Reconstruction—Mr. Beecher favors speedy Readmission—Soldiers’ and
Sailors’ Convention at Cleveland—The “Cleveland Letters” cause great
Excitement.
With President Lincoln’s death the Rebellion died. A few fitful flames
and a few smouldering coals here and there were all that was left of the
great conflagration, but the Rebellion was broken and dead. In its
death-struggles it struck one wicked, random blow, and left the victors
mourning in the very hour of victory—never was so great a victory so sad
and joyless.
But the nation soon roused itself and turned to the solution of those
new problems which confronted it. Through four harsh and bitter years,
years of suffering, this peace-loving nation had been trained to war.
Energetic fighting men had been pushed forward, by the necessities of
the times, to the front, and put in command of national affairs. A vast
army, trained for fighting, was at hand. When suddenly the war was at an
end, and he who with patient wisdom had stood at the helm, and guided
the nation through such troubled seas, was stricken down. A new and
untried man was, by virtue of his office, called to the head of the
government. Armies were to be disbanded. The credit of the nation was to
be sustained, and steps taken to meet the vast debt rolled up by the
war. The problem was changed: instead of war was peace, disarmament, and
reconstruction. Most serious of all was this question of
reconstruction—what to do with the conquered States and conquered
people. Having rebelled and led armies against the national government,
the leaders had been guilty of high treason. What should be done to
them? Should they be punished, and, if so, how? What should be done with
the States? It had been determined that they should not depart from the
Union. They were not in, and how should they be received back?
They had submitted, offered anew their loyalty to the government of the
Nation, and asked to be taken back again. The passions of a four-years
strife, and such a strife, were slow to subside; boiling blood cools but
slowly. At first a strong feeling of resentment set in, and it was
earnestly proposed to hang out of hand the leading rebels. Then they
proposed to hang Jefferson Davis as a symbol of defeated treason, and so
vicariously punish the South. In time even that feeling passed away. But
on the question of reconstruction and readmission the feelings of the
Republican party leaders ran high.
President Johnson, himself a loyal Southerner, was strongly in favor of
readmitting the Southern States to a participation in the government
(upon such terms as might be just), and receiving Senators and
Congressmen from the readmitted States. To this plan Congress, which was
overwhelmingly Republican, was bitterly opposed, and the result was the
executive and legislative branches of the government divided one over
against the other, waging a fierce and disgraceful fight—disgraceful
alike to each. As in all other matters that affected the welfare of the
government, Mr. Beecher was deeply interested in this, and lost no
opportunity to express his views from the pulpit and the platform.
He was strongly opposed to any vindictive course, and when it was
proposed to make an example of Jeff Davis he declared:
“The war is itself the most terrific warning that could be set up, and
to attempt, by erecting against this lurid background the petty figure
of a gallows with a man dangling at it, to heighten the effect, would be
like lighting tapers when God’s lightnings are flashing across the
heavens to add to the grandeur of the storm.”
On the 20th of February, 1866, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, in
answer to Wendell Phillips’s lecture entitled “The South Victorious,”
given a short time previous, Mr. Beecher delivered a speech which he
called “The North Victorious.” In this he took a pronounced stand on the
question of reconstruction:
“Each day will develop the prosperity of the South moving upon the new
basis, and each day will make it plainer and plainer to them that
nationality is necessary for their prosperity. Old aspirations must die.
The war passion must cease. It is a new South we are talking about. It
has a new political economy. It has a new future. God has said by the
side of the sepulchre, ‘South, come forth!’ and the South has come,
though bound hand and foot. Methinks I hear the Saviour say, ‘Loose her
and let her go.’
“On the other hand, look for one moment at the effects of a prolonged
exclusion of the Southern States. It is weaning the citizens of those
States more and more from the national government. For five years they
have not thought of Washington except to curse her. They have not felt
the need of it. They have not felt any blood running through them that
came from the national heart. It is proposed to make them live five
years more out of the Union. Is that the way to make them love it? Is
that the way to make them feel their need of the government?
“The utmost evil in admitting them that can result will be that we shall
be obliged to take a longer time to do some things which now we mean to
do by legislation. Many of the things which we seek to accomplish by
laws we shall be obliged to accomplish by moral means. I have seen this
anxiety to do everything by legislation, legislation, legislation,
waiting for it, and I have seen the power of great moral causes.
Although there is a wisdom in legislation which I would be far from
invalidating, the forms of wholesome legislation, still I would balance
that by the other consideration that it may take too long a time, and we
may rely too much upon legislation. I rely upon reason and conscience.
Churches are my congresses, and school-houses are my legislators.
Kindness, equal, reciprocal, or identical interests—these are renovating
influences; and I would not wait too long for laws, which at best are
but as mills which must run by some external power. What is a windmill
without wind, or a water-mill without a stream of water? Why put a mill
upon the hill-top with a water-wheel, or in a valley if made with a
sail? What are laws without public sentiment? They are water-mills
without water, wind-mills without wind. We must fall back upon moral
force. It may take a little more time, but we shall do the work more
thoroughly; and I believe we shall yet see the day when, throughout the
South, they will show an enthusiasm for liberty, and schools, and
churches, and colleges, such as we have never seen even in the North;
when every man shall sit under his own vine and fig-tree, blessed and
blessing.”
