In after time Herold’s memory of that disastrous night and the
succeeding days was that of a peculiarly lucid nightmare in which he
seemed to have acted without volition or consciousness of motive. He
ate, dressed, drove through the streets on unhappy missions, gave
orders, directions, consoled, like an automaton, and sometimes slept
exhaustedly. So it seemed to him, looking back. He spared John the
first night of misery. The man with his bandaged head slept like a log,
and Herold did not wake him. All that could be done he himself had
done. It was better for John to gather strength in sleep to face the
tragedy on the morrow. And when the morrow came, and Herold broke the
news to him, the big man gave way under the shock, and became gentle,
and obeyed Herold like a child. Thereafter, for many days, he sat for
the hour together with his old aunt, curiously dependent on her; and
she, through her deep affection for him, grew singularly silent and
practical.
In her unimaginative placidity lay her strength. She mourned for Unity
as for her own flesh and blood; but the catastrophe did not shake her
even mind, and when John laid his head in her lap and sobbed, all that
was beautiful in the woman flowed through the comforting tips of her
helpless fingers.
From Herold he learned the unsuspected reason of Unity’s crime and
sacrifice; and from Unity, too, for a poor little pencil scrawl found
in her pocket and addressed to him told him of her love and of her
intention to clear the way for his happiness. And when the inquest was
over and Unity’s body was brought to Kilburn and laid in its coffin in
her little room, he watched by it in dumb stupor of anguish.
Herold roused him now and then. Action--nominal action at least--had to
be taken by him as surviving protagonist of the tragedy. The morning
after the deed the newspapers shrieked the news, giving names in
full, raking up memories of the hideous case. They dug, not deep, for
motive, and found long-smoldering vengeance. Unity was blackened. John
responded to Herold’s lash. This must not be. Unity must not go to her
grave in public dishonor; truth must be told. So at the inquest, John,
wild, uncouth, with great strips of sticking-plaster on his head, told
truth, and gave a romantic story to a hungry press. It was hateful to
lay bare the inmost sacredness and the inmost suffering of his soul to
the world’s cold and curious gaze, but it had to be done. Unity’s name
was cleared. When he sat down by Herold’s side, the latter grasped his
hand, and it was clammy and cold, and he shook throughout his great
frame.
Then Herold, driven to mechanical action, as it seemed to him
afterward, by a compelling force, dragged John to an inquiry into
the evil woman’s life. It was Mrs. Oscraft, the full-blown, blowzy
bookmaker’s wife, the woman’s intimate associate for many years, who
gave the necessary clue. Horrified by the discovery of the identity of
her friend and by the revelation of further iniquities, she lost her
head when the men sternly questioned her. She had used her intimacy
with Mrs. Risca to cover from her own husband an intrigue of many
years’ standing. In return, Mrs. Risca had confessed to an intrigue of
her own, and demanded, and readily obtained, Mrs. Oscraft’s protection.
The women worked together. They were inseparable in their outgoings
and incomings, but abroad each went her separate way. That was why,
ignorant of the truth, Mrs. Oscraft had lied loyally when John Risca
had burst into her flat long ago. She had thought she was merely
shielding her fellow-sinner from the wrath of a jealous husband. Thus
for years, with her cunning, Mrs. Risca had thrown dust in the eyes
both of her friend and of the feared and hated wardress whom John had
set over her. Under the double cloak she had used her hours of liberty
to carry out the set, relentless purpose of her life. To spy on him
with exquisite craft had been her secret passion, to strike when the
time came the very meaning of her criminal existence.
“And for the last two or three years she gave no trouble and was as
gentle as a lamb, so how could I suspect?” Mrs. Bence lamented.
“It’s all over,” said John, stupidly; “it’s all over. Nothing matters
now.”
To Herold, in after time, the memories of these days were as those of
the doings of another man in his outer semblance. His essential self
had been the crazy being who had marched through the mellow Kensington
streets with fantastic dreams of murder in his head. At the sight of
Unity and the woman lying ghastly on the floor something seemed to
snap in his brain, and all the cloudy essence that was he vanished,
and a perfect mechanism took its place. When John with wearisome
reiteration said: “God bless you, Wallie! God knows what I should have
done without you,” it was hard to realize that he had done anything
deserving thanks. He was inclined to regard himself--when he had a
fugitive moment to regard himself--with abhorrence. He had talked;
Unity had acted. And deep down in his soul, only once afterward in his
life to be confessed, dwelt an awful remorse for his responsibility
in the matter of Unity’s death. But in simple fact no man in times of
great convulsion knows himself. He looks back on the man who acted and
wonders. The man, surviving the wreck of earthquake, if he be weak,
lies prone and calls on God and man to help him; if he be strong,
he devotes the intensity of his faculties to the work of rescue, of
clearing up debris, of temporary reconstruction, and has no time
for self-analysis. It is in reality the essential man in his vigor
and courage and nobility and disdain who acts, and the bruised and
shattered about him who profit by his help look rightly upon him as a
god.
It was only after John had visited the house of death, where, according
to law, the bodies both of slayer and slain had to lie, and had seen
the pinched, common face, swathed in decent linen, of the girl who for
his sake had charged her soul with murder and taken her own life, and
after he had driven away, stunned with grief and carrying with him, at
his feet in the taxicab, the useless kit-bag packed by the poor child
with Heaven knows what idea of its getting to its destination, and had
staggered to the comfort of the foolish old lady’s outstretched arms
and received her benediction, futilely spoken, divinely unspoken--it
was only then that, raising haggard eyes, all the more haggard under
the brow-reaching bandage he still wore, he asked the question:
“What about Stella? She is bound to learn.”
“I wrote to her last night,” said Herold. “I prepared her for the shock
as best I could.”
A gleam of rational thought flitted across John Risca’s mind.
“You remembered her at such a time, with all you had to do? You’re a
wonderful man, Wallie. No one else would have done it.”
“Are you in a fit state of mind,” said Herold, “to understand what
has happened? I tried to tell you this morning,”--as he had done
fitfully,--“but it was no use. You grasped nothing.”
“Go on now,” said John. “I’m listening.”
So Herold, amid the fripperies of Miss Lindon’s drawing-room, told the
story of his summons to the Channel House some time ago--Good God!--He
caught himself up sharply--it was only yesterday! and of his talk with
Stellamaris in the garden, and of her encounter with the evil woman,
and of the poison that had crept to the roots of Stella’s being.
John shivered, and clenched impotent fists. Stella left alone on the
cliff-edge with that murderous hag! Stella’s ears polluted by that
infamous tale! If only he had known it! Why did she hide it from him?
It was well the murderess was dead, but, merciful Heaven, at what a
price!
“Listen,” said Herold, gravely, checking his outburst; and he told of
his meetings with Unity,--it was essential that John should know,--of
her almost mystical worship of Stellamaris, of their discovery of the
revolver--
“Poor child!” cried John, “I bought it soon after I went to Kilburn.
I took it out the other day and played with a temptation I knew I
shouldn’t succumb to. I should never have had the pluck.”
Herold continued, telling him all he knew--all save that of which he
stood self-accused, and which for the present was a matter between him
and his Maker. And Miss Lindon, fondling on her lap a wheezy pug, the
successor to the Dandy of former days, who had been gathered to his
fathers long ago, listened in placid bewilderment to the strange story
of love and crime.
“I’m sure I don’t understand how people think of such things, let alone
do them,” she sighed.
“You must accept the fact, dear Miss Lindon,” said Herold, gently.
“God’s will be done,” she murmured, which in the circumstances was
as relevant a thing as the poor lady could have uttered. But John
sat hunched up in a bamboo chair that creaked under his weight,
and scarcely spoke a word. He felt very unimportant by the side of
Unity--Unity with whose strong, passionate soul he had dwelt in blind
ignorance. And Unity was dead, lying stark and white in the alien house.
After a long silence he roused himself.
“You wrote to Stella, you said?”
“Yes,” replied Herold.
“What will happen to her?”
“I don’t know.”
John groaned. “If only I had protected her as I ought to have done! If
only I had protected both of them!”
He relapsed again into silence, burying his face in his hands.
Presently Miss Lindon put the pug tenderly on the ground, rose, and
stood by his chair.
