When General Grant came before the public, and into a position that
compelled notice, he was called to meet a difficulty that his
predecessor in the office of President had encountered and overcome
successfully.
An opinion existed in the cultivated classes, an opinion that was
especially local in the East, that a great place could not be filled
wisely and honorably, unless the occupant had had the benefit of a
university training.
Of such training Mr. Lincoln was destitute, utterly, and the training
which General Grant had received at West Point, where it was his
fortune to attain only to advanced standing in the lower half of his
class, was at the best the training thought to be necessary for the
vocation of a soldier. That minority of critics overlooked the fact
that the world had set the seal of its favorable judgment upon
Cromwell, Washington, Franklin, Napoleon, Hamilton and others who had
not the advantages of university training. Napoleon in a military
school and Hamilton in Columbia College for the term of a year, more
or less, did not rank among university men.
That minority of critics did not realize the fact that colleges and
universities cannot make great men. Great men are independent of
colleges and universities. In truth, a really great man is supreme
over college and universities.
Lincoln was such a man in speech, in power of argument, in practical
wisdom, by which he was enabled to act fearlessly and with success in
the great affairs of administration.
Such a man was General Grant on the military side of his career. With
great military capacity, he was destitute of the military spirit.
During the period of his retirement from the army after the close of
the Mexican War he gave no attention to military affairs. When he came
to Washington in 1865 as General of the Army, he was not the owner of a
work on war nor on the military art or science.
His military capacity was an endowment. It might have been impaired or
crippled by the training of a university; but it is doubtful whether it
could have been improved thereby, and it is certain that it was, in
its quality, quite outside of the possibilities of university training.
As General Grant approached the end of his career the voice of the
critics, who judged men by the testimony of college catalogues and the
decorations of learned societies, was heard less frequently; and his
death, followed by the publication of his memoirs, written when the
hand of death was upon him, silenced the literary critics at once and
forever.
Since the month of July, 1885, there has appeared on the other side of
the Atlantic a set of military critics, of whom General Wolseley,
Commander of the British Army, must be treated as the chief, who deny
to General Grant the possession of superior military qualities, and who
assert that General Lee was his superior in the contest which they
carried on from February, 1864, to April, 1865. On this side of the
Atlantic there is toleration, if not active and open support of General
Wolseley's opinion.
General Wolseley is entitled to an opinion and to the expression of his
opinion; but his authority cannot be admitted. On the practical side
of military affairs his experience is a limited experience only.
It is not known that General Wolseley ever, in any capacity, engaged in
any battle that can be named in comparison with the battles of the
Wilderness, with Spottsylvania, with Cold Harbor, or the battle of Five
Forks; and it is certain that it was never his fortune to put one
hundred thousand men, or even fifty thousand men, into the wage of
battle and thus assume the responsibility of the contest.
It was never the necessity of the situation that General Lee should
assume the offensive, and in the two instances where he did assume the
offensive his campaigns were failures; and can any one doubt that if
General Grant had been in command either at Antietam or Gettysburg, the
war would than have come to an end of the left bank of the Potomac
River by the capture of Lee's army? If this be so, then Lee's
undertaking was a hazard for which there could have been no justifying
reason, and his escape from destruction was due to the inadequacy of the
men in command of the Northern armies. Following this remark I ought to
say that General Meade was a brave and patriotic officer, but he lacked
the qualities which enable a man to act promptly and wisely in great
exigencies. While General Lee was acting on the defensive did he
engage in and successfully execute any strategic movement that can be
compared with Grant's campaign of May, 1863, through Mississippi and to
the rear of Vicksburg? Or can General Wolseley cite an instance of
individual genius and power more conspicuous than the relief of our
besieged army at Chattanooga, the capture of six thousand prisoners,
forty pieces of artillery, seven thousand stands of small arms and
large quantities of other material of war?