Shortly after the assassination of President Lincoln he said, referring
to its effect upon the South:
“I know not how this may turn, so far as the South is concerned; I know
not but that the cords will be drawn tighter than they would have been
if Mr. Lincoln had been spared; yet I am not without hope that those men
who have for four years learned almost nothing but to curse the name of
our beloved and now martyred President, with the beginning of better
thoughts and feelings may, by sorrow and by grief, be led back again
toward a national feeling. The North has been unified by a sorrow of one
kind; and I would fain hope that God, in His providence, will make use
of this great affliction to produce the beginnings of compunction and
the return of national feeling throughout the South. And so the death of
Mr. Lincoln may be blessed to them as well as to us.
“But, brethren, my heart goes out toward my whole country. I mourn for
those outcast States. The bitterness of their destruction; the wrath
that has come upon them; their desolation—you know nothing of these. The
sublimest monument that has ever been reared in this world to testify
God’s abhorrence of cruelty and rebellion has its base as broad as
fifteen States. No pyramid was ever lifted up in such awful majesty as
is the pyramidal overthrow of these fifteen States. And I pray God that
this last, cruelest, wickedest offspring of the Rebellion may be an
expiation through which they shall be redeemed. Christ, when He died,
prayed for those that crucified Him, and instead of asking vengeance on
them, said: ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.’”
Just before going to Fort Sumter in April, 1865, he said from his
pulpit:
“I would be no man’s servant to go to add additional sorrows to those
that already press and weigh down the South.... I go to say to them,
‘Sound government has come back; beneficent government has come back;
the day has dawned; and, as brethren to brethren, I come to bring you
good tidings of great joy’”—a feeling that was more fully expressed in
his speech at the fort.
Shortly after Johnson had been called to the presidential chair, and
before the open rupture with Congress and his subsequent extravagant
follies, Mr. Beecher wrote him:
“The two points that have lain most at my heart are:
“1. That the government should not allow itself, by any temptation, to
invade the _true_ State rights. The temptation is strong. But the
precedent established might by and by plunge us again into great trials,
and even conflicts.
“2. The other point is, the necessity of securing for freedmen the
kindness and good-will of _Southern_ white men. Their fate will largely
depend upon their neighbors’ dispositions toward them. Northern people
nor the government can hold them up long if all the State populations
around them are inimical.
“In both these respects, as in others, I perceive that your sentiments
are enlightened and statesmanlike.
“May it please Almighty God to endue you with health and strength to
complete the work which you have so auspiciously begun!”
By the autumn of 1866 there had grown up in the Republican party quite a
minority, called “Conservative Republicans,” who were opposed to the
policy of exclusion; and an effort was made that fall to elect
Congressmen who would be in favor of admitting the Southern States again
under such terms and restrictions as might be deemed necessary. This
feeling was quite marked among the soldiers themselves, who, with the
chivalry natural to bravery, were opposed to humiliating a conquered
enemy. In September a National Convention of Soldiers and Sailors was
called to be held on the 17th in Cleveland, Ohio, to give expression to
this feeling. The preparatory committee sent to Mr. Beecher an
invitation to serve as chaplain to the convention, saying in it:
“Your name has been selected by the Executive Committee from sincere
admiration of your character, and as the only tribute within their power
to pay in acknowledgment of your noble devotion to the cause of the
Union, and your earnest and unceasing efforts in behalf of our soldiers
and sailors during the recent war.
“The Executive Committee also find in your course since the termination
of the struggle substantial harmony with the views to which they desire
to give effect in the convention—your eloquence and the just weight of
your name being employed to enforce upon the country a generous and
magnanimous policy toward the people of the lately rebellious States,
and a prompt reconstruction of the Union under the Constitution as the
best means of regaining the national tranquillity which the country so
much needs, and readjusting the rights of all sections, under the new
order of things, on a basis of law, order, Christian brotherhood, and
justice.
“In the call for the convention, which the undersigned have the honor to
transmit herewith, you will see fully set forth the motives which
actuate the military and naval defenders of the Union in their present
unusual course of taking part in a political movement; and it is our
hope—as we have always looked to you in the darkest days of the war for
inspiration, aid, and the cheering sympathy of a noble heart, never
failing to find them—that you will consent to invoke the Divine Blessing
upon the Convention of the Soldiers and Sailors of the United States who
served during the late Rebellion, and who approve the restoration policy
of President Johnson and the principles announced by the recent national
convention of Philadelphia—the first convention since 1860 in which all
the States of our beloved Union were represented.”
As the convention was called for a time when he was prostrated by his
annual “hay cold,” he was obliged to decline, but wrote to them what has
since become famous as his first Cleveland letter.