“My poor boy,” she said, “do you love her so much?”
“She’s dead,” said John.
Herold shook him by the shoulder. “Nonsense, man. Pull yourself
together.”
John raised a drawn face.
“What did you ask? I was thinking about Unity.”
* * * * *
That day, the day after the tragedy, Stellamaris faced life in its
nakedness, stripped, so it appeared to her, of every rag of mystery.
She had breakfasted as usual in her room, bathed and dressed, and
looked wistfully over her disowning sea. Then, as she was preparing to
go down-stairs, Morris had brought in Herold’s letter, scribbled so
nervously and shakenly that at first she was at a loss to decipher it.
Gradually it became terribly clear: Unity was dead; the woman was dead;
Unity had killed the woman and then killed herself.
“Details of everything but the truth will be given in the morning
papers,” Herold wrote; “but you must know the truth from the first--as
I know it. Unity has given her life to save those she loved--you and
John--from the woman. She has laid down her life for you. Never forget
that as long as you live.”
She sat for some moments quite still, paralyzed by the new horror that
had sprung from this false, flower-decked earth to shake her by the
throat. The world was terrifyingly relentless. She read the awful words
again. Bit by bit feeling returned. Her flesh was constricted in a cold
and finely wrought net. She grew faint, put her hand to her brow and
found it damp. She stumbled to her bed by the great west window and
threw herself down. Constable, lying on the hearth-rug, staggered to
his feet and thrust his old head on her bosom and regarded her with
mournful and inquiring eyes. She caressed him mechanically. Suddenly
she sprang up as a swift memory smote her. Once she lay there by the
window, and the dog was there by the bed, and there by the door stood
the ungainly figure of a girl of her own age. Was it possible that that
ungainly child whom she had seen and talked to then, whom a few weeks
ago she had kissed, could have committed this deed of blood? She rose
again to her feet, pushed the old dog aside blindly, and hid her eyes
from the light of day. The girl was human, utterly human, at those two
meetings. Of what unknown, devastating forces were human beings, then,
composed?
She took up the letter again. “Unity has given her life to save those
she loved--you and John--from the woman. She has laid down her life for
you. Never forget that as long as you live.”
Walter Herold said that. It must be true. Through all of yesterday’s
welter of misery, after he had left her, she had clung despairingly
to him. There was no God, but there was Walter Herold. Her pride had
dismissed him with profession of disbelief, but in her heart she had
believed him. Not that she had pardoned John Risca, not that she had
recovered her faith in him, not that she had believed in Unity. Her
virginal soul, tainted by the woman, had shrunk from thoughts of the
pair; but despite her fierce determination to believe in neither God
nor man, she had been compelled to believe in Herold. She had stood up
against him and fought with him and had bitten and rent him, and he had
conquered, and she had felt maddenedly angered, triumphantly glad. The
whole world could be as false as hell, but in it there was one clear
spirit speaking truth.
She went to the southern window, rested her elbows on the sill, and
pressed the finger-tips of both hands against her forehead. The soft
southwest wind, bringing the salt from the dancing sea, played about
her hair. Unity had laid down her life to save those she loved. So had
Christ done--given his life for humanity. But Christ had not killed a
human being, no matter how murderous, and had not taken his own life.
No, no; she must not mix up things irreconcilable. She faced the room
again. What did people do when they killed? What were the common,
practical steps that they took to gain their ends? Her mind suddenly
grew vague. Herold had spoken of newspapers. She must see them; she
must know everything. Life was a deadly conflict, and knowledge the
only weapon. For a few seconds she stood in the middle of the room,
her young bosom heaving, her dark eyes wide with the diamond glints in
their depths. Life was a deadly conflict. She would fight, she would
conquer. Others miserably weaker than herself survived. Pride and race
and splendid purity of soul sheathed her in cold armor. A jingle,
separated from context, came into her mind, and in many ways it was a
child’s mind:
Then spake Sir Thomas Howard,
“’Fore God, I am no coward,”
“‘’Fore God, I am no coward,’” she repeated, and with her delicate head
erect she went out and down the stairs and entered the dining-room.
There she found Sir Oliver and Lady Blount sitting at a neglected
breakfast. The old faces strove pitifully to smile. Stella kissed them
in turn, and with her hand lingering on the old man’s arm, she gave him
Herold’s letter.
“Is it in the newspapers?” she asked.
“What, what, my dear?” said Sir Oliver, adjusting his glasses on his
nose with fumbling fingers.
She looked from one to the other. Then her eyes fell on the morning
papers lying on the table. They were folded so that a great head-line
stared hideously.
“Oh, darling, don’t read it--for Heaven’s sake don’t read it!” cried
Lady Blount, clutching the nearer newspaper.
But Stella took up the other. “I must, dearest,” she said very gently.
“Walter has written to me; but he could not tell me everything.”
She moved to the window that overlooked the pleasant garden, and with
steady eyes read the vulgar and soul-withering report, while the two
old people, head to head, puzzled out Herold’s scrawl.
When she had finished, she laid the paper quietly at the foot of
the table and came and stood between them, revolted by the callous
publication of names, almost physically sickened by the realistic
picture of the scene, her head whirling. She caught hold of the back of
Sir Oliver’s chair.
“The newspaper lies,” she said, “but it doesn’t know any better. Walter
tells us why she did it.”
Sir Oliver, elbow on table, held the letter in his shaking grasp. It
dropped, and his head sank on his hand.
“It’s too horrible!” he said in a weak voice. “I don’t understand
anything at all about it. I don’t understand what Walter means. And all
that old beastly story revived! It’s damnable!”
He looked quite broken, his querulous self-assertion gone. Lady Blount,
too, gave way, and stretched out an imploring and pathetic arm, which,
as Stella moved a step or two toward her, fell around the slim,
standing figure. She laid her cheek against Stella and cried miserably.
“O my darling, my precious one, if we could only spare you all this!
Walter shouldn’t have written. O my darling, what are we to do! What
are we to do!”
And then Stellamaris saw once more that Great High Excellency and Most
Exquisite Auntship, for all their love of her, were of the weak ones
of the world, and she looked down with a new and life-giving feeling
of pity upon the bowed gray heads. Once,--was it yesterday or weeks or
months or years ago? She could not tell,--but once, to her later pain
and remorse, she had commanded, and they had obeyed; now she knew that
she had to comfort, protect, determine. And in a bewildering flash came
the revelation that knowledge was a weapon not only to fight her own
way through the evil of the world, but to defend the defenseless.
“I wish Walter was here,” she whispered, her hand against the withered,
wet cheek.
“Why Walter, dear?”
“He is strong and true,” said Stellamaris.
“Why not John, darling?”
Yes, why not John? Stella drew a sharp breath. Sir Oliver saved her an
answer.
“John has enough to look to, poor chap. He has got everything about his
ears. Stella’s right. We want Walter. He’s young. He’s a good fellow
is Walter. I must be getting old, my dear,--” He raised his face, and,
with a sudden forlorn hope of dignity, twirled his white mustache,--“A
year ago I shouldn’t have wanted Walter or anybody. It’s only you, my
child, that your aunt and I are thinking of. We’ve tried to do our
duty by you, haven’t we, Julia? And God knows we love you. You’re the
only thing in the world left to us. It isn’t our fault that you are
drawn into this ghastliness. It isn’t, God knows it isn’t. Only, my
dear,”--there was a catch in his voice,--“you’re not able to bear it.
For us old folks who have knocked about the world--well, we’re used
to--to this sort of thing. I’ve had to send men to the gallows in my
time--once twenty men to be shot. The paltry fellows at the Colonial
Office didn’t see things as I did, but that’s another matter. We’re
used to these things, dear; we’re hardened--”
“If I have got to live in the world, dear Excellency,” said Stella,
feeling that there were some sort of flood-gates between the tumultuous
flow of her being and the still waters of pity in which for the moment
her consciousness acted, “it seems that I’ve got to get used to it,
like every one else.”
“But what shall we do, darling?” cried Lady Blount, clinging
pathetically to the child of sea-foam, from whom all knowledge of the
perilous world had been hidden.
“Anything but worry Walter to come down here.”
“I thought you wanted him?”
“I do,” said Stella, with her hand on her bosom; “but that is only
selfishness. He is needed more in London. I think we ought to go up and
see if we can help in any way.”
