A NEW TERM BEGUN.
General Grant's second inauguration on Tuesday, March 4th, 1873,
was shorn of its splendor by the intense cold weather. The wind
blew in a perfect gale from the southwest, sweeping away the flags
and other decorations from private houses and making it very
disagreeable for the, nevertheless, large crowds of spectators.
When the procession started from the White House, so intense was
the cold that the breath of the musicians condensed in the valves
of their instruments, rendering it impossible for them to play,
and many of the cadets and soldiers had to leave the ranks half
frozen, while the customary crowds of civilians were completely
routed by the cutting blasts. The procession was headed by the
regulars, followed by a battalion of half frozen West Point cadets
in their light gray parade uniforms, and another of midshipmen from
the Annapolis Naval School in dark blue. A division of gayly
uniformed citizen-soldiers followed, including the Boston Lancers
in their scarlet coats, with pennons fluttering from their lances,
and the First Troop of the Philadelphia City Cavalry, which had
escorted almost every preceding President, and which carried its
historic flag, which was the first bearing thirteen stripes, and
which was presented to the Troop in 1775.
General Grant, with a member of the Congressional Committee, rode
in his own open barouche, drawn by four bay horses. In the next
carriage was Henry Wilson, Vice-President, escorted by another
member of the Committee, and the President's family followed.
After the military came political clubs in citizens' attire, with
bands and banners, the Washington Fire Department bringing up the
rear.
Meanwhile the Senate had closed the labors of the Forty-second
Congress, and chairs were placed in the chamber for the dignitaries,
who soon began to arrive. The members of the Diplomatic Corps wore
their court dresses and were resplendent with gold lace and
embroidery. Chief Justice Chase, who came in at the head of the
Supreme Court, looked well, although strangely changed by his full
gray beard, which concealed all the lines of his face. General
Sherman had been persuaded by his staff to appear in the new uniform
of his rank, but, to their disgust, he wore with it a pair of bright
yellow kid gloves. There were other high officers of the army and
navy, with the heads of the executive departments, on the floor of
the Senate, and the members of the defunct House of Representatives,
who came trooping in after their adjournment, formed a background
for the scene.
At twelve o'clock, Vice-President Colfax delivered a brief valedictory
address, and then Henry Wilson, Vice-President-elect, delivered
his salutatory, took the prescribed oath, and swore in the Senators-
elect. A procession was then formed, which slowly wended its way
through the rotunda to the customary platform over the steps of
the eastern portico. When General Grant appeared hearty cheers
were given by the vast crowd, estimated at not less then twenty
thousand in number, packed behind the military escort on the plaza
before the Capitol. Chief Justice Chase again administered the
oath of office, and the President advanced, uncovered, to the front
of the platform, and read his re-inaugural address. The wind blew
a tempest at times, nearly wrenching the manuscript from his hands.
No sooner had he finished reading than the salute from a neighboring
light battery was echoed by the guns in the Navy Yard, the Arsenal,
and at two or three forts on the Virginia side of the Potomac,
which had not yet been dismantled. Before the echoes of the salutes
had fairly died away, the procession started to escort President
Grant back to the White House, the bleak wind making nearly every
one tremble and shiver.
The city was illuminated in the early evening, and the new wooden
pavement on Pennsylvania Avenue, cleared of all vehicles by the
police, was covered by the throng of shivering men, women, and
children. The light in the tholus over the great dome of the
Capitol shone like a beacon far above the rows of colored lanterns
which were hung in festoons from the trees among the sidewalks.
Calcium lights added to the brilliancy of the scene, and many
private houses and stores were illuminated with gas or candles.
At nine o'clock there was a display of fireworks on the park south
of the White House, the rockets shooting comet-like across the
clear, star-dotted sky, dropping showers of colored fire in their
flight. All the while the wind blew fiercely, and the cold was
intensified, but the crowd seemed oblivious to the wintry blast.
