WASHINGTON, December, 1867.
I have resigned. The government appears to go on much the same, but
there is a spoke out of its wheel, nevertheless. I was clerk of the
Senate Committee on Conchology, and I have thrown up the position.
I could see the plainest disposition on the part of the other members of
the government to debar me from having any voice in the counsels of the
nation, and so I could no longer hold office and retain my self-respect.
If I were to detail all the outrages that were heaped upon me during the
six days that I was connected with the government in an official
capacity, the narrative would fill a volume. They appointed me clerk of
that Committee on Conchology and then allowed me no amanuensis to play
billiards with. I would have borne that, lonesome as it was, if I had
met with that courtesy from the other members of the Cabinet which was my
due. But I did not. Whenever I observed that the head of a department
was pursuing a wrong course, I laid down everything and went and tried to
set him right, as it was my duty to do; and I never was thanked for it in
a single instance. I went, with the best intentions in the world, to the
Secretary of the Navy, and said:
"Sir, I cannot see that Admiral Farragut is doing anything but
skirmishing around there in Europe, having a sort of picnic. Now, that
may be all very well, but it does not exhibit itself to me in that light.
If there is no fighting for him to do, let him come home. There is no
use in a man having a whole fleet for a pleasure excursion. It is too
expensive. Mind, I do not object to pleasure excursions for the naval
officers--pleasure excursions that are in reason--pleasure excursions
that are economical. Now, they might go down the Mississippi
on a raft--"
You ought to have heard him storm! One would have supposed I had
committed a crime of some kind. But I didn't mind. I said it was cheap,
and full of republican simplicity, and perfectly safe. I said that, for
a tranquil pleasure excursion, there was nothing equal to a raft.
Then the Secretary of the Navy asked me who I was; and when I told him I
was connected with the government, he wanted to know in what capacity. I
said that, without remarking upon the singularity of such a question,
coming, as it did, from a member of that same government, I would inform
him that I was clerk of the Senate Committee on Conchology. Then there
was a fine storm! He finished by ordering me to leave the premises, and
give my attention strictly to my own business in future. My first
impulse was to get him removed. However, that would harm others besides
himself, and do me no real good, and so I let him stay.
I went next to the Secretary of War, who was not inclined to see me at
all until he learned that I was connected with the government. If I had
not been on important business, I suppose I could not have got in.
I asked him for alight (he was smoking at the time), and then I told him
I had no fault to find with his defending the parole stipulations of
General Lee and his comrades in arms, but that I could not approve of his
method of fighting the Indians on the Plains. I said he fought too
scattering. He ought to get the Indians more together--get them together
in some convenient place, where he could have provisions enough for both
parties, and then have a general massacre. I said there was nothing so
convincing to an Indian as a general massacre. If he could not approve
of the massacre, I said the next surest thing for an Indian was soap and
education. Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they
are more deadly in the long run; because a half-massacred Indian may
recover, but if you educate him and wash him, it is bound to finish him
some time or other. It undermines his constitution; it strikes at the
foundation of his being. "Sir," I said, "the time has come when
blood-curdling cruelty has become necessary. Inflict soap and a
spelling-book on every Indian that ravages the Plains, and let them die!"
The Secretary of War asked me if I was a member of the Cabinet, and I
said I was. He inquired what position I held, and I said I was clerk of
the Senate Committee on Conchology. I was then ordered under arrest for
contempt of court, and restrained of my liberty for the best part of the
day.
I almost resolved to be silent thenceforward, and let the Government get
along the best way it could. But duty called, and I obeyed. I called on
the Secretary of the Treasury. He said:
"What will you have?"