“Go up to London!” echoed Sir Oliver.
“Yes, if you’ll take me, Uncle dear.”
The old man looked at his wife, who looked helplessly at him. Through
the open window came the late, mellow notes of a thrush and the
sunshine that flooded the summer garden.
“I am going to send Walter a telegram,” said Stella, moving gently away.
She left the room with the newly awakened consciousness that she
was absolute mistress of her destiny. Love, devotion, service,
anything she might require from the two old people, were hers for the
claiming--anything in the world but guidance and help. She stood alone
before the dragons of a world, no longer the vague Threatening Land,
but a world of fierce passions and bloody deeds. Herold’s words flamed
before her: “Unity has given her life for those she loved.” Had she,
Stellamaris, a spirit so much weaker than Unity’s?
She advanced an eager step or two along the garden walk, clenching
her delicate fists, and the fiery dragons retreated backward. She
could give, too, as well as Unity, her life if need be. If that was
not required, at least whatever could be demanded of her for those
she loved. Again she read the letter. Underlying it was tenderest
anxiety lest she should be stricken down by the ghastly knowledge. With
the personal motive, the intense and omnipotent motive of her sex,
unconsciously dominating her, she murmured half articulately:
“He thinks I’m a weak child. I’ll show him that I am a woman. He shall
see that I’m not afraid of life.”
* * * * *
So when Walter Herold went home late that night,--the theater being out
of the question, he had stayed at Kilburn until John had been persuaded
to go to bed,--he found a telegram from Stellamaris.
“Coming to London to see if I can be of any help. My dear love to John
in his terrible trouble. Tell me when I had better come.”
The next day, when they met before the inquest, he showed the telegram
to John, who, after glancing at it, thrust it back into his hand with a
deprecating gesture.
“No; let her stay there. What is she to do in this wilderness of
horror?”
“I have already written,” said Herold.
“To keep away?”
“To come.”
“You know best,” said John, hopelessly. “At any rate the news hasn’t
killed her. I feared it would. I had long letters from Oliver and Julia
this morning.”
“What do they say?”
John put his hand to his head. “I forget,” said he.
(To be concluded)
[Illustration]
[Illustration: Drawn by Frank Wiles
“SHE LOOKED DOWN WITH A NEW AND LIFE-GIVING FEELING OF PITY UPON THE
BOWED GRAY HEADS”]
THE CENTURY’S AFTER-THE-WAR SERIES
[Illustration]
GREAT EVENTS IN AMERICAN PROGRESS
DURING THE HALF-CENTURY FOLLOWING THE CIVIL WAR
DESCRIBED BY AMERICAN JOURNALISTS AND BY WRITERS HAVING PERSONAL AND
SPECIAL KNOWLEDGE OF IMPORTANT INCIDENTS
PREFATORY EDITORIAL NOTE
Two generations of readers have entered on the field of action since
the Civil War marked the end of what may be called the formative era of
American life. Twenty-eight years ago ~The Century~ began its
memorable Civil War Series, which gave the surviving leaders, Joseph
E. Johnston, Beauregard, Longstreet, and their valiant colleagues on
the Confederate side, a chance to be read with calm appreciation by the
people of the North, and brought to the reviving people of the South
dispassionate accounts by Grant, Sherman, McClellan, Porter, and their
fighting coadjutors on land and sea, of the motives and deeds which
shaped the heroic contest and resulted in a reunited country. Through
the medium of personal recollection, with fairness and without feeling,
the brave men of both sides fought their battles over again before an
open-minded audience of all the people, and for the first time since
slavery became the cause of strife, both parts of the country shook
hands over “the bloody chasm” in mutual admiration and respect.
The forty-seven years which have elapsed since Appomattox have also
had their conflicts, though most of them have been waged in the ways
of peace. They have resulted, however, in forcing the republic,
shaped by the aims of the fathers, into the wider domain of empire
required by the expanding purposes of the sons. In order to bring the
great happenings of this period vividly before the new generations of
readers, ~The Century~ has organized an After-the-War Series.
It will treat of such compelling and lasting influences as the attempt
to “recall” Andrew Johnson, seventeenth President, by impeachment;
the acquisition of Alaska, with its great promise for the future;
the settlement of the Alabama Claims, which brought about a new
status for the United States with Europe; the memorable attempt to
make Horace Greeley President, which in a way may be compared to the
present campaign of the “Progressives”; the near ship-wreck of the
Hayes-Tilden contest; the chain of measures and financial disasters
from “Black Friday” and the Crédit Mobilier to the time when the
nation kept its faith by the resumption of specie payments; the large
features of Reconstruction, still being worked out in the South; the
victory of civil-service reform, beginning with Cleveland’s election
over Blaine; the solidifying of the Monroe Doctrine in the Venezuelan
dispute, which prepared the way for the Panama Canal; the diplomacy of
the war with Spain, by which the republic became an empire; and also
articles describing the remarkable Bryan conventions, the progress of
conservation, the battle with the trusts, and the gigantic problem of
organized labor. In its total effect the series will reveal the drift
of life in the United States.
Each of these commanding subjects will be treated by a prominent
American journalist having particular acquaintance with the theme, and
also, where supplemental articles are necessary, by writers having
special knowledge of these historic dramas of American progress and
personal contact with the actors. In this year of political conflict
Colonel Watterson’s article, which begins the series, has a timely as
well as a distinct personal interest.
[Illustration]
THE HUMOR AND TRAGEDY OF THE GREELEY CAMPAIGN
BY HENRY WATTERSON
I
Among the many misconceptions and mischances which befell the slavery
agitation in the United States and finally led a kindred people into
actual war, the idea that got afloat after this war, that every
Confederate was a Secessionist, best served the ends of the radicalism
which sought to reduce the South to a conquered province, and as such
to reconstruct it by hostile legislation supported, wherever needed, by
force.
Andrew Johnson perfectly understood that a great majority of the men
who were arrayed on the Southern side had taken the field against their
better judgment through pressure of circumstance. They were Union men
who had opposed Secession and clung to the old order. Not merely in
the Border States did this class rule, but in the Gulf States it held
a respectable minority until the shot fired upon Sumter drew the call
for troops from Lincoln. The Secession leaders who had staked their all
upon the hazard knew that to save their movement from collapse it was
necessary that blood be sprinkled in the faces of the people. Hence the
message from Charleston,
With cannon, mortar, and petard,
We tender you our Beauregard,
with the response from Washington, precipitated the conflict of
theories into a combat of arms for which neither party was prepared.
The debate ended, battle at hand, Southern men had to choose between
the North and the South, between their convictions and predilections on
one side and expatriation on the other side, resistance to invasion,
not secession, the issue. But, four years later, when in 1865 all
that they had believed and feared in 1861 had come to pass, these men
required no drastic measures to bring them to terms. Events more potent
than acts of Congress had already reconstructed them. Lincoln, with a
forecast of this, had shaped his ends accordingly. Johnson, himself a
Southern man, understood it even better than Lincoln, and backed by the
legacy of Lincoln, he proceeded not very skilfully to build upon it.
The assassination of Lincoln, however, had played directly into the
hands of the radicals, led by Ben Wade, in the Senate, and Thaddeus
Stevens in the House. Prior to that baleful night they had fallen
behind the marching van. The mad act of Booth put them upon their feet
and brought them to the front. They were implacable men, politicians
equally of resolution and ability. Events quickly succeeding favored
them and their plans. It was not alone Johnson’s lack of temper and
tact that gave them the whip-hand. His removal from office would have
opened the door of the White House to Wade, so that strategically
Johnson’s position was from the beginning beleaguered and, before the
close, came perilously near to being untenable.
[Illustration: From a photograph taken about 1872, owned by Mr. F. H.
Meserve
LYMAN TRUMBULL]
Grant, who, up to the time of his nomination for the Presidency, had
had no partizan conviction, not Wade, the uncompromising extremist,
came after, and inevitably four years of Grant had again divided the
triumphant Republicans. This was the situation during the winter of
1871-72, when the approaching Presidential election brought the country
face to face with an extraordinary state of affairs. The South was in
irons. The North was growing restive. Thinking people everywhere felt
that conditions so anomalous to our institutions could not last.