This invitation, which seems so proper and natural to-day, and the
letter in reply recapitulating the views which, as we have seen, had
been expressed again and again in public, to the intense astonishment of
Mr. Beecher produced a perfect tornado, and for a few days he was in the
centre of a wild and furious whirlwind that threatened to destroy his
influence in public affairs—then very great—and even to rend his church
asunder. It seems impossible, as we look back twenty years, to believe
that such results could have followed such a cause.
It would seem, as we follow the exposition of his views almost daily on
this subject, as though the public, and certainly his friends, would
have become fully accustomed to them, and would have recognized the
object for which he strove; and the sudden, almost blind outburst of
anger, indignation, and grief that followed the Cleveland letter, can
only be explained on the theory that the course of President Johnson had
so exasperated the Northern feelings, that the people, fairly beside
themselves with anger, indignation, and suspicion, could see nothing
right in what he did or advised, and would not permit any one to speak a
kind word either for him or any of the views that he advocated.
Eighteen years later, looking back upon the accomplishment of that which
he had so strenuously advocated, and seeing men commending as wisdom
that which they had then condemned as folly, he recalls this incident in
his life, which, like many others before and since, awaked the mournful
prophecies of timid friends. From his Thanksgiving sermon, November 27,
1884, we quote:
“But one thing more was needed, and that was to chase the scowl from the
Southern brow; to revive the old friendship; to clasp hands again in a
vow of loving and patriotic zeal. It was given to us last, because it is
the greatest of God’s gifts. There never has been such a scene since the
earth was born; there never has been such a rupture, never such a
conflict, never such a victory, never such a reconstruction, never such
restoration of integrity in business, never such a reconciliation and
gladness between good men on both sides, as come to us to-day. As yet
the eyes of many are holden, and they cannot see how great a blessing
God has brought to our unbelieving eyes and timid hands. From the bottom
of my soul I believe in the honor and integrity of thoughtful Southern
men; and when I get from them such letters as I do, and hear from their
lips such declarations as I hear, that they feel at last that they are
in and of the Union, as much as we, and point to the flag, declaring,
with tears, ‘That is now my flag,’ I believe it; I should be faithless
to God and to Providence if I did not. I believe it with an enthusiasm
of faith, and with a longing heart of love; for I think they are above
hypocrisy or insincerity, and that, if we choose, the last cloud will
rise from between us and then pass away for ever.
“Moses, after forty years of toil, was allowed to see the promised land
from afar off only. Less worthy, yet more blessed, I am spared to go
over with the rejoicing tribes into the land flowing with milk and
honey. What am I, or my father’s house, that to me should be given the
privilege of laboring in all this drama, and seeing it end nobly thus?
The discipline is complete, and to the end of time this great epic of
liberty, our struggle with slavery, will shine like the sun.
“Not the least joyful element in this reconciliation is the assured
safety and benefit which will accrue to the colored race. That has come
to pass which was their only safety. Just as soon as the Southern
statesmen accept the perfect restoration of themselves to the great body
politic, and find that there is no division, as between Northern men and
Southern men, in any of the honors of government; just as soon as they
are in and a part of every administration—as, thank God! they will
be—just so soon of necessity that will take place which has taken place
everywhere, in every community: there will be the party of
administration, the ‘ins,’ and the party opposed to them, the
opposition, the ‘outs.’ The moment you have these two parties, each
party has a sentinel watching it. In the South that will take place
which is the salvation of the colored race. As long as they were a
fringe upon a Northern party the South was condensed and solidified
against it. As soon as they are divided at home between the
administrational party and the opposition party, they will be guarded
and taken care of. The administration party will not allow its voters to
be injured; the opposition party will not allow its voters to be
injured. They will be distributed as they should be, and the strength of
each party in the South will be the safeguard of the intermediate
voters. I regard this now, with schools and academies and various
seminaries spread among them, as the final step of emancipation.
“It is in these views that I have acted; and in the calmest retrospect I
now rejoice that I was able to act so.
“The greatest mistake of my life has happened twice, as I have been
informed.
“I was in 1866 invited to act as chaplain to the convention called at
the city of Cleveland, Ohio, of the soldiers and sailors of our army and
navy. The object of that convention was to so shape our Northern
politics as to bring the Southern States back immediately, or as soon as
possible; and in that general tendency I sympathized.
“The question of reconstruction of the seceding States was under
discussion, and feeling ran high, not alone on account of the nature of
the work to be done, but also by reason of the disturbed relations
between President Johnson and Congress.
“President Lincoln had been assassinated, and Johnson had assumed his
place. The statesmen whose vigor and courage had carried the country
through the civil war were less adapted to the delicate task of
restoring the discordant States to peace and unity than they had been to
the sudden duties of war.
“In a general way there were two parties: one counselling a speedy
readjustment, and the other a longer probation.
“President Lincoln and Governor Andrew, of Massachusetts, in the last
conversations which I had with them, inclined to the policy of immediate
restoration; and their views had great weight with me. It was in the
interest of such a policy that the Cleveland convention was called.
