HENDRICKS, JOHN SHERMAN, BANCROFT,
AND OTHERS--1884-1891
The following spring, visiting Washington, I met
President Cleveland again.
Of the favorable impression made upon me by his
career as Governor of New York I have already spoken,
and shall have occasion to speak presently of his
Presidency. The renewal of our acquaintance even increased
my respect for him. He was evidently a strong, honest
man, trying to do his duty under difficulties.
I also met again Mr. Cleveland's opponent in the previous
campaign--Mr. Blaine. Calling on Mr. William
Walter Phelps, then in Congress, whom I had known as
minister of the United States at Vienna, and who was
afterward my successor at Berlin, I made some reference
to Mr. Blaine, when Mr. Phelps said: ``Why don't
you go and call upon him?'' I answered that it might
be embarrassing to both of us, to which he replied: ``I
don't think so. In spite of your opposition to him
at Chicago, were I in your place I would certainly go
to his house and call upon him.'' That afternoon I
took this advice, and when I returned to the hotel Mr.
Blaine came with me, talking in a most interesting way.
He spoke of my proposed journey to Virginia, and discussed
Jefferson and Hamilton, admiring both, but Jefferson
the most. As to his own working habits, he said
that he rose early, did his main work in the morning, and
never did any work in the evening; that, having been
brought up in strongly Sabbatarian notions during his
boyhood in Pennsylvania, he had ever since, from the
force of habit, reserved Sunday as a day of complete rest.
Speaking of the customs in Pennsylvania at that time, he
said that not even a walk for exercise was allowed, and
nothing was ever cooked on the sacred day.
I met him afterward on various occasions, and could not
but admire him. At a dinner-party he was vexatiously
badgered by a very bumptious professor, who allowed
himself to speak in a rather offensive manner of ideas
which Mr. Blaine represented; and the quiet but decisive
way in which the latter disposed of his pestering
interlocutor was worthy of all praise.
Mr. Blaine was certainly the most fascinating man I
have ever known in politics. No wonder that so many
Republicans in all parts of the country seemed ready to
give their lives to elect him. The only other public man
in the United States whose personality had ever elicited
such sympathy and devotion was Henry Clay. Perhaps
his nearest friend was Mr. Phelps, to whom I have
referred above,--one of the best, truest, and most winning
men I have ever known. He had been especially
devoted to Mr. Blaine, with whom he had served in
Congress, and it was understood that if the latter had been
elected Mr. Phelps would have been his Secretary of State.
Mr. Phelps complained to me, half seriously, half
jocosely, of what is really a crying abuse in the United States
--namely, that there is no proper reporting of the
proceedings of the Houses of Congress in the main journals
of the country which can enable the people at large
to form any just idea as to how their representatives are
conducting the public business. He said: ``I may make
a most careful speech on any important subject before
Congress and it will not be mentioned in the New York
papers, but let me make a joke and it will be published all
over the United States. Yesterday, on a wager, I tried
an experiment: I made two poor little jokes during a short
talk in the House, and here they are in the New York
papers of this morning.''
During this visit to Washington I met at the house of
my classmate and dear friend, Randall Gibson, then a
senator from Louisiana, a number of distinguished men
among them the Vice-President, Mr. Hendricks, and General
Butler, senator from South Carolina.
Vice-President Hendricks seemed sick and sore. He
had expected to be a candidate for the Presidency, with
a strong probability of election, but had accepted the Vice-
Presidency; and the subject which seemed to elicit his
most vitriolic ill will was reform in the civil service. As we
sat one evening in the smoking-room at Senator Gibson's
he was very bitter against the system, when, to my surprise,
General Butler took up the cudgels against him and
made a most admirable argument. At that moment, for
the first time, I felt that the war between North and South
was over; for all the old issues seemed virtually settled,
and here, as regarded this new issue, on which I felt very
deeply, was one of the most ardent of Confederate soldiers,
a most bitter pro-slavery man before the Civil War,
one who, during the war, had lost a leg in battle, nearer
me politically than were many of my friends and neighbors
in the North.