During the period of reconstruction Alexander H. Stephens was examined
by the Committee on the Judiciary of the House of Representatives as to
the condition and purposes of the South. When the examination was over
I asked him when he came to the conclusion that the South was to be
defeated. He said: "In the year 1862." I then said: "In that year
you had your successes. What were the grounds of your conclusions?"
In reply he said: "It was then that I first realized that the North
was putting its whole force into the contest, and I knew that in such
a contest we were to be destroyed."
If I were to imagine a reason, or to suggest an excuse for General Lee's
two unsuccessful aggressive campaigns, I should assume that,
simultaneously with Mr. Stephens, he had reached the conclusion that
time was on the side of the North, and that the Fabian policy must fail
in the end.
In an aggressive movement there was one chance of success. A victory
and capture of Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington might lead to an
arrangement by which the Confederacy would be recognized, or a
restoration of the Union secured upon a basis acceptable to the South.
A desperate undertaking, no doubt, but it is difficult to suggest a
more adequate reason for the conduct of General Lee.
I cannot, as a civilian, assume to give a judgment which shall be
accepted by any one, upon the relative standing of military men; but I
cannot accept, without question, the decision of a military man who
never won a great victory in a great battle, upon a chieftain who
fought many great battles and never lost one.
I end my observations upon General Grant as a soldier by the relation
of an incident in my acquaintance with General Sherman, which was
intimate during the four years that I was at the head of the Treasury
Department.
It was my custom in those years to spend evenings at General Sherman's,
where we indulged ourselves in conversation and in the enjoyment of the
game of billiards. Our conversations were chiefly upon the war. In
those conversations General Grant's name and doings were the topics
often. General Sherman never instituted a comparison between General
Grant and any one else, nor did he ever express an opinion of General
Grant as a military leader; but his conversation always assumed that
General Grant was superior to every other officer, himself, General
Sherman, included.
In concurrence with the opinion of General Sherman the friends of
General Grant may call an array of witnesses who, both from numbers and
character, are entitled to large confidence.
During the four years of the Civil War more than two million men served
in the Northern Army. Many of them, more than a majority of them,
probably, served for at least three years each. With an unanimity that
was never disturbed by an audible voice of dissent, the two million
veterans gave to General Grant supremacy over all the other officers
under whom they had served. With like unanimity the chief officers of
the army assigned the first place to General Grant, and never in any
other war of modern times has there been equal opportunity for the
applications of a satisfactory test to leaders. In all the wars which
England has been engaged since the fall of Napoleon, except, possibly,
the Crimean War, the opposing forces have been composed of inferior
races of men. The fields of contest have been in India, Egypt and South
Africa. From such contests no satisfactory opinion can be formed as to
the qualities of the leaders of the victorious forces.
In our Civil War the men and the officers were of the same race in the
main, and the educated officers had been alike trained at West Point.
Except in numbers, the armies of the North and the South were upon an
equality, and in all the great contests, the numbers engaged were
equal substantially. The quality of the man and officers may be gauged
and measured with accuracy from the fact that at Shiloh, in the
Wilderness and at Gettysburg the same fields were contested for two
and three continuous days. It has been said of Mr. Adams that when an
English sympathizer with the South lauded the bravery of the Southern
Army, Mr. Adams replied: "Yes, they are brave men; they are my country-
men."
The Southern Army was composed of brave men and its officers were
qualified by training and experience to command any army and to contest
for supremacy on any field.
My readers should not assume that I have avoided a discussion of the
characteristics of General Grant in his personality and as a civil
magistrate.
The voice of those who in 1872 denied his ability and questioned his
integrity is no longer heard; but there are those at home and abroad
who either teach or accept the notion that General Grant has become
great historically by having been the favorite of fortune.
[* From the New York _Independent_.]
XL
BLAINE AND CONKLING AND THE REPUBLICAN CONVENTION OF 1880
The controversy between Mr. Blaine and Mr. Conkling on the floor of the
House of Representatives in the Thirty-ninth Congress was fraught with
serious consequences to the contestants, and it may have changed the
fortunes of the Republican Party.
