant of both. Much more so
than I was. There was one great fault in American character that the
whole world admired; it was our love of hero-worship. A great man was
the man who did great things, no matter what that man might stand for in
religion or in morals.
There was Gambetta, whose friendship for America had won the admiration
of our country. I myself admired his eloquence, his patriotism, his
courage in office as Prime Minister of France; but his dying words
rolled like a wintry sea over all nations, "I am lost!" Gambetta was an
atheist, a man whose public indignities to womanhood were demonstrated
from Paris to Berlin. Gambetta's patriotism for France could never atone
for his atheism, and his infamy towards women. His death, in the dawn of
1883, was a page in the world's history turned down at the corner.
What an important year it was to be for us! In the spring of 1883 the
Brooklyn bridge was opened, and our church was within fifteen or twenty
minutes of the hotel centre of New York. I said then that many of us
would see the population of Brooklyn quadrupled and sextupled. In many
respects, up to this time, Brooklyn had been treated as a suburb of New
York, a dormitory for tired Wall Streeters. With the completion of the
bridge came new plans for rapid transit, for the widening of our
streets, for the advancement of our municipal interests. A consolidation
of Brooklyn and New York was then under discussion. It was a bad
look-out for office-holders, but a good one for tax-payers. At least
that was the prospect, but I never will see much encouragement in
American politics.
The success of Grover Cleveland and his big majority, as Governor, led
both wings of the Democratic party to promise us the millennium. Even
the Republicans were full of national optimism, going over to the
Democrats to help the jubilee of reform. Four months later, although we
were told that Mr. Cleveland was to be President, he could not get his
own legislature to ratify his nomination. His hands were tied, and his
idolaters were only waiting for his term of office to expire. The
politicians lied about him. Because as Governor of New York he could not
give all the office-seekers places, he was, in a few months, executed by
his political friends, and the millennium was postponed that politics
might have time to find someone else to be lifted up--and in turn hurled
into oblivion.
That the politics of our country might serve a wider purpose, a great
agitation among the newspapers began. The price of the great dailies
came down from four to three cents, and from three to two cents. In a
week it looked as though they would all be down to one cent. I expected
to see them delivered free, with a bonus given for the favour of taking
them at all. It was not a pleasant outlook, this deluge of printed
matter, cheapened in every way, by cheaper labour, cheaper substance,
and cheaper grammar. It was a plan that enlarged the scope of influence
over what was arrogantly claimed as editorial territory--public opinion.
Public opinion is sound enough, so long as it is not taken too seriously
in the newspapers.
The difference between a man as his antagonists depict him, and as he
really is in his own character, may be as wide as the ocean. I was
particularly impressed with this fact when I met the Rev. Dr. Ewer of
New York, who had been accused of being disputatious and arrogant. Truth
was, he was a master in the art of religious defence, wielding a
scimitar of sharp edge. I never met a man with more of the childlike,
the affable, and the self-sacrificing qualities than Dr. Ewer had.
He was an honest man in the highest sense, with a never-varying purity
of purpose. Dr. Ewer died in the fall of 1883.
I began to feel that in the local management of our own big city there
was an uplift, when two such sterling young men as James W. Ridgeway,
and Joseph C. Hendrix, were nominated for District Attorney. They were
merely technical opponents, but were united in the cause of reform and
honest administration against our criminal population. We were fortunate
in the degree of promise there was, in having a choice of such competent
nominees. But it was a period of historical jubilee in our country, this
fall of 1883.
We were celebrating centennials everywhere, even at Harvard. It seemed
to be about a hundred years back since anything worth while had really
happened in America. Since 1870 there had been a round of centennials.
It was a good thing in the busy glorification of a brilliant present,
and a glorious future, that we rehearsed the struggle and hardships by
which we had arrived to this great inheritance of blessing and
prosperity.
"The United States Government is a bubble-bursting nationality," said
Lord John Russell, but every year since has disproved the accuracy of
this jeer. Even our elections disproved it. Candidates for the
Presidency are pushed out of sight by a sudden wave of split tickets. In
the elections of 1883, in Ohio ten candidates were obliterated; in
Pennsylvania five were buried and fifteen resurrected. In Indiana, the
record of names in United States political quicksands is too long too
consider, the new candidates that sprang up being still larger in
numbers. And yet only six men in any generation become President. Out of
five thousand men, who consider themselves competent to be captains,
only six are crowned with their ambition. And these six are not
generally the men who had any prospect of becoming the people's choice.
The two political chiefs in convention, failing on the thirtieth ballot
to get the nomination, some less conspicuous man is chosen as a
compromise. Political ambition seems to me a poor business. There are
men more worthy of national praise than the successful politicians; men
like Isaac Hull; men whose generous gifts and Christian careers
perpetuate the magnificent purposes of our lives. Isaac Hull was a
Quaker--one of the best in that sect. I lived among quakers for seven
years in Philadelphia, and I loved them. Mr. Hull illustrated in his
life the principles of his sect, characterised by integrity of finance
and of soul. He rose to the front rank of public-spirited men, from the
humble duties of a farmer's boy. He was one of the most important
members of the Society of Friends, and I valued the privilege of his
friendship more than that of any celebrity I ever knew. He lived for the
profit in standards rather than for wealth, and he passed on to a wider
circle of friends beyond.