Senator Jones of Florida, who was present, gave us
some character sketches, and among others delineated
admirably General Williams, known in the Mexican War
as ``Cerro Gordo Williams,'' who was for a time senator
from Kentucky. He said that Williams had a wonderful
gift of spread-eagle oratory, but that, finding no
listeners for it among his colleagues, he became utterly
disgusted and went about saying that the Senate was a
``d----d frigid, respectable body that chilled his intellect.''
This led my fellow-guests to discuss the characteristics of
the Senate somewhat, and I was struck by one remark in
which all agreed--namely, that ``there are no politics in
executive session.''
Gibson remarked that the best speech he had ever
heard in the Senate was made by John Sherman.
As regards civil-service matters, I found on all sides
an opinion that Mr. Cleveland was, just as far as possible,
basing his appointments upon merit. Gibson mentioned
the fact that a candidate for an important office in his
State, who had committed three murders, had secured
very strong backing, but that President Cleveland utterly
refused to appoint him.
With President Cleveland I had a very interesting
interview. He referred to his visit to Cornell University,
said that he would have liked nothing so well as to go
more thoroughly through its various departments, and, as
when I formerly saw him, expressed his regret at the loss
of such opportunities as an institution of that kind affords.
At this time I learned from him and from those near
him something regarding his power for hard work. It
was generally understood that he insisted on writing out
all important papers and conducting his correspondence
in his own hand, and the result was that during a
considerable period of the congressional sessions he sat at
his desk until three o'clock in the morning.
It was evident that his up-and-down, curt, independent
way did not at all please some of the leading members
of his party; in fact, there were signs of a serious
estrangement caused by the President's refusals to yield
to senators and other leaders of the party in the matter
of appointments to office. To illustrate this feeling, a
plain, bluff Western senator, Mr. Sawyer of Wisconsin,
told me a story.
Senator Sawyer had built up a fortune and gained a
great influence in his State by a very large and extensive
business in pine lumber, and he had a sort of rough,
quaint woodman's wit which was at times very amusing.
He told me that, some days before, two of his most eminent
Democratic colleagues in the Senate were just leaving the
Capitol, and from something they said he saw that they
were going to call upon the President. He therefore
asked them, ``How do you like this new President of
yours?'' ``Oh,'' answered the senators in chorus, ``he is
a very good man--a very good man indeed.'' ``Yes,''
said Senator Sawyer, ``but how do you LIKE him?'' ``Oh,''
answered the senators, ``we like him very much--very
much indeed.'' ``Well,'' said Sawyer, ``I will tell you a
story before you go to the White House if you will agree
when you get back, to tell me--`honest Injun'--whether it
suits your case.'' Both laughingly agreed, and Mr. Sawyer
then told them the following story: When he was a
young man with very small means, he and two or three
other young wood-choppers made up an expedition for
lumber-cutting. As they were too poor to employ a cook
for their camp, they agreed to draw lots, and that the
one on whom the lot fell should be cook, but only until
some one of the company found fault; then the fault-
finder should become cook in his turn. Lots being
drawn, one of them, much to his disgust, was thus chosen
cook, and toward the close of the day he returned to camp,
before the others, to get supper ready. Having taken
from the camp stores a large quantity of beans, he put
them into a pot boiling over the fire, as he had seen his
mother do in his boyhood, and then proceeded to pour in
salt. Unfortunately the salt-box slipped in his hand, and
he poured in much more than he had intended--in fact, the
whole contents of the box. On the return of the woodmen
to the cabin, ravenously hungry, they proceeded to dish
out the boiled beans, but the first one who put a spoonful
in his mouth instantly cried out with a loud objurgation,
``Thunder and lightning! this dish is all salt''; but, in a
moment, remembering that if he found fault he must himself
become cook, he said very gently, ``BUT I LIKE SALT.''
Both senators laughed and agreed that they would give
an honest report of their feelings to Senator Sawyer
when they had seen the President. On their return, Sawyer
met them and said, ``Well, honest Injun, how was it?''
They both laughed and said, ``Well, we like salt.''
Among many interesting experiences I recall especially
a dinner at the house of Mr. Fairchild, Secretary
of the Treasury. He spoke of the civil service, and said
that a short time previously President Cleveland had
said to him, regarding the crowd pressing for office: ``A
suggestion to these office-seekers as to the good of the
country would make them faint.''