Mr. Conkling was a member of the Thirty-seventh Congress, but he was
defeated as a candidate for the Thirty-eighth. He was returned for the
Thirty-ninth Congress. During the term of the Thirty-eighth Congress
he was commissioned by the Department of War as judge-advocate, and
assigned for duty to the prosecution of Major Haddock and the trial of
certain soldiers known as "bounty jumpers." That duty he performed.
When the army bill was before the House in April, 1866, Mr. Conkling
moved to strike out the section which made an appropriation for the
support of the provost-marshal general. General Grant, then in
command of the army, had given an opinion, in a letter dated March 19,
1866, that that office in the War Department was an unnecessary office.
Mr. Conkling supported his motion in a speech in which he said: "My
objection to this section is that is creates an unnecessary office for
an undeserving public servant; it fastens, as an incubus upon the
country, a hateful instrument of war, which deserves no place in a free
government in a time of peace."
Thus Mr. Conkling not only assailed the office, he assailed the officer,
and in a manner calculated to kindle resentment, especially in an
officer of high rank. General James B. Fry was provost-marshal-general.
He was able to command the friendship of Mr. Blaine, and on the
thirtieth day of April, Mr. Blaine read from his seat in the House a
letter from General Fry addressed to himself. Thus Mr. Blaine endorsed
the contents of the letter.
In that letter General Fry made three specific charges against Mr.
Conkling, but he made no answer to the arraignment that Mr. Conkling
had made of him and his office. Thus he avoided the issue that Mr.
Conkling had raised. His charges were these:
1. That Mr. Conkling had received a fee for the prosecution of Major
Haddock, and that the same had been received improperly, if not
illegally.
2. That in the discharge of his duties he had not acted in good faith,
and that he had been zealous in preventing the prosecution of deserters
at Utica.
3. That he had notified the War Department that the Provost-Marshal in
Western New York needed legal advice, and that thereupon he received
an appointment.
The fourth charge was an inference, and it fell with the allegation.
Upon the reading of the letter a debate arose which fell below any
recognized standard of Congressional controversy and which rendered a
reconciliation impossible.
At that time my relations to Mr. Conkling were not intimate, and I am
now puzzled when I ask myself the question: "Why did Mr. Conkling
invite my opinion as to his further action in the matter?" That he did,
however; and I advised him to ask for a committee. A committee of five
was appointed, three Republicans and two Democrats. Mr. Shellabarger
was chairman, and Mr. Windom was a member.
The report was a unanimous report. The committee criticised the
practice of reading letters in the House, which reflected upon the
House, or upon the acts or speeches of any member.
At considerable length of statement and remarks, the committee
exonerated Mr. Conkling from each and every one of the charges, and,
with emphasis, the proceedings on the part of General Fry were
condemned. The most important of the resolutions reported by the
committee was in these words:
_Resolved,_ That all the statements contained in the letter of General
James B. Fry to Hon. James G. Blaine, a member of this House, bearing
date the 27th of April, A. D. 1866, and which was read in this House
the 30th day of April, A. D. 1866, in so far as such statements impute
to the Hon. Roscoe Conkling, a member of this House, any criminal,
illegal, unpatriotic, or otherwise improper conduct, or motives, either
as to the matter of his procuring himself to be employed by the
Government of the United States in the prosecution of military offences
in the State of New York, in the management of such prosecutions, in
taking compensation therefor, or in any other charge, are wholly without
foundation truth, and for their publication there were, in the judgment
of the House, no facts connected with said prosecutions furnishing
either a palliative or an excuse.
The controversy thus opened came to an end only with Mr. Conkling's
death. It is not known to me that Mr. Conkling and Mr. Blaine were
unfriendly previous to the encounter of April, 1866. That they could
have lived on terms of intimacy, or even of ordinary friendship, is not
probable. Yet it may not be easy to assign a reason for such an
estrangement unless it may be found in the word incompatibility. My
relations with Mr. Blaine were friendly, reserved, and as to his
aspirations for the Presidency, it was well understood by him that I
could not be counted among his original supporters.
