Many of our Presidents have been inaugurated under curious and trying
circumstances, but no one of them except Hayes has taken the oath of
office when there was a cloud on his title. Every man who had voted for
Tilden,--whose popular vote exceeded that of Hayes by 264,000,--believed
that Hayes had reached his high place by means of fraud. Indeed, some of
the Hayes voters shared this belief, and stigmatized as monstrous the
action of the Louisiana returning board in awarding the electoral vote
of Louisiana to Hayes. The four men, three of them dishonest and the
fourth incompetent, who constituted this returning board, rejected, on
the ground of intimidation of negro voters, eleven thousand votes that
had been cast in due form for Tilden. In the seventh volume of my
history I have told the story of the compromise in the form of the
Electoral Commission which passed on the conflicting claims and adjudged
the votes of the disputed states, notably Florida and Louisiana, to
Hayes, giving him a majority of one in the electoral college, thus
making him President. When the count was completed and the usual
declaration made, Hayes had no choice but to abide by the decision. Duty
to his country and to his party, the Republican, required his acceptance
of the office, and there is no reason for thinking that he had any
doubts regarding his proper course. His legal title was perfect, but his
moral title was unsound, and it added to the difficulty of his situation
that the opposition, the Democrats, had a majority in the House of
Representatives. None but a determined optimist could have predicted
anything but failure for an administration beginning under such
conditions.
Hayes was an Ohio man, and we in Ohio now watched his successive steps
with keen interest. We knew him as a man of high character, with a fine
sense of honor, but we placed no great faith in his ability. He had
added to his reputation by the political campaign that he had made for
governor, in 1875, against the Democrats under William Allen, who
demanded an inflation of the greenback currency. He took an
uncompromising stand for sound money, although that cause was unpopular
in Ohio, and he spoke from the stump unremittingly and fearlessly,
although overshadowed by the greater ability and power of expression of
Senator Sherman and of Carl Schurz, who did yeoman's service for the
Republicans in this campaign. Senator Sherman had suggested Hayes as
candidate for President, and the nomination by the Republican national
convention had come to him in June, 1876. While his letter of acceptance
may not have surprised his intimate friends, it was a revelation to most
of us from its outspoken and common-sense advocacy of civil service
reform, and it gave us the first glimmering that in Rutherford B. Hayes
the Republicans had for standard bearer a man of more than respectable
ability.
His inaugural address confirmed this impression. He spoke with dignity
and sympathy of the disputed Presidency, promised a liberal policy
toward the Southern states, and declared that a reform in our civil
service was a "paramount necessity." He chose for his Cabinet men in
sympathy with his high ideals. William M. Evarts, the Secretary of
State, was one of the ablest lawyers in the country. He had been one of
the leading counsel in the defense of President Johnson in the
impeachment trial, and had managed the Republican cause before the
Electoral Commission with adroitness and zeal. John Sherman, the
Secretary of the Treasury, was the most capable financier in public
life. Carl Schurz, the Secretary of the Interior, was an aggressive and
uncompromising reformer, who had served the Republican party well in the
campaigns of 1875 and 1876. If these three men could work together under
Hayes, the United States need envy the governors of no other country.
They were in the brilliant but solid class, were abreast of the best
thought of their time, had a solemn sense of duty, and believed in
righteous government. Devens, the Attorney-General, had served with
credit in the army and had held the honorable position of Justice of the
Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts. Thompson of Indiana, Secretary
of the Navy, was a political appointment due to the influence of Senator
Morton, but, all things considered, it was not a bad choice. McCrary of
Iowa, as Secretary of War, had been a useful member of the House of
Representatives. The Postmaster-General was Key of Tennessee, who had
served in the Confederate army and voted for Tilden. This appointment
was not so genuine a recognition of the South as would have been made if
Hayes could have carried out his first intention, which was the
appointment of General Joseph E. Johnston as Secretary of War.