I have a little list of men who about this time passed away amid many
antagonisms--men who were misunderstood while they lived. I knew their
worth. There was John McKean, the District Attorney of New York, who
died in 1883, when criticism against him, of lawyers and judges, was
most bitter and cruel. A brilliant lawyer, he was accused of
non-performance of duty; but he died, knowing nothing of the delays
complained of. He was blamed for what he could not help. Some stroke of
ill-health; some untoward worldly [_Transcriber's Note: original says
"wordly"_] circumstances, or something in domestic conditions will often
disqualify a man for service; and yet he is blamed for idleness, for
having possessions when the finances are cramped, for temper when the
nerves have given out, for misanthropy when he has had enough to disgust
him for ever with the human race. After we have exhausted the vocabulary
of our abuse, such men die, and there is no reparation we can make. In
spite of the abuse John McKean received, the courts adjourned in honour
of his death--but that was a belated honour. McKean was one of the
kindest of men; he was merciful and brave.
There was Henry Villard, whose bankruptcy of fortune killed him. He was
compelled to resign the presidency of the Northern Pacific Railroad
Company, to resign his fortune, to resign all but his integrity. That he
kept, though every dollar had gone. Only two years before his financial
collapse he was worth $30,000,000. In putting the great Northern Pacific
Railroad through he swamped everything he had. All through Minnesota and
the North-west I heard his praises. He was a man of great heart and
unbounded generosity, on which fed innumerable human leeches, enough of
them to drain the life of any fortune that was ever made. On a
magnificent train he once took, free of charge, to the Yellowstone Park,
a party of men, who denounced him because, while he provided them with
every luxury, they could not each have a separate drawing-room car to
themselves. I don't believe since the world began there went through
this country so many titled nonentities as travelled then, free of cost,
on the generous bounty of Mr. Villard. The most of these people went
home to the other side of the sea, and wrote magazine articles on the
conditions of American society, while Mr. Villard went into bankruptcy.
It was the last straw that broke the camel's back. It would not be so
bad if riches only had wings with which to fly away; but they have claws
with which they give a parting clutch that sometimes clips a man's
reason, or crushes his heart. It is the claw of riches we must look out
for.
Then there was Wendell Phillips! Not a man in this country was more
admired and more hated than he was. Many a time, addressing a big
audience, he would divide them into two parts--those who got up to leave
with indignation, and those who remained to frown. He was often, during
a lecture, bombarded with bricks and bad eggs. But he liked it. He could
endure anything in an audience but silence, and he always had a secure
following of admirers.
He told me once that in some of the back country towns of Pennsylvania
it nearly killed him to lecture. "I go on for an hour," he told me,
"without hearing one response, and I have no way of knowing whether the
people are instructed, pleased, or outraged."
He enjoyed the tempestuous life. His other life was home. It was
dominant in his appreciation. He owed much of his courage to that home.
Lecturing in Boston once, during most agitated times, he received this
note from his wife: "No shilly-shallying, Wendell, in the presence of
this great public outrage." Many men in public life owe their strength
to this reservoir of power at home.
The last fifteen years of his life were devoted to the domestic
invalidism of his home. Some men thought this was unjustifiable. But
what exhaustion of home life had been given to establish his public
career! A popular subscription was started to raise a monument in
Boston to Wendell Phillips. I recommended that it should be built within
sight of the monument erected to Daniel Webster. If there were ever two
men who during their life had an appalling antagonism, they were Daniel
Webster and Wendell Phillips. I hoped at that time their statues would
be erected facing each other. Wendell Phillips was fortunate in his
domestic tower of strength; still, I have known men whose domestic lives
were painful in the extreme, and yet they arose above this deficiency to
great personal prominence.
What is good for one man is not good for another. It is the same with
State rights as it is with private rights. In '83-'84, the whole country
was agitated about the questions of tariff reform and free trade. Tariff
reform for Pennsylvania, free trade for Kentucky. New England and the
North-west had interests that would always be divergent. It was absurd
to try and persuade the American people that what was good for one State
was good for another State. Common intelligence showed how false this
theory was. Until by some great change the manufacturing interests of
the country should become national interests, co-operation and
compromise in inter-state commerce was necessary. No one section of the
country could have its own way. The most successful candidate for the
Presidency at this time seemed to be the man who could most bewilder the
public mind on these questions. Blessed in politics is the political
fog!
The most significantly hopeful fact to me was that the three prominent
candidates for Speakership at the close of 1883--Mr. Carlisle, Mr.
Randall, and Mr. Cox--never had wine on their tables. We were, moreover,
getting away from the old order of things, when senators were
conspicuous in gambling houses. The world was advancing in a spiritual
transit of events towards the close. It was time that it gave way to
something even better. It had treated me gloriously, and I had no fault
to find with it, but I had seen so many millions in hunger and pain, and
wretchedness and woe that I felt this world needed either to be fixed up
or destroyed.
The world had had a hard time for six thousand years, and, as the new
year of 1884 approached, there were indications that our planet was
getting restless. There were earthquakes, great storms, great drought.
It may last until some of my descendants shall head their letters with
January 1, 15,000, A.D.; but I doubt it.