GRANT AND GREELEY.
The new Cabinet--Seeds of party disaffection--Trip to California--
Party degeneracy--The liberal Republican movement--Re-nomination
of Grant--The Cincinnati convention--Perplexities of the situation
--The canvass for Greeley--Its bitterness--Its peculiar features--
The defeat--The vindication of Liberals--Visit to Chase and Sumner
--Death of Greeley.
The inaugural speech of Gen. Grant was a feeble performance, and
very unsatisfactory to his friends. When he announced his Cabinet,
disappointment was universal among Republicans, and was greatly
increased when he asked Congress to relieve A. T. Stewart, his
nominee for Secretary of the Treasury, from the disability wisely
imposed by the Act of Congress of 1789, forbidding the appointment
to that position of any one engaged "in carrying on the business
of trade or commerce." Senator Sherman at once introduced a bill
to repeal this enactment, but Mr. Sumner vigorously opposed the
measure, and the President soon afterward sent a message to the
Senate asking leave to withdraw his request as to Mr. Stewart. It
was doubtless the prompt and decided stand taken by Mr. Sumner in
this matter which laid the foundation for the President's personal
hostility to him, which so remarkably developed itself during the
following years. The seeds of a party feud were thus planted, and
as the Administration continued to show its hand, bore witness to
a vigorous growth.
In June of this year I made a trip to California in search of
health, which I had lost through overwork, and was now paying the
penalty in a very distressing form of insomnia. I took one of the
first through trains to the Pacific, and on reaching the State, I
found sight-seeing and travel so irresistible a temptation, that
I lost the rest and quiet I so absolutely needed. I was constantly
on the wing; and I encountered at every point, the "settler," who
was anxious to talk over the land squabbles of the State, with
which I had had much to do in Congress, but now needed for a season
to forget. I found that the half had not been told me respecting
the ravages of land-grabbing under the Swamp Land Act of 1850, and
the mal-administration of Mexican and Spanish grants. I was full
of the subject, and was obliged, also, to give particular attention
to the pre-emption of J. M. Hutchings, in the Yosemite Valley, for
the protection of which I had reported a bill which was then pending;
and I came near losing my life in the valley through the fatigue
I suffered in reaching it. After a stay of over two months in
California, and a trip by steamer to Oregon and Washington Territory,
I returned home early in September, but in no better health than
when I left; and a like experience attended a journey to Minnesota
soon afterward, where I was captured by leading railroad men who
belabored me over the land-grant to the St. Croix and Bayfield
railroad, the revival of which I had aided in defeating at the
previous session of Congress.
I returned to Washington in December, but physically unfit for
labor, spending most of the session in New York under the care of
a physician. I deeply regretted this, for the railway lobby was
in Washington in full force, as it was during the closing session
of the Forty-first Congress, when I was equally unfit for business.
I was not, however, without consolation. Under the popular reaction
against the Land-grant system which I had done my part to create,
the huge pile of land bills on the Speaker's table failed, save
the Texas Pacific project, which was carried by the most questionable
methods, and against such a general protest as clearly indicated
the end of this policy. A vote of nearly two to one was carried
in the House in favor of a bill reported by the Land Committee
defining swamp and overflowed lands, and guarding against the
enormous swindles that had disgraced the Land Department and
afflicted honest settlers. A like vote was secured in favor of
the bill to prevent the further disposition of the public lands
save under the pre-emption and homestead laws, for which I had
labored for years. Many thousands of acres had been saved from
the clutches of monopolists by attaching to several important grants
the condition that the lands should be sold only to actual settlers,
in quantities not exceeding a quarter section, and for not more
than two dollars and fifty cents per acre. A very important reform,
already referred to, had been made in our Indian treaty policy, by
which lands relinquished by any tribe would henceforth fall under
the operation of our land laws, instead of being sold in a body to
some corporation or individual monopolist. The Southern Homestead
law had dedicated to actual settlement millions of acres of the
public domain in the land States of the South, while the Homestead
Act of 1862 was splendidly vindicating the wisdom of its policy.
Congress had declared forfeited and open to settlement a large
grant of lands in Louisiana for non-compliance with the conditions
on which it was made, and the public domain had been saved from
frightful spoilation by the fortunate defeat of a scheme of land
bounties that would completely have overturned the policy of the
pre-emption and homestead laws, while practically mocking the claims
of the soldiers. The opportunity, now and then, to strangle a
legislative monster like this, or to further the passage of beneficent
and far-reaching measures, is one of the real compensations of
public life.