Considering that Johnston had surrendered the second great army of the
Confederacy only twelve years before, the thought was possible only to a
magnanimous nature, and in the inner circle of Hayes's counselors
obvious and grave objections were urged. General Sherman doubted the
wisdom of the proposed appointment, although he said that as General of
the army he would be entirely content to receive the President's orders
through his old antagonist. Although the appointment of Johnston would
have added strength, the Cabinet as finally made up was strong, and the
selection of such advisers created a favorable impression upon the
intelligent sentiment of the country; it was spoken of as the ablest
Cabinet since Washington's.
A wise inaugural address and an able Cabinet made a good beginning, but
before the harmonious cooperation of these extraordinary men could be
developed a weighty question, which brooked no delay, had to be settled.
The Stevens-Sumner plan of the reconstruction of the South on the basis
of universal negro suffrage and military support of the governments thus
constituted had failed. One by one in various ways the Southern states
had recovered home rule until, on the inauguration of Hayes, carpet-bag
negro governments existed in only two states, South Carolina and
Louisiana. In both of these the Democrats maintained that their
candidates for governor had been lawfully elected. The case of South
Carolina presented no serious difficulty. Hayes electors had been
rightfully chosen, and so had the Democratic governor, Hampton. But
Chamberlain, the Republican candidate, had a claim based on the
exclusion of the votes of two counties by the board of state canvassers.
After conferences between each of the claimants and the President, the
question was settled in favor of the Democrat, which was the meaning of
the withdrawal of the United States troops from the State House in
Columbia.
The case of Louisiana was much more troublesome. Packard, the Republican
candidate for governor, had received as many votes as Hayes, and logic
seemed to require that, if Hayes be President, Packard should be
governor. While the question was pending, Blaine said in the Senate:
"You discredit Packard, and you discredit Hayes. You hold that Packard
is not the legal governor of Louisiana, and President Hayes has no
title." And the other leaders of the Republican party, for the most
part, held this view. To these and their followers Blaine applied the
name "Stalwarts," stiff partisans, who did not believe in surrendering
the hold of the Republicans on the Southern states.
Between the policies of a continuance of the support of the Republican
party in Louisiana or its withdrawal, a weak man would have allowed
things to drift, while a strong man of the Conkling and Chandler type
would have sustained the Packard government with the whole force at his
command. Hayes acted slowly and cautiously, asked for and received much
good counsel, and in the end determined to withdraw the United States
troops from the immediate vicinity of the State House in Louisiana. The
Packard government fell, and the Democrats took possession. The lawyers
could furnish cogent reasons why Packard was not entitled to the
governorship, although the electoral vote of Louisiana had been counted
for Hayes; but the Stalwarts maintained that no legal quibble could
varnish over so glaring an inconsistency. Indeed, it was one of those
illogical acts, so numerous in English and American history, that
resolve difficulties, when a rigid adherence to logic would tend to
foment trouble.
The inaugural address and the distinctively reform Cabinet did not suit
the party workers, and when the President declined to sustain the
Packard government in Louisiana, disapproval was succeeded by rage. In
six weeks after his inauguration Hayes was without a party; that is to
say, the men who carried on the organization were bitterly opposed to
his policy, and they made much more noise than the independent thinking
voters who believed that a man had arisen after their own hearts. Except
from the Southern wing, he received little sympathy from the Democratic
party. In their parlance, fraud was written on his brow. He had the
honor and perquisites of office which were rightfully theirs.
Once the troops were withdrawn from South Carolina and Louisiana, no
backward step was possible, and although Hayes would have liked
congressional support and sympathy for his act, this was not necessary.
