University of Virginia Library

11. CHAPTER XI
GRANT, HAYES, AND GARFIELD—1871-1881

AT various times after the death of Mr. Lincoln I visited Washington, meeting many men especially influential, and, first of all, President Grant. Of all personages whom I then met he impressed me most strongly. At various times I talked with him at the White House, dining with him and seeing him occasionally in his lighter mood, but at no time was there the slightest diminution of his unaffected dignity. Now and then he would make some dry remark which showed a strong sense of humor, but in everything there was the same quiet, simple strength. On one occasion, when going to the White House, I met Professor Agassiz of Cambridge, and took him with me: we were received cordially, General Grant offering us cigars, as was his wont with visitors, and Agassiz genially smoking with him: when we had come away the great naturalist spoke with honest admiration of the President, evidently impressed by the same qualities which had always impressed me—his modesty, simplicity, and quiet force.

I also visited him at various times in his summer cottage at Long Branch, and on one of these occasions he gave a bit of history which specially interested me. As we were taking coffee after dinner, a card was brought in, and the President, having glanced at it, said, "Tell him that I cannot see him.'' The servant departed with the message, but soon returned and said, "The gentleman

wishes to know when he can see the President.'' "Tell him never,'' said Grant.

It turned out that the person whose name the card bore was the correspondent of a newspaper especially noted for sensation-mongering, and the conversation drifted to the subject of newspapers and newspaper correspondents, when the President told the following story, which I give as nearly as possible in his own words:

"During the hottest period of the final struggle in Virginia, we suffered very much from the reports of newspaper correspondents who prowled about our camps and then put on the wires the information they had gained, which of course went South as rapidly as it went North. It became really serious and embarrassed us greatly. On this account, one night, when I had decided to make an important movement with a portion of the army early next day, I gave orders that a tent should be pitched in an out-of-the-way place, at the earliest possible moment in the morning, and notified the generals who were to take part in the movement to meet me there.

"It happened that on the previous day there had come to the camp a newspaper correspondent named —, and, as he bore a letter from Mr. Washburne, I treated him as civilly as possible.

"At daylight next morning, while we were assembled in the tent making final arrangements, one of my aides, Colonel —, heard a noise just outside, and, going out, saw this correspondent lying down at full length, his ear under the edge of the tent, and a note-book in his hand. Thereupon Colonel took the correspondent by his other ear, lifted him to his feet, and swore to him a solemn oath that if he was visible in any part of the camp more than five minutes longer, a detachment of troops would be ordered out to shoot him and bury him there in the swamp, so that no one would ever know his name or burial-place.

"The correspondent left at once,'' said the President,

"and he took his revenge by writing a history of the war from which he left me out.''

The same characteristic which I had found at other meetings with Grant came out even more strongly when, just before the close of his term, he made me a visit at Cornell, where one of his sons was a student. To meet him I invited several of our professors and others who were especially prejudiced against him, and, without exception, they afterward expressed the very feeling which had come over me after my first conversation with him— surprise at the revelation of his quiet strength and his knowledge of public questions then before the country.

During a walk on the university grounds he spoke to me of the Santo Domingo matter. [3] He said: "The annexation question is doubtless laid aside for the present, but the time will come when the country will have occasion to regret that it was disposed of without adequate discussion. As I am so soon to leave the presidency, I may say to you now that one of my main thoughts in regard to the annexation of the island has been that it might afford a refuge for the negroes of the South in case anything like a war of races should ever arise in the old slave States.'' He then alluded to the bitter feeling between the two races which was then shown in the South, and which was leading many of the blacks to take refuge in Kansas and other northwestern States, and said, "If such a refuge as Santo Domingo were open to them, their former masters would soon find that they have not the colored population entirely at their mercy, and would be obliged to compromise with them on far more just terms than would otherwise be likely.''

The President said this with evidently deep conviction, and it seemed to me a very thoughtful and far-sighted view of the possibilities and even probabilities involved.

During another walk, in speaking of the approaching close of his second presidential term, he said that he found himself looking forward to it with the same longing which

he had formerly had as a cadet at West Point when looking forward to a furlough.

I have never believed that the earnest effort made by his friends at Chicago to nominate him for a third term was really prompted by him, or that he originally desired it. It always seemed to me due to the devotion of friends who admired his noble qualities, and thought that the United States ought not to be deprived of them in obedience to a tradition, in this case, more honored in the breach than in the observance.

