LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA DAVIS HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY BY GEORGE 0. SEILHAMER VOL. I. NARRATIVE AND CRITICAL HISTORY 1856-1898 JUDGE PUBLISHING CO. 110 FIFTH AVENUE NEW YORK THE WINTHROP PRESS NEW YORK TABLE OF CONTENTS. THE CREATIVE PERIOD. PAGE I. GENESIS OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY 1-18 The Wilmot Proviso The Mexican War and the Democracy Attitude of Politi- cal Parties in 1848 Free Soil Revolt of the Barnburners Compromise Measures of 1850 President Pierce and the Repeal of the Missouri Compromise of 1820 The Kansas-Nebraska Bill Complete Triumph of Slavery Despair of the North Eli Thayer Organization for the Kansas Conflict Governor Reeder and the Border Ruffians. II. THE CAMPAIGN OF 1856 19-32 The Nomination of James Buchanan First National Republican Conventions Colonel Fremont Republican Candidates for the Vice-Presidency The Plat- forms Contrasted Campaign Medals Contentions of the Canvass Assault Upon Senator Sumner The Kansas Conflict Republican Leaders of the Period Results of the Elections The Virulence and Vituperation with which the Republicans were Assailed. III. DEVELOPMENT AND GROWTH OF THE PARTY . . . 33-48 The Dred Scott Decision Pro-Slavery Attitude of the Supreme Court Effects of the Decision Kansas Governors Reeder, Shannon, Geary, and Walker The Lecompton Constitution Democratic Opposition to It Failure of the Conspiracy Douglas and Lincoln The Congress of Secession Union Soldiers in Congress Confederate Military Leaders Prominent Men in the 36th Congress Political Effects of the Lecompton Conspiracy John Brown's Raid on Harper's Ferry Attempts to Hold the Republican Party Responsible for Brown's Acts Helper's Book, " The Impending Crisis " Republican Strength, not Weakness, Results. IV. THE SECOND REPUBLICAN CONVENTION .... 49-64 Nominations in 1860 The Charleston Convention Republican Organization Complete The Chicago Convention William H. Seward Signs of Opposition to His Candidature The Candidates Enthusiasm of the New York Delegation Weed and Evarts The Republican Wigwam Organization of the Convention The Platform Naming the Candidates The Ballots Analysis of the Vote Lincoln Nominated Causes of Seward's Defeat Abraham Lincoln Hannibal Hamlin Enthusiastic Reception of the Ticket. V. THE LINCOLN AND HAMLIN CAMPAIGN .... 65-73 Shades of Opinion in the Canvass Mr. Lincoln During the Campaign Republican Enthusiasm and Oratory Seward and His Friends Hostility of the Commercial Class to Republican Success Campaign Medals The Wide-A wakes The Illinois Rail-Splitter The State Elections Analysis of the Presidential Vote. TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF THE EPOCH ..... 74-84 The Wilmot Proviso Slavery Clauses in the Democratic Platform, 1852 Whig Declaration, 1852 Republican Platform of 185G The Philadelphia Nomination Acceptance of the Philadelphia Nomination- Republican Platform of 1860 Mr. Lincoln's Letter of Acceptance. THE WAR PERIOD. I. SECESSION . . . . 85-97 The Conspiracy in the Cabinet Buchanan's Last Annual Message Judge Black Reconstruction of the Cabinet Disintegration of the Thirty-sixth Congress Efforts at Compromise in Congress Concessions of the North An " Embassy " from South Carolina The Peace Commission Responsibility of the Republican Party Demoralization of Northern Sentiment Fears of Conspiracies The Elec- toral Count Lincoln's Unexpected Appearance in Washington. II. REPUBLICAN LEADERS OF 1861 98-108 Lincoln's Personality Unfavorable Impressions Formation of the Cabinet Inauguration The Cabinet Received with Disfavor Seward and Lincoln Chase and Lincoln Distrust of the President The Thirty-seventh Congress The War Governors Impending Changes in Repiiblican Leadership. III. THE WAR FOR THE UNION 109-129 Lincoln Without a Policy Seward's Dominating Ideas Forts Sumter and Pickens Lincoln Assumes Full Responsibility Phases of the Slavery Question- The Peace Advocates Elections of 1862 Emancipation Greeley's Embarrassing Course The Cabinet Divided McClure's Comments on the Proclamation Demo- cratic Hostility to the War Compensated Emancipation Refused Suspension of the Habeas Corpus^Democrats Want an Armistice The Conscription Act Vallandigham The Draft Riots Elections of 1863. IV. THE THIRD REPUBLICAN CONVENTION .... 130-143 Opposition to Lincoln's Nomination Chase a Candidate The Pomeroy Circular Chase Withdraws The Cleveland Convention Hamlin and Lincoln General Butler Lincoln's Preference for Andrew Johnson Fremont's Letter of Accept- ance Lieutenant-General Grant The Baltimore Convention Dr. Breckinridge Credentials The Platform Lincoln and Johnson Nominated Dickinson Johnson General McClellan's Nomination. V. THE LINCOLN AND JOHNSON CAMPAIGN . . . . 144-155 Gloomy Outlook when the Canvass Opened Democratic Hopes Sentiments of Belmont, Bigler, and Seymour at Chicago The Jewett-Greeley Peace Fiasco Object of the Negotiations Resignation of Secretary Chase Democratic Conspira- cies Knights of the Golden Circle Objections Made to McClellan's Nomination- Lincoln and McClellan McClellan's Body-guard McClellan's Dismissal The Soldier Candidate of the Peace Party Turn in the Tide Union Victories Elec- tion Responses to the War Bulletins Montgomery Blair His Unpopularity The Pressure for His Removal Lincoln's Intervention Demanded by the Politicians Vallandigham Insists on the Chicago Platform Results of the Elections. TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF THE EPOCH ..... 156-159 Republican Platform of 1864 Mr. Lincoln's Address Democratic Platform of 1864. THE PERIOD OF RECONSTRUCTION. I. THE THIRTEENTH AMENDMENT 160-176 The Thirty-eighth Congress Schuyler Colfax, Speaker Cox and Long Henry Winter Davis and Robert C. Schenck Grant Made Lieutenant-General Ashley and the Amendment It Passes the Senate General Henderson Defeated in the House Opponents and Champions Holman, Wood and Randall Pendleton - President Lincoln's Message Reconsidered in the House The Debate Mr. Cox's Able Argument The Vote Ratification of the Amendment. II. PEACE 177-184 The Hampton Roads Conference Lincoln's Second Inauguration Close of the War Last Confederate Hopes Assassination of the President Mr. Lincoln's Character His Ideas of Reconstruction A New Announcement to the South That Was Never Made. III. PRESIDENT JOHNSON'S POLICY 185-200 Installation of Andrew Johnson His Characteristics Intimations of a Rigorous Policy Proclamation of Amnesty and Pardon The Wounded Seward and Preston King Seward's Speedy Recovery and Remarkable Energy He Dominates the President Seward and Johnson's Plan of Restoration Provisional Governors Governor Holden of North Carolina Judge Sharkey of Mississippi The Reor- ganization of the Southern States They Accept the Terms, but Disregard Them Legislation Hostile to the Negroes Course Pursued in Mississippi, Georgia, Ala- bama, Texas, South Carolina, and Florida The Two Virginias Creation of the State of West Virginia Joint Committee on Reconstruction Failure of the Lincoln Plan of Restoration Attempts to Re-enslave the Blacks Secretary Seward's Dis- appointment. IV. THE CONGRESS AND THE PRESIDENT ..... 201-220 Meeting of the Thirty-ninth Congress Dissatisfaction with the President's Policy Thaddeus Stevens Charles Sumner Their Leadership New Men in the Two Houses Delegations from the Southern States Mr. Stevens's Theory Henry J. Raymond, the Champion of the Administration Hurtful Democratic Support Shellabarger's Reply to Raymond The Specific Act The Democratic Position Establishment of the Freedman's Bureau Administration Republicans The Civil Rights Bill General James H. Lane The Fourteenth Amendment The Tenure of Office Bill The Reconstruction Acts Riot in New Orleans The Fortieth Congress Military Government for the South. TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE V. IMPEACHMENT 221-233 Character and Acts of President Johnson Cabinet Changes The Philadelphia Convention of 1866 The Arm-in-Arm Fiasco Mr. Raymond's Last Effort Northern and Southern Conventions Leaders For and Against the Administration James Speed Address of the Southern Loyalists " Swinging Around the Cir- cle " The President's Stump Speeches Soldiers' Convention at Cleveland Sol- diers' and Seamen's Convention at Pittsburg Efforts at Impeachment in Congress Removal of Secretary Stanton The President Impeached by the House of Representatives Tried by the Senate The Managers on Behalf of the House The Counsel for the President Impeachment Fails A Mistaken Remedy. DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF THE EPOCH ..... 234-243 Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution Reconstruction Act of the Thirty- ninth Congress Supplementary Reconstruction Act of the Fortieth Congress Supplementary Reconstruction Act of July 19, 1867 Amendatory Reconstruction Act of March 11, 1868. THE PEKIOD OF RESTORATION. I. THE GRANT AND COLFAX CAMPAIGN 244-257 Fourth Republican National Convention General Grant Grant and Johnson Organization of the Chicago Convention Sickles and Hawley The Platform of 1868 General Logan Contest for the Vice-Presidency Wade and Colfax Popularity of Schuyler Colfax Tender of the Nominations Democratic National Convention Pendleton Chief Justice Chase The Intrigues Nomination of Horatio Seymour Frank P. Blair, Jr., for Vice-President The Campaign Analysis of the Result The Electoral Count Louisiana The Fifteenth Amend- ment Inauguration of President Grant. II. THE PUBLIC CREDIT 258-270 War Finance and Currency The Demand Notes Suspension of Specie Pay- ments Measures of Relief The Legal Tenders Elbridge G. Spaulding The Democratic Contention Republicans Opposed to the Measure Popularity of the Greenbacks Value of the Legal Tender Notes to the Government Fluctuations in Gold The National Banking System Constitutionality of the Legal Tender Acts Payment of the National Debt in Coin Secretary McCulloch Secretary Boutwell Efforts at Funding the National Debt Panic of 1873 The Greenback Craze Failure of Congress to Afford Relief Election of a Democratic House of Repre- sentatives The Resumption Act of 1875 Demonetization of Silver. III. DIPLOMATIC RELATIONS OF THE UNITED STATES . . . 271-282 Unfriendliness of Europe During the Civil War England's Hostility The Trent Affair English and French Neutrality Mr. Dayton's Indignant Protest Recognition of the Southern Confederacy Ocean Belligerency Failure of the Johnson-Clarendon Treaty President Grant's Recommendations Hamilton Fish The Joint High Commission Treaty of Washington Settlement of Pending Difficulties with Great Britain Purchase of Alaska Opposition to the Treaty in the House The United States and Russia Treaty for the Annexation of San Do- mingo -Mr. Sumner's Hostility to the Treaty Sumner and Grant Reactionary Influences of the Period. TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE IV. THE SOUTH FIRST DECADE AFTER THE WAR . . . 283-296 Georgia Repudiates the Fifteenth Amendment Consequent Action of Congress Outrages in the South Origin of the Ku-Klux Klan Mr. Cox on the Ku-Klux Strength of the Organization Ku-Klux Outrages in North Carolina Condition of South Carolina Disorders in Georgia and Alabama Outrages in Mississippi Condition of the South in 1874 The Carpet-baggers Judge Black on Carpet-bag Government His Impeachment Denied Responsibility of the Democratic Party Legislation of Congress General Amnesty and Civil Rights A Democratic Recog- nition of Organized Intimidation and Terrorism. V. THE GRANT AND WILSON CAMPAIGN 296-308 Republican Discontent The Liberal Republican Movement Convention at Cincinnati Horace Greeley Nominated for President and B. Gratz Brown for Vice- President Republican National Convention at Philadelphia President Grant Re- nominated The Opposition to Vice-President Colfax Henry Wilson Nominated The Republican Platform Democratic National Convention at Baltimore Indorse- ment of the Cincinnati Ticket and Platform Grant and Greeley The Canvass Mr. Greeley's Tour Results of the Autumn Elections Greeley's Overwhelming Defeat -His Death The Electoral Count. VI. Six YEARS OF CONGRESS ' 309-318 Organization of the Forty-first Congress Conspicuous Members Mr. Blaine, Speaker of the House Repeal of the Tenure of Office Act Change in the Govern- ment of the District of Columbia New Members of the Forty-second Congress The Salary Grab Credit Mobilier Scandal The Exposure and its Consequences Eminent Men Implicated Senate and House in the Forty-third Congress Death of Charles Sumner Two Epochs Contrasted. DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF THE EPOCH 319-326 Republican Platform of 1872 Liberal Republican Platform, 1872 Supple- mentary Civil Rights Bill. THE PERIOD OF REACTION. I. REVOLUTION IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES . . . 327-333 The Forty-fourth Congress Michael C. Kerr, Speaker Noteworthy Changes in Both Houses Failure of the Amnesty Bill Andrew Johnson Again in the Senate New Members in the Forty-fifth Congress Failure of the Army Appropriation Bill in the Forty-fourth Congress The Use of Troops at the Polls Coinage of the Silver Dollar Organization of the Forty-sixth Congress Changes in the Senate and House of Representatives A Powerless Democratic Majority. II. THE HAYES AND WHEELER CAMPAIGN 334-346 Incipient Movement for a Third Term for General Grant Possible Republican Candidates for President Mr. Blaine The Mulligan Letters Senator Morgan Secretary Bristow and the Whisky Ring Organization of the Republican National Convention of 1876 The Platform Nominations and the Ballots Rutherford B. Hayes Nominated William A. Wheeler for Vice-President Rise of Samuel J. Tilden His Methods and Nomination The Campaign Doubtful Results of the Elections. TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE III. THE ELECTORAL COUNT 347-364 The Disputed States Visiting Statesmen Opinions on the Mode of Counting the Electoral Vote Committees Appointed by the House and Senate Electoral Commission Bill Processes that Led to an Agreement Plans of the House Com- mittee Justice Davis Obstacles in the Way of an Agreement The Senate Plan A Commission not a Tribunal All Plans Hinge on the Question of Justice Davis's Bias The Plan Agreed Upon- The Commission Constituted and Organized The Count Begun The Florida Case Heard The Cases of Louisiana, Oregon, and South Carolina- The Cipher Dispatches and Attempt at Bribery. IV. ADMINISTRATION OF PRESIDENT HAYES ..... 365-374 The Cabinet Secretary Sherman and Resumption Civil Service Reform Early Appointments and Removals The Spoils System Thomas A. Jencks, the Pioneer Civil-service Reformer The Commission of 1871 Competitive Examina- tions Introduced Restriction of Chinese Immigration Propositions Affecting the Election of President and Vice-President and the Method of Counting the Electoral Votes Rule Adopted in 1881. V. THE GARFIELD AND ARTHUR CAMPAIGN 375-392 Polititical Rivalries in 1880 General Grant a Candidate for a Third Term The Delegates to the Republican National Convention The Unit Rule in the Republican National Committee Chairman Cameron's Arbitrary Ruling Opening of the Convention Chairman Cameron's Speed) Senator Hoar Presides Rules Against the Unit Rule Lively Parliamentary Contests Mr. Conkling's Mischievous Resolution The Contested Seats District Representation Adopted The Platform The Nominating Speeches Roscoe Conkling Nominates General Grant General Garfield's Speech Nominating John Sherman The Ballots Garfield Nominated Chester A. Arthur for Vice-President The Candidates General Hancock Nomi- nated by the Democrats The Campaign Restilts of the Elections. DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF THE EPOCH ..... 393-407 Republican Platform of 1876 Democratic Platform of 1876 Republican Plat- form of 1880 National (Greenback) Platform, 1880 Democratic Platform of 1880. THE PERIOD OF DEFEAT AND RECOVERY. I. THE REPUBLICAN FEUDS OF 1881-2 408-419 Appointment of Collector Robertson Resignation of Senators Conkling and Platt Long Contest in the New York Legislature The Senators Defeated Assassina- tion of President Garfield A Stalwart of the Stalwarts Comments of the News- papers Republican Feud in Pennsylvania -Revolt of 1882 Cleveland and Folger Contest in New York Discontent in Other States Causes of Republican Reverses Mahone Movement in Virginia President Arthur's Cabinet A Success- ful Administration. TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE II. PEESIDENT ARTHUR'S ADMINISTRATION 420-428 Cause of Hill's Attack on Mahone The Struggle for the Control of the Senate Changes in the Forty-seventh Congress Both Houses Republican Legislation The Interstate Commerce Commission Passage of the Penclletou Civil-service Reform Bill Tariff of 1883 Report of the Tariff Commission Changes in Tariff Rates Efforts to Pass the Morrison Tariff Bill Changes in the Forty-eighth Congress Waiting for the Presidential Campaign Congress and Parties Adrift. III. THE CAMPAIGN OF 1884 429-445 General Benjamin F. Butler the First Candidate Nominated In Favor of Green- backs and Against Monopoly Butler's Arraignment of the Old Parties Potency of Populistic Theories Arthur and Blaine as Presidential Candidates The Repub- lican National Convention A Great Threshing Machine Claims of the Arthur and Blaine Delegates Opening of the Convention Contest for Temporary Chair- man Graphic Description of the Scene Causes of the Contest General Hender- son Permanent President Changes in the Rules The Platform The Nominating Speeches Judge West's Speech Arthur Named The Ballots Blaine Nominated How Maine Received the News General Logan for Vice President Cleveland and Hendricks Nominated by the Democrats "Tell the Truth" The Campaign Causes of Blaine's Defeat. IV. PRESIDENT CLEVELAND'S ADMINISTRATION .... 446-458 An Inexperienced Executive The Cabinet The Forty-ninth Congress President Cleveland's Vetoes Interstate Commerce Commission The White House Wed- ding An Accomplished " Master of Ceremonies " Fiftieth Congress Tariff Re- vision President Cleveland's Tariff Message Effect of the Message The Mills Tariff Bill Protection or Free Trade Becomes the Dominating Issue. V. THE CAMPAIGN OF 1888 459-468 The Democrats Take the Lead Democratic National Convention at St. Louis The Republican Party " Struggling for Life " Eulogies of President Cleveland Irish Flattery Nominating Speech of Daniel Dougherty Taxation is Robbery Cleveland Renominated by Acclamation The Democratic Platform Allen G. Thurman for Vice-President Republican National Convention at Chicago The Presidential Candidates Organization of the Convention The Platform Ballot- ing Analysis of the Voting Depew Withdraws McKinley's Protest Blaine's Telegrams Read Benjamin Harrison Nominated Levi P. Morton for Vice-Presi- dent The Candidates Democratic View of the Campaign Elements of Discontent General Harrison's Election. DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF THE EPOCH ..... 469-486 Republican Platform of 1884 Democratic Platform of 1884 Republican Plat- form, 1888 Democratic Platform, 1888. THE PEIIIOD OF DISCONTENT. I. PRESIDENT HARRISON'S ADMINISTRATION ..... 487-498 The Fifty-first Congress Thomas B. Reed Coinage Act of 1890 Bland Silver Coinage Act of 1878 The Purchase of Silver Me Kinley Tariff Act of 1890 William McKinley Features of the McKinley Tariff Reciprocity International Conference of 1889 Act of 1890 Reaction The Fifty-second Congress Bland Free Coinage Bill A Do-nothing Congress. TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE II. THE CAMPAIGN OF 1892 499-508 Republican National Convention at Minneapolis The Candidates Platform Opposition to Harrison Mr. Elaine's Candidature Dramatic Scene in the Conven- tion The Ballot Harrison Nominated Attempt to Stampede the Convention Whitelaw Reid Nominated for Vice-President Democratic National Convention Grover Cleveland the Favorite A Virulent and Bitter Platform The Presidential Candidates Cleveland Nominated Adlai E. Stevenson for Vice-President The People's or Populist Party An Aggressive Campaign Republican Measures Assailed Result of the Election A Democratic Triumph. III. PRESIDENT CLEVELAND'S SECOND ADMINISTRATION . . 509-527 Effects of Mr. Cleveland's Election The Fifty-third Congress President Cleve- land on the Financial Disorders Repeal of the Silver Purchasing Act The Oppo- sition to Repeal A Battle for Free Silver Coinage of the Seigniorage Wilson Tariff Bill -Committee on Ways and Means A Disappointing Measure Income Tax Feature Change in the Rules of the House The Wilson Bill in the Senate Amendments Arguments Against the Income Tax Sugar Trust Scandal The Tariff Bill in Conference President Cleveland's Remarkable Letter Indignant Response of Mr. Gorman The Bill as Passed a Humiliating Surrender The President Allows it to Become a Law Another Letter Repeal of Reciprocity Reaction -The Fifty-fourth Congress Failures of the New Tariff Condition of the Treasury. IV. THE CAMPAIGN OF 1896 528-539 Free Coinage of Silver a Party Menace Bolt of Free Silver Prohibitionists Popularity of William McKinley Republican National Convention at St. Louis- Opposition to McKinley The Platform Mr. Foraker's Nominating Speech The Ballot Analysis of the Vote The Gold Plank Garret A. Hobart for Vice-Presi- dent Democratic National Convention Silver Men Reject Hill for Temporary Chairman Senator Daniel Chosen Contest Over the Platform Free Silver Triumphs Mr. Bryan's Speech Candidates The Ballots Bryan and Sewall Nominated The Campaign Mr. McKinley at Canton Bryan's Tours and Speeches The Candidates Contrasted Mark Hanna Democratic and Populist Fusion Result of the Elections. V. OPENING OF A NEW EPOCH ....... 540-547 The Fifty-fifth Congress Quick Passage of the Dingley Tariff Act Changes in the Duties Legislation of the Extraordinary Session of Congress Annexation of Hawaii The Cuban Question Insurrections in Cuba Revolution of 1895-98 American Sympathy with the Cubans The Case of the Competitor President Cleveland's Attitude The Question of Belligerency Resolutions in the Fifty- fourth and Fifty-fifth Congresses President McKinley's Course Destrviction of the Maine War With Spain Beginning of a New Epoch. DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF THE EPOCH 548-565 Republican Platform of 1892 Democratic Platform of 1892 Demands of the Populists, 1892 Republican Platform of 1896 Democratic Platform of 1896. LIST OF STEEL ENGRAVINGS. PAGE John C. Fremont Frontispiece Abraham Lincoln Facing 49 Lincoln's Cabinet " 98 Group of War Governors " 107 Salmon P. Chase " 130 William H. Seward " 188 Edwin M. Stanton " 221 U. S. Grant " 244 Horace Greeley " 297 Benjamin Harrison " 459 William McKinley '. " 528 ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE TEXT. Portrait of Robert C. Winthrop , 4 " Thomas H. Benton 5 " Millard Fillmore 8 " Archibald Dixon 10 " Sam Houston 12 " General Nathaniel P. Banks 13 " Eli Thayer 15 " Andrew H. Reeder 16 " James Buchanan 19 Portrait Medal of John C. Fremont 21 v Portrait of William L. Dayton 22' Fremont Medals, 1856 24 Portrait of Charles Sumner 26 " Roger B. Taney 34 " General John W. Geary 36 " Stephen A. Douglas 38 " Abraham Lincoln 39 " Robert J. Walker 42 " John Brown 43 View of Harper's Ferry 44 Portrait of John Sherman 47 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGE. ^." Portrait of Caleb dishing; 49 JJ " William H. Seward 52 " Thurlow Weed 54 The Kepublican Wigwam, 1860 55 Portrait of Joshua K. Giddings 57 Lincoln's Birthplace 62 Portrait of Hannibal Hamlin 63 " William M. Evarts 67 " E. D. Morgan 68 Campaign Medals, 1860 70 Hartford Wide- Awakes 71 Portrait of Andrew G. Curtin 72 " Jeremiah S. Black 87 " John J. Crittenden 89 " John C. Breckinridge 96 " Charles Francis Adams 99 " N. B. Judd 101 " Benj. F. Wade 102 " Salmon P. Chase 104 " Simon Cameron 105 " Lyman Trumbull 105 " Thaddeus Stevens 106 " John A. Andrew 108 " General M. C. Meigs 112 " Horace Greeley 117 " C. L. Vallandigham 122 " Samuel C. Pomeroy 131 u General Benjamin F. Butler 134 " Andrew Johnson 136 General U. S. Grant 138 " Daniel S. Dickinson 142 " Horatio Seymour 145 " George N. Sanders 147 " General George B. McClellan 150 " Admiral D. G. Farragut 152 " Montgomery Blair 152 " Schuyler Colfax 161 " Henry Winter Davis 162 " General Kobert C. Schenck 163 " E. B. W^ashburne 164 " General J. A. Garfield 164 " General John B. Henderson 165 " James M. Ashley 168 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGE. Portrait of Samuel S. Cox 170 " George S. Boutwell Ill " Francis P. Blair 177 " General W. T. Sherman 179 " Abraham Lincoln 181 " William W. Holden 191 " General J. M. Schofield 193 " William L. Sharkey 193 " General James Longstreet 198 " Henry J. Kaymond 205 " Samuel Shellabarger 207 " Eeverdy Johnson 209 " Henry Wilson 211 " General O. O. Howard 212 " James H. Lane 214 " General Philip H. Sheridan 216 " Roscoe Conkling 217 " General Darius N. Couch 224 " James Speed 225 " General J. D. Cox 227 " James F. Wilson 229 " Edwin M. Stanton 230 " John A. Bingham 231 " Hamilton Fish 275 R. E. Fenton 298 " James G. Blaine 311 " Oliver P. Morton 336 " Rutherford B. Hayes 340 " William A. Wheeler 341 " Peter Cooper 346 " Thomas W. Ferry 349 " Chester A. Arthur 389 " William H. Robertson 409 " Galusha A. Grow 414 " John A. Logan 442 " Levi P. Morton 467 " Thomas B. Reed 488 " Garret A. Hobart 531 " Mark Hanna . 538 THE CREATIVE PERIOD. I. GENESIS OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. The Wilmot Proviso The Mexican War and the Democracy Atti- tude of Political Parties in 1848 Free Soil Revolt of the Barn- burners Compromise Measures of 1850 President Pierce and the Repeal of the Missouri Compromise of 1820 The Kansas- Nebraska Bill Complete Triumph of Slavery Despair of the North Eli Thayer Organization for the Kansas Conflict Governor Reeder and the Border Ruffians. HE first foundation stone of the Republican party was a hurried amendment, offered in the 29th Congress, that became famous as the Wilmot Proviso. The declaration that a state of war existed between the United States and Mexico was approved May 13, 1846, and on the fifth of August, President Polk sent a special message to Congress, in which he suggested that " the chief obstacle in securing peace was the adjustment of a boundary line that would prove satisfactory and convenient to both Republics." In this message he asked that a sum of money should be placed at his disposal, to be used at his dis- cretion, in the adjustment of the term's of peace. As a precedent, the President cited the example of Mr. Jefferson, who, in 1803, asked and received a special appropriation from Congress for the acquisi- tion of Louisiana. After the message was read, Mr. McKay, of North Carolina, Chairman of the Ways and Means, introduced a bill into the House directing that two millions of dollars be appro- priated, to be " applied under the direction of the President to any extraordinary expenses which may be incurred in our foreign inter- course." The bill followed the simple phraseology of the Jefferson act of 1803, word for word. An animated debate followed, in which Robert C. Winthrop said he " could not and would not vote for this bill as it now stood. ... It was a vote of unlimited confidence in an administration in which, he was sorry to say, there was very little confidence to be placed." As Mr. Winthrop had voted three months before that war existed by the act of Mexico, Mr. Adams declared that he now differed from his colleague with a regret equal to that with which he had differed from him on the bill by which war was de- clared. He announced his purpose to vote for Mr. McKay's bill in 2 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. any form, but suggested that it should expressly specify that the money was granted for the purpose of negotiating peace with Mexico. The bill was modified in accordance with Mr. Adams' suggestion, and seemed on the point of passing through all its stages without serious opposition. The opposition to the annexation of Texas in the previous adminis- tration was due in a great measure to the hostility of the Free States to the extension of the area of slavery. It was certain that the two millions of dollars that were demanded by the President would be used for the acquisition of territory not embraced in the new State of Texas. Would these acquisitions become Free or Slave States? Twenty years before, Mexico had completely abolished slavery, and it was a sound assumption that all the laud that might be ceded to the United States would come to us as free soil. But in view of the approaching exigency, Mr. Calhoun had enunciated the dogma that the Federal Constitution carried slavery into every rood of terri- tory acquired by the United States from which it was not excluded by positive law of American enactment. This construction of the Constitution, if assented to, would inevitably carry slavery into the extensive territory that it was designed to wrest from Mexico. To prevent a consummation that would thus add a vast region to the do- main of the slave power, a hurried conference was held by some of the Democratic members of Congress from the Free States, which was participated in by such active Democrats of that period as Hannibal Hamlin, of Maine; George Rathbun, Martin Grover, and Preston King, of New York; David Wilmot, of Pennsylvania; Jacob Brincker- hoff and James J. Faran, of Ohio, and Robert McClelland, of Michigan. The result of the conference was the famous Proviso proposed by the young Congressman from Pennsylvania, David Wilmot. Wilmot was in his first session of his term in Congress. He was only thirty-three years old, and as yet entirely unknown outside of the district that had chosen him as its representative. For twelve years he had been a practicing lawyer at Towanda, where he had ac- quired a leading position at the bar. He was a young man of power- ful frame, with a mind that partook of the rugged strength of his body. His most noteworthy qualities were his strong common sense and his tenacious courage. He was able, without any claims to bril- liancy, either as an orator or statesman. As a speaker he was clear, incisive, and sensible, and convinced rather by his sincerity than his eloquence. His district had always given Democratic majorities, and he was himself an intense Democratic partisan. It has been claimed by a modern writer of Republican antecedents that the Wilmot Proviso as a restrictive measure was nugatory, because the only GENESIS OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. 3 territory to be acquired was New Mexico and California, where slavery was already prohibited by Mexican law; and that it only served to bring on the slavery agitation, that finally resulted in the Civil War. This is a very narrow view of a declaration that cleft the old parties asunder, and that became the watchword of a new party that was destined to save the Union by destroying slavery. The Wil- mot Proviso made the name of its author familiar throughout the length and breadth of the land, and will cause him to be remembered in history as the foremost champion of the principles that finally tri- umphed in the Emancipation Proclamation of President Lincoln, crowned by the surrender at Appomattox. The gist of the Wilmot Proviso was that neither slavery nor in- voluntary servitude, except for crime, should ever exist in any terri- tory acquired by the United States from Mexico. Mr. Wilmot moved to add this Proviso to the first section of the bill making the two mil- lion appropriation. It was adopted in Committee of the Whole by 80 ayes to 64 noes, onlv three members from the Free States votine; i/ O against the proposition. The bill as amended w r as then reported to the House, and Mr. Rathbun, of New York, moved the previous question, but was met by Mr. Tibbatts, of Kentucky, with a motion that the bill " do lie on the table." It will thus be seen that the Southern Representatives were willing to defeat the bill in order to kill the Proviso. This motion was not agreed to by a vote of 93 noes to 79 ayes. Among the Representatives who voted with the minority w r ere Stephen A. Douglas and John A. McClernand, Demo- crats, of Illinois, and Robert C. Schenck, Whig, of Ohio. The bill was then passed w T ith the Proviso in a Democratic House by 85 yeas to 80 nays, and sent -to the Senate in the last hours of the session. A motion was made to strike out the Proviso, whereupon Senator John Davis, W T hig, of Massachusetts, rose in debate, and continued his speech until the hour fixed for the adjournment. Thus the bill and the Proviso failed together. Among the conspicuous Whigs in the House who voted for the Proviso were Washington Hunt, of New York; Joseph R. Ingersoll and James Pollock, of Pennsylvania; Robert C. Winthrop, of Massachusetts, and Truman Smith, of Con- necticut. Among the Democrats were Hannibal Hamlin, of Maine; Preston King, of New York; John Wentworth, of Illinois; Allen G. Thurman, of Ohio, and Robert McClelland, of Michigan. Only one member south of Mason and Dixon's Line, Henry Grider, Whig, of Kentucky, voted w r ith the majority. At the next session of Congress the desired appropriation, in- creased from two to three millions of dollars, was made without the obnoxious Proviso; but, notwithstanding the cow r ardice of the Whigs, HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. and the surrender of the Northern Democrats to the demands of the South, the principle involved in the Wilmot restriction became a potent factor in the succeeding Congresses and the political con- ventions. In the 30th Congress, of which Robert C. Winthrop, Whig, was chosen Speaker by a majority of only one vote, a resolve em- bodying the substance of the Wilmot Proviso was offered by Harvey Putnam, of New York, but was laid on the table, on motion of Richard Brodhead, of Pennsylvania, by 105 yeas to 93 nays. In this Congress there were two new members, both of whom afterw r ards became prominent in Republican politics Abraham Lincoln, of Il- linois, and Horace Greeley, of New York. Neither of them made any distinct impression upon the country. It is remembered of Lin- coln, that when it was alleged on the floor of the House that Mexican aggression had begun on American soil, he met the allegation by a reso- lution and a speech, in both of which he insisted on the designation of the spot. This word was repeated so often in Mr. Lincoln's resolution that he was nicknamed " Spot " Lincoln. Greeley w r as chosen to fill a vacancy; he served for only three months, and was not renominated. It was during the existence of this Congress that the war with Mexico was brought to a successful termination, that the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was concluded and ratified, and that fif- teen millions of dollars were voted for the payment of the ceded terri- tory without a restriction of any kind on the subject of slavery. The Mexican Government was anxious to obtain a guaranty from the United States that slavery should not be re-established on soil that had once belonged to Mexico, but Nicholas T. Trist, the American Commissioner, answered haughtily that if the territory about to be ceded " were increased tenfold in value, and, in addition to that, covered a foot thick with pure gold, on the single condition that slavery should be forever excluded, he would not entertain the offer for a moment, nor even think of sending it to the government. No American President would dare to submit such treaty to the Senate." The Mexican war, from its inception to its close, was a crusade in behalf of slavery. The Democratic party had precipitated the war. but gained no political strength through its successful conclusion. ROBERT C. WINTHROP. GENESIS OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. With the exception of General Zachary Taylor, who conducted a vic- torious campaign at the beginning of the struggle, but was checked and his army crippled by orders from the government at Washing- ton after the battle of Bueua Vista, and of General Winfield Scott, whose brilliant campaign from Vera Cruz to the city of Mexico was supplemented by a quarrel with the Secretary of War and orders to turn over the army to General William O. Butler, a political general, all the prominent military*- leaders were active Democrats in their respective States. The Major-Generals were William O. But- ler, John A. Quitman, and Gideon J. Pillow, and the Brigadier-Gen- erals were Joseph Lane, James Shields, Franklin Pierce, George Cad- walader, Caleb Cushing, Enos D. Hopping, and Sterling Price. Not one of these had seen service in the field, or had any pretense to mili- tary fitness. There was not a W'hig in the list, and even the graduates of the Military Academy at West Point were compelled to serve in un- important subordinate places, or to seek service through State appoint- ments in volunteer regiments. In- deed, the administration went even further, and sought to send Thomas H. Benton out to Mexico, with the rank of Lieutenant-General, to su- persede Taylor and Scott. A bill to enable this to be done was actually adopted in the House, and was only stopped in the Senate by a con- vincing speech of Mr. Badger of North Carolina. Colonel Benton himself was heartily in favor of his appointment to the supreme command, and, notwithstanding his recognized unfitness for the position, he seriously believed to the end of his life that a mistake had been made in the failure of the Senate to gratify his ambition. He declared in the auto- biography prefixed to his " Thirty Years' View " that his appoint- ment as Lieutenant-General over Scott and Taylor " could not have wounded professional honor," as at the time of his retirement from the army after the war of 1812, he ranked all those who had since reached its head. The effort at making a Democratic hero out of the war was a failure, and not only was President Polk disposed of as an available candidate for re-election, but Taylor's popularity gave him a strength so irresistible that it brought him the Whig nomination for the Presidency in 1848, to the chagrin and mortification of Mr. THOMAS H. BENTON. 6 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. Clay, and the fierce indignation of Mr. Webster, who resented the selection as a nomination rt unfit to be made." Taylor was placed be- fore the people simply on his record as a soldier, unhampered by poli- tical declarations, and after a " Stars and Stripes " canvass, he was elected by a plurality over Cass and Van Buren that was almost a popular majority, as well as by an overwhelming majority in the Electoral College. Although the Whigs at the outset had accepted the doctrine of the Wilmot Proviso with avidity, it was not long until the Whig- managers foresaw that if it was persisted in it would give almost the entire South to the Democrats. On the other hand, a pro-slavery policy would rend the Whig party throughout the North. In conse- quence a non-committal plan was adopted as the only safe one. Ac- cordingly, no resolutions formulating distinct principles w r ere adopt- ed by the Whig convention at Philadelphia that nominated General Taylor for the Presidency, and repeated efforts to interpose a resolu- tion affirming the principles of the Wilmot Proviso were met by suc- cessful motions to lay on the table. This pacified the majority of the Whig party at the time as an unavoidable expedient, but there were many " Conscience Whigs " in New York, New England, and Ohio, who had pronounced views on the subject of slavery, and refused to support the candidate. In Massachusetts the revolt was led by Henry Wilson, E. Kockwood Hoar, and Charles Francis Adams. In New York a defection was avoided only through the activity of Mr. Seward. In Ohio the discontent was almost as pronounced as in Massachusetts. This defection in the Whig party only failed to be disastrous because of the revolt of the Free Soil element in the Democratic party under the leadership of Van Buren. For a number of years the Democrats of New York had been divided into two factions, which bore respect- ively the name of Hunkers and Barnburners. The Hunkers, under the leadership of Mr. Marcy, President Polk's Secretary of War, were pro-slavery Democrats. The Barnburners, with Silas Wright as their leader, were Free Soilers. Each faction sent a delegation to the Democratic National Convention at Baltimore. The Convention ad- mitted both delegations, but the Barnburners declined to compromise a principle, and retired. Returning to New York, a great meeting was held in the City Hall Park, at which the cowardice of Northern Sena- tors, W'ho had voted with the South, was vigorously denounced and strenuously condemned. The delegates issued an address, written by Samuel J. Tilden, calling Democrats to independent action, and a convention was called to meet at Utica on the 22d of June, at which Van Buren was nominated as the Free Soil candidate. He accepted the nomination, but w r as distrusted by the " Conscience Whigs," who GENESIS OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. 7 pretended to doubt his sincerity; and many of them refused to support him, although his nomination was supplemented by that of a later convention of the Free Soil element, held at Buffalo on the 9th of August. The declaration of principles by the Buffalo Convention was, after the Wilmot Proviso, the most explicit fulmination against slavery extension that had been made up to that time. It may be justly regarded as the second foundation stone of the Republican party. Among those who participated in this convention were Joshua R. Giddings, the famous Abolitionist; Salmon P. Chase, and Charles Francis Adams. The real objects of the Barnburners were to be re- venged upon Cass, the Democratic candidate for the Presidency, and to wrest the political control of New York from the Hunkers. This accomplished, many of them were willing to forget their anti-slavery professions, and reunite with the old party in its pro-slavery crusade. Among these were C. C. Cambreling, Dean Richmond, John Van Buren, Sanford E. Church, and Samuel J. Tilden. Among those who were sincere, and adhered in later years to the principles the/ pro- fessed, the most prominent were Preston King and James W. Wads- worth. The election of General Taylor and the discovery of gold in Cali- fornia were almost simultaneous. It must be confessed that the latter event had greater effect upon the slavery agitation than the former. The pro-slavery leaders had counted upon a large increase in slave territory by the acquisitions from Mexico. It was their intention to consecrate to slavery by positive legislation the vast domain between Texas and the Pacific Ocean. This was prevented by the unexpected emigration to California after this important discovery. In less than a year the Pacific slope was filled with a hearty, resolute population, and California asked for admittance into the Union as a State, with slavery forever prohibited in the newly organized Commonwealth. Contrary to the expectation of the South and the Southern leaders, President Taylor, in a special message to Congress early in 1850. rec- ommended that the new State, with its anti-slavery constitution, should be promptly admitted. Congress was not disposed to regard any plan of the administration with favor, while the slave power was determined to obtain a part of the newly acquired territory. Repeat- ed efforts were made to cut off from California the territory south of 36 degrees 30 minutes, but finally the opposition was overcome, and the entire area was admitted as a Free State. The bill organizing New Mexico as a territory was passed two days later. The questions for adjustment that engaged the attention of the 31st Congress in- cluded the Texas boundary, and the payment to that State of ten millions of dollars indemnity for the loss of territory to which it laid 8 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. claim ; but a measure that gave greater offense at the North than even the extension of slave territory was the obnoxious Fugitive Slave Law, which was made a part of the Compromise of 1850. If President Taylor had lived, it is believed the offensive measures, to which Mr. Clay gave the last services of his distinguished career, would have been defeated, whereas the accession of Vice-President Fillmore, upon the death of the President, opened the way for the success of the plan of Compromise. It had been known long before President Taylor's death that Mr. Fillmore was not in sympathy with the policy of the administration. This was all the more surprising because Fillmore was among the most pronounced of anti-slavery Whigs during his ser- vice in Congress, and had been placed on the ticket with General Taylor in 1848, because it was believed that his nomination would hold to their allegiance a large class of Whigs who resented the candida- ture of a Louisiana slaveholder. In these expectations the Whigs were disappointed, the "Conscience Whigs " most of all. Mr. Fillmore gave the full influence of his adminis- tration to the Compromise of 1850, and signed in detail the measures that were considered as a final and com- plete adjustment of the slavery ques- tion. This finality proved to be illu- sory, but it marked the close of a stir- ring epoch in American history, that was to be followed by another even more stirring, not to say revolution- ary. With the close of this epoch most of the men that had made it memorable passed off the stage. Calhoun had died early in the year. Clay and Webster had finished their life w r ork, and soon were laid to rest the one at Ashland in Kentucky, and the other at Marshfield, in Massachusetts. Benton, too, had finished his career of thirty years in the Senate from the Compromise of 1820 to the Compromise of 1850. New men were to take their places in guiding the policy of the Republic, among whom William H. Seward, an anti-slavery Whig; Salmon P. Chase, a Free Soiler of Democratic affiliations; Jefferson Davis, an ultra Southern Democrat; and Stephen A. Douglas, a Northern Democrat, less ultra but not less dangerous, were the most prominent in the Senate with Thaddeus Stevens and William Pitt Fessenden as the most earnest, active, and uncompromising opponents of slavery in the House. These MILLARD FILLMORE. GENESIS OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. 9 were the giants of the new era the gladiators who contested in the arena of American politics during the next decade. The two National Conventions of 1852, both of which assembled at Baltimore, declared their adhesion to the Compromise of 1850, includ- ing the Fugitive Slave law, which was especially named in both plat- forms. The Convention that nominated General Pierce for the Presi- dency declared that " the Democratic party will resist all attempts at renewing in Congress and out of it the agitation of the slavery ques- tion, under whatever shape or color the attempt may be made." Notwithstanding that the Democrats were reunited, enthusiastic, and aggressive, with the Northern Democracy fully accepting the Compromises as a finality, the Whigs entered upon the Presidential canvass of 1852 with strong hopes of success. But it was not long until it became apparent that the party was hopelessly divided on ques- tions of principle. The Northern Democrats with Southern principles were willing enough to support their candidate; but a Northern can- didate on a Southern platform proved unsatisfactory both to the Whigs of the North and of the South. The result was that the Whig defeat was overwhelming. General Scott, the Whig candidate, car- ried only four States Vermont and Massachusetts in the North, and Kentucky and Tennessee in the South, receiving only 42 electoral votes to 254 for General Pierce. Notwithstanding his overwhelming electoral strength Pierce's absolute majority of the popular vote was only 58,896. He received a total of 1,651,274 votes to 1,386,580 for Scott, and 155,825 for John P. Hale, the Free Soil candidate. These figures ought to have shown that the result was by no means con- clusive, but the Democrats looked forward to a long lease of power. The slavery question was settled. Both parties were pledged to the finality of the settlement. The Free Soil vote in none of the States was great enough to be alarming. The country was prosperous. Both sections w r ere apparently satisfied with the settlement of the slavery question, and the new administration opened auspiciously. When Congress met in December, 1853, President Pierce, in his first annual message, declared that the Compromise legislation of 1850 had given renewed vigor to our institutions, and restored a sense of repose and security to the public mind. This " repose " he said should suffer no shock during his term, if he had power to avert it. A little more than one month later, in January, 1854, the repose upon which the Presi- dent had felicitated himself and the country was seriously disturbed by an intimation in the Senate from Archibald Dixon, of Kentucky, who had been chosen to succeed Mr. Clay, that when the bill to organ- ize the Territory of Nebraska should come before that body he would move that " the Missouri Compromise be repealed, and that the citi- 10 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. zens of the several States shall be at liberty to take and hold their slaves within any of the Territories." At the first session of the 32d Congress petitions \vere presented for the organization of the region westward of Missouri and Iowa, but it was not until the next session that a bill was introduced into the House for organizing the Territory of Platte. This bill Avas subse- quently reported from the Committee on Territories as a bill organiz- ing the Territory of Nebraska. This measure encountered unexpected opposition from the Southern members in Committee of the Whole, and was reported to the House with the recommendation that it be rejected. An attempt to lay it on the table Avas defeated, and it passed by 98 yeas to 43 nays, and w r as sent to the Senate, where it failed. All the Senators from slave Steites voted against the bill, ex- cept those from Missouri, who, for local reasons, were anxious that the UCAV ter- ritory should be organized. As early as December 14, 1853, Augustus C. Dodge, of Iowa, submitted to the Senate a bill for organizing the Territory of Nebraska, em- bracing, as before, the region lying Avest- ward of Missouri and loAva. It was re- ferred to the Senate Committee on Terri- tories. It Avas then that Senator Dixon gave notice that he should offer an amend- ment virtually repealing the Compromise of 1820. When the measure was reported from the committee Mr. Dixon offered his amendment as the t\venty-second section of the bill. The Democratic organ at Washington, the Union, denounced the proposition as a Whig device to divide and disorganize the Demo- cratic party. " I have been charged through one of the leading journals of this city," said Senator Dixon afterAvard, in his place in the Senate, " with haA'ing proposed the amendment Avhich I noti- fied the Senate I intended to offer, with a view to embarrass the Democratic party. It was said that I was a Whig from Kentucky, and that the amendment proposed by me should be looked upon with suspicion by the opposite party. Sir, I merely wish to remark that upon the question of slavery, I know no Whiggery, and I know no Democracy. I am a pro-slavery man. I am from a slave-holding State. I represent a slaA r e-holding constituency. I am here to main- tain the rights of that people whenever they are before the Senate." Although General Cass had been the first to enunciate the doctrine ARCHIBALD DIXON. GENESIS OF THE REPUBLICAN" PARTY. 11 of Popular Sovereignty, generally called " Squatter Sovereignty," as early as 1847, Senator Douglas, of Illinois, was the first to render it potential as a principle of legislative action. It must be conceded, however, that the Compromise of 1820 was inconsistent with slavery in the Territories. It became necessary, therefore, that Mr. Douglas should go a step further than he originally contemplated, and ac- cordingly, on the 23d of January, 1854, he reported a new measure from his committee, to which the Nebraska bill had been recom- mitted. The bill was different from its predecessor, except that it contemplated the same region. Instead of organizing the single Ter- ritory of Nebraska, the new measure proposed to organize the Terri- tories of Kansas and Nebraska. One of the sections of this bill de- clared the Missouri Compromise of 1820 inoperative and void, be- cause " inconsistent with the principle of non-intervention by Con- gress with slavery in the States and Territories, as recognized by the Compromise measures of 1850," and it was further declared that " its true intent and meaning was not to legislate slavery into any Terri- tory or State and not to exclude it therefrom, but to leave the people perfectly free to regulate their domestic institutions in their own way." The bill w r as finally forced through Congress, after a prolonged and bitter contest of four months, by a vote of 113 yeas to 100 nays in the House. The Free States contributed 44 votes in support of the measure, all cast by Democrats. Against it were 94 members from the Free States, of whom 44 were chosen as Whigs, 3 as Free Soilers, and 44 as Democrats. From the slave States, 12 Whigs and 57 Demo- crats sustained it. The Kansas-Nebraska bill, containing the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, was signed by President Pierce, May 30, 1854, and became the law of the land. The triumph of the Slave Power was complete, far-reaching, and apparently perpetual. Kansas and Nebraska, with all the territory south and west of them, were to become Slave States. When the Kansas-Nebraska bill became a law there was no hope of rescuing any part of this great domain from the domination of slavery. In Con- gress the South was supreme, and it was intended to make it supreme for all time. It was the purpose to carve the great State of Texas into five States instead of one, thus giving the South ten senators in- stead of two. Cuba and Central America were to be acquired for the aggrandizement and perpetuity of slavery. Even the Free States could not feel assured that they would be secure from the aggressions of the Slave Power for many years. The threat of Robert Toombs of Georgia that he would call the roll of his slaves on Bunker Hill might indeed become true it was at least a possibility. There were able champions of freedom in the 33d Congress Sew- 12 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. ard, Simmer, Chase, Hale, Wilson, Giddings, and others. Against the repeal of the Missouri Compromise of 1820 were two Southern Democrats of the old school General Sam Houston, of Texas, in the Senate, and Thomas H. Benton, of Missouri, in the House. Houston had had a career as romantic as that of a Knight of the Round Table. A native of Virginia, he was a Representative in Congress from Ten- nessee, and Governor of that State, before he was 35, but resigned his Governorship because of domestic trouble, and fled from civilized life. For years he roved with the Indians, adopted their habits, and became the chief of a tribe. Finally emigrating to Texas, he led the revolt against Mexico, and after fighting its battles, organized a new republic of which he was made President; by these means he gave to his native land the great domain that he had w T rested from Mexico. Once more in the Union and a Sena- tor of the United States, he warned the South against the madness of re- pealing the Missouri Compromise, and of Southern Democrats in the Senate he alone voted against the dangerous measure. In the House, after thirty- three years' service in the Senate, was the venerable Colonel Benton. He belonged to the class of Southern Democrats for whom the South had no longer any use the Democracy of Andrew Jackson, not that of John C. Calhoun. But his day was past, his power broken, his influence gone. In his own State he had been beaten, and David R. Atchison sat in his seat in the Senate. In the House, to which lie was sent by the city of St. Louis in the autumn of 1852, he was unsparing in his denunciation of the measure fathered by Douglas, declaring that the original Compromise had been forced upon the North by the South, and that this repeal had been initiated " without a memorial, without a petition, without a request from any human being. It was simply and only a contriv- ance of political leaders, who were using the institution of slavery as a weapon, and rushing the country forward to excitements and to conflicts in which there was no profit to either section, and possibly great harm to both." The immediate result of the repeal of the Compromise was the dis- solution of the Whig party. There were still a few Whigs in the South who refused to unite with the Democrats, but with the excep- SAM HOUSTON. GENESIS OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. 13 tion of John Bell in the Senate and seven members of the House, all the Whigs in Congress joined in repealing the Compromise. Still the Southern Whigs did not despair altogether, and with such leaders as Humphrey Marshall, Henry Winter Davis, and Horace Maynard, they attempted a reorganization under the name of the American party. Its creed was proscription of foreigners and hostility to the Roman Catholic Church. Its members met in secret lodges, and the party was nicknamed the " Know-Nothing Party." The area of Know- Nothingism extended as far as Texas, but the Order met with little success in the West. In some of the Northern States a large propor- tion of the Whigs joined it in the hope of diverting the political issues over slavery to Native Americanism, and the new party achieved ex- traordinary successes in the State elections of 1854. Its successes, how- ever, were feverish and fitful, and the Order was destined to run its career, and vanish as suddenly as it appeared. The great body of anti- slavery Whigs and anti-slavery Dem- ocrats in the North, who w r ere not Abolitionists, but who were sincere- ly and earnestly opposed to the ex- tension of slavery, saw that the real contest was with the Slave Power, and not against naturalization laws and ecclesiastical dogmas. Before the close of the year 1854, the anti- slavery sentiment of the Free States was in a ferment against the Pro- Slavery Democracy. The result was the birth of the Republican party. Old political landmarks had dis- appeared, and with them the political prejudices of three generations. At first the new party was without cohesion, without compact or- ganization, and almost without a name. The people, however, were determined to obtain a plurality in the House of Representatives, and such was their success at the outset that after a prolonged con- test in the 34th Congress, Nathaniel P. Banks, of Massachusetts, was elected Speaker of the House over William Aiken, of South Carolina. Every vote from the Slave States was given to Mr. Aiken, Banks being chosen wholly by votes from the Free States. The contest lasted from the 3d of December, 1855, until the 2d of February, 1856, none of the candidates being able to obtain a majority. Through 121 ballotings the Democratic candidate was William A. Richardson, of Illinois, the GEN. NATHANIEL P. BANKS. 14 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. House leader on the Nebraska bill in the previous Congress. Rich- ardson withdrew from the contest on the 23d of January, but the Democrats and Know-Nothings found themselves unable to concen- trate on any other candidate with a better prospect of success. Banks, the anti-Nebraska favorite, was in his second term in the House, and had already won distinction as a parliamentarian. He had been a member of both branches of the Massachusetts Legislature, serving for a while as Speaker, and \vas President of the Convention to revise the Constitution of the State in 1853. He was still a young man, vig- orous, alert, bold, and outspoken as a Republican, and withal mod- erate and conservative in word and act. He could do little in his own behalf except to await the result. During the long contest over the Speaker-ship, Col. John W. Forney, the Clerk of the 33d Congress, presided with distinguished ability and impartiality. As it was ap- parent that it was possible only to elect a Speaker under the plurality rule, the House finally agreed to adopt it, and Banks was elected by 103 votes to 100 for Mr. Aiken, with 30 scattering. Colonel Forney, the Clerk, declared the Speaker elected without reference to the House, when a scene of the wildest confusion ensued. But for this action the election of Banks might have been nullified even after it was made; for a Republican Speaker, elected wholly by votes from the Free States, was a bitter disappointment to the Representatives from the Slave States, who had voted solidly against him. Never before had a Speaker been chosen without support from both sections, and the result was ominous of the strife of the next ten years, in which a united North, gradually at first, arrayed itself against a united South, but w r as compelled to accept the arbitrament of the sword as the price of success in the Presidential elections of 1860. Between the election of the first Republican House of Representatives and the election of Banks as Speaker a new method of dealing with slavery expansion had been adopted that gave stability to the new party. It often happens that the triumph of wrong proves its undoing and it was almost inevitable that the repeal of the Missouri Compromise and the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska act should be the beginning of the end of slavery. This, however, was not the accepted view at the time. The anti-slavery agitators who had been shouting, " No union with slave-holders," and crying Tear dow r n the flaunting Lie! Half-mast the starry flag! Insult no sunny sky With Hate's polluted rag! were helpless and in despair. " The moment you throw the struggle GENESIS OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. 