II
Johnson had made a bungling attempt to carry out the policies of
Lincoln and had gone down in the strife. The Democratic party had
reached the ebb-tide of its disastrous fortunes. It seemed the merest
reactionary. A group of influential Republicans, for one cause or
another dissatisfied with Grant, held a caucus and issued a call for
what they described as a Liberal Republican Convention to assemble in
Cincinnati, May 1, 1872.[1]
A Southern man and a Confederate soldier, a Democrat by inheritance
and conviction, I had been making in Kentucky an unequal fight for the
acceptance of the inevitable. The line of cleavage between the old
and the new South I had placed upon the last three amendments to the
Constitution, naming them the Treaty of Peace between the sections.
The negro must be invested with the rights conferred upon him by these
amendments, however mistaken and injudicious the South might think
them. The obsolete black laws instituted during the slave régime must
be removed from the statute-books. The negro, like Mohammed’s coffin,
swung in mid-air. He was neither fish, flesh, nor fowl, nor good red
herring. For our own sake we must habilitate him, educate and elevate
him, make him, if possible, a contented and useful citizen. Failing of
this, free government itself might be imperiled.
I had behind me the intelligence of the Confederate soldiers almost to
a man. They, at least, were tired of futile fighting, and to them the
war was over. But there was an element, especially in Kentucky, which
wanted to fight when it was much too late--old Union Democrats and
Union Whigs--who clung to the hull of slavery when the kernel was gone,
and proposed to win in politics what had been lost in battle.
The leaders of this belated element were in complete control of the
political machinery of the State. They regarded me as an impudent
upstart, since I had come to Kentucky from Tennessee as little better
than a carpet-bagger, and had done their uttermost to put me down and
drive me out.
I was a young fellow of two and thirty, of boundless optimism and
with my full share of self-confidence, no end of physical endurance
and mental vitality, and having some political as well as newspaper
experience. It never crossed my fancy that I could fail. I met
resistance with aggression, answered attempts at bullying with scorn,
generally irradiated by laughter. Yet I was not wholly blind to
consequences and the admonitions of prudence, and when the call for a
Liberal Republican Convention appeared, I realized that, interested
as I was in what might come of it, if I expected to remain a Democrat
in a Democratic community, and to influence and lead a Democratic
following, I must proceed with caution. Though many of those proposing
the new movement were familiar acquaintances, some of them personal
friends, the scheme was, as it were, in the air. Its three newspaper
bell-wethers, Samuel Bowles of the Springfield “Republican,” Horace
White of the Chicago “Tribune,” and Murat Halstead of the Cincinnati
“Commercial,” were specially well known to me; so were Horace Greeley,
Carl Schurz, and Charles Sumner. Stanley Matthews was my kinsman;
George Hoadley and Cassius M. Clay were next-door neighbors. But they
were not the men I had trained with--not my “crowd,”--and it was a
question how far I might be able to reconcile myself, not to mention
my political associates, to such company, even conceding that they
proceeded under good fortune with a good plan, offering the South
extrication from its woes and the Democratic party an entering wedge
into a solid and hitherto irresistible Republicanism.
[Illustration: From a photograph taken about 1872, owned by Mr. F. H.
Meserve
CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS]
Nevertheless, I resolved to go a little in advance to Cincinnati, to
have a look at the stalking-horse there to be offered, free to take it
or leave it, as I liked, my bridges and lines of communication still
open and intact.
III
A livelier and more variegated omnium-gatherum was never assembled.
They had already begun to pour in when I arrived. There were
long-haired and spectacled doctrinaires from New England, and
short-haired and blatant emissaries from New York, mostly, as it turned
out, friends of Horace Greeley. There were brisk Westerners from
Chicago and St. Louis. If Whitelaw Reid, who had come as Greeley’s
personal representative, had his retinue, so had Horace White and Carl
Schurz. There were a few rather overdressed persons from New Orleans
brought up by Governor Warmouth, and a motley array of Southerners
of every sort, who were ready to clutch at any straw that promised
relief to intolerable conditions. The full contingent of Washington
correspondents was there, of course, with sharpened eyes and pencils,
to make the most of what they had already begun to christen a conclave
of cranks.
[Illustration: From a photograph taken in 1872
HENRY WATTERSON]
Bowles and Halstead met me at the station, and we drove to the St.
Nicholas Hotel, where White and Schurz were awaiting us. Then and
there was organized a fellowship of the first three and myself which
in the succeeding campaign went by the name of the Quadrilateral. We
resolved to limit the Presidential nomination of the convention to
Charles Francis Adams, Bowles’s candidate, and Lyman Trumbull, White’s
candidate, omitting altogether, because of specific reasons urged by
White, the candidacy of B. Gratz Brown, who, because of his Kentucky
connections, had better served my purpose. The very next day the secret
was abroad, and Whitelaw Reid came to me to ask why, in a newspaper
combine of this sort, the “New York Tribune” had been left out.
[Illustration: From a photograph taken in 1872
HORACE WHITE]
To my mind it seemed preposterous that it had been, or should be, and
I stated as much to my new colleagues. They offered objection which
to me appeared perverse, if not childish. To begin with, they did
not like Reid. He was not a principal, like the rest of us, but a
subordinate. Greeley was this, that, and the other; he could never be
relied upon in any coherent, practical plan of campaign; to talk about
him as a candidate was ridiculous. I listened rather impatiently, and
finally I said: “Now, gentlemen, in this movement we shall need the
‘New York Tribune.’ If we admit Reid, we clinch it. You will all agree
that Greeley has no chance of a nomination, and so, by taking him in,
we both eat our cake and have it.” On this view of the case Reid was
invited to join us, and that very night he sat with us at the St.
Nicholas, where from night to night until the end we convened and went
over the performances and developments of the day and concerted plans
for the morrow.
As I recall these symposiums, amusing and plaintive memories rise
before me.
The first serious business that engaged us was the killing of the
boom for Judge David Davis of the Supreme Court, which was assuming
definite and formidable proportions. The preceding winter it had been
organizing at Washington under the ministration of some of the most
astute politicians of the time, mainly, however, Democratic members
of Congress. A party of these had brought the boom to Cincinnati,
opening headquarters well provided with the requisite commissaries.
Every delegate who came in that could be reached was laid hold of and
conducted here.
[Illustration: From a photograph by Sarony, taken in 1872
SAMUEL BOWLES]
We considered this flat burglary. It was a gross infringement upon our
preserve. What business had the professional politicians with a great
reform movement? The influence and dignity of journalism were involved
and imperiled. We, its custodians, could brook no such defiance from
intermeddling office-seekers, especially from brokendown Democratic
office-seekers.
The inner sanctuary of our proceedings was a common drawing-room
between two bedchambers shared by Schurz and me. Here we repaired after
supper to smoke the pipe of fraternity and reform and to save the
country. What could be done to kill off “D. Davis,” as we irreverently
called the eminent and learned jurist, the friend of Lincoln, and the
only aspirant having a “bar’l”? That was the question. We addressed
ourselves to the task with earnest purpose, but characteristically.
The power of the press must be invoked. It was our chief, if not our
only, weapon. Each of us indited a leading editorial for his paper,
to be wired to its destination and printed next morning, striking
“D. Davis” at a prearranged and varying angle. Copies of these were
made for Halstead, who, having with the rest of us read and compared
the different screeds, indited one of his own in general comment and
review for Cincinnati consumption. In next day’s “Commercial,” blazing
under vivid head-lines, these leading editorials, dated “Chicago,”
“New York,” “Springfield, Mass.,” and “Louisville, Ky.,” appeared
with the explaining line, “‘The Tribune’ of to-morrow morning [or the
‘Courier-Journal’ or ‘Republican’] will say,” etc.
Wondrous consensus of public opinion! The Davis boom went down before
it. The Davis boomers were paralyzed. The earth seemed to have arisen
and hit them amidships. The incoming delegates were stopped and
forewarned. Six months of adroit scheming was set at naught, and little
more was heard of “D. Davis.”