At the inauguration ball, held in an immense temporary building,
which had no heating apparatus, the ladies were compelled to wear
their wrappings, and the gentlemen kept on their overcoats and hats
as they endeavored to keep warm by vigorous dancing. Mrs. Grant,
who wore a white silk dress trimmed with black Chantilly lace,
shivered as she stood by the side of her husband on the dais, and
the members and the ladies of the Diplomatic Corps remained but a
few moments. The supper, which had been prepared at a large expense,
was emphatically a cold repast. The ornamental devices in ice-
cream were frozen into solid chunks, and the champagne and punch
were forsaken for hot coffee and chocolate, the only things warm
in the building. The guests, each one of whom had paid twenty
dollars for a ticket, were frozen out before midnight.
Chief Justice Chase never appeared in public after this inauguration,
but died on the 7th of May following. An effort was made to have
Justice Miller promoted, but President Grant positively declined
doing so, on the ground that to raise any Associate Justice over
his brothers would be to deepen jealousies not wholly invisible
there, so he tendered the important position to Roscoe Conkling,
then a United States Senator from New York, whose great intellectual
powers especially qualified him to be the successor of Marshall
and of Taney. Some of Mr. Conkling's friends urged him to accept
the place, while others, who desired to see him President of the
United States, prevailed on him to remain in political life and to
decline the President's offer. General Grant then nominated as
Chief Justice his Attorney-General, George H. Williams, of Oregon,
but this awakened the jealousies of Justice Miller, whose son-in-
law, Colonel Corkhill, commenced a vigorous attack upon the nomination
in the Washington _Chronicle_, which he then edited. There were
also some grave scandals in Washington society about a number of
anonymous letters which had been written, it was intimated, by Mrs.
Williams. When the Senate met it soon became apparent that the
nomination of Mr. Williams could not be confirmed, and it was
withdrawn at his own request. Having come to him without his own
agency, he lost nothing in letting it go except some unpleasant
experiences.
The President then nominated Caleb Cushing, who was more objectionable
to the Court than Mr. Williams had been. The _Chronicle_ boiled
with rage, and other journals admitted that even if Mr. Cushing
had caught the spirit of the age and taken a long stride out of
his old errors of opinion, he was not a man to be placed on the
bench of the Supreme Court, when full civil rights had not been
accorded to the negro and many important questions connected with
the war had not been settled. On the other hand, Senators Sumner
and Boutwell, of Massachusetts, vouched for Mr. Cushing's Republican
record, and his loyalty and soundness on the measures of the war
and reconstruction. He would have been confirmed beyond doubt had
it not been for a letter written by him at the breaking out of the
Rebellion, to Jefferson Davis, commending a clerk in the Attorney-
General's office, who considered it his duty to join his relatives
at the South, for a position in the Confederate civil service.
The publication of this letter, which really contained nothing
objectionable beyond the fact that Mr. Cushing had recommended a
faithful clerk to an old personal friend as an honest and industrious
man, was made the most of. It was published by Colonel Corkhill
in large type with flaming headlines, as evidence of a secret
understanding between Mr. Cushing and the leader of the Rebellion.
Senator Sargent, who was hostile to Mr. Cushing, his townsman, read
this letter in a Republican caucus, and it fell upon the Senators
assembled like a heavy clap of thunder, while Senator Brownlow
(more extensively known as Parson Brownlow) keenly said that he
thought the caucus had better adjourn, convene the Senate in open
session, and remove Mr. Cushing's political disabilities. Mr.
Cushing, learning what had transpired, immediately wrote a letter
to the President requesting him to withdraw his nomination. In
this letter he reviewed his acts since the commencement of the war
and declared, in conclusion, that whatever might have been said,
either honestly or maliciously, to his prejudice, it was his right
to reaffirm that he had "never done an act, uttered a word, or
conceived a thought of disloyalty to the Constitution or the Union."
The President next nominated Morrison R. Waite, of Ohio, who had
been connected with the Alabama Claims Conference at Geneva, and
who was a men of eminent legal abilities, conscientious, and of
great purity of character. No objection could be offered to the
confirmation of his nomination, and it was unanimously made.
