BANCROFT LIBRARY THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Issued by the Republican State Central Committee of Cal, \VM. SHERMAN, Secretary. THE PRESIDENT VINDICATED. SPEECH OF DELIVERED 111 the United States Senate, June 3, '72. -. After a thorcugb. and comp'ete vindication of the action of the committee appointed to investigate - the French Arms Sales, Mr. Carpenter, adverting to the bi-.ter personal attack on the President by Senator Suznner, said : " But, sir, the present debate, began by the Senator from Massachusetts en Friday, acd continued by ' the Senator from Missouri on Friday evening, was not intended to discuss the question of the sale of , arms. That was the pretext for thrusting asother - political debate upon the Senate prior to the Phila- delphia convention. I have already shown you how the Senator from Massachusetts glided by this sub- ject with only a passing and angry glance, and devoted columns of personal abuse y be spared the sorrow of following its hearse. Sir, the absurdity of this- charge, when you consider the two men as we know t^wn, both the accusar and the accused, passes all human understanding, comprehension, or belief. I have heard it said (and I am sorry that the Senator is not here to correct m3 if it is not true) that a very estimable lady once wrote to the Senator from Massachusetts invoking his aid for some individual who had a case or a claim before Congress. The Senator repl'.ed that he was so ab- sorbed in the contemplation of geneial princi- ples, and so arduously laboring for the welfare of ;man in general, that ho had no time to de- vote to the wints of individuals. The lady re- sponded, thanking him for the civility of hia reply, and reminding him that, so- far as sha was informed lie had taken a somewhat loftier at- titude tuan was occupied by ttie Almighty, [laugh- ter;] that while He governed the Universe, while Ha ruled the oibs_in their spheres, He also considered the want* of His children, and that not even a spar- row could fall without His knowledge, But another great offence of the President is that he is so quarrelsome ; and here I will ask the Sec- retary to re ad from the Senator's speech the para- graph which I have marked, The Chief Ckrk reads as follows : "Evidently our President has never read the e'ev- enth commandment : ' A President of the United Sta'es shall never quarrel.' At least he lives in perpetual violation of it, listening to stories from horse-cars, gobbling the gossip of kis military ring, discoursing en imaginary griefs and nursing his un- just anger. Tiie elect of forty mi lion of people Las no right to qusrrel with anybody. His position is too exalted. He cannot do it witthout offence to the requirements of patrio.ism, without a siock to tae decencies of 1'fe, wi.hout a jar to the harmony of the universe." Mr. Carpenter. Mr. President, it IB one of the commonest, though by no me ins the greatest, errors into which the Senator from Massaehusets has fillen that he identifies himself so completely with tie universe tiat he is not at all certain whether he is part of the universe, or the universe is a part of him. [Laughter.] He assarts here that when the President quarrels with him if course that is what he means ; he did not mention himself, but he never considered anybody but himsel"; and when he was fpeikiog of the President quarreling he meant that great quarrel cf which the President has been made the victim, and to which he has quie'ly and silently submitted, a quarrel forced upon him by the Senator he says that such a quarrel jars the harmony of the universe ! Well, well! The Senator from Massachusetts might be jarred a great de.-,l more than hs has baen, and the universe would not take the slightest notice of it. [Laughter.] The universe wonll net tremble if he were hit far more severely than he ever has been. This is one of those stupendous, inconcievabla evidences of the humility of tae Senator from Massachusetts which I wish I could read in the hearing of every man in this land. But, Mr. President, th's is not the highest point of arrogance and assumption to which the Senator rises in tbig pirigrsph. It is not that he has mis- taken Himself for the universe that anybody will seriously complain. He h? s risen in this paragraph above the uiiverse : he bai seatol himself by the Eide of the Almighty, and uadertaken a revision, corrsction, and enlargement of His works : " Evidently cur President has never read the el.venth commandment." Now, then, comes the quotation from whom f "A President of the United States eh-.ll