15 with slavery into the half-barbarous West, where things are decided by the revolver and bowie-knife, slavery triumphs," said Wendell Philips. " Will Kansas be a free State?" asked William Lloyd Gar- rison, and he answered, " not while the existing union stands. Its fate is settled. . . . Eastern emigration will avail nothing to keep slavery out of Kansas." " No wonder that we were hopeless and helpless," said Eli Thayer, in his " Kansas Crusade." " We had no political organization of any strength to oppose slavery. . . . During all this period of the successful aggressive and increasing strength of slavery, there was in the North corresponding apprehen- sion and alarm. On the repeal of the Missouri Compromise the appre- hension became despondency, and the alarm became despair. . . . The speeches in Congress and the editorials of influential journalists prove that there was no hope of rescuing Kansas from the grasp of this resistless power, should the Kansas-Nebraska bill become a law." It was true that no polit- ical party, or parties, could avail to save Kansas. Slavery had every advantage. A slave State, with a population sufficient in numbers and daring to settle both Ter- ritories, bordered on the east, and stood ready in defiance ready to punish with death any anti-slavery man who attempt- ed to settle in the new Territory. When all others were despairing there was one man had the foresight to perceive that all was not lost who had the courage to predict that Kansas would still be saved for freedom, and the ability and energy to find the way. This man was Eli Thayer. He was a New England man, a graduate of Brown University, a member of Congress from Massachusetts, an impassioned and forcible speaker, and possessed of great organizing ability and unflinching courage. He is almost ignored by the his- torians of the epoch notably so in Greeley's " American Conflict " and Blaine's " Twenty Years of Congress " but throughout the Kan- sas struggle his name was on every tongue. Within a month after the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska bill Mr. Thayer had organized the Massachusetts Emigrant Aid Society, designed to make Kansas a Free State by actual settlement, and a determination to meet the Missouri desperadoes who were flocking over the border, armed with bowie-knives and revolvers, with Sharpe's rifles, and the ballot. At ELI THAYER. lo HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. the very outset he succeeded in obtaining substantial financial back- ing for his plan. Amos A. Lawrence, the millionaire Boston mer- chant, devoted a share of his great wealth and all of his greater in- fluence to the cause. Charles Francis Adams subscribed $25,000, and J. S. M. Williams $10,000. William M. Evarts gave $1,000, one-fourth of what he was worth at the time. Mr. Thayer's contributions in- cluded his untiring energy and ceaseless efforts. In preaching his cru- sade and inciting the people of the North to action he traveled sixty thousand miles, and made hundreds of speeches. But at first the pro- ject met with little encouragement beyond the sphere of its pro- jector's personal influence. Most of the newspapers that were after- ward Republican refrained from giving it their indorsement. Some of them, indeed, denounced the scheme as madness and Thayer as a madman. The Abolitionist agitators were scarcely less bitter in assailing the Emigrant Aid Society than the Pro-Slavery propagandists. Charles Stearns, the only full-fledged Garri- sonian to be found in Kansas early in the conflict, denounced the society as " a hindrance to the cause of free- dom and a curse to the Territory." He thought it an enormity that it purposed to oppose brute force to the Missourians, and arraigned Charles Robinson, Thayer's lieutenant, for saying, " If they fire, do you make them bite the dust, and I will find coffins." " It is, indeed, a noble enter- prise," said the Rev. Thomas Went- worth Higginson, afterward Colonel Higginson, " and I am proud that it owes its origin to a Worcester man ; but where is the good of emigrating to Nebraska, if Nebraska is only a transplanted Massa- chusetts, and Massachusetts has been tried and found wanting?" " What do I care for a squabble around the ballot box in Kansas? " asked Wendell Phillips. If these men had had their way Kansas and Nebraska would have been slave States, and there would have been no Republican party. As the first step toward organizing the new territory of Kansas, President Pierce appointed Andrew H. Reeder, of Pennsylvania, Gov- ernor, and Daniel Woodson, of Arkansas, Secretary of the Territory, with the necessary judicial officers, a majority of whom was from Slave States. The appointment of Governor Reeder was received ANDREW H. REEDER. GENESIS OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. 17 with suspicion at the South, and the Washington Union, President Pierce's immediate organ, declared that he was appointed under the strongest assurance that he was strictly and honestly a national man. Indeed, the Union asserted that while in Washington, at the time of his appointment, he conversed with Southern gentlemen on the sub- ject of slavery, and assured them that he had no more scruples in buying a slave than a horse, and regretted that he had not money enough to purchase one to carry with him to Kansas. This was prob- ably Governor Reeder's attitude at the time, but it is not likely that he was then aware of the open and flagrant frauds that the people of Missouri intended to commit in Kansas. The Territorial government was organized in the autumn of 1854, and in November an election for delegate in Congress was held. John W. Whitfield, an Indian agent, the Missouri candidate, was returned as elected. He received 2,871 votes, of which 1,729 were cast by residents of Missouri. Early in 1855 Governor Reeder ordered an election for the first Territorial Legislature, to be held on the 30th of March. All border Missouri was on hand for this election. There was no disguise, no regard for decency, no pretense of legality. The Missourians came in wagons and on horseback, and were armed with revolvers, pistols, and bowie- knives. They had tents, flags, and music. Nearly a thousand of them encamped in a ravine near the new town of Lawrence, which they menaced with two pieces of cannon loaded with musket balls. Find- ing that they had more men than were needed to carry the Lawrence District, they sent detachments to carry two other districts. The re- sult of this invasion was that the invaders elected all the members of the Legislature, with two exceptions one in either House, who were chosen from a remote inland district, which the Missourians over- looked. The Missouri newspapers boldly admitted the invasion, and exulted in the crime. " It is a safe calculation that two thousand squatters have passed over into the promised land from this part of the State within four days," said the Weston Reporter, a day before the election. " It is to be admitted that they, the Missourians, have conquered Kansas," the Platte Argus declared when the result was known. When the Missouri Brnnswickcr learned that Governor Reeder had refused to give certificates to thirteen members of the House, it said, " This infernal scoundrel will have to be hemped yet." As a matter of fact, Governor Reeder set aside the election in only six districts. All of these were afterward carried by the Free Soilers, except the Leavenworth District, which was directly on the Missouri border. The acts of this fraudulent Legislature were systematically vetoed by Governor Reeder, but they were passed over his head, and the President was memorialized for his removal. This was effected, 18 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. and Wilson Shannon, of Ohio, was appointed in his stead. Shannon announced on his way to the Territory that he " was for slavery in Kansas," and recognized the fraudulent Legislature as a legal assem- bly. It is unnecessary to follow the history of the Kansas conflict further in this place, because with its beginning the genesis of the Republican party was complete. II. Whigs THE CAMPAIGN OF 1856. The Nomination of James Buchanan First National Republican Conventions Colonel Fremont Republican Candidates for the Vice-Presidency The Platform Contrasted Campaign Medals Contentions of the Canvass Assault Upon Senator Surnner The Kansas Conflict Republican Leaders of the Period Results of the Elections The Virulence and Vituperation with which the Republicans were Assailed. N the Eastern States at the beginning of 1856, there were four parties the Democrats, the Whigs, the Know-Noth- ings, and the Republicans. Each of these parties held a National Convention the Democrats at Cincinnati, the at Baltimore, and the Know-Nothings, or Americans, and the Republicans at Phila- delphia. The Democracy nominated James Buchanan for the Presi- dency. Mr. Buchanan had been a Presidential aspirant since 1844, but he had never loomed up as a very formidable candidate. At the Democratic National Con- vention that nominated James K. Polk, he received only four votes on the first ballot, and the highest number he obtained was 25. In 1848, he started with 55 votes on the first ballot, but his vote was reduced to 33 on the fourth, when General Cass was nominated. In 1852, he began with 93 votes, which were reduced to 28 be- fore the " stampede " for General Pierce. In 1856, Buchanan's hour had come at last. He had been a Representative and Senator in Congress from Pennsylvania; had been appointed Minister to Russia by General Jackson; had been Secretary of State in the cabinet of JAMES BUCHANAN. 20 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. President Polk, and was Minister of the United States to the Court of St. James, under President Pierce. Cold in temperament and austere in manners, he lacked the affability of Cass, the gracious heartiness of Pierce, and the bluff cordiality of Douglas. Being absent from the country, he had no part in the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, or the blunders of Pierce's administration. His nomination was de- manded by the North and was a necessity to the South, but his success was not gained without a struggle. Pierce's adhesion to the Slave Power had made him a favorite with the Southern people, and the Southern delegates in the Cincinnati Convention were disposed to accord the President a second term. Senator Douglas had taken a strong hold upon the Southern heart, and was regarded as the natural heir to Mr. Pierce's support, if the President's nomination became im- possible. In the balloting, Buchanan had the lead from the outset, and gained steadily but slowly, while Pierce's vote waned rapidly, much of it going to Mr. Douglas. The resistance was maintained until the close of the sixteenth ballot, when Pierce was withdrawn and Buchanan nominated. John C. Breckinridge, of Kentucky, was made his associate on the ticket for Vice-President. The American Convention nominated Millard Fillmore for the Presidency, and Andrew Jackson Donelson, of Tennessee, for Vice- President. These nominations were ratified by the Whig Convention, which met in Baltimore in September, Edward Bates, of Missouri, presiding. The determination of the National Council to prescribe a platform of principles for the American Convention gave offense to nearly all the delegates from New England and Ohio, and to part of those from Pennsylvania, Illinois, and loAva, w r ho withdrew from the Convention, and subsequently nominated Col. John C. Fremont, of California, for President, and William F. Johnston, of Pennsylvania, for Vice-President. The first National Republican Convention was held at Pittsburg, February 22, 1856; but no nominations were made. Subsequently a call was issued for the Convention that met in Philadelphia on the 17th of June. This was the most spontaneous National Convention in the history of American politics. The delegates were not chosen by any settled rule. All the Free States w r ere represented, as were also Delaware, Maryland, and Kentucky. In this convention New York cast 96 votes, Pennsylvania 81, and Ohio 69. The convention met in Musical Fund Hall, and continued in session for three days. Col. Henry S. Lane, of Indiana, was made President. Lane had been a Representative in Congress from 1841 to 1843, but was not widely known outside of his ow r n State. The delegates met as members of the same party for the first time, and most of them were unknown THE CAMPAIGN OF 1856. 21 to each other. They represented all shades of anti-slavery opinion the Abolitionist, the Free Soiler, Democrats who had supported the Wilmot Proviso, and Whigs who had followed Seward, Weed, and Greeley. Mr. Seward was the recognized head of the party, but as yet he had no desire for the Presidential nomination. He believed that his time had not yet come. Salmon P. Chase, who w r as then Governor of Ohio, and was almost equally a favorite with these early Repub- licans, was also averse to leading a forlorn hope. The Whig element of the party w r as favorable to the nomination of Judge McLean of the Supreme Court, but the younger men, who had accepted the issue pre- sented by the South and w r ere unwilling to offer any compromise, de- manded a younger, a more energetic, and a more attractive candidate. Judge McLean was old, and belonged to the past. The party was 3 7 oung, and was looking to the future. As it was a young men's convention, it is not surprising that John C. Fremont, of Cal- ifornia, received 359 votes to 190 for John McLean, of Ohio. Fremont was admirably fitted for the part he was chosen to perform. The party and the man the cause and its stand- ard-bearer were counterparts of each other. His career had the spice of adventure, his life had a tinge of romance. As a young lieutenant in the army, he had eloped with Jessie Ben- ton, the charming, piquant, and brilliant daughter of the stern and majestic old Senator from Mis- souri. In his" twenty-seventh year he had explored the South Pass, and penetrated to the Rocky Mountains and the Great Salt Lakes. Still later he unfolded the Alta California, the Sierra Nevada, and the valleys of the San Joaquin and the Sacramento. At the age of thirty- six he had come back to Washington as the first Senator from the new State of California. He was now only 43. He was youthful in figure and quiet in manner, with the reputation of a savant as well as that of a hero. He was not only the " Pathfinder," who had opened up one-half of a vast continent to civilization, but he now took the lead in freeing the other half from slavery. The movement in his be- half had been aided, if not originated, by Francis P. Blair, the elder. Blair had been hostile to Calhoun, and although still a Democrat in 22 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. name, he was bitterly opposed to the Pro-Slavery Democracy. He was the intimate and devoted friend of Colonel Benton, and it was hoped that Benton would oppose Buchanan, whom he never liked, and sup- port Fremont, whom he liked very much. But the claims of party had a stronger hold upon the veteran than family ties, even though it was certain that Buchanan's administration would be a continua- tion of that of President Pierce, to which Benton had objected with all the fierceness of his nature. An informal ballot for a candidate for Vice-President was taken, the men who were voted for being William L. Dayton, of New Jersey; Abraham Lincoln, of Illinois; Nathaniel P. Banks, of Massachusetts; David Wilmot, of Pennsylvania; Charles Simmer, of Massachusetts; Jacob Collamer, of Vermont; Preston King, of New York; S. C. Pomeroy, of Kansas; Henry Wilson, of Massachusetts; Thomas H. Ford, of Ohio; Cas- sius M. Clay, of Kentucky; Joshua R. Giddings, of Ohio; William F. Johnston, of Penn- sylvania, and William Penning- ton, of New Jersey. Besides, three votes for a Mr. Carey, of New Jersey, whose given name seems to have been lost, were cast on this ballot. Dayton re- ceived 259 votes and Lincoln 110, while Banks had only 40 and Wilmot 43. Eleven of the Penn- sylvania votes went to Abraham Lincoln. When the future President heard, at his Springfield home, of the votes cast for " Lincoln " for Vice-President, he remarked, " That is probably the distinguished Mr. Lincoln of Massachusetts." Singularly enough, the distinguished Mr. Lincoln of Massachusetts is almost beyond identification, while the obscure Mr. Lincoln of Illinois enjoys a world-wide fame, and has a place in the hearts of his countrymen second only to the veneration that is felt for the name of Washington. " When you meet Judge Dayton present my respects," Lincoln wrote to John Van Dyke, one of the delegates, a few days after the convention, " and tell him I think him a far better man than I for the position he is in, and I shall support both him and Colonel Fremont most cordially." Although Dayton had not received a ma- WILLIAM L. DAYTON. THE CAMPAIGN OF 1856. 23 jority of votes cast on the informal ballot, his nomination was never- theless at once made unanimous. A glance at the different candidates before the Convention for the Vice-Presidency may not be inopportune, as affording an estimate of the makers of the Republican party. Judge Dayton had had a distin- guished career as a Senator in Congress. He was a graduate of Princeton and a lawyer of eminence. Lincoln had served in the Illi- nois Legislature, and had been a member of the 30th Congress. He had gained prominence in the autumn of 1854 by his vigorous' speeches in Illinois in opposition to the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and the skill witli which he had met Senator Douglas in joint debate. As a lawyer he occupied a noteworthy position at the Western bar. Banks was serving his second term in the House of Representatives, of which he had been elected Speaker after one of the most memorable contests in the history of Congress. Wilmot, who was famous because of the Proviso that bore his name, was President Judge of the Thirteenth Judicial District of Pennsylvania. Sumner had beaten Robert C. Winthrop for the United States Senate in 1850, and already occupied a prominent position as an opponent of slavery. Collamer had been a judge in Vermont, a member of Congress, Postmaster-General under President Taylor, and was serving his first term in the United States Senate. Preston King had served eight years in the House of Repre- sentatives, and was then a Senator from New York. Both Wilmot and King had been Democrats; Sumner was a Free Soiler, if not an Abolitionist, and Collamer was a Whig. Pomeroy was one of the champions of freedom, who emigrated to Kansas from Massachusetts to aid in the work projected by Thayer and directed by Robinson. Wilson was serving his first term in the United States Senate. Ford was as yet almost unknown. Clay was conspicuous as a Kentucky Free Soiler, who maintained the stand he had taken in his own State by his fiery eloquence and determined courage. Giddings was the famous Ohio Abolitionist. Johnston had been a Whig Governor of Pennsylvania, and Pennington was, like Ford, as yet not widely known. The platform devised by the Philadelphia Convention was un- usually bold in its declarations. Not only did it " deny the authority of Congress, or of a Territorial Legislature, of any individual, or asso- ciation of individuals, to give legal existence to slavery in any Terri- tory of the United States," but it went further and resolved " that the Constitution confers upon Congress sovereign pow r er over the Ter- ritories of the United States for their government, and in the exercise of this power the right and duty of Congress to prohibit in the Terri- tories those twin relics of barbarism polygamy and slavery." It HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. aimed a blow at Mr. Buchanan, the Democratic candidate, by de- claring that " the highwayman's plea that might makes right, em- bodied in the Ostend circular, was in every respect unworthy of American diplomacy, and would bring shame and dishonor upon any government of people that gave it their sanction." It further de- manded the immediate admission of Kansas as a Free State, and in- vited " the affiliation and co-operation of men of all parties, however differing from them in other respects, in support of the principles declared." The platforms of all the other Conventions were essentially Pro- Slavery. The " Americans " declared themselves in favor of the unqualified recognition and maintenance of the re- served rights of the several States, and the cultivation of harmony and frater- nal good-will between the citizens of the several States, and the non-interference by Congress with questions appertain- ing solely to the indi- vidual States, and non-intervention b y each State with the affairs of any other State. The Whigs de- clared their reverence for the Constitution and an unalterable attachment to the Union, deplored the disordered condi- tion of national affairs, and denounced parties " founded only on geographical distinctions." According to the Whig CJ ^ platform, the restoration of Mr. Fillmore to the Presidency would furnish the best, if not the only, means of restoring peace. The Democratic platform indorsed the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, and recognized the right of the people of all the Terri- tories to form a Constitution with or without domestic slavery. The Presidential canvass that followed was one of the most ani- mated since the Log Cabin and Hard Cider campaign of 1840. Evi- dence of the enthusiasm with which the opponents of slavery en- tered upon their work is found in the series of Fremont medals that were distributed all over the North and W T est. One of these was called " Jessie's Choice," a reference to Fremont's marriage with THE CAMPAIGN OF 1856. 25 Jessie Benton. Another represented a surveying party surveying a mountain, on the top of which was the White House. Still another, of white metal, is the largest campaign piece known. The obverse shows a fine portrait of Fremont. On the reverse is a wreath inclos- ing these inscriptions: " The Rocky Mountains echo back Fremont "; "The People's Choice for 1856"; "Constitutional Freedom." Be- neath the wreath is a scroll, with " Free " in the middle, and " Men " and " Soil " at either end. The Buchanan medals w T ere few in number, but one of them was especially noteworthy. It was a large, white metal piece, showing on the obverse " a buck leaping over a cannon." The Know-Nothings struck three medals one containing a portrait of Millard Fillmore; one an American flag with three rents, with the inscription " Our Flag Trampled Upon "; and one a reproduction of a medal of the Old American party, that in 1844 had called upon Amer- icans to " Beware of Foreign Influence." These medals, some of which still exist, are interesting mementoes of the birth of the Re- publican party, of its first campaign, and especially of its first ro- mantic and accomplished candidate for the Presidency. In the campaign Fremont was denounced as a sectional candidate, whose election by Northern votes on an anti-Slavery platform would dissolve the Union. This cry w r as supported by the fact that electoral tickets were not presented by the Republicans in the Slave States. On the other hand, Fillmore's support in the South was weakened by his obvious inability to carry any of the Free States. Thus the contest was soon narrowed to a battle between Buchanan and Fre- mont in the North. The Democratic platform was differently under- stood by the Democracy of the two sections. In the North it was con- tended that slavery could not enter a Territory unless its inhabitants desired and approved its introduction. The Democratic doctrine of the South was that slavery was to be protected in the Territories un- til State Governments were formed and admission to the Union se- cured. This meant that in the Territorial Legislatures laws might be passed to protect slavery, but not to exclude it. It was against this construction of Mr. Douglas's doctrine of " Popular Sovereignty " that the Republicans contended. They claimed that Freedom and not Slavery w r as the normal condition of the Territories, and boldly as- serted throughout the campaign the right and the duty of Congress to exclude slavery, as enunciated in the Philadelphia platform. But the cries of sectionalism and disunion were still more powerful with a large part of the Northern people, especially the commercial classes, then logical deductions in Constitutional interpretation, or hostility to the extension of slavery as contemplated by the South. If the is- sues presented by the platform had only been abstract questions, 26 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. there can be little doubt that the Republicans would have met with overwhelming defeat, even in the Free States. Instead of being ab- stractions, the canvass palpitated with life and energy, because of the Kansas conflict and the attempt to fasten slavery upon Kansas by force and fraud. Border ruffianism in the Territory and the arro- gance of the leaders of the slave power in Congress, rather than the principles of the Philadelphia platform, gave vitality to the Republi- can party in the campaign of 1856. Events that had occurred almost upon the eve of the meeting of the Republican Convention were of the most exasperating character. Not only had civil war been precipitated in Kansas, but the sanctity of the Senate had been invaded. While the Republicans of the North and West were preparing for the Convention at Philadelphia, Senator Sumuer was stricken down in his seat in the Senate Chamber by Preston S. Brooks, a Representative from South Carolina. For two days Sumner had stood in his place in the Senate delivering a philippic of ex- traordinary range and power, aimed at the designs of the South in behalf of slavery. This w T as the speech that was sent broadcast over the land during the campaign with the title of the " Crime Against Kansas." The audience before which it was delivered was in keeping with the character of the occasion and the fame of the orator. The ladies' gal- lery overflowed with the fashionable and earnest women of the capital. The lobbies were crowded with poli- ticians from all parts of the country, and with members of the House. With one or two exceptions the Senators were all in their seats. Few of the slave champions failed to feel the shock of Sumner's lance. Two Senators especially suffered from his merciless invective and bitter sarcasm. These were Stephen A. Douglas and Arthur P. Butler. One of them Sunnier called the Don Quixote, the other the Sancho Panza of Slavery. Douglas listened with ill-concealed hate, and a rage that he was scarcely able to repress. His reply showed how keenly he felt the thrusts of his antagonist. He answered with vitu- peration and personalities, asking with undignified vindictiveness, as if Sumner was unworthy of the courtesy that one gladiator extends to another, " Is it his object to provoke some of us to kick him, as we CHARLES SUMNEK. THE CAMPAIGN OF 1856. 27 would a dog in the street, that he may get sympathy upon the great chastisement?" But Butler was not impaled as Douglas had been; he was, however, treated with contemptuous and scathing references to " the loose expectoration of his speech/' and as one who " touches nothing which he does not disfigure with error, sometimes of prin- ciple, sometimes of fact," while Butler's State, South Carolina, was not spared in Sumner's arraignment. " Has he read the history of the State which he represents? " the Massachusetts Senator asked. " He can not surely have forgotten its - shameful imbecility from slavery, continued throughout the Revolution, followed by its more shameful assumption for slavery since." Butler was absent and, per- haps, ill; and Brooks came over from the House, the next day, to be- come his avenger and the avenger of his State. A few men knew of his purpose to chastise Sumner, among them Keitt, one of Brooks's colleagues from South Carolina, and Edmondson, a member of the House from Virginia. Keitt was an accessory to the assault. Among the Senators who witnessed it were Douglas, who had talked of kick- ing Sumner only the day before, and three sorry figures from the South in the subsequent Rebellion Toombs, Mason, and Slidell. The Senate had adjourned, but Sumner was still at his desk absorbed in the letters he was writing to catch the mails for the North. " I have read your speech twice over carefully," said Brooks, coming up behind Sumner. " It is a libel on South Carolina, and Mr. Butler, who is a relative of mine Sumner heard no more, for the blows were raining thick and fast upon him, and he was unable to rise because his long legs were under his desk. James W. Simon- ton, the agent of the New York Associated Press, attempted to inter- fere, but Keitt rushed in, saying, " Let them alone, G d d n you." Sumner was beaten to the floor. Only the thick mass of hair that covered his scalp saved him, probably, from a fatal fracture of the skull. It was many months before he fully recovered from the effects of the blows. The Senate made a lame complaint to the House, and in anticipation of expulsion Brooks resigned. The Knight of the Bl.udgeon was not only re-elected, but was treated as a hero in South Carolina. Some of his admirers presented him with a cane inscribed " Use knock-down arguments," and others gave him another cane bearing the classical legend, " Hit him again." But in the North a wave of indignation swept over the country. In the Senate Senator Wilson characterized the assault upon his colleague as " brutal, mur- derous, and cowardly," whereupon Senator Butler exclaimed, " You are a liar." Brooks challenged Wilson, and Wilson, of course, de- clined the challenge. Anson Burlingame denounced the assault in the House, and was challenged by Brooks, but did not decline the 28 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. challenge. Burlingame named rifles as the weapons, and the Clifton House, Canada, as the place of meeting; but as the Massachusetts Representative was a dead shot with the rifle, Brooks objected to the meeting place and the duel never came off. Brooks was afterward tried for the offense in the courts of the District of Columbia, and fined $300. The outrage and its consequences w r ere worth many votes to the Republicans in November, 1856. The Kansas conflict was, of course, an important element in the campaign. The Territory swarmed with the minions of the slave pow r er, intent on its subjugation. Outrages and murders, even, were frequent. On the 21st of May, 1850, Lawrence was surrounded by armed bands of " border ruffians " under General Atchison, who, with the " Platte County Rifles " and two pieces of artillery, approached from Lecompton on the w r est. On the east the town was beleaguered by a regiment of wild young men, mainly recruited in South Carolina and Georgia, who had come to Kansas in the spring under Colonel Bu- ford, armed, in military array, and with the avowed purpose of making Kansas a slave State. This force bristled with weapons obtained from the Federal officers in charge of the United States Armory, and it w r as commanded by a formidable array of colonels Colonel Titus, of Florida; Colonel Wilkes, from South Carolina, and Colonel Boone, from Westport, Missouri; and one General General String-fellow, a Vir- ginian. The people of Lawrence were unprepared to resist, and agreed to surrender their artillery, which consisted of a twelve-pound howitzer and four smooth-bore pieces, that had been buried some days before, and were now dug up and turned over to the invaders. Then the Free State Hotel and two Free State printing offices were de- stroyed at the instigation of Atchison. The house of Charles Robin- son, who had been elected Governor by the Free State settlers, was next set on fire, but the flames were extinguished before the building was finally consumed. In June Osawatomie was attacked by a force under General Whitfield. The town of Leavenworth, on the border, was taken possession of by a large force, mainly Missourians, on the 1st of September. One of the incidents of this " Kansas War " was the so-called " battle of Black Jack," when twenty-eight Free State men, led by old John Brown, fought and defeated, on the open prairie, fifty-six border ruffians, headed by H. Clay Pate, from Virginia. All of this band that had not run away or been killed were captured, be- sides their horses, mules, wagons, provisions, and campaign equipage. A Legislature, chosen under a Free State Constitution previously adopted by the settlers, met at Topeka on the 4th of July, but its mem- bers were dispersed by a force of regulars under Colonel Sumner. by order of President Pierce. In spite of the persecution and discourage- THE CAMPAIGN OF 1856. 29 ments the emigration to Kansas continued, and, supported by Repub- lican oratory in the campaign throughout the North, was maturing and hardening into the bones and sinew of a Free State. The South gained nothing by these usurpations and outrages, while the North was consolidated and strengthened in support of the Republican party. The Republican canvass increased in animation as it progressed. There were great political meetings in all of the great cities, as there always are, and smaller meetings in the towns and villages, and rustic gatherings in the schoolhouses everywhere. It was a young man's campaign, and the young men were the orators and the makers of the party. Somehow the leaders who were ambitious by nature, and politicians by instinct, had little real share in a movement that was too spontaneous for their cautious methods. Indeed, many of those who were in the front in the later years, and claimed their full share of the glory, were still coquetting with their own consciences as half- hearted followers of Fillmore, or too hopeful and confiding adherents of Buchanan. Although Seward was proclaiming the " irrepressible conflict," that made him an object of hatred to the South, he was es- sentially a man of conservative and conciliatory temper, and had little real sympathy with a candidate whom he could only regard as an expression of youthful enthusiasm in the creation of the party. Chase's support of Fremont w as in a measure perfunctory, and was extended to the platform rather than to the candidate. Wade was more hearty, as was to be expected from a man of his rugged and sometimes vindictive nature. Sumner was disabled for the work of the campaign, and was scarcely able to do more than to go home to vote for Fremont and Dayton and his gallant and devoted friend, Anson Burlingame. The real workers were the men of whom Bur- lingame was a type. He was a man of brawn and brain, stalwart and handsome, and brave to the verge of recklessness. Among the others were Banks, whose election as Speaker gave him great prominence; John Sherman, who, like Banks, was in his second term in Congress; Eli Thayer, whom " Sunset " Cox described as " a living steam en- gine"; Roscoe Conkling, then only beginning a career that was to prove exceptionally brilliant; Galusha A. Grow, saucy in bravado, but as ready to give a blow as to provoke one; John A. Bingham, a man of unusual eloquence and ardor; and Thaddeus Stevens, tenacious, courageous, bitter of speech, inflexible in the resistance of wrong. There was a still younger generation in popular recognition if not in years, which embraced such men as James G. Blaine, Andrew G. Curtin, Austin Blair, Schuyler Coif ax, and Oliver P. Morton; and one still younger, that was just leaving college to begin careers scarcely 30 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. less distinguished with the year of the formal organization of the Republican party. It is unnecessary to name in this place the men who still cherished the traditions of the party of Clay and Webster, or lingered with the Democracy, deluding themselves with the hope that Buchanan would reverse the policy of Pierce in the Kansas sur- render. The result of the election was what had been foreseen. Buchanan and Breckinridge carried every Slave State, except Maryland. Fill- more and Donelson carried Maryland only. Fremont and Dayton w T ere successful in all the New England States by large majorities, and in New York, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Iowa. Buchanan obtained the electors in five of the Free States New Jersey, Pennsyl- vania, Indiana, Illinois, and California. New Jersey and California were lost to the Republicans in consequence of the u American " vote, and Indiana was carried by the Democrats by a majority of only 1,809, and Pennsylvania by 925. The popular vote was 1,838,169 for Buchanan, 1.341,264 for Fremont, and 874,534 for Fillmore. With the people Mr. Buchanan was in a minorit}^ the combined opposition ex- ceeding his vote by 377,629. These results astounded and mortified the Democrats. The loss of New York and Ohio was an unexpected blow. The narrow majority in Pennsylvania was scarcely more con- soling. In Michigan the reverse was aggravated by the choice of Chandler as the successor of Cass in the United States Senate. The sacrifice involved the loss of ten States that had been carried by Pierce in 1852 Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, Maryland, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Iowa. It w r as no recompense for this loss that Buchanan carried Kentucky and Ten- nessee. Under all the circumstances the moral triumph was with the Republicans. They had entered the campaign without any well- grounded hopes of success, but determined to win the battle if the victory could be won. When the fight was over they felt and acted as if it had been won. The actual victory at the polls, in their view, was only postponed. So far from being discouraged were they, that it was seen that the conflict in the battle of Freedom against Slavery in the Territories was to be fought to the end. Mr. Buchanan came to the Presidency with an almost solid North against a solid South. The battle had been fought without flinching and without compro- mise, and with a full understanding of the fact that the platform, " Free Soil, Free Speech, Free Men," was an incitement, if not an in- vitation, to Southern revolt in case of their success. They w r ent into a contest that had become a necessity of national preservation and in- tegrity. Beaten in their first campaign, they were resolved to con- tinue the fight in Kansas and on the floors of Congress, and four years THE CAMPAIGN OF 1856. 31 I later, with a " rail-splitter " for a candidate, they won a signal triumph. In looking back at a campaign, so bitter in its conduct and so momentous in its consequences, one can not fail to marvel at the fanaticism and the virulence inspired by slavery. It was to be ex- pected, perhaps, that Fremont as the candidate of a new, bold, and aggressive party, should be depicted in lurid colors, but it is impos- sible now, without regard to party or to sections, to recall the terms in which he was denounced without a sense of shame. In the hostile journals, North and South, he was described as a vain, shallow, pre- tentious, " w T oolly-horse," " mule-eating," " free-love," " nigger-em- bracing," black Republican; an extravagant, insubordinate, reckless adventurer; a financial spendthrift, and a political mountebank. All this has no significance now, except as it points to the passion that was behind it. But what is more remarkable than the abuse of the black Republicans and their candidate in the newspapers and in political speeches was the obloquy heaped upon the North and upon Northern statesmen even in the Senate. " I have said that the neces- sity of political position," said Senator Mason, of Virginia, in his re- pty to Sumner, " alone brings me into relations with men upon this floor who elsewhere I cannot acknowledge as possessing manhood in any form. I am constrained to hear here depravity, vice in its most odious form, uncoiled in this presence, exhibiting its loathsome de- formities in accusation and villification against the quarter of the country from which I come; and I must listen to it because it is a necessity of my position, under a common Government, to recognize as an equal, politically, one whom to see elsewhere is to shun and de- spise." Sumner himself could use invective more scathing than this, and his philippics sometimes w r ere not free from vituperation, but even his arraignment of South Carolina and its Senator fell short of im- puting a want of manhood to, and charging depravity and vice upon, the majority of the American people and their representatives, for no other reason than their opposition to the extension of slavery. In the eyes of the South every man was a scoundrel, or worse, who dared to oppose the Slave Power, and such epithets were freely employed in the campaign of 1856, with equal facility in the Senate at Wash- ington and in the bar-rooms of Missouri. The South was so sincerely in earnest that few men in the Southern Democracy were capable of perceiving that their ardor and their virulence were ludicrous, or that their denunciations of Northern " fanatics " betrayed a more unrea- soning and intolerable fanaticism than that which they imputed to their adversaries. And yet when the tragi-comedy they were then playing had closed as one of the most terrible tragedies in history, a 32 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. Southern historian calmly assumed that " the slavery question really involved but little of moral sentiment"; that the repeal of the Mis- souri Compromise was " scarcely more than a matter of principle, or sentiment"; and that the doctrine of "Popular Sovereignty" had been imposed on the Southern people by the " arts of an able and elo- quent demagogue." But what the South never realized until it was vanquished was that the Republican party was a young giant at its birth, and that the bitterness with which it was assailed constantly added to its strength and power. III. DEVELOPMENT AND GROWTH OF THE PARTY. The Dred Scott Decision Pro-Slavery Attitude of the Supreme Court Effects of the Decision Kansas Governors Reeder, Shan- non, Geary, and Walker The Lecompton Constitution Demo- cratic Opposition to It Failure of the Conspiracy Douglas and Lincoln The Congress of Secession Union Soldiers in Congress- Confederate Military Leaders Prominent Men in the 36th Con- gress Political Effects of the Lecompton Conspiracy John Brown's Raid on Harper's Ferry Attempts to Hold the Repub- lican Party Responsible for Brown's Acts Helper's Book, " The Impending Crisis " Republican Strength, not Weakness, Results. R. BUCHANAN'S administration opened with an apparent triumph even greater than the repeal of the Missouri Com- promise. This was the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in the Dred Scott case. Dred Scott, a negro, was held as a slave in Missouri by Dr. Emerson, an army sur- geon. This was in 1834. In that year the surgeon was transferred to Rock Island, Illinois, and took his slave with him. Two years later Dr. Emerson was sent to Fort Snelling, in what is now Minnesota, and again carried Dred along with the rest of his personal effects. At Fort Snelling he met Major Taliaferro, who had in his service a black woman known as Harriet. The doctor bought this woman from the major, and with his consent she was married to his other slave, Dred. Two children were born to this slave couple Eliza, on a Mis- sissippi steamboat and north of the Missouri line, and Lizzie at Jef- ferson Barracks, in Missouri. The entire family was afterwards sold to John A. H. Sanford, of the city of New York. On this state of facts Dred afterward brought suit for his freedom in the Circuit Court of St. Louis county, and obtained a verdict and judgment in his favor. This was reversed by the Missouri Supreme Court, and taken on ap- peal to the Supreme Court of the United States. The case was heard by the Supreme Court at Washington in May, 1854, and should have been decided early in 1856, but in view of the conflict in Kansas and the pending Presidential election, judgment was deferred until after Mr. Buchanan's inauguration. Although the decision had not been announced at the time of the inauguration, Mr. Buchanan alluded to it in his inaugural address as a final settlement of the question of slavery in the Territories, and declared his intention to submit to it, HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. as was the duty of all good citizens. When the announcement was made the decision was received with indignation and scorn through- c* & out the North. The Court not only undertook to remand Dred Scott back to slavery, but assumed the right to settle the status of all the Territories belonging to the United States as Slave Territory. The act of Congress prohibiting slavery north of 36 degrees 30 minutes was declared unconstitutional and void. Thus was not only the re- peal of the Missouri Compromise approved by the highest judicial tribunal in the land, but its re-enactment was forbidden. The opinion of the Court was pronounced by Chief Justice Taney. Tauey had been appointed to the position he then held twenty years before by President Jackson, whose flexible instrument he had been in Jackson's conflict with the Bank of the United States. He was a State- Rights, Pro-Slavery partisan. Apart from his conclusions his opinion was, perhaps, the most extraordinary doc- ument that ever came from the high- est judicial tribunal of a free people. It has since been claimed for him he was sincere in all his declarations. But this is the plea that was justly derided of the man who " did not know it was loaded." Three of the Associated Justices who were from the South Justice Wayne, of Geor- gia; Justice Daniel, of Virginia, and Justice Campbell, of Alabama, con- curred with the Chief Justice in all his conclusions, and Justice Catron, of Tennessee, concurred in the judgment so far as Dred Scott was concerned, holding that his two years' residence in Illinois had given him no right to freedom; but he dissented from the Chief Justice's notion that Congress had no power to govern the Territories. Justice Catron held, however, that slave- holders had an indefeasible right to carry their slaves into, and hold them in, the Territories belonging to the United States. Thus his dissent resolved itself into a mere quibble. It will be observed that these five justices, a majority of the Court, were all from the Slave States. The conclusions of Justice Nelson, of New York, and Justice Grier, of Pennsylvania, involved the absurdity of according to Con- gress the right to establish slavery in the Territories, but not to pro- hibit it. The dissenting judges were Justice McLean, of Ohio, and Justice Curtis, of Massachusetts. Practically the Court stood seven ROGhR B. TANEY. DEVELOPMENT AND GROWTH OF THE PARTY. 35 to two, although Justice Catron manifested a gleam of independence in sustaining the power of Congress over the Territories. This decision gave a powerful impetus to the Republican party at the very outset of Mr. Buchanan's administration, and was an essen- tial element in its development and growth. If the decision had been announced before the Presidential election, it is probable Mr. Bu- chanan would have been defeated. Coming after his inauguration, it served to keep alive the issues upon which he had been chosen, even apart from the continued outrages in Kansas. William Pitt Fessen- den declared, in a speech in the Senate, his belief that in the event of Fremont's election, " we should never have heard of a doctrine so utterly at variance with all truth, so utterly destitute of all legal logic, so founded on error, and unsupported by anything resembling argument." It is doubtful whether this assumption is in keeping with the temper of the time, even on the Bench of the Supreme Court. The Slave Power was desperate. All its expedients had failed, or were on the verge of failure. The repeal of the Missouri Compromise was suffi- cient to carry slavery into the Territories, but not to keep it there. It was evident that in the race of emigration the South could not com- pete with the North. If the people of the new Northwest had control over their own institutions in its territorial condition, it was inevi- table that all the new States would be Free States. The edict of the Supreme Court was aimed at this condition, the Court holding that " it was unconstitutional for Congress to decree freedom for a Terri- tory of the United States," but in reaching this conclusion the Court went beyond the real question at issue in the case of Dred Scott, and thus the decision became a political subterfuge for providing slavery with a bulwark in the Territories. The motives were such as should not have influenced a judicial tribunal. The effect was what might have been expected, and instead of proving of value to the South it provoked the intense hostility of the North. With slavery unalterably fixed upon all the Territories as their normal condition by a decision of the Supreme Court, the next step wasto force a Pro-Slavery Constitution upon Kansas. When the 35th Congress met in December, 1857, the Territory had already had three Governors Andrew H. Reeder, Wilson Shannon, and John W T . Geary. All of them were Democrats all were from the North, and all had failed. None of them was disposed at the outset to resist the wish of the South to make Kansas a slave State, if it could be done with any decent regard for the rights of the people of the Territory; but each revolted in turn at the methods employed by the minions of the Slave Power. Reeder had become as hateful to the turbulent element as the most hated Abolitionist, and after his election as Delegate in 36 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. Congress by the Free State men he was impelled to escape from the Territory in disguise to save his life. Shannon gave almost as great offense by his impotent attempts at fairness, and in September, 1856, was superseded by Geary. If Geary had consented to join in the effort to fasten slavery upon Kansas by means of the Lecompton Constitution, he might have retained his office and received the sup- port of the administration. He chose to resign on the day that Mr. Buchanan was inaugurated, and Robert J. Walker, of Mississippi, was appointed in his place. Mr. Walker was born in Pennsylvania, but he had lived in the South from early manhood, and was a South- ern man in sympathy and interest. He was a man of great ability and large experience. He had been for ten years a Senator from Missis- sippi, and Secretary of the Treasury under President Polk. If any man could govern the Territory in the interest of the South, and at the same time hold the wavering Democrats in the North true to their party allegi- ance, it was believed that he was the man. He soon found, however, that the task committed to him was be- yond his powers without the sacrifice of his own honor, and what Keeder and Geary had done under Pierce he was compelled to do, with even greater effect, under Buchanan. The Lecompton Constitution was framed by a fraudulent Convention called by a fraudulent Legislature. It provided for the admission of Kan- sas as a Slave State, without regard to the wishes of the people of the Territory. It is now T almost universally conceded that this Constitution was adopted by votes, the majority of which w r ere never cast at all, or had been cast by men who were not citizens of Kansas. The Free State men refused to have anything to do with a contrivance so fraudulent as this so-called Constitution, and had re- fused to vote. The Lecompton Constitution was received by the President late in January, 1858, and by him transmitted to Congress on the 2d of February, with a message declaring Kansas as much a Slave State as Georgia, or South Carolina; recognizing the invaders from Missouri as rightly entitled to form a Constitution for the State, and treating the anti-slavery people of Kansas as in rebellion against lawful authority. The effects of this message, and the attempt to force the admission of Kansas as a Slave State, w r as a schism in the Demo- GEN. JOHN W. GEARY. DEVELOPMENT AND GROWTH OF THE PARTY. 37 cratic part}- that never was healed. The first to refuse to sustain the iniquity was Senator Douglas. Douglas had gone to great lengths to give the control of Kansas to the South; he had applauded and up- held the Dred Scott decision, and Mr. Lincoln charged that he as- sented to it before it was pronounced. It w r as, of course, more im- portant to the South to secure Kansas as a Slave State than to carry Illinois for Mr. Douglas, but for Mr. Douglas the loss of Illinois meant the close of his public career. He had made great sacrifices for the South, and now he w r as asked to sacrifice himself. He determined, therefore, to make a bold stand, not so much against slavery as against the iniquity by which its triumph was to be enforced. " Rarely in our history," says Mr. Elaine, in his " Twenty Years of Congress," " has the action of a single person been attended by a public interest so universal; applause so hearty in the North, by de- nunciation so bitter in the South." Following the lead of Douglas in the Senate were Broderick of California, Stuart of Michigan, and Piigh of Ohio; and in the House, such inflexible Democrats as John B. Haskin and Horace F. Clark of New York, John Hickman and Henry Chapman of Pennsylvania, and Samuel S. Cox of Ohio but altogether only twelve who finally refused to yield. Douglas was the leader, but Broderick was the soul of this little band of Independent Democrats. Elected to the Senate as the colleague of William M. Gwin, in 1856, Broderick instinctively took sides against the arro- gant domination of the Southern wing of the party of which Uwin was a leader, and joined Douglas in opposition to the Lecomptou policy of the administration. His course aroused fierce hostility in California, and these resentments led to his death in 1859, in a duel deliberately planned for his destruction. The opposition availed nothing in the Senate, and the Lecompton bill was passed by a vote of 33 to 25. In the House the resistance was more effective, and the administration, with all its power, w^as unable to force the passage of the bill without a Proviso submitting the entire Constitution to a vote of the people. The Senate concurred in this amendment, and the struggle was over. The Pro-Slavery men were defeated, and Kansas in the end became a Free State. The struggle over the Lecompton Constitution in Congress lasted three months. The effect of the episode upon the Democratic party was disastrous. In the North the Democracy was rent by dissensions and torn by faction. In the South Douglas was denounced with a malevolence as great as that heaped upon Fremont two years be- fore. While he regained something of his old popularity in the Free States, there were few signs of relenting among Northern Republi- cans. The Illinois Republicans were especially unforgiving. They 38 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. attributed his hostility to the Lecompton Constitution to the instinct of self-preservation, and prepared to contest his return to the Senate. The candidate named to oppose him was Abraham Lincoln. The two men \vere utterly unlike each other. Douglas was small of stature, with long and grizzled hair, and his admirers were fond of calling him " the little giant." In manner he was frank, hearty, cordial, af- fable; in debate he was bold, dashing, fearless, fluent, never hesitat- ing for a word or a phrase, aggressive, and sometimes arrogant. Douglas was 45 years old and Lincoln was 49. The latter was very tall, very angular, and his beardless face was dark and seamed. His head, poised on a very long neck, was massive. In manner he was bright and alert; in disposition good-tempered and generous; and in speech clear, direct, and simple, with a vein of quaintness underlying his arguments that was neither wit nor humor, but a blending of both, and very effective with Western audi- ences. He had need of all the gifts that na- ture had bestowed upon him for the forensic contest that was before him. Douglas was everywhere known as a debater of remark- able skill. He was fertile in resources, and a master of logic, and no one excelled him in the employment of fallacy and the use of sophistry. To meet him in debate was to court destruction in the first encounter. Lin- coln was not only anxious to run the risk, but determined to meet his antagonist in joint discussion. After some preliminary spar- STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. ring, the terms of the great contest were arranged. It was agreed that the two candi- dates should meet on the same platform, and appeal to the same audiences. It was a battle of the giants. The two men were always promptly on the field, and wherever they went they were met by vast outpourings of the people. There were seven of these joint debates, and when they were over the friends of each claimed the victory for their own champion. In dignity, good- humor, and gentleness, Lincoln unquestionably had the better of his antagonist, for Douglas frequently resorted to the use of epithets and insinuation, and habitually spoke of the Republican party as " Black Republicans." Douglas saved his seat in the United States Senate, but Lincoln won the moral victory, and his defeat paved the way for the marvelous career that has made his name immortal. While the forensic contest between Douglas and Lincoln was in progress in Illinois the election of the 36th Congress was pending DEVELOPMENT AND GROWTH OF THE PARTY. 39 the Congress of Secession. In the House of Representatives of that extraordinary Congress there were 109 Republicans, 101 Democrats, 26 Americans, and 1 who was still known as a Whig. William Pen- nington of New Jersey, a Republican, and a man of splendid presence, ABRAHAM LINCOLN. but a poor parliamentarian, was chosen Speaker after a bitter con- test lasting two months. Among the Representatives were many members, on both sides of the floor, who afterward became conspicu- ous in the war between the States. Among these were Oilman Mars- ton, and Mason W. Tappan, of New Hampshire, each of whom led a 40 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. well-equipped regiment to the field, and served conspicuously during the war; Orris S. Ferry, of Connecticut, also a soldier, and afterward a Senator; Daniel E. Sickles, who organized the " Excelsior Brigade " and achieved the proud distinction of becoming one of the heroes of Gettysburg; John Cochrane, also a Democrat, but a sturdy Unionist, as became one of his Revolutionary ancestry; and Alfred Ely, who was captured by the famous " Black Horse Cavalry," after the first battle of Bull Run, and hurried to the Confederate capital, with the cry of " On to Richmond "all of New York; Philip B. Fouke, John A. Logan, and John A. McClernand, three Democratic members from Illinois, all Union soldiers, and two of them especially conspicuous; Cadwalader C. Washburn and Charles H. Larrabee, of Wisconsin, the one a Republican and the other a Democrat, but both in the Union army; and Colonel William Vandever and Samuel 11. Curtis, of Iowa, the latter the hero of Pea Kidge. As a Delegate from Wash- ington Territory was Isaac I. Stevens, a graduate of West Point, and a splendid soldier, who fell at the head of his division at Chantilly, Virginia, in 1862. In the Senate there was only one conspicuous figure of the war of which the 36th Congress was the prelude Ed- ward D. Baker, who fell at Ball's Bluff, in the autumn of 1861. It is a meager list, it must be confessed, and there were among them as many Democrats as Republicans. In later Congresses were seen the faces of sun-browned warriors from the field and battle-scarred veterans of the strife. In the Senate, from the beginning until near the close of Mr. Bu- chanan's administration, sat Jefferson Davis, the chief conspirator of that stirring epoch, and the soul of the impending conflict. With him were some of the members of his future Cabinet, and others who were to sit as members of the so-called Confederate Congress, but there were only three, aside from Vice-President Breckinridge, who aspired to military command Wigfall, of Texas, who was at the firing on Fort Sumter; Toombs, of Georgia, who commanded a brigade 1 under Longstreet; and Clingman, of North Carolina, but none of them was really efficient or distinguished in the war they helped to precipitate. In the House almost every Southern State had a general some of them a number of generals. Of the Virginia delegation Roger A. Prior was to become a " rebel brigadier," " Extra Billy " Smith a major-general, and A. G. Jenkins to lead the cavalry when Lee en- tered Pennsylvania; North Carolina had Branch, killed at Antietam, Ruffin, who died of his wounds while a prisoner, and Vance, better known after than during the war; South Carolina was represented by only one future brigadier, Bonham, but Keitt fell at the head of his regiment at Cold Harbor, and Ashmore served in an humbler DEVELOPMENT AND GROWTH OF THE PARTY. 41 capacity; Georgia, too, had only one Congressional brigadier, Gart- rell; Tennessee had three Hatton, killed at Seven Pines, Quarles,and Wright; Alabama had two Confederate colonels Moore, killed in the seven days' fight, and Curry, afterward Minister to Spain and then a clergyman; and Mississippi had Barksdale, killed at Gettys- burg, General Otho K. Singleton, Reuben Davis, a colonel, and L. Q. C. Lamar, whose highest rank was lieutenant-colonel. In the Senate was Mallory, of Florida, who became Secretary of the Confederate Navy, and in the House, Reagan, of Texas, the Confederate Postmas- ter-General. Colonel Lines used to say that he once saved the fortifi- cations at Richmond by crying out, " Reagan and his troops to the right," u Mallory and his brigades to the left." In the 36th Congress there were many Republicans who were con- spicuous then, and were to be more conspicuous afterward Lot M. Morrill and William Pitt Fessenden, of Maine; John P. Hale, of New Hampshire; Collamer and Foot, of Vermont; Sumner and Wilson, of Massachusetts; Anthony, of Rhode Island; Seward and Preston King, of New York; Simon Cameron, of Pennsylvania; Wade, of Ohio; Chandler and Bingham, of Michigan; Trumbull, of Illinois; Durkee and Doolittle, of Wisconsin; Rice, of Minnesota, and Harlan and Grimes, of Iowa, in the Senate; and in the House, besides those who served in the war, Justin S. Morrill, of Vermont; Charles Francis Adams, John B. Alley, Anson Burlinganie, Henry L. Dawes, Alexan- der H. Rice, and Eli Thayer, of Massachusetts; Roscoe Conkling, Reuben E. Fenton, and Francis E. Spinner, of New York; John Co- vode, Galusha A. Grow, Edward McPherson, and Thaddeus Stevens, of Pennsylvania; James M. Ashley, John A. Bingham, Thomas Cor- win, and John Sherman, of Ohio; William A. Howard, of Michigan; Schuyler Colfax, of Indiana; Owen Lovejoy and E. B. Washburne, of Illinois; and William Windom, of Minnesota. There was also a num- ber of Democrats conspicuous then and afterward Horace F. Clark and John B. Haskin, of New York; John Hickman, of Pennsylvania; William Allen, Samuel S. Cox, and Clement L. Vallandingham, of Ohio; and William H. English, William S. Holman, and William E. Niblack, of Indiana. The prominent " Americans " were Henry Win- ter Davis, of Maryland, and Horace Maynard, of Tennessee. In the Senate still lingered James A. Bayard, of Delaware, and John J. Crit- tenden, of Kentucky, and Andrew Johnson was the junior Senator from Tennessee. In the elections that gave the Republicans virtual control of the 3(>th Congress they owed much to Governor Walker's repudiation of the frauds in Kansas, followed by his manly resignation of an office he could no longer hold with honor. Sent to the Territory by an ad- HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. ministration that had betrayed the solemn pledge that had made Mr. Buchanan's election possible, it was believed by the Pro-Slavery men that Walker would be in hearty sympathy with their plans. It was Walker's protest, more than anything else, that paved the way to the freedom of Kansas and the annihilation of the Pro-Slavery conspiracy in Kansas and in Congress. His manly course thrilled the people of the whole country, and aided to demolish the Democracy in nearly all the Free States. It destroyed Democratic prestige in New York, and revolutionized some of the most constant and intensely Democratic districts in Pennsylvania. It swept New Jersey for the Republicans. It gave courage to the anti-Lecompton Democrats to antagonize the administration in spite of its power and patronage, and to win the battle for freedom. Walker was, of course, proscribed by the South and by the administration; but this very proscription was an impulse to- ward Republican success, and helped to give vitality to the Republican party. The proscription of Walker was followed by others equally malig- nant, and all the more inexcusable be- cause they were petty as well as malig- nant. The anti-Lecompton Democrats were treated with all the contumely it was possible to heap upon them. Men like Haskin and Hickman were beyond pardon, and even Mr. Cox, of Ohio, then a very young man, and ardent and im- pulsive, was made to feel that he had lost caste with the administration. Great and small alike were made to suffer from the President's dis- pleasure. All this helped to widen the breach in the Democratic ranks, and it not only tended to inspire the Republicans with unflag- ging enthusiasm, but almost daily brought them new recruits. In the autumn of 1859, only six w r eeks before the meeting of the 36th Congress, an event occurred that had consequences singularly out of proportion to its importance. This was John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry, on the 17th of October. Brown was a man of little education, but of stern principles and inflexible courage, who had gone to Kansas in 1855, w r here he became a terror to the slaveholders on the Missouri border. He was no politician, and as an Abolitionist he was a disciple of Nat Turner, rather than of Garrison and Phillips. When he emigrated to Kansas he went not to settle, but to fight, and he found plenty of fighting without going far out of his way to seek ROBERT J. WALKER. DEVELOPMENT AND GROWTH OF THE PARTY. 