The next most important question of his administration related to
finance. He and his Secretary of the Treasury would have been gratified
by an obedient majority in Congress at their back. Presidents before and
after Hayes have made a greater or less employment of their patronage to
secure the passage of their favorite measures, but Hayes immediately
relinquished that power by taking a decided position for a civil service
based on merit. In a little over a month after the withdrawal of the
troops from the immediate vicinity of the State House in Louisiana, he
announced his policy in a letter to his Secretary of the Treasury. "It
is my wish," he wrote, "that the collection of the revenues should be
free from partisan control, and organized on a strictly business basis,
with the same guaranties for efficiency and fidelity in the selection of
the chief and subordinate officers that would be required by a prudent
merchant. Party leaders should have no more influence in appointments
than other equally respectable citizens. No assessments for political
purposes on officers or subordinates should be allowed. No useless
officer or employee should be retained. No officer should be required or
permitted to take part in the management of political organizations,
caucuses, conventions, or election campaigns." The mandatory parts of
this letter he incorporated in an order to Federal office-holders,
adding: "This rule is applicable to every department of the civil
service. It should be understood by every officer of the general
government that he is expected to conform his conduct to its
requirements."
It must be a source of gratification to the alumni and faculty of
Harvard College that its president and governing boards were, in June,
1877, in the judicious minority, and recognized their appreciation of
Hayes by conferring upon him its highest honorary degree. Schurz, who
had received his LL.D. the year before, accompanied Hayes to Cambridge,
and, in his Harvard speech at Commencement, gave his forcible and
sympathetic approval of the "famous order of the President," as it had
now come to be called.
A liberal and just Southern policy, the beginning of a genuine reform in
the civil service and the resumption of specie payments, are measures
which distinguish and glorify President Hayes's administration, but in
July, 1877, public attention was diverted from all these by a movement
which partook of the nature of a social uprising. The depression
following the panic of 1873 had been widespread and severe. The slight
revival of business resulting from the Centennial Exposition of 1876 and
the consequent large passenger traffic had been succeeded by a reaction
in 1877 that brought business men to the verge of despair. Failures of
merchants and manufacturers, stoppage of factories, diminished traffic
on the railroads, railroad bankruptcies and receiverships, threw a
multitude of laborers out of employment; and those fortunate enough to
retain their jobs were less steadily employed, and were subject to
reductions in wages.
The state of railroad transportation was deplorable. The competition of
the trunk lines, as the railroads running from Chicago to the seaboard
were called, was sharp, and, as there was not business enough for all,
the cutting of through freight rates caused such business to be done at
an actual loss, while the through passenger transportation afforded
little profit. Any freight agent knew the remedy: an increase of freight
rates by agreement or through a system of pooling earnings. Agreements
were made, but not honestly kept, and, after a breach of faith, the
fight was renewed with increased fury. As the railroad managers thought
that they could not increase their gross earnings, they resolved on
decreasing their expenses, and somewhat hastily and jauntily they
announced a reduction of ten per cent in the wages of their employees.
This was resisted. Trouble first began on the Baltimore and Ohio
Railroad, where the men not only struck against the reduction, but
prevented other men from taking their places, and stopped by force the
running of trains. The militia of West Virginia was inadequate to cope
with the situation, and the governor of that state called on the
President for troops, which were sent with a beneficial effect. But the
trouble spread to Maryland, and a conflict in Baltimore between the
militia and rioters in sympathy with the strikers resulted in a number
of killed and wounded. The next day, Saturday, July 21, a riot in
Pittsburg caused the most profound sensation in the country since the
draft riots of the Civil War. The men on the Pennsylvania and the
Pittsburg, Fort Wayne and Chicago railroads, had struck, and all freight
traffic was arrested. On this day six hundred and fifty men of the first
division of the Pennsylvania national guard at Philadelphia arrived in
Pittsburg, and, in the attempt to clear the Twenty-eighth Street
crossing, they replied to the missiles thrown at them by the mob with
volleys of musketry, killing instantly sixteen of the rioters and
wounding many.
Here was cause for exasperation, and a furious mob, composed of
strikers, idle factory hands, and miners, tramps, communists, and
outcasts, began its work of vengeance and plunder. Possessed of
firearms, through breaking into a number of gun shops, they attacked the
Philadelphia soldiers, who had withdrawn to the railroad roundhouse, and
a fierce battle ensued. Unable to dislodge the soldiers by assault, the
rioters attempted to roast them out by setting fire to cars of coke
saturated with petroleum and pushing these down the track against the
roundhouse. This eventually forced the soldiers to leave the building,
but, though pursued by the rioters, they made a good retreat across the
Allegheny River. The mob, completely beyond control, began the
destruction of railroad property. The torch was applied to two
roundhouses, to railroad sheds, shops and offices, cars and locomotives.