“My first letter was in reply to the invitation from the convention:
“‘PEEKSKILL, N. Y., August 30, 1866.
“‘CHAS. G. HALPINE, _Brevet Brig.-Gen._; H. W. SLOCUM, _Major-Gen._;
GORDON GRANGER, _Major-Gen._, _Committee_:
“‘GENTLEMEN: I am obliged to you for the invitation which you have made
to me to act as chaplain to the Convention of Sailors and Soldiers about
to convene at Cleveland. I cannot attend it, but I heartily wish it and
all other conventions, of what party soever, success, whose object is
the restoration of all the States late in rebellion to their federal
relations.
“‘Our theory of government has no place for a State except in the Union.
It is justly taken for granted that the duties and responsibilities of a
State in federal relations tend to its political health and to that of
the whole nation. Even Territories are hastily brought in, often before
the prescribed conditions are fulfilled, as if it were dangerous to
leave a community outside of the great body politic.
“‘Had the loyal senators and representatives of Tennessee been admitted
at once on the assembling of Congress, and, in moderate succession,
Arkansas, Georgia, Alabama, North Carolina, and Virginia, the public
mind of the South would have been far more healthy than it is, and those
States which lingered on probation to the last would have been under a
more salutary influence to good conduct than if a dozen armies had
watched over them.
“‘Every month that we delay this healthful step complicates the case.
The excluded population, enough unsettled before, grows more irritable;
the army becomes indispensable to local government and supersedes it;
the government at Washington is called to interfere in one and another
difficulty, and this will be done inaptly, and sometimes with great
injustice; for our government, wisely adapted to its own proper
functions, is utterly devoid of those habits, and unequipped with the
instruments, which fit a centralized government to exercise authority in
remote States over local affairs. Every attempt to perform such duties
has resulted in mistakes which have excited the nation. But whatever
imprudence there may be in the method, the real criticism should be
against the requisition of such duties of the general government.
“‘The federal government is unfit to exercise minor police and local
government, and will inevitably blunder when it attempts it. To keep a
half-score of States under federal authority, but without national ties
and responsibilities; to oblige the central authority to govern half of
the territory of the Union by federal civil officers and by the army, is
a policy not only uncongenial to our ideas and principles, but
pre-eminently dangerous to the spirit of our government. However humane
the ends sought and the motive, it is, in fact, a course of instruction
preparing our government to be despotic, and familiarizing the people to
a stretch of authority which can never be other than dangerous to
liberty.
“‘I am aware that good men are withheld from advocating the prompt and
successive admission of the exiled States by the fear, chiefly, of its
effect upon the freedmen.
“‘It is said that, if admitted to Congress, the Southern senators and
representatives will coalesce with Northern Democrats and rule the
country. Is this nation, then, to remain dismembered to serve the ends
of parties? Have we learned no wisdom by the history of the past ten
years, in which just this course of sacrificing the nation to the
exigencies of parties plunged us into rebellion and war?
“‘Even admit that the power would pass into the hands of a party made up
of Southern men and the hitherto dishonored and misled Democracy of the
North, that power could not be used just as they pleased. The war has
changed, not alone institutions, but ideas. The whole country has
advanced. Public sentiment is exalted far beyond what it has been at any
former period. A new party would, like a river, be obliged to seek out
its channels in the already existing slopes and forms of the
continent....
“‘I hear with wonder, and shame, and scorn the fear of a few that the
South, once more in adjustment with the federal government, will rule
this nation! The North is rich, never so rich; the South is poor, never
before so poor. The population of the North is nearly double that of the
South. The industry of the North, in diversity, in forwardness and
productiveness, in all the machinery and education required for
manufacturing, is half a century in advance of the South. Churches in
the North crown every hill, and schools swarm in every neighborhood;
while the South has but scattered lights, at long distances, like
light-houses twinkling along the edge of a continent of darkness. In the
presence of such a contrast how mean and craven is the fear that the
South will rule the policy of the land! That it will have an influence,
that it will contribute, in time, most important influences or
restraints, we are glad to believe. But if it rises at once to the
control of the government it will be because the North, demoralized by
prosperity and besotted by grovelling interests, refuses to discharge
its share of political duty. In such a case the South not only will
control the government, but ought to do it.
“‘It is feared, with more reason, that the restoration of the South to
her full independence will be detrimental to the freedmen. The sooner we
dismiss from our minds the idea that the freedmen can be classified and
separated from the white population, and nursed and defended by
themselves, the better it will be for them and us. The negro is part and
parcel of Southern society. He cannot be prosperous while it is
unprospered. Its evils will rebound upon him. Its happiness and
reinvigoration cannot be kept from his participation. The restoration of
the South to amicable relations with the North, the reorganization of
its industry, the reinspiration of its enterprise and thrift, will all
redound to the freedman’s benefit. Nothing is so dangerous to the
freedman as an unsettled state of society in the South. On him comes all
the spite, and anger, and caprice, and revenge. He will be made the
scapegoat of lawless and heartless men. Unless we turn the government
into a vast military machine, there cannot be armies enough to protect
the freedmen while Southern society remains insurrectionary. If Southern
society is calmed, settled, and occupied, and soothed with new hopes and
prosperous industries, no armies will be needed. Riots will subside,
lawless hangers-on will be driven off or better governed, and a way will
be gradually opened to the freedmen, through education and industry, to
full citizenship with all its honors and duties.