43 it. Old as he was, he met the Missourians with extraordinary prow- ess, and worsted them in many a fierce encounter. When the Kansas conflict was ended Captain Brown was not yet satisfied. He was not a Eepublican and distrusted the Republican leaders. " Republicans of 1858," he said, " will be the Democrats of 1860." He thought that Republican success in the ensuing Presidential election would be a serious check to the cause he had at heart, that the people would be deceived, that the Republicans would be as conservative of slavery as the Democrats. For the enslaved black he saw no hope in the fu- ture, except by force of arms. Believing that the Lord directed him in visions what to do, it was easy for him to conceive that he was di- vinely commissioned not only to resist the extension of slavery, but to free four millions of bondmen. Trusting in his divine commission, he projected the enterprise which startled and astounded the country, and in the end brought about the achievement for which he so ardently longed. The contemplated crusade was arranged with great deliberation and consummate abil- ity, considering the paucity of means with which it w r as to be started. The entire force with which Brown made his attack upon Har- per's Ferry consisted of seventeen white men and five negroes. The night of the 24th of Oc- tober \vas originally fixed upon for the first blow against slavery in Virginia, but suspect- ing that one of his party was a traitor, he re- solved that he must strike prematurely, or not JOHN BROWN. at all. On Saturday, the 15th, a plan of opera- tions was discussed, and unanimously ap- proved the next evening. That night this extraordinary army entered Harper's Ferry without creating alarm, and took pos- session of the armory buildings belonging to the United States, which were guarded by only three watchmen. These were seized and locked up in the guard house. Then the watchman at the Potomac Bridge was captured and secured. At a quarter past one the western train on the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad arrived, and found the bridge guarded by armed men. Almost simultaneously w r ith the detention of the train the house of Colonel Lewis W. Wash- ington was visited by Brown's men, under Captain Stevens, who seized his arms and horses, and liberated his slaves. Every male citi- zen who ventured into the street during the rest of the night was cap- tured and confined in the armory, until the number of prisoners was between 40 and 50. One of the workmen asked by what authoritv the 44 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. arsenal had been seized, and was told, " By the authority of Almighty God." Every workman who approached the armory, as day dawned, was seized and imprisoned. By 8 o'clock the number of prisoners ex- ceeded GO. Soon after daybreak the fight began, and a grocer named Boerly was killed by the return fire from the army of occupation. Soon afterward one of Brown's sons, Walter, was mortally wounded by a shot fired by some Virginians, w r ho had obtained possession of a room overlooking the armory gates. The alarm was spread over the surrounding country, and at noon a militia force, consisting of 100 VIEW OF HARPER'S FERRY. men, arrived from Charlestown, the county seat, and were so disposed as to command every available exit from the armory. The attacking force was rapidly augmented and the fight was continued, another of Brown's sons, Oliver, meeting the fate of his brother earlier in the day. The assailants being in overwhelming force, Brown retreated to the engine-house, where he succeeded in repulsing them, with a loss to the Virginians of two killed and six wounded. Night found Brown's force only three unwounded whites besides himself. Eight of his men were already dead, another was dying, two were captives DEVELOPMENT AND GROWTH OF THE PARTY. 45 mortally wounded, and one was a prisoner unhurt. A party, sent out to capture slave-holders and liberate slaves early in the day, was ab- sent. They fled during the night through Maryland into Pennsyl- vania, but most of them were ultimately taken. It was not till the next morning that the engine-house was captured by a force of United States marines, two of the marines being wounded. Brown was struck in the face by a saber, and knocked down. After he fell the old man received two bayonet thrusts at the hands of an infuriated sol- dier. Brown and the rest of his little band, who fell into the hands of the Virginians, were tried and executed at the town of Charles- town, all of them djdng with calm and unflinching courage. It was a mad scheme, with a tragic ending, but it has been immortalized in song and story in every land where the spirit of liberty is cherished. John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry, doomed to failure from its inception, as any one not blinded by a fanaticism that has no mis- givings might have foreseen, was in consequence of the events that were its immediate outcome the prelude to the civil war. Henry A. Wise was Governor of Virginia. He was a man of fine talents and ardent temperament, with much of the reckless bravado and arrogant impulsiveness that marked the Pro-Slavery leaders of the epoch. Governor Wise was eager to connect the Northern people and the Kepublican party with John Brown's acts and purposes. In attempt- ing this he gave official expression to fears and forebodings that had no foundation in fact. He affected to see in Brown and his handful of followers only the advance guard of other invasions, for the purpose of inciting and promoting servile insurrections, and even of rescuing the captured Harper's Ferry raiders from the custody of Virginia. He alleged that organizations existed in some of the Free States having these objects in view, and he addressed a letter to President Buchanan in which he declared that " if another invasion should as- sail the State of Virginia, he should pursue the invaders into any territory, and punish them wherever they could be reached by arms." Copies of this letter were sent to Governor Chase, of Ohio, and other Northern governors, w r ith a repetition of his purpose to pursue in- vaders into adjoining States. This arrogant action was received in the usual manner in the North with truckling assent and humility by the Democrats, and with indignant scorn by the Republicans. Gov- ernor Packer, of Pennsylvania, made haste to offer ten thousand men for service at the call of Virginia, but Governor Chase, of Ohio, promptly informed Governor Wise that the people of that State would not consent " to the invasion of her territory by armed bodies from other States, even for the purpose of pursuing and arresting fugitives from justice." As no such organizations as those complained of by 46 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. Governor Wise existed anywhere in the North, nothing came of the matter, except the irritation of feeling it was intended to provoke, with corresponding irritation and agitation in the South. There is no reason to believe that the fear and demoralization that swept over the Slave States, after Brown's futile foray on Harper's Ferry, was feigned. The specter of a slave insurrection, or even a series of slave insurrections, promoted by Northern Abolitionists, had become a portent of imminent danger to the Southern people. The leaders of public opinion in the South constantly sought to misdirect and mis- lead them. According to the slaveholding extremists, the Wilniot Proviso was aimed at slavery in the same spirit as had been John Brown's fantastic provisional constitution. In the end, the South looked upon the teachings of Seward as identical with those of Gerrit Smith, and could see no difference between the mad freak of John Brown and the supposed purposes of the " Black Republicans." The effort to hold the Republican party responsible for the John Brown raid was a political device of Senator Mason, of Virginia. His defiant and autocratic manner well fitted him for the part of its ac- cuser, if the purpose of the accusation was to strengthen it with the Northern people. Early in the 36th Congress Mr. Mason moved a Committee of the Senate to investigate the causes leading up to the raid on Harper's Ferry. The motion was opposed by Trumbull, of Illinois, who moved that a raid from Missouri into Kansas should be included in the investigation, and it was mercilessly ridiculed by Senator Hale, of New Hampshire, but it prevailed, and the committee was appointed. An incident of the investigation was the arrest of Frank B. Sanborn, of Concord, Massachusetts, for refusing to go to Washington to testify before the Senate Committee touching his knowledge of the raid. Sanborn was seized by persons deputed by the Sergeant-at-Arms of the Senate, forced into a carriage and hand- cuffed, but his Concord neighbors interfered, invoking the assistance of a writ of habeas corpus, and his release was ordered. Sanborn after- ward presented a memorial to the Senate through Mr. Sumner, where- upon Mr. Mason moved that the memorial be rejected. There was no love lost between the Senator from Massachusetts and the Senator from Virginia, and the incident led to one of those sulphurous out- bursts for which Sumner had become famous. " The Senator moves," he said, " . . . . that the memorial be rejected ; and he makes this unaccustomed motion with a view to establish a precedent in such a case. I feel it my duty to establish a precedent in such a case by en- tering an open, unequivocal protest against such an attempt. Sir, an ancient poet said of a judge in hell that he punished first and heard afterward Castif/atquc audltquc and permit me to say that the DEVELOPMENT AND GROWTH OF THE PARTY. 47 Senator from Virginia, on this occasion, takes a precedent from that Court." The protest of the Republican party against Senator Mason's effort to fix the odium of John Brown's raid upon it was equally open and unequivocal. The challenged party declined to stand on the de- fensive. It attempted no exculpation from the idle imputation. Prominent Republicans frankly expressed their pity for the brave old man who had sacrificed his life for his principles, and the party, in- stead of being weakened by an episode that was unforeseen by any of its leaders, grew stronger from the effort of the South to make the unfortunate occurrence a political issue. The Senate Committee failed to trace the origin of the project beyond the narrow circle of John Brown's immediate associates, and it was not felt that any dis- avowal of Republican sympathy was required because on the day of Brown's execution bells were tolled, and " prayers offered up for him as if he were a martyr." The action of the Senate in trying to fix the responsibility for the John Brown raid upon the Republican party was supplemented by an at- tempt in the House to fasten a charge of inciting insurrection upon the two Republicans who were voted for for the Speakership on the first ballot John Sherman and Galusha A. Grow. Both Sherman and Grow had indorsed a book called " The Im- pending Crisis," with a compendium that was even less startling than the book itself. The book was com- piled by Hinton R. Helper, and it was, in fact, little more than a compilation of dry statistics, but it gave great offense to the South. Sherman indorsed it without reading it, and then forgot all about the indorsement. This act was little short of a crime in the eyes of Southern statesmen, and after Sherman and Grow were voted for for Speaker, Mr. Clark, of Missouri, offered a resolution reciting the fact of the indorsement of Helper's book by the two Republican culprits, and declaring that " its doctrines and senti- ments " were " insurrectionary and hostile to the domestic peace and tranquillity of the country, and that no member of this House, who had indorsed and recommended it, or the Compend from it, is fit to be Speaker of the House." No poor book ever got a better advertisement, for, impervious to ridicule, the excited South- '. JOHN SHERMAN. 48 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. erners kept up their attacks upon it throughout the prolonged contest over the Speakership. The only comfort they obtained from the gratuitous advertisement of Helper's dull book was that the Black Republican who was finally elected was not one of the men who had indorsed it, and that both these " would have to roost lower the rest of their lives." In the effort to rebuke a poor book the House finally contented itself with a poor Speaker. In the House, as in the Senate, the only effect of the attempts to arraign the Kepublican party was to combine wavering voters in the Free States in support of Kepubli- can doctrines, and incidentally to widen the breach between Douglas and the South, and hasten the disruption of the Democratic party. The bitterness of the South only served to consolidate the North, and to pave the way for the Republican triumph of 1860. IV. THE SECOND REPUBLICAN CONVENTION. Nominations in 1860 The Charleston Convention Republican Or- ganization Complete The Chicago Convention William H. Seward Signs of Opposition to His Candidature The Candi- dates Enthusiasm of the New York Delegation Weed and Evarts The Republican Wigwam Organization of the Con- vention The Platform Naming the Candidates The Ballots Analysis of the Vote Lincoln Nominated Causes of Seward ? s Defeat Abraham Lincoln Hannibal Hainlin Enthusiastic Reception of the Ticket. HEN the National Republican Convention of i860 met at Chicago on the 16th of May the Democratic party was in the throes of dissolution. The Democratic Convention had met at Charleston on the 23d of April, and adjourned on the 3d of May to meet in Baltimore on the 18th of June. The Con- vention at Charleston neither nomi- nated a candidate nor adopted an acceptable platform, and before the adjournment the breach between the Northern and Southern w r ings of the Democracy was complete. The Convention organized by the election of Caleb Gushing, of Massachusetts, as its President. Mr. Gushing had been elected to Congress as a Whig as early as 1834, and was an active participant on the Anti- Slavery side of the discussions in the House. In the quarrel be- tween President Tyler and Mr. Clay he adhered to the administration, and after being sent as Commissioner to China in 1843, he joined the Democracy, and was made brigadier-general by President Polk in the war with Mexico. He subsequently served as attorney-general under President Pierce. As a Democrat he became a partisan of the extreme State-rights school, and not even the services of Jefferson Davis were of greater value to the Pro-Slavery Democracy. His CALEB GUSHING. 50 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. selection to preside over the Charleston Convention was in itself a triumph for the Southern Democracy, but apart from a sympathetic presiding officer, the South gained an advantage even greater from the support accorded it by the California and Oregon delegations in constituting the Committee on Resolutions. In 1800 the number of States in the Union was 33; of these 18 were Free and 15 Slave States. The support of the Pacific States gave the South a majority of one in committee. The majority of the committee accordingly reported a platform taking the most advanced ground ever assumed by the South. It contained an explicit assertion of the right of citizens to settle in the Territories, with their slaves " a right not to be de- stroyed or impaired by Congressional or Territorial legislation," and the further declaration that it was the duty of the Federal Govern- ment, when necessary, " to protect slavery in the Territories, and wherever else its constitutional authority extends." The supporters of Mr. Douglas saw that they would be hopelessly destroyed in the North if they consented to these extreme demands of the South, and for the first time in the history of the Democratic party the Northern delegates in a National Convention refused to submit to Southern dictation. A substitute was accordingly reported by the minority, that declared that " inasmuch as differences of opin- ion exist in the Democratic party as to the nature and extent of the powers and duties of a Territorial Legislature, and as to the powers and duties of Congress under the Constitution of the United States over the institution of slavery within the Territories, the Democratic party will abide by the decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States upon questions of constitutional law." This was a temporizing expedient, cunningly contrived, but evasive. The Southern delegates promptly and sternly refused to accept the compromise. The Douglas men, on the other hand, would not yield In the Convention the mi- nority platform was substituted for that of the majority by a vote of 165 to 138. Although fairly outvoted, the Southern delegates refused to abide by the decision, and seven States Louisiana, Alabama, South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Texas, and Arkansas withdrew from the Convention, and organized a separate body. This left the supporters of Douglas in control of the regular Convention, but the ac- ceptance of the two-thirds rule in a full Convention rendered the nomination of Douglas, even with a large part, of the South elimi- nated, impossible. It w r as finally determined to fill vacancies occa- sioned by the withdrawal of delegates from the South, and the ad- journment to Baltimore was taken to allow r this to be done. At Baltimore there was a second secession, including the withdrawal of Mr. Gushing, the President, whose place was then taken by Governor THE SECOND REPUBLICAN CONVENTION. 51 Tod, of Ohio. Stephen A. Douglas was then nominated for President and Benjamin Fitzpatrick, of Alabama, for Vice-President. Mr. Fitzpatrick declined the nomination, and Herschel V. Johnson, of Georgia, was afterward substituted by the National Committee. The seceders from the Convention at Baltimore subsequently met and nominated John C. Breckinridge, of Kentucky, for President, and Joseph Lane, of Oregon, for Vice-President. This Convention adopted the platform reported by the majority of the Committee on Resolu- tions of the Charleston Convention. The nominations and platform of the seceding Convention at Baltimore were accepted by the seced- ing Convention at Richmond the same day, the 28th of June. Mean- time another convention had been held at Baltimore by the Constitu- tional Union party, as it called itself, at which John Bell, of Tennes- see, was nominated for President, and Edward Everett, of Massachu- setts, for Vice-President. Thus there were three parties and three tickets arrayed against the Republicans and their candidates. The disrupted Charleston Convention had adjourned to meet at Baltimore a fortnight, and the nomination of Bell and Everett had been made a week before the meeting of the Chicago Convention. This second Republican National Convention was essentially different from that which had nominated Fremont at Philadelphia four years before. In 1856 the delegates were self-appointed and the party with- out organization or cohesion. In 1860 its organization was perfected in every Northern State, and the delegates w r ere chosen as fit embodi- ments of the principles and purposes of the party. While the Demo- crats w r ere divided and discordant, the Republicans were united and confident. They had carried every Northern State in 1859, except California, Oregon, New York, and Rhode Island. In Oregon the ad- verse majority was only 59. In New York the Republican vote was less than two thousand short of an absolute majority over the Demo- crats and the third party men. Rhode Island had only been carried by a fusion of the entire opposition. Since these elections the party had gained in confidence and strength, and was hopeful of carrying every Free State in the ensuing Presidential election. Like the Phila- delphia Convention of four years before, the Chicago Convention was made up in great part of young men, a large proportion of whom were afterward prominent in public life. Mr. Blaine says that not fewer than sixty of them, till then unknown beyond their districts, were afterward sent to Congress; many became Governors of their States, and many others were distinguished as soldiers in the civil war that was to follow the Republican triumph. All the Free States were fully represented in the Convention, with delegates from six Slave States Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky, Missouri, and Texas. The 52 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. whole number of votes represented in the Convention was 465, the number necessary to a choice being 233. The one man who had done more than any other to organize, con- solidate, and inspire the Republican party was William H. Seward, of New York. For fully two years before the meeting of the Conven- tion the impression prevailed among the people that his nomination for President was a foregone conclusion. Fully two-thirds of the dele- gates chosen to the Convention preferred him as the Republican can- didate, and a clear majority went to Chicago expecting to vote for him. His high character, his eminent ability, and the importance and mag- nitude of his work were everywhere conceded. When the Convention met there was no powerful candi- date to oppose him, and it was not until the delegates came face to face that his availability began to be a question. It was soon found, however, that he was confronted with obstacles that would prove formidable, if not insuperable. Timid men feared that his radi- calism would make Mr. Seward weak where a candidate of fewer antagonisms might be strong. In the Convention was a delegate from Oregon, who lived in New York, and had sought and obtain- ed the right to represent that far distant Statewith a viewto oppos- ing Seward's nomination. This man was Horace Greeley. It was not known at the time that the old firm of Seward, Weed, and Greeley had been dissolved. If this had been known it is doubtful if Greeley's hostility to Seward would have been so effective as it proved, but apart from Greeley's opposition still more powerful influences were exerted against Seward from the two States of Indiana and Pennsylvania. In Indiana Henry S. Lane had just been nominated for Governor, with Oliver P. Morton, then not known be- yond his State, for Lieutenant-Governor. It was understood that if the Republicans carried the State, Lane would be sent to the United States Senate, and Morton would become Governor. Both Lane and Morton believed that Seward's nomination meant their own defeat in their States. In Pennsylvania Andrew G. Curtin had been nomi- nated for Governor by a People's State Convention, the party not WILLIAM H. SEWARD. THE SECOND REPUBLICAN CONVENTION. 53 being bold enough to assume the name of Republican. In this Peo- ple's party the " American " element continued to be powerful. The " American " organization was still maintained in Philadelphia, and in a number of the counties of the State. Without its aid Curtin's success was impossible. In Indiana the " American " element was strong also, and its support was equally necessary to the election of Lane and Morton. As a result of these conditions, the defeat of Seward and the nomination of Lincoln were brought about by two men who believed, not without reason, that Seward's nomination meant a Democratic victory in their States Henry S. Lane, of Indi- ana, and Andrew G. Curt in, of Pennsylvania. In spite of the hostility of Greeley and the antagonistic attitude of Indiana and Pennsylvania, Seward's strength was not easily broken. As late as the night of the IGth Mr. Greeley telegraphed to the N>w York Tribune that the opposition to Governor Seward was unable to concentrate on a candidate, and that he would be nominated. Gree- k's choice was Edward Bates, of Missouri an old Whig, who had been a member of the convention that framed the constitution of that State in 1820, and joined the Republicans because of the re- peal of the Missouri Compromise. He was backed by a Missouri dele- gation, and had the support of the venerable Francis P. Blair and his son, Montgomery Blair. His strength was confined to the border States, none of which the Republicans could hope to carry. A part of the Ohio delegation affected to want the nomination of Salmon P. Chase; Pennsylvania had an ostensible candidate in Simon Cameron; New Jersey supported William L. Dayton, and Vermont presented the name of Jacob Collamer. Another candidate, besides Chase, who was without the support of a united delegation, was John McLean, of Ohio. Abraham Lincoln, of Illinois, was the only candi- date whose strength was unforeseen. Lincoln had been named as the choice of the Illinois Republicans by the State Convention only a few days before the meeting of the National Convention. This nomi- nation was a surprise even to the Convention that made it. The proposition came from Richard J. Oglesby, in an eloquent speech, and it was received with an enthusiasm that was as boisterous as it was spontaneous. A delegation was chosen that was remarkable for its ability, and admirably fitted for the difficult task assigned to it. But it was not necessarily a Lincoln delegation to a finish. Eight of the twenty-two delegates would gladly have supported Seward would, perhaps, have preferred him to Lincoln. Even in Chicago, where the enthusiasm for Lincoln was very great, Seward's popularity seemed a match for it. No candidate for the Presidency ever had a delegation from his own State more devoted to his interests than was the New HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. York delegation in support of Mr. Seward in 1860. It had come to Chicago to work with a united will, and to vote as a unit. Behind it was an enthusiastic following that was so demonstrative that it seemed to be celebrating a victory already achieved. At the Seward headquarters at the Richmond House was a palpitating mass of Se- ward enthusiasts, intolerant of any name but that of their favorite. These carried their demonstrations to excess. They invaded the quar- ters of the delegations from other States, and proclaimed the name of their candidate everywhere. Seward badges were seen in every crowd. The New York delegation was scarcely behind the mobs of tumultuous Seward admirers in ostentatious display. Some of the delegates talked without prudence of the money New York would contribute to the campaign. The delegates marched in procession to the Convention each day, with music and banners. More potential than this outward show were the quiet ap- peals of Mr. Seward's two most eloquent champions Thurlow Weed and William M. Evarts. In every delegation their pleadings for their candidate were heard and felt. Weed was Seward's life-long friend. In pri- vate conversation he was the most persua- sive of men. He spoke for Seward with an earnestness that was weighted with his af- fection for the man, and a force that was irre- sistible in the presentation of the character, the gifts, and the services of the statesman. Evarts was as eloquent as Weed was persua- sive. W T herever Evarts went men followed him, drawn by the charm of his oratory even men who were deter- mined not to accept his candidate. Never before had a great statesman so impassioned a champion. Evarts spoke as a friend, as a patriot for the Republic, for the party that could save it, and for the man who had founded the party and was best fitted to lead it. But no appeal, however persuasive, no argument however eloquent, was of avail in a crisis in which eminent services counted for less than the ability to carry four doubtful States, in which the Republican party was scarce- ly Republican at heart States in which the Republican leaders, who were not " Know-Nothings," were still Whigs in sympathy, without the courage to call themselves Republicans. These men had their missionaries, as Seward had Weed and Evarts, but with demands that could not be easily disregarded. With Lane was John D. Defrees, the chairman of his State Committee, and with Curtin was Alexander K. McClure, who was to manage the campaign in Pennsylvania. Lin- THE SECOND REPUBLICAN CONVENTION. 55 coin's biographers, Nicolay and Hay, deny that the credit of Lincoln's nomination belongs to these men, and assert that " Lincoln was not chosen by intrigue, but through political necessity." It has never been claimed that it was " intrigue " that nominated Lincoln, but the " political necessity " that defeated Seward w r as only another name for the political interests that were opposed to his nomination. Mr. McClure, in his " Lincoln and Men of War Times," has stated the mat- ter with more precision. "There could be no question as to the sincerity of the Republican candidates for Governor in the two pivotal States THE REPUBLICAN WIGWAM. when they declared that a particular nomination would doom them to defeat," he says, " and it was Andrew G. Curtin and Henry S. Lane whose earnest admonitions to the delegates at Chicago compelled a Seward Convention to halt in its purpose and set him aside, with all his pre-eminent qualifications and with all the enthusiastic devotion of his party to him." The Chicago of 1860 had no building sufficiently commodious for a great National Convention. A temporary frame structure, for which it was claimed that it was capable of seating ten thousand persons, was accordingly designed and erected for the occasion. This building 56 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. was given the name of the " Republican Wigwam." It turned out to be admirably fitted for the purpose for which it was intended. Its acoustic qualities were perfect. Every part of the great auditorium was visible from every part. Every celebrity could be seen, every speech could be heard. There were separate doors for the ingress and egress of spectators and delegates. Among the delegates was a large number of men of national reputation, most of them unknown by sight to the vast multitude that crowded the building. It was soon found that the crowd was easily able to distinguish the chief actors on the floor of the Convention, and the eminent men seated on the platform. In many of the delegations there w r as a noteworthy blend- ing of men of diverse political antecedents anti-Slavery Democrats, 'Webster Whigs, and now and then a pronounced Abolitionist. Mas- sachusetts sent John A. Andrew and George S. Boutwell; New York, William M. Evarts and Preston King; Pennsylvania, Thaddeus Ste- vens and Andrew H. Reeder; Ohio, Thomas Corwin and Joshua R. Giddings; Illinois, David Davis and N. B. Judd; and Missouri, Francis P. Blair, Jr., and Carl Schurz. David W T ilmot, of Pennsylvania, the Democratic author of the famous Proviso, was made temporary chair- man of the Convention, and George Aslmiun, of Massachusetts, a life- long adherent of Daniel Webster, its permanent president. Both selections were received with satisfaction by the Convention and hearty applause from the galleries. The first day of the Convention was devoted to the work of organ- ization, and the usual Committees on Credentials and Resolutions were appointed. There were no contested seats, but a delegation claiming to represent Texas was afterward found to be ineligible. The Committee on Platform, which consisted of one delegate from each State and Territory, reported on the evening of the second day. When the platform was read it was received with tremendous cheers, and the disposition was evinced to adopt it immediately and unani- mously. Mr. Giddings, of Ohio, always insisting upon the embodiment of " primal truths,'' moved to amend the first resolution by incor- porating in it the phrases from the Declaration of Independence, de- claring "That all men are created equal; and they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed," but the Convention was eager to adopt the platform without change, and the amendment was voted down. This so grieved the anti-slavery veteran that he rose and walked out of the Convention Hall. When the second resolution was reached George William Curtis, of New York, renewed Mr. Giddings's THE SECOND REPUBLICAN CONVENTION. 57 amendment, and supported his motion with a burst of oratory that carried everything before it. " I have to ask this Convention/' he said, " whether they are prepared to go upon the record before the country as voting down the words of the Declaration of Independ- ence? ... I rise simply to ask the gentlemen to think well be- fore, upon the free prairies of the West, in the summer of 1860, they dare to wince and quail before the assertions of the men in Phila- delphia in 1776; before they dare to shrink from repeating the words that these great men enunciated." The amendment was adopted, and Mr. Giddings, overjoyed at Curtis's triumph, returned to his seat. The platform was skillfully framed. It denounced disunion, the reopening of the slave trade, the " popular sovereignty " and non- intervention theories; denied the authority of Congress, of a Terri- torial Legislature, or of individuals to give existence to slavery in any Territories 'of the United States; opposed any change in the natural- ization laws; recommended an ad- justment of import duties to encour- age the industrial interests of the country, and advocated the im- mediate admission of Kansas as a Free State, free homesteads, and a railroad to the Pacific Ocean. The platform as a whole was received with shouts of applause, such as had never before been accorded to the declaration of principles adopted by a National Convention. When the Convention met on the third day everybody knew that the balloting w T ould soon determine the fate of the candidates. The New York delegation felt assured of Mr. Seward's triumph, and the New Yorkers made their march to the Wigwam even more full and imposing than on the two previous days. The display proved a costly one to those who took part in it. While they were parading the streets, with banners and music, the partisans of Lincoln were quietly filling the building, and when Seward's friends arrived there was no space left, except the seats reserved for the delegates. The disap- pointment was a keen one, but it had to be endured. Within the Wigwam the scene was one that has never been adequately described. Every seat was filled. Every inch of standing room was occupied. The vast throng of ten thousand living, breathing men was palpitat- ing with suppressed excitement and strained expectation. The en- .JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 58 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. trance of the popular favorites was watched with the keenest interest, and each in turn was greeted with rousing cheers that rose and fell in blending waves of sound. During the opening prayer a solemn hush pervaded the great audience. Then there was an unexpected preliminary wrangle, that tested the patience of delegates and spec- tators to the utmost. But at last everything was ready for the pres- entation of the names of the candidates. The ceremony w r as exceed- ingly simple. There were no swelling speeches, like those that formed dramatic features of later conventions as Robert. G. Ingersoll's speech nominating Blaine at Cincinnati in 1870, and Roscoe Conk- ling's nominating Grant at Chicago in 1880. A simple announce- ment, without an electrifying prelude, was all there was of the cere- mony in 1860. " I take the liberty," said Mr. Evarts, of New York, " to name as a candidate to be nominated by this Convention for the office of President of the United States, William H. Seward." The announcement was received with a roll of applause that completely filled the great building. " I desire," Mr. Judd then said, " on behalf of the delegation from Illinois, to put in nomination as a candidate for President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln." Another wave of applause swept over the Wigwam. Then came the other nomina- tions. Bates, Chase, Cameron, Dayton, Collamer, and McLean were named, each name being received with cheers. Although caucusing had been kept up until the hour for the meeting of the Convention, and many of the delegations went into the Wigwam with no definite program beyond the first ballot, it soon became clear that the real contest would be between Seward and Lincoln. This was demon- strated in a series of episodes that revealed the spontaneous waves of feeling that were swaying the vast multitude spectators and dele- gates alike. Indiana seconded the nomination of Lincoln. The ap- plause that followed was like the roar of a tempest. Michigan sec- onded the nomination of Seward. Then the New York delegation led in a shout in which every throat in the building seemed to join. This put Lincoln's friends on their mettle, and when a part of the Ohio delegation gave them an opportunity to shout again for their favorite by seconding the nomination of Lincoln the tumultuous applause that followed was deafening, almost appalling. " I thought the Seward yell could not be surpassed," wrote Murat Halstead, the distinguished Cincinnati journalist, " but the Lincoln boys were clearly ahead, and feeling their victory, as there was a lull in the storm, took deep breaths all round, and gave a concentrated shriek that was positively awful, and accompanied it with stamping that made every plank and pillar in the building quiver." Gradually the tumult died away, and THE SECOND REPUBLICAN CONVENTION. 59 the balloting began. There were only three ballots, with the following results: 1st. 2d. 3d. Whole number of votes 465 465 465 Necessary to a choice 233 233 233 William H. Seward, of New York 173^ 184i 180 Abraham Lincoln, of Illinois 102 181 23U Simon Cameron, of Pennsylvania 50^ 2 Salmon P. Chase, of Ohio 49 42^ 24^ Edward Bates, of Missouri 48 35 22 William L. Dayton, of New Jersey 14 8 5 Jacob Collamer, of Vermont 10 Scattering 6 2 1 An analysis of this table is necessary to show how Seward was beaten and Lincoln nominated. On the first ballot 70 of Seward's votes came from New York, and 30 from the border States, including Kansas, Nebraska, and the District of Columbia. The rest was from New England and the Northwest. The action of the six New England States was a surprise and disappointment to Mr. Seward's friends. Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Vermont w r ere unanimous against him. New Hampshire gave him only one vote, and Maine and Mas- sachusetts were divided. His only solid delegation from the North- west was that of Michigan. Lincoln had his own State, Illinois, and the vote of Indiana intact from the beginning, making 48, besides 21 from the border States, 8 from Ohio, and 4 from Pennsylvania. The remaining 21 were mostly from the Western States. The Ohio vote was divided between Chase and McLean, excepting the 8 votes that went to Lincoln. Together the two Ohio candidates drew only 15 votes from other States. Cameron lost 4^ votes from the Pennsyl- vania delegation, which was as near to a full complimentary ballot as the factional feeling in that State ever accorded a Pennsylvania can- didate. Missouri voted solidly for Bates, and continued voting for him throughout the balloting. His strength outside of Missouri was only 30 votes, and it diminished to 17 on the second, and 4 on the last ballot. The result showed that the contest was between Seward and Lincoln, but it failed to disclose how the six candidates, who held the balance of power, would distribute their strength. On the second ballot Seward gained only 11 votes, while Lincoln secured 79. Of these 44 came from Cameron, 10 from Collamer, and 6 from Chase and McLean. It was Pennsylvania that gave Lincoln the impetus on this ballot that was to bring him within U votes of a majority on the next ballot. Before the balloting was ended on the third ballot, it became 60 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. known that the crisis had been reached ; and while, as is customary in such crises, the announcement of the result was held back by the chair, it was only a question of seconds who should lead in changing from other candidates to Lincoln. The break was made by David K. Carrter, of Ohio, who announced a change of 4 votes from Chase to Lincoln. Then, amidst the wildest hurrahs, delegation after delega- tion transferred its vote to the victor, until Lincoln had received 354 out of 465. After the result was announced and the tempest had sub- sided, the nomination, on motion of William M. Evarts, of New York, seconded by John A. Andrew, of Massachusetts, \vas made unani- mous. In the evening the Convention proceeded to finish its work by nomi- nating a candidate for Vice-President. On the first ballot, Hannibal Hamlin, of Maine, had 194 votes; Cassius M. Clay, of Kentucky, 101^; John Hicknian, of Pennsylvania, 58; Andrew H. Reeder, of Pennsyl- vania, 51; and Nathaniel P. Banks, of Massachusetts, 38^. On the second and final ballot Hamlin had 367, Clay 86, and Hickman 13. This selection was the best that could have been made, and the ticket was one to evoke the enthusiasm of the party. While the balloting was in progress in Chicago Mr. Lincoln was sitting in the office of the State Journal at Springfield, which was con- nected by Avire with the Wigwam. Within a few minutes of the an- nouncement of the result on the last ballot he was handed a message, that he read in silence. Then, rising, he said simply, " There is a little woman down at our house who would like to hear this; I'll go down and tell her." No political convention ever held in this country has been so much written about as the Chicago Convention of 1860. Few of those who have made it their theme have agreed in their accounts of the motives that controlled it. Mr. Lincoln's biographers, Nicolay and Hay, claim for the nomination that " it was hardly the work of the delegates it was the concurrent product of popular wisdom." " It is one of the contradictions not infrequently exhibited in the movement of parti- san bodies," said Mr. Elaine, " that Mr. Seward was defeated because of his radical expressions on the slavery questions, while Mr. Lincoln was chosen in spite of expressions far more radical than those of Mr. Seward." It is unnecessary to accept either of these conclusions. The determination to defeat Seward, at first latent, then active, and finally triumphant, was due rather to his prominence than his prin- ciples. As an anti-slavery man Lincoln had been fully as pronounced in his declarations as Seward. Even before Seward's announcement of the " irrepressible conflict," in his Rochester speech, in 1858, Mr. Lin- coln had declared that this Government could not endure half slave THE SECOND REPUBLICAN CONVENTION. 61 and half free. The only difference between the two candidates on the slavery question was that one w r as widely known and the other al- most unknown. In spite of the prominence which his joint debate with Mr. Douglas in Illinois in 1858, and his great speech at the Cooper Union in New York in 1859, had given him, Mr. Lincoln was not seriously thought of as a Presidential candidate previous to the meeting of the Chicago Convention. In a book of biographies of Presidential possibilities, published early in 1860, he was not men- tioned in conjunction with Seward, Chase, Bates, Hale, Banks, Mc- Lean, Fremont, and Henry Wilson. It was the original purpose of Seward's opponents to concentrate upon Bates. If the Convention had been held in St. Louis, instead of Chicago, it is barely possible the scheme would have succeeded. If it had failed it would have been because Bates's popularity was not so potent in the one city as was Lincoln's in the other. To unite on any of the other candidates against Seward was impossible. Chase was a man of great and recog- nized ability, but he was without magnetism, and he had no personal following- not even the united support of his own State. Dayton had no strength outside of New Jersey, and Cameron had none out- side of Pennsylvania. Collamer could command no support outside of New England. Lincoln's strength was not considered in its per- sonal aspects, nor were his immediate friends instrumental in secur- ing his nomination. The whole question was one of availability, un- der conditions in which Mr. Seward Avas not considered available. In determining this question it was Indiana, not Illinois, that was the more potent; it was the friends of Lane in Lincoln's behalf, not Lin- coln's Illinois friends, active, able, enthusiastic, and skillful as they were, who molded the plastic material in the Convention to their will. The friends of Curtin were willing to follow the friends of Lane wherever the latter chose to lead. When Pennsylvania united with Illinois and Indiana on the second ballot Seward's sun was about to set Lincoln's star was seen to rise as the harbinger of the coming victory. It was no great question of principle that dictated Lincoln's success and Seward's failure, but the whole matter resolved itself into an adjustment of party needs in localities where party success was im- perative. Their failure was not without the bitterness of disappoint- ment to Seward and his friends, but they could take no offense at the triumph of Lincoln. Happily they cherished no ill-will, nourished no hatreds, but accepted the discipline of defeat with the heroism of men to whom devotion to their cause was paramount to every other consideration. Seward, like Clay and Webster, had failed in the ambition of a lifetime, but his fame is all the brighter because he manfullv subordinated his own claims upon the party he had done 62 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. so much to create to the decree of its great tribunal, which could make and unmake leaders. At the time of his nomination Abraham Lincoln was 51 years old. He had many of the elements of a popular candidate for the Presi- dency in the peculiar crisis when he was made the standard-bearer of the Republican party. He was one of the plain people, to begin with, with all their virtues and some of their shortcomings. He was self-educated, self-made. By birth he belonged to the pioneer class, and he was a typical product of that Western civilization that pro- duced men strong of limb, sound of brain, and bold of heart. Born in Kentucky, he had been reared in Indiana, and had attained his young manhood in that " land of full-grown men," Illinois. As an ungainly, long-legged, strong-limbed, and cheery young fellow he worked as a farm-hand in the Sangamon country, and with his own hands split the rails that fenced his father's first farm in Illinois. Striking out for himself, after reaching his majority., young Lincoln made one of the crew of a flatboat in a winter voyage down the Sangamon and the Mississippi to New Orleans. Then he found employment managing a country store at New Salem, and spent his leisure time in reading such books as he was able to procure. In a year or two he was accounted a prod- igy of learning by his less studious LINCOLN'S BIRTHPLACE. neighbors, and as early as 1832 he was successful in becoming a candidate for the Legislature. Before the election came on, the famous Indian chief, Black Hawk, was on the warpath, and Lincoln was one of the first to volunteer. He was made captain of his company, but so far as it concerned Lincoln's command the campaign was a bloodless one. After his return from Black Hawk's war Lincoln failed of his election to the Legislature, and his employer failed in business. He then tried a country store on his own account, but the speculation proved disastrous. Thus he was again without employment and in debt. He then turned his attention to surveying, and became an amateur lawyer. In 1834 he was again a candidate for the Legisla- ture, and was elected. He was three times re-elected. Becoming a full-fledged lawyer, Lincoln, in 1837, settled in Springfield, which had just become the capital of Illinois. There he practiced until his elec- tion to the Presidency, his law partners being John T. Stuart, 1837- 41; Stephen T. Logan, 1841-3, and William H. Herndon, 1843- 65. Lincoln gained distinction at the bar, and in a few years was THE SECOND REPUBLICAN CONVENTION. 63 recognized as one of the leading lawyers of the State. In 1846 he was elected to Congress, his Democratic competitor being Peter Cart- wright, the famous backwoods preacher. In his speeches in Congress there were some characteristic touches. " He invaded Canada with- out resistance," he said of General Lewis Cass, " and he outvaded without pursuit." " First he takes up one," he remarked of Presi- dent Polk's positions on the Mexican war, " and in attempting to argue us into it, he argues himself out of it." " His manner of speech, as well as thought, Avas original," Alexander H. Stephens said of him many years afterward. " He had no model. He was a man of strong convictions and, what Carlyle would have called, an earnest man. He abounded in anecdote. He illustrated everything he was talking about with an anecdote, always exceedingly apt and pointed; and socially he always kept his company in a roar of laughter." Although his service in the House was restricted to the 30th Congress, he evinced his strong anti-slavery convictions by in- troducing a bill for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia. In those days a man in Illinois who wanted a second term in Congress was considered greedy, and Lincoln was compelled to stand aside for Edward D. Baker, who had returned from Mex- ico renowned for distinguished service at Cerro Gordo. Lincoln then sought to be Commissioner of the General Land Office under President Taylor, HANNIBAL HAMLIN. but was offered the Governorship of Oregon instead, which he de- clined because of the reluctance of his wife to go to the Pacific coast. It is a noteworthy coincidence that Baker, his successor in the House of Representatives, was a Senator in Congress from Oregon when Lincoln became President of the United States. After leaving Con- gress Mr. Lincoln devoted himself to his law practice, and was losing his interest in politics when the Repeal of the Missouri Compromise again aroused him to activity. He met Mr. Douglas in joint discus- sion in 1854, and in 1858 occurred the famous joint debate between Douglas and Lincoln. It was these contests with the " Little Giant " ~ that made him a Presidential possibility against Douglas in 1860. Hannibal Hamlin, Mr. Lincoln's associate on the ticket, was ori- ginally a Democrat of the school of Silas Wright. He was a lawyer by profession, and had served in the Maine Legislature from 1836 to 1840; he was a Representative in the 28th and 28th Congresses, and 64 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. again a member of the Maine Legislature in 1847, and was elected to the United States Senate in 1848, and re-elected for six years in 1851. In January, 1857, he resigned his seat in the Senate to become Gov- ernor of Maine, but, being again elected United States Senator for six years, he resigned the Governorship after holding it only six weeks. His opposition to the Eepeal of the Missouri Compromise had separated him from his old politi- cal associates. His candidature for Governor of Maine, in 1856, was undertaken in opposition to the Democratic party in that State, and his success gave a great impulse to Republican organization through- out the country. Mr. Hamlin was a man of strong common sense, great sagacity, sound judgment, and rugged integrity. His nomina- tion imparted strength to the ticket, and helped to inspire the party with confidence and courage throughout the campaign. The ticket was one that aroused the Free States to enthusiasm, and the weary delegates, speeding homeward from Chicago, saw evidences of the approbation of the country in every village. Blazing bonfires, clanging bells, and thundering cannon, and processions bearing- rails in honor of the rail-splitter of Illinois, attested the satisfaction with which the work of the Chicago Convention was received by the people, and opened a campaign that was to become unique in history. V. THE LINCOLN AND HAMLIN CAMPAIGN. Shades of Opinion in the Canvass Mr. Lincoln During the Campaign Republican Enthusiasm and Oratory Seward and His Friends -Hostility of the Commercial Class to Republican Success- Campaign Medals The Wide-A wakes The Illinois Rail-Split- ter the State Elections Analysis of the Presidential Vote. ITH four Presidential tickets in the field, the campaign of 1860 could not fail to be an animated one. The four can- didates for President represented every shade of political opinion on the slavery question. Mr. Lincoln was in favor of prohibiting slavery extension by law. Mr. Breckinridge demanded legal protection for its extension. Mr. Douglas occupied a position between these two extremes, and advocated his doctrine of non-in- tervention with the fiery impetuosity and tireless energy for which he was remarkable. Mr. Bell desired to avoid the only real question that was at issue, and to concentrate the interest of the country on what he considered the paramount duty of saving the Union. It was apparent from the outset that the supporters of Breckinridge con- templated the destruction of the Government if they failed in the elections. This was not only the belief of the Republicans and of the supporters of Douglas and Bell, but it was openly avowed and pub- licly proclaimed by the Southern Democracy. In pursuance of this policy the supporters of Breckinridge proceeded to render the election of Douglas impossible, and the election of Lincoln a certainty, by organizing a party and nominating Breckinridge electors in many of the Free States, notably in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Connecticut, California, and Oregon. Their manifest purpose was to create alarm in the North, but the time had gone by when the Northern people would yield to their fears for the Union; and the Republicans, instead of being weakened by the threat that a President constitutionally elected could not be inaugurated, were strengthened by the domineer- ing and offensive declarations of the South. It soon became apparent that Mr. Lincoln's election was a certainty, and not even the " fusion " tickets in the States of New York, New Jersey, and Rhode Island could prevent it. Every coalition in the Free States meant combined opposition to Republican success, but in the Slave States the Breck- inridge men would consent to no compromise, partnership, or ar- 66 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. rangement with the partisans of Douglas, although aware that the effect would be to give Virginia, Kentucky, and Maryland to Bell and Everett. All of these considerations entered into the discussions throughout the campaign, and rendered it more animated than any that had gone before it. During the campaign Mr. Lincoln remained quietly at his home at Springfield, making no public addresses, writing no political letters, and holding no conferences with politicians. As a matter of course, letters came to him b} r the hundred from every part of the country, and a constant stream of visitors sought the Republican candidate, some from idle curiosity, some with an honest purpose of encouraging him and serving him, and many to put in a good word for themselves in case of his election. The one change made in Mr. Lincoln's daily life during the campaign was his occupancy of the Governor's room in the State House at Springfield, which was not needed for official business during the absence of the Legislature. It was a plain room of modest proportions, and scantily furnished. Free access was given to all who chose to enter. Mr. Lincoln watched the campaign carefully, but took no active part in its direction, and acted in all respects as if he were only an indifferent observer. Mr. Douglas, on the contrary, for the first time in the case of a Presidential candidate, took the stump on his own behalf. A ready and able debater, he at- tracted large crowds to his meetings, speaking in nearty all the Free and in some of the Slave States; but he soon found that the odds against him were too heavy to leave any well-grounded hope for his election. His speeches were designed to prove that he was the only safe candidate that Breckinridge represented the sectionalism of slavery, and Lincoln the sectionalism of anti-slavery. It was the old appeal to the fears of the people, that had been the basis of all the compromises and concessions since 1820. It was ineffective, because the Free States w r ere no longer in a temper for evasion or surrender. His doctrine of " squatter sovereignty " had become as hateful to the South as the restrictions of the Wilmot Proviso, and there was never a doubt from the beginning to the close of the campaign that the Southern Democracy was as bitterly hostile to Douglas as to Lincoln. Bell's prospects were equally hopeless, and neither the Constitutional Union party nor its candidate had any real share in the campaign, except to stultify the memories of Clay and Webster, by diverting from Lincoln and the North part of the support of which he was en- titled, and giving to Breckinridge and the South a part of the elec- toral strength that ought to have gone to Douglas. In the campaign of 1860 the Republicans had the advantage of presenting a united front to the enemy, while the Democracy was THE LINCOLN AND HAMLIN CAMPAIGN. 67 arraying itself in two hostile camps at Charleston and Baltimore. In nearly all of the great cities of the North enthusiastic ratification meetings were held before the nominations of Douglas and Breckin- ridge were made by the contending Democratic factions. At these meetings speeches were made by the young orators of the Republican party from all over the Free States. Among the earliest of these meetings was one held in Independence Square, in Philadelphia, on the 26th of May, at which addresses were made by Lyman Trumbull, of Illinois; William Dunn, of Indiana; John Sherman, of Ohio, and Galusha A. Grow, of Pennsylvania. The bitter assaults upon Sher- man and Grow during the contest for the Speakership at the opening of Congress made them popular favorites, and they were serenaded after the meeting with an outburst of enthusiasm that showed how thoroughly the people were aroused to the importance of the issues involved in the campaign. In New York, in Boston, in Cincinnati, in Chicago, in all the smaller cities from Portland, Maine, to Portland, Oregon in the towns and vil- lages and country schoolhouses, the orators of the party met respon- sive gatherings of the people, some- times in great processions wearing badges and carrying torches, and sometimes in quiet neighborhood meetings, but with the badges and torches everywhere. Every conspicuous Republican orator in the North and West was pressed into the service, but the young men were especially active and eloquent. Among the most distinguished then or afterward were Governor Chase, of Ohio; Judge Wilmot, of Pennsylvania; William M. Evarts, of New York, and John A. An- drew, of Massachusetts. Curtin and Lane canvassed their States with a thoroughness that had never before been attempted in these old Democratic strongholds, feeling that the responsibility for success or failure rested largely upon their shoulders. Horace Greeley left the editorial rooms of the Tribune to address ward meetings and rural gatherings, and George William Curtis gave his party the benefit of his polished periods and brilliant oratory. But the most conspicuous of the Republican orators during the canvass was, of course, William H. Seward. He made a political tour through the Northwest during 68 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. the autumn, making speeches of a remarkably high order. His clos- ing address was made to his own townsmen at Auburn the night be- fore the election. A few sentences from that closing speech summed up the situation, as it had been developed by months of campaign- ing. " You may go \vith me into the streets to-night," he said, " and follow the ' Little Giants,' who go with their torchlights and their flaunting banners of 1 Popular Sovereignty '; or you may go with the smaller and more select and modest band, who go for Breckinridge and Slavery; or you may follow the music of the clanging bells; and, strange to say, they will bring you into one chamber. When you get there, you will hear only this emotion of the human heart appealed to, Fear fear that if you elect a President of the United States according to the constitution and the law r s to-morrow, you will wake up next day and find that you have no country for him to preside over! Is that not a strange motive for an American patriot to appeal to? And, in that same hall, amid the jargon of three discordant members of the ' Fusion ' party, you will hear one argument; and that argument is, that so sure as you are so perverse as to cast your vote singly, lawfully, honestly, as you ought to do, for one candidate for the Presidency, instead of scatter- ing it among three candidates, so that no President may be elected, this Union shall come down over your heads, involving you and us in a common ruin! " These sentiments were the dominating note of the canvass. Wher- ever a Republican speaker was heard the people were urged not to yield to the fears that it was hoped would paralyze Republican ac- tivity and prevent the election of Lincoln. But while Sew r ard adopted the manly course in upholding the party and supporting its candidate, he made no attempt either then or afterward to conceal how keenly he felt his disappointment. Curtin and Lane he treated with a frigid- ity that showed that he held them responsible for his defeat, and that kept them aloof from him ever afterward. His friends were even more unforgiving. Although Governor Edwin D. Morgan, of New York, consented to remain at the head of the National Committee, he exhibited no cordiality toward either of these men, and was indiffer- ent to the success of the Republicans in Pennsylvania and Indiana. Weed was brusque even to rudeness. " I called on Morgan the night after the nomination was made," Curtin wrote in August. " He treated me civilly, but with marked coolness; and I then called on THE LINCOLN AND HAMLIN CAMPAIGN. 