The final ratification of the Fifteenth Constitutional Amendment,
which was declared in force on the thirtieth of March, 1870,
perfectly consummated the mission of the Republican party, and left
its members untrammeled in dealing with new questions. In fact,
the Republican movement in the beginning was a political combination,
rather than a party. Its action was inspired less by a creed than
an object, and that object was to dedicate our National Territories
to freedom, and denationalize slavery. Aside from this object,
the members of the combination were hopelessly divided. The
organization was created to deal with this single question, and
would not have existed without it. It was now regarded by many as
a spent political force, although it had received a momentum which
threatened to outlast its mission; and if it did not keep the
promise made in its platform of 1868, to reform the corruptions of
the preceding Administration, and at the same time manfully wrestle
with the new problems of the time, it was morally certain to
degenerate into a faction, led by base men, and held together by
artful appeals to the memories of the past. Our tariff legislation
called for a thorough revision. Our Civil Service was becoming a
system of political prostitution. Roguery and plunder, born of
the multiplied temptations which the war furnished, had stealthily
crept into the management of public affairs, and claimed immunity
from the right of search. What the country needed was not a stricter
enforcement of party discipline, not military methods and the
fostering of sectional hate, but oblivion of the past, and an
earnest, intelligent, and catholic endeavor to grapple with the
questions of practical administration.
But this, in the very nature of the case, was not to be expected.
The men who agreed to stand together in 1856, on a question which
was now out of the way, and had postponed their differences on
current party questions for that purpose, were comparatively unfitted
for the task of civil administration in a time of peace. They had
had no preparatory training, and the engrossing struggle through
which they had passed had, in fact, disqualified them for the work.
While the issues of the war were retreating into the past the
mercenary element of Republicanism had gradually secured the
ascendancy, and completely appropriated the President. The mischiefs
of war had crept into the conduct of civil affairs, and a thorough
schooling of the party in the use of power had familiarized it with
military ideas and habits, and committed it to loose and indefensible
opinions respecting the powers of the General Government. The
management of the Civil Service was an utter mockery of political
decency, while the animosities engendered by the war were nursed
and coddled as the appointed means of uniting the party and covering
up its misdeeds. The demand for reform, as often as made, was
instantly rebuked, and the men who uttered it branded as enemies
of the party and sympathizers with treason. It is needless to go
into details; but such was the drift of general demoralization that
the chief founders and pre-eminent representatives of the party,
Chase, Seward, Sumner and Greeley were obliged to desert it more
than a year before the end of Gen. Grant's first administration,
as the only means of maintaining their honor and self-respect. My
Congressional term expired a little after Grant and Babcock had
inaugurated the San Domingo project, and Sumner had been degraded
from the Chairmanship of the Committee on Foreign Affairs to make
room for Simon Cameron. The "irrepressible conflict" had just
begun to develop itself between the element of honesty and reform
in the party, and the corrupt leadership which sought to make
merchandise of its good name, and hide its sins under the mantle
of its past achievements.
After the adjournment of the Forty-first Congress in March, 1871,
I visited New York, where I called on Greeley. We took a drive
together, and spent the evening at the house of a mutual friend,
where we had a free political talk. He denounced the Administration
and the San Domingo project in a style which commanded my decided
approval, for my original dislike of Grant had been ripening into
disgust and contempt, and, like Greeley, I had fully made up my
mind that under no circumstance could I ever again give him my
support. After my return home I wrote several articles for the
Press in favor of a "new departure" in the principles of the party.
Mr. Vallandigham had just given currency to this phrase by employing
it to designate his proposed policy of Democratic acquiescence in
the XIV and XV Constitutional Amendments, which was seconded by
the "Missouri Republican," and accepted by the party the following
year. The "new departure" I commended to my own party was equally
thorough, proposing the radical reform of its Tariff and Land
Policy, and its emancipation from the rule of great corporations
and monopolies; a thorough reform of its Civil Service, beginning
with a declaration in favor of the "one-term principle," and
condemning the action of the President in employing the whole power
and patronage of his high office in securing his re-election for
a second term by hurling from office honest, capable and faithful
men, simply to make places for scalawags and thieves; and the
unqualified repudiation of his conduct in heaping honors and
emoluments upon his poor kin, while accepting presents of fine
houses and other tempting gifts from unworthy men, who were paid
off in fat places. I did not favor the disbanding of the party,
or ask that it should make war on Gen. Grant, but earnestly protested
against the policy that sought to Tammany-ize the organization
through his re-nomination.
