To comprehend the personal government that has been installed
over us we must know its author. His picture is the necessary
frontispiece,--not as soldier, let it be borne in mind, but as
civilian. The President is titular head of the Army and Navy of the
United States, but his office is not military or naval. As if to
exclude all question, he is classed by the Constitution among “civil
officers.” Therefore as civilian is he to be seen. Then, perhaps, may
we learn the secret of the policy so adverse to republicanism in which
he perseveres.
To appreciate his peculiar character as a civilian it is important to
know his triumphs as a soldier, for the one is the natural complement
of the other. The successful soldier is rarely changed to the
successful civilian. There seems an incompatibility between the two,
modified by the extent to which one has been allowed to exclude the
other. One always a soldier cannot late in life become a statesman; one
always a civilian cannot late in life become a soldier. Education and
experience are needed for each. Washington and Jackson were civilians
as well as soldiers.
In the large training and experience of Antiquity the soldier and
civilian were often united; but in modern times this has been seldom.
The camp is peculiar in the influence it exercises; it is in itself
an education; but it is not the education of the statesman. To
suppose that we can change without preparation from the soldier to
the statesman is to assume that training and experience are of less
consequence for the one than the other,--that a man may be born a
statesman, but can fit himself as a soldier only by four years at West
Point, careful scientific study, the command of troops, and experience
in the tented field. And is nothing required for the statesman? Is his
duty so slight? His study is the nation and its welfare, turning always
to history for example, to law for authority, and to the loftiest truth
for rules of conduct. No knowledge, care, or virtue, disciplined by
habit, can be too great. The pilot is not accepted in his trust until
he knows the signs of the storm, the secrets of navigation, the rocks
of the coast,--all of which are learned only by careful study with
charts and soundings, by coasting the land and watching the crested
wave. But can less be expected of that other pilot who is to steer the
ship which contains us all?
The failure of the modern soldier as statesman is exhibited by Mr.
Buckle in his remarkable work on the “History of Civilization.” Writing
as a philosopher devoted to liberal ideas, he does not disguise that
in Antiquity “the most eminent soldiers were likewise the most eminent
politicians”; but he plainly shows the reason when he adds, that
“in the midst of the hurry and turmoil of camps these eminent men
cultivated their minds to the highest point that the knowledge of that
age would allow.”[52] The secret was culture not confined to war. In
modern Europe few soldiers have been more conspicuous than Gustavus
Adolphus and Frederick sometimes called the Great; but we learn from
our author that both “failed ignominiously in their domestic policy,
and showed themselves as short-sighted in the arts of peace as they
were sagacious in the arts of war.”[53] The judgment of Marlborough
is more pointed. While portraying him as “the greatest conqueror of
his age, the hero of a hundred fights, the victor of Blenheim and
of Ramillies,” the same philosophical writer adds that he was “a
man not only of the most idle and frivolous pursuits, but was so
miserably ignorant that his deficiencies made him the ridicule of his
contemporaries,” while his politics were compounded of selfishness and
treachery.[54] Nor was Wellington an exception. Though shining in the
field without a rival, and remarkable for integrity of purpose, an
unflinching honesty, and high moral feeling, the conqueror of Waterloo
is described as “nevertheless utterly unequal to the complicated
exigencies of political life.”[55] This judgment of the philosopher
is confirmed by that of Metternich, the renowned statesman, who, after
encountering Wellington at the Congresses of Vienna and Verona, did not
hesitate to write of him as “the great Baby.”[56] Such are the examples
of history, each with its warning.
It would be hard to find anything in the native endowments or in
the training of our chieftain to make him an illustrious exception;
at least nothing of this kind is recorded. Was Nature more generous
with him than with Marlborough or Wellington, Gustavus Adolphus or
Frederick called the Great? or was his experience of life a better
preparation than theirs? And yet they failed, except in war. It is not
known that our chieftain had any experience as a civilian until he
became President, nor does any partisan attribute to him that double
culture which in Antiquity made the same man soldier and statesman.
It has often been said that he took no note of public affairs, never
voting but once in his life, and then for James Buchanan. After leaving
West Point he became a captain in the Army, but soon abandoned the
service, to reappear at a later day as a successful general. There is
no reason to believe that he employed this intermediate period in any
way calculated to improve him as a statesman. One of his unhesitating
supporters, my colleague, [Mr. WILSON,] in a speech intended to
commend him for reëlection, says: “Before the war we knew nothing of
Grant. He was earning a few hundred dollars a year in tanning hides
in Galena.”[57] By the war he passed to be President; and such was
his preparation to govern the Great Republic, making it an example
to mankind! Thus he learned to deal with all questions, domestic
and foreign, whether of peace or war, to declare Constitutional Law
and International Law, and to administer the vast appointing power,
creating Cabinet officers, judges, foreign ministers, and an uncounted
army of office-holders!
To these things must be added, that when this soldier first began as
civilian he was already forty-six years old. At this mature age, close
upon half a century, when habits are irrevocably fixed, when the mind
has hardened against what is new, when the character has taken its
permanent form, and the whole man is rooted in his own unchangeable
individuality, our soldier entered abruptly upon the untried life of a
civilian in its most exalted sphere. Do not be surprised, that, like
other soldiers, he failed; the wonder would be had he succeeded. There
is a French saying, that at forty a man has given his measure. At least
his vocation is settled,--how completely is seen, if we suppose the
statesman, after traversing the dividing point, abruptly changed to
the soldier. And yet at an age nearly seven years later our soldier
precipitately changed to the statesman.
This sudden metamorphosis cannot be forgotten, when we seek to
comprehend the strange pretensions which ensued. It is easy to see how
some very moderate experience in civil life, involving of course the
lesson of subordination to republican principles, would have prevented
indefensible acts.