[Illustration: From a photograph by Gutekunst
ALEXANDER K. McCLURE]
Like the Mousquetaires, we were equally in for fighting and
foot-racing; the point with us being to “get there,” no matter how;
the end--the defeat of the rascally machine politicians and the reform
of the public service--being relied upon to justify the means. I am
writing this forty years after the event, and must be forgiven the
fling of my wisdom at my own expense and that of my associates in
harmless crime. Reid and White and I are the sole survivors. We were
wholly serious, maybe a trifle visionary, but as upright and patriotic
in our intentions and as loyal to our engagements as it was possible
for older, and maybe worse, men to be. For my part, I must say that
if I have never anything on my conscience heavier than the massacre
of that not very edifying, yet promising Davis “combine,” I shall be
troubled by no remorse, but to the end shall sleep soundly and well.
In that immediate connection an amusing incident throwing some light
upon the period thrusts itself upon my memory. The Quadrilateral, with
Reid added, had finished its consolidation of public opinion just
related, when the cards of Judge Craddock, Chairman of the Kentucky
Democratic Committee, and of Colonel J. Stoddart Johnston, editor of
the “Frankfort Yeoman,” the organ of the Kentucky Democracy, were
brought from below. They had come to look after me, that was evident.
By no chance could they have found me in more equivocal company. In
addition to ourselves, bad enough from the Kentucky point of view,
they found in the room Theodore Tilton and David A. Wells. When they
crossed the threshold and were presented _seriatim_, the face of
each was a study. Even an immediate application of whisky and water
did not suffice to restore their lost equilibrium and bring them to
their usual state of convivial self-possession. Colonel Johnston told
me years after that when they went away they walked in silence a block
or two, when the old judge, a model of the learned and sedate school
of Kentucky politicians and jurists, turned to him and said: “It is no
use, Stoddart. We cannot keep up with that young man or with these
times. Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace!”
[Illustration: From a photograph taken in 1861, owned by Mr. Frederick
H. Meserve
CARL SCHURZ]
The Jupiter Tonans of reform in attendance upon the convention was
Colonel Alexander K. McClure of the Philadelphia “Times.” He was one
of the handsomest and most imposing of men; Halstead himself was
scarcely more so. McClure was personally unknown to the Quadrilateral,
but this did not stand in the way of our asking him to dine with us as
soon as his claims to fellowship in the good cause of reform began to
make themselves apparent through the need of bringing the Pennsylvania
delegation to “a realizing sense.”
As he entered the room, he looked like a god, nay, he acted like one.
Schurz first took him in hand. With a lofty courtesy that I have never
seen equaled, he tossed his inquisitor into the air. Halstead came
next, trying him upon another tack, but fared no better than Schurz.
Then I hurried to the rescue of my friends. McClure, now looking a bit
bored and resentful, landed me somewhere near the ceiling.
It would have been laughable if it had not been ignominious. I took my
discomfiture with the bad grace of silence throughout the brief, stiff,
and formal meal which followed. But when it was over, and the party had
risen from the table and was about to disperse, I collected my energies
and resources for a final forlorn hope. I was not willing to remain so
crushed or to confess myself so beaten, though I could not disguise
from myself a feeling that all of us had been overmatched.
“McClure,” said I, with the cool and quiet resolution of despair,
drawing him aside, “what in the ---- do you want, anyhow?”
He looked at me with swift intelligence and a sudden show of sympathy,
and then over at the others with a withering glance.
“What? With those cranks? Nothing.”
Jupiter descended to earth. I am afraid we actually took a glass of
wine together. Anyhow, from that moment to the hour of his death we
were the best of friends.
Without the inner circle of the Quadrilateral, which had taken
matters into its own hands, were a number of persons, some of them
disinterested and others simple curiosity- and excitement-seekers,
who might be described as merely “lookers-on in Vienna.” The Sunday
afternoon before the convention was to meet, we, the self-elect,
fell in with a party of these in a garden “over the Rhine,” as the
German quarter of Cincinnati is called. There was first general and
rather aimless talk, then came a great deal of speech-making. Schurz
started it with a few pungent observations intended to suggest and
inspire some common ground of public opinion and sentiment. Nobody was
inclined to dispute his leadership, but everybody was prone to assert
his own. It turned out that each regarded himself, and wished to be
regarded, as a man with a mission, having a clear idea how things were
not to be done. There were civil-service reform protectionists and
civil-service reform free traders. There were a few politicians, who
were discovered to be spoilsmen, the unforgivable sin, and as such were
quickly dismissed. The missing ingredient was coherence of belief and
united action. Not a man of them was willing to commit or bind himself
to anything. Edward Atkinson pulled one way, and William Dorsheimer
exactly the opposite way. David A. Wells sought to get the two
together; it was not possible. Sam Bowles shook his head in diplomatic
warning. Horace White threw in a chink or so of a rather agitating
newspaper independence, while Halstead, to the more serious-minded, was
in an inflamed state of jocosity.
[Illustration: From a photograph by Sarony
MURAT HALSTEAD]
All this was grist to the mill of the Washington correspondents,
chiefly “story” writers and satirists, who were there to make the
most out of an occasion in which the bizarre was much in excess of the
conventional, with George Alfred Townsend and Donn Piatt to set the
pace. Hyde of the “Republican” had come from St. Louis to keep special
tab on Grosvenor of the “Democrat.” Though rival editors facing our
way, they had not been admitted to the Quadrilateral. McCullagh and
Nixon were among the earliest arrivals from Chicago. The lesser lights
of the gild were innumerable. One might have mistaken it for an annual
meeting of the Associated Press.
IV
The convention assembled. It was in Cincinnati’s great music-hall.
Schurz presided. Who that was there will never forget his opening words,
“This is moving day.” He was just turned forty-two; in his physiognomy
a scholarly Herr Doktor; in his trim, lithe figure a graceful athlete;
in the tones of his voice an orator.
Even the bespectacled doctrinaires of the East, whence, since the days
the Star of Bethlehem shone over the desert, wisdom and wise men have
had their emanation, were moved to something like enthusiasm. The rest
of us were fervid. Two days and a night and a half the Quadrilateral
had the world in a sling and things its own way. It had been agreed,
as I have said, to limit the field to Adams, Trumbull, and Greeley,
and Greeley being out of it as having no chance whatever, the list was
still further abridged to Adams and Trumbull. Trumbull not developing
very strong, Bowles, Halstead, and I, even White, began to be sure
that it would require only one ballot to nominate Adams--Adams the
indifferent, who had sailed away for Europe, observing that he was not
a candidate for the nomination, and otherwise intimating his disdain of
it and us.
Matters being thus apparently cocked and primed, the convention
adjourned over the first night of its session with everybody happy
except the “D. Davis” contingent, which lingered, but knew its “cake
was dough.” If we had forced a vote that night, as we might have done,
we should have nominated Adams. But, inspired by the bravery of youth
and inexperience, we let the golden opportunity slip. The throng of
delegates and the vast audience dispersed.
In those days it being the business of my life to turn day into night
and night into day, it was not my habit to go to bed much before the
presses began to thunder below. This night proved no exception: being
tempted by a party of Kentuckians, some of whom had come to back me and
some to watch me, I did not quit their agreeable society until the “wee
sma’ hours ayant the twal.”
[Illustration: Photograph by Pearsall, taken in 1872
HORACE GREELEY
This portrait, unusual for the absence of spectacles, is owned by his
daughter, Mrs. F. M. Clendenin.]
Before turning in, I glanced at the early edition of the “Commercial”
to see that something--I was too tired to decipher precisely what--had
happened. It was, in point of fact, the arrival about midnight of
General Frank P. Blair and Governor B. Gratz Brown of Missouri. I had
in my possession documents which would have induced at least one of
them to pause before making himself too conspicuous. The Quadrilateral,
excepting Reid, knew this. We had separated upon the adjournment of the
convention. I, being across the river in Covington, their search for me
was unavailing. They were in despair. When, having had a few hours
of rest, I reached the convention hall toward noon, it was too late.
[Illustration: HORACE GREELEY AND WHITELAW REID
From a photograph taken in the editorial rooms of “The Tribune” shortly
before the opening of the Greeley Campaign.]
[Illustration: From a cartoon by Thomas Nast in “Harper’s Weekly”
NAST’S CARTOON, “‘THE PIRATES’ UNDER FALSE COLORS--CAN THEY CAPTURE THE
‘SHIP OF STATE’?”