nsver quarre'." This is the addition which the Senator from Massachusetts engrafts upon the decalogue, that body of laws given by God to man amid the thun- ders cf Sinai. I hold in my hand the sacred volume which contains the revelations of man's latest exis- tence on earth, and penetrates the vgil and discloses the mysteries beyond. John, on the island of Patm os, being "in the spiiit, on the Lord's day," eaw many things clem and unclean; he saw the great red dragon with seven heads and ten horns; he saw the wLore of Babylon in scarlet a.t;re; and he saw the Senator from Massachusetts. [Laughter and applause in the galleries.] And apparently with a view to prevent the blasphemy which we have witnessed in this chamber there are written at the conclusion of this sacred volume, which con- tains the light of our life in this lifa and our guide to a better aoode above, words of awful aimoni.ion I which I ecmmend to the careful study of the Sena- tor from Massachusetts : " For I testily unto every man thai heartth the words of the prophecy of this book, if any man shall add uato these thing?, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book. "And if any man shall take away from the words of the'book of proptecy, Gad shall take away his part of the book of lif ?, and out of the holy city, and frcm the things which are written in this book." Oh, Senator from Massachusetts, reviser and cor- recter of the decalogue, toy I regret your absence so that you cannot hear these passages of Scripture! [-Laugh'er.] Why, sir, if the presumption of the Senator from Massachusetts shouM only reach a liUle higher, you might find in the book-stalls of t'ais city within a year a volume entitled "The Sarmon on the Jljuut, revised, correctei, and greatly enlarged and improved, by Charles Sumnsr." [Lsughter.] I submit such a production would be in perfect keeping with his supplement to the deca- logue. But, Mr. President, suppose that on a cureful and impartial investigation of facts it should turn out that all the quarrel that exists between the Senator from Masaicnusetta and the President of the United States is a quarrel entirely on the part of the Sena- tor, and that it is based upon motives ut erly un- worthy of a Senator, what would be thought of it then? I am sorry he is not here to correct me if I am misinformed, but I am told by th>Ee who ought to koow that the first trouble that occurred between the Sena'or from Massachusetts and the Administra- tion was in regard tJ the Greek mission. It was bell by Mr. Tuckerman, who dad always performed his duty to tbe satisfaction of the Government, and oa the accession of this Administration the Senator from Massachusetts, as chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations, demanded that plice, and de- manded it for a friend of his in B^s.on, upon tha ground th&t his friend had, as he said, been a life- loug friend. It so happened that t.e Administra- tion could not consistently and prop.rly gratify the Senator in this matter. The demand, as I under- st nd it, was made on mere personal grounds. The Senator from M -.ssachusetts demanded tha appoint- ment not be:ause Mr. Tucterman was not a worthy eprese ntative, but because the Senator desired to giatify a " life-long friend." If this was not " ne- potism" on the part of the Senator what was it? Then came the removal of Mr. Motley, Minister to England, for reasons satisfactory to the Senate. This mitter was considered in sscret session, and I Cinnot refrrto anjth ng that took placp. 1 cannot say whether or not in that debate fie Senator from Maasachuset's deslared that Mr. Motley's appoint- ment had been conceded to him as clnirman of the Committee on Fore'gn Relations. I caanot say whether or not Mr. Sumner declared that Mr. Mot- ley was his personal f ,-iend. I cannot say whether or not Mr. Sumner said that if Mr. Motley should be removed it wo jld be the end of ad amicable rela- tions between him and this Administration, or words to that effect. I Cannot say anything about ir, and I do not intend to do so. [Laughter.] Bu f , I say, suppose such were the facts, wlut would toe people of this country think of the Senator who now comes here and arraigns the President as a quirreler, and announces bimsilf 8 the champion of civil service reforoa, and opposed to entertaining personal considerations in the administration of public affairs? There are so many remarkable things in the Sena- tor's speech that it is impossible to dwell longer on auy one point, &iA my strength is so far exhausted that I sta'lVe compelled to