I may add here that, having seen him on several convivial occasions, and under circumstances when, if ever, he would be likely to indulge in what was understood to have been, in his early life, an unfortunate habit, I never saw him betray the influence of alcohol in the slightest degree.

Shortly after General Grant laid down his high office, he made his well-known journey to Europe and the East, and I had the pleasure of meeting him at Cologne and traveling up the Rhine with him. We discussed American affairs all day long. He had during the previous week been welcomed most cordially to the hospitalities of two leading sovereigns of Europe, and had received endless attentions from the most distinguished men of England and Belgium, but in conversation he never, in the slightest degree, referred to any of these experiences. He seemed not to think of them; his heart was in matters pertaining to his own country. He told me much regarding his administration, and especially spoke with the greatest respect and affection of his Secretary of State, Mr. Hamilton Fish.

Somewhat later I again met him in Paris, had several walks and talks with him in which he discussed American affairs, and I remember that he dwelt with especial admiration, and even affection, upon his colleagues Sherman and Sheridan.

I trust that it may not be considered out of place if, in this retrospect, which is intended, first of all, for my

children and grandchildren, I state that a personal fact, which was known to many from other sources, was confirmed to me in one of these conversations: General Grant informing me, as he had previously informed my wife, that he had fully purposed to name me as Secretary of State had Mr. Fish carried out his intention of resigning. When he told me this, my answer was that I considered it a very fortunate escape for us both; that my training had not fitted me for such duties; that my experience in the diplomatic service had then been slight; that I had no proper training as a lawyer; that my knowledge of international law was derived far more from the reading of books than from its application; and that I doubted my physical ability to bear the pressure for patronage which converged upon the head of the President's cabinet.

In the Washington of those days my memory also recalls vividly a dinner with Senator Conkling at which I met a number of interesting men, and among them Governor Seymour, who had been the candidate opposed to Grant during his first presidential campaign; Senator Anthony, Senator Edmunds, the former Vice-President Mr. Hamlin, Senator Carpenter, and others. Many good stories were told, and one amused me especially, as it was given with admirable mimicry by Senator Carpenter. He described an old friend of his, a lawyer, who, coming before one of the higher courts with a very doubtful case, began his plea as follows: "May it please the court, there is only one point in this case favorable to my client, but that, may it please the court, is a chink in the common law which has been worn smooth by the multitude of scoundrels who have escaped through it.''

During the year 1878 I was sent as an honorary commissioner from the State of New York to the Paris Exposition, and shall give a more full account of this period in another chapter . Suffice it that, having on my return prepared my official report on the provision for political education made by the different governments of Europe, I became more absorbed than ever in university affairs,

keeping aloof as much as possible from politics. But in the political campaign of 1878 I could not but be interested. It was different from any other that I had known, for the "Greenback Craze'' bloomed out as never before and seemed likely to poison the whole country. Great hardships had arisen from the fact that debts which had been made under a depreciated currency had to be paid in money of greater value. Men who, in what were known as "flush times,'' had bought farms, paid down half the price, and mortgaged them for the other half, found now, when their mortgages became due, that they could not sell the property for enough to cover the lien upon it. Besides this, the great army of speculators throughout the country found the constant depreciation of prices bringing them to bankruptcy. In the cry for more greenbacks,— that is, for continued issues of paper money,— demagogism undoubtedly had a large part; but there were many excellent men who were influenced by it, and among them Peter Cooper of New York, founder of the great institution which bears his name, one of the purest and best men I have ever known.

This cry for more currency was echoed from one end of the country to the other. In various States, and especially in Ohio, it seemed to carry everything before it, nearly all the public men of note, including nearly all the leading Democrats and very many of the foremost Republicans, bowing down to it, the main exceptions being John Sherman and Garfield.