Barrels of spirits, taken from the freight cars, and opened and drunk,
made demons of the men, and the work of plunder and destruction of goods
in transit went on with renewed fury.
That Saturday night Pittsburg witnessed a reign of terror. On Sunday the
rioting and pillage were continued, and in the afternoon the Union Depot
and Railroad Hotel and an elevator near by were burned. Then as the
rioters were satiated and too drunk to be longer dangerous, the riot
died out: it was not checked. On Monday, through the action of the
authorities, armed companies of law-abiding citizens, and some faithful
companies of the militia, order was restored. But meanwhile the strike
had spread to a large number of other railroads between the seaboard and
Chicago and St. Louis. Freight traffic was entirely suspended, and
passenger trains were run only on sufferance of the strikers. Business
was paralyzed, and the condition of disorganization and unrest continued
throughout the month of July. The governors of West Virginia, Maryland,
Pennsylvania, and Illinois called upon the President for United States
troops, which were promptly sent, and in Indiana and Missouri they were
employed on the demand of the United States marshals. Where the regular
soldiers appeared order was at once restored without bloodshed, and it
was said that the rioters feared one Federal bayonet more than a whole
company of militia. The gravity of the situation is attested by three
proclamations of warning from President Hayes.
Strikes had been common in our country, and, while serious enough in
certain localities, had aroused no general concern, but the action of
the mob in Baltimore, Pittsburg, and Chicago seemed like an attack on
society itself, and it came like a thunderbolt out of a clear sky,
startling Americans, who had hugged the delusion that such social
uprisings belonged to Europe, and had no reason of being in a great,
free republic where all men had an equal chance. The railroad managers
had no idea that they were letting loose a slumbering giant when their
edict of a ten per cent reduction went forth. It was due to the prompt
and efficient action of the President that order was ultimately
restored. In the profound and earnest thinking and discussion that went
on during the rest of the year, whenever thoughtful men gathered
together, many a grateful word was said of the quiet, unassuming man in
the White House who saw clearly his duty and never faltered in pursuing
it. It was seen that the Federal government, with a resolute President
at its head, was a tower of strength in the event of a social uprising.
In the reform of the civil service Hayes proceeded from words to action.
He reappointed Thomas L. James as postmaster of New York City, who had
conducted his office on a thorough business basis, and gave him
sympathetic support. The New York Custom-house had long been a political
machine in which the interests of politicians had been more considered
than those of the public it was supposed to serve. The President began
an investigation of it through an impartial commission, and he and
Sherman came to the conclusion that the renovation desired, in line with
his letter to the Secretary of the Treasury and his order to the
Federal officers, could not be effected so long as the present
collector, Chester A. Arthur, and the naval officer, A. B. Cornell,
remained in office. Courteous intimations were sent to them that their
resignations were desired on the ground that new officers could better
carry out the reform which the President had at heart. Arthur and
Cornell, under the influence of Senator Conkling, refused to resign, and
a plain issue was made between the President and the New York senator.
At the special session of Congress, in October, 1877, he sent to the
Senate nominations of new men for these places, but the power of
Conkling, working through the "courtesy of the Senate," was sufficient
to procure their rejection; and this was also the result when the same
nominations were made in December.
In July, 1878, after the adjournment of Congress, Hayes removed Arthur
and Cornell, and appointed Merritt and Burt in their places. During the
following December these appointments came before the Senate for
confirmation. Sherman decided to resign if they were rejected, and he
made a strong personal appeal to Senators Allison, Windom, and Morrill
that they should not permit "the insane hate of Conkling" to override
the good of the service and the party. A seven hours' struggle ensued in
the Senate, but Merritt and Burt were confirmed by a decisive majority.
After the confirmation, Hayes wrote to Merritt: "My desire is that the
office be conducted on strictly business principles and according to the
rules for the civil service which were recommended by the Civil Service
Commission in the administration of General Grant."