During this dinner I happened to be seated between
Senators John Sherman of Ohio and Vance of Georgia,
and presently Mr. Vance--one of the jolliest mortals I
have ever met--turned toward his colleague, Senator Sherman,
and said, very blandly: ``Senator, I am glad to see
you back from Ohio; I hope you found your fences in
good condition.'' There was a general laugh, and when
it was finished Senator Sherman told me in a pleasant
way how the well-known joke about his ``looking after his
fences'' arose. He said that he was the owner of a large
farm in Ohio, and that some years previously his tenant
wrote urging him most earnestly to improve its fences,
so that finally he went to Ohio to look into the matter.
On arriving there, he found a great crowd awaiting
him and calling for a speech, when he excused himself
by saying that he had not come to Ohio on political
business, but had merely come ``to look after his fences.''
The phrase caught the popular fancy, and ``to look after
one's fences'' became synonymous with minding one's
political safeguards.
I remember also an interesting talk with Mr. Bayard,
who had been one of the most eminent senators in his time,
who was then Secretary of State, and who became, at a
later period, ambassador of the United States to Great
Britain. Speaking of office-seeking, he gave a comical
account of the developing claims of sundry applicants
for foreign missions, who, he said, ``are at first willing to
go, next anxious to go, and finally angry because they
cannot go.''
On another social occasion, the possibility of another
attempt at secession by States being discussed, General
Butler of South Carolina said: ``No more secession for
me.'' To this, Senator Gibson, who also had been a brigadier-
general in the Confederate service, and had seen
much hard fighting, said, ``And no more for me.'' Butler
rejoined, ``We may have to help in preventing others from
seceding one of these days.'' I was glad to note that both
Butler and Gibson spoke thoroughly well of their former
arch-enemy, General Grant.
Very interesting was it to meet again Mr. George
Bancroft. He referred to his long service as minister at
Berlin, expressed his surprise that Bismarck, whom he
remembered as fat, had become bony, and was very severe
against both clericals and liberals who had voted against
allowing aid to Bismarck in the time of his country's
greatest necessity.
I also met my Cornell colleague Goldwin Smith, the
former Oxford professor and historian, who expressed his
surprise and delight at the perfect order and decorum of
the crowd, numbering nearly five thousand persons, at the
presidential levee the night before. In order to understand
what an American crowd was like, instead of going
into the White House by the easier way, as he was entitled
by his invitation to do, he had taken his place in the long
procession far outside the gate and gradually moved
through the grounds into the presidential presence, taking
about an hour for the purpose. He said that there was
never any pressing, crowding, or impatience, and he
compared the crowd most favorably with any similar body in
a London street.
Chief Justice Waite I also found a very substantial
interesting man; but especially fascinating was General
Sheridan, who, at a dinner given by my Berlin predecessor,
Mr. Bancroft Davis, described the scene at the battle
of Gravelotte when, owing to a rush by the French, the
Emperor of Germany was for a time in real danger and
was reluctantly obliged to fall back. He said that during
the panic and retreat toward Thionville he saw the Emperor
halt from time to time to scold soldiers who threw
away their muskets; that very many German soldiers,
during this panic, cast aside everything except the clothes
they wore--not only their guns, but their helmets; that
afterward the highways and fields were strewn thickly
with these, and that wagons were sent out to collect them.
He also said that Bismarck spoke highly to him regarding
the martial and civil qualities of the crown prince,
afterward the Emperor Frederick, but that regarding
the Red Prince, Frederick Charles, he expressed a very
different opinion.
Speaking of a statement that some one had invented
armor which would ward off a rifle-ball, Sheridan said
that during the Civil War an officer who wore a steel vest
beneath his coat was driven out of decent society by
general contempt; and at this Goldwin Smith told a story of
the Duke of Wellington, who, when troubled by an inventor
of armor, nearly scared him to death by ordering
him to wear his own armor and allow a platoon of soldiers
to fire at him.
During the course of the conversation Sheridan said
that soldiers were braver now than ever before--braver,
indeed, than the crusaders, as was proved by the fact
that in these days they wear no armor. To this Goldwin
Smith answered that he thought war in the middle ages
was more destructive than even in our time. Sheridan
said that breech-loading rifles kill more than all the
cannon.
