A CANDIDATE FOR PRESIDENT
1872
I have passed a great many days in jail. A jail is a good place to
meditate and to plan in, if only one can be patient in such a place.
Much of my work was thought out and wrought out while living in the
fifteen jails of which I have been a tenant. It was in a jail in Dublin,
called the Four Courts' Marshalsea, that a feeling of confidence that I
might one day be President of the United States first came into definite
form. It was in this prison, also, that I planned Train Villa, which was
to be built in Newport. As my life in that Villa, which in its day was
one of the most famous and luxurious in America, was a sort of prelude
to my campaign for the Presidency, I may fitly say here what I have to
say about it in this book.
[Illustration: Train Villa, George Francis Train's summer home in
Newport from 1868 to 1872.]
I had long wanted a handsome residence by the sea, and so, when I had
nearly completed the work done in connection with the Union Pacific
Railway, and there seemed to be ahead of me a period of comparative
leisure, I projected this house. My plans were made before I was in
the Dublin jail. My wife built the Villa, or began work on it, while I
was still in the Marshalsea. The lot on which it stands embraced some
two and a half acres in the most delightful region of Newport. In order
that my boys might have an opportunity for sport at home, I had a
building put up for billiards and bowling. This was, I believe, the
first residence in Newport that had a special place of this kind,
although of course, many had billiard tables. A fine cottage was also
built for my father-in-law, Colonel George T. M. Davis. This cottage was
sold recently for $50,000, to the Dolans of Philadelphia.
The Villa itself must have cost $100,000, but the truth is, I have never
known how much money was lavished upon its building and adornment. I was
called rich and had never, at any time, given a thought to the mere
details of money. What I wanted I got. In those days that was the
substance of my economic system in personal matters. We lived there in
manorial style, entertaining so lavishly and freely that the Villa
became a free guest-house for all Newport. I also recollect that my
living cost me more than $2,000 a week. Now I manage to live on $3 a
week in the Mills Hotel, or Palace, as I call it. Here I am more
contented than I was at Newport. I seem to be saving $1,997 a week. We
turned out, in Newport, six carriages when we went driving; but this was
a display that I always set my heart against. It seemed to be mere
wastefulness.
Since my occupancy, Train Villa, as it is called to this day, has been
rented by some of the most prominent persons in the fashionable world.
Among those who have lived in it are the Kernochans, the Kips, Governor
Lippitt of Rhode Island, some of the Vanderbilts and the Mortimers. At
the present time, it is occupied by George B. de Forest. It was formerly
rented for $5,000 for three months or the season. It never paid us two
per centum on its cost, and finally was sold by the trustee, Colonel
Davis.
The Villa was once turned into a jail, although I was not the captive in
that instance. In the famous Credit Mobilier case, in '72-'73, a man,
who was my guest at the time, was arrested, and, as the Credit Mobilier
men then in Newport could not give bail in the sum of $1,000,000, as
demanded, an arrangement was made with the sheriff by which the Villa
temporarily became a jail, where my guest was confined.
So full of confidence was I that I could be elected President in '72,
that I telegraphed from San Francisco that I would reach Newport on a
certain day, and wished arrangements made for a "Presidential" banquet.
Although this banquet was not the end of the campaign, it was the last
flourish of trumpets in my Presidential aspirations.
My political career in fact was brief. My intention was to have it
extend through at least a Presidential term; but the people would not
have it so. Prior to '69, '70, '71, and '72, I had taken no active part
in politics, although I had been interested in various campaigns and in
many great public questions of the day. I have already referred to the
offer made to me by the revolutionists in Australia to make me their
President. That was, perhaps, the first time that anything political
ever entered my life. The offer was by no means a temptation to me and I
refused to consider it, without a single poignant regret.
In '65, the Fenians, after I had espoused the general cause of the
Irish, as of the oppressed of every country, asked me to attend their
first convention, which was to be held in Philadelphia. They wished me
to address them. This I did, but I took no active part in the work of
the convention or of the faction. I had already attended the Democratic
Convention in Louisville in '64, when I held a proxy from Nebraska, and
had hoped to have General Dix nominated for President and Admiral
Farragut for Vice-President, but I was not permitted to take my seat.
While I was in the Four Courts' Marshalsea, in Dublin, in '68, James
Brooks, of the New York Express, sent word to me that the Democrats in
convention were willing to nominate Salmon P. Chase if I would consent
to take the second place on the ticket. This did not suit me at all, and
I sent a despatch to Brooks that I would take the first place only, and
that as Chase was my friend, he could take the second place. This put an
end to the negotiations.
But the seed of ambition had been sown, even before this, and it
germinated in the old Irish prison. As soon as I got out of that jail, I
began my campaign for President of the United States, and in '69 started
on a program that involved 1,000 addresses to 1,000 conventions. It
seemed to me that, with the effect I had always had upon people in my
speeches and in personal contact, and with the record of great
achievements in behalf of the progress of the world, especially with
regard to the development of this country, I should succeed. I supposed
that a man with my record, and without a stain on my reputation or
blemish in my character, would be received as a popular candidate.