leave many of these swee's for fur:her consideration by other Senators. There is one thing, however, which for its enormity deserves special attention, and if I thought it wcu d lake the 1 st bieath of life I have to spend on any- thing, I would spend it on this. I ask the Secretary to reid the ex'ract in relation to Mr. Stanton. The chief clerk read as follows: "THE TESTIMONY OF HON. E. M. STANTON. " Some'hing alao must be attributed to individual character; aud here I eipr.ss no opinion of my own; I shall allow another to speak in solemn wO:ds echoed fiom the tomb. " On raachirg Washington at the opening of Con- gress in December, 18j9, I Was puned to hear tbat Mr. S anton, lately Sicretiry of War, was in failing healih. Full of gratitude f.rhis unsurpassed ser- vices, and with a sentiment of friendship quickened by common political sympathies, I lost no t'me in seeing him, and repeated my visits until his death, toward the close of the same month. My last visit was mirVeJ by a communication never to be forgot- ten. As I entered his bedroom, wnere I found him reclining on a Eofa, prtpped by pillows, he reached out his hand, alre.idy clammy cold, and, in r, p'y to my icqu ry, 'Hose are you?' answered, 'Waiting for my furlough.' Then at onae with eipgal&r solemnity b.3 said, 'L have something to say to you.' Whom I was scat id he proceeded, without one w_rd of intro- duction: 'I know General Grant better ttai any other psrsoa in the country can know him. It was Ely duty to study him, and I did so, night and day, when I siw h'm a:d when 1 did not tee h ; m, and now I tell you what I know, he can not gove;n this country.' The intensify of his manner aud the Jk)8- itiveness of his judgment surprised me, for though I was aware that the late Secretary of War did not place the President very high in general capacity, I was not prepared for a judgment so strongly couched At las*, after some delay, occupied in meditating his remarkable words. I observed, 'What you say, is very broad.' ' It is as true as it is "broad, 1 he replied prompMy. I added, ' You are tarty ; you tell this late; why did you not ssy this bafore his nomina- ti n?' He answered tbat he was not consulted about the nomination, and had no opportunity of express- ing bi3 opinion upon it, besides b sing much occu- pied at the time by his duties as Secretary of War asd his contest with ihe President. I fol'owed by saying, 'Bu* you took part ia the Presidential elec- tim, and mule a sucjession of speeches for him ia Ohio and Pennsylvania.' ' I s;oke, ' said he, ' but I never intr.dused the name of General Grant. I spoka for the Republican par y and tlie Republican cause.' This was the last time I saw Mr. Stanton. A few days later I foltowed him to the grave where he now rests." Mr. Carpenter. Mr. President, let us examiae this remarkable statement a little in detail. The Senator asserts tht this interview occurred a few days before Mr. Stanton's death; and tnat Mr. Stanton was expressing not a suddeu conc'ujion, formed upon nawly discovered testimony, but the result of his study of Grant's ciaract jr for many years. Hemak s Mr. Stanton say : " I kuow General Grant better than any other person in the country can know him. It was my duty to study hioi when I saw him and when I did not see him," etc. And he makes him say "that he was not consulted about the nomination' 1 of General Grint fjr the Presidency, &ud that in the speeches which he (S'anton) made during the campaign ha never intro- duced the name of General Grant. Tae Senator from M issachusetts has been very unfortunate in all this business. He waded into this investigition chin dsep upon the strength of letters of very emineut iadividm's, whose names he refused to disclose, and whose testimony, therefore, we couM not obtain. But upon thU occasion he evidently intended to support his charge agains General Grant by witnesses who cou d not b3 ca'led lo impeach him. So he violated all the de icacies of friendship and invaded the sanctuiry of ths grave and cilled Edwin M. Stanton bick to beir testimo- ny against the President of the United States. Sir, it is a little difficult to ke-p strictly wi :hin parlia- mentary decorum and say wh it ought to b i said on such an occasion. I shall attempt to do it, and I hope I shall succeed. In the first p'aoe. I am speaking to men who will know whether I atn right or wrong in whit I say ; and I assert that if Mr. Stanton nude that declara- tion to the Senator from Mmactu^etts under the circumstances detailed by him, if thsre is a word of subs'antial tru:h t j t^at