In central New York the mania seemed, early in the summer, to take strong hold. In Syracuse John Wieting, an amazingly fluent speaker with much popular humor, who had never before shown any interest in politics, took the stump for an unlimited issue of government paper currency, received the nomination to Congress from the Democrats and sundry independent organizations, and for a time seemed to carry everything before him. A similar state of things prevailed at Ithaca and the region round about Cayuga Lake. Two or three people much

respected in the community came out for this doctrine, and, having a press under their control, their influence seemed likely to be serious. Managers of the Republican organization in the State seemed at first apathetic; but at last they became alarmed and sent two speakers through these disaffected districts—only two, but each, in his way, a master. The first of them, in order of time, was Senator Roscoe Conkling, and he took as his subject the National Banking System. This had been for a considerable time one of the objects of special attack by uneasy and unsuccessful people throughout the entire country. As a matter of fact, the national banking system, created during the Civil War by Secretary Chase and his advisers, was one of the most admirable expedients ever devised in any country. Up to the time of its establishment the whole country had suffered enormously from the wretched currency supplied from the State banks. Even in those States where the greatest precaution was taken to insure its redemption all of it was, in time of crisis or panic, fluctuating and much of it worthless. But in other States the case was even worse. I can recall perfectly that through my boyhood and young manhood every merchant and shopkeeper kept on his table what was called a "bank-note detector,'' which, when any money was tendered him, he was obliged to consult in order to know, first, whether the bill was a counterfeit, as it frequently was; secondly, whether it was on a solvent bank; and thirdly, if good, what discount should be deducted from the face of it. Under this system bank-notes varied in value from week to week, and even from day to day, with the result that all buying and selling became a sort of gambling.

When, then, Mr. Chase established the new system of national banks so based that every bill-holder had security for the entire amount which his note represented, so controlled that a bill issued from any little bank in the remotest State, or even in the remotest corner of a Territory, was equal to one issued by the richest bank in Wall Street, so engraved that counterfeiting was practically impossible,

there was an immense gain to every man, woman, and child in the country.

To appreciate this gain one must have had experience of the older system. I remember well the panic of 1857, which arose while I was traveling in eastern and northern New England, and that, arriving in the city of Salem, Massachusetts, having tendered, in payment of my hotel bill, notes issued by a leading New York city bank, guaranteed under what was known as the "Safety Fund System,'' they were refused. The result was that I had to leave my wife at the hotel, go to Boston, and there manage to get Massachusetts money.

But this was far short of the worst. Professor Roberts of Cornell University once told me that, having in those days collected a considerable debt in one of the Western States, he found the currency so worthless that he attempted to secure New York funds, but that the rate of exchange was so enormous that, as the only way of saving anything, he bought a large quantity of cheap clothing, shipped it to the East, and sold it for what it would bring.

As to the way in which the older banking operations were carried on in some of the Western States, Governor Felch of Michigan once gave me some of his ex-periences as a bank examiner, and one of them especially amused me. He said that he and a brother examiner made an excursion through the State in a sleigh with a pair of good horses in order to inspect the various banks established in remote villages and hamlets which had the power of issuing currency based upon the specie contained in their vaults. After visiting a few of these, and finding that each had the amount of specie required by law, the examiners began to note a curious similarity between the specie packages in these different banks, and before long their attention was drawn to another curious fact, which was that wherever they went they were preceded by a sleigh drawn by especially fleet horses. On making a careful examination, they found that this sleigh bore from bank to bank a number of kegs of specie sufficient to enable

each bank in its turn to show the examiners a temporary basis in hard money for its output of paper.

Such was the state of things which the national banks remedied, and the system had the additional advantage of being elastic, so that any little community which needed currency had only to combine its surplus capital and establish a bank of issue.

But throughout the country there were, as there will doubtless always be, a considerable number of men who, not being able to succeed themselves, distrusted and disliked the successful. There was also a plentiful supply of demagogues skilful in appealing to the prejudices of the ignorant, envious, or perverse, and as a result came a cry against the national banks.

In Mr. Conkling's Ithaca speech (1878), he argued the question with great ability and force. He had a sledgehammer way which broke down all opposition, and he exulted in it. One of his favorite tactics, which greatly amused his auditors, was to lead some prominent gainsayer in his audience to interrupt him, whereupon, in the blandest way possible, he would invite him to come forward, urge him to present his views, even help him to do so, and then, having gradually entangled him in his own sophistries and made him ridiculous, the senator would come down upon him with arguments—cogent, pithy, sarcastic—much like the fist of a giant upon a mosquito.

In whatever town Mr. Conkling argued the question of the national banks, that subject ceased to be a factor in politics: it was settled; his attacks upon the anti-bank demagogues annihilated their arguments among thinking men, and his sarcasm made them ridiculous among unthinking men. This was the sort of thing which he did best. While utterly deficient in constructive power, his destructive force was great indeed, and in this campaign it was applied, as it was not always applied, for the advantage of the country.