I had not the slightest doubt that I should be elected; and, with this
sublime self-confidence, threw myself into the campaign with an energy
and fire that never before, perhaps, characterized a Presidential
candidate. I went into the campaign as into a battle. I forced fighting
at every point along the line, fiercely assailing Grant and his
"nepotism," on the one hand, and Greeley, and the spirit of compromise
and barter that I felt his nomination represented, on the other.
In the year '69 I had made twenty-eight speeches in California, and
eighty on the Pacific coast. I also made a trip over the Union Pacific
Railway, on the first train over that line, and made addresses at many
places throughout the country. The following year, '70, I seriously set
myself to the task of appealing to the people directly for support, and
began a series of public addresses on the issues of the day. But this
year's work was interrupted by my trip around the world in eighty days,
which consumed the end of the year, from the 1st of August to Christmas.
In '71 I fought hard from January to December, making the total of my
speeches to the people 800, and having spoken directly, up to that time,
to something like 2,000,000 persons. Of course, my campaign was made on
independent lines entirely. I was not the nominee nor the complaisant
tool of any party or faction. I made my race as one who came from the
bosom of the people, and who represented the highest interests of the
people. It was just here that failure came. I thought I knew something
of the people, and felt confident that they would prefer a man of
independence, who had accomplished something for them, to a man who was
a mere tool of his party, a distributor of patronage to his friends and
relatives, or to one who was a mere stalking-horse. But I was mistaken.
The people, as Barnum has said, love to be humbugged, and are quite
ready to pay tribute to the political boss and spoilsman.
A remarkable feature of my campaign was that, instead of scattering
money broadcast, to draw crowds or to win votes, I made a charge for
admission to hear my addresses. I spoke to audiences that paid to hear
me talk to them in my own behalf and in theirs. In three years of active
work--with the interruption of my trip around the world in '70--I took
in $90,000 in admission charges. In spite of these charges, I spoke to
more people and had greater audiences to listen to me than any other
speaker during that heated campaign.
There was another remarkable thing about my campaign. I possessed
tremendous power over audiences. So long as I could reach them with my
voice, or talk with them or shake hands with them, I could hold them;
but the moment they got out of my reach they got away from me, and
slipped back again to the sway of the political bosses.
I saw that my chance of getting the nomination was lost long before the
assembling of the Liberal Republican Convention of '72 in Cincinnati. I
was not astonished by the result of that convention, except that I did
not expect the nomination of Greeley, which I considered as a piece of
political treachery, a deliberately calculated movement in the interest
of Grant. But I still felt, vainly, indeed, some hope that the people
would see the futility of supporting Greeley, and of placing me at the
head of the ticket.
I can recall now the scenes in the Convention Hall when Carl Schurz
nominated Horace Greeley. Outside of some cheering on the part of those
who were party to the trickery, the nomination was received with ominous
stillness. Suddenly, from out of the gallery, near where I was seated,
there came a thin, quavering, piercing voice, like the cry of a seer of
the wilderness or a wandering Jeremiah: "Sold, by God, but the goods not
delivered!"
The words sounded then like a pronouncement of doom; but it proved not
to be so. The "deal" was carried out, and the "goods" were delivered.
Grant was elected, and Greeley, betrayed, retired, a heart-broken man.
Before I close this chapter on the Presidency, I wish to record here one
distinct service which I believe I rendered this city and the country
during my campaign. It was I, and not the New York newspapers, that
first exposed the so-called "Tweed Ring." I began the fight against this
ring of corrupt politicians, single-handed, and kept it up for more than
a year before any New York paper or any other journal took up the issue.
The New York papers, in fact, refused to publish my speech exposing this
gang of public plunderers, and it was published in the Lyons, N. Y.,
Republican on April 22, '71. The speech itself was made long before
Tweed had been accused of misuse of public funds.
While I was on the platform, a voice asked me "Who is the ring?" I had
been attacking the "ring" in every public utterance in New York. I
replied: "Hoffman, Tweed, Sweeney, Fisk, and Gould." Later, in the same
speech, I said: "Tweed and Sweeney are taxing you from head to foot,
while their horses are living in palaces," and then, using, for effect,
some of the methods of the French Commune, I cried: "To the lamp-post!
All those in favor of hanging Tweed to a lamp-post, say aye!" There was
a tremendous outburst of "ayes."
In other speeches I went into details and gave the sums of which the
people of New York had been plundered, and the amounts that had been
paid in bribes to obtain influence in stilling public suspicion, and to
buy immunity from exposure and opportunity for further theft.
So my campaign for the Presidency was not entirely in vain. It was
something that seemed unavoidable, toward which I seemed pressed by
circumstance and fate; and I can rest in the consciousness that it
accomplished some permanent good.