GENERAL GRANT AND SANTO DOMINGO--1868-1871
During the two or three years following my senatorial
term, work in the founding and building of Cornell
University was so engrossing that there was little
time for any effort which could be called political. In
the early spring of 1868 I went to Europe to examine
institutions for scientific and technological instruction,
and to secure professors and equipment, and during about
six months I visited a great number of such schools,
especially those in agriculture, mechanical, civil, and mining
engineering and the like in England, France, Germany,
and Italy; bought largely of books and apparatus,
discussed the problems at issue with Europeans who seemed
likely to know most about them, secured sundry professors,
and returned in September just in time to take
part in the opening of Cornell University and be inaugurated
as its first president. Of all this I shall speak more
in detail hereafter.
There was no especial temptation to activity in the
political campaign of that year; for the election of General
Grant was sure, and my main memory of the period is a
visit to Auburn to hear Mr. Seward.
It had been his wont for many years, when he came
home to cast his vote, to meet his neighbors on the eve of
the election and give his views of the situation and of its
resultant duties. These occasions had come to be anticipated
with the deepest interest by the whole region round
about, and what had begun as a little gathering of neighors
had now become such an assembly that the largest
hall in the place was crowded with voters of all parties.
But this year came a disappointment. Although the
contest was between General Grant,--who on various decisive
battle-fields had done everything to save the administration
of which Mr. Seward had been a leading member,
--and on the other side, Governor Horatio Seymour, who
had done all in his power to wreck it, Mr. Seward devoted
his speech to optimistic generalities, hardly alluding to
the candidates, and leaving the general impression that
one side was just as worthy of support as the other.
The speech was an unfortunate ending of Mr. Seward's
career. It was not surprising that some of his old
admirers bitterly resented it, and a remark by Mr. Cornell
some time afterward indicated much. We were arranging
together a program for the approaching annual
commencement when I suggested for the main address Mr.
Seward. Mr. Cornell had been one of Mr. Seward's
lifelong supporters, but he received this proposal coldly,
pondered it for a few moments silently, and then said
dryly, ``Perhaps you are right, but if you call him you
will show to our students the deadest man that ain't buried
in the State of New York.'' So, to my regret, was lost the
last chance to bring the old statesman to Cornell. I have
always regretted this loss; his presence would have given
a true consecration to the new institution. A career like
his should not be judged by its little defects and lapses,
and this I felt even more deeply on receiving, some time
after his death, the fifth volume of his published works,
which was largely made up of his despatches and other
papers written during the war. When they were first
published in the newspapers, I often thought them long
and was impatient at their optimism, but now, when I read
them all together, saw in them the efforts made by the
heroic old man to keep the hands of European powers
off us while we were restoring the Union, and noted the
desperation with which he fought, the encouragement
which he infused into our diplomatic representatives
abroad, and his struggle, almost against fate, in the time
of our reverses, I was fascinated. The book had arrived
early in the evening, and next morning found me still
seated in my library chair completely absorbed in it.
In the spring of the year 1870, while as usual in the
thick of university work, I was again drawn for a moment
into the current of New York politics. The long wished
for amendment of the State constitution, putting our highest
tribunal, the Court of Appeals, on a better footing
than it had ever been before, making it more adequate, the
term longer, and the salaries higher, had been passed, and
judges were to be chosen at the next election. Each of the
two great parties was entitled to an equal number of
judges, and I was requested to go to the approaching
nominating convention at Rochester in order to present
the name of my old friend and neighbor, Charles Andrews.
It was a most honorable duty, no man could have
desired a better candidate, and I gladly accepted the
mandate. Although it was one of the most staid and dignified
bodies of the sort which has ever met in the State, it had
as a preface a pleasant farce.
As usual, the seething cauldron of New York City politics
had thrown to the surface some troublesome delegates,
and among them was one long famed as a ``Tammany Republican.''
Our first business was the choice of a president for the
convention, and, as it had been decided by the State committee
to present for that office the name of one of the most
respected judges in the State, the Honorable Platt Potter,
of Schenectady, it was naturally expected that some member
of the regular organization would present his name
in a dignified speech. But hardly had the chairman of
the State committee called the convention to order when
the aforesaid Tammany Republican, having heard that
Judge Potter was to be elected, thought evidently that
he could gain recognition and applause by being the
first to present his name. He therefore rushed for-
ward, and almost before the chairman had declared the
convention opened, cried out: ``Mr. Chairman, I move
you, sir, that the Honorable `Pot Platter' be made
president of this convention.'' A scream of laughter went
up from all parts of the house, and in an instant a gentleman
rose and moved to amend by making the name ``Platt
Potter.'' This was carried, and the proposer of the
original motion retired crestfallen to his seat.