The other great speaker in the campaign was General James A. Garfield, then a member of the House of Representatives.

My acquaintance with him had begun several years before at Syracuse, when my old school friend, his college mate, Charles Elliot Fitch, brought him into my library. My collection of books was even at that date very large, and Garfield, being delighted with it, soon revealed his scholarly qualities. It happened that not long before this I had bought in London several hundred volumes from the library left by the historian Buckle, very many of them bearing copious annotations in his own hand. Garfield had read Buckle's "History of Civilization in England'' with especial interest, and when I presented to him and discussed with him some of these annotated volumes, there began a friendly relation between us which ended only with his life.

I also met him under less favorable circumstances. Happening to be in Washington at the revelation of the Crédit Mobilier operations, I found him in the House of Representatives, and evidently in the depths of suffering. An effort was making to connect him with the scandal, and while everything I know of him convinces me that he was not dishonest, he had certainly been imprudent. This he felt, and he asked me, in an almost heart-broken tone, if I really believed that this had forever destroyed his influence in the country. I answered that I believed nothing of the kind; that if he came out in a straightforward, manly way, without any of the prevarication which had so greatly harmed some others, he would not be injured, and the result showed that this advice was good.

On our arrival at the great hall in Ithaca (October 28, 1878), we found floor and stage packed in every part. Never had a speaker a better audience. There were present very many men of all parties anxious to hear the currency question honestly discussed, and among them many of the more thoughtful sort misled by the idea that a wrong had been done to the country in the restoration of the currency to a sound basis; and there was an enormous attendance of students from the university.

As Garfield began he showed the effects of fatigue from

the many speeches he had been making for weeks,—morning, noon, and night; but soon he threw himself heartily into the subject, and of all the thousands of political speeches I have heard it was the most effective. It was eloquent, but it was far more than that; it was honestly argumentative; there was no sophistry of any sort; every subject was taken up fairly and every point dealt with thoroughly. One could see the supports of the Greenback party vanishing as he went on. His manner was the very opposite of Mr. Conkling's: it was kindly, hearty, as of neighbor with neighbor,—indeed, every person present, even if greenbacker or demagogue, must have said within himself, "This man is a friend arguing with friends; he makes me his friend, and now speaks to me as such.''

The main line of his argument finished, there came something even finer; for, inspired by the presence of the great mass of students, he ended his speech with an especial appeal to them. Taking as his test the noted passage in the letter written by Macaulay to Henry Randall, the biographer of Jefferson,—the letter in which Macaulay prophesied destruction to the American Republic when poverty should pinch and discontent be wide-spread in the country, —he appealed to these young men to see to it that this prophecy should not come true; he asked them to follow in this, as in similar questions, their reason and not their prejudices, and from this he went on with a statement of the motives which ought to govern them and the line they ought to pursue in the effort to redeem their country.

Never was speech more successful. It carried the entire audience, and left in that region hardly a shred of the greenback theory. When the election took place it was observed that in those districts where Conkling and Garfield had spoken, the greenback heresy was annihilated, while in other districts which had been counted as absolutely sure for the Republican party, and to which, therefore, these orators had not been sent, there was a great increase in the vote for currency inflation.

I have often alluded to this result as an answer to those

who say that speaking produces no real effect on the convictions of men regarding party matters. Some speaking does not, but there is a kind of speaking which does, and of this were these two masterpieces, so different from each other in matter and manner, and yet converging upon the same points, intellectual and moral.

Before I close regarding Garfield, it may be well to give a few more recollections of him. The meeting ended, we drove to my house on the university grounds, and shortly before our arrival he asked me, "How did you like my speech?'' I answered: "Garfield, I have known you too long and think too highly of you to flatter you; but I will simply say what I would say under oath: it was the best speech I ever heard. "This utterance of mine was deliberate, expressing my conviction, and he was evidently pleased with it.

Having settled down in front of the fire in my library, we began to discuss the political situation, and his talk remains to me among the most interesting things of my life. He said much regarding the history of the currency question and his relations to it, and from this ran rapidly and suggestively through a multitude of other questions and the relations of public men to them. One thing which struck me was his judicially fair and even kindly estimates of men who differed from him. Very rarely did he speak harshly or sharply of any one, differing in this greatly from Mr. Conkling, who, in all his conversations, and especially in one at that same house not long before, seemed to consider men who differed from him as enemies of the human race.