“‘Civilization is a growth. None can escape that forty years in the
wilderness who travel from the Egypt of ignorance to the promised land
of civilization. The freedmen must take their march. I have full faith
in the results. If they have the stamina to undergo the hardships which
every uncivilized people has undergone in its upward progress, they will
in due time take their place among us. That place cannot be bought, nor
bequeathed, nor gained by sleight of hand. It will come to sobriety,
virtue, industry, and frugality. As the nation cannot be sound until the
South is prosperous, so, on the other extreme, a healthy condition of
civil society in the South is indispensable to the welfare of the
freedmen.
“‘Refusing to admit loyal senators and representatives from the South to
Congress will not help the freedmen. It will not secure for them the
vote. It will not protect them. It will not secure any amendment of our
Constitution, however just and wise. It will only increase the dangers
and complicate the difficulties. Whether we regard the whole nation or
any section of it or class in it, the first demand of our time is entire
reunion!
“‘Once united, we can, by schools, churches, a free press, and
increasing free speech, attack every evil and secure every good.
Meanwhile, the great chasm which rebellion has made is not filled up. It
grows deeper and stretches wider! Out of it rise dread spectres and
threatening sounds. Let that gulf be closed, and bury in it slavery,
sectional animosity, and all strifes and hatreds!
“‘It is fit that the brave men who, on sea and land, faced death to save
this nation, should now, by their voice and vote, consummate what their
swords rendered possible.
“‘For the sake of the freedmen, for the sake of the South and its
millions of our fellow-countrymen, for our own sake, and for the great
cause of freedom and civilization, I urge the immediate reunion of all
the parts of this Union which rebellion and war have shattered.
I am, truly yours,
“‘HENRY WARD BEECHER.’”
This letter was published by the convention in the hope that it would
make an impression on the public mind. It did. Their most sanguine
expectations were more than realized in that respect. But it was a step
in advance of the prevailing public sentiment, and, like such steps, was
largely misunderstood or misrepresented.
The partisan Republican press at once assailed Mr. Beecher, some
bitterly, some indignantly, and some compassionately. Read hastily, it
was construed as a declaration against the Republican party and in favor
of President Johnson, who by this time had come in violent collision
with Congress and the general sentiment of the North. The President’s
course was regarded as treacherous, and a feeling of hatred was
spreading through the North, so intense that it was only necessary for
him to advocate any measure to have it looked upon with suspicion and be
bitterly opposed. Many of Mr. Beecher’s personal friends were alarmed
and distressed, fearing that he was giving aid and comfort to the enemy.
He was overwhelmed with letters full of fear—fear for the country, fear
for the Republican party, fear for him and his future usefulness. Some
who had been among his intimate friends attacked him openly and fiercely
in the public prints. The _Independent_, whose editorship he had but
recently resigned, and to which he was still a regular contributor, in
its leading editorial, from the pen of Theodore Tilton, attacked him
with intense and persistent bitterness. Writing shortly afterwards to a
friend, he said:
“The rage and abuse of excited men I have too long been used to, now to
be surprised or daunted.... I stood almost alone, my church, in my
absence, full of excitement; all my ministerial brethren, with a few
honorable exceptions, either aloof or in clamor against me; well-nigh
the whole religious press denouncing me, and the political press
furious.”
On the other hand, many thoughtful, earnest men agreed with the letter
and commended it most earnestly. We quote from a letter received from
Dr. Stephen H. Tyng as a type of this class:
“I have just read your admirable letter in the _Times_ of to-day. My
eyes are wet with tears of sympathy and thanksgiving. You have expressed
in terms and with beauty peculiar to yourself precisely what I have in
my humble way thought and felt.... The recognition and establishment of
our Union on the basis of undisputed loyalty to the national government,
unlimited liberty to the people, universal fidelity in payment of our
responsibility, and generous reciprocation and acknowledgment of mutual
kindness and confidence among all portions of our territory and all
classes of our people, is to me the one great immediate end for us to
strive for. I have not a doubt that all our interests and hopes, social,
moral, and economical, are far safer in the union of our States and the
complete acknowledgment of them all, than they can be in its
refusal—nay, that they are safe in no other course. I cannot justify the
partisan and acrimonious action which resists and impedes this immediate
union.... The country has been much indebted to you for faithful and
powerful defence, but it has never had more occasion to honor you than
for the letter which I have read this morning....”
