In this tyrannical spirit, and in the assumption of his central
imperialism, he has interfered with political questions and party
movements in distant States, reaching into Missouri, and then into
New York, to dictate how the people should vote, then manipulating
Louisiana through a brother-in-law appointed Collector. With him a
custom-house seems less a place for the collection of revenue than an
engine of political influence, through which his dictatorship may be
maintained.
Authentic testimony places this tyrannical abuse beyond question. New
York is the scene, and Thomas Murphy, Collector, the Presidential
lieutenant. Nobody doubts the intimacy between the President and
the Collector, who are bound in friendship by other ties than those
of seaside neighborhood. The Collector was determined to obtain the
control of the Republican State Convention, and appealed to a patriot
citizen for help, who replied, that in his judgment “it would be a
delicate matter for office-holders to undertake to dictate to the
associations in the different districts who should go from them to
the State Convention, and still more delicate to attempt to control
the judgments of men employed in the different departments as to the
best men to represent them.” The brave Collector lieutenant of the
President said, “that he should not hesitate to do it; that it was
General Grant’s wish, and General Grant was the head of the Republican
Party, and should be authority on this subject.”[146] Plainly, the
Republican Party was his perquisite, and all Republicans were to do
his bidding. From other testimony it appears that the President,
according to the statement of his lieutenant, “wanted to be represented
in the Convention,” being the Republican State Convention of New
York,--“wanted to have his friends there in the Convention”; and the
Presidential lieutenant, being none other than the famous Collector,
offered to appoint four men in the custom-house for the witness, if he
would secure the nomination of certain persons as delegates from his
district, and he promised “that he would immediately send their names
on to Washington and have them appointed.”[147] And so the Presidential
dictatorship was administered. Offices in the custom-house were openly
bartered for votes in the State Convention. Here was intolerable
tyranny, with demoralization like that of the slave-market.
But New York is not the only scene of this outrage. The Presidential
pretension extends everywhere; nor is it easy to measure the arrogance
of corruption or the honest indignation it quickens into life.