At the left Sumner is reading a book; Andrew Johnson is behind the
capstan; August Belmont in the gangway with a knife in his mouth;
Fenton in the background; Whitelaw Reid on a keg of powder playing
a violin tagged, “This is not an organ”; David Davis is behind
Archbishop Hughes with the cross; Manton Marble is hiding behind his
newspaper “The World”; Senator Tipton is bawling near Greeley; Carl
Schurz is waving his hat to friends on the _Ship of State_ and
Theodore Tilton is embracing him; Governor Hoffman holds a parasol;
Horatio Seymour kneels to Jeff Davis lying on the Confederate flag,
behind him a group of Confederates with Wade Hampton standing near
Greeley; John Kelly holds the Tammany knife, and above his head are
faces of Tweed, and Mayor Oakey Hall with eye-glasses.
]
I got into the thick of the session in time to see the close, not
without an angry collision with that one of the newly arrived actors
whose coming had changed the course of events, and with whom I had
lifelong relations of affectionate intimacy. Recently, when I was
sailing in Mediterranean waters with Joseph Pulitzer, who, then a mere
youth, was yet the secretary of the convention, he recalled the scene:
the unexpected and not over-attractive appearance of B. Gratz Brown,
the Governor of Missouri; his not very pleasing yet ingenious speech
in favor of the nomination of Greeley; the stoical, almost lethargic
indifference of Schurz. “Carl Schurz,” said Pulitzer, “was the most
industrious and the least energetic man I have ever known and worked
with. A word from him at that crisis would have completely routed Blair
and squelched Brown. It was simply not in him to speak it.”
[Illustration: From a photograph by Sarony, taken in 1872
THOMAS NAST]
The result was that Greeley was nominated amid a whirl of enthusiasm,
his workers, with Whitelaw Reid at their head, having maintained an
admirable and effective organization, and being thoroughly prepared to
take advantage of the opportune moment. It was the logic of the event
that B. Gratz Brown should be placed on the ticket with him.
The Quadrilateral was “nowhere.” It was done for. The impossible had
come to pass. There arose thereafter a friendly issue of veracity
between Schurz and me, which illustrates our state of mind. My version
is that we left the convention hall together, with an immaterial train
of after incidents; his that we did not meet after the adjournment. He
was quite sure of this because he had ineffectually sought me. “Schurz
was right,” said Joseph Pulitzer, upon the occasion of our yachting
cruise just mentioned, “because he and I went directly from the hall
with Judge Stallo to his home on Walnut Hills, where we dined and
passed the afternoon.”
The Quadrilateral had been knocked into a cocked hat. Whitelaw Reid was
the sole survivor. He was the only one of us who clearly understood
the situation and thoroughly knew what he was about. He came to me and
said: “I have won, and you people have lost. I shall expect that you
stand by the agreement and meet me as my guests at dinner to-night.
But, if you do not personally look after this, the others will not be
there.” I was as badly hurt as any; but a bond is a bond, and I did
as he desired, succeeding partly by coaxing and partly by insisting,
though it was uphill work.
Frostier conviviality I have never sat down to than Reid’s dinner.
Horace White looked more than ever like an iceberg; Sam Bowles was
diplomatic, but ineffusive; Schurz was as a death’s head at the board;
Halstead and I, through sheer bravado, tried to enliven the feast.
But they would none of us, nor it, and we separated early and sadly,
reformers hoist by their own petard.
[Illustration: THE SAME TUNES BY ANOTHER FIDDLE WILL SOUND AS SWEET. IT
IS TOO BAD TO HAVE THE NEW YORK WORLD PLAY SECOND FIDDLE TO ITS OWN
FAVORITE TUNES.
From a cartoon by Thomas Nast in “Harper’s Weekly”
NAST’S CARTOON OF WHITELAW REID OF “THE TRIBUNE” AND MANTON MARBLE OF
“THE WORLD” PLAYING IN CONCERT]
V
The reception by the country of the nomination of Horace Greeley
was as inexplicable to the politicians as the nomination itself had
been unexpected by the Quadrilateral. The people rose to it. The
sentimental, the fantastic, and the paradoxical in human nature had to
do with this. At the South an ebullition of pleased surprise grew into
positive enthusiasm. Peace was the need, if not the longing, of the
Southern heart, and Greeley’s had been the first hand stretched out to
the South from the enemy’s camp,--very bravely, too, for he had signed
the bail-bond of Jefferson Davis,--and quick upon the news flashed the
response from generous men eager for the chance to pay something on a
recognized debt of gratitude.
Except for this spontaneous uprising, which continued unabated in July,
the Democratic party could not have been induced at its convention at
Baltimore to ratify the proceedings at Cincinnati and formally to make
Greeley its candidate. The leaders dared not resist it. Some of them
halted, a few held out, but by midsummer the great body of them came to
the front to head the procession.
Horace Greeley was a queer old man, a very medley of contradictions,
shrewd and simple, credulous and penetrating, a master penman of the
school of Swift and Cobbett, even in his odd, picturesque personality
whimsically attractive and, as Seward learned to his cost, a man to be
reckoned with where he chose to put his powers forth.
What he would have done with the Presidency had he reached it is not
easy to say or to surmise. He was altogether unsuited for official
life, for which, nevertheless, he had a longing. But he was not so
readily deceived in men or misled in measures as he seemed, and as most
people thought him.
His convictions were emotional, his philosophy experimental; but there
was a certain method in their application to public affairs. He gave
bountifully of his affection and his confidence to the few who enjoyed
his familiar friendship; he was accessible and sympathetic, though
not indiscriminating, to those who appealed to his impressionable
sensibilities and sought his help. He had been a good party man and was
temperamentally a partizan.
To him place was not a badge of bondage; it was a decoration,
preferment, promotion, popular recognition. He had always yearned for
office as the legitimate destination of public life and the honorable
reward of party service. During the greater part of his career, the
conditions of journalism had been rather squalid and servile. He was
really great as a journalist. He was truly and highly fit for nothing
else, but, seeing less deserving and less capable men about him
advanced from one post of distinction to another, he wondered why his
turn proved so tardy in coming, and when it would come. It did come
with a rush. What more natural than that he should believe it real
instead of the empty pageant of a vision?
After the first shock and surprise of the Cincinnati nomination, it had
taken me only a day and a night to pull myself together and to plunge
into the swim to help fetch the water-logged factions ashore. This
was clearly indispensable to forcing the Democratic organization to
come to the rescue of what would prove otherwise but a derelict upon a
stormy sea. Schurz was deeply disgruntled. Before he could be appeased,
a bridge found in what was called the Fifth Avenue Hotel Conference
had to be constructed in order to carry him across the stream which
flowed between his disappointed hopes and aims and what appeared to him
an illogical and repulsive alternative. Like another Achilles, he had
taken to his tent and sulked. He was harder to deal with than any of
the Democratic file-leaders; but he finally yielded, and did splendid
work in the campaign.
Carl Schurz was a stubborn spirit, not readily adjustable. He was a
nobly gifted man, but from first to last an alien in an alien land.
He once said to me, “If I should live a thousand years, they would
still call me a Dutchman.” No man of his time spoke so well or wrote
to better purpose. He was equally skilful in debate, an overmatch
for Conkling and Morton, whom, especially in the French Arms matter,
he completely dominated and outshone. As sincere and unselfish, as
patriotic and as courageous, as any of his contemporaries, he could
never attain the full measure of the popular heart and confidence,
albeit reaching its understanding directly and surely. Within himself a
man of sentiment, he was not the cause of sentiment in others. He knew
this and felt it.
During the campaign the Nast cartoons in “Harper’s Weekly,” which
while unsparing to the last degree to Greeley and Sumner, and treating
Schurz with a kind of considerate, qualifying humor, nevertheless
greatly offended him. I do not think Greeley minded them much, if
at all. They were very effective, notably the “Pirate Ship,” which
represented Greeley rising above the taffrail of a vessel carrying the
Stars-and-Stripes and waving his handkerchief at the man-of-war _Ship
of State_ in the distance, while the political leaders of the
Confederacy, dressed in true corsair costume, crouched below, ready to
spring. Nothing did more to sectionalize Northern opinion and fire the
Northern heart, or to lash the fury of the rank and file of those who
were urged to vote as they had shot, and who had hoisted above them
“the bloody shirt” for a banner.