The reply to Dr. Tyng, written some days before the second letter, is
valuable as showing how little his critics understood Mr. Beecher’s
position, and with what unreasonable and passion-blinded haste they
jumped to the conclusion that he had abandoned the Republican party,
become a Johnson man, Copperhead, etc.:
“PEEKSKILL, Sept. 6, 1866.
”MY DEAR DR. TYNG:
“Your kind letter surprised and delighted me, and has been a great
comfort withal. You perhaps are aware by this time that my letter has
been excessively distasteful to the great body of men with whom I have
acted, and to my own congregation. Nothing but a deep sense of public
danger, to which the eyes of our best men seem blind, induced me to
write it. The sentiments contained in it I had, in speeches and
lectures, openly declared in all the principal cities of the East during
the whole winter and spring, and I was therefore not a little surprised
at the wonder and excitement with which they have now been received.
“I attribute it to the sharp issue made by Mr. Johnson and Congress, and
to the exasperation of the public mind with the President, especially
his most unwise speeches made during his present tour. I am far from
being a Johnson man. I am an advocate of the _principles_ of speedy
readjustment, without waiting for a greater but at present unattainable
good. I am, however, constrained to say that Mr. Johnson just now and
for some time past has been the greatest obstacle in the way of his own
views. The mere fact that he holds them is their condemnation with a
public utterly exasperated with his rudeness and violence. The TRUTH is,
however, just as important as if it had a wiser advocate.
“Things may go so far that no choice will be left but between a
Copperhead Johnson party and a radical Republican, and I cannot for a
moment hesitate on which side I shall be, or rather already am.
“The moral sentiment of justice, liberty, and Christian progress is with
the Republican side. There are the men whom I most esteem, and with whom
I have always acted, and for whom first and last I have wished success.
“For that very reason I have desired and labored assiduously to secure
to them more practical views than those at first peculiar to a few
extreme men, but which, partly by the President’s indiscretions, partly
by the inflammation of the public mind and the adroitness with which
things have been managed by a few, seem likely to become the
enthusiastic belief of the whole community, or of a large majority. I
must submit to things which I cannot control. Should things turn out
better than my fears I shall be glad to find myself a false prophet. But
I confess that the cause of the freedmen, which lies near my heart,
looks gloomy in the future. With a very Southern South and a very
Northern North I do not see but they will be ground to powder. But God
rules—that is my unfailing comfort. His cause gains as well by disaster
as by success. Good and evil both serve Him....”
On the 7th of September Mr. Beecher received a letter from Dr. R. S.
Storrs, then an intimate friend, which expressed the feelings of not a
few of his friends. In this he urged Mr. Beecher to make a fuller and
more explicit statement of his position, and to show plainly that he was
not in sympathy with Johnson, Seward, etc., in their general attitude.
“A vast number of people who have loved and honored you for years are
really beginning to believe that you have gone over bodily; of course
all those who know you as I do, know this to be an utter misapprehension
of your position.”
Many of the members of Plymouth Church shared the common
misapprehension, while many saw plainly what Mr. Beecher was seeking,
and sympathized with him. As a consequence the church was deeply stirred
and in commotion.
To quote again from Mr. Beecher:
“Not many days after, President Johnson began that ill-favored journey,
known as ‘swinging around the circle,’ during the progress of which his
temper, attitude, and injudicious speeches thoroughly alarmed the
community.
“It was believed that he was betraying the country, and that all that
had been gained by the war was about to be lost by the treachery of the
President. The public mind was greatly inflamed, and my Cleveland letter
was received with violent protests. Many personal friends and members of
Plymouth Church were greatly exercised.
“There was a great pother made about that. My own friends were very hot.
Some dove into the newspapers, some into letters. They flew thick and
fast all around about me. Neighboring ministers thought that I was
unseated and disrupted for ever. In the midst of it all I knew I was
right, and that if I had patience others would know that I was right.
And they did, though they still talk about that greatest blunder of my
life, ‘the Cleveland letter.’ I am going to send down that document to
my children as one of the most glorious things that I ever did in my
life. But such was the excitement and clamor that I thought it wise to
alleviate the fear and trouble of my people by giving a fuller view of
the ground of my first letter and to confute the idea that I had
abandoned the Republican party, so I wrote the second letter to a friend
to read to the church, assuming the same position, but with explanatory
reasoning.” This was the second so-called “Cleveland Letter”:
We give a few extracts from this letter, which was a very long one,
covering nearly the same ground as the first, only giving his reasons
more fully:
“PEEKSKILL, Saturday, Sept. 8, 1866.
”MY DEAR ———:
“I am obliged to you for your letter. I am sorry that my friends and my
congregation are grieved by my Cleveland letter.
“This feeling, however, has no just grounds, whatever may be the
seeming. I have not left, and do not propose to leave, or to be put out
of, the Republican party. I am in sympathy with its aims, its great
principles, and its army of noble men. But I took the liberty of
criticising its policy in a single respect, and to do what I could to
secure what I believed, and still believe, to be a better one.