In three of his annual messages, Hayes presented strong arguments for a
reform in the civil service, and he begged Congress, without avail, to
make appropriations to sustain the Civil Service Commission. He
sympathized with and supported Schurz in his introduction into the
Interior Department of competitive examinations for appointments and
promotions, and he himself extended that system to the custom-houses and
post-offices of the larger cities.
All that was accomplished in this direction was due to his efforts and
those of his Cabinet. He received neither sympathy nor help from
Congress; indeed, he met with great opposition from his own party. A
picture not without humor is Hayes reading, as his justification, to the
Republican remonstrants against his policy of appointments the strong
declaration for a civil service based on merit in the Republican
platform, on which he had stood as candidate for President. Though his
preaching did not secure the needed legislation from Congress, it
produced a marked effect on public sentiment.
The organization of civil service reform associations began under Hayes.
The New York association was begun in 1877, reorganized three years
later, and soon had a large national membership, which induced the
formation of other state associations; and although the national civil
service reform league was not formed until after his term of office
expired, the origin of the society may be safely referred to his
influence. In the melioration of the public service which has been so
conspicuously in operation since 1877, Hayes must be rated the pioneer
President. Some of Grant's efforts in this direction were well meant,
but he had no fundamental appreciation of the importance of the question
or enthusiasm for the work, and, in a general way, it may be said that
he left the civil service in a demoralized condition. How pregnant was
Hayes's remark in his last annual message, and what a text it has been
for many homilies! "My views," he wrote, "concerning the dangers of
patronage or appointments for personal or partisan considerations have
been strengthened by my observation and experience in the executive
office, and I believe these dangers threaten the stability of the
government."
The brightest page in the history of the Republican party since the
Civil War tells of its work in the cause of sound finance, and no
administration is more noteworthy than that of Hayes. Here again the
work was done by the President and his Cabinet in the face of a
determined opposition in Congress. During the first two years of his
administration, the Democrats had a majority in the House, and during
the last two a majority in both the House and the Senate. The Republican
party was sounder than the Democratic on the resumption of specie
payments and in the advocacy of a correct money standard, but Hayes had
by no means all of his own party at his back. Enough Republicans,
however, were of his way of thinking to prevent an irremediable
inflation of either greenbacks or silver.
The credit for what was accomplished in finance belongs in the main to
John Sherman, a great financier and consummate statesman; but he had the
constant sympathy and support of the President. It was their custom to
take long drives together every Sunday afternoon and discuss
systematically and thoroughly the affairs of the Treasury and the
official functions of the President. No President ever had a better
counselor than Sherman, no Secretary of the Treasury more sympathetic
and earnest support than was given by Hayes. Sherman refunded 845
millions of the public debt at a lower rate of interest, showing in his
negotiations with bankers a remarkable combination of business and
political ability. Cool, watchful, and confident, he grasped the point
of view of New York and London financial syndicates, and to that
interested and somewhat narrow vision he joined the intelligence and
foresight of a statesman. Sherman brought about the resumption of
specie payments on the 1st of January, 1879, the date fixed in the bill
of which he was the chief author and which, four years before, he had
carried through the Senate. It was once the fashion of his opponents to
discredit his work, and, emphasizing the large crop of 1878 and the
European demand for our breadstuffs, to declare that resumption was
brought about by Providence and not by John Sherman. No historian of
American finance can fail to see how important is the part often played
by bountiful nature, but it is to the lasting merit of Sherman and Hayes
that, in the dark years of 1877 and 1878, with cool heads and unshaken
faith, they kept the country in the path of financial safety and honor
despite bitter opposition and clamorous abuse.