Only on one occasion was the subject ever mentioned. About two weeks
before the Republican Convention of 1884, I met Mr. Blaine in Lafayette
Square. He beckoned me to a seat on a bench. He opened the
conversation by saying that he was glad to have some votes in the
convention, but that he did not wish for the nomination. He expressed
a wish to defeat the nomination of President Arthur, and he then said
the ticket should be General Sherman and Robert Lincoln. Most
assuredly the nomination of that ticket would have been followed by an
election. To me General Sherman had one answer to the suggestion:
"I am not a statesman; my brother John is. If any Sherman is to be
nominated, he is the man."
I did not then question, nor do I now question, the sincerity of the
statement that Mr. Blaine then made. My acquaintance with Mr. Blaine
began with our election to the Thirty-eighth Congress, and it continued
on terms of reserved friendship to the end of his life. That reserve
was not due to any defect in his character of which I had knowledge,
nor to the statements concerning him that were made by others, but to
an opinion that he was not a person whose candidacy I was willing to
espouse in advance of his nomination. I ought to say that in my
intercourse with Mr. Blaine he was frank and free from dissimulation.
I was on terms of intimacy with Mr. Conkling from the disastrous April,
1866, to the end of his life. Hence it was that I ventured upon an
experiment which a less well-assured friend would have avoided. I
assumed that Mr. Blaine would close the controversy at the first
opportunity. It may be said of Mr. Blaine that, while he had great
facility for getting into difficulties, he had also a strong desire to
get out of difficulties, and great capacity for the accomplishment of
his purposes in that direction.
On a time, and years previous to 1880, I put the matter before Mr.
Conkling, briefly, upon personal grounds, and upon public grounds in
a party sense. He received the suggestion without any manifestation
of feeling, and with great candor he said: "That attack was made
without any provocation by me as against Mr. Blaine, and when I was
suffering more from other causes than I ever suffered at any other time,
and I shall never overlook it."
General Grant's strength was so overmastering in 1868 and 1872 that
the controversy between Blaine and Conkling was of no importance to the
Republican Party. The disappearance of the political influence of
General Grant in 1876 revived the controversy within the Republican
Party, and made the nomination of either Blaine or Conkling an
impossibility. Its evil influence extended to the election, and it put
in jeopardy the success of General Hayes. At the end, Mr. Conkling
did not accept the judgment of the Electoral Commission as a just
judgment, and he declined to vote for its affirmation.
I urged Mr. Conkling to sustain the action of the commission, and upon
the ground that we had taken full responsibility when we agreed to the
reference and that there was then no alternative open to us. I did not
attempt to solve the problem of the election of 1876 either upon ethical
or political grounds. The evidence was more conclusive than
satisfactory that there had been wrong-doing in New York, in Oregon,
in New Orleans, and not unlikely in many other places. As a measure of
peace, when ascertained justice had become an impossibility, I was
ready to accept the report of the commission, whether it gave the
Presidency to General Hayes or to Mr. Tilden. The circumstances were
such that success before the commission did not promise any
advantage to the successful party.
For the moment, I pass by the Convention of 1880 and the events of the
following year. In the year 1884 Mr. Conkling was in the practice of
his profession and enjoying therefrom larger emoluments, through a
series of years, than ever were enjoyed by any other member of the
American bar. He once said to me: "My father would denounce me if
he knew what charges I am making." That conjecture may have been well
founded, for the father would not have been the outcome of the period
in which the son was living. The father was an austere county judge,
largely destitute of the rich equipment for the profession for which
the son was distinguished. After the year 1881, when Mr. Conkling
gave himself wholly to the profession, Mr. Justice Miller made this
remark to me: "For the discussion of the law and the facts of a case
Mr. Conkling is the best lawyer who comes into our court."