“I am, and from the first have been, fully of opinion that the amendment
of the Constitution proposed by Congress, equalizing representation in
Northern and Southern States, was intrinsically just and reasonable, and
that it should be sought by a wholesome and persistent moral agitation.
“But, from the present condition of the public mind and from the
President’s attitude, I deemed such a change to be practically
impossible, in any near period, by political action. And a plan of
reconstruction based upon that seems to me far more like a plan of
adjourning reconstruction for years, at least, with all the liabilities
of mischief which are always to be expected in the fluctuations of
politics in a free nation.
“It is not the North that chiefly needs the restoration of government to
its normal sphere and regular action. Either the advantages of Union are
fallacious, or the continuous exclusion of the South from it will breed
disorder, make the future reunion more difficult, and especially subject
the freedmen to the very worst conditions of society that can well
exist. No army, no government, and no earthly power can compel the South
to treat four million men justly, if the inhabitants (whether rightly or
wrongly) regard these men as the cause, or even the occasion, of their
unhappiness and disfranchisement. But no army, or government, or power
will be required when Southern society is restored, occupied, and
prospering in the renewed Union. Then the negro will be felt to be a
necessity to Southern industry, and interest will join with conscience
and kindness in securing for him favorable treatment from his
fellow-citizens....
“Neither am I a ‘Johnson man’ in any received meaning of that term. I
accept that part of the policy which he favors, but with modification. I
have never thought that it would be wise to bring back all the States in
a body, and at once, any more than it would be to keep them all out
together. One by one, in due succession, under a special judgment rather
than by a wholesale theoretic rule, I would have them readmitted. I
still think a middle course between the President’s and that of Congress
would be wiser than either. But with this my agreement with the
President ends.
“And now allow me to express some surprise at the turn which the public
mind has taken on my letter. If I had never before spoken my sentiments,
I could see how friends might now misapprehend my position. But for a
year past I have been advocating the very principles of the Cleveland
letter in all the chief Eastern cities—in Boston, Portland, Springfield,
Albany, Utica, Rochester, Buffalo, Philadelphia, Harrisburg, Pittsburgh,
and Brooklyn (at the Academy of Music last winter). These views were
reported, discussed, agreed to or differed from, praised and blamed
abundantly. But no one thought, or at least said, that I remember, that
I had forsaken the Republican party or had turned my back upon the
freedman. My recent letter but condenses those views which for twelve
months I have been earnestly engaged in urging upon the attention of the
community. I am not surprised that men dissent. But this sudden
consternation and this late discovery of the nature of my opinions seem
sufficiently surprising. I could not ask a better service than the
reprinting of that sermon of last October, which first brought upon me
the criticisms of the _Tribune_ and _Independent_.
“I foresaw that, in the probable condition of parties and the country,
we could not carry suffrage for the freedman by immediate political
action. When the ablest and most radical Congress of our history came
together they refused to give suffrage to negroes, even in the District
of Columbia; and only in an indirect way, not as a political right but
as the hoped-for result of political selfishness, did they provide for
it by an amendment of the Constitution. What was prophecy with me,
Congress has made history. Relinquishing political instruments for
gaining the full enfranchisement of men, I instantly turned to moral
means; and enunciating the broadest doctrine of manhood suffrage, I gave
the widest latitude to that, advocating the rights of black and white,
of men and women, to the vote. If any man has labored more openly, on a
broader principle, and with more assiduity, I do not know him. More
ability may have been shown, but not more directness of purpose or
undeviating consistency....
“Deeming the speedy admission of the Southern States as necessary to
their own health, as indirectly the best policy for the freedmen, as
peculiarly needful to the safety of our government, which, for the sake
of accomplishing a good end, incautious men are in danger of perverting,
I favored, and do still favor, the election to Congress of Republicans
who will seek the early admission of the recusant States. Having urged
it for a year past, I was more than ready to urge it again upon the
representatives to Congress this fall. In this spirit and for this end I
drew up my Cleveland letter. I deem its views sound; I am not sorry that
I wrote it. I regret the misapprehension which it has caused, and yet
more any sorrow which it may have needlessly imposed upon dear friends.
As I look back upon my course, I see no deviation from the straight line
which I have made, without wavering, for now thirty years in public
life, in favor of justice, liberty, and the elevation of the poor and
ignorant.
“The attempt to class me with men whose course I have opposed all my
life long will utterly fail. I shall choose my own place, and shall not
be moved from it. I have been from my youth a firm, unwavering, avowed,
and active friend of all that were oppressed. I have done nothing to
forfeit that good name which I have earned. I am not going weakly to
turn away from my settled convictions of the public weal for fear that
bad men may praise me or good men blame. There is a serious difference
of judgment between men as to the best policy. We must all remit to the
future the decision of the question. Facts will soon judge us.
“I feel now profoundly how imperfect my services have been to my
country, compared with its desert of noble services. But I am conscious
that I have given all that I had to give, without fear or favor. Above
all earthly things is my country dear to me. The lips that taught me to
say ‘Our Father’ taught me to say ‘Fatherland.’ I have aimed to conceive
of that land in the light of Christianity. God is my witness that with
singleness of heart I have given all my time, strength, and service to
that which shall make our whole nation truly prosperous and glorious.