At a breakfast given by Goldwin Smith at Wormley's,
Bancroft, speaking of Berlin matters, said that the Emperor
William did not know that Germany was the second
power in the world so far as a mercantile navy was
concerned until he himself told him; and on the ignorance
of monarchs regarding their own domains, Goldwin
Smith said that Lord Malmesbury, when assured by Napoleon
III that in the plebiscite he would have the vote of
the army, which was five hundred thousand, answered,
``But, your majesty, your army numbers seven hundred
thousand,'' whereupon the Emperor was silent. The in-
ference was that his majesty knew a large part of his
army to be merely on paper.
At this Mr. John Field, of Philadelphia, said that on
the breaking out of the Franco-Prussian War he went to
General Grant at Long Branch, and asked him how the
war was likely to turn out, to which the general answered,
``As I am President of the United States, I am unable to
answer.'' ``But,'' said Field, ``I am a citizen sovereign
and ask an opinion.'' ``Well,'' said General Grant,
``confidentially, the Germans will beat the French thoroughly
and march on Paris. The French army is a mere shell.''
This reminded me that General Grant, on my own visit
to him some weeks before, had foretold to me sundry
difficulties of Lord Wolseley in Egypt just as they afterward
occurred.
At a dinner with Senator Morrill of Vermont I met
General Schenck, formerly a leading member of Congress
and minister to Brazil and to England. He was very
interesting in his sketches of English orators; thought
Bright the best, Gladstone admirable, and Sir Stafford
Northcote, with his everlasting hawing and humming,
intolerable. He gave interesting reminiscences of Tom
Corwin, his old preceptor, and said that Corwin's power
over an audience was magical. He added that he once
attended a public dinner in Boston, and, sitting near
Everett, who was the chief speaker, noticed that when the
waiters sought to clear the table and were about to remove
a bouquet containing two small flags, Everett would not
allow them to do it, and that later in the evening, during
his speech, just at the proper point, he caught up these
flags, as if accidentally, and waved them. He said that
everything with Everett and Choate seemed to be cut and
dried; that even the interruptions seemed prepared beforehand.
Senator Morrill then told a story regarding Everett's
great speech at the opening of the Dudley Observatory
at Albany, which I had heard at the time of its delivery.
In this speech Everett said: ``Last night, crossing the
Connecticut River, I saw mirrored in its waters Arcturus,
then fully at the zenith, and I thought,'' etc., etc.; ``but,''
said Morrill, ``some one looked into the matter and found
that Everett, before leaving home, had evidently turned
the globe in his study wrong side up, for at that time
Arcturus was not at the zenith, but at the nadir.''
At the Cornell commencement of this year (1885) I
resigned my presidency of the university. It had
nominally lasted eighteen years, but really more than twenty,
since I had taken the lead in the work of the university
even before its charter was granted, twenty years previously,
and from that day the main charge of its organization
and of everything except providing funds had been
intrusted to me. Regarding this part of my life I shall
speak more fully in another chapter.
Shortly after this resignation two opportunities were
offered me which caused me considerable thought.
As to the first, President Cleveland was kind enough
to write me an autograph letter asking whether I would
accept one of the positions on the new Interstate Railway
Commission. I felt it a great honor to be asked to act as
colleague with such men as Chief Justice Cooley, Mr.
Morrison, and others already upon that board, but I
recognized my own incompetence to discharge the duties of
such a position properly. Though I had been, some years
before, a director in two of the largest railway corporations
in the United States, my heart was never in that
duty, and I never prepared myself to discharge it.
Thinking the matter over fully, I felt obliged to decline
the place. My heart was set on finishing the book which
I had so long wished to publish,--my ``History of the
Warfare of Science with Theology,''--and in order to
cut myself off from other work and get some needed
rest I sailed for Europe on October 3, 1885, but while
engaged most delightfully in visits to Oxford,
Cambridge, and various places on the Continent, I received
by cable an offer which had also a very tempting side.
It was sent by my old friend Mr. Henry Sage of Ithaca,
urged me to accept the nomination to Congress from that
district, and assured me that the nomination was equivalent
to an election. There were some reasons why such a
position was attractive to me, but the more I thought of
it the more it seemed to me that to discharge these duties
properly would take me from other work to which I was
pledged. Before deciding the question, however, I determined
to consult two old friends who were then living in
London hotels adjacent to my own. The first of these was
my dear old instructor, with whom my relations had been
of the kindest ever since my first year at Yale--President
Porter.