In the first half of the canvass the impetus was with Greeley; the
second half, beginning in eclipse, seemed about to end in something
very like collapse. The old man seized his flag and set out upon his
own account for a tour of the country. And right well he bore himself.
If speech-making ever does any good toward the shaping of results,
Greeley’s speeches surely should have elected him. They were marvels
of impromptu oratory, mostly homely and touching appeals to the better
sense and the magnanimity of a people not ripe or ready for generous
impressions, convincing in their simplicity and integrity, unanswerable
from any point of view of sagacious statesmanship or true patriotism,
if the North had been in any mood to listen, to reason, and to respond.
I met him at Cincinnati and acted as his escort to Louisville and
thence to Indianapolis, where others were waiting to take him in
charge. He was in a state of querulous excitement. Before the vast
and noisy audiences which we faced he stood apparently pleased and
composed, delivering his words as he might have dictated them to a
stenographer. As soon as we were alone he would break out into a kind
of lamentation, punctuated by occasional bursts of objurgation. He
especially distrusted the Quadrilateral, making an exception in my
case as well he might, because, however his nomination had jarred my
judgment, I had a real affection for him, dating back to the years
immediately preceding the war, when I was wont to encounter him in the
reporters’ galleries at Washington, which he preferred to using his
floor privilege as an ex-member of Congress.
It was mid-October. We had heard from Maine. Indiana and Ohio had
voted, and Greeley was for the first time realizing the hopeless nature
of the contest. The South, in irons and under military rule and martial
law sure for Grant, there had never been any real chance. Now it was
obvious that there was to be no compensating ground-swell at the North.
That he should pour forth his chagrin to one whom he knew so well and
even regarded as one of his “boys” was inevitable. Much of what he said
was founded on a basis of fact, some of it was mere suspicion and
surmise, all of it came back to the main point that defeat stared us in
the face.
I was glad and yet loath to part with him. If ever a man needed a
strong friendly hand and heart to lean upon he did during those dark
days--the end in darkest night nearer than any one could divine. He
showed stronger mettle than had been allowed him; bore a manlier part
than was commonly ascribed to his slovenly, slipshod habiliments and
his aspect in which benignancy and vacillation seemed to struggle for
the ascendancy. Abroad, the elements conspired against him. At home his
wife lay ill, as it proved, unto death. The good gray head he still
carried like a hero, but the worn and tender heart was beginning to
break.
Happily the end came quickly. Overwhelming defeat was followed by
overwhelming affliction. He never quitted his dear one’s bedside until
the last pulse-beat, and then he sank beneath the load of grief. “‘The
Tribune’ is gone and I am gone,” he said, and spoke no more.
The death of Greeley fell upon the country with a sudden shock. It
aroused a wide-spread sense of pity and sorrow and awe. All hearts were
hushed. In an instant the bitterness of the campaign was forgotten,
though the huzzas of the victors still rent the air. President Grant,
his late antagonist, with his cabinet, and the leading members of the
two Houses of Congress, attended his funeral. As he lay in his coffin,
he was no longer the arch-rebel leading a combine of buccaneers and
insurgents, which the Republican orators and newspapers had depicted
him, but the brave old apostle of freedom, who had done more than all
others to make the issues upon which a militant and triumphant party
had risen to power. The multitude remembered only the old white hat and
the sweet, old baby face beneath it, heart of gold, and hand wielding
the wizard pen; the incarnation of probity and kindness, of steadfast
devotion to his duty, as he saw it, and to the needs of the whole human
family. It was, indeed, a tragedy; and yet, as his body was lowered
into its grave, there rose above it, invisible, unnoted, a flower of
matchless beauty--the flower of peace and love between the parts of the
Union to which his life had been a sacrifice.
The crank convention had builded wiser than it knew. That the
Democratic party could ever have been brought to the support of Horace
Greeley for President of the United States reads even now like a page
out of a nonsense-book. That his warmest support should have come from
the South seems an incredible, and was a priceless, fact. His martyrdom
shortened the distance across the bloody chasm; his coffin very nearly
filled it. The candidacy of Charles Francis Adams or of Lyman Trumbull
would have meant a mathematical formula, with no solution of the
problem, and as certain defeat at the end of it. Greeley’s candidacy
threw a flood of light and warmth into the arena of deadly strife; it
made a more equal and reasonable division of parties possible; it put
the Southern half of the country in a position to plead its own case
by showing the Northern half that it was not wholly recalcitrant, and
it made way for real issues of pith and moment relating to the time
instead of pigments of bellicose passion and scraps of ante bellum
controversy.
In a word, Greeley did more by his death to complete the work of
Lincoln than he could have done by a triumph at the polls and the term
in the White House he so much desired. Though only sixty years of age,
his race was run. Of him it may be truly written that he lived a life
full of inspiration to his countrymen, and died not in vain, “our later
Franklin” fittingly inscribed upon his tomb.
[1] Dissatisfaction with the administration of General Grant led
a number of distinguished Republicans to unite in a call for
what they named a Liberal Republican Convention to assemble
in Cincinnati the first of May, 1872. Charles Sumner, Lyman
Trumbull, and Carl Schurz were foremost among these Republicans.
Mr. Schurz was chosen permanent chairman of the convention and
delivered a striking key-note speech. Stanley Matthews, afterward
a Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, served as
temporary chairman.
The free-trade and civil-service reform elements were largely
represented under the leadership of David A. Wells, George
Hoadley, and Horace White. Charles Francis Adams was the choice
of these for the Presidential nomination. The opposition to Mr.
Adams was divided at the outset between Justice David Davis of
the Supreme Court, ex-Senator Lyman Trumbull of Illinois, and
Governor B. Gratz Brown of Missouri, with a strong undercurrent
for Horace Greeley. The arrival upon the scene at the opportune
moment of Governor Brown, accompanied by General Francis P.
Blair, turned the tide from both Adams and Davis, and, Brown
withdrawing and throwing his strength to Greeley, secured on the
sixth ballot the nomination of the famous editor of the New York
“Tribune,” Brown himself taking second place on the ticket.
In the platform that was adopted the free-trade issue, in
deference to Mr. Greeley’s Protectionist antecedents and
sentiments, was “relegated to the congressional districts.”
The result at Cincinnati was received with mingled ridicule and
applause. Many Liberal Republicans refused to accept Mr. Greeley
and fell back within the lines of the regular Republican party. A
sub-convention, called the Fifth Avenue Conference, was required
to hold others of them, including Carl Schurz. Finally, the
Democratic National Convention, which met at Baltimore in July,
ratified the Greeley and Brown ticket.
During the midsummer there were high hopes of its election; but
as the canvass advanced, its prospects steadily declined. Early
in October Mr. Greeley made a tour from New England westward
as far as Indiana and Ohio, delivering a series of speeches in
persuasive eloquence regarded as unexampled in the political
annals of the country. But nothing sufficed to stay overwhelming
defeat, the portion fate seemed to have allotted Mr. Greeley on
several occasions, in 1861 as a candidate for the Senate, in
1869 as a candidate for Controller of New York, and in 1870 as a
representative in Congress, to which he had been sent in 1848-9.
During his absence from home his wife had fallen ill. He returned
to find her condition desperate. She died and was buried amid
the closing scenes of the disastrous campaign. Mr. Greeley had
for years suffered from insomnia. His vigil by the bedside of
his dying wife had quite exhausted him. Inflammation of the
brain ensued; he remained sleepless, delirium set in, and he
died November 29, 1872. General Grant and his Cabinet, with
most of the officials of Congress and the Government, attended
his funeral, the tragic circumstances of his death wholly
obliterating partizan feeling and arousing general sympathy among
all classes of the people.
COMMENTS ON COLONEL WATTERSON’S PAPER
The foregoing was written in the south of France to help while
away a winter vacation. I was not willing to give it to the public
without the “visé” of my surviving colleagues, Whitelaw Reid and
Horace White, to each of whom I sent a copy. At first I thought of
recasting my matter to meet their objections. But, on second thought,
it seems best to “let the hide go with the tallow,” as it were, their
comments not only illuminating my narrative, but throwing on it
the side lights of their differing points of view. No one holds in
higher respect than I the noble aims and great sacrifices made by the
Liberal Republicans.