whole paragraph ; if it be not an infaimu:, fbrication from first tj last, then Mr. Stanton was the most double-faced and cishonest man that ever lived ; and I call -a pan Senators around me to bear testimony upon this pM&t. Tnere were accidents that brought me to know Mr. Stanton very well. I came h^ra to attend to an important lawsui*, occupied a room in the Wsr De- partment, and for several months siw ,Mr. Stanton daily. I went to'the Supreme Court in the morning at 11 o'clock to watch the progress of its business, and I was at leisure for the rest of the day. I was much of the time at the Department, and therefore frequently wi*fa h-'m. He was at that time, as you all know, imprisoned in the Department in cors;- quence of troubles with the Prt sident, and he used to come into my ro m to smoke, and often invited me to walk with him. In the course of our conver- sations I beard Mm refer to General Grant a hundred times, and never but with the highest respect and the kindest feel.ng. I came here a Senator at the session at which Mr. Stanton died, and was frequently at bis house dur- ing his last illcew. I ssw him just before he dieil, under circumstances which gave me an opportunity to kn w more than I should otherwise have known of his feeling toward General Grant. I bed charge for ti e first time In my life of a bill in the Senate, the bill which we passed for the reconstruction of the Legislature of Georgia, after the colored mem- bers had been expel ed. We sat late at Light to pass it. At about hall-pist eleven, while in my seat, it occurred to me sorre*hing might be done to insure the appointment of Mr. Stanton as judge ot the Supreme Court. It had been talked about for sc me week s. It ha d been expected by many of UP, and ye t his ncmioa- ion did not come. I then and tbere drew up a letter to the President recommending Mr. Stac- ton to be appointed judge of that court. I tcok It around this Chamber acd in less thn twenty min- utes obtained thirty-seven signatures of Republican Seratcrs. That was Friday night, and beforj leav- ing t l e Sec ate Chamber I agreed with the Senator from Michigan [Mr. Chand'er.] to meet me at the White House the following morniog, Saturday, at ten o'clock, to present the letter to the Presided. The n;xt morning, at ten o'clock, I rode to Mr. Stanton's and shewed him the letter, and as b.i glanced over it 'he tears started down his checks. He said cot a word. Ha did tot even say, thank you. Witness : ng the depth of his emotion I bowed myself out, telling him that I was going to present it to the President. I carried it to the President and found the Senator from Michigan with the President, awaiting me. Said the President : "I am delighted to have that letter ; I have de- sired for weeks to appoint Mr. Stn(on to that place, and yet in cot sequence of his having been Secret^ ry of War, and so pr minent in the recent pjlUic.il 6 r;fe, I have doubted whether it would answer to make him a judge; that in-lcrsement is all that I want ; ycu go to Mr. Station's house and tell him his name will be sent to the Senate on Monday morning." This was en Saturday. 1 then drove back to Mr. Stanton's house and t^ld him whaS the President tai stU. Mr. Stanton's first reply-was : "ThekiLd- ness of Genera'. Gran' it is perfectly characteristic of him will do more to cure me than all the skill of the doctors." And, sir, I know th t in the serious illness which terminated so disastrously, he fre- quently had occasion to rjfer to the course of the Administration, to matters that were pending In Congress, and I do know, and I can tes'ify, and I hold it to be my solemn duty to testify, ttat in all those interviews, from first to last, from the time I first made his acqnaintance down to tbe hour of his d"ath, I never heard h : m siy of General Grant anything that was not of iha kindest nature and of the highest prise. My friend from Vermont [Mr. Edmonds.] reminds me of a difficulty that occurred after the name of Mr. Stanton was eent to the Senate. He was pppointed to succeed Mr. Justice Grur who had reMred, to take effect on a future day the first of February I think, that he might be present at the decision of some causes that bed been previously argued. Mr. Stanton's name wae sent here ; he wt-s confirmed by tbe Senate, and a commission made out and ready to 09 delivered. The Present th>:n suggested this difficulty: Mr. Jus'i?e Grier still beirg in office, could tbe commission be delivered? Thereupon several friends were consulted by tbe President, and they advised him that there was r>o difficulty