Returning to Washington on the meeting of Congress in December, I
conferred with Trumbull, Schurz and Sumner, respecting the situation,
and the duty of Republicans in facing the party crisis which was
evidently approaching. During the session, I listened to the great
debate in the Senate on Sumner's resolution of inquiry as to the
sale of arms to the French, and was delighted with the replies of
Schurz and Sumner to Conkling and Morton. My dislike of the
President steadily increased, and his disgraceful conduct towards
Sumner and alliance with Morton, Conkling, Cameron, and their
associates rendered it morally impossible for me any longer to
fight under his banner. The situation became painfully embarrassing,
since every indication seemed to point to his re-nomination as a
foregone conclusion. But I clung to the hope that events would in
some way order it otherwise. In February, I was strongly urged to
become a candidate for Congressman at large under the new Congressional
apportionment; and although failing health unfitted me for active
politics, to which I had no wish to return, I really wanted the
compliment of the nomination. The long-continued and wanton
opposition which had been waged against me in my own party led me
to covet it, and in the hope that General Grant's nomination might
yet be averted I allowed my friends to urge my claims, and to
believe I would accept the honor if tendered, which I meant to do
should this hope be realized. I saw that I could secure it. My
standing in my own party was better than ever before. The
"Indianapolis Journal," for the first time, espoused my cause,
along with other leading Republican papers in different sections
of the State. The impolicy and injustice of the warfare which had
long been carried on against me in Indiana were so generally felt
by all fair-minded Republicans that Senator Morton himself, though
personally quite as hostile as ever, was constrained to call off
his forces, and favor a policy of conciliation. It was evident
that my nomination was assured if I remained in the field; but as
time wore on I saw that the re-nomination of General Grant had
become absolutely inevitable; and, as I could not support him I
could not honorably accept a position which would commit me in his
favor. The convention was held on the 22d of February, and on the
day before I sent a telegram peremptorily refusing to stand as a
candidate; and I soon afterward formally committed myself to the
Liberal Republican movement. I could not aid in the re-election
of Grant without sinning against decency and my own self-respect.
I deplored the fact, but there was no other alternative. If it
had been morally possible, I would have supported him gladly. I
had no personal grievances to complain of, and most sincerely
regretted the necessity which compelled my withdrawal from political
associations in which I had labored many long years, and through
seasons of great national danger. If I had consulted my own selfish
ambition I would have chosen a different course, since I knew by
painful experience the cost of party desertion, while the fact was
well known that the prizes of politics were within my reach, if I
had sought them through the machinery of the Republican organization
and the support of General Grant. Had the party, having accomplished
the work which called it into being, applied itself to the living
questions of the times, and resolutely set its face against political
corruption and plunder, and had it freely tolerated honest differences
of opinion in its own ranks, treating the question of Grant's re-
nomination as an open one, instead of making it a test of Republicanism
and a cause for political excommunication, I could have avoided a
separation, at least at that time. I made it with many keen pangs
of regret, for the history of the party had been honorable and
glorious, and I had shared in its achievements. My revolt against
its discipline forcibly reminded me of the year 1848, and was by
far the severest political trial of my life. My new position not
only placed me in very strange relations to the Democrats, whose
misdeeds I had so earnestly denounced for years; but I could not
fail to see that the great body of my old friends would now become
my unrelenting foes. Their party intolerance would know no bounds,
and I was not unmindful of its power; but there was no way of
escape, and with a sad heart, but an unflinching purpose, I resolved
to face the consequences of my decision. My chief regret was that
impaired health deprived me of the strength and endurance I would
now sorely need in repelling wanton and very provoking assaults.