On my laying the matter before him, he said, ``Accept
by all means''; but as I showed him the reasons on both
sides, he at last reluctantly agreed with me that probably
it was best to send a declination.
The other person consulted was Mr. James Belden of
Syracuse, afterward a member of Congress from the
Onondaga district, a politician who had a most intimate
knowledge of men and affairs in our State. We had been
during a long period, political adversaries, but I had
come to respect sundry qualities he had more lately
exhibited, and therefore went to him as a practical man
and laid the case before him. He expressed his great
surprise that I should advise with him, my old political
adversary, but he said, ``Since you do come, I will give
you the very best advice I can.''
We then went over the case together, and I feel sure
that he advised me as well as the oldest of my friends
could have done, and with a shrewdness and foresight
all his own.
One of his arguments ran somewhat as follows: ``To
be successful in politics a man must really think of
nothing else; it must be his first thought in the morning and
his last at night; everything else must yield to it. Heretofore
you have quietly gone on your way, sought nothing,
and taken what has been freely tendered you in the interest
of the party and of the public. I know the Elmira
district, and you can have the nomination and the election
without trouble; but the question is whether you could
ever be happy in the sort of work which you must do in
order to take a proper place in the House of Representatives.
First of all, you must give up everything else and
devote yourself to that alone; and even then, when you
have succeeded, you have only to look about you and see
the men who have achieved success in that way, and who,
after all, have found in it nothing but disappointment.''
In saying this he expressed the conclusion at which I had
already arrived.
I cabled my absolute declination of the nomination, and
was reproved by my friends for not availing myself of
this opportunity to take part in political affairs, but have
nevertheless always felt that my decision was wise.
To tell the truth, I never had, and never desired to
have, any capacity for the rough-and-tumble of politics.
I greatly respect many of the men who have gifts of
that sort, but have recognized the fact that my influence
in and on politics must be of a different kind. I have
indeed taken part in some stormy scenes in conventions,
meetings, and legislatures, but always with regret. My
true r<o^>le has been a more quiet one. My ambition,
whether I have succeeded in it or not, has been to set
young men in trains of fruitful thought, to bring mature
men into the line of right reason, and to aid in devising
and urging needed reforms, in developing and supporting
wise policies, and in building up institutions which shall
strengthen what is best in American life.
Early in 1891 I was asked by Mr. Sherman Rogers
of Buffalo, one of the best and truest men in political
life that I have ever known, to accompany him and
certain other gentlemen to Washington, in order to
present to Mr. Harrison, who had now become President of
the United States, an argument for the extension of the
civil-service rules. Accompanied by Mr. Theodore
Roosevelt and Senator Cabot Lodge, our delegation reached
the Executive Mansion at the time fixed by the President,
and were received in a way which surprised me. Mr.
Harrison seemed, to say the least, not in good humor. He
stood leaning on the corner of his desk, and he asked none
of us to sit. All of us had voted for him, and had come
to him in his own interest as well as in the interest of the
country; but he seemed to like us none the better for all
that. The first speech was made by Mr. Rogers. Dwelling
on the disappointment of thoughtful Republicans
throughout the country at the delay in redeeming pledges
made by the Republican National Convention as to the
extension of the civil service, and reiterated in the
President's own speeches in the United States Senate, he in a
playful way referred to the conduct of certain officials in
Buffalo, when the President interrupted him, as it seemed
to me at the time very brusquely and even rudely
saying: ``Mr. Rogers, you have no right to impute evil
motives to any man. The motives of these gentlemen to
whom you refer are presumably as good as your own. An
argument based upon such imputations cannot advance the
cause you support in the slightest degree.'' Mr. Rogers
was somewhat disconcerted for a moment, but, having
resumed his speech, he presented, in a very dignified and
convincing way, the remainder of his argument. He was
followed by the other members from various States, giving
different sides of the case, each showing the importance
which Republicans in his own part of the country
attributed to an extension of the civil-service rules.
My own turn came last. I said: ``Mr. President: I will
make no speech, but will simply state two facts.
``First: Down to a comparatively recent period every
high school, college, and university in the Northern States
has been a center of Republican ideas: no one will gainsay
this for a moment. But recently there has come a change.