These two years formed a part of my own business career, and I can add
my vivid recollection to my present study of the period. As values
steadily declined and losses rather than profits in business became the
rule, the depression and even despair of business men and manufacturers
can hardly be exaggerated. The daily list of failures and bankruptcies
was appalling. How often one heard that iron and coal and land were
worth too little and money too much, that only the bondholder could be
happy, for his interest was sure and the purchasing power of his money
great! In August, 1878, when John Sherman went to Toledo to speak to a
gathering three thousand strong, he was greeted with such cries as, "You
are responsible for all the failures in the country"; "You work to the
interest of the capitalist"; "Capitalists own you, John Sherman, and you
rob the poor widows and orphans to make them rich."
By many the resumption of specie payments was deemed impossible. The
most charitable of Sherman's opponents looked upon him as an honest but
visionary enthusiast who would fail in his policy and be "the deadest
man politically" in the country. Others deemed resumption possible only
by driving to the wall a majority of active business men. It was this
sentiment which gave strength to the majority in the House of
Representatives, which was opposed to any contraction of the greenback
currency and in favor of the free coinage of silver, and of making it
likewise a full legal tender. Most of these members of Congress were
sincere, and thought that they were asking no more than justice for the
trader, the manufacturer, and the laborer. The "Ohio idea" was
originally associated with an inflation of the paper currency, but by
extension it came to mean an abundance of cheap money, whether paper or
silver. Proposed legislation, with this as its aim, was very popular in
Ohio, but, despite the intense feeling against the President's and
Secretary's policy in their own state and generally throughout the West,
Hayes and Sherman maintained it consistently, and finally brought about
the resumption of specie payments.
In their way of meeting the insistent demand for the remonetization of
silver Hayes and Sherman differed. In November, 1877, the House of
Representatives, under a suspension of the rules, passed by a vote of
163 to 34 a bill for the free coinage of the 412 1/2 grain silver dollar,
making that dollar likewise a legal tender for all debts and dues. The
Senate was still Republican, but the Republican senators were by no
means unanimous for the gold standard. Sherman became convinced that,
although the free-silver bill could not pass the Senate, something must
nevertheless be done for silver, and, in cooperation with Senator
Allison, he was instrumental in the adoption of the compromise which
finally became law. This remonetized silver, providing for the purchase
of not less than two million dollars' worth of silver bullion per month,
nor more than four millions, and for its coinage into 412 1/2 grain silver
dollars. Hayes vetoed this bill, sending a sound and manly message to
the House of Representatives; but Congress passed it over his veto by a
decided majority.
The regard for John Sherman's ability in Ohio was unbounded, and it was
generally supposed that in all financial affairs, as well as in many
others, he dominated Hayes. I shared that opinion until I learned
indirectly from John Hay, who was first assistant Secretary of State and
intimate in inner administration circles, that this was not true; that
Hayes had decided opinions of his own and did not hesitate to differ
with his Secretary of the Treasury. Nevertheless, not until John
Sherman's "Recollections" were published was it generally known, I
believe, that Sherman had a share in the Allison compromise, and did not
approve of the President's veto of the bill remonetizing silver.
The Federal control of congressional and presidential elections, being a
part of the Reconstruction legislation, was obnoxious to the Democrats,
and they attempted to abrogate it by "riders" attached to several
appropriation bills, especially that providing for the army. While the
Senate remained Republican, there was chance for an accommodation
between the President and the Senate on one side and the House on the
other. Two useful compromises were made, the Democrats yielding in one
case, the Republicans in the other. But in 1879, when both the House and
the Senate were Democratic, a sharp contest began between Congress and
the executive, the history of which is written in seven veto messages.
For lack of appropriations to carry on the government, the President
called an extra session of Congress in the first year of his
administration and another in 1879, which was a remarkable record of
extra sessions in a time of peace. The Democratic House passed a
resolution for the appointment of a committee to investigate Hayes's
title and aroused some alarm lest an effort might be made "to oust
President Hayes and inaugurate Tilden." Although this alarm was stilled
less than a month later by a decisive vote of the House, the action and
investigation were somewhat disquieting.