I attended the Liberal Republican Convention at Cincinnati on the
first of May, where I was delighted to meet troops of the old Free
Soilers of 1848 and 1852. It was a mass convention of Republicans,
suddenly called together without the power of money or the help of
party machinery, and prompted by a burning desire to rebuke the
scandals of Gen. Grant's administration, and rescue both the party
and the country from political corruption and misrule. It was a
spontaneous and independent movement, and its success necessarily
depended upon the wisdom of its action and not the force of party
obligation. There were doubtless political schemers and mercenaries
in attendance, but the rank and file were unquestionably conscientious
and patriotic, and profoundly in earnest. I never saw a finer
looking body assembled. It was a more formidable popular demonstration
than the famous Convention at Buffalo, in 1848, and gave promise
of more immediate and decisive results. There was a very widespread
feeling that the Cincinnati ticket would win, and the friends of
Gen. Grant could not disguise their apprehension. The thought
seemed to inspire every one that a way was now fortunately opened
for hastening the end of sectional strife and purifying the
administration of public affairs. The capital speech of Stanley
Matthews, on accepting the temporary chairmanship of the Convention,
was but the echo of the feeling of the Convention, and its confident
prophecy of victory. "Parties," said he, "can not live on their
reputations. It was remarked, I believe, by Sir Walter Raleigh,
in reference to the strife of ancestry, that those who boasted most
of their progenitors were like the plant he had discovered in
America, the best part was under ground." He declared that "the
time has come when it is the voice of an exceedingly large and
influential portion of the American people that they will no longer
be dogs to wear the collar of a party." All that now seemed wanting
was wise leadership, and a fair expression of the real wish and
purpose of the Convention.
The principal candidates were Charles Francis Adams, Horace Greeley,
Lyman Trumbull, David Davis, and B. Gratz Brown. Mr. Chase still
had a lingering form of the Presidential fever, and his particular
friends were lying in wait for a timely opportunity to bring him
forward; but his claims were not seriously considered. The friends
of Judge Davis did him much damage by furnishing transportation
and supplies for large Western delegations, who very noisily pressed
his claims in the Convention. With prudent leadership his chances
for the nomination would have been good, and he would have been a
very formidable candidate; but he was "smothered by his friends."
The really formidable candidates were Adams and Greeley, and during
the first and second days the chances were decidedly in favor of
the former. On the evening of the second day Mr. Brown and Gen.
Blair arrived in the city, pretending that they had come for the
purpose of arranging a trouble in the Missouri delegation; but
their real purpose was to throw the strength of Brown, who was
found to have no chance for the first place, in favor of Greeley,
who had said some very flattering words of Brown some time before
in a letter published in a Missouri newspaper. This new movement
further included the nomination of Brown for the second place on
the ticket, and was largely aimed at Carl Schurz, who was an Adams
man, and had refused, though personally very friendly to Brown, to
back his claims for the Presidential nomination. It seemed to be
a lucky hit for Greeley, who secured the nomination; but the real
cause of Mr. Adams' defeat, after all, was the folly of Trumbull's
friends, who preferred Adams to Greeley, in holding on to their
man in the vain hope of his nomination. They could have nominated
Adams on the fourth or fifth ballot, if they had given him their
votes, as they saw when it was too late. Greeley regretted Brown's
nomination, and afterward expressed his preference for another
gentleman from the West; and he had, of course, nothing to do with
the movement which placed him on the ticket.
I was woefully disappointed in the work of the Convention, having
little faith in the success of Greeley, and being entirely confident
that Adams could be elected if nominated. I still think he would
have been, and that the work of reform would thus have been thoroughly
inaugurated, and the whole current of American politics radically
changed. The time was ripe for it. His defeat was a wet blanket
upon many of the leading spirits of the Convention and their
followers. The disappointment of some of these was unspeakably
bitter and agonizing. Stanley Matthews, illustrating his proverbial
instability in politics, and forgetting his brave resolve no longer
"to wear the collar of a party," abruptly deserted to the enemy.
The "New York Nation" also suddenly changed front, giving its feeble
support to General Grant, and its malignant hostility to Greeley.
The leading Free Traders in the Convention who had enlisted zealously
for Adams became indifferent or hostile. Many of the best informed
of the Liberal leaders felt that a magnificent opportunity to launch
the work of reform and crown it with success had been madly thrown
away. With the zealous friends of Mr. Adams it was a season of
infinite vexation; but for me there was no backward step. The
newborn movement had blundered, but Republicanism under the lead
of Grant remained as odious as ever. It was still the duty of its
enemies to oppose it, and no other method of doing this was left
them than through the organization just formed. That a movement
so suddenly extemporized should make mistakes was by no means
surprising, while there was a fairly implied obligation on the part
of those who had joined in its organization to abide by its action,
if not wantonly recreant to the principles that had inspired it.