During nearly twenty years it has been my duty to nominate
to the trustees of Cornell University candidates for
various positions in its faculty; the fundamental charter
of the institution absolutely forbids any consideration, in
such cases, of the party or sect to which any candidate
belongs, and I have always faithfully carried out that
injunction, never, in any one of the multitude of nominations
that I have made, allowing the question of politics to
enter in the slightest degree. But still it has happened that,
almost without exception, the candidates have proved to be
Republicans, and this to such an extent that at times I have
regretted it; for the university has been obliged frequently
to ask for legislation from a Democratic legislature,
and I have always feared that this large preponderance
of Republican professors would be brought up
against us as an evidence that we were not true to the
principles of our charter. As a matter of fact, down to
two or three years since, there were, as I casually learned,
out of a faculty of about fifty members, not over eight
or ten Democrats. But during these recent years all this
has been changed, and at the State election, when Judge
Folger was defeated for the governorship, I found to my
surprise that, almost without exception, my colleagues in
the faculty had voted the Democratic ticket; so far as I
could learn, but three besides myself had voted for the
Republican candidate.'' President Harrison immediately
said: ``Mr. White, was that not chiefly due to the free-
trade tendencies of college-men?'' I answered: ``No, Mr.
President; the great majority of these men who voted
with the Democrats were protectionists, and you will
yourself see that they must have been so if they had
continued to vote for the Republican ticket down to that
election. All that I hear leads me to the conviction
that the real cause is disappointment at the delay of the
Republican party in making good its promises to improve
the public service. In this question the faculties of our
colleges and universities, especially in the Eastern, Middle,
and Northern States, take a deep interest. In fact, it
is with them the question of all questions; and I think
this is one of the things which, at that election in New
York, caused the most overwhelming defeat that a candidate
for governor had ever experienced.'' To this the
President listened attentively, and I then said: ``Mr.
President, my second point is this: The State of New
York is, of course, of immense importance to the Republican
party, and it has been carried in recent years by a
majority of a few hundred votes. There are more than
fourteen thousand school districts in the State, and in
nearly every one of these school districts there are a
certain number of earnest men--anywhere from a handful
to a houseful--who believe that since the slavery question
is removed from national politics, the only burning
question which remains is the `spoils system' and the
reform of the civil service. Now, you have only to multiply
the fourteen thousand school districts by a very
small figure, and you will see the importance of this question
as regards the vote of the State of New York. I know
whereof I speak, for I have myself addressed meetings
in many of these districts in favor of a reform of the civil
service, have had correspondence with other districts in
all parts of the State, and am sure that there is a deep-
seated feeling on the subject in great numbers of them,--
a feeling akin to what used to be called in the anti-slavery
days `fanaticism,'--that is, a deep-seated conviction that
this is now the most important question before the American
people, and that it must be settled in precedence
to all others.''
The President received what I had to say courteously,
and then began a reply to us all. He took at first rather
a bitter tone, saying that he had a right to find fault
with all of us; that the Civil Service League had
denounced his administration most unjustly for its relation
to the spoils system; that he was moving as rapidly in the
matter as circumstances permitted; that he was anxious
to redeem the promises made by the party and by himself;
that he had already done something and purposed to do
more; and that the glorifications of the progress made by
the previous administration in this respect, at the expense
of his own, had been grossly unjust.
To this we made a short rejoinder on one point, stating
that his complaint against us was without foundation;
that not one of us was a member of the Civil Service
League; that not one of us had taken any part in its
deliberations; and that we could not, therefore, be made
responsible in any way for its utterances. The President
now became somewhat more genial, though he did not
ask us to be seated, alluding in a pungent but good-natured
way to the zeal for reform shown by Mr. Roosevelt,
who was standing by, and closing in considerably better
humor than he had begun. Although I cannot say that I
was greatly pleased with his treatment of the committee,
I remembered that, although courtesy was not generally
considered his strong point, he was known to possess
many sterling qualities, and I felt bound to allow that his
speech revealed a man of strength and honest purpose.
All of us, even Mr. Roosevelt and Senator Lodge, came
away believing that good had been done, and that the
President, before his term of office had expired, would do
what he could in the right direction; and I am glad to say
that this expectation was fulfilled.