69 Weed, who was very rude indeed." Thurlow Weed was not a man who sought to cloak his resentments. " You have defeated the man who, of all others, was most revered by the people and wanted as President," he said to Curtin. " You and Lane want to be elected, and to elect Lincoln you must elect yourselves." Neither Weed nor Morgan responded to appeals in behalf of the State ticket in Penn- sylvania, although the results of the Presidential contest hinged upon Republican success in that State, in the October elections; but the party was so well satisfied with Lincoln's nomination that the indif- ference of the New York magnates produced no evil consequences. A marked feature of the campaign was the hostility of the com- mercial classes to Republican success. This was especially the case with the " merchant princes " of New York and Philadelphia. Their dissatisfaction was partly due to a fear of secession and civil war should Lincoln be elected, and partly to the large Southern indebted- ness to the mercantile classes in these two great commercial cities. " I can not recall five commercial houses of prominence in the city of Philadelphia," wrote the chairman of the Republican State Commit- tee of Pennsylvania afterward, " where I could have gone to solicit a subscription to the Lincoln campaign with reasonable expectation that it would not be resented, and of all our financial men I can recall only Anthony J. Drexel who actually sympathized with the Republi- can cause." In New Y^ork city the fears of the merchants of a result fatal to their business, their prosperity, and their affluence, were so vivid and earnest, that while there was abundance of money for " Fu- sion," there was little or none to promote Republican success. But even the potency of wealth availed nothing against the tide of popu- lar conviction and enthusiasm. Any account of the campaign would be incomplete without some mention of the badges and symbols and marching clubs that were its most picturesque features. The Republicans had their " Wide- Awakes," " Lincoln Defenders," " Republican Invincibles," and " Rail-Splitters "; and even the Constitutional Union party marched as " Bell-Ringers " and " Minute Men of '56." Campaign medals were worn throughout the canvass by the partisans of all the candidates. There was a beautiful portrait medal of Stephen A. Douglas, one of the same size, but inferior workmanship, of John C. Breckinridge, and a smaller one than either of these of John Bell. The Lincoln portrait medals in many cases combined the portraits of both Lincoln and Hamlin, and one of them had a characteristic inscription, " Abra- Ham Lin-Coin." Altogether the number of Lincoln medals of 1860 was about 200, which is second only in American political medals to the extensive series of Washington medallions covering a period of 70 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. many years. The most interesting pieces of the Lincoln series were those worn by the Hartford " Wide-A wakes," the first uniformed body of voters to take part in political processions. This medal shows on its obverse a " Wide-Awake " in full uniform, carrying a lantern, and on the reverse another bearing a torch. The obverse of one of these medals shows a " Wide- Awake," wearing a characteristic " Wide-Awake " hat, and bears the inscription, " I am ready." Med- als relating to Lincoln's struggles in early life were very popular, and there was a number of them bearing such inscriptions as " Great Kail-Splitter of the West," and " The Kail-Splitter of 1830." The rail- DOUGLAS MEDAL. BRECKINRIDGE MEDAL. splitter of 1830 was, of course, the party splitter of 1860. Other in- scriptions in the Lincoln series were " Honest Abe of the West," " Honest Old Abe," " No More Slave Territory," and " Free Homes for Free Men." In originality of design and beauty of execution they were not inferior to the Clay pieces of 1844, representing " The Same Old Coon, O. K." and " The Mill Boy of the Slashes." With this Lin- coln series political medals in Presidential campaigns ceased to be noteworthy, although a few characteristic ones remain to be noticed hereafter. The origin of the " Wide- A wakes " is a cqrious bit of political his- THE LINCOLN AND HAMLIN CAMPAIGN. 71 tory. The organization grew out of an incident of the first campaign meeting at Hartford, February 25, 1800 the State election. Cas- sius M. Clay, of Kentucky, was the principal speaker, and it was ar- ranged that after the meeting he should be escorted to the Allyn House by a torchlight procession. Two of the young men who were to carry torches, D. G. Francis and H. P. Blair, in order to protect their clothing from the oil likely to fall from their lamps, prepared for themselves capes of black cambric, which they wore in connection with their glazed caps. Colonel G. P. Bissell, w r ho was marshal of the parade, noticing the uniform worn by the two young men, put them in front of the procession, where the novelty of the rig, and its double advantage in utility and in show, at- tracted much attention. The incident suggested a campaign club of fifty torch-bearers, with glazed caps and oilcloth capes, instead of cambric, the torch-bearing club to be auxiliary to the Young Men's Republican Union. It was intended formally to organize the torch-bearers on the Gth of March, but on the evening of the 5th Abraham Lincoln addressed a meeting at Hartford. After his speech such of the cape-wearers as had secured their uniforms escorted Mr. Lincoln to his hotel. In notic- ing the proposed organization of the torch-bearers, a day or two be- fore, William P. Fuller, city editor of the Hartford Courant, alluded to them as the " Wide-Awakes." The name was applied to the Repub- lican Young Men's Union as well as the torch-bearers, but at their meeting on the Gth of March the latter determined to appropriate the title as the distinctive name of their special organization. Their example was followed by the Republican torch-bearers all over the country, and before the Presidential campaign was well under way, the " Wide-Awakes " had swallowed up the names and the mem- bership of other Republican clubs everywhere. It was just one year after the Hartford " Wide-Awakes " escorted Mr. Lincoln in their first parade that he was inaugurated President of the United States. On a number of occasions as many as twenty and perhaps thirty thousand " Wide-Awakes " marched in the torchlight processions in the larger cities. The rail symbols and the rail-splitter phrases originated at the Illinois Republican Convention at Decatur, May 10, I860. While the Convention was at work the proceedings were interrupted by a mys- terious announcement that an old citizen of Macon County had some- thing to present. Curiosity having been sufficiently aroused for the episode, John Hanks and one of Hauks's neighbors entered the hall, each bearing an old fence rail purporting to be two identical rails 72 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. from a lot of 3,000 which the boy Lincoln had helped to cut and split in 1830 for the inclosure of his father's farm. These emblems of his handiwork were intended as a prelude to a resolution recommending him for President of the United States, and they were received by the Convention with deafening shouts. Lincoln was present on this occasion, but it is said he was not greatly pleased with the rail-splitter incident. Years afterward he was asked if he believed they were the veritable rails he and Hanks had made. " I wouldn't make my affi- davit that they were," he said, " but Hanks and I did make rails on that piece of ground, although I think I could make better rails now, and I did say that if there are any of the rails that had been split, I wouldn't wonder that they are the rails." A few days later these rails were sent to Chicago, where, trimmed with flowers and lighted up with tapers, they were exhibited in the hotel parlor at the headquarters of the Illinois delegation. Their history and the campaign incidents of which they were the features were duly exploited in the newspapers throughout the West and North. Although the Republican candidate was in consequence hailed as the "Rail-Splitter of Illinois," it was spitefully asked " Will he split the Union as he used to split rails? " It does not appear that it became custom- ary for rail-bearers to march side by side with the torch-bearers in their Wide-Awake caps and capes in the Re- publican processions of the campaign. The spring elections of I860 in the New England States afforded no certainty of a Republican triumph in November. New Hampshire was carried by a satisfactory majority in February, but in Connecti- cut Governor Buckingham was re-elected by only 541 votes in a total of 80,000, and in Rhode Island the Republicans w r ere beaten by Will- iam Sprague for Governor by a majority of 1,460. The elections in Maine and Vermont in September showed that the tide had turned. In the former State a Republican Governor was elected by a majority of 18,091, and the latter followed with a Republican majority of 22,- 370. If Penns}^lvania and Indiana showed results equally decisive in October Lincoln's election could be regarded as a certainty. The whole interest of the campaign was centered in these States, in which the Democrats were united and hopeful. In Pennsylvania Curtin ANDREW G. CURTIN. THE LINCOLN AND HAMLIN CAMPAIGN. 73 was opposed by Henry D. Foster, who had the hearty support of the three factions into which a disrupted Democracy divided the elements opposed to Republican success. In Indiana Thomas A. Hendricks was Lane's only competitor. Curtin swept Pennsylvania, obtaining a majority of 32,164, and Lane had 9,757 majority in Indiana. It was clear that nothing short of a miracle would prevent the election of Lincoln and Hamlin in November. All of the eighteen Free States chose all the Lincoln electors except New Jersey, where Douglas had 3 votes in the Electoral College to 4 for Lincoln. The popular vote in New Jersey is usually quoted as 62,801 for Douglas and 58,324 for Lincoln, but this is scarcely a fair test of the relative strength of the candidates. The " Fusion " ticket was made up of three Douglas, two Breckinridge, and two Bell repre- sentatives. This required " scratching " in every case in which a Douglas Democrat voted for Republican electors. If the Breckin- ridge and Bell votes had been eliminated from the so-called " Fusion " vote, Lincoln would have had a plurality. In all the other States in which Republican electors were chosen, except California and Oregon, Lincoln had a majority. It w r as the Breckinridge faction that de- prived Douglas of the vote of both these States. The only Slave State that Douglas carried was Missouri. Bell carried Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee. If Bell's strength had been given to Douglas in the South it would have given him the States of Maryland, Virginia, Georgia, Louisiana, Tennessee, and Kentucky. Thus it will be seen that the Constitutional Union party operated in behalf of the party of secession in the Slave States, and prevented Douglas's success in the two Pacific States. But not even a United Democracy combined with the full Bell and Everett strength would have defeated the Republi- can ticket. The Republican majorities in 15 States gave Lincoln 169 electors, to a possible 134 for a united opposition. In the Electoral College Lincoln had 180 votes, Breckinridge 72, Bell 39, and Douglas 12. Lincoln fell 947,289 short of an absolute majority in a popular vote of 4,680,193. Had Seward been nominated there is no reason to suppose that he would have been beaten in any of the States in which Lincoln had majorities. This triumph ended the creative period of the Republican party. DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF THE EPOCH. THE WILMOT PROVISO. " PROVIDED, That, as an express and fundamental condition to the acquisition of any territory from the Republic of Mexico by the United States, by virtue of any treaty that may be negotiated be- tween them, and to the use by the Executive of the moneys herein appropriated, neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall ever exist in any part of said territory, except for crime, whereof the party shall first be duly convicted." SLAVERY CLAUSES IN THE DEMOCRATIC PLATFORM, 1852. " Resolved, That Congress had no power, under the Constitution, to interfere with or control the domestic institutions of the several States, and that such States are the sole and proper judges of every- thing appertaining to their own affairs not prohibited by the Consti- tution; that all efforts of the Abolitionists or others, made to induce Congress to interfere with the questions of slavery, or to take in- cipient steps in relation thereto, are calculated to lead to the most alarming and dangerous consequences, and that all such efforts have an inevitable tendency to diminish the happiness of the people, and endanger the stability and permanency of the Union, and ought not to be countenanced by any friend to our political institutions. " Resolved, That the foregoing proposition covers, and is intended to embrace, the whole subject of slavery agitated in Congress; and therefore the Democratic party of the Union, standing on this na- tional platform, will abide by, and adhere to, a faithful execution of the acts known as the l compromise ' measures settled by the last Congress the act for reclaiming fugitives from service or labor in- cluded; which act, being designed to carry out an express provision of the Constitution, can not with fidelity thereto be repealed, nor so changed as to destroy or impair its efficiency. " Resolved, That the Democratic party will resist all attempts at renewing in Congress, or out of it, the agitation of the slavery ques- tion, under whatever shape or color the attempt may be made." The Whig Convention declared that the Compromise measures of 1850 had been " received and acquiesced in by the Whig party in the United States, as a settlement in principle and substance of the dan- gerous and exciting questions which they embrace," and further, that this system was " essential to the nationality of the Whig party, and the integrity of the Union." DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF THE EPOCH. 75 WHIG DECLARATION, 1852. " That the series of acts of the Thirty-second Congress, the act known as the Fugitive Slave law included, are received and acqui- esced in by the Whig party of the United States as a settlement in principle and substance of the dangerous and exciting questions which they embrace; and, so far as they are concerned, we will main- tain them, and insist upon their strict enforcement, until time and experience shall demonstrate the necessity of further legislation to guard against the evasion of the laws on the one hand and the abuse of their powers on the other, not impairing their present efficiency; and we deprecate all further agitation of the question thus settled, as dangerous to our peace, and will discountenance all efforts to con- tinue or renew such agitation, whenever, wherever, or however the attempt may be made; and we will maintain this system as essential to the nationality of the Whig party and the integrity of the Union." REPUBLICAN PLATFORM OF 1856. This convention of delegates, assembled in pursuance of a call ad- dressed to the people of the United States, without regard to past political differences or divisions, who are opposed to the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, to the policy of the present administration, to the extension of slavery into free territory; in favor of admitting Kan- sas as a Free State, of restoring the action of the Federal Government to the principles of Washington and Jefferson; and who purpose to unite in presenting candidates for the offices of President and Vice- President, do resolve as follows: Resolved, That the maintenance of the principles promulgated in the Declaration of Independence and embodied in the Federal Con- stitution is essential to the preservation of our Republican institu- tions, and that the Federal Constitution, the rights of the States, and the union of the States, shall be preserved. Resolved, That with our Republican fathers we hold it to be a self-evident truth, that all men are endowed with the inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and that the primary object and ulterior designs of our Federal Government were to secure these rights to all persons within its exclusive jurisdiction; that, as our Republican fathers, when they had abolished slavery in all our national territory, ordained that no person should be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, it becomes our duty to maintain this provision of the constitution against all at- tempts to violate it for the purpose of establishing slavery in any 76 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. territory of the United States, by positive legislation, prohibiting its existence or extension therein. That we deny the authority of Con- gress, of a Territorial Legislature, of any individual or association of individuals, to give legal existence to slavery in any Territory of the United States, while the present constitution shall be main- tained. Resolved, That the Constitution confers upon Congress sovereign power over the Territories of the United States, for their government, and that in the exercise of this power it is both the right and the duty of Congress to prohibit in the Territories those twin relics of barbarism, polygamy and slavery. Resolved, That while the Constitution of the United States was ordained and established by the people in order to form a more per- fect Union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defense, and secure the blessings of liberty, and con- tains ample provision for the protection of the life, liberty, and prop- erty of every citizen, the dearest constitutional rights of the people of Kansas have been fraudulently and violently taken from them; their territory has been invaded by an armed force; spurious and pretended legislative, judicial, and executive officers have been set over them, by whose usurped authorit} 7 , sustained by the military power of the Government, tyrannical and unconstitutional law's have been enacted and enforced; the rights of the people to keep and bear arms have been infringed; test oaths of an extraordinary and en- tangling nature have been imposed as a condition of exercising the right of suffrage and holding office; the right of an accused person to a speedy and public trial by an impartial jury has been denied; the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures has been violated: they have been deprived of life, liberty, and property without due process of law; that the freedom of speech and of the press has been abridged; the right to choose their representatives has been made of no effect; murders, robberies, and arsons have been instigated and encouraged, and the offenders have been allowed to go unpunished; that all these things have been done with the knowledge, sanction, and procurement of the present administration; and that for this high crime against the Constitution, the Union, and humanity, we arraign the administration, the President, his advisers, agents, sup- porters, apologists, and accessories, either before or after the fact, before the country and before the world, and that it is our fixed pur- pose to bring the actual perpetrators of these atrocious outrages, and their accomplices, to a sure and condign punishment hereafter. Resolved, That Kansas should be immediately admitted as a State of the Union, with her present free constitution, as at once the most DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF THE EPOCH. 77 effectual way of securing to her citizens the enjoyment of the rights and privileges to which they are entitled, and of ending the civil strife now raging in her territory. " Resolved, That the highwayman's plea, that " might makes right," embodied in the Ostend circular, was in every respect un- worthy of American diplomacy, and would bring shame and dishonor upon any government or people that gave it their sanction. Resolved, That a railroad to the Pacific Ocean, by the most cen- tral and practicable route, is imperatively demanded by the interests of the whole country, and that the Federal Government ought to ren- der immediate and efficient aid in its construction; and, as an auxil- iary thereto, the immediate construction of an emigrant route on the line of the railroad. Resolved, That appropriations by Congress for the improvement of rivers and harbors, of a national character, required for the accom- modation and security of our existing commerce, are authorized by the Constitution, and justified by the obligation of government to protect the lives and property of its citizens. THE PHILADELPHIA NOMINATION. Philadelphia, June 19, 1856. SIR: A convention of delegates, assembled at Philadelphia on 17th, 18th, and 19th days of June, 185G, under a call addressed to the people of the United States, without regard to past political differ- ences or divisions, who are opposed to the repeal of the Missouri Com- promise, to the policy of the present administration, to the extension of slavery into free territory, in favor of the admission of Kansas as a Free State, and of restoring the action of the Federal Government to the principles of Washington and Jefferson, adopted a declaration of principles and purposes for which they are united in political ac- tion a copy of which we have the honor to inclose and unanimously nominated you as their candidate for the office of President of the United States at the approaching election, as the chosen representa- tive of those principles in this important political contest, and with the assured conviction that you would give them full practical op- eration, should the suffrages of the people of the Union place you at the head of the National Government. The undersigned were directed by the convention to communicate to you the fact of your nomination, and to request you in their name and, as they believe, in the name of a large majority of the people of the country, to accept it. 78 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. Offering you the assurance of our high personal respect, we are your fellow citizens, H. S. LANE, Pres. of the Convention. JAMES M. ASHLEY. ANTHONY J. BLEECKER. JOSEPH C. HOKNBLOWER. E. K. HOAR. THADDEUS STEVENS. KlNGSLEY S. BlNGHAM. JOHN A. WILLS. C. F. CLEVELAND. CYRUS ALDRICH. To John C. Fremont, of California. ACCEPTANCE OF THE PHILADELPHIA NOMINATION. New York, July 8, 1856. GENTLEMEN: You call me to a high responsibility by placing me in the van of a great movement of the people of the United States, who, without regard to past differences, are united in a common effort to bring back the action of the Federal Government to the principles of Washington and Jefferson. Comprehending the magnitude of the trust which they have declared themselves willing to place in my hands, and deeply sensible to the honor which their unreserved con- fidence in this threatening position of public affairs implies, I feel that I can not better respond than by a sincere declaration that, in the event of my election to the Presidency, I should enter upon the exe- cution of its duties with a single-hearted determination to promote the good of the whole country, and to direct solely to this end all the power of the Government, irrespective of party issues, and regardless of sectional strifes. The declaration of principles embodied in the resolves of your convention, expresses the sentiments in which I have been educated, and which have been ripened into convictions by per- sonal observation and experience. With this declaration and avowal, I think it necessary to revert to only two of the subjects embraced in the resolutions, and to those only because events have surrounded them with grave and critical circumstances, and given to them espe- cial importance. I concur in the views of the convention deprecating the foreign policy to which it adverts. The assumption that we have the right to take from another nation its domains because we want them, is an abandonment of the honest character which our country has acquired. DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF THE EPOCH. 79 To provoke hostilities by unjust assumptions would be to sacrifice the peace and character of the country, when all its interests might be more certainly secured, and its objects attained by just and healing counsels, involving no loss of reputation. International embarrassments are mainly the results of a secret diplomacy, which aims to keep from the knowledge of the people the operations of the Government. This system is inconsistent with the character of our institutions, and is itself yielding gradually to a more enlightened public opinion, and to the power of a free press, which, by its broad dissemination of political intelligence, secures in advance to the side of justice the judgment of the civilized world. An honest, firm, and open policy in our foreign relations would com- mand the united support of the nation, whose deliberate opinions it would necessarily reflect. Nothing is clearer in the history of our institutions than the de- sign of the nation, in asserting its own independence and freedom, to avoid giving countenance to the extension of slavery. The influence of the small but compact and powerful class of men interested in slavery, who command one section of the country, and wield a vast political control as a consequence in the other, is now directed to turn back this impulse of the Revolution, and reverse its principles. The extension of slavery across the continent is the object of the power which now rules the Government; and from this spirit have sprung those kindred wrongs in Kansas so truly portrayed in one of your resolutions, which prove that the elements of the most arbitrary governments have not been vanquished by the just theory of our own. It would be out of place here to pledge myself to any particular policy that has been suggested to terminate the sectional contro- versy engendered by political animosities, operating on a powerful class banded together by a common interest. A practical remedy is the admission of Kansas into the Union as a Free State. The South should, in my judgment, earnestly desire such consummation. It would vindicate its good faith it would correct the mistake of the repeal; and the North, having practically the benefit of the agree- ment between the two sections, would be satisfied, and good feeling be restored. The measure is perfectly consistent with the honor of the South, and vital to its interests. That fatal act which gave birth to this purely sectional strife, originating in the scheme to take from free labor the country secured to it by a solemn covenant, can not be too soon disarmed of its pernicious force. The only genial region of the middle latitudes left to the emi- grants of the Northern States for homes can not be conquered from the free laborers, who have long considered it as set apart for them 80 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. in our inheritance, without provoking a desperate struggle. What- ever may be the persistence of the particular class which seems ready to hazard everything for the success of the unjust scheme it has par- tially effected, I firmly believe that the great heart of the nation, which throbs with the patriotism of the free men of both sections, will have power to overcome it. They will look to the rights secured to them by the Constitution of the Union, as their best safeguard from the oppression of the class which by a monopoly of the soil, and of slave labor to till it might, in time, reduce them to the extremity of laboring upon the same terms with the slaves. The great body of non-slaveholding freemen, including those of the South, upon whose welfare slavery is an oppression, will discover that the power of the general Government over the public lands may be beneficially exerted to advance their interests and secure their independence. Knowing this, their suffrages will not be wanting to maintain that authority in the Union which is absolutely essential to the maintenance of their own liberties, and which has more than once indicated the purpose of disposing of the public lands in such a way as would make every settler upon them a freeholder. If the people intrust to me the administration of the Government, the laws of Congress in relation to the Territories shall be faithfully executed. All its authority shall be exerted in aid of the national will to re-establish the peace of the country on the just principles which have heretofore received the sanction of the Federal Govern- ment, of the States, and of the people of both sections. Such a policy would leave no aliment to that sectional party which seeks its ag- grandizement by appropriating the new Territories to capital in the form of slavery, but would inevitably result in the triumph of free labor the natural capital which constitutes the real wealth of this great country, and creates that intelligent power in the masses alone to be relied on as the bulwark of free institutions. Trusting that I have a heart capable of comprehending our whole country, with its varied interests, and confident that patriotism ex- ists in all parts of the Union, I accept the nomination of your conven- tion, in the hope that I may be enabled to serve usefully its cause, which I consider the cause of constitutional freedom. Very respectfully your obedient servant, J. C. FREMONT. REPUBLICAN PLATFORM OF 1860. Kesolved, That we, the delegated representatives of the Republi- can electors of the United States, in convention assembled, in dis- DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF THE EPOCH. 81 charge of the duty we owe to our constituents and our country, unite in the following declarations: 1. That the history of the nation, during the last four years, has fully established the propriety and necessity of the organization and perpetuation of the Republican party, and that the causes which called it into existence are permanent in their nature, and now, more than ever before, demand its peaceful and constitutional triumph. 2. That the maintenance of the principles promulgated in the Declaration of Independence and embodied in the Federal Constitu- tion " that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed " is essential to the preservation of our institutions; and that the Federal Constitution, the rights of the States, and the union of the States, must and shall be preserved. 3. That to the union of the States this nation owes its unprece- dented increase in population, its surprising development of material resources, its rapid augmentation of wealth, its happiness at home, and its honor abroad; and we hold in abhorrence all schemes for dis- union, come from whatever source they may; and we congratulate the country that no Republican member of Congress has uttered or coun- tenanced the threats of disunion so often made by Democratic mem- bers, without rebuke and with applause from their political associ- ates; and we denounce those threats of disunion, in case of a popular overthrow of their ascendency, as denying the vital principles of a free government, and as an avowal of contemplated treason, which it is the imperative duty of an indignant people sternly to rebuke and forever silence. 4. That the maintenance inviolate of the rights of the States, and especially the right of each State to order and control its own domes- tic institutions according to its own judgment exclusively, is essen- tial to that balance of power on which the perfection and endurance of our political fabric depends; and we denounce the lawless inva- sion by armed force of the soil of any State or Territory, no matter under what pretext, as among the gravest of crimes. 5. That the present Democratic administration has far exceeded our worst apprehensions, in its measureless subserviency to the ex- actions of a sectional interest, as especially evinced in its desperate exertions to force the infamous Lecompton Constitution upon the protesting people of Kansas; in construing the personal relation be- tween master and servant to involve an unqualified property in per- son; in its attempted enforcement, everywhere, on land and sea, 82 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. through the intervention of Congress and of the Federal courts, of the extreme pretensions of a purely local interest; and in its general and unvarying abuse of the power intrusted to it by a confiding people. 6. That the people justly view with alarm the reckless extrava- gance which pervades every department of the Federal Government; that a return to rigid economy and accountability is indispensable to arrest the sympathetic plunder of the public treasury by favored par- tisans; while the recent startling developments of frauds and corrup- tions at the Federal metropolis show that an entire change of ad- ministration is imperatively demanded. 7. That the new dogma that the Constitution, of its own force, carries slavery into any or all of the Territories of the United States, is a dangerous political heresy, at variance with the explicit provi- sions of that instrument itself, with contemporaneous exposition, and with legislative and judicial precedent; is revolutionary in its tend- ency, and subversive of the peace and harmony of the country. 8. That the normal condition of all the territory of the United States is that of freedom; that as our Republican fathers, when they had abolished slavery in all our national territory, ordained that no person should be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, it becomes our duty, by legislation, whenever such legislation is necessary, to maintain this provision of the Constitution against all attempts to violate it; and we deny the authority of Con- gress, of a Territorial Legislature, or of any individual, to give legal existence to slavery in any Territory of the United States. 9. That we brand the recent reopening of the American slave trade, under the cover of our national flag, aided by perversions of judicial power, as a crime against humanity, and a burning shame to our country and age; and we call upon Congress to take prompt and efficient measures for the total and final suppression of that execrable traffic. 10. That in the recent vetoes, by their Federal Governors, of the acts of the Legislatures of Kansas and Nebraska, prohibiting slavery in those Territories, we find a practical illustration of the boasted Democratic principle of non-intervention and popular sovereignty, embodied in the Kansas-Nebraska bill, and a demonstration of the deception and fraud involved therein. 11. That Kansas should of right be immediately admitted as a State under the Constitution recently formed and adopted by her people and accepted by the House of Representatives. 12. That, while providing revenue for the support of the general government by duties upon imports, sound policy requires such an DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF THE EPOCH. 83 adjustment of these imposts as to encourage the development of the industrial interests of the whole country; and we commend that policy of national exchanges which secures to the workingmen liberal wages, to agriculture remunerating prices, to mechanics and manu- facturers an adequate reward for their skill, labor, and enterprise, and to the nation commercial prosperity and independence. 13. That we protest against any sale or alienation to others of the public lands held by actual settlers, and against any view of the free-homestead policy which regards the settlers as paupers or sup- pliants for public bounty; and w r e demand the passage by Congress of the complete and satisfactory homestead measure which has al- ready passed the House. 14. That the Republican party is opposed to any change in our naturalization laws, or any State legislation by which the rights of citizenship hitherto accorded to immigrants from foreign lands shall be abridged or impaired; and in favor of giving a full and efficient protection to the rights of all classes of citizens, whether native or naturalized, both at home and abroad. 15. That appropriations by Congress for river and harbor im- provements of a national character, required for the accommodation and security of our existing commerce, are authorized by the Consti- tution, and justified by the obligations of government to protect the lives and property of its citizens. 16. That a railroad to the Pacific Ocean is imperatively de- manded by the interests of the whole country ; that the Federal Gov- ernment ought to render immediate and efficient aid in its construc- tion; and that, as preliminary thereto, a daily overland mail should be promptly established. 17. Finally, having thus set forth our distinctive principles and views, we invite the co-operation of all citizens, however differing on other questions, who substantially agree with us in their affirmance and support. MR. LINCOLN'S LETTER OF ACCEPTANCE. Springfield, 111., May 23, 1860. HON. GEORGE ASHMUN. President of the Republican National Convention. SIR: I accept the nomination tendered me by the Convention over which you presided, and of which I am formally apprised in the letter of yourself and others, acting as a Committee of the Conven- tion, for that purpose. The declaration of principles and sentiments which accompanies 84 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. your letter meets my approval; and it shall be my care not to violate or disregard it in any part. Imploring the assistance of Divine Providence, and with due re- gard to the views and feelings of all who were represented in the Convention; to the rights of all the States and Territories and people of the nation; to the inviolability of the Constitution, and the per- petual union, harmony, and prosperity of all. I am now happy to co-operate for the practical success of the principles declared by the Convention. Your obliged friend and fellow-citizen, A. LINCOLN. THE WAR PERIOD. I. SECESSION. The Conspiracy in the Cabinet Buchanan's Last Annual Message- Judge Black Reconstruction of the Cabinet Disintegration of the Thirty-sixth Congress Efforts at Compromise in Congress Concessions of the North An " Embassy " from South Caro- lina The Peace Convention Responsibility of the Republican Party Demoralization of Northern Sentiment Fears of Con- spiracies The Electoral Count Lincoln's Unexpected Appear- ance in Washington. HE secession conspiracy that followed immediately after Lincoln's election was essentially a part of the Breckin- ridge campaign. The cabal centered, if it did not originate, in President Buchanan's Cabinet. The Cabinet conspira- tors were Howell Cobb, of Georgia, Secretary of the Treasury; John B. Floyd, of Virginia, Secretary of War; and Jacob Thompson, of Mississippi, Secretary of the Interior. Intimately associated with them was William H. Trescott, of South Carolina, Assistant Secretary of State. Trescott acted as a sort of go-between for the conspirators in the South and the conspirators in the Cabinet. Five days before the Presidential election he wrote to Robert Barnwell Rhett, with the authorization of the Secretary of the Treasury, " that upon the election of Lincoln Georgia ought to secede from the Union, and that she will do so. ... But he desires me to impress upon you his conviction that any attempt to precipitate the actual issue upon this administration will be most mischievous calculated to produce dif- ferences of opinion and destroy unanimity." Secretary Floyd was even then negotiating with agents of some of the Southern States for a sale of muskets belonging to the United States. Mr. Buchanan was not in ignorance of the attitude of the three conspirators in his Cab- inet, with the possible exception of Floyd. Secretary Cobb told him three days after the election that he thought " disunion inevitable, and under present circumstances most desirable." Secretary Thomp- son objected to the President's proposed message, when it was shown to the Cabinet on the 10th of November, because, as Floyd recorded his objection, he " misses entirely the temper of the Southern people; and attacks the true State-rights doctrine on the subject of secession." 86 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. Secretary Floyd expressed himself decidedly opposed to any rash movement. " I did so," he said, " because I think that Lincoln's ad- ministration will fail, and be regarded as impotent for good or evil within four months after his inauguration." As he was then selling muskets, altered from flint to percussion by the Ordnance Depart- ment, to the Southern States, his prudence must be regarded as rather sinister. An essential part of the conspiracy at this time was tne blind adhesion of Isaac Toucey, of Connecticut, Secretary of the Navy, who told the President only three days after Lincoln's election that " retaliatory State measures would prove most availing in bring- ing Northern fanatics to their senses." Secretary Toucey w r as useful to the South in placing the United States Navy beyond reach of the incoming administration, in anticipation of secession. It is scarcely surprising, with revolution thus organized in his Cabinet with his knowledge, that the President finally announced to Congress the remarkable paradox that while a State has no right to secede, the Union has no right to coerce a seceding State. President Buchanan's last annual message to Congress was an ex- traordinary document a message of which the London Times said truly a month later, that " it was a greater blow to the American people than all the rants of the Georgian Governor or the ordinances of the Charleston Convention. The President has dissipated the idea that the States which elected him constitute one people." In this ex- traordinary message Mr. Buchanan informed Congress that " the long- continued and intemperate interference of the Northern people with the question of slavery in the Southern States has at last produced its natural effect." His conception of this effect existed only in his own imagination. " The feeling of peace at home," he said, " has given place to apprehension of servile insurrections, and many a matron throughout the South retires at night in dread of what may befall herself and her children before morning." Mr. Buchanan was not entirely convinced that the election of Mr. Lincoln justified seces- sion. " The election of any one of our fellow r -citizens to the office of President," he declared, with an unctuous complacency that was un- affected, " does not of itself afford just cause for dissolving the Union." Then he added a qualification that was even more unctuous and extraordinary. " This is more especially true," he continued, " if his election has been effected by a mere plurality, and not a majority, of the people, and has resulted from transient and temporary causes, which may probably never occur again." He then discussed the al- leged grievances of the South, and conceded the " wrongs " of the Slave States. " The Southern States, standing on the basis of the Constitution," he argued, after urging the repeal of so-called " per- SECESSION. 87 sonal liberty laws " in some of the States, " have a right to demand this act of justice from the States of the North. Should it be refused, then the Constitution to which all the States are parties, will have been willfully violated by one portion of them in a provision essential to the domestic security and happiness of the remainder. In that event, the injured States, after having used all peaceful and consti- tutional means to obtain redress, would be justified in revolutionary resistance to the government of the Union." After this admission his argument against the assumption by any State of an inherent right to secede at its own will and pleasure was alike fatal to his own administration and to the Union. It was all the extremists of the South desired. The President had practically conceded the duty, if not the right of secession, and the conspirators in his own Cabinet and in Congress proceeded to use the weap- on he had placed in their hands. It was at first believed that these de- structive doctrines had the approbation of Mr. Buchanan's entire Cabinet, but it was not long until General Cass, the venerable Secretary of State, and Jeremiah S. Black, the learned and able Attorney-General, realized the false position in which the President had placed them. When it be- came known that Mr. Buchanan would not insist upon the collection of the national revenue in South Carolina, or upon strengthening the United States forts in Charleston harbor, Cass determined to separate from the administration. He resigned on the 12th of December, only nine days after the fatal message was sent to Congress. Thereupon Black was called upon to succeed him in the Department of State. Judge Black was a remarkable character. His literary and legal acquire- ments were prodigious. As a lawyer he was at the head of the American bar; as a jurist he had never had a superior on the Ameri- can bench. He was a man of broad views, profound convictions, and ineradicable prejudices. He made distinctions in the line of conduct that he marked out for himself and the practice of others. His own conscience would not have permitted him to hold a man in bondage, but he saw no reason for rebuking the holding of slaves by those whose consciences approved of it. He regarded the South with affec- tion, and for New England he had a detestation that was racial rather than personal. " The New Englander individually I greatly JEREMIAH S. BLACK. 88 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. affect," he often said, " but in the mass I judge them to be stark mad." The Southern fire-eaters he regarded as the victims of Northern Abolitionists, and while he deprecated disunion in the South, he looked upon the doctrines of the Republican party as inconsistent with loyalty to the Union. Some of the w r orst features of Mr. Bu- chanan's message were due to his suggestion, and had he continued as Attorney-General until the close of the administration it is not likely he would have revised the conclusions on which these features were based. For Buchanan he had an attachment that begun with his youth, and had grown with his growth. Buchanan's fame was as dear to him as his own. But he was not subservient, and when he was confronted by conditions that his judgment and his conscience rejected, he had the courage to oppose them. Judge Black succeeded Cass as Secretary of State on the 17th of December the day when the Disunion Convention assembled at Charleston. Three days later the Ordinance of Secession was passed, and Black was only in his fourth day in the State Department when Governor Pickens pro- claimed South Carolina a separate, free, sovereign, and independent State. From that moment there was a new power in the White House. The demand for the surrender of the forts of the United States to South Carolina was refused. The disunion conspirators in the Cab- inet found their positions untenable, and resigned in quick succes- sion. Floyd was the first to go, and he was succeeded by Joseph Holt, of Mississippi, as Secretary of War. Thompson followed Floyd, but not immediately. Cobb had gone to Georgia before the resigna- tion of Cass to stimulate secession, and Philip Francis Thomas, of Maryland, succeeded him. A complete reorganization of the Cabinet became necessary. Edwin M. Stanton succeeded Black as Attorney- General, and Horatio King, of Maine,, became the successor of Holt as Postmaster-General. Refusing to accede to the new policy, Thomas resigned, and was succeeded by John A. Dix. Thus two months after the election of Lincoln the Cabinet was reconstituted as it ought to have been reconstituted on the 7th of November. The disintegration of the 36th Congress began with the withdrawal of the South Carolina delegation from the House of Representatives on the 24th of December. The withdrawal of the other States fol- lowed in the order of their secession. In the House the leavetaking was in the main without defiance, and, except in a few cases, without any show of bravado. The retiring Senators from the seceding States were more outspoken, the Senate affording a better field than the House for valedictories of justification and recrimination. Among the most inflammatory of these speeches were those of Clement C. Clay, Jr., of Alabama; Jefferson Davis, of Mississippi; Alfred Iverson, SECESSION. 89 of Georgia, and John Slidell, of Louisiana. In the mean time numer- ous propositions of compromise were before Congress, all of which humiliated the North without appeasing the South. In the Senate a Committee of Thirteen, comprising seven Democrats, five Republicans, and the venerable John J. Crittenden, of Kentucky, who belonged to 1/7 tJ neither party, was appointed to devise measures of conciliation, through which a dissolution of the Union might be averted. In the House a similar Committee of Thirty-three, with Thomas Corwin, of Ohio, as chairman, w r as intrusted with a like task. The Senate Com- mittee of Thirteen came to no agreement, but the House Committee of Thirty-three made a report that embodied nearly every objection- able suggestion submitted to it. The recommendations embraced everything the South had ever asked, and more. The Free States were to repeal all their " personal liberty laws "; New Mexico, which included the present Territory of Arizona, was to be admitted as a Slave State; it was pro- posed still further to amend the Fugi tive Slave Law so as to provide for the trial of an alleged runaw r ay in the State from which it was claimed he had es- caped, and his surrender without trial in the State in which he was found; and the Constitution of the United States was to be amended so as to render it- impossible to abolish slavery in any State without the consent of every State JOHN ,i. CRITTENDEN. in the Union. But even these conces- sions, sweeping as they were, were not considered a sufficient price for a preserved Union, and a minority of the Committee of Thirty-three, consisting of five Southern members, made a report in which they proposed six amendments which, if adopted, would have placed slavery under the guardianship and protection of the National Gov- ernment. These six propositions were: (1) That in all the territory south of the old Missouri line, then held or to be afterward acquired, slavery of the African race was to be recognized as existing, not to be interfered with by Congress, but to be protected by all the depart- ments of the Territorial Government during its existence; (2) that Con- gress should have no power to interfere with slavery even in those places under its exclusive jurisdiction in the Slave States; (3) that Con- gress should never interfere with slavery in the District of Columbia without the consent of Maryland and Virginia and the inhabitants of 90 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. the District, nor without just compensation for the slaves, and even denying to Congress the right to prohibit officers of the General Gov- ernment and members from bringing their slaves to the District, hold- ing them there, and taking them away again; (4) that Congress should not interfere with the transportation of slaves from one State to another, or to any territory south of the Missouri line, whether that transportation be by land, by navigable river, or by sea; (5) that it should be the duty of Congress to provide for the payment from the National Treasury for any fugitive slave whose arrest was prevented by violence or intimidation, or who, after arrest, w r as rescued by force; and (6) that " no future amendment to the Constitution shall ever be passed that shall affect any provision of the five amendments just re- cited; that the provision in the original Constitution which guaran- tees the count of three-fifths of the slaves in the basis of representa- tion shall never be changed by any amendment; that no amendment shall ever be made which alters or impairs the original provision for the recovery of fugitives from service; that no amendment shall ever be made that shall permit Congress to interfere in any way with slavery in the States where it may be permitted." These extraordi- nary propositions were substantially identical with the vaunted Crit- tenden Compromise, the failure of which is still a matter for regret with Democratic historians. The Crittenden Compromise was the most nefarious measure ever proposed in the history of Congress. The intrenchment of slavery in the Constitution and the subordination of the Free States to the con- stitutional rights of the slavehunters were not its worst features. It looked to the acquisition of Cuba, of Mexico, and of South America as slave territory. It was the greatest temptation ever offered to the slave power for the indefinite expansion of slavery within the Union. Even Jefferson Davis was dazzled by the splendid prospect it held out for Southern aggrandizement. He lingered in the Senate even after Mississippi had seceded, and it was only after the failure of the Crittenden propositions that he withdrew. Toombs, too, is quoted as one of the Southern Senators who would have given it a reluctant assent. " Mr. Toombs, will this compromise, as a remedy for all wrongs and apprehensions, be acceptable to you?" Mr. Crit- tenden asked him while they sat together in the Senate Committee of Thirteen. " Not by a good deal," he answered ; " but my State will accept it, and I will follow my State." But neither Davis nor Toombs would have accepted the Crittenden Compromise as a finality. In the Committee of Thirteen Mr. Davis submitted a proposition for a constitutional amendment providing for a recognition of property in slaves in any State in the Union, and not subject to be diverted or SECESSION. 91 impaired by the local law of any State " either in escape thereto, or of transit or sojourn of the owner therein." This proposition contem- plated the introduction of slavery into the Free States, but notwith- standing this it received the votes of two Northern Senators in the committee Bigler, of Pennsylvania, and Rice, of Minnesota. These two were the only Northern Democrats in the Committee of Thir- teen, with the exception of Mr. Douglas, who did not vote on the Davis proposition. Had the South accepted the Crittenden Compromise, there would have been a demand later for a Union all slave, and, as is shown by the vote on the Davis proposition, the demand would have had the support of a part of the Northern Democracy. In the House of Representatives the most important of the recom- mendations of the Committee of Thirty-three received affirmative action. The propositions to admit New Mexico as a Slave State and to amend the Fugitive Slave Law were adopted, and even a constitu- tional amendment declaring that "no amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish, or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institu- tions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the law of said State," was adopted by a vote of 133 to 65. This was to have been the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution. If adopted, this amendment would have been only less far-reaching than that of the Crittenden Compromise. Among the Republicans in the 30th Con- gress, who would have consented to the intrenchment of slavery in the organic law, were Mr. Sherman, of Ohio; Mr. Colfax, of Indiana; Charles Francis Adams, of Massachusetts; Mr. Howard, of Michigan; Mr. Windom, of Minnesota, and Messrs. Moorhead and McPherson, of Pennsylvania. Among those who refused to yield to the fears of the weaker brethren were Thaddeus Stevens and Galusha A. Grow, of Pennsylvania; Roscoe Conkling and Reuben E. Fenton, of New York; Marston and Tappan, of New Hampshire; Anson Burlingame, of Massachusetts, and the two Washburns, one of Massachusetts and the other of Wisconsin. When the proposition reached the Senate eight Republican Senators voted for it Anthony, of Rhode Island; Baker, of Oregon; Dixon and Foster, of Connecticut; Grimes and Har- lan, of Iowa; Morrill, of Maine, and Ten Eyck, of New Jersey. Only twelve out of the twenty-five Republican Senators voted in the nega- tive. Seward, Fessenden, and Collamer did not vote. Although it received the sanction of both Houses of Congress, this amendment came to nothing, being lost sight of in the burning questions of the Civil War. No better proof of the utter demoralization of the Repub- lican party, that followed the Republican triumph of I860, can be found than the willingness of nearly every Republican Senator and 92 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. Representative in the 36th Congress to admit New Mexico as a Slave State, and to organize the Territories of Colorado, Dakota, and Nev- ada without prohibiting slavery. The hour of conciliation only failed to become one of surrender because the South was bent upon seces- sion, and declined to accept the sacrifice. Strange as it may sound, the North and the Republican party owed to the recklessness of dis- union an escape from the humiliation of consenting to make the United States a Slave Empire, with slavers on the ocean, and wars of conquest for the acquisition of slave territory. There were some episodes of the winter of 1860-61 in Washington that seem very ludicrous now, but were regarded with great serious- ness then. One of these episodes was the appearance at the capital of an " embassy " from the sovereign and independent State of South Carolina to negotiate a treaty of peaceful surrender of the armed fortresses and other property of the United States within the limits of the new sovereignty. This " embassy " came to Washington with as funny a Secretary of Legation as ever danced and flirted in the court circles of Europe. He was a very young person, and not at all imposing. He wore patent leather shoes, and light-colored trousers in very large plaids. This singular young person appeared officially before the Committee of Thirty-three of the House. When Repre- sentative Dawes, of Massachusetts, asked him what brought him to Washington he repeated the question with surprise, and added, " You cannot be ignorant that the new sovereign State of South Carolina has sent an embassy to negotiate a treaty of friendship and alliance with its neighbors of the United States, with w r hich it is desirous of living on terms of fellowship; and I have the honor of being secretary of that legation." The " embassy " took a fine house in K street, the rent of which is still owing, where the} 7 unfurled the flag of their lega- tion, and prepared to present their credentials to President Buchanan. The usefulness of the " embassy " was impaired, however, by an event for which neither the commissioners nor the administration were prepared. Major Robert Anderson, who was in command of the forti- fications in Charleston harbor, suddenly, on the night of the 26th of December, transferred his little force from Fort Moultrie, where it was at the mercy of the " Sovereign State of South Carolina," to Fort Sumter, where he had some hope of making a successful defense in case of attack. Anderson's stroke emboldened the Commissioners to demand the immediate withdrawal of the troops from the harbor of Charleston, under a threat of suspending negotiations which were not yet begun. Thereupon the President, who had consented to re- ceive the agents of a conspiracy, was impelled, after prolonged hesita- tion, to dismiss the emissaries of an insurrection, and to make an un- SECESSION. 93 successful effort to succor the beleaguered garrison. It was the im- pudence of the demand, backed by the preparations of South Carolina for war with the United States, that induced Judge Black to stop the temporizing folly of Buchanan, and to reverse the feeble policy of the administration. One of the episodes of that remarkable winter in Washington was the famous Peace Convention, from which so much was expected, but which achieved so little. It was appointed upon the invitation of the General Assembly of Virginia, and comprised 133 Commissioners, in- cluding many from the border States. It met on the 4th of Febru- ary, when only one month of the 36th Congress remained. A commit- tee consisting of one Commissioner from each State was appointed to consider the conflicting propositions offered in Convention, and " to report what they may deem right, necessary, and proper to restore harmony and preserve the Union." This committee was instructed to report on or before the 8th, but the report was not made until the 15th. The propositions reported by the majority of the Committee were substantially the same as the Crittenden Compromise. Minority reports were made by Mr. Baldwin, of Connecticut, and Mr. Seddon, of Virginia. Mr. Baldwin's proposition was for a Convention for a proposed amendment to the Constitution of the United States, to be submitted to the Legislatures of the several States, or to conventions therein, for ratification. One of Mr. Seddon's propositions was the distinct recognition of the right of secession, and a final vote was not reached on the first section of the proposed amendment until the 26th of February. This section, on which all the others depended, was negatived by a vote of 8 States to 11. Immediately after the section had been negatived, a motion to reconsider the vote prevailed, and the Convention adjourned until the next morning. On the 27th the section was adopted by a vote of 9 to 8 States. The States voting in the negative were Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, Connecticut, Illinois, Virginia, and North Carolina. Missouri withheld her vote, and New York was unable to vote because of the absence of one of the Commissioners from that State. The remaining sections were carried by small majorities. The amendment adopted by the Con- vention was communicated to the Senate and House of Representa- tives by Mr. Tyler, the President, but it failed in the Senate by a vote of 28 to 7, while in the House the Speaker was refused leave to present it. As six States had already seceded, and took no part in the Con- vention, this last effort for peace was foredoomed to failure from the beginning. It has been held by Democratic writers since the war that the Re- publican party was responsible for the failure of the compromise 94 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. measures of 1860-61. One Democratic historian asserts that " no man can point to one law passed by Congress to prevent secession, or to avoid war. Those Republicans who did not go with Greeley and Chief Justice Chase in letting the South l go in peace/ expected and wished for war, as a means of fulfilling their promises to the Aboli- tionists." S. S. Cox, in his " Three Decades of Federal Legislation," written long after the war, declared that those who sought to coun- teract the schemes of secession were themselves checkmated by ex- treme men of the Republican party, who, he assumes, were for the destruction of slavery at the peril of war and disunion. The people, Mr. Cox declared, favored the compromise. We should be compelled to regard these assertions as true, if the panic that existed all over the North and the petitions signed by thousands of Northern citizens and showered upon Congress, were accepted as proofs of the attitude of the Free States. If the principles contained in the Crittenden Compromise had triumphed, and been accepted by the seceding States, the surrender would have involved the disorganization of the Repub- lican party. Its continued existence would have been considered a continual menace to slavery, and every Presidential election in which it participated would have been conducted with menaces of secession in case of Republican success. When South Carolina seceded all com- promise was futile, unless the Republican party consented to go out of business at once and forever. This was what was expected and demanded by the Democratic champions of slavery in the North. " When the struggle was at its height in Georgia between Robert Toombs, for secession, and Alexander H. Stephens, against it," said William Bigler, of Pennsylvania, as late as 1863, " had those men in the Committee of Thirteen, who are now so blameless in their own estimation, given us their votes, or even three of them, Stephens would have defeated Toombs, and secession would have been pros- trated. I heard Mr. Toombs say to Mr. Douglas that the result in Georgia was staked on the action of the Committee of Thirteen. If it accepted the Crittenden propositions, Stephens would defeat him; if not, he would carry the State out by 40,000 majority. The three votes from the Republican side would have carried it at any time; but union and peace in the balance against the Chicago platform were sure to be found wanting." This man, who had voted with Jef- ferson Davis in the Committee of Thirteen to introduce slavery into the Free States, thought it criminal in Republican Senators that they should wish to preserve the principles of their party and the fruits of its victory. While Democratic writers accuse the Republican leaders of 1860-61 of making no efforts to avert secession, later Republicans are more apt SECESSION. 