IV

The Jupiter Tonans of reform in attendance upon the convention was Col.

Alexander K. McClure. He was one of the handsomest and most imposing of

men; Halstead himself scarcely more so. McClure was personally unknown to

the Quadrilateral. But this did not stand in the way of our asking him

to dine with us as soon as his claims to fellowship in the good cause of

reform began to make themselves apparent through the need of bringing the

Pennsylvania delegation to a realizing sense.

He looked like a god as he entered the room; nay, he acted like one. Schurz

first took him in hand. With a lofty courtesy I have never seen equalled he

tossed his inquisitor into the air. Halstead came next, and tried him upon

another tack. He fared no better than Schurz. And hurrying to the rescue

of my friends, McClure, looking now a bit bored and resentful, landed me

somewhere near the ceiling.

It would have been laughable if it had not been ignominious. I took my

discomfiture with the bad grace of silence throughout the stiff, formal and

brief meal which was then announced. But when it was over and the party,

risen from table, was about to disperse I collected my energies and

resources for a final stroke. I was not willing to remain so crushed nor to

confess myself so beaten, though I could not disguise from myself a feeling

that all of us had been overmatched.

"McClure," said I with the cool and quiet resolution of despair, drawing

him aside, "what in the ---- do you want anyhow?"

He looked at me with swift intelligence and a sudden show of sympathy, and

then over at the others with a withering glance.

"What? With those cranks? Nothing."

Jupiter descended to earth. I am afraid we actually took a glass of wine

together. Anyhow, from that moment to the hour of his death we were the

best of friends.

Without the inner circle of the Quadrilateral, which had taken matters into

their own hands, were a number of persons, some of them disinterested and

others simple curiosity and excitement seekers, who might be described as

merely lookers-on in Vienna. The Sunday afternoon before the convention was

to meet we, the self-elect, fell in with a party of these in a garden "over

the Rhine," as the German quarter of Cincinnati is called. There was first

general and rather aimless talk. Then came a great deal of speech making.

Schurz started it with a few pungent observations intended to suggest and

inspire some common ground of opinion and sentiment. Nobody was inclined

to dispute his leadership, but everybody was prone to assert his own. It

turned out that each regarded himself and wished to be regarded as a man

with a mission, having a clear idea how things were not to be done. There

were Civil Service Reform Protectionists and Civil Service Reform Free

Traders. There were a few politicians, who were discovered to be spoilsmen,

the unforgivable sin, and quickly dismissed as such.

Coherence was the missing ingredient. Not a man jack of them was willing

to commit or bind himself to anything. Edward Atkinson pulled one way and

William Dorsheimer exactly the opposite way. David A. Wells sought to

get the two together; it was not possible. Sam Bowles shook his head

in diplomatic warning. Horace White threw in a chunk or so of a rather

agitating newspaper independency, and Halstead was in an inflamed state of

jocosity to the more serious-minded.

It was nuts to the Washington Correspondents--story writers and satirists

who were there to make the most out of an occasion in which the bizarre was

much in excess of the conventional--with George Alfred Townsend and Donn

Piatt to set the pace. Hyde had come from St. Louis to keep especial tab on

Grosvenor. Though rival editors facing our way, they had not been admitted

to the Quadrilateral. McCullagh and Nixon arrived with the earliest from

Chicago. The lesser lights of the guild were innumerable. One might have

mistaken it for an annual meeting of the Associated Press.

V

The convention assembled. It was in Cincinnati's great Music Hall. Schurz

presided. Who that was there will ever forget his opening words: "This is

moving day." He was just turned forty-two; in his physiognomy a scholarly

_Herr Doktor_; in his trim lithe figure a graceful athlete; in the

tones of his voice an orator.