Thus Hayes encountered sharp opposition from the Democrats, who
frequently pointed their arguments by declaring that he held his place
by means of fraud. He received sympathy from hardly any of the leaders
of his own party in Congress, and met with open condemnation from the
Stalwarts; yet he pursued his course with steadiness and equanimity, and
was happy in his office. His serene amiability and hopefulness,
especially in regard to affairs in the Southern states, were a source of
irritation to the Stalwarts; but it was the serenity of a man who felt
himself fully equal to his responsibilities.
In his inaugural address, Hayes contributed an addition to our political
idiom, "He serves his party best who serves the country best." His
administration was a striking illustration of this maxim. When he became
President, the Republican party was in a demoralized condition, but,
despite the factional criticism to which he was subject, he gained in
the first few months of his Presidency the approval of men of
intelligence and independent thought, and, as success attended his
different policies, he received the support of the masses. The signal
Republican triumph in the presidential election of 1880 was due to the
improvement in business conditions and to the clean and efficient
administration of Hayes.
In recalling his predecessor in office, we think more gladly of the
Grant of Donelson, Vicksburg, and Appomattox than of Grant the
President, for during his two administrations corruption was rife and
bad government to the fore. Financial scandals were so frequent that
despairing patriots cried out, "Is there no longer honesty in public
life?" Our country then reached the high-water mark of corruption in
national affairs. A striking improvement began under Hayes, who infused
into the public service his own high ideals of honesty and efficiency.
Hayes was much assisted in his social duties by his wife, a woman of
character and intelligence, who carried herself with grace and dignity.
One sometimes heard the remark that as Hayes was ruled in political
matters by John Sherman, so in social affairs he was ruled by his wife.
The sole foundation for this lay in his deference to her total
abstinence principles, which she held so strongly as to exclude wine
from the White House table except, I believe, at one official dinner,
that to the Russian Grand Dukes.
Hayes's able Cabinet was likewise a harmonious one. Its members were
accustomed to dine together at regular intervals (fortnightly, I think),
when affairs of state and other subjects were discussed, and the
geniality of these occasions was enhanced by a temperate circulation of
the wine bottle. There must have been very good talk at these social
meetings. Evarts and Schurz were citizens of the world. Evarts was a man
of keen intelligence and wide information, and possessed a genial as
well as a caustic wit. Schurz could discuss present politics and past
history. He was well versed in European history of the eighteenth
century and the Napoleonic wars, and could talk about the power of
Voltaire in literature and the influence of Lessing on Goethe. From
appreciative discourse on the Wagner opera and the French drama, he
could, if the conversation turned to the Civil War, give a lively
account of the battles of Chancellorsville or Gettysburg, in both of
which he had borne an honorable part. Sherman was not a cosmopolitan
like his two colleagues, but he loved dining out. His manners were those
of the old-school gentleman; he could listen with genial appreciation,
and he could talk of events in American history of which he had been a
contemporaneous observer; as, for example, of the impressive oratory of
Daniel Webster at a dinner in Plymouth; or the difference between the
national conventions of his early political life and the huge ones of
the present, illustrating his comparison with an account of the Whig
convention of 1852, to which he went as a delegate.
Differing in many respects, Hayes and Grover Cleveland were alike in the
possession of executive ability and the lack of oratorical. We all know
that it is a purely academic question which is the better form of
government, the English or our own, as both have grown up to adapt
themselves to peculiar conditions. But when I hear an enthusiast for
Cabinet government and ministerial responsibility, I like to point out
that men like Hayes and Cleveland, who made excellent Presidents, could
never have been prime ministers. One cannot conceive of either in an
office equivalent to that of First Lord of the Treasury, being heckled
by members on the front opposition bench and holding his own or getting
the better of his opponents.
I have brought Hayes and Cleveland into juxtaposition, as each had a
high personal regard for the other. Hayes died on January 17, 1893.
Cleveland, the President-elect, was to be inaugurated on the following
fourth of March. Despite remonstrance and criticism from bitter
partisans of his own party, who deprecated any honor paid to one whom
all good Democrats deemed a fraudulent President, Cleveland traveled
from New York to Fremont, Ohio, to attend the funeral. He could only
think of Hayes as an ex-President and a man whom he highly esteemed.