95 to charge them with cherishing a conciliatory spirit that was both shameful and cowardly. The Democratic accusations are forgotten sophistries that if recalled now are contemptuously dismissed. These sophistries seemed irrefragable in the winter of 1860-61 to many per- sons who became sound Republicans afterward. In this era it is not easy to realize the love for the Union that was felt during the epoch when it was assailed. No sacrifice was considered too great for its preservation. At the same time the hatred of slavery was not very deep or very bitter even in the Republican States. Thousands of men in every Free State had voted for Lincoln and Hamlin, who were only Kepublicans when the sun shone and the skies were blue and fair. These fair-weather Kepublicans were appalled when they saw the storm that was the result of their victory. They were willing to sacrifice their principles and their party for their country and its in- stitutions, and they believed they were patriots in doing it. Men who had accepted the Whig platform of 1852, and voted for Pillmore and Donelson or Buchanan and Breckinridge in 1856, were willing to repent in sackcloth and ashes for having supported Lincoln and Hamlin in 1860. Few of the old Whigs became Abolitionists until after slavery was abolished. Many of the men who helped to nomi- nate Lincoln in 1860 opposed the Emancipation Proclamation in 1862. The disintegration of the Republican party began with the news of Republican success. The reaction in the North was so great that it amounted to self-abasement. The sentiments that were applauded in the campaign were now received with jeers instead of cheers. A mob was threatened in Philadelphia to prevent George William Cur- tis from delivering a lecture before the People's Literary Union, and a Republican Mayor lacked the courage to protect the lecturer. Among the intending rioters, no doubt, were some of the men who, a few months before, had serenaded Benjamin Harris Brewster, after- ward Attorney-General in President Arthur's Cabinet, in recognition of his services as a lawyer in sending a fugitive slave back to slavery. " The institution of domestic servitude is a great public necessity," Mr. Brewster said in his speech " politically right, socially right, and morally right." When such were the opinions of a man who afterward became one of the high priests of the party, it is not sur- prising that the mob that rejoiced in the return of a runaway was loud in demanding surrender to slavery. Everywhere Union meetings were held, in which the South was implored to come back, with declarations that every peaceable remedy should be exhausted, party platforms set aside, and individual records cast to the winds. With such a state of feeling and such abasement in the North, interspersed with Northern proclamations of the wrongs of the South and the right of secession, it is no wonder that Republicans in Congress gave way, 96 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. only to be treated with contempt by the seceding States and derision by the departing statesmen. While good men abased themselves, men of the kind who had serenaded Brewster and were threatening Curtis rejoiced in their shame; and while timid men took counsel of their fears, bad men were bold in proclaiming their hate. This was the condition to which thirty years of compromises and concessions had brought the country. As the time approached for counting the electoral vote and declar- ing the result, intense excitement prevailed in Washington, and many persons believed that a conspiracy existed to prevent the count. In view of these fears great precautions were taken to guard against any possible danger. General Scott obtained permission from the Secre- tary of War to bring a number of companies of regulars from Fortress Monroe to the capital, which, with the seven hundred regular troops then in Washington, the police, and militia, he deemed sufficient for all contingencies. The regulars were placed under the com- mand of Colonel Harvey Brown. The bridges of the Potomac were carefully guarded by the militia, the regular troops were stationed at convenient points in the city, and a confidential ar- rangement of signals was communicated, to the officers. The certificates of the electoral vote from each State were kept in two boxes in the sole custody of the Vice-President, in whose loyalty little confidence was felt. On the day of the count, Vice-President Breckinridge, with a messenger carrying the two boxes, and followed by the Senate, two by two, was to proceed from the Senate Chamber, through the Ro- tunda, to the House of Representatives. It w r ould have been easy for desperadoes, mingling with the crowd that filled the space between the chambers, to fall upon the messenger and violently seize the boxes, or to precipitate themselves from the galleries of the House, and break up the proceedings. As a safeguard against these dangers, policemen from Philadelphia, New York, and other cities, in citizens' dress, were stationed along the passageways and in the galleries. Happily no con- spiracy existed, and the count and declaration of Mr. Lincoln's elec- tion proceeded without interruption. A large and brilliant throng filled the galleries of the House to witness the ceremony. The Vice- President, although his heart was with the secessionists, performed JOHN C. BRECKINRIDGE. SECESSION. 97 his duty with great dignity and propriety. The sealed returns of the electoral votes, cast in the colleges of the several States on the 5th of December, were formally opened and registered. Then the teller officially declared the result, and the Vice-President announced that Abraham Lincoln, of Illinois, having received a majority of the whole number of electoral votes, is elected President of the United States for four years, commencing the 4th of March, 1861. During these proceedings the excitement and anxiety were intense; but the crisis was safely passed, and it only remained to complete the formalities that would clothe the President-elect with the insignia of the great office to which he had been called. Tn the mean time, Mr. Lincoln made his memorable journey from his home in Springfield to the capi- tal. While he was on his way it was learned that a conspiracy existed to assassinate the President-elect in Baltimore on his way to Wash- ington. There is now r no reason to doubt that it was defeated by pre- cautions that brought Mr. Lincoln to the capital on the morning be- fore the day appointed for his arrival. The consequence of the secret journey from Harrisburg to Washington was a sudden and painful revulsion of feeling toward the President-elect. He was " frightened at his own shadow "; he had " sneaked into Washington "; " the man afraid to come through Baltimore was not fit to be President," were the phrases with which his indignant critics indulged themselves. A hostile newspaper even fabricated a story that he had come dis- guised in a Scotch cap and cloak. To counteract the effect of these violent outcries, Mr. Seward took the President-elect in charge and introduced him to the Senate. To Mr. Haskin, an anti-Lecompton Democrat, was committed the duty of introducing him to the House of Representatives. Thus the 36th Congress went out of existence, and Mr. Lincoln awaited the morning of his inauguration. II. REPUBLICAN LEADERS OF 1861. Lincoln's Personality Unfavorable Impressions Formation of the Cabinet Inauguration The Cabinet Received with Disfavor Seward and Lincoln Chase and Lincoln Distrust of the Presi- dent The Thirty-seventh Congress The War Governors Im- pending Changes in Republican Leadership. HE personal appearance of no President of the United States ever projected itself into the problems of his administra- tion with the grim distinctness that Abraham Lincoln's tall form, gaunt figure, and seamed face became a part of his public life. Even to expectant politicians and charitably disposed party friends the man was not only a disappointment, but a forebod- ing of national calamity. Most of these observers afterward put their early impressions on record with a freedom that was all the greater because they had misjudged the man because of his looks. When the President-elect opened the door of his Springfield house to one political pilgrim, the politician, who was himself a man of imposing- appearance, felt his heart sink within him when he saw in the figure before him " the man chosen by a great nation to become its ruler in the gravest period of its history." Tall, gaunt, ungainly, ill-clad, with a homeliness of manner that was unique in itself, as the politi- cal wayfarer described him, he seemed far from the heroic figure that he is in history. One member of Congress, who had uncon- sciously idealized the qualities of mind and heart that all the world now recognizes in the hero and martyr, has left a record of his emo- tions when he saw Abraham Lincoln enter the House of Representa- tives, on the morning after the secret journey. " Never did god come tumbling down more suddenly and completely than did mine,' 7 he afterward wrote, " as the unkempt, ill-formed, loose-jointed, and dis- proportioned figure of Mr. Lincoln appeared at the door." In the " reptile " press he was caricatured with extraordinary bitterness, both with pen and pencil. The caricatures of the Northern press, in- cluding the " Journal of Civilization," during the war period exceeded in virulence even the attacks of Freneau and of the Aurora upon Washington. The libel of the Scotch cap and cloak was reproduced with infinite variety and shameless malevolence. But neither the aspersions of Northern champions of the South, nor the panic of the timid Republicans who took counsel of their fears, were so dangerous REPUBLICAN LEADERS OF 1861. 99 in that trying hour as the haughty depreciation of the hereditary Whigs. This class included nearly all the men eminent for their learning, their social position and their wealth. Edward Everett, distinguished for his scholarship and his eloquence, had accepted the subordinate place on the ticket with John Bell in 1860 in order to de- feat Lincoln, and he now stood for conciliation and surrender. He could not realize that in the near future he would stand on the same platform with Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg, where his sonorous periods would die on his own lips, while the President's few phrases w T ould become immortal. Robert C. Winthrop held proudly aloof, or indulged himself in contemptuous depreciation of the man of the people. Charles Francis Adams turned tinker of the Constitution, and by the amendment that he proposed, and both advocated and opposed in his indecision and weakness, forever associated the Adams name with a futile surrender to slavery. He never rose to a full appreciation of the sagacity and wisdom of Abraham Lincoln. William H. Seward sat serene- ly in his seat in the Senate, uttering trite prophecies of the calm that would come after the storm, and waiting for the time when, to use the words of Mr. Adams after his death, he would dismiss " the noblest dreams of an ambition he had the clearest right to indulge, in exchange for a more solid power to direct affairs for the benefit of the nation in the name of another." From that other all the world seemed willing to turn away in depreciation, if not in downright disgust, and the country regarded the incoming President and his administration with hopeless despair. It was fortunate for the Union that the quiet figure in the modest home in Illinois was neither the mountebank that enemies describe him as being, nor the plastic clay the man who expected to rule in his name hoped to find him. For Abraham Lincoln the winter of 1860-61 was peculiarly trying. The time was out of joint. Events that w T ould make or mar the new administration at the outset were beyond the control of the President-elect, and shaped themselves without regard to his opinions or interests. He could only watch and wait, and form his Cabinet and prepare his Inaugural Address almost unaided in those dark days of doubt and conflict. The formation of the Cabinet was no easy task, although Mr. Lincoln formulated it in his own mind as soon as his head touched his pillow on the night after his election. CHARLKS FKANCIS ADAMS. 100 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. As Mr. Lincoln originally marshaled the names of his contemplated Cabinet, they comprised Seward, Chase, Bates, Dayton, Welles, Judd, and Blair. Reward, Bates, and Dayton were of Whig antecedents, and Chase, Judd, Welles, and Blair of Democratic affiliations, before they became Republicans. There was no objection to the selection of Mr. Seward for Secretary of State, but Seward's friends strenuously objected to the appointment of either Chase as Secretary of the Treasury or Bates as Attorney-General, because they had been Demo- crats. They considered a Seward Cabinet essential to the success of the administration, and through the manipulations of Thurlow Weed it was believed they would have their way. It was even intimated that Mr. Seward might decline if Chase and Bates were appointed. Mr. Lincoln refused to yield, and Mr. Seward was compelled to ac- quiesce. The claims of Pennsylvania to a Cabinet position were so great that they were acceded to, and the name of Mr. Cameron for Secretary of War was substituted for that of Mr. Dayton. This brought a protest from the anti-Cameron faction, and Colonel McClure was sent to Springfield to prevent the appointment. Among the Peunsylvanians who were opposed to Cameron were Thaddeus Ste- vens, David Wilmot, and Governor Curtin. McClure succeeded so well in his mission that the tender to Cameron was withdrawn. In the mean time the appointment of Mr. Welles as Secretary of the Navy was jeopardized also, Mr. Lincoln being anxious to have a loyal member of the Cabinet from the South. Mr. Seward recommended Colonel Fremont for Secretary of War, and Randall Hunt, of Louisi- ana, and John A. Gilmer or Kennett Raynor, of North Carolina, for other places. Other names suggested by him were those of Robert E. Scott, of Virginia, and Meredith Gentry, of Tennessee. Mr. Gilmer would have been appointed to either the War or Navy Department had he consented. His declination resulted in the final selection of both Cameron and Welles. An effort was made to secure the appoint- ment of Henry Winter Davis, of Maryland, which would have resulted in setting Montgomery Blair aside for Postmaster : General. In the case of Blair, Mr. Lincoln also adhered to his original intention. As the Cabinet was finally constituted, the only substitution, besides that of Cameron for Dayton, was the appointment of Caleb B. Smith, of Indiana, as Secretary of the Interior, instead of Norman B. Judd, of Illinois. Why Mr. Smith was appointed instead of Mr. Judd is not very clear, unless it w 7 as because Mr. Lincoln wished to retain the political balance between the Republican Whigs and the Repub- lican Democrats in his official family. Judd was a man of more ability than Smith, his services to the party were greater, and to Mr. Lincoln his personal friendship and political loyalty had been inestimable. REPUBLICAN LEADERS OF 1861. 101 No one man had been more active or serviceable in securing Mr. Lin- coln's nomination. The President told Secretary Welles that he had a stronger desire that Judd should be associated with him in the ad- ministration than any one else, and yet Judd was compelled to con- tent himself with the Prussian Mission instead of a Cabinet position. Judd's failure is only another illustration of the uncertainty of politi- cal rewards, and the impotency of powerful friends. The inauguration of Lincoln differed in one respect from other in- augurations before and since there was a greater display of military force than had ever been necessary, or than may ever be necessary hereafter. The carriage of the retiring President and the President- elect was drawn between two files of a squadron of District cavalry. A company of sappers and miners marched in front of the Presidential carriage, and the infantry and riflemen of the District followed it. Squads of riflemen were placed on the roofs of command- ing houses in Pennsylvania ave- nue so as to command all the win- dows on both sides of the way. Kiflemen occupied the windows of the wings of the Capitol, and a battalion of District troops was placed near the steps of the east front. After the ceremony Presi- dent Lincoln's journey to the W T hite House was made with the same military disposition as be- fore. The usual ceremonial visit was made to the Senate Chamber, and the usual procession of dignitaries escorted the President-elect to the east portico of the Capitol to be sworn. On the platform was a distinguished throng James Buchanan, rejoicing, no doubt, that he was about to escape from the great responsibility to which he had proved unequal; General Scott, soon to be supplanted as the military leader of the time; Stephen A. Douglas, Lincoln's foeman in more than one political battle, and the Justices of the Supreme Court, and many of the Senators and Representatives in Congress whose work, such as it was, completed the history of the epoch. The Inaugural Address was delivered in a clear, resonant voice, and the oath of office w r as administered by Chief Justice Taney. W T hile Lincoln was speak- ing Douglas held his hat. and was one of the first to grasp the hand of his old rival, now President of the United States. It was the last N. B. JUDD. 102 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. time the venerable Chief Justice was to pronounce the solemn words that make an American citizen the ruler of a great people, and which then marked the beginning of a new era. It is unnecessary to at- tempt any analysis of the Inaugural Address, for President Lincoln's plea for the Union went unheeded, except by those w r hose duty it became to enforce it by arms. When President Lincoln announced his Cabinet after his inau- guration it was assailed by men like Wade and Lovejoy as a dis- graceful surrender to the South. Thaddeus Stevens described it as an assortment of rivals for the Presidency, one stump speaker from Indiana, and two representatives of the Blair family. The assortment of rivals was made up of Seward in the State Department, Chase in the Treasury, Cameron as Secre- tary of War, and Bates as Attor- ney-General. The " stump speak- er " from Indiana was Caleb B. Smith, Secretary of the Interior, and the two representatives of the Blair family were Montgomery Blair and Edward Bates, of Mis- souri, whose appointment was generally attributed to the influ- ence of Francis P. Blair, Jr. Gid- eon Welles, of Connecticut, seems to have owed his appointment as Secretary of the Navy to Vice- President Hamlin. It was a com- mon saying among radical Repub- licans at the time, that Mr. Lin- coln's Cabinet did not contain three such unswerving friends of the Union as Dix, Holt, and Stanton, who had just retired with Mr. Buchanan. The appointment of Mr. Seward to the first place under the new government was in accordance with precedent. For twenty years the post had been given to the President's most powerful competitor in his own party for the Presidency. President Harrison had offered the ^tate Department to Mr. Clay, and when he declined it, it was given to Mr. Webster; President Polk appointed Mr. Buchanan; President Pierce gave the place to Mr. Marcy, and President Bu- chanan accorded it to General Cass, his successful rival in 1848, be- cause it was impossible to offer it to his predecessor, General Pierce. The only exception was President Taylor, whose two powerful op- BENJ. F. WADE. REPUBLICAN LEADERS OF 1861. 103 ponents, Clay and Webster, would have disdained to accept office under him. As Secretary of State under President Lincoln, Mr. Seward readily assumed that he was to be the mouthpiece of the ad- ministration. The tone of his letter to the President-elect, criticising the draft of Lincoln's Inaugural Address, reveals his easy assump- tion of mastery in guiding the new government. The attitude he ad- vised was far from becoming the policy that Mr. Lincoln adopted. He did not fear the displeasure of the triumphant party that had pre- ferred Mr. Lincoln to himself for the Presidency, but he was for " con- cessions " to " the defeated, irritated, angered, frenzied party." " Your case," he told Lincoln, " is like that of Jefferson," whose ex- ample he thought it wise to follow. Although Mr. Lincoln adopted nearly all of Mr. Seward's suggestions in the address, he never for a moment yielded his independence of judgment to his great Secretary, nor ceased to be the master mind of his administration. It was some weeks after the inauguration that Mr. Seward discovered that in reality he was not " to direct affairs for the benefit of the nation through the name of another." Of the two men Lincoln was the stronger in will, the sounder in judgment, the safer in administration, and the better grounded in the true principles of a wise statesman- ship. He was shrewd, but not crafty, and, unlike Seward, he was Hot a managing politician. Not only were the President's character mis- understood, his abilities underrated, and his fitness for his high office impugned, but Mr. Seward shared in the erroneous judgment of what Mr. Adams calls " the deficiencies of his chief." At the beginning of the administration the Secretary of State acted as if he was President de facto; he formulated a policy of his own, which he made a secret of the State Department, and of which the Cabinet had no knowledge, and the President was only partly informed; he assumed the right to call Cabinet meetings at his own pleasure, without the President's direction; he prepared and sent an irregular military expedition for the relief of Fort Pickens, without consulting the Secretary of War and the General-in-Chief, or informing any of his associates in the government of his extraordinary assumption of authority; in many ways he acted as a virtual dictator, ignoring the heads of the other departments, directing the expenditure of military and naval appro- priations of which he had no control, assigning officers of the army and navy to services of his own devising without regard to their assigned duties; and making promises and giving assurances in re- gard to Fort Sumter that were unauthorized by the President. He even submitted a proposition to the President to change the national issue from slavery to a foreign war. With the suggestion of a war with France and Spain, was another more remarkable still. It was 104 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. that the enforcement of the new policy should devolve upon some member of the Cabinet. " I neither seek to evade or assume the re- sponsibility," Mr. Seward said, with the smirking complacency of self-sufficiency. The erratic course of the Secretary of State was the cause of much mischief, but the President ignored Mr. Seward's recommendations, and had the will and the courage to bring his inter- meddling to an end. When Seward learned that he could not be the master he became as amenable to his chief as the other members of Lincoln's Cabinet. After Seward, Mr. Chase was the most discordant element of the new Cabinet. As a member of the Peace Conference he was prop- erly averse to the concessions that were demanded on behalf of the South, and voted against the proposed Thirteenth Amendment, but in Mr. Lincoln's councils he believed in disunion as preferable to civil war, and urged surrender to the Confederacy upon the President. He was a pure man, of unques- tioned ability and overmastering ambition, but, a supposed extrem- ist, he was in fact a conservative, prejudiced, petulant, and intract- able. He was not amenable like Seward. Unlike Seward, he was not eager to rule in the name of another, but from the day that he entered the Cabinet until he left it his heart was set on becoming- Lincoln's successor. Although he earned enduring fame as the finan- cier of the civil war, he was never satisfied with his position, and tendered his resignation so often that he was at last surprised at its acceptance. Cameron's Cabinet relations with Lincoln were more agreeable than were to be expected when the circumstances of his appointment and the concentrated opposition to his management of the War De- partment are considered. According to the theory on which the Cabinet was formed, Cameron was as clearly entitled to a place in it as Seward. When justice is done him it will be conceded that in the early months of Lincoln's administration he evinced a clearer idea of the scope and meaning of the impending struggle than any of Lin- coln's advisers, and if he had not been a politician he might have become the great War Minister instead of Stanton. As it was, he was S. P. CHASE. REPUBLICAN LEADERS OF 1861. 105 SIMON CAMERON. destined to become the victim of the feuds in the party in his own State, and of the bitter hostility of the commonplace men who were making war upon the administration, while the administration was making war upon the South. Welles, Bates, Smith, and Blair were all mediocri- ties, but their loyalty to Lincoln entitles them to grateful remem- brance. Gideon \Velles was not prominent even in New England. Owing his appointment of Secretary of the Navy to the Vice-President, he receded from his friendship for Hamlin when Hamlin passively withdrew his sympathy from the ad- ministration. Lincoln's memory had no more earnest conservator than Gideon Welles. Bates made a re- spectable Attorney-General, but, with Smith and Blair, was overshadowed by the more brilliant lumi- naries of the war time. When the attack on Fort Sumter precipitated the call for troops, and made a called session of tin 1 37th Congress necessary, the Re- publican leaders of 1801, outside of the Cabinet, took their places in the line and staff under the President, or the powerful chiefs who soon began to contend for su- premacy in the party. As the pre- vious Congress had been a Con- gress of secession and concilia- tion, it was found when its suc- cessor assembled on the Fourth of July, 1801, that it was to be a Congress of distrust. In the Senate, Sumner, Trumbull, Chan- dler, Wade, and others assumed an attitude of doubt toward the LYMAN TRUMBULL. President that pained and humili- ated him, and would have serious- ly embarrassed his administration had not the younger men in both Houses, who were more confident and more generous, come to his 106 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY support. Douglas had reached the end of his long career in the Senate only a month before, dying in Chicago, June 3, 1861, but not until after he had been to the White House, where he had proffered his counsel and his services to Abraham Lincoln, when he heard of the forced surrender of Fort Sumter. His Republican colleague from Illinois, Lyman Trumbull, in whose behalf Lincoln had waived his claims to the Senatorship six years before, was less impulsive and less hearty. TrumbulPs distrust was inexcusable, because he not only knew Lincoln, but had profited from his generosity. The dis- trust of Sumner, Chandler, and Wade was inherent in the men. Charles Sumner could not look with confidence upon Lincoln in 1801, for the same reason that James M. Mason contemned Sumner in 1856. He believed himself sprung from a different order from that of the man that all the world now recognizes as belonging to the highest type of manhood. Chandler and Wade were men of coarse fiber, and were quick to condemn when their own ideas of fitness were disre- garded. In the House, Grow was made Speaker, because of his activity in the anti - slavery struggle, and his alertness and fitness. The leadership on the floor was accorded to Thaddeus Stevens by common consent. He was the ablest lawyer in Con- gress and, after Judge Black, in the country. This explains the doubtful passage attributed to the two men in court. " Do you w r ish to show contempt for the court? " the Judge asked. " On the contrary, I am trying to conceal it," Stevens answered. His wit and sarcasm were biting, but he was without humor. Whoever put his handle to the plow and turned backward he regarded as an enemy. Mr. Stevens had not supported Mr. Lincoln for the nomination at Chicago, prefer- ring Judge McLean, and his relations at the White House, if not polit- ically hostile, were never cordial. Personally Stevens cherished an in- tense dislike for Lincoln, and some of his bitterest gibes were aimed at the sorely tried man in the White House. But while Mr. Lincoln failed to obtain the confidence of the men who had made the bitterest as- saults upon slavery, he was never without a powerful following, even in the hours that were darkest for his own administration and for the Union. ' ,\ THADDEUS STEVENS. REPUBLICAN LEADERS OF 1861. 107 The 37th Congress was prolific of inen who were to make a profound impression upon the country and become the leaders of the party. In the Senate were Henry 8. Lane, of Indiana, who had played such a conspicuous part in the nomination of Lincoln at Chicago; James Harlan, of Iowa; John Sherman, of Ohio, who had been transferred from the House when Chase entered the Cabinet; David Wilmot, the successor of Cameron from Pennsylvania; Ira Harris, of New York, who took the seat vacated by Seward; Henry B. Anthony, beginning a life-long service from Khode Island; and James H. Lane and Samuel C. Pomeroy, representing the new Free State of Kansas, after the complete success of the conflict for freedom. Among the older Sen- ators, who were not found wanting in the hour of trial, were William Pitt Fessenden, of Maine; Hale and Clark, of New Hampshire: Baker, of Oregon; Foot and Collamer, of Vermont, and Doolittle, of Wisconsin. In the House there was a long array of new names, after- ward distinguished Aaron A. Sargent, of California; Isaac N.Arnold, of Illinois; George W. Julian and John C. P. Shanks, of Indiana; Sam- uel Hooper, of Massachusetts; Francis P. Blair, Jr., of Missouri; Ed- ward H. Rollins, of New Hampshire; William A. Wheeler, of New York; Samuel Shellabarger, of Ohio; William D. Kelley, of Pennsyl- vania, and William P. Sheffield, of Rhode Island. The most conspicu- ous of the Republican Congressmen, who overlapped the ante-bell urn and poxt-bellum periods, were Schuyler Colfax, Roscoe Conkling, R. E. Fen- ton, Galusha A. Grow, Owen Lovejoy, Horace Maynard, E. G. Spauld- ing, and E. B. Washburne. It needs to be said, however, that the Con- gresses of the war period afforded a less favorable field for political distinction than was presented in the Congresses of the period of reconstruction. It was one of the conditions of the civil war that much of the politi- cal power of the period was in the hands of the Governors of the Re- publican States. The hearty co-operation of the War Governors of 1801 with the President served as an incitement to the friends of the administration in Congress, and neutralized the spirit of distrust evinced by such men as Sumner and Wade in the Senate, and Stevens and Lovejoy in the House. The three most commanding figures among the War Governors of 1861 were Andrew G. Curtin, of Penn- sylvania; Oliver P. Morton, of Indiana, and John A. Andrew, of Massachusetts. Among these Governor Curtin was easily first be- cause of the peculiar relations of his State to the conflict, the fervor of his patriotism, and the sincerity of his attachment to the Presi- dent. Curtin was the first to marshal his State for the defense of the Union, and the leader in preparing the North for the impending war. In this service the geographical position of Pennsylvania counted 108 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. for much, but Curtin's foresight, earnestness, and enthusiasm, and his devotion to the man he had helped to nominate and elect, were factors of even greater influence. Next to the magnetic personality and generous exertions of Curtin came the untiring energy and un- conquerable will of Morton. The fervor of Andrew's patriotism was not less noble and unselfish, and the bayonets of Massachusetts proved more than a match for the distrust of Sumner. In New York, Morgan, in spite of his conservative temper, became especially useful in the support he brought to the financial policy of the administra- tion. In line with these chiefs of command- ing influence were, for New England, Israel Washburn, of Maine; Ichabod Goodwin, of New Hampshire; Erastus Fairbanks, of Ver- mont; William Sprague, of Rhode Island, and William A. Buckingham, of Connecti- cut; with Charles Ogden for New Jersey, and for the W T est and Northwest William Dennison, of Ohio; Austin Blair, of Michi- gan; Kichard Yates, of Illinois; Samuel J. Kirkwood, of Iowa; Alexander W. Randall, of Wisconsin, and Alexander Ramsey, of JOHN A. ANDREW. Minnesota. It was feared that the two Pacific States, which had Democratic Governors, would cast their lot with the South, but the patriotism of the people withstood the treasonable pledges and projects of the politicians. The relations of the States to the Federal Government in the conduct of the war brought the War Governors in closer touch with the adminis tration than a Congress swayed by political considerations was able to feel until after it was brought under the influence of the loyal peo- ple at home and the army in the field. War created new conditions, and the new conditions brought out new leaders. The leaders of 1861, both in Congress and in command of the armies, found themselves superseded through the force of events, and the statesmen who distrusted Lincoln were relegated to the opposition, or lost their hold upon the country, just as the galaxy of Union generals of 1861 was a different and feeble constellation when contrasted w T ith the Union heroes of 1865. III. THE WAR FOR THE UNION. Lincoln without a Policy Seward's Dominating Ideas Forts Suin- ter and Pickens Lincoln Assumes Full Responsibility Phases of the Slavery Question The Peace Advocates Elections of 18G2 Emancipation Greeley's Embarrassing Course The Cab- inet Divided McClure's Comments on the Proclamation Demo- cratic Hostility to the War Compensated Emancipation Re- fused Suspension of the Habeas Corpus Democrats Want an Armistice The Conscription Act Vallandigharn The Draft Kiots Elections of 18(53. HEN President Lincoln entered upon the duties of his high office he was without any settled policy except the one purpose that was always uppermost with him his inflex- ible resolve to save the Union. He was not a man to at- tempt to do the right thing in the wrong way, or at the wrong time. All his utterances on his historic journey from Springfield to Wash- ington were vitalized by one dominating aim the desire to win the seceding States back to their duty. He had no thought of instituting a crusade against slavery if they returned. " We mean to treat you, as near as we possibly can, as Washington, Jefferson, and Madison treated you," he said at Cincinnati, addressing his words to the slave- holders. " We mean to leave you alone, and in no way interfere with your institutions; to abide by all and every compromise of the Con- stitution. . . . We mean to remember that you are as good as we that there is no difference between us other than the difference of circumstances. We mean to recognize, and bear in mind always, that you have as good hearts in your bosoms as other people, or as we claim to have, and to treat you accordingly." He still hoped that the ebullitions of secession might not be as serious as they seemed. " There is really no crisis, except an artificial one," he said at Pitts- burg; " such a one as may be gotten up at any time by turbulent men, aided by designing politicians." The Inaugural Address contained no threats against the South, unless his avowal of his purpose to keep his oath to maintain the Constitution was a threat. When Mr. Lincoln assumed the Presidency the war on the part of the South was already begun. He waited for the successful assault upon Fort Sumter on the part of the United States. The interval was one of un- 110 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. certainty and doubt. The weight of opinion in the Cabinet was in favor of the abandonment of Sumter. To provision or to strengthen it was impracticable. Meanwhile there w r as a rebel " embassy " in Washington vainly seeking to open negotiations with the administration. It had two purposes to demand the evacuation of Forts Sumter and Pickens and to indulge the Secretary of State with " dreams which we know are not to be realized." While Seward could not receive the com- missioners, either officially or informally, he permitted Justice Camp- bell, of the Supreme Court, to become an intermediary. Secretary Seward was in favor of the evacuation of Sumter, and he told Justice Campbell that it would be evacuated within five days. Sumter was not evacuated, and the interviews with Justice Campbell were con- tinued. It was determined to supply Sumter, and Seward promptly informed Campbell of the intention. Justice Campbell was severely criticised for using his official position to carry on this intrigue, but Seward could not have been aware that it was an intrigue. It was an intrigue on the part of both the parties to it. Each believed he was engaged in the performance of a patriotic duty. Seward had an abiding faith in the Unionism of the border States, especially Vir- ginia, and he was coquetting with the Virginia Convention, through George W. Summers, in much the same way that he was coquetting with the Southern Confederacy through Justice Campbell. He sought to make Lincoln a participant, without making him a confidant. Summers was invited to Washington for a conference, but, pleading- important business, he sent John B. Baldwin in his place. Baldwin came with empty hands, and he came too late. While Seward was giving assurances to Campbell, Lincoln made no pledges to Baldwin. The President would have been willing to order the evacuation of Fort Sumter if the Virginia Convention could have been induced to adjourn without delay. After Baldwin's mission had failed, John Minor Botts offered to submit the propositions that Seward had so much at heart, but the President would not consent. A secret expedi- tion, advised by Seward, was sent to re-enforce and defend Fort Pick- ens and the other Gulf forts, while the President, wearied at last with Seward's tortuous recommendations and Quixotic projects, had learned that he must be President in fact as well as in name, if the authority of the United States was to be asserted and maintained. Secretary Seward's course during the first month of President Lin- coln's administration was a series of the most extraordinary assump- tions in the history of Constitutional Government. Mr. Seward was the Pooh Bah of the period the first in peace and the first in war, and, he was prone to believe, the first in the hearts of his countrymen. THE WAR FOR THE UNION. Ill His intrigues with the Southern conspirators, through Southern Whigs like Campbell and Summers and Baldwin and Botts, re- sulted in nothing, except the subsequent charge that the Government had failed to keep faith with the conspiracy. In what he attempted to do, as well as in what he insisted should not be done, his acts were as inconsistent as his arguments were illogical. He was urgent for conciliation, for delay, for the exercise of his own matchless powers in crushing out conspiracy by finesse. There is no reason to doubt the sincerity of his belief in himself, in his mission, in his ultimate triumph. " I have built up the Republican party," was the thought that dominated him; " I have brought it to triumph; I must save the party and save the Government. To do this war must be averted; the negro question must be dropped; the irrepressible conflict ig- nored, and a Union party to embrace the border slave States created." He had no doubt of his ability to dominate the President by his tact, his prestige, the support he would be able to command. Lincoln was to be a mere puppet in his hands; the other members of the Cabinet were to be treated as nonentities, who could neither help nor hurt. Relying on Lincoln's simplicity and inexperience, he sought to strengthen his influence over the President by a pretended refusal to accept the State Department. He declined on the 2d of March, and consented to withdraw his declination on the morning of the 5th. Lincoln met Seward's craft by a craft subtler than that with which he was dealing. He made no immediate response, keeping Seward in doubt from Saturday until Monday, and when he finally wrote his reply he remarked, " I can't afford to let Seward take the first trick." He was willing to have Seward stay or go, but he was not willing to let Seward dictate his Cabinet at the eleventh hour. " Judd," he said, when he was asked if Winter Davis was to be nominated instead of Blair, " when the slate breaks again it will break at the top." It was Blair who was the first to antagonize Seward's peace policy in the Cabinet. But Seward's policy ruled the hour. Seward was for publicly proclaiming surrender at Charleston, and secretly preparing for war at Pensacola and in Texas. He felt himself fully able to di- rect the operations by land and sea to become, as it were, the gen- eral of the army and the admiral of the fleet. On the 29th of March, with the question whether Sumter should be provisioned or evacu- ated still undecided, the President ordered an expedition to be made ready at New York, to sail on the 6th of April. Although the Secre- tary of War and the Secretary of the Navy were directed to co-operate in preparing the expedition, neither was informed of its object or designation. The Secretary of State, however, was determined that it should be his expedition. W T hile Lincoln was made to seem to act 112 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. Seward acted. On the same day that the order for the secret expedi- tion was made he took Captain M. C. Meigs, an engineer officer in charge of the new wings of the Capitol, to the White House. On the way he explained his wish that Su niter should be evacuated, but Pickens defended. His object was to secure the appointment of Meigs as military commander of the expedition. The President asked Cap- tain Meigs if Fort Pickens could be held. " Certainly, if the navy would do its duty," was the answer. Lincoln then asked Meigs if he would go down there and take command, but Meigs, with the true instincts of a soldier, pointed out that there was a number of majors already there, and he was only a captain. " I understand how that is," said Seward, decisively; " Captain Meigs must be promoted." As this was impracticable, Colonel Keyes, General Scott's military secre- tary, was associated with Seward's plans. On Sunday, March 31, the Secretary accompanied the two offi- cers in a call upon General Scott, in further pursuance of the great scheme of military and naval ad- venture. " General Scott," Seward said, " you have formally reported to the President your advice to evacuate Port Pickens ; notwith- standing this, I now come to bring you his order, as Commander-in- Chief of the Army and Navy, to re-en- force and hold it to the last extrem- ity." " Sir," replied the old soldier, drawing himself up to his full height, " the great Frederick used to say ' When the King commands all things are possible.' ' As a naval expert, young and daring, Lieutenant David D. Porter was ordered to join Keyes and Meigs in preparing and executing the Seward scheme. The expedition originally ordered by the President was, in fact, intended for the relief of Sumter. As neither the Secre- tary of War nor the Secretary of the Navy was taken into the confi- dence of the astute Secretary of State, the two expeditions naturally came into conflict. One fine morning the Commandant of the Brook- lyn Navy Yard received two orders " to fit out the i Powhatan' to go to sea at the earliest possible moment." These orders seemed identical, although one was signed by President Lincoln and the other by Secre- tary Welles. The President intended the " Powhatan " for the Pickens expedition, and the Navy Department destined her for the relief of GENERAL M. C. MEIGS. THE WAR FOR THE UNION. 113 Sumter. But this was not the extent of Seward's intermeddling. On the same day that Mr. Lincoln signed the order for the "Powhatan,"he signed other orders, at Mr. Reward's request, that were still more re- markable. One of them detached Captain Stringham for service at Pensacola, and the other contemplated the sending of Captain Pen- dergrast to Vera Cruz, on account of u important complications in our foreign relations." When the orders reached the Navy Department in duplicate the gentle Welles was indignant, and he hastened to the President with fire in his eyes. " What have I done wrong? " Lincoln asked, playfully, when Welles entered. He had signed them without reading or understanding them, and he recalled them, but without giving Welles his confidence in regard to their significance. Mr. Seward had also submitted to Mr. Lincoln " Some Thoughts for the President's Consideration." It was in this remarkable paper that he proposed to change the issue from the impending domestic to an un- necessary foreign war, and virtually invited the President to abdicate in his favor. The Don Quixote of American statecraft had reached the limit of his madness. To his suggestion that either the President must direct the preposterous policy he proposed " himself, and be all the time active in it, or devolve it on some member of his Cabinet," Mr. Lincoln answered, " If this must be done I must do it." After this Seward, like his Spanish prototype, was restored to his right mind, and it was not until after his death that the world learned how acute had been his aberration. While the Meigs expedition rendered Fort Pickens secure and saved Key West and the Tortugas, the attempt to relieve Fort Sumter pre- cipitated the attack, and compelled the call to arms. With the be- ginning of the war the political questions that were so important in Mr. Seward's mind disappeared in the uprising of the nation. It is unnecessary in this work to follow the fortunes of the struggle in their military aspects, or to concern ourselves with the routine of business legislation in Congress. The called session lasted only twenty-nine working days. In that time seventy-six public acts were passed, all of them, except four, relating to the military and naval forces of the Union and the needs of the Government. Only one polit- ical resolution was adopted a resolution declaring the objects of the war, in which the purpose not to interfere with slavery in the States where it existed, that had so often been asserted in vain, was again reiterated. The act in which provision was made for the for- feiture of all claim to slaves employed in the military or naval service against the United States can not be fairly classed as political. Mr. Lincoln regarded the passage of this act as untimely, and he would, perhaps, have disapproved of it had it not been that to veto it would 114 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. have been equivalent to an admission that the Confederate States might have the full benefit of the slaves for military purposes. Secretary Cameron was in advance of both the President and Con- gress in dealing with slavery in its relations to the war. General Butler declared the negroes that came into his lines in the Virginia peninsula " contraband " the origin of the name " Contrabands " for runaway or captured slaves and as early as May, 1861, Cameron instructed him not to surrender slaves that came within his lines to their masters, but to " employ them in the services to which they may be best adapted." He was not disposed to deal harshly with General Fremont because of the order, issued in August of the same year, declaring free the slaves owned by men in the Confederate serv- ice. This order was annulled by the President. In his first annual report Cameron advocated arming the slaves for military service, but was compelled to modify the report by an order of President Lincoln. Cameron's forced retirement from the Cabinet a few weeks later was not directly due to this report, but it had its effect in inducing the President to yield to the strong pressure for his removal. Lincoln was not disposed to antagonize the powerful element in the North that was declaiming against a war against slavery, or the obtrusive sentiment in the army that found so many mouthpieces to proclaim they were " not fighting for the niggers." But the issue was one that could not be smothered. It came up in Congress in the win- ter of 1861-62 in the demand for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, and notwithstanding the opposition of the border slave States the bill was passed. In a special message, March 6, 1862, Mr. Lincoln recommended the passage of a joint resolution looking to co- operation with States consenting to abolish slavery, with compensa- tion for the loss of the slaves. At this time Mr. Lincoln would have consented to the outlay of the vast sum of |400,000,000, if it had suf- ficed to purchase peace without the disturbing element that had caused the war. A few months later he became convinced that only emancipation would render the complete restoration of the Union possible, and from that time he never wavered from the declared intentions of his Provisional Proclamation of September 22, 1862, and the epochal Proclamation of Emancipation of January 1, 1863. There always was a peace party in the loyal States from the firing on Sumter until the surrender at Appomattox. In the main the peace advocates were Democrats, but a few erratic Eepublicans, of whom Horace Greeley was a type, at times took the same ground. These two elements reached identical conclusions from diverse premises. The Peace Democrats wanted slavery preserved the Peace Repub- licans sought its destruction. These Democrats were willing to pre- THE WAR FOR THE UNION. 115 serve slavery without the Union, while the Republicans were willing to surrender the Union to slavery in order to form a Free Republic. Both were noisy, but the Peace Democrats were dangerous, while the Peace Republicans were only amusing. In the elections of 1861 the peace party w r as not seriously felt. The great body of the Douglas Democracy united with the Republicans in the autumn elections for a vigorous prosecution of the war, and the administration was sustained against the futile efforts of the pro-Slavery Democracy. But in 1862 the outlook was discouraging. The Democracy became aggressive against an "abolition war," and for a time it seemed as if the Repub- licans would be routed in every part of the country. In Maine the majority for Governor was reduced from an absolute majority of 26,694 for Lincoln in 1860 over the combined opposition to a little over 4,000. This was before the Preliminary Proclamation of Eman- cipation was issued. In Vermont, on the contrary, the administration majority greatly exceeded expectations. The October elections were discouraging. In Ohio the popular majority against the administra- tion was about seven thousand, and the Democrats elected fourteen of the nineteen Congressmen. In Indiana the reverse was overwhelm- ing, the Republicans carrying only three of the eleven Congress Dis- tricts. In Pennsylvania the Democrats had a majority of four thou- sand, and one-half of the Representatives in Congress. A Democratic Legislature was chosen, and Charles R. Buckalew, a Democrat, was sent to the United States Senate. In New York, in November, Ho- ratio Seymour was elected Governor over General James S. Wads- worth, by a majority of nearly ten thousand. New Jersey elected a Democratic Governor, Joel Parker, while the Republicans carried only one Congress District. Illinois chose a Democratic Legislature, and sent William A. Richardson, the Lecompton leader in the 35th Congress, to the United States Senate. In Michigan the reaction was marked, although not so complete as in Ohio, Indiana, and Illi- nois. In Massachusetts Governor Andrew was re-elected over Gen- eral Charles Devens, a Union soldier, who ran as a coalition candidate against the emancipation policy of the administration; and Iowa, Kansas, and Minnesota sent unanimous Republican delegations to the 38th Congress. California and Oregon also proved firm. These successes, however, failed to counterbalance the disasters in the other States, and if it had not been for the border slave States the President would have been confronted by a hostile House of Representatives in the closing years of the war. Delaware chose a Republican Repre- sentative, Missouri contributed a majority of its members to the sup- port of the administration, and in the ensuing year Maryland. West, Virginia, and Kentucky finally assured a working majority of twenty in the House. 116 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. The defeats in the field were the real causes of the reverses in the elections. From Bull Run to Antietam the Army of the Potomac had met with disaster after disaster. With Richmond in sight McClellan had been driven back in the Seven Days' Fights, and compelled to .abandon an enterprise that was expected to end the war. Pope was beaten on the unfortunate battle-ground at Manassas Junction, w T here the confident Unionists had been so terribly routed the year before. Lee had boldly thrown the army of Northern Virginia into Maryland, and had again met McClellan with undaunted courage. It was doubtful whether the battle of Antietam had been lost or won, but if it was a victory it was as much a triumph for " Little Mac " and the Democrats as for Lincoln and the Republicans. As a Republican victory it contributed nothing to Republican success in the ensuing- elections, while McCIellan's removal gave deep offense to every man who still called himself a Democrat, whether citizen or soldier. Even the " soldier vote " w r as cast against the War party with surprising- force, and when the 37th Congress met to begin its last session it looked as if Confederate success was assured, and that a Democratic House would crown the triumph w T ith terms of surrender that would meet all the demands of the South. Still another defeat, as disastrous and humiliating as any that had gone before it, was to intervene between the elections of 1862 and the formal promulgation of the Proclamation of Emancipation the utter discomfiture of Burnside at Fredericksburg. Hooker's failure fol- lowed when the military campaign opened in the spring of 1803, and Lee, confident of bringing the war to a close, now again crossed the Potomac and entered Pennsylvania. In the Southwest Grant was beleaguering Pemberton at Vicksburg, but the country had not yet learned to expect much from Grant. Of Meade it knew as little, and it cared nothing for either. But with the capture of Vicksburg, and defeat of Lee at Gettysburg, the war was only beginning in its military aspects, and from that time it meant a complete political revolution, as well as hard fighting and the destruction of the Con- federacy. When President Lincoln was contemplating the Emancipation Proclamation he was alike embarrassed by the inconsiderate demands of the Radicals and the plaintive entreaties of the Conservatives in the Republican party. The one man who had been a thorn in Lincoln's side ever since his election was Greeley. Greeley was a great man, but not a wise one. He was the first to embarrass Lincoln by making a proposition for which even Buchanan was scarcely then prepared. " Whenever a considerable section of our Union," he said in the New York Tribune, only three days after the election of 1860, " shall delib- THE WAR FOR THE UNION. 117 erately resolve to get out we shall resist all coercive measures de- signed to keep it in. We hope never to live in a Eepublic whereof one section is pinned to another by bayonets." This cry was con- tinued until the assault on Fort Sumter made coercion no longer an issue. Then came the " On to Richmond " cry, which ended in dis- aster and humiliation. Wrong in 1860, and wrong again in 1861, Greeley was urgent to do the right thing at the wrong time in 1862. While Lincoln was busy with the Emancipation Proclamation, con- sulting his Cabinet, and considering it in all its aspects and bearings, Greeley precipitated himself upon the President in an " Open Letter," in which he denounced the Executive for failing to enforce the Con- fiscation Act of 1861 in " mistaken deference to rebel slavery," and he accused Lincoln of bowing to " cer- tain fossil politicians hailing from the border States," and to army officers, who " evinced far more so licitude to uphold slavery than to put down the rebellion." This let- ter brought out Lincoln's famous reply, in which he said that if he could save the Union without free- ing any slaves he would do it; that if he could save it by freeing all the slaves he would do it; and that if he could save it by freeing some and leaving others he would do that; adding, "What I do about slavery and the colored race I do because I believe it helps to save the Union, and what I forbear I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union." The appeals for Emancipation came from many quarters, and the pressure was very great, but the opposition was not less strenuous and determined. The Cabinet was divided. Stanton and Bates were for its immediate promulgation a month before Greeley's waspish letter was written, and when Greeley had no knowledge of what was in the President's mind. Chase was for arming the slaves, and de- volving the duty of proclaiming emancipation upon the commanding officers of the army. Seward was for postponement until some im- portant military success afforded a favorable opportunity. Blair, with the instincts of a politician, saw in it the loss of the elections. The politicians almost to a man took sides with the views of the HORACE GREELEY. 118 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. Postmaster-General when they were able to get Lincoln's ear. The best statement of the case as it was made from the political stand- point is that of Alexander K. McClure. " The most earnest discussions I ever had with Lincoln," he wrote, " were on the subject of his Emancipation Proclamation. I knew the extraordinary pressure that came from the more radical element of the Republican party, embracing a number of its ablest leaders, such as Sunmer, Chase, Wade, Chandler, and others, but I did not know, and few were permitted to know, the importance of an Eman- cipation policy in restraining the recognition of the Confederacy by France and England. I was earnestly opposed to an Emancipation Proclamation by the President. For some weeks before it was issued I saw Lincoln frequently, and in several instances sat with him for hours at a time after the routine business of the day had been disposed of and the doors of the White House were closed. I viewed the issue solely from a political standpoint, and certainly had the best of reasons for the views I pressed upon Lincoln, assuming that political expediency should control his action. I reminded him that the proclamation would not liberate a single slave; that the Southern armies must be overthrown, and that the territory held by them must be conquered by military success before it could be made effective. To this Lincoln answered : ' It seems like the Pope's bull against the comet '; but that was the most he ever said in any of his conversa- tions to indicate that he might not issue it. I appealed to him to issue a military order, as Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy, proclaiming that every slave of a rebellious owner should be forever free when brought within our lines. Looking simply to practical re- sults, that would have accomplished everything that the Emancipa- tion Proclamation achieved; but it was evident during all these dis- cussions that Lincoln viewed the question from a very much higher standpoint than I did, although, as usual, he said but little and gave no clew to the bent of his mind on the subject. I reminded Lincoln that political defeat would be inevitable in the great States of the Union in the elections soon to follow if he issued the Emancipation Procla- mation; that New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois would undoubtedly vote Democratic and elect Demo- cratic delegations to the next Congress. He did not dispute my judg- ment as to the political effect of the proclamation, but I never left him with any reasonable hope that I had seriously impressed him on the subject." It is a fitting acknowledgment that Mr. McClure made after many years that Lincoln rose to the sublimest duty of his life while he (McClure) " was pleading the mere expedient of a day against a THE WAR FOR THE UNION. 