on that ground ; and thereuprn the comm'ssion was sent to Mr. Etanton, to take effect on the day when the res- ignation of Mr. Grier should take effect The Pres- ident continued to call upon him al his house, day after day, during his last illness, up to the day of his death, and followed his remains to the grave. The c.TCums'arces of the appointment of Mr. Stankn to .the place were very remarkable, Mr. Justice Grier, an old maa, full of honors and full of days, bad sent in bis resignation or announced his disposition to retire on a cfrtain day. Mr. Stanton was nominated, confirmed, C3mmifsioned, and ready to take h-s seat. He w s then taken sick, died, and was buried, all te'ore the 1st day of February, and on that day good old Justice Grier returned, took his place on the bench, and helped to decide causes af er his successor had bsen appointed, commission- ed, and was dead and buried. The circumstances show the anxiety of the President in this matter to do tbia kicdly act to his friend Stanton ; and I tell ycu, sir, what I do know and what no statement could shake from my belief for one moment, that there i not one word of truth in the whole para- graph which has been read from the desk. In the paragraph quoted from the Senator's fpeech be represents Mr. Stanton assaying that although In the campaign of 1868 he tcok the stump for the Re- pub'ican party, he did not mention the name of General Grent. I have here the report of a speech made by Mr. Stanton at Steubetville, Ohio, where he had formerly resided, and I read from it, being a report in the Washington Daily Chronicle of Septem- ber 27, 1868, as follows ; * * * "And now I ask what reason has any man to vo'e againet General Gran 1 ,? His capacity tnd integrity for civil administration were equally manifest in the vast territory in which he operated. If any man smong you would hide from the boy, the musket aad knapsack that his father carried at Don- elson, at Vicksburg, upon Lookout Mountain, throughout the Wilderness, before Richmond, at Five Forks, at Appomattox Court-house, and Shouldering proudly, marched with two hundred thousand of his fellow-soldiers through the streets of Washington, and around the Capitol and Execu- tive Mansion that he defended wiih his life, for years, in the long march, d Eurrendered, as prisoners of war, to Lee and Jobnson, Beavsregard and Forrest, and Preston, let him vote against General Grant. [Applause.] If there is any m-m among you who has forgotten that bright Sabbath day the little Monitor, as she steamed out eg^inst the new sea monster, the Merrimic, and, before noon, drove her, shattered and crippled, to port ; if there is any man who would have rejoiced to behold a cannon ball shatter Farragut, as, lashed to hie mast, he drove through the Rebel fleet and pushed them to pieces, let that man vote against Grant. If any man would lave Worden, and Farragut, and Winslow and all our great admirals haul down the s'ar-epangled banner, never again to brave the battle end the bresze ; if he would see them slink in shame from their own quarter-decks, and give up their ships to Miury, and Buchannan, and Senunes, and MofiV, while the Confederate bars, emblems of slavery, flaunt on eveiy sea, in every Sttte, let him vote against Grant. Vote early and vote often; for if Grant ba elected, this globe shall disappear from the firrnamint be- fore the banner of the United States shall suffer tarnish or shame on the land or on the deep. [An. plause.] If there is any man amocg yon that would reverse the order of history : who would bring upon you a shame and a reproach never before kno^n p.mong the nations of the earth ; wbo would have the commander of the United S'ates arm'es deliver up bis sword and humbly bow before the Rebel com- mander let that man vote against Grant, but never again call himself an American citizen. [Applause.] If there is any man whose eyeballs would not burn to behold Lse upon the portico of the Capitol, with. Beauregard, P/eston, and Forrest at his side, with a Confederate army around him, and, as the Govern- ment is transferred to them, listen to the rebel yell as it sounds on the field of battle, and in the New York convention, [loud cheers,] let such a man vote against Grant and go to Washington on the 4th of March. [Applause.] Why, then, I repeat, should any lover of his country vote against Grant, Collax, and the Republican Members of Congress ? ROOMS OF THE Republican State Central Committee, 417 KEARNY STREET, SAN FRANCISCO, CAL. Francis & Valentine, Steam Printing House, 517 Clay Street, San Francisco.