I had the honor of presenting Mr. Andrews's name.
He was nominated and elected triumphantly, and so began
the career of one of the best judges that New York
has ever had on its highest court, who has also for many
years occupied, with the respect and esteem of the State,
the position of chief justice.
The convention then went on to nominate other judges,
--nomination being equivalent to election,--but when the
last name was reached there came a close contest. An old
friend informed me that Judge Folger, my former colleague
in the Senate and since that assistant treasurer of
the United States in the city of New York, was exceedingly
anxious to escape from this latter position, and
desired greatly the nomination to a judgeship on the Court
of Appeals.
I decided at once to do what was possible to secure
Judge Folger's nomination, though our personal relations
were very unsatisfactory. Owing to our two conflicts at
the close of our senatorial term above referred to, and
to another case where I thought he had treated me
unjustly, we had never exchanged a word since I had left
the State Senate; and though we met each other from
time to time on the board of Cornell University trustees,
we passed each other in silence. Our old friendship, which
had been very dear to me, seemed forever broken, but I
felt deeply that the fault was not mine. At the same time
I recognized the fact that Judge Folger was not especially
adapted to the position of assistant treasurer of the United
States, and was admirably fitted for the position of judge
in the Court of Appeals. I therefore did everything possible
to induce one or two of the delegations with which I
had some influence to vote for him, dwelling especially
upon his former judgeship, his long acquaintance with the
legislation of the State, and his high character, and at last
he was elected by a slight majority.
The convention having adjourned, I was on my way to
the train when I was met by Judge Folger, who had just
arrived. He put out his hand and greeted me most heartily,
showing very deep feeling as he expressed his regret
over our estrangement. Of course I was glad that bygones
were to be bygones, and that our old relations were
restored. He became a most excellent judge, and finally
chief justice of the State, which position he left to become
Secretary of the Treasury.
To the political cataclysm which ended his public activity
and doubtless hastened his death, I refer elsewhere.
As long as he lived our friendly relations continued, and
this has been to me ever since a great satisfaction.
In this same year, 1870, occurred my first extended
conversation with General Grant. At my earlier meeting with
him when he was with President Johnson in Albany, I had
merely been stiffly presented to him, and we had exchanged
a few commonplaces; but I was now invited to his
cottage at Long Branch and enjoyed a long and pleasant
talk with him. Its main subject was the Franco-German
War then going on, and his sympathies were evidently
with Germany. His comments on the war were prophetic.
There was nothing dogmatic in them; nothing could be
more simple and modest than his manner and utterance,
but there was a clearness and quiet force in them which
impressed me greatly. He was the first great general I
had ever seen, and I was strongly reminded of his mingled
diffidence and mastery when, some years afterward, I
talked with Moltke in Berlin.
Another experience of that summer dwells in my memory.
I was staying, during the first week of September,
with my dear old friend, Dr. Henry M. Field, at Stockbridge,
in the Berkshire Mountains of Massachusetts, and
had the good fortune, at the house of his brother, the
eminent jurist, David Dudley Field, to pass a rainy evening
in company with Mr. Burton Harrison, who, after a
distinguished career at Yale, had been the private secretary
of Jefferson Davis, president of the Southern Confederacy.
On that evening a storm had kept away all but a
few of us, and Mr. Harrison yielded to our entreaties to
give us an account of Mr. Davis's flight at the surrender of
Richmond, from the time when he quietly left his pew in
St. Paul's Church to that of his arrest by United States
soldiers. The story was most vivid, and Mr. Harrison, as
an eye witness, told it simply and admirably. There had
already grown out of this flight of Mr. Davis a most
luxuriant tangle of myth and legend, and it had come to
be generally believed that the Confederate president had
at last endeavored to shield himself behind the women of
his household; that when arrested he was trying to escape
in the attire of his wife, including a hooped skirt and a
bonnet, and that he was betrayed by an incautious display
of his military boots beneath his wife's flounces. The
simple fact was that, having separated from his family
party, and seeking escape to the coast or mountains, he
was again and again led by his affection for his family to
return to them, his fears for them overcoming all care
for himself; and that, as he was suffering from neuralgia,
he wore over his clothing, to guard him from the incessant
rain, Mrs. Davis' waterproof cloak. Out of this grew the
legend which found expression in jubilant newspaper
articles, songs, and caricatures.