119 record for human freedom that must be immortal while liberty has worshipers in any land or clime." While President Lincoln was anxiously considering the question of emancipation, the utterances of the Democratic conventions in many of the States were peculiarly bitter and rancorous. In Penn- sylvania, in 1862, the Democratic State Convention described the Re- publicans as " the party of fanaticism, or crime, whichever it may be called." After more than a year of war, opposition to slavery was still more criminal than secession and disunion for slavery. The hysterical declarations of that time, that " the party of fanaticism or crime, whichever it may be called, that seeks to turn loose the slaves of the Southern States to overrun the North and enter into competition with the white laboring masses, thus degrading their manhood by placing them on an equality with negroes," was " insulting to our race "; that " this is a government of white men and was established exclusively for the w T hite race "; and that " the negroes are not entitled to and ought not to be admitted to social or political equality with the white race," seem very foolish as well as very narrow and bigoted now, but then appeals to race prejudice were very effective weapons for weak- ening the administration and discrediting the war for the Union. In Ohio it was declared that " it would be unjust to our gallant sol- diers to compel them to free the negroes of the South, and thereby fill Ohio with a degraded population to compete with these same soldiers upon their return to the peaceful avocations of life." Indiana was red-hot for " negro exclusion," and the Democracy of Illinois made the distinct declaration that a war for the abolition of slavery could not have their support. These were the issues that won in the elec- tions of 1862. The shame that followed the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860 was repeated in 1862 as the answer to Lincoln's Moni- tory Proclamation. In spite of a fatuity into which they were led by fatuous politicians, the people of the Free States were sound at the core, and the people of the border States were even more devoted to the Union than in the dangerous months of secession. But in the border Slave States, as in the belt of Free States that fringed the skirts of slavery, the politicians hostile to the administration were intractable. Lee had entered Maryland with the avowed purpose of helping the downtrod- den people of the State to free themselves from the yoke of the tyrant, but he found himself in a land where he was regarded as an enemy, while McClellan's soldiers were welcomed as friends. Bragg had gone into Kentucky with the intention of rousing a fresh revolt, and as he retreated, discouraged and beaten, he was fired upon by the people he had come to champion. But the politicians of the border 120 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. States were as hostile to compensated emancipation as the Demo- cratic politicians of the Free States were hostile to " freeing the nig- gers " under any circumstances or for any reason. A bill to give the loyal slaveholders of Missouri $15,000,000 for the emancipation of their slaves was so strenuously resisted by the Democratic Repre- sentatives in Congress, aided by the rest of the Democrats from all the States, early in 1863, that the measure was beaten. Had it succeeded similar relief would have been extended to Delaware, Maryland, West Virginia, and Kentucky. Mr. Crittenden, the venerable champion of conciliation, could not be persuaded to accept even compensated conciliation when it involved the destruction of slavery. He scouted the acceptance of United States bonds in payment for slave property as an absurdity. " You Southern men," the President said one day to the eminent Kentucky Unionist, " will soon reach the point where bonds will be a more valuable possession than bondsmen. Nothing is more uncertain now than two-legged property." And so it proved. The influences that controlled the Representatives from the border States in their opposition to compensated emancipation, and the Democratic leaders in the North and West, were their confident belief that the war was a failure, and their expectation of the intervention of the Great Powers. In consequence of these expectations and be- liefs some of the Democratic conspirators were looking forward to the time when they could compel an armistice, and call a Peace Con- vention with or without the consent of a humiliated administration. Lord Lyons, the British Minister, was made the depository of the con- fidences of some of the Democratic leaders of New York immediately after the election of Governor Seymour. " The subject uppermost in their minds while they were speaking to me," Lyons wrote, " was naturally that of mediation between the North and the South." While believing that it must come they were " afraid of its coming too soon "; it would be " essential to the success of any proposal from abroad that it should be deferred until the control of the Executive Government should be in the hands of the Conservative party "; they told him that " the object of the military operations should be to place the North in a position to demand an armistice," and that the armis- tice should be " followed by a Convention in which such changes of the Constitution should be proposed as would give the South ample security on the subject of its slave property"; and they wanted, if they could, to bring about the armistice " without the aid of foreign governments," but " if it appeared to be the only means of putting an end to hostilities " they " would be disposed to accept an offer of mediation." It was while this conspiracy, which was the result of the great Democratic triumph in the elections of 1862, was in its incipient THE WAR FOR THE UNION. 121 stages that the Emancipation Proclamation was issued. The Procla- mation, in itself, was not abolition. It was purely a military measure, but it would free the slaves wherever the armies of the Union pene- trated while the war lasted. When the war was over complete emancipation would still remain to be perpetuated by a Constitu- tional amendment, unless the amendment came sooner. Its imme- diate effect was to delay intervention, and with the delay the Demo- cratic hopes of mediation vanished. Gettysburg and Vicksburg ren- dered the dream of an armistice, such as the Democratic conspirators desired, a thing impossible of attainment, and with the triumphs of the national arms came renewed triumphs for the Republican party that made the great Democratic strength in the 38th Congress the sad expression of the despair of the nation. Two Acts of the 37th Congress were especially obnoxious to the Peace Democracy the Act authorizing the suspension of the writ of Habeas Corpus and the Conscription Act. There had been many mili- tary arrests of civilians during the early part of the war, and some of these military prisoners had been held without regard to writs issued by State or Federal judges. These arrests were wildly de- nounced as outrages, and as most of the " State prisoners " were prominent Democrats, noted for their zeal, activity, and earnestness in misrepresenting and discouraging the war, their detention was the occasion of a great outcry. These victims of the " tyrant " included Charles J. Ingersoll, an eminent lawyer and former member of Con- gress from Philadelphia; James W. Wall, an avowed enemy of the war, of New Jersey; George W. Jones, previously a Senator in Con- gress from Iowa, and Mr. Buchanan's Minister to Bogota; Jacob J. Noah, a Union soldier, whose " political opinions were adverse to those of the dominant party"; William II. Winder, a Marylander, nominally of Philadelphia, who w r as very active in proclaiming that " the Union was founded on fraternal love and fellowship," that " it could never be cemented by blood or upheld by the bayonet," and in deprecating the civil war and deploring its consequences; and Dennis A. Mahoney, the editor of the Dubuque Herald, Iowa, who was one of the prisoners confined in the " Old Capitol " prison at Washington. These were representative opponents of the war in the North and W T est, in whose behalf it was claimed that " the licentiousness of the tongue or pen is a minor evil compared with the licentiousness of arbitrary power." Free speech was to be accorded to every man who denounced the war, proclaimed it a failure, misrepresented its pur- poses, and discouraged enlistments, but any interference with these disloyal acts was tyranny, and the tyrant, Lincoln, was denounced in political speeches and political conventions in all parts of the coun- 122 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. try. The effect of this crusade, at first disastrous to the Kepublicans in the elections of 1862, was felt with even greater force in the draft riots of 1863. One of the ablest and most vindictive opponents of the adminis- tration was Clement L. Vallandigham, a member of the 37th Con- gress from Ohio. When secession came Vallandigham opposed coercion, and was constant in his attempts " to restore the Union through peace." For " publicly expressed sympathy for those in arms against the Government of the United States, and declared disloyal sentiments and opinions, with the object and purpose of weakening the power of the Government in its efforts to suppress an unlawful rebellion " in a speech at Mount Vernon, Ohio, Vallandigham was ar- rested by order of General Burnside in May, 1863, tried by a Military Commission, and sentenced to confinement in Fort Warren, Boston Harbor. President Lincoln modified this sentence, and directed that he should be sent through the military lines to the enemy. The language imputed to Vallandigham, S. S. Cox, in his " Three Decades of Federal Legislation." claims as his own. Cox says that by some mistake the provost-marshal, or some other reporter, gave his words as the words of Vallandig- ham, and that he swore to this state of fact before the court-martial. No attention was paid to the genial " Sunset," who was not dangerous, while Vallandigham was very c. L. VALLANDIGHAM. dangerous indeed. Had he not been rigor- ously dealt with he would have had the Peace Democracy of Ohio in arms against the Enrollment Act be- fore midsummer. As he was convicted and sent South, as Cox says, " by some whim of tyranny," violent resistance to the draft was trans- ferred to New York City, where the Draft Riots of 1863 became one of the most startling episodes of the turning period in the War for the LTnion. The Conscription Act was rendered necessary by the discourage- ment of enlistments that resulted from Democratic opposition to the war. The Act was passed on the 16th of April, 1863. Its passage was received with great bitterness by the Peace Democrats everywhere. It was not the kind of armistice they were looking for. It was the Conscription Law that was so hotly discussed by Vallandigham and Cox at Mount Vernon, and denounced " in defense of the rights of the people and of constitutional liberty." In New York the action of the THE WAR FOR THE UNION. 123 Government in causing the arrest of Vallandighani caused great ex- citement and indignation, and at a meeting of Democrats at Albany, over which Erastus Corning presided, it was denounced as " the as- sumption of a military commander," for reasons mildly described as " words addressed to a public meeting, in criticism of the course of the administration and in condemnation of the military orders of that General." The whole series of resolutions adopted by the Albany meeting w T as transmitted to the President, and Mr. Lincoln answered them, cogently and frankly, in words that have an interest as great to-day as w r hen they were uttered. " The resolutions promise to support me," he said, " in every con- stitutional and lawful measure to suppress the Rebellion; and I have not knowingly employed, nor shall knowingly employ, any other. But the meeting, by their resolutions, assert and argue that certain military arrests, and proceedings following them, for which I am ultimately responsible, are unconstitutional. I think they are not. The resolutions quote from the Constitution the definition of treason, and also the limiting safeguards and guaranties therein provided for the citizen on trial for treason, and on his being held to answer for capital or otherwise infamous crimes, and, in criminal prosecutions, his right to a speedy and public trial by an impartial jury. They pro- ceed to resolve ' that these safeguards of the rights of the citizen against the pretensions of arbitrary power were intended more especially for his protection in times of civil commotion.' And, ap- parently to demonstrate the proposition, the resolutions proceed: ' They were secured substantially to the English people after years of protracted civil war, and were adopted into our Constitution at the close of the Revolution.' Would not the demonstration have been better if it could have been truly said that these safeguards had been adopted and applied during the civil wars, and during our Revolu- tion, instead of after the one and at the close of the other? I, too, am devotedly for them after civil war, and before civil war, and at all times, 'except when, in cases of rebellion or invasion, the public safety may require ' their suspension. The resolutions proceed to tell us that these safeguards ' have stood the test of seventy-six years of trial, under our republican system, under circumstances which show that, while they constitute the foundation of all free government, they are elements of the enduring stability of the Republic.' No one denies that they have stood the test up to the beginning of the present Rebel- lion, if we except a certain occurrence at New Orleans; nor does any one question that they will stand the same test much longer after the Rebellion closes. But these provisions of the Constitution have no application to the case we have in hand, because the arrests com- 124 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. plained of were not made for treason that is, not for the treason defined in the Constitution, and upon conviction of which the punish- ment is death nor yet were they made to hold persons to answer for any capital or otherwise infamous crimes; nor were the proceedings following, in any constitutional or legal sense, ' criminal prosecu- tions.' The arrests were made on totally different grounds, and the proceedings which followed accorded with the grounds of the arrest. Let us consider the real case with which we are dealing, and apply to it parts of the Constitution plainly made for such cases. u p r io r f O ni y installation here, it had been inculcated that any State had a lawful right to secede from the national Union, and that it would be expedient to exercise the right whenever the devotees of the doctrine should fail to elect a President to their own liking. I was elected contrary to their liking; and accordingly, so far as it was legally possible, they had taken seven States out of the Union, had seized many of the United States forts, and had fired upon the United States flag, all before I was inaugurated, and, of course, before I had done any official act whatever. The Rebellion thus begun soon ran into the present civil war; and, in certain respects, it began on very unequal terms between the parties. The insurgents had been pre- paring for it more than thirty years, while the Government had taken no steps to resist them. The former had carefully considered all the means which could be turned to their account. It undoubtedly was a well-pondered reliance with them that, in their own unrestricted efforts to destroy the Union, Constitution, and law, all together, the Government would, in great degree, be restrained by the same Con- stitution and law from arresting their progress. Their sympathizers pervaded all departments of the Government and nearly all com- munities of the people. From this material, under cover of ' liberty of speech,' ' liberty of the press,' and ' habeas corpus, 1 * they hoped to keep on foot amongst us a most efficient corps of spies, informers, suppliers, and aiders and abettors of their cause in a thousand ways. They knew that, in times such as they were inaugurating, by the Con- stitution itself, the 'habeas corpus" might be suspended; but they also knew they had friends who would make a question as to who was to suspend it; meanwhile, their spies and others might remain at large to help on their cause. Or if, as has happened, the Executive should suspend the writ, without ruinous waste of time, instances of arresting innocent persons might occur, as are always likely to occur in such cases: and then a clamor could be raised in regard to this, which might be at least of some service to the insurgent cause. It needed no very keen perception to discover this part of the enemy's program, so soon as by open hostilities their machinery was fairly THE WAR FOR THE UNION. 125 put in motion. Yet, thoroughly imbued with a reverence for the guaranteed rights of individuals, I was slow to adopt the strong- measures which by degrees I have been forced to regard as being within the exceptions of the Constitution, and as indispensable to the public safety. Nothing is better known to history than that courts of justice are utterly incompetent to such cases. Civil courts are or- ganized chiefly for trials of individuals, or, at most, a few individuals acting in concert; and this in quiet times, and on charges of crimes well denned in the law. Even in times of peace, bands of horse thieves and robbers frequently grow too numerous and powerful for ordinary courts of justice. But what comparison in numbers have such bands ever borne to the insurgent sympathizers even in many of the loyal States? Again, a jury too frequently has at least one member more ready to hang the panel than to hang the traitor. And yet, again, he who dissuades one from volunteering, or induces one soldier to desert, weakens the Union cause as much as he who kills a Union soldier in battle. Yet this dissuasion or inducement may be so conducted as to be no defined crime of which any civil court would take cog- nizance. " Ours is a case of rebellion so called by the resolutions before me in fact, a clear, flagrant, and gigantic case of rebellion; and the provision of the Constitution, that ' the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when, in cases of rebellion or invasion, the public safety may require it,' is the provision which specially applies to our present case. This provision plainly attests the understanding of those who made the Constitution, that ordinary courts of justice are inadequate to ' cases of rebellion ' attests their purpose that, in such cases, men may be held in custody whom the courts, acting on ordinary rules, would discharge. Habeas corpus does not discharge men who are proved to be guilty of defined crime; and its suspension is allowed by the Constitution on purpose that men may be arrested and held who can not be proved to be guilty of defined crime, ' when, in cases of rebellion or invasion, the public safety may require it.' " This is precisely our present case a case of rebellion, wherein the public safety does require the suspension. Indeed, arrests by process of courts and arrests in cases of rebellion do not proceed altogether upon the same basis. The former is directed at the small percentage of ordinary and continuous perpetration of crime; while the latter is directed at sudden and extensive uprisings against the Government, which, at most, will succeed or fail in no great length of time. In the latter case, arrests are made, not so much for what has been done, as for what probably would be done. The latter is more for the pre- 126 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. ventive and less for the vindictive than the former. In such cases, the purposes of men are much more easily understood than in cases of ordinary crime. The man who stands by and says nothing, when the peril of his government is discussed, can not be misunderstood. If not hindered, he is sure to help the enemy; much more, if he talks ambiguously talks for his country with ' buts ' and i ifs ' and ' auds.' Of how little value the constitutional provisions I have quoted will be rendered if arrests shall never be made until defined crimes shall have been committed, may be illustrated by few notable examples. General John C. Breckinridge, General Robert E. Lee, General Joseph E. Johnston, General John B. Magruder, General William Preston, General Simon B. Buckner, and Commodore Franklin Buchanan, now occupying the very highest places in the rebel war service, were nil within the power of the Government since the Rebellion began, and w r ere nearly as well known to be traitors then as now. Unques- lionably, if we had seized them, the insurgent cause would be much weaker. But no one of them had then committed any crime defined in the law. Every one of them, if arrested, would have been discharged on habeas corpus, were the writ allowed to operate. In view of these and similar cases, I think the time not unlikely to come when I shall be blamed for having made too few T arrests rather than too many. " By the third resolution, the meeting indicate their opinion that military arrests may be constitutional in localities where rebellion exists, but that such arrests are unconstitutional in localities where rebellion or insurrection does not actually exist. They insist that such arrests shall not be made ' outside of the lines of necessary military occupation and the scenes of insurrection.' Inasmuch, how- ever, as the Constitution itself makes no such distinction, I am unable to believe that there is any such constitutional distinction. I concede that the class of arrests complained of can be constitutional only when, in cases of rebellion or invasion, the public safety may require them, and I insist that in such cases they are constitutional wherever the public safety does require them; as well in places to which they may prevent the rebellion extending, as in those where it may be already prevailing; as well where they may restrain mischievous in- terference with the raising and supplying of armies to suppress the rebellion, as where the rebellion may actually be; as well where they may restrain the enticing men out of the army, as where they would prevent mutinj^ in the army; equally constitutional at all places where they will conduce to the public safety, as against the dangers of re- bellion or invasion. Take the peculiar case mentioned by the meeting. It is asserted, in substance, that Mr. Vallandigham was, by a military commander, seized and tried ' for no other reason than w r ords ad- THE WAR FOR THE UNION. 127 dressed to a public meeting, in criticism of the course of the adminis- tration, and in condemnation of the military orders of the General.' Now, if there be no mistake about this; if this assertion is the truth and the whole truth; if there was no other reason for the arrest, then I concede that the arrest was wrong. But the arrest, as I understand, was made for a very different reason. Mr. Vallandigham avows his hostility to the war on the part of the Union; and his arrest was made because he was laboring, with some effect, to prevent the raising of troops; to encourage desertions from the army; and to leave the Rebellion without an adequate military force to suppress it. He was not arrested because he was damaging the political prospects of the administration, or the personal interests of the commanding General, but because he was damaging the army, upon the existence and vigor of which the life of the nation depends. He was warring upon the military; and this gave the military constitutional jurisdiction to lay hands upon him. If Mr. Vallandigham was not damaging the mili- tary power of the country, then his arrest was made on a mistake of fact, which I would be glad to correct on reasonably satisfactory evidence. " I understand the meeting, whose resolutions I am considering, to be in favor of suppressing the Rebellion by military force by armies. Long experience has shown that armies can not be maintained unless desertions shall be punished by the severe penalty of death. The case requires, and the law and the Constitution sanction, this punishment. Must I shoot a simple-minded soldier boy who deserts, while I must not touch a hair of a wily agitator who induces him to desert? This is none the less injurious when effected by getting a father, or brother, or friend, into a public meeting, and there working upon his feelings till he is persuaded to write the soldier boy that he is fighting in a bad cause, for a wicked administration of a contemptible government, too weak to arrest and punish him if he shall desert. I think that, in such a case, to silence the agitator and save the boy is not only con- stitutional, but withal a great mercy. " If I be wrong on this question of constitutional power, my error lies in believing that certain proceedings are constitutional when, in cases of rebellion or invasion, the public safety requires them, which would not be constitutional when, in the absence of rebellion or in- vasion, the public safety does not require them: in other words, that the Constitution is not, in its application, in all respects the same, in cases of rebellion or invasion involving the public safety, as it is in times of profound peace and public security. The Constitution itself makes the distinction; and I can no more be persuaded that the Gov- ernment can constitutionally take no strong measures in time of 128 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. rebellion, because it can be shown that the same could not be law- fully taken in time of peace, than I can be persuaded that a particular drug is not good medicine for a sick man, because it can be shown not to be a good food for a well one. Nor am I able to appreciate the danger apprehended by the meeting, that the American people will, by means of military arrests during the Rebellion, lose the right of public discussion, the liberty of speech and the press, the law of evi- dence, trial by jury, and habeas corpus,, throughout the definite peace- ful future, which I trust lies before them, any more than I am able to believe that a man could contract so strong an appetite for emetics during a temporary illness as to persist in feeding upon them during the remainder of his healthful life. " One of the resolutions expresses the opinion of the meeting that arbitrary arrests will have the effect to divide and distract those who should be united in suppressing the Rebellion; and I am specifically called on to discharge Mr. Vallandigham. I regard this as, at least, a fair appeal to me on the expediency of exercising a constitutional power which I think exists. In response to such appeal, I have to say, it gave me pain when I learned that Mr. Vallandigham had been ar- rested that is, I was pained that there should have seemed to be a necessity for arresting him and that it will afford me great pleasure to discharge him so soon as I can, by any means, believe the public safety will not suffer by it." The Ohio Democracy nominated the exiled Vallandigham for Gov- ernor, but repelled the accusation that they would violently resist the draft. New York City, obedient to the Ohio teachings, resisted it. As the time for the first draft in the metropolis approached the Demo- cratic newspapers were busy inflaming the passions of the populace. According to the World, the men who administered the Federal Gov- ernment were " weak and reckless," and the Congress that passed the Conscription Act " an oligarchic conspiracy plotting a vast scheme of military servitude." The Daily News talked of " the miscreants at the head of the Government," and counseled opposition in the courts. An inflammatory handbill calling upon the people to rise and assert their liberties was circulated on the eve of the 4th of July. Meade's victory at Gettysburg called forth the loyal sentiment of the com- munity, and the appeal came to nothing. After the draft had actually begun it was easy to excite an ignorant population to arson and murder. The riots began at the house where the draft was in progress at Forty-sixth street and Third avenue. The officers and clerks were dispersed, the enrollment papers destroyed, and the building was set on fire. In a few hours the rioters had increased from hundreds to thousands. The riots extended over four days. From Monday until THE WAR FOR THE UNION. 129 Thursday a carnival of crime ruled the city. The colored population was assailed and some negroes were killed. A colored orphan asylum was destroyed. Enrolling offices were wrecked and the buildings in which they had found quarters were burned. The outbreak was, in fact, a " fire in the rear," a diversion in favor of the Rebellion. The July riots of 1863 were the natural outcome of Democratic teachings throughout the war, but they bore good fruit in one respect they helped to bring about the revulsion of feeling without which the war would have been a failure in spite of the victories of Meade at Gettys- burg and Grant at Vicksburg. In the elections of 1863 the popular verdict of the previous year was reversed in every State that had given Democratic majorities in 1862. Yallandigham w r as beaten in Ohio by over 60,000 votes with- out the soldier vote, and with it by more than one hundred thousand. In Pennsylvania Judge George W. Woodward, the Democratic can- didate for Governor, who had joined in the decision of the Supreme Court pronouncing the Conscription Act unconstitutional, was beaten by Andrew G. Curtin, the War Governor, by more than 15,000, and Chief Justice Lowrie, who had pronounced that judgment, was de- feated by nearly 13,000. New York, which had given Governor Sey- mour a majority of more than 10,000 in 1862, now gave the Republi- can State ticket over 30,000. In Indiana and Illinois the shame of 1862 was expunged, and in all the other Western States the Repub- lican vote was largely increased. The Peace party had met with re- buke everywhere, and the Republican party was in admirable shape for a vigorous prosecution of the war, and a successful result in the Presidential elections of 1864. IV. THE THIRD REPUBLICAN CONVENTION. Opposition to Lincoln's Nomination Chase a Candidate The Pom- eroy Circular Chase Withdraws The Cleveland Convention Hamliu and Lincoln General Butler Lincoln's Preference for Andrew Johnson Fremont's Letter of Acceptance Lieutenaut- General Grant The Baltimore Convention Dr. Breckinridge Credentials The Platform Lincoln and Johnson Nominated Dickinson Johnson General McClellau's Nomination. HE political interest of 1864 centered in the re-election of President Lincoln. If the brilliant victories of midsummer in 1863, with the added glories of Chickamauga later in the year, had been repeated at the beginning of the military campaign of 18(51, or if the significance of General Grant's strategy in Virginia had been foreseen and understood, there would have been no general or dangerous opposition to Lincoln in the Republican party. As it was, there were many elements of discontent to be reckoned with, and there was a determined opposition to be encoun- tered and overcome. There can be no doubt that Lincoln was nerv- ously anxious for a second nomination, especially at the time when his chances of success were the most doubtful. What may be called the latent attachment of the people was with him always, but the politicians who regarded him with distrust at the beginning of his administration, and who were never in touch with his methods, were hostile. Greeley was laboring diligently for his overthrow. Chase was anxious to obtain the nomination, and for nearly a year before the Republican National Convention of 1864 both he and his friends were making every possible exertion to secure it. These exertions were a source of much discomfort and embarrassment to the President, and the cause of clashings and heartburnings in the disposition of the patronage of a Department that through it could exert a powerful political influence. Mr. Chase's candidature became an acknowledged factor in the political campaign with the publication of what is called the " Pom- eroy circular," in February. This circular was written by J. M. Winchell. It was, however, as much the work of Samuel C. Pomeroy, who signed it as chairman of a secretly organized committee of Chase's friends, as if he had written it. Pomerov was one of the earlv Free THE THIRD REPUBLICAN CONVENTION. 131 State men of Kansas, where he went as one of the managers of Thayer's crusade. When Kansas became a State he had his reward in being chosen a Senator in Congress. He was not a man eminent for ability, nor one whose name would carry much weight in the contest between Chase and Lincoln for the Presidential nomination. Chase, however, had conferred with Pomeroy and others, and had as- sented to Pomeroy becoming chairman of a committee of his political friends. When the circular, which was intended to be confidential, was printed, Chase was shocked at the bald phraseology of its attack upon the President, and hastened to disavow all knowledge of it. It called for " counteraction on the part of those unconditional friends of the Union who differ from the policy of the administration "; the friends of Lincoln were accused of using " party and the machin- ery of official influence " to se- cure " the perpetuation of the present administration" 1 ; and it was calmly asserted that " those who conscientiously believe that the interests of the country and of freedom demand a change in favor of vigor and purity and nationality have no choice but to appeal at once to the people be- fore it is too late to secure a fair discussion of principles." The appeal was followed by the fol- lowing conclusions : " 1. That even were the re-elec tion of Mr. Lincoln desirable, it is practically impossible against the union of influences which will oppose him. " 2. That should he be re-elected, his manifest tendency toward compromises and temporary expedients of policy will become stronger during a second term than it has been in the first, and the cause of ~ human liberty, and the dignity of the nation suffer proportionately, while the war may continue to languish during his whole administra- tion, till the public debt shall become a burden too great to be borne. " 3. That the patronage of the Government through the necessities of the war has been so rapidly increased, and to such an enormous ex- tent, and so loosely placed, as to render the application of the one- term principle absolutely essential to the certain safety of our re- publican institutions. SAMUF.L C. POMEROY. 132 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. " 4. That we find united in Hon. Salmon P. Chase more of the quali- ties needed in a President, during the next four years, than are com- bined in any other available candidate. His record is clear and un- impeachable, showing him to be a statesman of rare ability and an administrator of the highest order, while his private character fur- nishes the surest available guaranty of economy and purity in the management of public affairs. " 5. That the discussion of the Presidential question already com- menced by the friends of Mr. Lincoln has developed a popularity and strength in Mr. Chase unexpected even to his warmest admirers, and while we are aware that its strength is at present unorganized, and in no condition to manifest its real magnitude, we are satisfied that it only needs a systematic and faithful effort to develop it to an extent sufficient to overcome all opposing obstacles. For these reasons the friends of Mr. Chase have determined on measures which shall present his claims fairly at once to the country. A central organization has been effected, which already has its connections in all the States, and the object of which is to enable his friends everywhere most effectu- ally to promote his elevation to the Presidency. We wish the hearty co-operation of all those who are in favor of the speedy restoration of the Union on the basis of universal freedom, and w T ho desire an ad- ministration of the Government during the first period of its new life, which shall to the fullest extent develop the capacity of free institu- tions, enlarge the resources of the country, diminish the burdens of taxation, elevate the standard of public and private morality, vindi- cate the honor of the Republic before the world, and in all things make our American nationality the fairest example for imitation which human progress has ever achieved. If these objects meet your approval, you can render efficient aid by exerting yourself at once to organize your section of the country, and by corresponding with the Chairman of the National Executive Committee, for the purpose either of receiving or imparting information. . . ." This remarkable assault on the administration on- the behalf of one of its members was so brutal in its terms and so unjustifiable both in form and substance, that it could not fail to defeat the object of its authors. Mr. Chase read it in the newspapers with a feeling of keen disappointment and shame. He had been a candidate for the Presi- dency in 1864 ever since Lincoln's election in 1860. The sentiments of the " circular " were in reality his own, expressed in many private conversations and letters. Fie was active in promoting a reorganiza- tion of the War Democrats in conjunction with the Radical Republi- cans, and wrote to Daniel S. Dickinson, of New York, in November, 1863, urging him to attend a convention at Chicago to assist in " the THE THIRD REPUBLICAN CONVENTION. 133 regeneration of the Democracy." He wrote to Governor Sprague, of Rhode Island, a few days later, doubting the expediency of re-electing anybody, and expressing the belief that a man of different qualities from those the President has will be needed for the next four years. u I am not anxious to be regarded as that man/' he said, " and I am quite willing to leave that question to the decision of those who agree in thinking that some such man should be chosen." While expressing a wish not to press his claims upon friends or the public, he took care that they should know that he would not object to the use of his name. He held frequent conferences with the committee of which Senator Pomeroy was the chairman, and with only the necessary coyness he assented to their views. He was especially anxious to secure the sup- port of the Ohio delegation in the Republican National Convention, and wrote to many of his Ohio friends for their assistance in securing it for him, but in none of these letters was Lincoln criticised harshly or the administration assailed. In his letter to Sprague he declared that he would not permit himself to be driven into any hostile or un- friendly position as to Mr. Lincoln. The Pomeroy " circular " placed him in the attitude he had sought to avoid, and upon its publication he at once wrote to the President disavowing all personal responsi- bility for it. " For yourself I cherish sincere respect and esteem," he said; " and, permit me to add, affection. Differences of opinion as to administrative action have not changed these sentiments; nor have they been changed by assaults upon me by persons who profess them- selves the special representatives of your views and policy. You are not responsible for acts not your own; nor will you hold me respon- sible except for what I do or say myself." The President's answer was frank and manly, but for Mr. Chase the " fat was in the fire." A few days after the appearance of the Pomeroy circular the Republi- can members of the Ohio Legislature passed a resolution in favor of Mr. Lincoln's renomination. This expression of the Republican sen- timent of his State induced Mr. Chase to withdraw as a candidate. The restless spirits in the Republican party continued their op- position notwithstanding Mr. Chase's withdrawal, and a convention was called to meet at Cleveland on the 31st of May. This call was ad- dressed to the " Radical Men of the Nation," and was signed by a few of the irreconcilables, including the Rev. Dr. George B. Cheever and Lucius Robinson, of New York, and B. Gratz Brown, of Missouri. Wendell Phillips and Frederick Douglass wrote letters approving the movement. The meeting comprised about 300 persons, none of them regularly chosen as delegates. William F. Johnston, the last of the Whig Governors of Pennsylvania, was the temporary chairman, and General John Cochrane, of New York, a War Democrat, the Presi- 134 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. dent of the Convention. General John C. Fremont was unanimously nominated for President, and General John Coclirane, with a few dis- senting votes, for Vice-President. The platform was bold in terms, but meaningless as a practical policy. Its most sweeping declaration in favor of the confiscation of the lauds of rebels and their distribu- tion among Union soldiers and sailors was repudiated by General Fremont in his letter of acceptance, and remitted to Congress by General Coclirane. The ticket commanded no appreciable support, and the candidates subsequently withdrew. The Republican National Convention assembled at Baltimore on the Tth of June. All opposition to the renominatiou of President Lin- coln had disappeared, and the interest centered in the candi- date for Vice-President. There was a strong feeling in the party for the " old ticket," but Lincoln was unquestionably unfavorable to Hamlin as his running mate. The two men w r ere not sympathetic; Hamlin neither obtained nor desired the President's confidence. He had none of the personal at- tachment for Lincoln that was felt and avowed by Chase in spite of their political differ- ences. His claims to a renomi- nation were purely sentimental claims, and these were of a na- ture with which Lincoln could not sympathize to any great ex- tent. Hamlin was one of the doubters of Lincoln's fitness for the Pres- idency, and would have been willing that the President should have no real share in Lincoln's administration. He was indifferent, if not hos- tile, when Lincoln was most sorely tried. Their positions were now re- versed. Lincoln was not only openly indifferent to Hamlin's candida- ture, but he was secretly casting about him for a candidate to take Hamlin's place. His idea of the candidate for Vice-President was that he should be a War Democrat. Hamlin had been a Democrat, but he ceased to be one long before the war. Lincoln wanted a Democrat who came into the Republican party with the war. His first choice was General Benjamin F. Butler. Butler had been an extreme pro-Slavery Democrat, but after the firing on Sumter and the call to arms he was GEN. BENJAMIN F. BUTLER. THE THIRD REPUBLICAN CONVENTION. 135 the first Union General to treat slaves as " contraband '' of war; as a soldier in the field he had not proved very successful, but after the oc- cupation of New Orleans he held the captured city with so much firm- ness that he was an object of universal obloquy in the South and with the Peace Democracy of the North. Butler declined to become a can- didate, and finally the President's influence was quietly exerted for the nomination of Andrew Johnson, of Tennessee. There has been much dispute in regard to President Lincoln's share in the nomination of Johnson, but that he favored and promoted it may be accepted as proved. Three years' contact with politicians as astute as Seward and Chase, and with the little army of political organizers that encamped in the White House, had made Abraham Lincoln a shrewd manager in poli- tics. When he determined that Johnson should be his associate on the ticket he brought the necessary influences to bear upon his purpose with remarkable skill. It w^as part of Lincoln's characteristics that he gave a share of his confidence to many men, but his full confidence to no man. If he had not wished for Johnson's nomination it would not have been made. Johnson was not the personal choice of any of Lincoln's friends. Lincoln brought them into his views one by one, but few or none of them knew that he had conferred with the others. He imparted his views to Cameron, but did not tell Cameron that he meant to impart them to McClure. He gave his confidence to Mc- Clure, but McClure was not aware that he had given it to Cameron. From Burton C. Cook, the chairman of the Illinois delegation, he withheld all knowledge of his purpose, thinking it time enough for Cook to learn what was expected from him w r hen the time came to act. How far he consulted with Henry J. Raymond, the editor of the New York Times, in regard to Johnson's nomination is not known, but Raymond was Lincoln's manager at Baltimore, and he diverted the New York delegation from Dickinson to Johnson while it was still possible to nominate their own candidate. Seward and Weed w r ere both consulted, and both assented and assisted. Leonard Swett, of Illinois, who, perhaps, more than any man, had Lincoln's complete confidence, and Ward H. Lamon, w r hom Lincoln brought from Spring- field to make him Marshal of the District of Columbia, were both fully informed in regard to the President's wishes. Lamon, indeed, was fur- nished with a letter declaring Lincoln's views in favor of Johnson's nomination, that he was to use if its use became necessary. Hamlin and his friends were kept in complete ignorance of the fact that Lin- coln was asking his friends to nominate Johnson. " Lincoln," Swett said to him, " if it were known in New England that you are in favor of leaving Hamlin off the ticket it would raise the devil among the 136 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. Yankees." The secret was so well kept that Hamlin learned for the first time that Lincoln was active in promoting the nomination of Johnson only a year or two before his death. At Baltimore it was in the air that Johnson was Lincoln's candidate for the Vice-Presidency, but not even Swett was openly for him. This familiar of Lincoln bewildered the Illinois delegation; and made Cook suspicious of treachery, by telegraphing a request that the delegation should sup- port Holt. At Cook's request a letter was sent to the White House to ascertain if Lincoln was behind Swett. " Cook wants to know con- fidentially whether Swett is all right," John G. Nicolay, the Presi- dent's private secretary, wrote from Baltimore to John Hay, the assistant private secretary; " whether in urging Holt for Viee-Presi- dent he reflects the President's wishes; whether the President has any preferences either personally or on the score of policy; or whether he wishes not even to interfere by a con- fidential communication." The answer- was probably sufficient for Cook, but it was not understood by Nicolay. " Swett is unquestionably all right," Lincoln wrote on the back of the letter from Nicolay to Hay; " Mr. Holt is a good man, but I had not heard or thought of him for V.-P. Wish not to interfere about V.-P. Can not interfere about platform convention must judge for it- self." This meant that Swett knew what he was about, but that the President was ANDREW JOHNSON. not making confidential communications through his private secretaries. The nom- ination of Johnson at Baltimore was Lincoln's nomination, made at Lincoln's request, for reasons that he was very earnest in urging. He sent for McClm e to urge him to support Johnson. " At that interview," Mr. McClure says, " Mr. Lincoln earnestly explained why the nomina- tion of a well-known Southern man like Andrew Johnson who had been Congressman, Governor, and Senator by the favor of his State would not only nationalize the Republican party and the Government, but would greatly lessen the grave peril of the recognition of the Con- federacy by England and France. He believed that the election to the Vice-Presidency of a representative statesman from an insurgent State that had been restored to the Union would disarm the enemies of the Republic abroad and remove the load of sectionalism from the Gov- ernment that seemed to greatly hinder peace. No intimation, no trace, of prejudice against Mr. Hamlin was exhibited, and I well knew that THE THIRD REPUBLICAN CONVENTION. 137 no such consideration could have influenced Mr. Lincoln in such an emergency. Had he believed Mr. Hamlin to be the man who could best promote the great work whose direction fell solely upon himself he would have favored Hamlin's nomination regardless of his per- sonal wishes; but he believed that a great public achievement would be attained by the election of Johnson ; and I returned to Baltimore to work and vote for Johnson, although against all my personal pre- dilections in the matter." Similar declarations were made to Swett and Lamon, and Lincoln's wishes were respected by the convention without the delegates understanding fully why they were acting against their personal predilections in the matter. While Lincoln was planning for the displacement of Hamlin on the eve of the Baltimore Convention it is unnecessary to say plot- ting, because as a candidate for re-election his wishes in regard to his associate on the ticket were and ought to have been paramount with the nominating body the hope of preventing his candidature had not entirely expired in the breasts of his most bitter opponents. General Fremont's letter accepting the Cleveland nomination was dated only three days before the date set for the meeting of the Convention at Baltimore. It was a violent assault on the administration, which was charged with incapacity by a soldier candidate whose military career had failed because of his own want of capacity, and arraigned for infidelity to the principles it was pledged to maintain, although Lin- coln had always been in advance of the great body of the Republican party on the question of emancipation. Fremont's premature policy of 1861 would have been even more completely repudiated by the North than was Lincoln's Monitory Proclamation in the elections of 1862. This arraignment in itself could do Lincoln no real injury with the delegates already pledged to his support, but it was coupled with an intimation that might have been effective if the Radicals had shown themselves capable of a serious diversion. Fremont hinted that if Lincoln was set aside he would retire in favor of the Republican can- didate, but he boldly proclaimed his purpose to organize all the ele- ments of opposition against Lincoln's election. There was only one man whose name gave any promise of success should it be presented in opposition to the nomination of Lincoln. This man was Lieutenant- General Grant, whose vigorous operations against Lee in Virginia w^ere arousing the admiration and enthusiasm of the country. After the capture of Yicksburg Grant had rapidly risen from a subordinate position to the command of all the armies of the United States. For the first time since the beginning of the war the capture of Richmond ceased to be the primary purpose of the Army of the Potomac, and the destruction of Lee's army was made the main object of the campaign 138 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. in the East. The destruction of the army under General Joseph E. Johnston in the Southwest was the task set for General Sherman. The campaign against Lee, under Grant's personal direction, had be- gun with the bloody battle of the Wilderness, on the 4th of May and subsequent days. The bloody battle of Spottsylvania, and the opera- tions on the North Anna, the Pamunky, and the Tolopotomy followed. On the 3d of June Grant's army made the fruitless attack at Cold Har- bor, that was afterward so severely criticised. For the next day a mass meeting was appointed to be held in New York city to voice the gratitude of the country to Grant for his vigorous campaign. If Grant had countenanced the design the New York meeting would have been used to bring him forward as a Presidential candidate, but he per- emptorily refused to permit the use of his name for political purposes, and thus all hope of defeating Lin- coln was frustrated. The third Republican National Convention contained more eminent men than were ever assembled as delegates in a political body. There were not fewer than six Republican Governors, five of them leading War Governors, on the floor of the Convention the eloquent John A. Andrew, of Massachusetts; Marcus L. Ward and William A. Newell, of New Jersey; William Dennison and David Tod, of Ohio, and Austin Blair, of Michigan. Vermont sent Solomon Foot, who was among the faithful in the United States Senate before the war. Among the New York delegation were Henry J. Raymond, the gifted editor of the New York Times; Daniel S. Dickinson, a representative War Demo- crat, and Lyman Tremaine, a War Democrat, who, like Dickinson, be- came an able and eloquent exponent of Republican principles. The Pennsylvania delegation contained three of the most distinguished Republicans from that State Galusha A. Grow, Thaddeus Stevens, and Simon Cameron. Among the delegates from the Northwest were Omer D. Conger, of Michigan; Angus Cameron, of Wisconsin, and George W. McCrary, of Iowa. Burton C. Cook was at the head of the delegation from Illinois. As a whole the Convention was a more sedate body than that which had nominated Abraham Lincoln four years before, but it was not less inspiring, nor does its work embrace a less important chapter in the history of the Republican party. GEN. U. S. GRANT. THE THIRD REPUBLICAN CONVENTION. 139 The Convention was opened with a brief speech by Governor Mor- gan, of New York, Chairman of the National Committee, in which he advocated a constitutional amendment abolishing slavery. Morgan's address was followed by the announcement of the selection of the Rev. Dr. Robert J. Breckinridge, of Kentucky, as temporary chairman. This selection w r as the occasion of one of the dramatic features of the Con- vention. Dr. Breckinridge was one of the most venerable and distin- guished divines of the Presbyterian Church. He was a Breckinridge of the Breckinridges the Breckiuridges of Virginia and Kentucky. Of his family he was the only distinguished member who remained true to the Union. He was eminent for his piety, his learning, his elo- quence, and his great skill in controversy. He was a man of resolute and unyielding character aggressive, inflexible, and courageous. When he took the chair his tall figure, strong face, and patriarchal beard marked him as a leader of men. His speech was in keeping with the character of the man and the character of the assemblage before which it was made. It w r as sharp, sinewy, and defiant bold, broad, and national. Its opening sentences proclaimed his own uncompro- mising attitude and that of the party for which he was the spokesman " the nation shall not be destroyed." He dissipated the plea that the Constitution was a shield for those who were seeking to destroy the Union, and exclaimed, " We shall change the Constitution if it suits us to do so." He made no humanitarian plea for the men who were seeking to break up the Union, among whom were his own kins- men, but declared that " the only enduring, the only imperishable cement of all free institutions has been the blood of traitors." Recog- nizing slavery as the institution that had lifted the sword against the Union, he aroused the enthusiasm of the Convention by the announce- ment that we must " use all power to exterminate and extinguish it." " I know very well," he said, " that the sentiments which I am utter- ing will cause me great odium in the State in which I was born, which I love, where the bones of two generations of my ancestors and some of my children are, and where very soon I shall lay my own. . . . But we have put our faces toward the way which we intend to go, and we will go in it to the end." With this inspiring prelude the work of the Convention began. At the evening session A. K. McClure made the report in behalf of the Committee on Organization, recommending William Dennison, of Ohio, for permanent president. Governor Dennison repeated the sentiments already expressed by Governor Morgan and Dr. Breckin- ridge on taking the chair. There w r ere no disputed questions in regard to any of the delegations from the Northern States, nor to those of four of the border States Delaware. Maryland, West Virginia, and 140 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. Kentucky. But there were two delegations from Missouri, and Thad- deus Stevens objected to calling the roll of the Southern States and receiving their delegates on the ground that such an act might be regarded as recognizing the right of States in rebellion to vote in the Electoral College. These questions were referred to the Committee on Credentials. Preston King, of New York, on behalf of the com- mittee, reported in favor of admitting the liadical Union delegation from Missouri, and excluding the Conservative Union, or Blair dele- gation. There was probably little difference between the two in the regularity of their election, but as the latter was favorable to Lin- coln's nomination, while the Radicals supported General Grant, it was thought to be good policy to favor Grant's Missouri friends at the expense of Lincoln's supporters. This view prevailed in the Con- vention by a vote of 440 to 4. The delegations from Tennessee, Arkan- sas, and Louisiana were admitted to the floor of the Convention with- out the right to vote. The delegation from South Carolina was re- jected. Three of the Territories Nebraska, Colorado, and Nevada- were accorded the rights of States on the ground that they were soon to be admitted into the Union, but the delegations from the other Territories, and those from Virginia and Florida, were only accorded admittance to the floor. As a matter of fact, Nevada was the only one of the three favored Territories that voted in the Electoral College in 1865. The report of the Committee on Resolutions was made through Henry J. Raymond, by whom the platform was written. The resolu- tions enforced the duty of maintaining the Union and quelling the rebellion by force of arms; approved the determination of the Govern- ment to enter into no compromise with rebels; indorsed the acts done against slavery, and declared in favor of an amendment to the Con- stitution prohibiting it in all the States; gave thanks to the soldiers and sailors; applauded the practical wisdom, unselfish patriotism, and unswerving fidelity of Abraham Lincoln; recommended harmony in the national councils; claimed the full protection of the law for the colored troops; favored foreign immigration, and the speedy con- struction of a railroad to the Pacific; pledged the national faith for the redemption of the public debt, and reaffirmed the Monroe doc- trine. The harmony Cabinet resolution was aimed at Postmaster- General Blair, but it was conveyed in vague terms and ought not to have been adopted. The reaffirmation of the Monroe doctrine at that time was also a declaration against the practical wisdom of Abraham Lincoln in not driving the French out of Mexico. This resolution wrought no harm, for the President was fully in sympathy with its purpose, although he was too busy just then with other matters to THE THIRD REPUBLICAN CONVENTION. 141 carry it into effect. As a whole the platform was elevated in tone, and direct and unequivocal in expression. - When the time came to nominate a candidate for President, Gen- eral Simon Cameron offered a resolution declaring Abraham Lincoln the choice of the party for President, and Hannibal Hamlin its candi- date for Vice-President. As this was not what General Cameron either expected or w r anted to be done, it was not done. The night before the vote was taken he did some missionary work among the Pennsylvania delegation, suggesting that after casting the solid vote of the State for Hamlin it should be given solidly for Johnson. This was done, but some of the Pennsylvania delegates would have clung to Hamlin if his nomination had been possible. If the Convention had been unanimous for the old ticket Cameron's resolution would have been accepted without objection, but objection was made, and so with- out taking the sense of the Convention by insisting on a vote, Cam- eron withdrew it. Grant's Missouri friends w r anted to vote for their candidate for President quite as seriously as the friends of Johnson and Dickinson wanted to try conclusions with Hamlin. Accordingly nomination by ballot was ordered in both cases. Lincoln received 497 votes to 22 for Grant, all from Missouri. The nomination was then made unanimous. On the ballot for Vice-President Andrew John- son, of Tennessee, received 200 votes; Hannibal Hamlin, of Maine, 145; Daniel S. Dickinson, of New York, 113; Benjamin P. Butler, of Massachusetts, 26; and L. H. Rousseau, of Kentucky, 21. There were a few scattering votes. If there had been a serious purpose to nomi- nate either Hamlin or Dickinson it was possible to do it, but without waiting for the announcement of the result of a ballot that was know r n ^ to be indecisive, there was a break for Johnson that was continued until he had 492 votes to his credit, only IT of Dickinson's friends and 9 of Hamlin's remaining true to them. Such a result would have been impossible if the Convention had not been fully impressed by the belief that Mr. Lincoln desired it. Although the same influences that defeated Mr. Hamlin brought about the defeat of Mr. Dickinson, the New York candidate always attributed his failure to the hostile element in his own delegation. Mr. Dickinson had many qualities to make him a strong candidate, not only as against Mr. Hamlin, but as against Mr. Johnson. He had been not only a Democrat, but a Hunker; he sustained Secretary Marcy and Polk's administration against the powerful influence of Silas Wright, then Governor of New York, when he entered the ~ United States Senate as Wright was leaving it. Such was his popu- larity that he was talked of as an available candidate for the Presi- dencv as earlv as 1852. When the war came he declared himself un- 142 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. reservedly for the Union, and the administration had no more hearty or eloquent supporter. He was a man of fine talents, extensive ac- quirements, and great legal learning. As a political speaker he was distinguished for wit and repartee. He was especially apt in his use of anecdotes, and his facility in applying Bible illustrations gave him the nickname of " Scripture Dick." He was besides a man of com- manding presence, and his long, silvery locks rendered him very im- pressive. As a man, as a lawyer, and as a statesman he was greatly Johnson's superior; and as a Union man and a War Democrat he was as deserving as his successful rival, except that he belonged to the North, while Johnson came from the South. With Lincoln neutral and his own State united in his support, he would have been nomi- nated. The opposition in his own delegation came from the Whig ele- ment in the Republican party of New York, that was averse to the political advancement of War Democrats. It was even claimed that his election as Vice-President might jeopardize Mi-. Seward's place in the Cabinet. On a test vote in the delegation he received only 28 votes to 32 for Johnson and G for Hamlin. It was Raymond's leader- si dp that deprived Dickinson of a ma- jority of the delegation, and Raymond's only motive for supporting Johnson against a New York candidate so emi- nently worthy was the wish of Lincoln for Johnson's nomination. If Johnson's character had beeu better understood lie would not have secured Lincoln's preference, and with it the second place on the ticket. The same qualities that attracted Lincoln made him a favor- ite with the Northern people. A Southern Senator at the time of secession, he stood manfully by the Union. As Military Governor of Tennessee afterward he deepened this favorable impression by his boldness and vigor. At the time he was successfully rehabilitating his State and restoring it to the Union. His humble origin, his early struggles and energy, his indebtedness to his wife for a rudi- mentary education, his rise from a village alderman to a Senator in Congress from his State, were facts that made him a suitable mate for the rail -splitter of Illinois. His assessment of rich secessionists in 1862 to support the destitute families of Confederate soldiers, his vigorous treatment of rebel sympathizers in 1862-3, and his ready ac- DANIEL S. DICKINSON. THE THIRD REPUBLICAN CONVENTION. 