The hearts of the liberal masses were for Greeley, and if he could
not be elected, which was by no means certain, his supporters could
at least make their organized protest against the mal-administration
of the party in power.
I attended the Democratic State Convention of Indiana on the twelfth
of June, which was one of the largest and most enthusiastic ever
held in the State. The masses seemed to have completely broken
away from their old moorings, and to be rejoicing in their escape,
while their leaders, many of them reluctantly, accepted the situation.
Both were surprisingly friendly to me, and their purpose was to
nominate me as one of the candidates for Congressman-at-large, which
they would have done by acclamation if I had consented. I was much
cheered by such tokens of union and fraternity in facing the common
enemy. The State campaign was finely opened at Indianapolis on
the eleventh of July, where I presented the issues of the canvass
from the Liberal standpoint; and I continued almost constantly on
the stump till the State election in October, having splendid
audiences, and gathering strength and inspiration from the prevailing
enthusiasm of the canvass. The meetings toward the close were real
ovations, strikingly reminding me of the campaign of 1856. Up to
the time of the North Carolina election I had strong hopes of
victory; but owing to the alarm which had seized the Grant men on
account of Greeley's unexpected popularity, and the lavish expenditure
of their money which followed, the tide was turned, and was never
afterward checked in its course. They became unspeakably bitter
and venomous, and I never before encountered such torrents of abuse
and defamation, outstripping, as it seemed to me, even the rabidness
which confronted the Abolitionists in their early experience. At
one of my appointments a number of colored men came armed with
revolvers, and breathing the spirit of war which Senator Morton
was doing his utmost to kindle. He had been telling the people
everywhere that Greeley and his followers were all Rebels, seeking
to undo the work of the war, to re-enslave the negro, and saddle
upon the country the rebel debt; and these colored men, heeding
his logic, thought that killing Rebels now was as proper a business
as during the war, and would probably have begun their work of
murder if they had not been restrained by the more prudent counsel
of their white brethren. Even in one of the old towns in Eastern
Indiana which had been long known as the headquarters of Abolitionism,
a large supply of eggs was provided for my entertainment when I
went there to speak for Greeley; and they were not thrown at me
simply because the fear of a reaction against the party would be
the result. The Democrats in this canvass were rather handsomely
treated; but the fierceness and fury of the Grant men toward the
Liberal Republicans were unrelieved by a single element of honor
or fair play.
This was pre-eminently true in Indiana, and especially so as to
myself. The leaders of Grant, borrowing the spirit of the campaign,
set all the canons of decency at defiance. "Sore head," "Renegade,"
"Apostate," "Rebel," and "deadbeat," were the compliments constantly
lavished. Garbled extracts from my old war speeches were plentifully
scattered over the State, as if we had been still in the midst of
the bloody conflict, and I had suddenly betrayed the country to
its enemies. Garbled and forged letters were peddled and paraded
over the State by windy political blatherskites, who were hired to
propagate the calumnies of their employers. In fact, my previous
political experience supplied no precedent for this warfare of my
former Republican friends. But I was not unprepared for it, and
fully availed myself of the right of self-defense and counter
attack. I would not make myself a blackguard, but I met my assailants
in every encounter with the weapons of argument and invective, and
stretched them on the rack of my ridicule; while their prolonged
howl bore witness to the effectiveness of my work. My whole heart
was in it. The fervor and enthusiasm of earlier years came back
to me, and a kindred courage and faith armed me with the strength
which the work of the canvass demanded.
The novelty of the canvass was indeed remarkable in all respects.
The Liberal Republicans had not changed any of their political
opinions, nor deserted any principle they had ever espoused, touching
the questions of slavery and the war; and yet they were now in the
fiercest antagonism with the men who had been politically associated
with them ever since the organization of the party, and who had
trusted and honored them through all the struggles of the past.
They were branded as "Apostates" from their anti-slavery faith;
but slavery had perished forever, and every man of them would have
been found fighting it as before, if it had been practicable to
call it back to life; while many of their assailants had distinguished
themselves by mobbing Abolitionism in the day of its weakness.