Under Mr. Hayes, the successor of General Grant in the Presidency, I served first as a commissioner at the Paris Exposition, and then as minister to Germany. Both these services will be discussed in the chapters relating to my diplomatic life, but I may refer briefly to my acquaintance with him at this period.

I had met him but once previously, and that was during his membership of Congress when he came to enter his son

at Cornell. I had then been most favorably impressed by his large, sincere, manly way. On visiting Washington to receive my instructions before going to Berlin, I saw him several times, and at each meeting my respect for him was increased. Driving to Arlington, walking among the soldiers' graves there, standing in the portico of General Lee's former residence, and viewing from the terrace the Capitol in the distance, he spoke very nobly of the history we had both personally known, of the sacrifices it had required, and of the duties which it now imposed. At his dinner-table I heard him discuss with his Secretary of State, Mr. Evarts, a very interesting question—the advisability of giving members of the cabinet seats in the Senate and House of Representatives, as had been arranged in the constitution of the so-called Confederate States; but of this I shall speak in another chapter .

It should further be said regarding Mr. Hayes that, while hardly any President was ever so systematically denounced and depreciated, he was one of the truest and best men who has ever held our Chief Magistracy. I remember, just at the close of his administration, dining with an eminent German statesman who said to me: "I have watched the course of your President with more and more surprise. We have been seeing constantly in our German newspapers extracts from American journals holding up your President to contempt as an ignoramus, but more and more I have seen that he is one of the most substantial, honest, and capable Presidents that you have had.''

This opinion was amply justified by what I saw of Mr. Hayes after the close of his Presidency. Twice I met him during conferences at Lake Mohonk, at which matters relating to the improvement of the freedmen and Indians were discussed, and in each he took broad, strong, and statesmanlike views based on thoughtful experience and permeated by honesty.

I also met him at a great public meeting at Cleveland, where we addressed some four thousand people from the

same platform, and again I was impressed by his manly, far-seeing grasp of public questions.

As to my after relations with Garfield, I might speak of various pleasant interviews, but will allude to just one incident which has a pathetic side. During my first residence in Germany as minister of the United States, I one day received a letter from him asking me to secure for him the best editions of certain leading Greek and Latin classics, adding that it had long been his earnest desire to re-read them, and that now, as he had been elected to the United States Senate, he should have leisure to carry out his purpose. I had hardly sent him what he desired when the news came that he had been nominated to the Presidency, and so all his dream of literary leisure vanished. A few months later came the news of his assassination.

My term of service as minister in Berlin being ended, I arrived in America in September, 1881, and, in accordance with custom, went to present my respects to the new President and his Secretary of State. They were both at Long Branch. Mr. Blaine I saw and had with him a very interesting conversation, but President Garfield I could not see. His life was fast ebbing out, and a week later, on Sunday morning, I heard the bells tolling and knew that his last struggle was over.

So closed a career which, in spite of some defects, was beautiful and noble. Great hopes had been formed regarding his Presidency, and yet, on looking back over his life, I have a strong feeling that his assassination was a service rendered to his reputation. I know from those who had full information that during his campaign for the Presidency he had been forced to make concessions and pledges which would have brought great trouble upon him had he lived through his official term. Gifted and good as he was, advantage had been taken of his kindly qualities, and he would have had to pay the penalty.

It costs me a pang to confess my opinion that the administration of Mr. Arthur, a man infinitely his inferior in nearly all the qualities which men most justly admire, was

far better than the administration which Mr Garfield would have been allowed to give to the country.

Upon my return to the university I was asked by my fellow-citizens of Ithaca in general, as also by the university faculty and students, to give the public address at the celebration of President Garfield's funeral. This I did and never with a deeper feeling of loss.

One thing in the various tributes to him had struck me painfully: Throughout the whole country his career was constantly referred to in funeral addresses as showing how a young American under all the disadvantages of poverty could rise to the highest possible position. I have always thought that such statements, as they are usually presented, are injurious to the character and lowering to the aspirations of young men. I took pains, therefore, to show that while Garfield had risen under the most discouraging circumstances from complete poverty, his rise was due to something other than mere talent and exertion —that it was the result of talent and exertion originating in noble instincts and directed to worthy ends. Garfield's life proves this abundantly, and whatever may have been his temporary weakness under the fearful pressure brought upon him toward the end of his career, these instincts and purposes remained his main guiding influences from first to last.