Any presentment of the President would be imperfect which did not show
how this ungovernable personality breaks forth in quarrel, making him
the great Presidential quarreller of our history. As in nepotism,
gift-taking with repayment by office, and Presidential pretensions
generally, here again he is foremost, having quarrelled not only more
than any other President, but more than all others together, from
George Washington to himself. His own Cabinet, the Senate, the House
of Representatives, the diplomatic service, and the civil service
generally, all have their victims, nearly every one of whom, besides
serving the Republican Party, had helped to make him President.
Nor have Army officers, his companions in the field, or even his
generous patrons, been exempt. To him a quarrel is not only a constant
necessity, but a perquisite of office. To nurse a quarrel, like tending
a horse, is in his list of Presidential duties. How idle must he be,
should the words of Shakespeare be fulfilled, “This day all quarrels
die”![156] To him may be applied those other words of Shakespeare, “As
quarrellous as the weasel.”[157]
Evidently our President has never read the Eleventh Commandment: “A
President of the United States shall never quarrel.” At least he lives
in perpetual violation of it, listening to stories from horse-cars,
gobbling the gossip of his military ring, discoursing on imaginary
griefs, and nursing an unjust anger. The elect of forty millions of
people has no right to quarrel with anybody. His position is too
exalted. He cannot do it without offence to the requirements of
patriotism, without a shock to the decencies of life, without a jar to
the harmony of the universe. If lesson were needed for his conduct,
he might find it in that king of France who on ascending the throne
made haste to declare that he did not remember injuries received as
Dauphin.[158] Perhaps a better model still would be Tancred, the
acknowledged type of the perfect Christian knight, who “disdained
to speak ill of whoever it might be, even when ill had been spoken
of himself.”[159] Our soldier President could not err in following
this knightly example. If this were too much, then at least might we
hope that he would consent to limit the sphere of his quarrelsome
operations so that the public service might not be disturbed. Of this
be assured,--in every quarrel he is the offender, according to the
fact, as according to every reasonable presumption; especially is he
responsible for its continuance. The President can always choose his
relations with any citizen. But he chooses discord. With the arrogance
of arms he resents any impediment in his path,--as when, in the spring
of 1870, without allusion to himself, I felt it my duty to oppose his
San Domingo contrivance. The verse of Juvenal, as translated by Dryden,
describes his conduct:--
“Poor me he fights,--if that be fighting where
He only cudgels and I only bear.
…
Answer or answer not, ’tis all the same,
He lays me on and makes me bear the blame.”[160]
Another scholarly translator gives to this description of the
Presidential quarrel another form, which is also applicable:--
“If that be deemed a quarrel, where, Heaven knows,
He only gives and I receive the blows;
Across my path he strides and bids me Stand!--
I bow obsequious to the dread command.”[161]
If the latter verse is not entirely true in my case, something must be
pardoned to that Liberty in which I was born.
Men take their places in history according to their deeds. The flattery
of life is then superseded by the truthful record, and rulers do not
escape judgment. Louis the Tenth of France has the designation of _Le
Hutin_, or “The Quarreller,” by which he is known in the long line of
French kings. And so in the long line of American Chief-Magistrates
has our President vindicated for himself the same title. He must wear
it. The French monarch was younger than our President; but there are
other points in his life which are not without parallel. According
to a contemporary chronicle, he was “well disposed, but not very
attentive to the needs of the kingdom”;[162] and then again it was his
rare fortune to sign one of the greatest ordinances of French history,
declaring that “according to the Law of Nature every one must be
born free”;[163] but the Quarreller was in no respect author of this
illustrious act, and was moved to its adoption by considerations of
personal advantage. It will be for impartial History to determine if
our Quarreller, who treated his great office as a personal perquisite,
and all his life long was against that Enfranchisement to which he put
his name, does not fall into the same category.