~Henry Watterson.~
I--BY WHITELAW REID
Dorchester House,
Park Lane, W., London, England,
May 3, 1911.
My dear Watterson:
I have read the manuscript with the greatest interest. On a few little
matters I shouldn’t have put things quite the same way; but that
of course is to be expected from the different points of view from
which we necessarily regard the subject. On the whole, it seems to me
extremely fair and accurate.
I shall append a few notes, which I have made on different points
suggested by the manuscript, not with the idea that you will find any
occasion to incorporate any of my suggestions in your account, but only
by way of refreshing your memory, as your manuscript has refreshed
mine, about interesting incidents of a period which now seems so remote
as to belong exclusively to our romantic youth.
On page 27 it would seem to be implied that Ben Wade was somewhat
influenced in his support of the impeachment policy by the fact
that if impeachment succeeded, he was the inevitable successor. I
saw a great deal of Wade in those days. He certainly knew what the
consequence to himself of a successful impeachment would be, but I
never saw any reason to suppose that if somebody else had been acting
Vice-President, Wade’s attitude would not have been the same. Probably
he would have been even more outspoken.
Page 31. What you say of the attitude of three of the Quadrilateral
toward myself is not news to me. I knew, however, the reasons for
it (which would probably have influenced me if I had been in their
places), and I bore no grudges. In fact, at the time I had a pretty
strong conviction that they were the people who were going to be badly
disappointed in the end; so that, while you all thought you were taking
me into camp, I was comforting myself with the belief that I was taking
the Quadrilateral into camp, and should find them very useful articles
to begin housekeeping with.
Page 35. Did McCullagh come from Chicago? I thought we always counted
him as belonging to Cincinnati until he went to St. Louis. When I first
went to Cincinnati, he was a reporter on the “Gazette,” from which he
went to the “Commercial.”
Page 40. The “bravery” of Greeley’s outstretched hand may have been
fully recognized, but I doubt if its self-sacrifice ever was. First
and last it must have cost him (poor man that he was) nearly a million
dollars. Shortly after the first volume of his history, “The American
Conflict,” was published, I remember congratulating him on the
pecuniary success. His reply was: “Oh, I haven’t made as much as the
newspapers say. Still, I’ve made a hundred thousand dollars that I know
of, for I have spent every cent of it. The past at least is secure.”
With that figure as a basis, you can calculate how much he would
probably have made from the enormously augmented sale of the first
volume when the second came out, as well as from the copyrights on the
second. The circulation of “The Tribune” was also affected for a time
in the same disastrous way.
Page 41. With my intimate knowledge of Greeley at that period I should
hardly have said he had a passion for office. What I did think was that
he had a passion for recognition, and was very sore at being treated
not as an equal and comrade, but as a convenience to the machine,
by Seward and Thurlow Weed. It was less office he sought than an
opportunity to teach those gentlemen their places and his. Certainly he
never had a lifelong passion for office like Lincoln.
Page 41. We had no better politics during the campaign than in the
management of the Fifth Avenue Conference. I remember that William
Henry Hurlbert and some others who were doing their best then to defeat
us did not wake up to the real significance of our attitude toward this
conference until the morning it met. Then Hurlbert described the course
of “The Tribune” as that of a court gallant, tiptoeing forward to bow
the favorites to their places.
I always thought we had the country with us until after the North
Carolina election, and believed we carried that. I am afraid it was
our old friend Ned Webster who deliberately rushed down to steal
it away from us, and that his very strong measures had pretty high
sanction. Or was it in the Hayes-Tilden election that he came to the
front? The truth is the North Carolina election was the turning-point.
If the result had been left as we believed it to be for the first two
or three days, I don’t think we should have had the October reaction,
or that Nast’s cartoons could have had anything like the effect they
did exert.
By the way, some of those cartoons could hardly have been tolerated at
any other time in America, and would hardly have been tolerated in any
other country at any time, such as the one depicting Greeley--Greeley
of all living men!--as clasping hands with the ghost of Wilkes Booth
across the grave of murdered Abraham Lincoln. I once told “Brooklyn”
Joe Harper he ought to be ashamed of that, and begin every day of
his life with a prayer for forgiveness for it. His reply was that we
all of us had done something at some time in our lives that we ought
to be ashamed of. He understood perfectly that I never resented in
the least Nast’s caricatures of myself. In fact, I thought some of
them extraordinarily clever, such as the one depicting me playing a
hand-organ in front of the old Manhattan Club, with Greeley as the
monkey holding out a hat for pennies, while on the end of the organ was
the familiar quotation from “The Tribune” of those days, “This is not
an organ.”
Page 42. You are perfectly right in praising Greeley’s hopeless
campaign in the West. In fact, if I were writing, I should pitch the
note a little higher. I remember Joseph H. Choate saying to a group,
of which I was a member, one Saturday night at the Century Club during
that campaign, “What extraordinarily good speeches Greeley is making
out West!” To give that its full value, please remember that Choate was
a partner of Evarts, who had nominated Seward, and that to that whole
combination Greeley was anathema.
Page 42. My recollection is that Mrs. Greeley died in the interval
after his return from the West, but before the election. I always
attributed his sudden collapse after the election as much to his
loss of sleep, while watching for a week at her bedside, as to
disappointment over the result, and this opinion was somewhat confirmed
by Dr. Choate (a brother of Joseph), to whose private sanatorium he
was taken. I asked Choate what the real disease was, and he said, “If
you want it in popular phrase, it is really an inflammation of the
outer membrane of the brain, due to loss of sleep or extraordinary
excitement.” Then I asked what his prognosis was, and he replied,
“He will either be well in a week or dead.” This is of course not a
description of insanity at all; and I always felt a cruel injustice was
done his memory in describing him as going crazy over defeat--as cruel
as it would be to say such a thing of a fever patient because he was in
a temporary delirium.
I was never convinced that the “last words” you quote were ever
uttered by him, “‘The Tribune’ is gone, and I am gone.” Dana was
surrounded in those days by people who for one reason or another
had grudges equal to his own against “The Tribune”--Amos Cummings,
who had left us in a pet because of some rebuke from John Russell
Young; Dr. Wood, whom Amos got away from us; and, above all, a man in
the proof-room, who resented my criticisms of his proofreading and
deserted us, taking with him the manuscript of one or two of Greeley’s
unbalanced articles, which his brother-in-law, John Cleveland, had
discovered and brought to me, and which I suppressed because they were
obviously unbalanced. They reveled in these things; and it happened at
that time to be all grist to Dana’s mill.
II--BY HORACE WHITE
I have read “The Humor and Tragedy of the Greeley Campaign.” What I
think of it depends upon the point of view from which I look at it. The
only tragic thing in it is the death of Greeley. All the rest is comedy.
Regarded as such it has high merits. I can think of nothing political
that is more mirth-provoking, unless it is Dickens’s description of
_Mr. Veneering’s_ campaign for a seat in Parliament with the help
of _Boots_ and _Brewer_ riding about London in cabs and
“bringing him in.”
The first three pages are serious. On the fourth page the fun begins,
and continues till the death of Greeley. At the bottom of page 33
there are two sentences beginning with the words, “We were wholly
serious,” which excuse the participants, including yourself, for
being at Cincinnati at all. Then the humor starts afresh and becomes
side-splitting at the place where McClure enters and tosses Schurz and
Halstead and yourself to the ceiling successively.
Now the question arises, What will the readers of your paper, who get
from it their first and only knowledge of the campaign of 1872--and
these will probably be ninety per cent. of its readers--think of
that campaign? They will think it was a very droll affair and quite
unaccountable. They will know nothing about disfranchisement or Santo
Domingo or nepotism or whisky frauds, or civil-service rapine or the
real causes of the uprising of 1871-72.
The McClure episode, by the way, is even more unaccountable. I don’t
understand it myself. It reads as though Colonel McClure was surveying
the scene from Olympus as a disinterested spectator, with great scorn
for the participants in the convention. In fact he was chairman of the
Pennsylvania delegation, supporting Greeley or Davis or somebody. He
was as deep in the mud as anybody else was in the mire.