How could men apostatize from a cause which they had served with
unflinching fidelity until it was completely triumphant? And how
was it possible to fall from political grace by withdrawing from
the fellowship of the knaves and traders that formed the body-guard
of the President, and were using the Republican party as the
instrument of wholesale schemes of jobbery and pelf? To charge
the Liberal Republicans with apostasy because they had the moral
courage to disown and denounce these men was to invent a definition
of the term which would have made all the great apostates of history
"honorable men."
They were called "Rebels"; but the war had been over seven years
and a half, and if the clock of our politics could have been set
back and the bloody conflict re-instated, every Liberal would have
been shouting, as before, for its vigorous prosecution. No man
doubted this who was capable of taking care of himself without the
help of a guardian.
It was charged that "they changed sides" in politics; but the sides
themselves had been changed by events, and the substitution of new
issues for the old, and nobody could deny this who was not besotted
by party devil-worship or the density of his political ignorance.
They were called "sore-heads" and "disappointed place-hunters;"
but the Liberal leaders, in rebelling against their party in the
noon-day of its power, and when honors were within their grasp,
were obliged to "put away ambition" and taste political death, and
thus courageously illustrate the truth that "the duties of life
are more than life." The charge was as glaringly stupid as it was
flagrantly false.
But the novelty of this canvass was equally manifest in the political
fellowships it necessitated. While facing the savage warfare of
their former friends Liberal Republicans were suddenly brought into
the most friendly and intimate relations with the men whose recreancy
to humanity they had unsparingly denounced for years. They were
now working with these men because the subjects on which they had
been divided were withdrawn, and the country had entered upon a
new dispensation. The mollifying influence of peace, aided, no
doubt, by the organized roguery which in the name of Republicanism
held the Nation by the throat, unveiled to Liberals a new political
horizon, and they gladly exchanged the key-note of hate and war
for that of fraternity and reunion. They saw that the spirit of
wrath which had so moved the Northern States during the conflict
was no longer in order. The more they pondered the policy of
amnesty and followed up the work of the canvass the more thoroughly
they became reconstructed in heart. They discovered that the men
whom they had been denouncing with such hot indignation for so many
years were, after all, very much like other people. Personally
and socially they seemed quite as kindly and as estimable as the
men on the other side, while very many of them had undoubtedly
espoused the cause of slavery under a mistaken view of their
constitutional obligations, and as a phase of patriotism, while
sincerely condemning it on principle. Besides, Democrats had done
a very large and indispensable work in the war for the Union, and
they now stood upon common ground with the Republicans touching
the questions on which they had differed. On these questions the
party platforms were identical. If their position was accepted as
a necessity and not from choice, they were only a little behind
the Republicans, who, as a party, only espoused the cause of the
negro under the whip and spur of military necessity, and not the
promptings of humanity. In the light of such considerations it
was not strange that the Greeley men gladly accepted their deliverance
from the glamour which was blinding the eyes of their old associates
to the policy of reconciliation and peace, and blocking up the
pathway of greatly needed reforms.
Soon after the State election I resumed my work on the stump, which
included a series of appointment in Kansas, where I addressed by
far the most enthusiastic meetings of the campaign. My welcome to
the State was made singularly cordial by the part I had played in
Congress in opposing enormous schemes of land monopoly and plunder,
which had been concocted by some of her own public servants in the
interest of railway corporations and Indian rings. On my return
to Indiana the signs of defeat in November became alarming, and
they were justified by the result. It was overwhelming and stunning.
Democrats and Liberals were completely dismayed and bewildered.
The cause of Mr. Greeley's defeat, speaking generally, was the
perfectly unscrupulous and desperate hostility of the party for
which he had done more than any other man, living or dead; but the
disaster resulted, more immediately, from the stupid and criminal
defection of the Bourbon element in the Democratic party, which
could not be rallied under the banner of an old anti-slavery chief.
Thousands of this class, who sincerely hated Abolitionism, and
loved negro slavery more than they loved their country, voted
directly for Grant, while still greater numbers declined to vote
at all. Mr. Greeley's own explanation of the result, which he gave
to a friend soon after the election, was as follows: "I was an
Abolitionist for years, when it was as much as one's life was worth
even here in New York, to be an Abolitionist; and the negroes have
all voted against me. Whatever of talents and energy I have
possessed I have freely contributed all my life long to Protection;
to the cause of our manufactures. And the manufacturers have
expended millions to defeat me. I even made myself ridiculous in
the opinion of many whose good wishes I desired by showing fair
play and giving a fair field in the 'Tribune' to Woman's Rights;
and the women have all gone against me!"