Even the bespectacled doctrinaires of the East, whence, since the days when

the Star of Bethlehem shone over the desert, wisdom and wise men have had

their emanation, were moved to something like enthusiasm. The rest of us

were fervid and aglow. Two days and a night and a half the Quadrilateral

had the world in a sling and things its own way. It had been agreed, as I

have said, to limit the field to Adams, Trumbull and Greeley; Greeley being

out of it, as having no chance, still further abridged it to Adams and

Trumbull; and, Trumbull not developing very strong, Bowles, Halstead and

I, even White, began to be sure of Adams on the first ballot; Adams the

indifferent, who had sailed away for Europe, observing that he was not a

candidate for the nomination and otherwise intimating his disdain of us and

it.

Matters thus apparently cocked and primed, the convention adjourned over

the first night of its session with everybody happy except the D. Davis

contingent, which lingered on the scene, but knew its "cake was dough."

If we had forced a vote that night, as we might have done, we should have

nominated Adams. But inspired by the bravery of youth and inexperience we

let the golden opportunity slip. The throng of delegates and the audience

dispersed.

In those days, it being the business of my life to turn day into night and

night into day, it was not my habit to seek my bed much before the presses

began to thunder below, and this night proving no exception, and being

tempted by a party of Kentuckians, who had come, some to back me and some

to watch me, I did not quit their agreeable society until the "wee short

hours ayont the twal." Before turning in I glanced at the early edition

of the Commercial, to see that something--I was too tired to decipher

precisely what--had happened. It was, in point of fact, the arrival about

midnight of Gen. Frank P. Blair and Governor B. Gratz Brown.

I had in my possession documents that would have induced at least one of

them to pause before making himself too conspicuous. The Quadrilateral,

excepting Reid, knew this. We had separated upon the adjournment of the

convention. I being across the river in Covington, their search was

unavailing. I was not to be found. They were in despair. When having had

a few hours of rest I reached the convention hall toward noon it was too

late.

I got into the thick of it in time to see the close, not without an angry

collision with that one of the newly arrived actors whose coming had

changed the course of events, with whom I had lifelong relations of

affectionate intimacy. Sailing but the other day through Mediterranean

waters with Joseph Pulitzer, who, then a mere youth, was yet the secretary

of the convention, he recalled the scene; the unexpected and not over

attractive appearance of the governor of Missouri; his not very pleasing

yet ingenious speech; the stoical, almost lethargic indifference of Schurz.

"Carl Schurz," said Pulitzer, "was the most industrious and the least

energetic man I have ever worked with. A word from him at that crisis would

have completely routed Blair and squelched Brown. It was simply not in him

to speak it."

Greeley was nominated amid a whirl of enthusiasm, his workers, with

Whitelaw Reid at their head, having maintained an admirable and effective

organization and being thoroughly prepared to take advantage of the

opportune moment. It was the logic of the event that B. Gratz Brown should

be placed on the ticket with him.

The Quadrilateral was nowhere. It was done for. The impossible had come to

pass. There rose thereafter a friendly issue of veracity between Schurz and

myself, which illustrates our state of mind. My version is that we left the

convention hall together with an immaterial train of after incidents, his

that we had not met after the adjournment--he quite sure of this because he

had looked for me in vain.

"Schurz was right," said Joseph Pulitzer upon the occasion of our yachting

cruise just mentioned, "I know, for he and I went directly from the hall

with Judge Stallo to his home on Walnut Hills, where we dined and passed

the afternoon."

[Illustration: Mrs. Lincoln in 1861 _From a Photograph by M. B.

Brady_]

The Quadrilateral had been knocked into a cocked hat. Whitelaw Reid was the

only one of us who clearly understood the situation and thoroughly knew

what he was about. He came to me and said: "I have won, and you people have

lost. I shall expect that you stand by the agreement and meet me as my

guests at dinner to-night. But if you do not personally look after this the

others will not be there."

I was as badly hurt as any, but a bond is a bond and I did as he desired,

succeeding partly by coaxing and partly by insisting, though it was devious

work.

Frostier conviviality I have never sat down to than Reid's dinner. Horace

White looked more than ever like an iceberg, Sam Bowles was diplomatic

but ineffusive, Schurz was as a death's head at the board; Halstead and I

through sheer bravado tried to enliven the feast. But they would none of

us, nor it, and we separated early and sadly, reformers hoist by their own

petard.