If this estimate was trustworthy, then Mr. Conkling's misgivings as to
his charges may have been groundless. If a rich man, whose property is
put in peril, whose liberty is assailed, or whose reputation is
threatened, will seek the advice and aid of the leading advocate of the
city, state, or country, shall not the compensation be commensurate
with the stake that has been set up? Is it to be measured by the
_per diem_ time pay of ordinary men?
Whatever may have been Mr. Conkling's pecuniary interests or
professional engagements in the year 1884, he found time to take a quiet
part in the contest of that year, and to contribute to Mr. Blaine's
defeat.
In the month of November, and after the election, I had occasion to pass
a Sunday in New York. It happened, and by accident, that I met Mr.
Conkling on Fifth Avenue. After the formalities, he invited me to call
with him upon Mr. William K. Vanderbilt. Mr. Vanderbilt was absent
when we called. Upon his return, the election was the topic of
conversation. Mr. Vanderbilt said that he voted for Garfield in 1880,
but that he had not voted for Blaine. Mr. Conkling expressed his
regret that Mr. Blaine had come so near a success, and he attributed it
to the fact that he had not anticipated the support which had been
given to Blaine by the Democratic Party.
On a time in the conversation Mr. Conkling said: "Mr. Vanderbilt, why
did you sell Maud S.?"
Mr. Vanderbilt proceeded to give reasons. He had received letters from
strangers inquiring about her pedigree, care, age, treatment, etc.,
which he could not answer without more labor than he was willing to
perform. As a final reason, he said: "When I drive up Broadway, people
do not say, 'There goes Vanderbilt,' but they say, 'There goes Maud S.'"
When General Grant was on his journey around the world I wrote him a
letter occasionally, and occasionally I received a letter in reply. In
two of my letters I mentioned as a fact what I then thought to be the
truth, that there was a very considerable public opinion in favor of
his nomination for President in 1880, and that upon his return to the
country some definite action on his part might be required. Upon a
recent examination of his letters, I find that they are free from any
reference to the Presidency. If Mr. Conkling, General Logan, Mr.
Cameron, and myself came to be considered the special representatives
of General Grant at the Chicago Convention of 1880, the circumstance was
not due to any designation by him prior to the Galena letter, of which
I am to speak and which was written while the convention was in session,
and when the contest between the contending parties was far advanced.
Our title was derived from the constant support that we had given him
through many years and from his constant friendship for us through the
same many years. We were of the opinion then, and in that belief we
never faltered, that the nomination and election of General Grant were
the best security that could be had for the peace and prosperity of
the country. That opinion was supported by an expressed public
sentiment in the conventions of New York, Pennsylvania, and Illinois,
and in other parts of the country there were evidences of a disposition
in the body of the people to support General Grant in numbers far in
excess of the strength of the Republican Party.
The mass of the people were not disturbed by the thought that General
Grant might become President a third time. They did not accept the
absurd notion that experience, successful experience, disqualified a
man for further service. Nor did that apprehension influence any
considerable number of the leaders. They demanded a transfer of power
into new hands. This, unquestionably, was their right, and as a
majority of the convention, as the convention was constituted finally,
they were able to assert and to maintain their supremacy.
It is too late for complaints, and complaints were vain when the causes
were transpiring, but there were delegates who appeared in the
convention as opponents of General Grant who had been elected upon the
understanding that they were his friends. Upon this fact I hang a
single observation. If there is a trust in human affairs that should be
treated as a sacred trust it is to be found in the duty that arises
from the acceptance of a representative office in matters of government.
When a public opinion has been formed, either in regard to men or to
measures, whoever undertakes to represent that opinion should do so in
good faith.
To this rule there were many exceptions in the Republican Convention of
1880, and it was no slight evidence of devotion to the party and to the
country when General Grant and Mr. Conkling entered actively into the
contest after the fortunes of the party had been prostrated, apparently,
by the disaster in the State of Maine.