Not by the lustre of arms, even in a just cause, would I seek her glory,
but by a civilization that should carry its blessings down to the lowest
classes, and nourish the very roots of society by her moral power and
purity, by her public conscience, her political justice, and by her
intelligent homes, filling up a continent and rearing a virtuous and
noble citizenship.
“By night and by day this is the vision and dream of my life, and
inspires me as no personal ambition ever could. I am not discouraged at
the failure to do the good I meant, at the misapprehension of my course
by my church, nor the severity of former friends. Just now those angry
voices come to me as rude winds roar through the trees. The winds will
die, the trees will live. As soon as my health is again restored I shall
go right on in the very course I have hitherto pursued. Who will follow
or accompany it is for others to decide. I shall labor for the education
of the whole people; for the enfranchisement of men without regard to
class, caste, or color; for full development, among all nations, of the
liberty wherewith Christ makes men free. In doing this I will cheerfully
work with others, with parties—any and all men that seek the same
glorious ends. But I will not become a partisan. I will reserve my right
to differ and dissent, and respect the same right in others. Seeking
others’ full manhood and true personal liberty, I do not mean to forfeit
my own.
“Better days are coming. These throes of our day are labor-pains. God
will bring forth ere long great blessings. In some moments which it
pleases God to give me I think I discern beyond the present troubles,
and over the other side of the abyss in which the nation wallows, that
fair form of Liberty—God’s dear child—whose whole beauty was never yet
disclosed. I know her solemn face. That she is divine I know by her
purity, by her sceptre of justice, and by that atmosphere of Love that,
issuing from her, as light from a star, moves with her as a royal
atmosphere. In this, too, I know her divinity, that she shall bless both
friends and enemies, and yield the fullest fruition of liberty to those
who would have slain her, as once her Master gave His life for the
salvation of those who slew Him.
“I am, your true friend and pastor,
“HENRY WARD BEECHER.”
At the conclusion of his Thanksgiving sermon from which we have already
quoted, after reviewing these letters, he summed up the subject:
“My dear friends, if I had written that for to-day I could not have
written it better, and I do not think it needs to be written any better.
I stand on that, and I have read it this morning not only because
inspired by the parallelism, but because it has been represented that my
Cleveland letter was the greatest blunder of the day; and then, worse
than that, that I backed down from it and retracted it. And I have read,
therefore, both of them, in parts, so far as bears more immediately on
questions of to-day, that you may know that God gave me the light to do
one of the best things I ever did when I wrote that letter; and that He
gave me the grace to stand on it without turning back for one single
moment; and that He has given me grace to lay my path, by sight, along
those two letters—hindsight and foresight—from that day down to this;
and that He has given me grace to withstand the impleadings of those
that I love dearly, not only of my immediate household but of my blood
and kindred; of those that are in the church, that are to me as my own
life, and those that are of the political party with which I have
labored thus far.
“Still seeing that luminous light, as God reveals it to me, I have
walked in it and toward it, and abide in that same direction to-day;
and, God helping me, so will I live to the end.”
To most of his friends the second letter gave great relief. The
excitement in the church was quickly allayed, and, as it abated, the
calm second-sight of his people began to see more and more in the
letters in which they could agree.
After the second letter Dr. Storrs wrote again:
“BROOKLYN, Sept. 10, 1866.
”DEAR BEECHER:
“Your letter is _admirable_ in _all_ respects, and must make precisely
the right impression of your position and views on every one who reads
it. Now let the winds ‘crack their cheeks.’ All my solicitude is over,
and Andy J. and Seward fully deserve what things they are going to get.
“Most affectionately,
“R. S. STORRS, JR.”
In letters to prominent public men and journalists Mr. Beecher urged
that the conservative Republicans should express themselves plainly and
clearly for the speedy reunion of the loyal Southern States and
restoration of a more kindly feeling, but that this should be done, not
in _opposition_ to the Republican party, but within it. He was emphatic
that the work of reconstruction could not then be safely left to the
Democratic party. As soon as the public began to understand, what one
would think had been plainly apparent at the start, that it was not, and
had not been, his intention to leave the Republican party, but to urge
the party to take up speedy reconstruction as its line of policy, and
that he was laboring to create a sentiment within the party in its
favor, the general excitement began to abate, and soon the bitterness,
except with a few extremists, passed away.
A few sparks which took their heat from this fierce excitement remained,
however, smouldering unnoticed and unsuspected, to aid, a few years
later, in creating the most terrible and fiery ordeal that ever a good
man was called to undergo, since the time of Him who came on earth to
give Himself a voluntary sacrifice, that through His death the world
might live; whose tender kindness, patient forgiveness, and generous
self-sacrifice were made the guide and rule of life, so far as human
nature could, by him whose life we seek to portray.