143 ceptauce of the emancipation policy, and his efforts to make Tennessee a free State added to his popularity. The selection was a good one so far as men could see even those wno were not favorable to his nomi- nation could urge no strong objections against it. He certainly added to the strength of the ticket in the campaign of 1864. Mr. Hamliu's defeat wrought him no real injury. The reasons for Johnson's nomination were so specious, and it was accepted so heart- ily by the country, that Hamlin and his friends felt compelled to smother their disappointment with the best grace they were able to command. Hanilin believed that Lincoln was favorable to his nomi- nation for a quarter of a century. " I was really sorry to be dis- abused/' he wrote in 1889. The Democratic National Convention did not meet until the 29th of August, when it assembled in Chicago, and nominated General George B. McClellan for President, and George H. Pendleton, of Ohio, for Vice-President. It contained many representative Democrats of that and a later period, including such men as Josiah G. Abbott and George Lunt, of Massachusetts; William W. Eaton, of Connecticut; Dean Richmond, Horatio Seymour, Sanford E. Church, Washington Hunt, and Samuel J. Tilden, of New York; William Bigler and Will- iam A. Wallace, of Pennsylvania; William Allen, Allen G. Thurman, and Clement L. Vallandigham, of Ohio, and Joseph E. McDonald, of Indiana. It was a Peace Convention, and its utterances properly be- long to the campaigns then in progress those of Grant and Sherman in the South, and that of Lincoln and Johnson in the North. V. THE LINCOLN AND JOHNSON CAMPAIGN. Gloomy Outlook when the Canvass Opened Democratic Hopes Sentiments of Belmont, Bigler, and Seymour at Chicago The Jewett-Greeley Peace Fiasco Object of the Negotiations Resig- nation of Secretary Chase Democratic Conspiracies Knights of the Golden Circle Objections Made to McClellan's Nomina- tion Lincoln and McClellan McClellan's Body-guard Mc- Clellan's Dismissal The Soldier Candidate of the Peace Party- Turn in the Tide Union Victories Election Responses to the War Bulletins Montgomery Blair His Unpopularity The Pressure for His Removal Lincoln's Intervention Demanded by the Politicians Vallandigham Insists on the Chicago Plat- form Results of the Elections. HE Presidential campaign of 1864 was so intimately associ- ated with the progress of the war that Republican hopes rose and fell with the fortunes and misfortunes of the armies under Grant and Sherman. When the Baltimore Convention adjourned the full effects of the defeat at Cold Harbor vere not felt. It was confidently expected that the re-election of Lincoln and the close of the war would be celebrated at the same time. The reverse and the certainty that much hard fighting was still before the Army of the Potomac before Lee could be crushed were rude shocks to this optimistic feeling. A period of deep gloom fol- lowed one of great exaltation. Many Republicans even joined in the denunciation of Grant. It is possible that the battle ought not to have been fought at all; but this claim rests only on the assump- tion that no general should fight and fail. It is unnecessary to discuss the failure here, but the magnitude of our losses, the demoralizing effect of the disaster upon the morale of the ariity, the utter hopeless- ness of crushing Lee north of the James, appalled the country. The luckless events that followed it Sheridan's failure to unite with Hunter in Lee's rear, Hunter's failure to capture Lynchburg and his disastrous retreat, Early's swoop across the Potomac, the defeat of Wallace at the Monocacy, the demonstrations on the outskirts of Washington and the suburbs of Baltimore, the deadly mine ex- plosion at Petersburg, and the burning of Chambersburg were not encouraging concomitants for an administration seeking a popular THE LINCOLN AND JOHNSON CAMPAIGN. 145 indorsement. In the army in the South and Southwest the prospect was almost equally dark and gloomy. Sturgis was beaten by Forrest at Guntown, Sherman was repulsed at Kenesaw r . All this can be read with critical dispassion now it can even be read with a feeling of pride that through these manifold dangers and disasters came the final triumph but the war bulletins that told the achievements of a triumphant enemy with all possible reserve were not fruitful cam- paign documents for the responsible party in the approaching Presi- dential election. Even Lincoln began to fear the portentous mean- ing of a cloud that seemed to have no silver lining. While the Republicans were discouraged by the series of disasters that followed fast and fol- lowed faster from the early June days of Cold Harbor far into the midsummer, the Peaco Democracy took heart of hope. The meeting of the Democratic- National Convention had been originally fixed for the 4th of July. It w r as postponed until the closing days of August, in order to take advantage of the later phases of popular discon- tent, owing to an unfavorable course of military events. The wished-for reverses exceeded even the wildest Democratic hopes. In their joy the leaders lost all prudence, and went to the extreme of unpatriotic par- tisanship. With a wildness of rhetoric that was expressive of the violence of their passions, the war and the war party were arraigned by the Convention orators. " Four years of misrule," said August Belmont, Chairman of the National Committee, in opening the proceedings, " by a sectional, fanatical, and corrupt party have brought our country to the very verge of ruin. . . . The past and the present are sufficient warning of the disastrous con- sequences which would befall us if Mr. Lincoln's re-election should be made possible by our want of patriotism and unity." Our whole political and social system was to go to everlasting smash, amid bloodshed and anarchy, in that event. The notes of the raven were repeated by Governor Bigler, of Pennsylvania, the temporary chair- man. But to Governor Horatio Seymour, of New York, the permanent HORATIO SEYMOUR. 146 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. president, was committed the task of giving the keynote to the Con- vention and the party. He was well adapted to lead the forces of re- action and surrender. He was able, adroit, and eloquent specious, subtle, and mischievous. He w r as, moreover, the acknowledged leader of the Peace Democracy a pre-eminence that he owed less to his im- portant place as Governor of New York than to his prepossessing- manner and polished and persuasive speech. It was his duty to put virulent utterances into apparently temperate but plausible form. He performed this duty with great skill. He affected to treat the Republican party more in sorrow than in anger. " Four years ago," he said, " a convention met in this city when our country was peace- ful, prosperous, and united. Its delegates did not mean to destroy our Government, to overwhelm us with debt, or to drench our land in blood; but they were animated by intolerance and fanaticism, and blinded by an ignorance of the spirit of our institutions, the character of our people, and the condition of our land. They thought they might safely indulge their passions, and they concluded to do so. Their pas- sions have wrought out their natural results." To this man and those who heard him the championship of the expansion of slavery was not fanaticism; secession and disunion were not the indulgence of passions. It was the Republican party that had gone to war with the South, not the South that was making war on the Union. It was easy for him to suggest an armistice involving surrender, and for those to whom he was speaking to accept the suggestion. " The ad- ministration," he said, " will not let the shedding of blood cease, even for a little time, to see if Christian charity and the wisdom of states- manship may not work out a method to save our country. Nay, more, they will not listen to a proposal of peace which does not offer that which this Government has no right to ask." After three years of war, slavery, which had caused it, was still as sacred in the eyes of Horatio Seymour as before the war began. The address closed with a threat. " But for us," said the spokesman of the Peace Democracy, " we are resolved that the party which has made the history of our country since its advent to power seem like some unnatural and ter- rible dream shall be overthrown. We have forborne much because those who are now charged with the conduct of public affairs know but little about the principles of our Government." The platform to which these sentiments were the prelude was in its vital part a dec- laration that the war was a failure. It demanded a cessation of hos- tilities, while the rebels had no thought of laying down their arms, and a Peace Convention to arrange terms of surrender to a triumphant enemy. On such a platform George B. McClellan, a Union soldier, was nominated by the party of surrender. He accepted, and for a time even Abraham Lincoln regarded his election as a possibility. THE LINCOLN AND JOHNSON CAMPAIGN. 147 An episode of the campaign, between the War Convention at Balti- more and the Peace Convention at. Chicago, was the peace mission, so obtrusively proposed and so reluctantly undertaken by Horace Greeley. It originated with a grotesque adventurer who called him- self William Cornell Jewett, of Colorado. Jew T ett was a type of the busybody who occupied a position midway between such intermed- dlers as the famous Chevalier Wykoff and the mischievous Joseph Howard, Jr. Wykoff, in his day, was a self-appointed intermediary for royal and imperial potentates. Howard was the author of a forged proclamation, imputed to President Lincoln, calling out a new levy of troops on the assumed basis that the war was proving a failure. Jewett was neither so adroit as Wykoff nor so reckless as Howard in the pursuit of notoriety, but he managed to attract a great deal of at- tention to himself. His catspaw was (ireeley. Jewett wrote letters of advice to Jefferson Davis and Abra- ham Lincoln, that were never no- ticed by their recipients, but ap- peared in the New York Herald, with comments replete with the grim humor of James Gordon Ben- nett, the elder. Greeley took the adviser of the two American Presi- dents more seriously. In July, 1864, Jewett wrote to Greeley from Niagara Falls, that he had just seen George N. Sanders, of Kentucky, on the Canada side, and that he was GEORGE tf. SANDERS. authorized to say that two ambas- sadors from " Davis & Co." were there " with full and complete pow r ers to treat for peace." " Mr. Sanders requests," Jewett wrote,. " that you come on immediately to me at Cataract House to have a private interview; or if you will send the President's protection for him and two friends they will come and meet you." Greeley was greatly impressed by this communication. He sent the letter, with a telegram from Jewett that followed it, to the President, inclosed in a letter of his own, in which he spoke of his queer correspondent as " our irrepressible friend, Colorado Jewett," and urged that the application be responded to. This letter from Greeley to Lincoln was an extraor- dinary recital from a sane man to the President of the United States. " I venture to remind you that our bleeding, bankrupt, almost dying country also longs for peace," he said, after insisting upon the Con- federate wish for a settlement; " shudders at the prospect of fresh con- 148 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. scriptions, of further wholesale devastations, and of new rivers of human blood." He declared that there was " a widespread conviction that the Government and its prominent supporters are not anxious for peace, and do not improve proffered opportunities to achieve it "; rebuked the President for not receiving the Stephens embassy, and disapproved the warlike tone of the Baltimore platform. He wanted an adjustment in time to affect the North Carolina election, but failed to understand that the proposed negotiation was a Confederate scheme to affect the Presidential elections. Mr. Greeley himself made suggestions of the basis of a settlement (1) the Union restored and declared perpetual; (2) slavery utterly and forever abolished; (3) com- plete amnesty; (4) the payment of f 400,000,000 to the Slave States as compensation for their slaves; (5) the Slave States to be represented in Congress in proportion to their total population; and (<>) a national convention. To Mr. Greeley's surprise Mr. Lincoln made no objection to his terms, and asked him to meet the commissioners at Niagara and conduct them to Washington. Greeley was thus doubly entrapped; he accepted his mission with reluctance, and conducted it without skill. There was, in fact, no basis for negotiations on the part of the alleged commis- sioners that could be at all acceptable, and Mr. Greeley and the rebels both complained afterward because the President made Gree- ley's conditions the conditions of the proposed negotiations. " There was a very widespread impression," he says in the " American Con- flict," written after the war, " that the overture of the Confederates had not been met in the manner best calculated to strengthen the national cause and invigorate the arm of its supporters. In other words, it was felt since the overture originated with them they should have been allowed to make their own proposition, and not required in effect to make one dictated from our side, however in- herently reasonable." Mr. Greeley joined in attributing the failure of these insincere negotiations to the President's refusal to receive the Rebel Commissioners " unconditionally," and the outcome of the affair was what was originally intended a not ineffective campaign document for the Peace Democracy. After the failure of Greeley's peace mission there was a discussion between the President and Greeley in regard to the correspondence. The President invited Mr. Greeley to Washington, but Greeley declined to go on the ground that Mr. Lincoln was surrounded by his " bitter- est personal enemies." " I will gladly go," he said, " whenever I feel a hope that their influence has waned." This could only have meant that Greeley wanted a promise from the President that Secretary Seward should be dismissed from the Cabinet. The acceptance of Mr. THE LINCOLN AND JOHNSON CAMPAIGN. 149 Chase's resignation as Secretary of the Treasury, on the last day of June, because Mr. Chase insisted on nominating a candidate of his own as Assistant Treasurer at New York, was one of Greeley's griev- ances. The President sustained the party view in the matter, which was the view of Seward's friends. Greeley regarded Chase's resigna- tion as a shock to public confidence in the administration, but it proved nothing of the kind, for even Mr. Chase, true to his conserva- tive instincts, supported Mr. Lincoln in the ensuing campaign as heartily as it was his nature to support anybody. No one believes that Horace Greeley was knowingly disloyal in becoming the instrument of the conspiracy, but he was in line with many of the conspirators, who were disloyal, in some of his utterances and demands. In one of his letters to Lincoln he went to the extent of asking for an armistice for a year and a convention even after his abortive negotiations. The conspirators who w r ere doing the work of the Southern Confederacy in the North scarcely went further in principle, although they were willing to go to far greater lengths in practice. It was a time when conspirators and conspiracies were rife in all the border slave and free States. They were known by various names, but the " Knights of the Golden Circle " was the one most commonly applied to them. When one name was discovered they adopted another, calling themselves at different times the " Order of American Knights," the " Order of the Star," and the " Sons of Lib- erty." These knights were in the main the lower class of Democrats, for whom furtive treason in secret lodges had a great attraction these " Sons of Liberty " were ignorant champions of slavery, led by rebel brigadiers and major-generals in disguise. The organization of the lodges was military. The State lodges were commanded by major- generals, the Congress districts by brigadiers, the counties by col- onels, and the townships by captains. They drilled in secret, pur- chased arms, and prepared for war. Judge Advocate General Holt, in March, 1804, placed their number at 340,000. This was probably exaggerated at the time, but it had reached fullv 500,000 when Gen- ~ eral McClellan was nominated at Chicago. If the dark cloud had not lifted almost immediately after the work of the Peace Convention was ended, it is not unlikely that these knights of slavery would have marched as openly in the campaign processions of 1864 as the " Wide- A wakes " marched in the torchlight parades in the campaign of 1860. The nomination of General McClellan was not made without a stormy protest in a convention of peacemakers. McClellan had ar- rested the Maryland Legislature when it was on the point of passing an ordinance of secession. A Maryland delegate stood up in the Con- vention and boldly proclaimed him " a tyrant." " All the charges of 150 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. usurpation and tyranny that can be brought against Lincoln and Butler/' exclaimed the speaker, " can be made and substantiated against McClellau. He is the assassin of State rights, the usurper of liberty, and if nominated will be beaten everywhere as he was at An- tietam." General Morgan, of Ohio, defended McClellan, but Alexan- der Long, an extremist of the Vallandigham type, joined in the de- nunciation of the candidate. These men wanted a candidate whose tfcts would square with their principles, but the majority of the Con- vention felt that McClellan was a good enough peace candidate for them. On a platform less vehement in declaring the war, in which he had been the idol of the Democratic soldiers in the Army of the Potomac, a failure, he would have been an ideal candidate. His military failures had al- ways been condoned by the Democrats and by niam T of the Republicans. The admin- istration at Washington \vas charged w r ith the responsi- bility of his defeat before Richmond. The drawn bat- tle at Antietam was magni- fied into a great victory by his friends and admirers. The country knew little of his real character his vanity that made him disobedient and even disrespectful, his ambition that prompted him to look forward to a dictator- ship, his inertia that saved the lives of his men by inaction and sacrificed them through disease or defeat. After the battle at Antietam President Lincoln visited him in the cam]) on the Potomac, and vainly urged him to cross the river and give the enemy battle. Leaving his tent early in the morning with a friend, Lincoln went to an eminence that over- looked the vast encampment. It was a splendid vision of all the pomp and circumstance of glorious war. " Do you know what that is? " he asked, pointing to the vast host that was encamped below them. " It is the Army of the Potomac," was the answer. " That is a mistake," Lincoln said; " it is only McClellan's body-guard.'' While McClellan lay there, Stuart with his cavalry swept completely round the proud army, fresh from the vaunted victory at Antietam, sacking GEN. GKORGK B. McCLKLLAN. THE LINCOLN AND JOHNSON CAMPAIGN. 151 the towns and villages on his inarch without losing a inaii. At this time the President was chafing at McClellan's delay and McClellan was chafing at the course of the President. u The President's late proclamation," he wrote " the continuation of Stanton and Halleck in office, render it almost impossible for me to retain my commission and self-respect at the same time." But he neither resigned nor at- tacked the enemy, and the President removed him. He afterward took credit to himself for not heading a mutiny of his troops because of his removal. u Many were in favor of my refusing to obe} 7 the or- der," he wrote, " and of marching upon Washington to take possession of the Government.'" Without the desperate courage to heed these counsels, he seems to have heard them without rebuke. His removal caused a storm of indignation in the peace party, which a day or tw T o before had elected Horatio Seymour Governor of New York. His dis- missal, Lord Lyons wrote to his Government, caused u an irritation not unmixed with consternation and despondency. The General has been regarded as the representative of conservative principles in the army. Support of him has been made one of the articles of the Con- servative electoral platform." This General, removed in 18(52, and living in enforced retirement in New Jersey in 1864, was the logical candidate of the Peace Democracy for President, as Mr. Lincoln's successor. The time seemed opportune for the party and the candidate. General Grant had done, in the summer of 1864, what McClellan was removed for not doing in the autumn of 1862. The result, as it appeared to the Peace Convention at Chicago, was " four years of failure to restore the Union by the experiment of war." If these conditions had lasted long enough to allow' McClellan time to have written his letter of acceptance without a sign of the coming victories, it is probable he would have placed himself squarely on the platform of his party in defiance of the aroused sentiment of the country. That would not have been incom- patible with his career, for a soldier who never saw his own army fight a battle was well fitted to lead a party that declared that there should be no more battles for the Union. " With reverses in the field the cause is doubtful at the polls," said Abraham Lincoln; u with victory in the field, the election will take care of itself." While the Peace Convention was declaring the war a failure the news of the capture of Fort Morgan came as a protest to the betrayal of the Union, Scarcely had it named its candidate when the inspiriting intelligence was received that Sherman was in At- lanta. " Sherman and Farragut." Seward said in a speech at Auburn, " have knocked the planks out of the Chicago platform." The dele- gates to the Convention had scarcely got back to their homes, to ex- 152 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. ADMIRAL 1>. G. FARRAGUT. plain to disgusted Democrats why they had accepted a policy from the wild and reckless Vallandigham, when Sheridan sent the forces of the fierce and arrogant Early scurrying from Winchester and Fisher's Hill. Cedar Creek was quickly to follow. With Farra- gut sweeping Mobile Bay, with Sherman in Atlanta preparing to march through Georgia, with Sheridan avenging the swoop of Early and the torch of McCaus- land in the Shenandoah Valley, and with Grant holding Lee fast as in a vise at Petersburg and pounding the main hope of the Confederacy day after day, the peace party and its candidate could not withstand the ridicule and obloquy hurled at them by a people aflame with enthusiasm. It was in the first flush of these victories that General McClellan set himself to the task of writing his letter of acceptance. His situation was an awkward one. He at- tempted a cautious and guarded dis- sent from the offensive and obnox- ious declarations of the nominating body, but it was too late for mod- eration to avail him with the coun- try. The bulletins from the battle- field were echoed back from the polls in the September and October elections. Vermont and Maine answered back to Atlanta and Mo- bile; Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indi- ana were the responses to Winches- ter, Fisher's Hill, and Cedar Creek. The campaign that had begun in darkness and gloom closed with a sunburst. At the time when Lincoln was most despondent over the chances of his re-election, the greatest pressure was brought to bear upon him for the removal of Postmaster-General Blair, in compliance with the MONTGOMKRY BLAIR. THE LINCOLN AND JOHNSON CAMPAIGN. 153 demand of the Baltimore platform. The Cabinet was never a happy family, and Montgomery Blair was one of its most discordant ele- ments. His sharp tongue wagged incessantly, and sharp words, like chickens, come home to roost. None of Mr. Lincoln's advisers made so many enemies, both in and out of the Cabinet. His loyalty to Lincoln \vas at least equal to that of any of his associates, and his support of the Emancipation Proclamation was unequivocal when others were less hearty, but he lost caste with the radical anti-slavery men at a very early period. He was, as he wrote to Fremont, too obstreperous. The quarrel of the Blairs with Fremont was the beginning of the antagonisms that finally involved Mr. Lincoln, and compelled him to ask for the Postmaster-General's resignation. These antagonisms had a seriousness then that seems like silliness now. The Union League of Philadelphia, in 1863, made the members of the Cabinet honorary members of the club, but omitted Montgomery Blair's name from the list. At that time he opposed Henry Winter Davis in Maryland, which he had a right to do; but in doing it he spoke of his Republican assailants with an acrimony that directed their anger tow r ard Lincoln, who was blameless. The Blair feud in Missouri not only deprived Lincoln of the vote of the Missouri delegation in the Baltimore Con- vention, but it was the occasion of the harmony counsels in the Balti- more platform. After the Convention, and especially after Chase's resignation, Lincoln was harassed by the complaints of Blair's en- emies. His relations with Seward and Stanton were as strained as had been his relations with Chase. To the old enmities he added new- ones. Smarting under the destruction of his property in the suburbs of Washington, when Early was conducting a political campaign in conjunction with the Democracy, he talked recklessly of the laxity or poltroonery of the defenders of the capital. This angered General Halleck, who wrote to the Secretary of War calling Blair a slanderer, and asking " whether such wholesale denouncement and accusation by a member of the Cabinet receives the sanction and approbation of the President of the United States." Stanton sent the letter to the President without comment. " Whether the remarks were really made I do not know," Lincoln said in response, " nor do I suppose such knowledge is necessary to a correct response. If they were made, I do not approve them; and yet, under the circumstances, I would not dismiss a member of the Cabinet therefor. I do not con- sider what may have been hastily said in a moment of texation at so severe a loss is sufficient ground for so grave a step. Besides this, truth is generally the best vindication against slander. I propose continuing to be myself the judge as to when a member of the Cabinet shall be dismissed." With each day the pressure upon the President 154 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. increased until September, when missives aimed at Blair became an avalanche. '' Blair every one hates," Henry Wilson wrote. " Tens of thousands of men will be lost to you or will give a reluctant vote on account of the Blairs." At last Lincoln yielded, but not until the political skies had brightened and success was assured. Blair ac- cepted his dismissal manfully, and Lincoln had no more earnest sup- porter in the campaign. The Democratic position rendered Fremont's candidature unten- able, and he withdrew. Lincoln held aloof from the campaign, but Seward made a speech to his to-wusmen at Auburn before the peace delegates from Chicago got back to their homes to tell the people how boldly they had proclaimed the war a failure. It was one of the con- ditions of the war canvass, however, that the President was called upon to intervene to compose disagreements among his supporters, or to pass upon the protests of his opponents. One of the most im- portant of the Democratic objections came from Tennessee. Governor Johnson issued a proclamation defining the manner in which the Presidential vote should be taken, and prescribing the oath. The Democratic candidates for electors felt aggrieved at the requirements, and appealed from Johnson to Lincoln. The President refused to intervene, and the McClellan ticket was withdrawn. From the Con- gress districts came complaints, even from Republican candidates, of Republican officials, especially the postmasters. Isaac N. Arnold complained of the hostility of the postmaster at Chicago. William I). Kelley accused the postmaster at Philadelphia of interference. Fred- erick A. Conkling incurred the opposition of the Custom House offi- cials in New York city. Roscoe Conkling was opposed by some of Mr. Seward's friends in the Utica district. When the distractions of faction were quieted everywhere else, they were still active in Mis- souri. In all these cases Mr. Lincoln did what he could to compose the differences, generally with success, so that the party was reunited in the Presidential contest, even in a State where some of the politi- cians were inclined to oppose Lincoln because the Blairs continued to support him. It was, of course, impossible to conduct McClellan's campaign in the key in which it was set. The men who had given its tone and character to the Convention that nominated him were angered at his attempt to weaken the force of its declarations. " The Chicago Con vention," Mr. Vallandigham said, after the letter of acceptance was made public, " enunciated its platform and principles by authority and was binding on every Democrat, and by them the Democratic administration must and should be governed. It was the only au- thorized exposition of the Democratic creed, and he repudiated all THE LINCOLN AND JOHNSON CAMPAIGN. 155 others." That this would have been the policy of the administration in case of success the country did not doubt. McClellan was practi- cally held to the platform throughout the campaign, and the discus- sions of his military genius and his wrongs proved ineffective. The mad schemes of Jacob Thompson and other rebel emissaries in Can- ada only added to the hopelessness of the efforts in his behalf. The October elections dissipated the last lingering hope of Democratic success. Pennsylvania changed her representation in Congress from 12 to 12, to 15 Republicans and 9 Democrats. Indiana elected Gov- ernor Morton by a majority of 30,000. Ohio, which had sent 14 Demo- crats to 5 Republicans to Congress in 1862, now chose IT Republicans to 2 Democrats, and the Union ticket had a majority of 54,754. Mary- laud placed herself in line with the Free States by adopting the new Constitution abolishing slavery. Lincoln's election being thus as- sured, the interest centered in the determination to defeat Governor Seymour in New York. It was a campaign for the vindication of the President against the aspersions of Mr. Seymour in the Chicago Con- vention. Seymour was beaten. McClellan carried only three States- New Jersey, Delaware, and Kentucky. Lincoln carried all the others, receiving 212 electoral votes to 21 for McClellan. Lincoln's popular majority was 411,428; of the arm}- vote he received 119,754 to 34,291 for McClellan over 3 to 1. The Republican representation in Con- gress was increased from 10G to 143, and the Democrats were reduced from 77 to 41 on the face of the returns. The Union was saved. The doom of slavery was sealed. It only remained for the Republican party to end a war, fast nearing its close, and to begin the work of Reconstruction. DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF THE EPOCH. REPUBLICAN PLATFORM OF 1864. 1. Resolved, That it is the highest duty of every American citizen to maintain against all their enemies the integrit}^ of the Union, and the permanent authority of the Constitution and laws of the United States; and that, laying aside all differences of political opinion, we pledge ourselves as Union men, animated by a common sentiment, and aiming at a common object, to do everything in our power to aid the Government in quelling by force of arms the rebellion now raging against its authority, and in bringing to the punishment due to their crimes the rebels and traitors arrayed against it. 2. Resolved, That we approve the determination of the Government of the United States not to compromise with rebels, or to offer them any terms of peace, except such as may be based upon an uncondi- tional surrender of their hostility and a return to their just allegiance to the Constitution and laws of the United States; and that we call upon the Government to maintain this position, and to prosecute the war with the utmost possible vigor to the complete suppression of the rebellion, in full reliance upon the self-sacrificing patriotism, the heroic valor, and the undying devotion of the American people to their country and its free institutions. 3. Resolved, That as slavery was the cause, and now constitutes the strength of this rebellion, and as it must be, always and everywhere, hostile to the principles of republican government, justice and the national safety demand its utter and complete extirpation from the soil of the Republic; and that, while we uphold and maintain the acts and proclamations by which the Government, in its own defense, has aimed a deathblow at this gigantic evil, we are in favor, furthermore, of such amendment to the Constitution, to be made by the people in conformity with its provisions, as shall terminate and forever pro- hibit the existence of slavery within the limits or the jurisdiction of the United States. 4. Rewired, That the thanks of the American people are due to the soldiers and sailors of the army and navy who have periled their lives in defense of their country and in vindication of the honor of its flag; that the nation owes to them some permanent recognition of their patriotism and their valor, and ample and permanent provision for those of their survivors who have received disabling and honor- able wounds in the service of the country; and that the memories of DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF THE EPOCH. 157 those who have fallen in its defense shall be held in grateful and ever- lasting remembrance. 5. Resolved, That we approve and applaud the practical wisdom, the unselfish patriotism, and the unswerving fidelity with which Abraham Lincoln has discharged, under circumstances of unpar- alleled difficulty, the great duties and responsibilities of the Presiden- tial office; that we approve and indorse, as demanded by the emer- gency and essential to the preservation of the nation and as within the provisions of the Constitution, the measures and acts which he has adopted to defend the nation against its open and secret foes; that we approve, especially, the proclamation of emancipation and the employment as Union soldiers of men heretofore held in slavery; and that w r e have full confidence in his determination to carry these and all other constitutional measures essential to the salvation of the country into full and complete effect. 6. Resolved, That we deem it essential to the general welfare that harmony should prevail in the national councils, and we regard as worthy of public confidence and official trust those only who cordially indorse the principles proclaimed in these resolutions, and which should characterize the administration of the Government. 7. Resolved, That the Government owes to all men employed in its armies, without regard to distinction or color, the full protection of the laws of war; and that any violation of these laws or of usages of civilized nations in time of war, by the rebels now in arms, should be made the subject of prompt and full redress. 8. Resolved, That foreign immigration, which in the past has added so much to the wealth, development of resources, and increase of power to this nation the asylum of the oppressed of all nations- should be fostered and encouraged by a liberal and just policy. 9. Resolved, That we are in favor of a speedy construction of the railroad to the Pacific coast. 10. Resolved, That the national faith, pledged for the redemption of the public debt, must be kept inviolate, and that for this purpose we recommend economy and rigid responsibility in the public expendi- tures, and a vigorous and just system of taxation; and that it is the duty of every loyal State to sustain the credit and promote the use of the national currency. 11. Resolved, That we approve the position taken by the Govern- ment, that the people of the United States can never regard with in- difference the attempt of any European power to overthrow by force, or to supplant by fraud, the institutions of any republican govern- ment on the Western continent; and that they will view with extreme jealousy, as menacing to the peace and independence of their own 158 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. country, the efforts of any such power to obtain new footholds for monarchical governments, sustained by foreign military force, in near proximity to the United States. MR. LINCOLN'S ADDRESS. In answer to the committee appointed to notify him of his nomina- tion, headed by Governor Dennison, Mr. Lincoln said: u I will neither conceal my gratification nor restrain the expression of my gratitude that the Union people, through their convention, in the continued effort to save and advance the nation, have deemed me not unworthy to remain in my present position. I know no reason to doubt that I shall accept the nomination tendered; and yet perhaps I should not declare definitely before reading and considering what is called the platform. I will say now, however, I approve the dec- laration in favor of so amending the Constitution as to prohibit slavery throughout the nation. When the people in revolt, with a hundred days of explicit notice that they could within those days re- sume their allegiance without the overthrow of their institutions and that they could not so resume it afterward, elected to stand out, such amendment to the Constitution as is now proposed became a fitting and necessary conclusion to the final success of the Union cause. Such alone can meet and cover all cavils. Now the unconditional Union men, North and South, perceive its importance and embrace it. In the joint names of Liberty and Union, let us labor, to give it legal form and practical effect." DEMOCRATIC PLATFORM OF 1864. Resolved, That in the future, as in the past, we will adhere with unswerving fidelity to the Union under the Constitution as the only solid foundation of our strength, security, and happiness as a people, and as a framework of government equally conducive to the welfare and prosperity of all the States, both Northern and Southern. Resolved, That this Convention does explicitly declare, as the sense of the American people, that after four years of failure to restore the Union by the experiment of war, during which, under the pretense of a military necessity, or war power higher than the Constitution, the Constitution itself has been disregarded in every part, and public liberty and private right alike trodden down, and the material pros- perity of the country essentially impaired justice, humanity, liberty, and the public welfare demand that immediate efforts be made for a cessation of hostilities, with a view to an ultimate convention of the States, or other peaceable means, to the end that, at the earliest prac- DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF THE EPOCH. 159 ticable moment, peace may be restored on the basis of the Federal Union of the States. Resolved, That the direct interference of the military authorities of the United States in the recent elections held in Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, and Delaware was a shameful violation of the Constitution; and a repetition of such acts in the approaching election will be held as revolutionary, and resisted with all the means and power under our control. Resolved, That the aim and object of the Democratic party is to preserve the Federal Union and the rights of the States unimpaired; and they hereby declare that they consider that the administrative usurpation of extraordinary and dangerous powers not granted by the Constitution; the subversion of the civil by military law in States not in insurrection; the arbitrary military arrest, imprisonment, trial, and sentence of American citizens in States where civil law exists in full force; the suppression of freedom of speech and of the press; the denial of the right of asylum; the open and avowed disregard of State rights; the employment of unusual test oaths; and the inter- ference with and denial of the right of the people to bear arms in their defense, are calculated to prevent a restoration of the Union and the perpetuation of a government deriving its just powers from the con- sent of the governed. Resolved, That the shameful disregard of the administration to its duty in respect to our fellow-citizens who are now, and long have been, prisoners of war and in a suffering condition, deserves the severest reprobation, on the score alike of public policy and common hu- manity. Resolved, That the sympathy of the Democratic party is heartily and earnestly extended to the soldiery of our army and the sailors of our navy, who are and have been in the field and on the sea, under the flag of our country; and, in the event of its attaining power, they will receive all the care, protection, and regard that the brave soldiers and sailors of the Kepublic have so nobly earned. THE PERIOD OF RECONSTRUCTION. I. THE THIRTEENTH AMENDMENT. The Thirty -eighth Congress Schuyler Colfax, Speaker Cox and Long Henry Winter Davis and Robert C. Schenck Grant Made Lieutenant-General Ashley and the Amendment It Passes the Senate General Henderson Defeated in the House Oppo- nents and Champions Holman, Wood, and Randall Pendleton President Lincoln's Message Reconsidered in the House The Debate Mr. Cox's Able Argument The Vote Ratification of the Amendment. HE period of Reconstruction properly begins with the adop- tion of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States in the 38th Congress. The House of Repre- sentatives in this Congress, chosen in the year of reaction, 1862, was a body unlike any of its predecessors. Few of its members had been prominent in preceding Congresses. Some of the leading Republican members of the 37th Congress had declined a re-election, fearing defeat, and others had been beaten. The names of E. G. Spaulding, Roscoe Conkling, Charles B. Sedgwick, and A. B. Olin disappeared from the roll of the New York delegation. Galusha A. Grow was not returned from Pennsylvania. John A. Bingham and Samuel Shellabarger, of Ohio, were both beaten in Republican dis- tricts. The most active and distinguished members of the new House included Isaac N. Arnold, John F. Farnsworth, Owen Lovejoy, and E. D. Washburne, of Illinois; Schuyler Colfax and George W. Julian, of Indiana; Frederick A. Pike, of Maine; Henry L. Dawes, Daniel W T . Gooch, and Alexander H. Rice, of Massachusetts; William Windom, of Minnesota; James M. Ashley, of Ohio; Thaddeus Stevens and Will- iam D. Kelley, of Pennsylvania, and Justin S. Morrill, of Vermont. The new Republican members w T ho became prominent comprised Godlove S. Orth, of Indiana; William B. Allison, John A. Kasson, and James F. Wilson, of Iowa; James G. Blaine, of Maine; John A. J. Cresswell and Henry Winter Davis, of Maryland ; Oakes Ames, George S. Boutwell, Samuel Hooper, and William B. Washburn, of Massa- chusetts; Ignatius Donnelly, of Minnesota; Robert C. Schenck, of Ohio; Leonard Myers, Charles O'Neill, and Glenni W. Schofield, of THE THIRTEENTH AMENDMENT. 161 Pennsylvania, and Thomas A. Jencks, of Rhode Island. Lovejoy died before the expiration of his term, and Fenton resigned to become Governor of New York. Among the few prominent Democrats who were re-elected were William S. Holman and Daniel W. Voorhees, of Indiana; Benjamin Wood, of New York, and Samuel S. Cox and George H. Peudleton, of Ohio. The Democratic leaders of subsequent years, who came to the House for the first time, included William M. Morrison and John T. Stuart, of Illinois; James Brooks, Francis Ker- nan, and Fernando Wood, of New York; Alexander Long, of Ohio; Samuel J. Randall, of Pennsylvania, and Charles A. Eldridge, of Wis- consin. The new Republican Senators were Nathan A. Farwell, of Maine, who succeeded William Pitt Fessendeu; Alexander Kamsey, of Minnesota; B. Gratz Brown, of Missouri; Edwin D. Morgan, of New York, and William Sprague, of Rhode Island. The new Democratic Senators were William A. Richard- son, of Illinois; Thomas A. Hen- dricks, of Indiana; Reverdy John- son, of Maryland; William Wright, of New Jersey, and Charles R. Buck- alew, of Pennsylvania. If Mr. Grow had been re-elected he would, as a matter of course, have been accorded the Speaker- ship of the House, but in his ab- sence the Republicans chose Schuy- ler Colfax as his successor. Mr. Colfax had already served eight years in Congress from a dis- trict previously Democratic and always close. In 1862 his majority was only 229. He was descended from good Revolutionary stock, his grandfather being Captain William Colfax, of the Connecticut Line, and his grandmother a cousin of General Philip Schuyler. His father, Schuyler Colfax, who held a position in a New York bank, died before his son and namesake was born, leaving his widow and child in straitened circumstances. W 7 hat education young Colfax received was in the public schools of New York city, but he was withdrawn at an early age to earn his livelihood and help to support his mother. The widow Colfax married a second time, and with her husband emigrated to Indiana, taking her son, Schuyler, with her. There he learned the trade of a printer, and conducted a successful weekly newspaper at SCIIUYLEK COLFAX. 162 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. South Bend before he entered public life. He was very industrious, and in Congress he was soon recognized as one of the ablest parlia- mentarians in the House. His cordiality of manner earned him the nickname of " Smiler " Colfax, but his moderation and tact made him very popular. He came to the chair with the good-will of both sides of the House, and as Speaker he was able, prompt, fair-minded, gen- erous, and dignified. The principal opponent of Mr. Colfax for the Speakership was Mr. Cox, of Ohio. Cox received 42 votes to 101 for Colfax, and 39 divided between six other candidates. He was serving his third term in the House, but his personal popularity was greater than the esteem in which he was held politically. He was too independent in his speeches to make a good Peace Democrat, and too conservative in his votes to be accepted as a good War Democrat. The consequence was that he was un- able to command the united vote of his party in a Congress in which Alexander Long was one of his colleagues. Long came very near expulsion in April, 1864, for saying in a speech in the House that he was in favor of the recognition of the Southern Confederacy. Men of the Long type voted for John L. Dawson, of Pennsylvania, for Speaker, because Cox w r as not bold enough to suit them, but Cox long afterward cherished the delu- sion that a resolution for the appoint- ment of Peace Commissioners, offered by Long in 1864, was identical with a resolution offered by him in 1861. Mr. Cox failed to see in his later years that in 1861 a resolution might not be offensive, while the same resolution in 1864 was disloyal. The oratorical honors of the 38th Congress went to Henry Winter Davis, of Maryland. Davis had served six years in the House as an " American," 1855-61. He supported Bell and Everett in 1860, and was beaten as a candidate for re-election. The war made him a Re- publican, and it was as a Republican that he was elected as a Repre- sentative from Baltimore in 1862. As a debater he was unrivaled, and as an orator he was brilliant beyond any of his contemporaries. Although he was mainly instrumental in holding his State in its loyalty to the Union, he w r as never in hearty accord w r ith President Lincoln's administration, and sought to prevent Lincoln's renomina- tion in 1864. But the leader of the House in the 38th Congress was HARRY WINTER DAVIS. THE THIRTEENTH AMENDMENT. 163 General Robert C. Schenck, not Henry Winter Davis. Schenck had entered the army at the beginning of the war, but, like most of the political generals Banks, Butler, McClernand, and others less famous he had not proved exceptionally brilliant as a soldier. In 1862 he was selected to oppose the re-election of Vallandigham, and succeeded in defeating that blatant advocate of secession in Ohio, in a Demo- cratic district, in a year when the Democrats captured eight Repub- lican districts in the State. General Schenck had previously served eight years in Congress, 1843-51, and was the American Minister at Rio Janeiro under President Fillmore. As a Whig he had not ac- cepted the Wilmot Proviso, but as a Republican in the 38th Congress he supplanted Stevens as the leader, first in Committee of the Whole and then as chairman of the Com- mittee on Ways and Means. In the discussions under the five-minute rule he was a marvel of clear and compact statement. His first posi- tion after the organization of the House was chairman of the Com- mittee on Military Affairs, at that time of greater importance even than the W T ays and Means. In ora- tory Schenck was not as graceful as Davis, but " on his feet," Mr. Blaine says, " he had no equal in the House." The younger men in both chambers will be treated at length as they won their way to distinction. The first of the military meas- ures in the 38th Congress to draw the political fire of the soldier statesmen was a bill introduced on the opening day of the session to empower the President to appoint a lieutenant-general for all our armies. The fact that this measure was o presented by E. B. Washburne, of Illinois, pointed unmistakably to the appointment of General Grant to this controlling place. Wash- burne, like Grant, was from Galena, but the two townsmen had never spoken to each other before the outbreak of the rebellion. It was to Washburne, however, that Grant owed his first commission as a brigadier-general, and as the Congressman was the sponsor, so he was afterward the constant friend of the soldier. Washburne made no secret of the fact that the superlative rank to be created by his measure was intended for Grant. In the House Military Committee ROBERT C. SCHENCK. 164 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. E. B. WASHBURN. the bill had only one enthusiastic supporter, General Farnsworth, by whom it was reported in an able speech. General Schenck, the chairman of the committee, thought it premature. Not a very success- ful soldier himself, he was prone to doubt the military qualities of the more successful generals. Eighteen months before, McClel- lan would have been selected; after the battle of Gettysburg, Meade would have been the man; in the midst of his successes in the Southwest, Rosecrans might have been appointed at the time it was difficult to predict who would have precedence in the end. These assumptions were scarcely true, and they had no force when applied to Grant. In spite of his doubts, Schenck an- nounced his intention to support the bill. But there was one young soldier statesman from Ohio on the Military Committee, who had set squadron in the field too often to sur- render his judgment, when it came to selecting a great commander for all the armies of the Union. He was the Representative from the Ashtabula district, and sat in the seat so long filled by Joshua R. Gid- dings. He had become president of an Ohio college almost as soon as he became an alumnus of Will- iams; he had studied law, and had been a member of the Ohio Sen- ate; entering the army at the be- ginning of the war in command of a regiment, he served as chief of staff to General Rosecrans, and was rewarded for distinguished services bv being; made in suc- GEN. J. A. GARFIELD. cession a brigadier-general and major-general of volunteers. At Chickamauga his achievements were especially brilliant. General Garfield was in Congress only a few days when he evinced his oppo- sition to the bill, and one of his first speeches in the House was against THE THIRTEENTH AMENDMENT. 165 its passage. The bill was passed by 96 yeas to 41 nays. Stevens and Winter Davis, as well as Garfield, voted against it. Randall, of Penn- sylvania; Morrison, of Illinois; Eldridge, of Wisconsin, and Voorhees, of Indiana, were among the Democrats who voted for it. The test measure of the 38th Congress was the Thirteenth Amend- ment to the Constitution. It was first offered in the House, December 14, 1863, by James M. Ashle}^ of Ohio. Ashley was as radical on the slavery question as Giddings had been for many years before, but he never obtained the fame of the older Ohio Abolitionist. He spoke with earnestness and force in behalf of his favorite measure, and he will always be remembered for the watchful care he bestowed upon it in a Congress not disposed to adopt it. After its introduction, Mr. Holman, of Indiana, objected to the second reading of the bill, but the objection was overruled, and it w r as referred to the Judiciary Com- mittee. It soon became apparent that the measure had no chance of receiving the neces- sary two-thirds vote at that session of Con- gress. Mr. Arnold, of Illinois, introduced a joint resolution proposing a like amendment to the Constitution a few days later. Mr. Hol- man moved to lay this resolution on the table. His motion failed by only 79 nays to 58 yeas. Before any action was taken in the House on Mr. Ashley's bill, a joint resolution, providing for the abolition of slavery by a Constitutional amendment, was offered in the Senate by Mr. Henderson, of Missouri, reported from the Ju- GEN. JOHN B. HENDKRSON. diciary Committee, and passed by a vote of 38 yeas to 6 nays. The Senators voting in the negative were Garrett Davis, and Powell, of Kentucky; Hendricks, of Indiana; McDougall, of California, arid Kiddle and Saulsbury, of Delaware. " I bid fare- well to all hope of reconstruction of the Union," Saulsbury said upon the anouncement of the vote. John B. Henderson, the author of the resolution, had been ap- pointed a Senator from Missouri after the expulsion of Trusten Polk in January, 1862. General Henderson had been a Douglas Democrat, but as one of the most prominent and active Union men of his State, he was of great service in frustrating the schemes of the Secessionists in 1861. He was a man of marked ability and probity. When he be- came a Republican the geniality of his nature prevented him from be- coming a bitter partisan. He opposed the Confiscation Act of 1862 because it would " cement the Southern mind against us, and drive new armies of excited and deluded men from the border States to 166 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. espouse the cause of rebellion," but lie earnestly supported Mr. Lin- coln's Compensated Emancipation policy, and labored strenuously to secure the passage of the Missouri Compensation bill. When this measure was defeated by the factious opposition of the Democratic Representatives from his own State, he took the lead in the Senate in proposing the complete abolition of slavery. Garrett Davis was a Kentucky Whig, who had succeeded John C. Breckinridge a man of unquestionable loyalty, but opposed to any interference with slavery. When the bill abolishing slavery in the District of Columbia was before Congress in 1862, he wanted it amended so as to provide for colonization beyond the limits of the United States, on the ground that the residence of liberated slaves among the whites would result in a war of races. When General Henderson's resolution was reported in the Senate in February, 1863, Mr. Davis moved to amend it so as to exclude all the descendants of negroes on the maternal side from all places of office and trust under the Government of the United States, and he carried his pro-slavery feeling so far as to propose a Constitu- tional amendment for the consolidation of the six New England States into two States, to be called East New England and West New Eng- land. Thomas A. Hendricks, the successor of Jesse D. Bright, who was expelled for disloyalty, was a man of pure character, eminent abilities, and courteous manners, and he was highly respected even by the Senators from whom he differed so radically on the slavery ques- tion. He objected to any interference with slavery because the eleven States then in rebellion were not represented in Congress. James A. McDougall had succeeded William M. Gwin, the rabid secessionist leader of California. He entered the Senate as a War Democrat, and for a while sustained the administration, but he soon fell back into the ranks of the old Democracy. Both the Delaware Senators, George Eeed Kiddle and Willard Saulsbury, clung tenaciously to slavery be- cause their State was nominally a slave State, and they believed, sin- cerely, no doubt, that the Union could not be restored unless slavery was preserved. When the Senate resolution reached the House its reception was even more discouraging than that of the resolution offered by Mr. Arnold. It was met at the threshold by an objection to its second reading by Mr. Holman, who had previously objected in a like man- ner to Arnold's resolution, and was already acquiring his lasting reputation as the " great objector." Holman had entered the 36th Congress as a moderate Democrat, and his conservative spirit always led him to interpose objections to any of the war measures that con- templated the destruction of slavery. The first test vote showed that there were 55 members opposed to the amendment, and only 76 for it, THE THIRTEENTH AMENDMENT. 167 in a House that would require 110 votes for its passage. In the debate that followed the principal speakers in opposition to the resolution were Fernando Wood, Samuel J. Randall, and George H. Pendleton, Northern Democrats, and Robert Mallory, a Kentucky Whig. Wood was Mayor of New York City at the beginning of the war, and had been accused of a w r ild scheme of making the metropolis a free city. Although he had the reputation of being the leader of the turbulent element, he was a man of polished manners and dignified bearing. He, no doubt, believed in his own denunciations of the measure as " unjust in itself, a breach of good faith utterly irreconcilable with expediency." Kandall \vas beginning a distinguished career in the House, but, like most young Democrats, he could see in the proposed amendment only the beginning of radical changes in the Constitu- tion, and he regarded the abolition of slavery as the forerunner of usurpations of which the conservative young men of that period had imaginary but overwhelming fears. Pendleton was the Democratic leader of the House, and he took the extreme ground that the Union as it was then constituted had no power to abolish slavery. His ten- der regard for the peculiar institution of the States in rebellion led him to look upon slavery as a part of the form and spirit of the Gov- ernment, and he wanted it preserved for the wayward sisters when they were compelled to return to their duty. Mr. Mallory contended that President Lincoln had been compelled to issue the Emancipation Proclamation by the War Governors, who had met at Altoona in 1862. The principal speakers in behalf of the amendment were Mr. Morris, of New York; Mr. Ingersoll, of Illinois, and Mr. Boutwell, of Massa- chusetts. Daniel Morris, as well as Eben C. Ingersoll and George S. Boutwell, was serving his first term in Congress. It seems extraordi- nary now that the principal arguments in behalf of the most far- reaching measure ever before Congress should have been committed in its initial stages to men new to public life. The apparent indiffer- ence of Stevens, W T ashburne, and Schenck was due, no doubt, to the fact that the fate of the Senate resolution in the House was a foregone conclusion. When the vote was taken the yeas were 93 to 65 nays, 27 short of the necessary two-thirds. Mr. Ashley, who had voted in the negative for the purpose, moved to reconsider the vote, and an- nounced that when Congress again assembled in December, 1864, he would press his motion with the expectation that the measure would pass. In his annual message to Congress, after the Presidential elections and the election of a new House of Representatives, largely Republi- can, President Lincoln urged the passage of the Thirteenth Amend- ment, making a special appeal to the Democrats who had voted 168 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. against it a few months before. " Without questioning the wisdom or patriotism of those who stood in opposition," he said, " I venture to recommend the reconsideration and passage of the measure at the present session. Of course the abstract question is not changed, but an intervening election shows almost certainly that the next Congress will pass the measure if this Congress does not. Hence there is only a question of time as to when the proposed amendment will go to the States for their action, and as it is to go at all events, may we not agree that the sooner the better? " The President was especially anxious for the amendment to maintain the validity of the Emancipa- tion Proclamation. " In presenting the abandonment of armed re- sistance on the part of the insurgents as the only indispensable con- dition to ending the war," he said, " I retract nothing heretofore said as to slavery. . . . While I remain in my present position I shall not at- tempt to retract or modify the Emancipation Proclamation. Nor shall I return to slavery any per- son who is free by the terms of that Proclamation or by any of the Acts of Congress. If the people should, by whatever mode or means, make it an Executive duty to re-en- slave such persons, another, and not I, must be their instrument to per- form it." Having preserved the parliament- ary status of the amendment, Mr. Ashley was in a position to comply with the President's wish for its speedy consideration, and to verify his prediction of the final triumph of a measure that Mr. Seward considered worth an army. Accord- ingly, on the 6th of January, 1865, he again brought the question before the House. Since the measure had failed at the previous ses- sion a great change had taken place in the attitude of many of the Democratic Representatives toward the amendment. Even Mr. Voor- hees, of Indiana, while opposing it, recognized the thorough success of the Union cause the complete downfall of the Confederacy. He had been an extremist only less violent than Vallandigham and Long, but the near approach of the end of the rebellion sobered him and made him temperate of speech. Mr. Ashley opened the debate with a forcible speech, but his greatest service to the measure, at this time, JAMES M. ASHLEY. THE THIRTEENTH AMENDMENT. 