This reminds me that some years later, my old college
friend, Colonel William Preston Johnston, president of
Tulane University, told me a story which throws light
upon that collapse of the Confederacy. Colonel Johnston
was at that period the military secretary of President
Davis, and, as the catastrophe approached, was much
vexed at the interminable debates in the Confederate
Congress. Among the subjects of these discussions was the
great seal of the Confederacy. It had been decided to
adopt for this purpose a relief representing Crawford's
statue of Washington at Richmond, with the Southern
statesmen and soldiers surrounding it; but though all
agreed that Washington, in his Continental costume, and
holding in his hand his cocked hat, should retain the
central position, there were many differences of opinion as
to the surrounding portraits, the result being that motions
were made to strike out this or that revolutionary hero
from one State and to replace him by another from another
State, thus giving rise to lengthy eulogies of these
various personages, so that the whole thing resembled the
discussions in metaphysical theology by the Byzantines
at the time when the Turks were forcing their way
through the walls of Constantinople. One day, just
before the final catastrophe, Mr. Judah Benjamin, formerly
United States senator, but at that time the Confederate
secretary of state, passed through Colonel Johnston's
office, and the following dialogue took place.
Colonel Johnston: ``What are they doing in the Senate
and House, Mr. Secretary?''
Mr. Benjamin: ``Oh, simply debating the Confederate
seal, moving to strike out this man and to insert that.''
Colonel Johnston: ``Do you know what motion I would
make if I were a member?''
Mr. Benjamin: ``No, what would you move?''
Colonel Johnston: ``I would move to strike out from
the seal everything except the cocked hat.''
Colonel Johnston was right; the Confederacy was
``knocked into a cocked hat'' a few days afterward.
In the autumn of that year, September, 1870, I was sent
as a delegate to the State Republican Convention, and
presented as a candidate for the lieutenant-governorship a
man who had served the State admirably in the National
Congress and in the State legislature as well as in great
business operations, Mr. DeWitt Littlejohn of Oswego. I
did this on the part of sundry gentlemen who were anxious
to save the Republican ticket, which had at its head my
old friend General Woodford, but though I was successful
in securing Mr. Littlejohn's nomination, he soon
afterward declined, and defeat followed in November.
The only part which I continued to take in State politics
was in writing letters and in speaking, on sundry social
occasions of a political character, in behalf of harmony
between the two factions which were now becoming more
and more bitter. At first I seemed to have some success,
but before long it became clear that the current was too
strong and that the bitterness of faction was to prevail. I
am so constituted that factious thought and effort
dishearten and disgust me. At many periods of my life
I have acted as a ``buffer'' between conflicting cliques
and factions, generally to some purpose; now it was
otherwise. But, as Kipling says, ``that is another story.''
The hard work and serious responsibilities brought
upon me by the new university had greatly increased.
They had worn deeply upon me when, in the winter of
1870-71, came an event which drew me out of my university
life for a time and gave me a much needed change:
--I was sent by the President as one of the three
commissioners to Santo Domingo to study questions relating
to the annexation of the Spanish part of that island which
was then proposed, and to report thereupon to Congress.
While in Washington at this time I saw much of President
Grant, Mr. Sumner, and various other men who were
then leading in public affairs, but some account of them
will be given in my reminiscences of the Santo Domingo
expedition.
I trust that it may be allowed me here to recall an
incident which ought to have been given in a preceding
chapter. During one of my earlier visits to the National
Capital, I made the acquaintance of Senator McDougal.
His distorted genius had evidently so dazzled his fellow-
citizens of California that, in spite of his defects, they had
sent him to the highest council of the Nation. He was a
martyr to conviviality, and when more or less under
the sway of it, had strange ideas and quaint ways of
expressing them. His talk recalled to me a time in my child-
hood when, having found a knob of glass, twisted, striated
with different colors, and filled with air bubbles, I enjoyed
looking at the landscape through it. Everything became
grotesquely transfigured. A cabbage in the foreground
became opalescent, and an ear of corn a mass of jewels,
but the whole atmosphere above and beyond was lurid, and
the chimneys and church spires were topsy-turvy.
The only other person whose talk ever produced an
impression of this sort on me was Tolstoy, and he will be
discussed in another chapter.
McDougal's peculiarity made him at last unbearable;
so much so that the Senate was obliged to take measures
against him. His speech in his own defense showed the
working of his mind, and one passage most of all. It
remains probably the best defense of drunkenness ever
made, and it ran as follows:
``Mr. President,--I pity the man who has never viewed
the affairs of this world, save from the poor, low, miserable
plane of ordinary sobriety.''
My absence in the West Indies covered the first three
months of the year 1871, and then the commission returned
to Washington and made its report; but regarding
this I shall speak at length in the chapter of my diplomatic
experiences, devoted to the Santo Domingo question.