Greeley, however, received nearly three million votes, being
considerably more than Governor Seymour had received four years
before; but General Grant, who had been unanimously nominated by
his party, was elected by two hundred and eighty-six electoral
votes, and a popular majority of nearly three quarters of a million,
carrying thirty-one of the thirty-seven States. To the sincere
friends of political reform the situation seemed hopeless. The
President was re-crowned our King, and political corruption had
now received so emphatic a premium that honesty was tempted to give
up the struggle in despair. His champions were already talking
about a "third term," while the Republican party had become the
representative and champion of great corporations, and the instrument
of organized political corruption and theft.
And yet this fight of Liberals and Democrats was not in vain. They
planted the seed which ripened into a great popular victory four
years later, while the policy of reconciliation for which they
battled against overwhelming odds was hastened by their labors,
and has been finally accepted by the country. They were still
further and more completely vindicated by the misdeeds of the party
they had sought to defeat. The spectacle of our public affairs
became so revolting that before the middle of General Grant's second
term all the great Republican States in the North were lost to the
party, while leading Republicans began to agitate the question of
remanding the States of the South to territorial rule, on account
of their disordered condition. At the end of this term the Republican
majority in the Senate had dwindled from fifty-four to seventeen,
while in the House the majority of one hundred and four had been
wiped out to give place to a Democratic majority of seventy-seven.
No vindication of the maligned Liberals of 1872 could have been
more complete, while it summoned to the bar of history the party
whose action had thus brought shame upon the Nation and a stain
upon Republican institutions.
After the presidential election I went to Washington, where I met
Chief Justice Chase in the Supreme Court and accepted an invitation
to dine with him. He looked so wasted and prematurely old that I
scarcely knew him. He was very genial, however, and our long
political talk was exceedingly enjoyable. It seemed to afford him
much satisfaction to show me a recently reported dissenting opinion
of his in which he re-asserted his favorite principle of State
rights. I only met him once afterward, and this was at the
inauguration of General Grant. I called on Mr. Sumner the same
evening, and found him in a wretched state of health, which was
aggravated by the free use of poisonous drugs. He seemed very much
depressed, politically. He had lost caste with the great party
that had so long idolized him, and which he had done so much to
create and inspire. He had been deserted by the colored race, to
whose service he had unselfishly dedicated his life. He had been
degraded from his honored place at the head of the Senate Committee
on Foreign Relations, and for no other reason than the faithful
and conscientious performance of his public duty. He had been
rebuked by the Legislature of his own State. His case strikingly
suggested that of John Quincy Adams in 1807, when the anathemas of
Massachusetts were showered upon him for leaving the Federalist
party when it had accomplished its mission and survived its character,
and joining the supporters of Jefferson. I sympathized with him
profoundly; but his case was not so infinitely sad as that of poor
Greeley, over whose death, however, the whole Nation seemed to be
in mourning. He had greatly overtaxed himself in his masterly and
brilliant campaign on the stump, in which he displayed unrivaled
intellectual resources and versatility. He had exhausted himself
in watching by the bedside of his dying wife. He had been assailed
as the enemy of his country by the party which he had done more
than any man in the Nation to organize. He had been hunted to his
grave by political assassins whose calumnies broke his heart. He
was scarcely less a martyr than Lincoln, or less honored after his
death, and his graceless defamers now seemed to think they could
atone for their crime by singing his praises. It is easy to speak
well of the dead. It is very easy, even for base and recreant
characters, to laud a man's virtues after he has gone to his grave
and can no longer stand in their path. It is far easier to praise
the dead than do justice to the living; and it was not strange,
therefore, that eminent clergymen and doctors of divinity who had
silently witnessed the peltings of Mr. Greeley by demagogues and
mercenaries during the canvass now poured out their eloquence at
his grave. What he had sorely needed and was religiously entitled
to was the sympathy and succor of good men while he lived, and
especially in his heroic struggle for political reconciliation and
reform. The circumstances of his death made it peculiarly touching
and sacramental, and I was inexpressibly glad that I had fought
his battle so unflinchingly, and defended him everywhere against
his conscienceless assailants.