Of the many incidents of the convention no one is more worthy of notice
than the speech of Mr. Conkling when he placed General Grant in
nomination. Whatever he said that was in support of his cause,
affirmatively, was of the highest order of dramatic eloquence. When he
dealt with his opponents, his speech was not advanced in quality and its
influence was diminished. His reference in his opening sentence to his
associates who had deserted General Grant: "In obedience to
instructions which I should never dare to disregard," was tolerated even
by his enemies; but his allusion to Mr. Blaine in these words: "without
patronage, without emissaries, without committees, without bureaus,
without telegraph wires running from his house to this convention, or
running from his house anywhere," intensified the opposition to General
Grant.
In many particulars his speech is an unequaled analysis of General
Grant's character and career, presented in a most attractive form. An
extract may be tolerated from a speech that can be read with interest
even by those who are ignorant of the doings, or it may be, by those
who have no knowledge of the existence, of the convention:
"Standing on the highest eminence of human distinction, modest, firm,
simple, and self-poised, having filled all lands with his renown, he
has seen not only the high-born and the titled, but the poor and the
lowly, in the uttermost ends of the earth, rise and uncover before him."
Mr. Conkling was the recognized leader of the three hundred and six who
constituted the compact body of the supporters of General Grant.
Suggestions were made that the substitution of Mr. Conkling's name for
General Grant's name would give the nomination to Mr. Conkling, and
there was a moment of time when General Garfield anticipated or
apprehended such a result. There was, however, never a moment of time
when such a result was possible. The three hundred and six would never
have consented to the use of any name in place of General Grant's name
unless General Grant's name were first withdrawn by his authority.
A firmer obstacle even would have been found in Mr. Conkling's sturdy
refusal to allow the use of his name under such circumstances. Among
the friends of General Grant the thought of such a proceeding was never
entertained, although the suggestion was made, but without authority,
probably, from those charged with the management of the organizations
engaged in the struggle.
After many years had passed, and the proceedings of the convention were
well-nigh forgotten, Mr. John Russell Young printed a letter in which he
made the charge that Conkling, Cameron, Boutwell, and Lincoln had
concealed the contents of a letter from General Grant in which he
directed them as his representatives to withdraw his name from the
convention. Mr. Young was in error in two particulars. Lincoln was not
named in the letter. General Logan was the fourth person to whom the
letter was addressed.
Young brought the letter from Galena, where Grant then was, and he
claims that the letter was addressed to himself. General Frederick D.
Grant, who was then at Chicago, claims that the letter was addressed to
him, and that, after reading it, he handed it to Mr. Conkling.
As late as the first half of the year 1897, Mr. Conkling's papers had
not been examined carefully. The contents of the letter are important,
and for the present the evidence is circumstantial; but to me it is
conclusive against Mr. Young's statement that Conkling, Cameron, Logan,
and Boutwell were directed by General Grant to withdraw his name from
the convention. I cannot now say that I read the letter, but of its
receipt and the contents I had full knowledge, and I referred to it
in these words in a letter to my daughter dated May 31, 1880:
"Grant sent for Young to visit him at Galena. Young returned to-day,
and says that Grant directed him to say to Cameron, Logan, Conkling,
and Boutwell that he should be satisfied with whatever they may do."
Without any special recollection upon the point, the conclusion of
reason is that my letter was written from a conversation with Young,
and before I had knowledge of the contents of Grant's letter. I may
add, however, that his letter produced no change in my opinion as to
our authority and duty in regard to Grant's candidacy. My mind never
departed for a moment from the idea that we were free, entirely free,
to continue the contest in behalf of General Grant upon our own judgment.
Upon the views and facts already presented and with even greater
certainty upon the correspondence with General Frederick D. Grant,
I submit as the necessary conclusion of the whole matter that the letter
of General Grant of May, 1880, did not contain any specific
instructions, and especially that it did not contain instructions for
the withdrawal of his name from the convention; in fine, that the
further conduct of the contest was left to the discretion and judgment
of the four men whom he had recognized as his representatives.