Mr. Edwin M. Stanton had previously been appointed a Justice of
the Supreme Court through the exertions of Senator Wade, of Ohio.
"The War Secretary" had left the department over which he had
energetically presided, and was suffering from heart disease. He
deemed himself a neglected man and rapidly sunk into a listless
condition, with no action in it, but with occasional spells of
energetic sickness. Mr. Wade came on from Ohio about this time,
and went to see his friend. Just then there was considerable talk
that Associate Justice Grier was about to retire from the Supreme
Court. Mr. Wade deemed his friend neglected, and also thought it
unintentional on the part of the President. It conversation he
drew from Mr. Stanton the admission that he would like to be
appointed to the Supreme Bench. Just before leaving Wade said he
meant to ask Grant for the position, in the event of Grier's
retirement. Mr. Stanton forbade the action, but Wade declined to
be as modest as was the organizer of victorious armies and their
administration. He went direct to the White House, and at the door
found the President going for a drive in his phaeton. He was
invited to go along, and at once availed himself of the opportunity.
During the ride he spoke about Mr. Stanton. The President listened
carefully and said he had promised to consider Mr. Strong's name,
and had supposed Mr. Stanton would not take the position even if
offered to him. Mr. Wade gave the conversation he had had with
Mr. Stanton. There the matter ended. Mr. Wade went home. Mr.
Stanton remained quietly at his home.
Finally Judge Grier resigned, and, to the surprise of most persons,
Edwin M. Stanton was tendered and accepted the position. He
qualified by taking the oath of office, but never sat in that high
tribunal to try a case. One cannot help wondering what might have
resulted from his presence there. But he never had the opportunity
of proving that the man who was so fierce and implacable as a War
Minister could have been as calm and judicially impartial on the
bench as Story himself. There are many at Washington who believe
that Mr. Stanton committed suicide by cutting his throat with a
razor. Caleb Cushing was positive that he did, and investigated
the matter so far as he could, but Hon. E. D. McPherson, of
Pennsylvania, for years the efficient clerk of the House of
Representatives, procured from the attendant physician a statement
that it was not so, but that Mr. Stanton died a natural death.
The marriage of General Grant's only and much-loved daughter, Ellen
Wrenshall Grant, to Algernon Charles Frederic Sartoris, at the
White House, on the 21st of May, 1874, was a social event in
Washington. It was no secret that General Grant had not approved
of the engagement between his daughter, not then nineteen years of
age, and the young Englishman who had enlisted her affection on
the steamer while she was returning from abroad. But when the fond
father found that her heart was set on the match he yielded, although
it was a hard struggle to have her leave home and go abroad among
strangers. The ceremony was performed in the East Room by the Rev.
Dr. O. H. Tiffany. There were eight bridesmaids, and Colonel Fred
Grant was the bridegroom's best man.
The bride wore a white satin dress, trimmed with point lace, a
bridal veil which completely enveloped her, with a wreath of white
flowers and green leaves interspersed with orange blossoms. The
eight bridesmaids wore dresses of white corded silk, alike in every
particular, with overdresses of white illusion, sashes of white
silk arranged in a succession of loops from the waist downward,
forming graceful drapery. Mrs. Grant, who was in mourning, wore
a mauve-colored silk dress, trimmed with a deeper shade of the
same, with ruffles and puffs of black illusion, lavender-colored
ribbon, and bunches of pansies. The banquet was served in the
state dining-room, with the bride's cake in the centre of the
elaborately decorated table.
[Facsimile]
M. R. Waite
Chief Justice
MORRISON REMICH WAITE was born at Lynn, Connecticut, December 29th,
1816; was graduated at Yale College when twenty-two years of age;
studied law; went to Ohio in 1838, and was there admitted to the
bar in 1839; settled at Toledo; was a member of the State Legislature
in 1843; was defeated as a Republican candidate for Congress in
1862; was counsel for the United States before the Geneva Award
Commission in 1871, and was presiding over the State Constitutional
Convention of Ohio when he was appointed Chief Justice of the United
States, in January, 1874.