169 was the pressure he brought to bear on every man on the Democratic- side of the House, whose conscience inclined him to strike the dead- liest blow that could be given to the rebellion by enfranchising the slave. The peculiar attitude of the Southern leaders at this time on the question of slavery proved a great help to the Thirteenth Amend- ment in the crisis of its fate. " We are not fighting for slavery," Jef- ferson Davis wrote to Governor Vance, of North Carolina, a few mouths before; " we are fighting for independence; and that or ex- termination we will have." If the South was not fighting for slavery there was no reason why the North should consent to continue it. " The party to which I belong loves the Union as dearly as the South loves slavery," said Mr. Cox during the debate. " If they can let slavery go for independence, the Democracy can let it go for the sake of the Union." This was the line upon which the battle was fought and won, for the amendment would have been compelled to wait an- other year but for Democratic aid. The first Democratic speech in favor of the measure was made by Mr. Odell, of New York, and as Mr. Yeaman, of Kentucky, spoke on the same side the same day, Mr. Pendleton determined to rally the op- position. The speeches of Voorhees, Odell, and Yeaman were made on the 9th of January, and Pendleton spoke on the 12th. Mr. Pendleton had come out of the Presidential contest with increased rather than diminished prestige with his own followers, notwithstanding the overwhelming defeat of the Peace Democracy, and he succeeded in prolonging the battle against the amendment. He held that the right to amend was limited in two ways: (1) by the letter; and (2) by the spirit, scope, and intent of the Constitution. It was a question of compact. One State, the smallest Rhode Island could, of right, resist such an amendment by force. These contentions called out a number of the young orators on the Republican side of the House in reply, including General Garfield in an elaborate argument; Mr. Boutwell, of Massachusetts; Mr. Schofield, of Pennsylvania; Mr. Kas- son, of Iowa, and Mr. Arnold, of Illinois. Fully one-third of the House took part in the debate. Mr. Pendleton's most troublesome antagonist, however, was one of his own colleagues a Democrat- Mr. Cox. There never was a bolder or more logical Constitutional lawyer in Congress than Cox. Where others showed their skill by evading a question, he often exhibited greater skill by facing it as sound Democratic doctrine. It was so in this case. " It was with some amusement," he said, " that I listened to my two colleagues (Messrs. Pendleton and Ashley) yesterday. How adroitly the Demo- cratic member sought to catch the Republican. How he plied him to admit the power to establish slavery! How shrewdly my colleague 170 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. on the other side evaded! On the other hand, members on the other side sought to entangle my colleague (Mr. Pendleton) with some of his former votes ! How both evaded the issues presented in their former positions ! while the humbler member who now addresses you sat complacently consistent amid the melodramatic performance, ready to admit that the power to change the fundamental law by amendment is unlimited, under the guards and modes prescribed, even to the establishment of slavery or a monarchy of entire freedom or entire democracy. Both of my friends deny this as extreme and heterodox: the one, because he would have nothing but limited Re- publicanism as the form of our government; that is my Democratic colleague who is so Republican; the other, because he would have nothing but sweeping Democracy as the basis of our Constitution; that is my Republican colleague who is so Democratic. The wishes of each color their present arguments as to power. When slavery is to be guaranteed, my colleague from Cincinnati believes with me in the pow r er to amend, and my colleague from Toledo denies it. When it is to be abol- ished, my colleague from Toledo believes with me in the power to amend, and the other denies it. Both deny the power when slavery is to be affected, and both admit it when slav- ery is not to be affected. I have them both on either side, and each on both sides, and both with me. I accept the power in either case as they claim it, but go beyond them SAMUEL S. COX. J . ft . , ,,,, both, for I stand on a principle. They are enamored of the power only when one case is absent. Like the fond lover of two maidens, they love the one l when the other dear charmer's away.' Yet they are unfaithful to both because they are so attached to either unfaithful because they are not upon the prin- ciple. I can extend to them (as a member from New York used to say here in olden times), from the serene Olympian heights of my cerulean consistency, the eternal principle of Republicanism and Democracy which will reconcile them both to duty and the Constitu- tion." The power to amend was the real question in dispute, and Cox had accepted it, with its logical consequences, two days before Mr. Pen- dleton's speech was made. While Mr. Kasson was speaking on the 10th Mr. Mallory, of Kentucky, asked him whether by an amendment the Constitution might not be changed so as to convert the Govern- ment into a monarchy, an aristocracy, or a despotism. With Kasson's THE THIRTEENTH AMENDMENT. 171 consent Cox interjected an affirmative reply. " I carry the Democratic doctrine to such an extent," he said, " that I maintain that the people, speaking through three-fourths of the States, in pursuance of the mode prescribed by the Constitution, have the right to amend it in every particular, except the two specified in that instrument; that this includes the right to erect a monarchy; to make, if you please, the King of Dahomey our King." Mr. Cox subsequently pointed out in his reply to Mr. Pendleton that this power over the Constitution was conceded by Madison, by Calhoun, and by Jefferson Davis. It was, indeed, the power invoked by the Peace Conference of 1861, and by the Crittenden Compromise. Mr. Bout well argued that the power over the Constitution was limited only by its preamble, but Mr. Thayer, of Pennsylvania, and Mr. Dawes, of Massachusetts, went fur- ther and agreed that there were no limitations that three-fourths of the States could alter the pre- amble as well as any other part of the instrument. The debate completely demolished the theory propounded by Mr. Pendleton, and so the only question that remained was the one that con- fronted the friends of the amend- ment at the beginning whether a majority of two-thirds could be obtained in the House to submit it for the approval of three-fourths of the States. Nearly all the Republican Rep- resentatives who earned distinc- tion in the debate on the Thirteenth Amendment thus paved the way to national recognition and eminent public service. James A. Garfield was only estopped from sitting in the United States Senate, as the colleague of John Sherman, by his election to the Presidency. George S. Boutwell was Secretary of the Treasury under President Grant, and succeeded Henry Wilson in the Senate. Henry L. Dawes, after a distinguished career in the House, became the successor of Charles Sumner. Glenni W. Schofield and M. Russell Thayer, being Pennsyl- vanians, went unrewarded of the higher preferment that Pennsyl- vania has always denied to her ablest men in the House. Ebon C. Ingersoll, who was the successor of Owen Lovejoy, and John A. Kas- son remained in the House for many years, but George H. Yeaman and James S. Rollins suffered later in the political upheaval in Ken- GEO. 8. BOUTWELL. 172 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. rucky and Missouri. Three Democrats, Alexander H. Coffroth and Archibald McAllister, of Pennsylvania, and Anson Herrick, of New York, spoke for the amendment on the day of the vote, and voted as they talked. The two Pennsylvania Representatives represented dis- tricts wrested from the Republicans in 1802, and Herrick voted for a similar constituency in New York. McAllister and Herrick had not been re-elected, and Coffroth, although returned as elected, was un- seated by his Republican competitor. The final struggle over the Thirteenth Amendment took place on Tuesday, January 31, 1865. In anticipation of the vote the galleries of the House were crowded. It was a day of excitement both on the floor and in the galleries. It was not until 4 o'clock in the afternoon that the voting began. Most of the members kept careful tally dur- ing the progress of the vote. All the Republicans voted for the amendment. Eight Representatives were absent, all Democrats. This list comprised Daniel Marcy, of New Hampshire; George Mid- dleton and A. J. Rogers, of New Jersey; Jesse Lazear, of Pennsyl- vania; John F. McKenny and Francis C. LeBlond, of Ohio; and Daniel W. Voorhees and James F. McDowell, of Indiana. Some of them were expected to vote for the measure, and it was alleged they were absent by design. None of them was paired, which is proof that they were unwilling to vote against the amendment and not prepared to vote for it. Fourteen Democrats gave their votes for it. They were J. E. English, of Connecticut; Anson Herrick, William Radford, Homer A. Nelson, John B. Steele, and John Ganson, of New York; Joseph Baily, A. H. Coffroth, and Archibald McAllister, of Pennsylvania; AVells A. Hutchins, of Ohio; Augustus C. Baldwin, of Michigan; Wheeler, of Wisconsin; and King and Rollins, of Missouri. Of these all except Nelson, who was absent, had voted against the amendment at the previous session. Radford and Steele were undecided until the last moment, and changed their votes on the final passage. Mr. Radford was the only one of the fourteen, with the exception of Coff- roth, \vlio was unseated, who had been elected to the 39th Congress. One Democrat went to the House with his speech in his pocket justi- fying his vote, and voted with the opposition. This was Samuel S. Cox. His course excited surprise and criticism, but it was character- istic of the man. He learned after he reached the floor that Peace Commissioners from the Confederacy were on their way to Washing- ton, and he convinced himself that the amendment would prove an obstacle to peace and union. " Weighing in the one scale," he wrote long afterward, " the dead body of slavery, which was to be formally abolished by this amendment, and in the other peace and union and these latter without slavery how could he doubt the unwisdom of THE THIRTEENTH AMENDMENT. 173 an amendment which would postpone peace and imperil the Union? " If slavery was an abstract question, as he claimed, made so through powder and ball, the true course clearly was to prevent its resuscita- tion by the passage of the amendment. Mr. Cox did not believe it was dead. While he saw a chance of union with slavery, he was un- willing to strike down the institution that was the cause of the seces- sion, and after four years of war he still clung to it as a basis of negotiations with the South. The amendment was adopted by" a vote of 119 yeas to 56 nays. The result was received with vociferous applause from the galleries and handshakings and congratulations on the floor. So many eager citizens were admitted to the hall of the House that members were crowded from their places, and a jubilee was inaugurated in the chamber. When order Avas restored Mr. Ingersoll, of Illinois, said: " Mr. Speaker, in honor of this immortal and sublime event, I move that the House do now adjourn." Mr. Harris, the only Representative from Maryland who had voted against the amendment, demanded the ayes and noes, and they were recorded 121 to 24. The Thirteenth Amendment is as follows: " Be it resolved, etc., That the following article be proposed to the Legislatures of the several States as an amendment to the Constitu- tion of the United States, which, when ratified by three-fourths of said Legislatures, shall be valid, to all intents and purposes, as a part of the said Constitution, namely: " Article XIII. " Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime, whereof the party shall have been duly con- victed, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. " Sec. 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by ap- propriate legislation." The vote in the House stood thus: YEAS (Democrats in Italics). Maine Elaine, Perham, Pike, Rice. New Hampshire Patterson, Rollins. Massachusetts Alley, Ames, Baldwin, Boutwell, Dawes, Eliot, Gooch, Hooper, Rice, W. D. Washburn. Rhode Island Dixon, Jenckes. Connecticut Brandagee, Deming, English, J. H. Hubbard. Vermont Baxter, Merrill, Woodbridge. 174 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. New York A. W. Clark, Freeman Clark, Davis, Frank, Ganson, Griswold, Herrick, Hotchkiss, Hulburd, Kellogg, Littlejohn, Marvin, Miller, Morris, Nelson, Odell, Ponieroy, Radford, Steele, Van Valken- burg. New Jersey Starr. Pennsylvania Bailij, Broomall, Coffroth, Hale, Kelley, McAllister, Moorhead, A. Myers, L. Myers, C. O'Neill, Schofield, Stevens, Thayer, Tracy, Williams. Delaware Smithers. Maryland Cresswell, Henry Winter Davis, F. Thomas, Webster. West Virginia Blair, Brown, Whaley. Kentucky Anderson, Randall, Smith, Yeaman. Ohio Ashley, Eckley, Garfield, Ihitchins, Schenck, Spaulding. Indiana Colfax, Dumont, Julian, Orth. Illinois Arnold, Farnsworth, Ingersoll, Norton, E. B. Washburne. Missouri Blow, Boyd, Kiny, Knox, Loan, McClurg, J. 8. Rollins. Michigan A. C. Baldwin, Beaman, Driggs, F. W. Kellogg, Long- year, Upson. Iowa Allison, Grinnell, A. W. Hubbard, Kasson, Price, Wilson. Wisconsin Cobb, Mclndoe, Sloan, Wheeler. Minnesota Donnelly, Windom. Kansas Wilder. Oregon McBride. Nevada Worthington. California Cole, Higby, Shannon. Total, 119. NAYS (all Democrats). Maine Sweat. New York Brooks, Chanler, Kalbfleisch, Kernan, Pruyn, Town- send, Ward, Winfleld, Ben. Wood, Fernando Wood. New Jersey Perry, W. G. Steele. Pennsylvania Ancona, Dawson, Dennison, P. Johnson, W. H. Miller, S. J. Randall, Stiles, Strouse. Maryland B. G. Harris. Kentucky Clay, Grider, Harding, Mallory, Wadsworth. Ohio Bliss, Cox, Finck, Wm. Johnson, Long, J. R. Morris, Noble, J. O'Neill, Pendleton, C. A. White, J. W. White. Indiana Cravens, Edgerton, Harrington, Holman, Law. Illinois J. C. Allen, W. J. Allen, Eden, C. M. Harris, Knapp, Mor- rison, Robinson, Ross, Stuart. Wisconsin J. S. Brown, Eldridge. Missouri Hall, Scott. Total, 56. Not voting Lazear, Pennsylvania; Marcy, New Hampshire; Me- THE THIRTEENTH AMENDMENT. 175 Do well and Voorhees, Indiana; Le Blond and McKinney, Ohio; Mid- dleton and Rogers, New Jersey all Democrats. The vote in the Senate had been: YEAS (Democrats in Italics). Maine Fessenden, Merrill. New Hampshire Clark, Hale. Massachusetts Sumner, Wilson. Rhode Island Anthon}^ Sprague. Connecticut Dixon, Foster. Vermont Collamer, Foot. New York Harris, Morgan. New Jersey Ten Eyck. Pennsylvania Cowan. Maryland Rcverdy Johnson. West Virginia Van Winkle, Willey. Ohio Sherman, Wade. Indiana Henry S. Lane. Illinois. Trumbull. Missouri Brown, Henderson. Michigan Chandler, Howard. Iowa Grimes, Harlau. Wisconsin Doolittle, Howe. Minnesota Ramsey, Wilkinson. Kansas J. H. Lane, Pomeroy. Oregon Harding, Ncsinitli. California Conness. Total, 38. NAYS (all Democrats). Delaware Riddle, Saulsbury. Kentucky Davis, Powell. Indiana Hendricks. California McDougall. Total, 6. Not voting Buckalew, Pennsylvania; Wright, New Jersey; Hicks, Maryland; Bowden and Carlile, West Virginia; Richardson, Illinois- all Democrats. The Thirteenth Amendment adopted by Congress in 1865 was in marked contrast with the one proposed and so strenuously urged in 1861. To prevent war all the Democrats and some Republicans were willing to make slavery perpetual in the organic law. To end the war with the only peace that could be perpetual slavery was abolished for all time. But the final passage of the amendment by the House 176 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. of Representatives, and its approval by the President, was not the end of the anxiety in regard to its validity, even should it receive the as- sent of the necessary three-fourths of the States. The number of States was 36. The number required for the ratification of the amend- ment was 27. The number of the States in rebellion w r as 11. This required its ratification by two of the seceding States, even if all the States that had remained loyal accepted it. Two of the latter re- jected it, Delaware and Kentucky, and others hesitated. Of the States assenting when proclamation of the ratification was made, December 18, 1805, nine had been in rebellion. The only safe ground w r as that the Ordinances of Secession were void, and that no State had been at any time out of the Union. When the Thirteenth Amendment was proclaimed the work of Reconstruction was the most important ques- tion with w T hich Congress and the country were dealing. II. PEACE. The Hampton Koads Conference Lincoln's Second Inauguration- Close of the War Last Confederate Hopes Assassination of the President Mr. Lincoln's Character His Ideas of Recon- struction A New Announcement to the South That Was Never Made. HE rumors of negotiations for peace that deterred Mr. Cox from voting for the Thirteenth Amendment had some foundation in fact. They were initiated by the venerable Francis P. Blair, who visited Richmond early in January, 1865, and had a conference with Jefferson Davis. It was impossible that they should have any result, because Mr. Davis insisted upon treating on the basis of " two countries." Mr. Blair, however, suc- ceeded in having three commission- ers appointed to confer with Presi- dent Lincoln and Secretary Seward, and Alexander H. Stephens, Rob- ert M. T. Hunter, and John A. Campbell came to Hampton Roads, where they dined with the Secre- tary of State and had a conference with the President. The meeting took place on the 3d of February on board the steamboat " River Queen." Mr. Lincoln insisted on three preliminary conditions: (1) The absolute restoration of the na- tional authority in all the States; (2) no receding from the positions taken on the slavery question; and (3) no cessation of military opera- tions on the part of the Government till the hostile forces surrendered and disbanded. What the commissioners sought they did not get an armistice and recognition. What the President sought he did not ob- tainimmediate submission. When the fact that the conference had occurred became known there was a greater display of passion- ate feeling on the part of the radical Republicans than the occasion warranted. There was no public expression of disapproval in Con- FRANCIS P. BLAIR. 178 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. gress, but many of the Republicans were furious, and one-third of the Republican members of the House refused to vote for a resolution of thanks to the President, offered by Mr. Cox. The dissidents included Thaddeus Stevens, of Pennsylvania; Henry Winter Davis and Francis Thomas, of Maryland; Morrill, of Vermont; Dawes, of Massachusetts; Windom, of Minnesota; Allison, of Iowa, and Wads worth, of Ken- tucky. Two Democrats Long, of Ohio, and Rogers, of New Jersey- voted against it. The resolution, emanating from a man who needed it as a justification for voting against the Thirteenth Amendment, was in the nature of an impertinence, but it was unnecessary to rebuke the President by seeking to rebuke its ingenious author. Mr. Cox's resolution was offered on the 6th of February, and two days later Mr. Stevens introduced a resolution of inquiry which the House adopted. To this the President made a full and frank reply, but the subject con- tinued to disturb Congress until the time came for its adjournment. Extreme men like James Brooks, of New York, continued to demand an armistice until General Grant secured one, that was alike accept- able to Democrats and Republicans, at Appomattox. Mr. Blair's visit to Richmond and the Hampton Roads conference bear some of the earmarks of Mr. Seward's peculiar diplomacy. There was a recurrence to the idea of a foreign war as a bond of reunion. By driving the French from Mexico a new empire south of the Rio Grande could be acquired. Whether it was to be free or slave, fed- eral or independent, were questions that were left in that nebulous state of uncertainty that was Mr. Seward's delight. As regards this proposition, the words were Blair's, but the voice was Seward's. It was from Mr. Seward that the Confederate Commissioners first heard of the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, and their reports repre- sent the Secretary of State as saying that if the rebellious States would submit, and agree to immediate restoration, its ratification might still be defeated. It was inevitable that Mr. Lincoln's name should be connected with Mr. Blair's wild project in the rumors that were in the air in Washington, but it is not impossible that the thirty- one Republicans in the House who voted against Mr. Cox's resolution had a vague knowledge of a fact calculated to dissatisfy them with the President. Immediately after his return from Hampton Roads Mr. Lincoln drafted a plan of conciliation that he thought practicable. It was for a grant of $400,000,000, to be distributed among the Slave States as the price of submission without slaver} 7 . This plan w y as sub- mitted to the Cabinet, but it was unanimously disapproved. " You are all opposed to me," said the President, pathetically, and the mat- ter was dropped. Just one month later Mr. Lincoln was inaugurated President of the United States for the second time. PEACE. 179 When the two Houses met in joint convention on the 8th of Febru- ary to count the electoral vote the chair announced the possession of returns from the two States of Tennessee and Louisiana, but that in obedience to the law of the land they w r ould not be presented. No member asked to have these returns received, and the votes of the two States were not counted. The inaugural ceremonies differed from similar pageantries before them only in these respects that for the first time the enslaved race had a share in the civic rejoicings, and that a battalion of colored troops marched in the parade. The oath of office was administered by Chief Justice Chase. Mr. Lincoln's ad- dress was very brief, but it has taken its place among the political classics of which he was the author. The concluding para- graph is especially celebrated. " With malice toward none," the President said; "with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work w r e are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and a lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations." At the time when the 38th Congress was dissolved, and President Lincoln took up the duties of his office for his second term, peace was nearer than even the most sanguine dared to hope. There was only one way to bring pacification that was to conquer it. Upon this method of pacification General Grant was bending all the energies of the armies under his command. Sherman had made his great march to the sea. Sheridan was scouring the valley of Virginia from Win- chester to the James, there to rejoin the Army of the Potomac in time for the closing campaign. Lee was meditating the necessity of withdrawing from Richmond, while Grant was slowly pushing his for- midable left wing nearer to the only roads by which Lee could escape. An armistice was the last hope of the Confederacy, and even after an armistice was refused by the authorities at Washington it was sought GEN. W. T. SHERMAN. 189 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. at the headquarters of the Army of the Potomac. The Confederate Congress on the 19th of January made Lee General-in-Chief, investing him with dictatorial powers, and the belief was cherished at Rich- mond that Grant possessed like powers. Long-street and Ord met un- der a flag of truce in February, and the conversation turned upon a possible adjustment of the terms of peace. Longstreet must have mis- understood Ord, for Lee wrote to Grant that he had been informed that General Ord had said that General Grant would not decline an interview with a view u to a satisfactory settlement of the present un- happy difficulties by means of a military convention," if Lee had authority to act. Lee assured Grant that he had the necessary au- thority, and asked for the military convention. Grant telegraphed these overtures to Washington, but Lincoln, without a moment's hesitation, answered: " You are not to decide, discuss, or confer upon any political questions. Such questions the President holds in his own hands, and will submit them to no military conferences or con- ventions. Meanwhile you are to press to the utmost your military advantages." There was no military convention, but Grant pressed his military advantages to a glorious conclusion. The purport of Ord's conversation with Longstreet has never been explained. It is certain, however, that in the closing days of the war there was a military conspiracy to subvert in some way the authority of the civil power in making peace. It was, of course, a Democratic conspiracy a conspiracy of Democratic generals. To the existence of this conspiracy it is possible, perhaps, to trace Lee's apparent op- timism after his fortunes had become desperate. Although he fore- saw that he must abandon Richmond, he still deluded himself with the illusion that he could save his army and continue the war at the worst that he could escape unconditional surrender. Within a few hours of the surrender he contended that surrender w r as not impera- tive. His optimism was assumed, but that of the bombastic Beaure- gard was real. With the Confederacy tottering Beauregard wanted to be sent to crush Sherman; "to give the enemy battle and crush him "; " then to concentrate all forces against Grant, march to Wash- ington, and dictate a peace." Even Lee thought it might still be pos- sible to execute such a program when it was no longer possible for him to hold Richmond. He yielded with dignity at last, but made no pretense that slavery should be spared after its existence had been submitted to the arbitrament of the sword. Was the destruction of slavery worth its cost? That there is no longer a slavery question is a sufficient answer to the query. The war was not inaugurated to destroy slavery; to have saved it after four years of battle for the Union would have been PEACE. 181 criminal. If the Union could have existed half slave and half free there would have been no war either to compel or prevent its exten- sion. The Abolitionists were not warriors. But the " irrepressible conflict " was a verity. There is no doubt that independence was the aim of the Southern leaders from the beginning. The war was for the Union, and its perpetuity was worth any sacrifice a Union without slavery was doubly worth fighting for and worth saving. Both results were achieved at Appomattox. The crowning triumph was as much the victory of the Republican party as of the Republic. The surrender of Lee's army meant peace. In the North there was a jubilee. In the South the men who had marched and battled for four long years threw down the musket and hurried to their homes to follow the plow. For the moment reconstruction had little or no interest for the soldiers on either side. But be- fore the Army of the Potomac could return from Virginia to Washington to lay aside the badges of the soldier and as- ABKAHAM LINCOLN. sume the garb of the citizen, Abraham Lincoln, the moderate, the good, the wise, was stricken, assassinated, dead! He fell a martyr to the cause that in- spired the hate of the assassin- pierced bA T the bullet of the mummer whose last tragedy part made him infamous. " Sic semper ti/raniti#," cried the mur- derer, and after speeding the fatal missile he added, " The South is avenged!" It was the vengeance of a madman over which the South still grieves as well as the North. If Abraham Lincoln had lived to complete his second term the chapters that follow this one would have been a story of moderation and wisdom, gentleness and justice, instead of the tale of dissension and political bitterness that the truth of history compels. The solemn pageants that marked the funeral journey from Washington to Springfield everywhere attested the grief of the people over a loss that stunned them. When death came to him so suddenly, when only one- half his work seemed achieved, all his great qualities became the more conspicuous because of the crime that all the world regards as a foul 182 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. and most unnatural murder. When lie was dead those who had op- posed and even those who had jeered at him united in lamenting- his loss and in the recognition of his great qualities. It was now seen that his gentleness had been matched by his firmness, his caution and discretion by sagacity and wisdom, and his statecraft by the noblest practical results. His trials and triumphs were no longer parts of a political problem, but the history of a great career. As a statesman his ideals had been lofty, and men revered his memory because of the dangers to himself and the country through which he had passed with so much sweetness and serenity. His acts and his speeches were those of the unselfish patriot as well as of the publicist and the orator. Not only did his utterances become classic, but his address at Gettysburg and his closing words upon the occasion of his second in- auguration enshrined themselves in the hearts of the people. Those who had underestimated him no longer asserted that he had not been the head of his administration, or that his administrative acts had lacked the qualities of true statesmanship. Even his enemies praised him. It was the apotheosis of a life-work that, like Washington's, was destined to grow more brilliant and hallowed with the passing years. Nearly all the men who knew him, whether or not they agreed with him in politics, have written tributes to his memory, and it would be as fruitless as it is unnecessary to attempt to add to them here. It has been claimed that if Abraham Lincoln had lived the restora- tion of the States, lately in rebellion, to their places in the Union would have been accomplished more speedily, and with less friction, than w r as the case under his successor. This may be conceded, but the subject has only a speculative interest. There certainly would have been no breach between the Executive and Congress. Mr. Lincoln would have entered upon the work of Reconstruction with a more com- manding authority over both sections of the country than President Johnson was able to exercise. His prudence and his self-repression would have served to allay passions that Johnson's bumptious and aggressive methods excited to fever heat. His appeals would have been made to the conscience and the convictions of the people, and he w T ould have succeeded in having his own way through his willing- ness to learn the ways of others, his moderation in pressing his own views upon the Cabinet and upon Congress, and the quiet but force- ful influence that was always assured to him through his patience and forbearance. It is true his apparent plan of restoration did not become the policy of the Republican party, but what was impossible with Lincoln dead would have been possible, if not easj- , with Lincoln living. Throughout the war Mr. Lincoln pursued a tentative policy of Re- PEACE. 183 construction. His first attempts were made in Tennessee and Louis- iana, but as a restoration of the civil authority in these States at the time was impracticable, a resort to military government became necessary in both. In 1862 Andrew Johnson was appointed Military Governor of Tennessee, and General George F. Shepley was invested with similar authority in Louisiana. This was not reconstruction, for that could only consist in the restoration of the civil authority. A step in this direction was made in Louisiana in December, 1802, w r hen Governor Shepley ordered an election for two members of Con- gress. Benjamin F. Flanders and Michael Halm were elected, and were admitted to seats in the 37th Congress, February 9, 1863. This action was not only premature, but it was useless, and in the end it was mischievous, for it encouraged Louisiana to establish a State Government before Congress had adopted a settled policy of restora- tion. The plan met with the approbation of Mr. Lincoln, and it was carried out in accordance with the recommendation in his message to Congress, December 8, 1863, and the terms of a proclamation that accompanied the message. The weakness of the scheme consisted in the fact that the State Government thus created could not last an hour without military support. Arkansas followed the example of Louisiana, and Messrs. Fishback and Baxter were elected to the United States Senate. When they presented their credentials their application was met by a resolution, offered by Mr. Sumner, declaring that " a State pretending to secede from the Union, and battling against the General Government to maintain that position, must be regarded as a rebel State subject to military occupation, and without representation on this floor until it has been readmitted by a vote of both Houses of Congress; and the Senate will decline to entertain any such application from any such rebel State until after such a vote of both Houses." The Senate was unwilling to be as emphatic as Mr. Sumner desired, but it finally declared that " the rebellion is not so far suppressed in Arkansas as to entitle that State to representation in Congress; and therefore Messrs. Fishback and Baxter are not en- titled to admission as Senators." The House took similar action in regard to the Representatives elected from Arkansas. This disagreement between the President and Congress reached the stage of a positive conflict later when Congress passed a bill em- bodying its own views of reconstruction. The passage of this bill could be regarded in no other light than as a rebuke to the President for proceeding with the w r ork of restoration without waiting for the action of Congress. It was claimed by the more radical Republicans in both Houses that the President had exceeded his constitutional power, but this assumption was unfair because it was not true. The 184 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. President still maintained the principle with which the war was be- gun once a State always a State while Congress was tending toward Mr. Simmer's position that the States in rebellion had re- verted to a territorial condition. It soon became apparent that Mr. Lincoln was not in a humor to be rebuked by Congress. He allowed the bill to die by withholding his approval, and four days after the close of the session he issued a proclamation in which he treated the measure as merely an expression of opinion by Congress as to the best plan of Reconstruction. It was in response to this proclamation that the famous Wade-Davis " protest " was published during the Presi- dential campaign of 1864. In his last annual message to Congress Mr. Lincoln made no allu- sion to Reconstruction, and Congress took action in only one instance that in any way affected the principle involved in Mr. Lincoln's plan. This action was the passage of a resolution directing that there should be no count of the electoral vote of the States of Louisiana and Arkansas. This resolution was sent to the President for his approval. He signed and returned it with a sarcastic message in which he said the two Houses of Congress convened under the twelfth article of the Constitution " have complete pow r er to exclude from counting all electoral votes deemed by them to be illegal, and it was not compe- tent for the Executive to defeat or obstruct the power by a veto, as would be the case if his action were at all essential to the matter "; and he added that he disclaimed all right on the part of the Executive to interfere in any way in the matter of canvassing or counting the electoral votes, and he also " disclaims that by signing said resolu- tion he has expressed any opinion on the recital of the preamble or any judgment of his own upon the subject of the resolution." This was telling Congress in effect that if he had signed the resolution without explanation it would have implied his right to veto it; if it had been sent to him as a reflection on his reconstruction policy, Con- gress might have saved itself the trouble. That Mr. Lincoln had not abandoned his own plan of Reconstruc- tion is evident from the last speech made by him two days after the surrender at Appomattox. " It may be my duty," he said, " to make some new announcement to the people of the South. I am considering and shall not fail to act when satisfied that action will be proper." The " new announcement " was never made. The cry of the assassin " the South is avenged " interposed to prevent the contemplated message of a broad and liberal policy with peace and union. III. PRESIDENT JOHNSON'S POLICY. Installation of Andrew Johnson His Characteristics Intimations of a Kigorous Policy Proclamation of Amnesty and Pardon The Wounded Seward and Preston King Seward's Speedy Re- covery and Remarkable Energy He Dominates the President Seward and Johnson's Plan of Restoration Provisional Gov- ernors Governor Holden of North Carolina Judge Sharkey of Mississippi The Reorganization of the Southern States They Accept the Terms, but Disregard Them Legislation Hostile to the Negroes Course Pursued in Mississippi, Georgia, Alabama, Texas, South Carolina, and Florida The Two Virginias Crea- tion of the State of West Virginia Joint Committee on Recon- struction Failure of the Lincoln Plan of Restoration Attempts to Re-enslave the Blacks Secretary Seward's Disappointment. HILE the death of Abraham Lincoln was still unknown to the greater part of the American people, Andrew Johnson took the oath of office as his successor. Since his inaugura- tion as Vice-President he had remained in Washington, and so there w r as no interruption of the Executive authority. The ceremony took place at his lodgings at the Kirkwood Hotel, where the oath was administered by Chief Justice Chase in the presence of the members of the Cabinet and a few of the Senators who had lin- gered in Washington after the adjournment of the Senate. The change was one for which the country was not prepared, and it was disquiet- ing, if not appalling. There was an instinctive feeling that Johnson's nomination and election had been a grave political blunder. He was not the man that either the North or the South would have chosen for the emergency that now confronted him and the Republic. Northern men distrusted and Southern men hated and despised him. The qualities that had made him a good candidate were almost certain to make him a bad President. By birth and by education, by tempera- ment and by environment, he was peculiarly unsuited to the responsi- bilities he was called upon to assume. It was not so much that he belonged to the " poor white " class by birth, as that he was the leader of that class in the South, that made him distasteful to the Southern aristocracy, whether he attempted to administer either jus- tice or mercv in the hour of defeat and humiliation. As a Democrat 186 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. he had always been a fly in the ointment of Southern Democrats. He was by instinct a fit representative of the class to which he was allied by birth, the white workingman. His political career before the war had been exceptionally successful by the aid of the working-men of his own State. He was the champion of white labor in the Tennessee Legislature and in Congress, his arguments tending to antagonize the slave system, to which he gave a perfunctory support. His es- pousal of the Homestead policy was especially offensive to the South- ern leaders. There is no reason to doubt that his independent course in both Houses of Congress was as sincere and honest as it was brave and courageous. As a Union man he was inflexible at a time when inflexibility for the Union marked him for the violent hatred of his own section. In the hour of secession he stood alone in the Senate the only Senator from a seceding State who remained loyal to the Union. His firm discharge of his duty as Military Governor of Ten- nessee, afterward, made him exceedingly popular in the loyal States, but as much an object of obloquy and detestation in the South as General Butler. It was regarded as futile to expect clemency from a man of his antecedents, and it was known that he had protested to President Lincoln, the day after Lee's surrender, against the terms accorded by General Grant. With such a career behind him, and with a firm belief in a policy of rigor at the hour of triumph, he was suddenly exalted to the office that had been filled by Lincoln with rare tact and discretion, and while the dead President still lay in the White House he announced that his policy was not to be one of mercy. In a speech to a delegation of distinguished citizens from Illinois, on the 18th of April, he intimated that Mr. Lincoln's policy was to be his policy, but when Lincoln's neighbors and friends were gone he struck out the intimation from the stenographer's report. It was not in har- mony with what he had said in another part of his address and with what he felt. " When the question of exercising mercy comes before me," Mr. Johnson remarked to his Illinois visitors, " it will be considered calmly, judicially remembering that I am the Executive of the Na- tion. I know men love to have their names spoken in connection with acts of mercy, and how easy it is to yield to that impulse. But we must never forget that what may be mercy to the individual is cruelty to the State." Mr. Johnson's early utterances, coming from a man in his position, were singularly unhappy. The effect of the first speech after he be- came President w r as detrimental to the administration and to the country. It gave no assurance of what his policy would be, but, on the contrary, openly evaded it. There were no words of grief or PRESIDENT JOHNSON'S POLICY. 187 praise for the dead President, beyond the declaration that he was " al- most overwhelmed by the announcement of the sad event which has so recently occurred." The speech, which was a very brief one, abounded with allusions to himself and his career. " Toil and an honest advocacy of the great principles of free government have been my lot," he said. " The duties have been mine, the consequences God's." The effect of- such utterances at such a time could not fail to be hurtful. " Johnson seemed willing to share the glory of his achievements with his Creator," said John P. Hale, with bitter wit, " but utterly forgot that Mr. Lincoln had any share of credit for the suppression of the Rebellion." While the funeral cortege was slowly bearing Mr. Lincoln's re- mains to their last resting place, the people everywhere attesting their grief for the dead President, the inflexible sternness of Mr. Johnson's utterances received frequent iteration. To members of the Christian Commission, who called upon him under the same roof where the body of the dead President reposed, he talked of " erecting a standard by which everybody should be taught to believe that treason is the highest crime known to the laws, and that the perpetrator should be visited with the punishment which he deserves." This was in reply to the Rev. Dr. Borden, of Albany, who expressed the hope that justice might be tempered with mercy. " I have become satisfied that mercy without justice is a crime, and that when mercy and clemency are exercised by the Executive it should always be done in view of justice," he said to a delegation of loyal Southerners, a day or two later. " But I say treason is a crime, the very highest crime known to the law," he exclaimed to a delegation of Pennsylvanians, headed by Simon Cameron, " and there are men who ought to suffer the pen- alty of their treason ! ... To the unconscious, the deceived, the conscripted, in short, to the great mass of the misled, I would say mercy, clemency, reconciliation, and the restoration of their govern- ment. But to those who have deceived, to the conscious, intelligent, influential traitor who attempted to destroy the life of a nation, I would say, on you be inflicted the severest penalties of your crime." This truculent mood continued for several weeks. " Well, Mr. Wade, what would you do if you were in my place and charged with my responsibilities? " he asked of the bluff and not too tender Senator from Ohio, regarding him as over-merciful. " I think," was the an- swer, " I should either force into exile or hang about ten or twelve of the worst of those fellows perhaps by way of full measure I should make it thirteen, a baker's dozen." The mild thought was appalling to the ferocious Johnson. " But how," he asked, " are you going to pick out so small a number and show them to be guiltier than the rest?" 188 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. In all these utterances affecting treason and traitors there were no allusions to any plan of restoration, and it was not until the 29th of May that the first of the important measures in his policy of Recon- struction was announced. This was his Proclamation of Amnesty and Pardon. In this the roaring lion had become a cooing dove. It is true there was a formidable looking list of exceptions thirteen classes in all. The excepted classes were (1) all diplomatic officers and foreign agents of the Confederate Government; (2) all who left judicial stations under the United States to aid the rebellion; (3) all military and naval officers of the Confederacy above the rank of colonel in the army and lieutenant in the navy; (4) all who left seats in Congress to join the rebellion; (5) all who resigned or offered to re- sign from the army and navy to evade duty in resisting the rebellion; (6) all who were engaged in treating otherwise than as lawful prisoners of war persons found in the United States service as officers, soldiers, or seamen; (7) all persons who were or had been absentees from the United States for the purpose of aiding the rebellion; (8) all gradu- ates of the Military or Naval Academy; (9) officers of the States in insurrection; (10) all who passed beyond the Federal military lines for the purpose of aiding the rebellion; (11) all persons engaged in the destruction of the commerce of the United States upon the high seas, lakes, and rivers; (12) all persons held in military, naval, or civil con- finement; and (13) all persons engaged in the rebellion the estimated value of whose property was over $20,000. The Proclamation con- tained a proviso that " special application may be made to the Presi- dent for pardon by any person belonging to the excepted classes," and the assurance was added that " such clemency will be liberally ex- tended as may be consistent with the facts of the case and the peace and dignity of the United States." This complete reversal of the sanguinary policy of the President was due to the influence and advice of the moderate and astute Secre- tary of State. Almost at the same moment that the assassin, Booth, was firing the fatal shot from the stage of Ford's Theater that killed President Lincoln, his fellow conspirator, Payne, was dealing Secre- tary Seward a wound that it was feared would be mortal. The shock to his nervous system was so great that for days he was not permitted to learn the fate of the President, or even that his son, Frederick Seward, had been desperately wounded by one of the conspirators. To the surprise and joy of the country Secretary Seward rallied quick- ly and recovered speedily. Wounded on the night of the 14th of April, he was well enough by the first of May to be informed of the events of which he was one of the victims; on the 10th he was able to receive visits from President Johnson and members of the Cabinet; and on the PRESIDENT JOHNSON'S POLICY. 189 20th he was back at his desk in the State Department. In the interval Preston King, who had been displaced in the Senate two years before by Governor Edwin D. Morgan, had had the ear of the President. King was a man well adapted to secure the confidence of Johnson. Like Johnson, he had been a Democrat before he became a Republican. Like Johnson, he had no sympathy w T ith the Whigs of whom Seward was representative. Between King and Seward there was not only no comity of interest, but much bitterness of feeling. King blamed Seward and his lieutenant, Weed, for his failure to be returned to the Senate in 1863. Now he was waiting for his revenge by becoming Secretary of State in Seward's stead. It was King who advised John- son to strike the allusion to Lincoln's policy from the speech to the Illinois delegation. If Seward's recovery had been slower, or if the Secretary had risen from his bed enfeebled in mind as well as shat- tered in body, Preston King would have been his successor in the State Department. He afterward accepted the post of Collector of the Port of New York, but, grievously disappointed, he died by his own hand. Mr. Seward, in May, 1865, found himself in exactly the same atti- tude toward President Johnson that he had occupied toward Presi- dent Lincoln in March, 1861. The chance had again come to him to " direct affairs for the benefit of the nation through the name of an- other," and he nerved himself to embrace the opportunity with a resolution and energy that were almost superhuman. Four years of war had not rendered his methods of bringing the seceded States back to their duty obsolete in his own mind, and the same means remained ready to his hand for reuniting the American people in a common bond of nationality* a foreign war. His first day at the State Depart- ment was devoted to a long conference with the French Minister touching the imperial regime in Mexico. From that hour Maximil- ian's empire was doomed. His idea of Reconstruction was that the best way was the speediest. He believed in vigor, but not in the rigor that had been the sanguinary feature of President Johnson's speeches while he lay pale, emaciated, and, it was believed, dying on the bed on which the assassin had prostrated him. Like Lincoln, he did not regard revenge as a just motive for political action. In his view the only guaranty of the rehabilitated citizen was an oath of renewed loyalty. He was in favor of trusting the South fully, and he was eager for a restored Union, without any unnecessary delay. This would probably have been the policy of Abraham Lincoln. As Lin- coln's policy it would have been feasible, for he would have spoken with an authority that was denied to Seward, and that was certain to be acrimoniously withheld from Johnson. If Seward and Johnson 190 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. had called Congress together and taken counsel with the Republican leaders, their success would not have been assured, perhaps, but the worst blunders of Johnson's administration would have been avoided. Neither the President nor his great Secretary thought this necessary, and in avoiding Scylla their bark was dashed upon Charybdis. In his debilitated state and the visionary eagerness and confidence that are apt to inspire a man who has just emerged from a severe illness, Mr. Seward yielded to the fascination of bending the Presi- dent to his will, believing that if he could dominate Johnson he could rule the country. The task that he thus set for himself was no easy one. lie had attempted it four years before with Lincoln, and had failed utterly. What he then thought easy he had found impossible. What most men would have regarded as impossible he now easily accomplished. Seward and Johnson were political antipodes, with- out a single point of contact or sympathy in their motives or ideas. The Secretary of State was a Whig, and the Whigs were Johnson's detestation. The President was a Democrat of the Jackson school, but to Seward Jackson was as detestable as he had been to John Quincy Adams. Personally as well as politically the two men were far apart. Johnson entertained a prejudice against Seward that amounted to dislike. In spite of his position Senator Johnson was looked upon with something like disdain by men like Senator Seward. Conventional imputations carry great w r eight, even with popular lead- ers. Seward was an aristocrat in manners and feeling. Johnson was a democrat as well as a Democrat. These differences only added to Seward's fascination in the work of molding Johnson to his will- indeed, they made Johnson more manageable than w r ould have been a Nature's Nobleman like Lincoln. To be appealed to by a man of the prestige and pre-eminence of Seward was a flattery of a kind to which the coarser fiber of Johnson's nature gave a ready response. Besides, Seward was at once the most deferential as well as the most eloquent of talkers. He was a good listener. He never understated the points of an antagonist in a private discussion, but restated them in language so glowing that to yield the argument to such an op- ponent became magnanimity. Seward talked Johnson into his way of thinking by his eloquence, his ardor, and his picturesque view of the possibilities that awaited an administration that restored the Union quickly and triumphantly. The President became plastic in the hands of the Secretary of State. In the matter of the Amnesty Proclamation Johnson yielded to Seward's milder views on every point except one- he insisted on making wealth in the South a disqualification for cit- izenship without special pardon. To a man who had suffered social ostracism from these men for a lifetime it was a peculiar pleasure PRESIDENT JOHNSON'S POLICY. 191 that they should be compelled to corne to him to sue for citizenship. But Johnson did not reverse his policy of rigor for Seward's alluring program from any feeling of weakness or dependence. His con- fidence in his own pow r ers, and his willingness to assume official re- sponsibility without any sense of personal fear, made him all the more amenable to the master mind of the Premier. Seward's efforts to convince him that as President he possessed all the power necessary to the Reconstruction of the States lately in rebellion led him to give a ready response to the Secretary's arguments, and he pursued the thorny path marked out for him without flinching when he was pricked and torn by the way. On the same day that President Johnson issued his Proclamation of Amnesty and Pardon, William W. Holdeu was appointed Pro- visional Governor of North Carolina, with authority to restore civil government in the State. It w r as made the duty of Governor Holden " at the earliest practicable period, to prescribe such rules and regulations as may be necessary and proper for assembling a convention composed of delegates who are loyal to the United States, and no others, for the purpose of altering or amending the Constitu- tion thereof, and with authority to exercise, within the limit of the State, all the powers nec- essary and proper to enable the loyal people of the State of North Carolina to restore said State to its constitutional relations to the Federal Government as will entitle the State WILLIAM w. HOLDEN. to the guaranty of the United States therefor and its people against invasion, insurrections, and domestic violence." The appointment of Governor Holden was quickly followed by similar appointments for other States, William L. Sharkey being- made Provisional Governor of Mississippi with like powers on the 1.3th of June; James Johnson of Georgia, and Andrew J. Hamilton of Texas on the 17th; Lewis E. Parsons of Alabama, on the 21st; Benjamin F. Perrj^ of South Carolina, on the 30th, and William Marvin of Florida, on the 13th of July. It will thus be seen that within six weeks from the time of his announcement of a plan of Re- construction, President Johnson had begun to set the machinery in motion for the restoration of seven of the eleven seceded States. The reconstructed State governments that had been formed in the States of Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Louisiana were speedily recog- nized. In consequence of this speedy action, the 37th Congress, when it assembled in December, 1865, found the Union restored without its 192 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. knowledge or consent, and in a way that was not likely to meet with its approbation. There was no recognition of the Provisional Govern- ments set up by the President, but a Joint Committee on Reconstruc- tion was appointed by the two Houses on the 13th of December, and made its report, April 30, 1866. The committee consisted of William Pitt Fessenden, of Maine; James W. Grimes, of Iowa; Ira Harris, of New York; Jacob M. Howard, of Michigan; Reverdy Johnson, of Maryland; and George H. Williams, of Oregon, on the part of the Senate; and Thaddeus Stevens, of Pennsylvania; Elihu B. Washburne, of Illinois; Justin S. Morrill, of Vermont; Henry Grider, of Kentucky; John A. Bingham, of Ohio; Roscoe Conkling, of New York; George S. Bout well, of Massachusetts; Henry T. Blow, of Missouri, and Andrew J. Rogers, of New Jersey, on behalf of the House. As this report and the action taken upon it were in direct antagonism with President Johnson's policy, its history will be told in the chapter devoted to the 39th Congress, while the practical working of the Provisional Gov- ernments are here described in greater detail than would be possible if the Johnson plan and the plan of Congress were considered to- gether. President Johnson's first Provisional Governor was not a happy selection from a Northern or Southern standpoint. Governor Holden was a veering politician whose vane alwa3 7 s pointed to windward. He was a Democratic editor at Raleigh and an original secessionist. As early as 1856 he advocated disunion in case of Fremont's election. In 1860-61 he opposed secession, but was a member of the North Carolina Convention, and not only voted for the Ordinance that car- ried the State out of the Union, but was especially virulent as a " last dollar " and " last man " blatherskite. His declaration that he would keep the pen with which he affixed his name to the North Carolina Ordinance as an heirloom for his posterity was not maintained in a manner creditable to his devotion to the principles he professed. He became at a comparatively early period a dissatisfied and disaffected subject of the Confederate oligarchy at Richmond. The freedom with which he criticised Jefferson Davis's administration caused him to be looked upon as an open enemy of the Confederate cause, and he was subjected to much persecution and annoyance. His joy at the down- fall of the Confederacy was, no doubt, real. Like Johnson, he was sprung from the poor white class of North Carolina, and, like John- son, he was at no time a favorite with the aristocracy of the South. With such antecedents and with such an environment behind him he was an unhappy choice to guide his State back to her old moorings in the Union. Indeed, he gave himself little trouble about the re- habilitation of his State and the prosperity of its people. His chief PRESIDENT JOHNSON'S POLICY. 193 concern was to build up a party for President Johnson and himself. To this end he engaged in the petty business that Thaddeus Stevens called " peddling amnesty," bringing both the administration and the Provisional Government into disrepute. If General Schofield had been continued as Military Governor of North Carolina until Congress could be called in extraordinary session and have time to prescribe the con- ditions of restoration, it can not be doubted that the results would have been in every way more gratifying. As it was, neither the administration nor the Governor reaped any advantage from the President's " pol- icy." Even with the restricted suffrage Ilolden was beaten as a candidate for Gov- ernor under the new Constitution by a ma- jority of more than 6,000 votes for Jonathan Worth, a Union man of Quaker descent, and the Republican party was discredited in North Carolina from the outset by the superserviceable course of the Johnson party. Governor Sharkey, of Mississippi, was an eminent jurist, but a weak administrator. It must be said in his behalf, however, that in his State success was impossible, for Mississippi rejected all the condi- tions of Reconstruction even the Thirteenth Amendment. Judge Sharkey was sent to the United States Senate, but under the cir- cumstances it is doubtful if lie would have been admitted even if Mr. Lincoln's plan of restoration for Louisiana had been generally adopted in dealing with the insur- rectionary States. The Mississippi Legislature, chosen in accordance with the Johnson policy, went so far out of its way to enact objec- tionable laws, affecting the colored population, that there was room for the charge made at the time that Mississippi would adopt slavery as a State institution as soon as its statehood was recognized. Indeed, practically the old slave code WILLIAM L. SHARKEY. 194 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. was actually re-enacted. Thus the haste to reorganize became a detri- ment not only to the State, but to the entire South. Governor Johnson, of Georgia, was a man of less prominence in his State than were lloldeu in North Carolina, Sharkey in Mississippi, or General Hamilton in Texas, but he came nearer to success than any of President Johnson's Provisional Governors. Georgia, even before the war, was to some extent a manufacturing State, and so escaped the dominating influence of the planter class, that in Alabama and Mississippi failed to learn for a number of years afterward that the war for slavery had abolished it forever. Governor Hamilton, of Texas, was the only one of the seven Provisional Governors appointed by the President who was under no delusion in regard to the work for which he was appointed. He \vas a Union man, who had been compelled to flee the State at the beginning of the war, and he only returned with the other refugees in 1805. " Candor compels me to say to the people of Texas," he said in his proclamation calling the State Convention, " that in the action of the proposed convention, if the negro is characterized or treated as less than a free man, our Senators and Representatives will seek in vain admission to the halls of Congress. It is, indeed, strange that men should take a solemn oath to faithfully abide by and support all laws and proclamations which have been made during the existing rebellion with reference to the emancipation of slaves, and in the next breath favor gradual emancipation. It is the part of wisdom and the part of duty to accept what is inevitable without resistance." Governor Parsons, of Alabama, tried to convince the people of that State that the abolition of slavery was a finality with how little success the sequel showed. " There is no longer a slave in Alabama," he said. " It is thus made manifest to the world that the right of secession for the purpose of establishing a separate confederacy, based on the idea of African slavery, has been fully and effectually tried, and is a failure." In the Convention called by the Provisional Governor, in accordance with his instructions, the reactionary spirit was made clearly manifest. The contentions of aiitc-licllHin days were revived. It was argued in the debates that the State had com- mitted no crime by secession, that only individuals could be punished; that secession worked no forfeiture of the right of slaveowners in their slave property, and that there was no power in the United States Government by proclamation or otherwise to destroy slavery. Al- though the Convention repealed the Ordinance of Secession and adopted the Thirteenth Amendment, the Governor and Legislature elected under the revised Constitution, which was not submitted to the people, at once evinced a purpose to subject the negro population PRESIDENT JOHNSON'S POLICY. 195 to an unfriendly code. Freedmen, free negroes, and nmlattoes, when contracting to labor for a longer time than one mouth, were required to enter into a written agreement, witnessed by two white persons, and failure to perform the contract on the part of the freedman was made a misdemeanor. The penalty was loss of wages and sentence for vagrancy, which meant sale to the highest bidder and virtual slavery. The Governor-elect, Robert M. Patton, in his address on assuming office, desired it to be understood, while commending the policy of the President, that socially and politically the affairs of the State should be controlled by the superior intelligence of the white men. A few inconveniences incident to the situation were to be en- dured until they could be changed, but in due season Alabama was to control the negro much as before the war. In South Carolina and Florida the services of the Provisional Gov- ernors, Perry and Marvin, w r ere merely perfunctory. In the former the Ordinance repealing the Ordinance of Secession was as hurried as the passage of that initial act of the rebellion had been nearly five years before, and the same man who forced the adoption of the one offered the other for adoption Francis W. Pickens. South Carolina hesitated to accept the Thirteenth Amendment, and it was only after pressure had been brought to bear upon the Legislature by President Johnson and Secretary Seward that it was ratified. The legislation affecting the freedmen was not only singularly inopportune, but re- markably vicious. Within a fortnight of the assembling of the 39th Congress an act was passed making felonies of crimes committed by persons of color that were only misdemeanors if committed by white persons. In many other directions special laws were enacted for the colored population that were restrictive, burdensome, unjust, and tyrannical, and special courts were created for cases in which persons of color were one or both the parties. This was a deliberate attempt to substitute serfdom for slavery by means of this new colored code, but Major-General Sickles interfered, and the second South Carolina conspiracy was rendered nugatory. In Florida a policy similar to that of South Carolina, Alabama, and Mississippi was adopted. The ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment was not made until after it had been proclaimed as part of the organic law. By their acts all these States rendered President Johnson's Reconstruction policy fu- tile, and compelled the more drastic plan of restoration that Congress afterward adopted. The part of the " Old Dominion " that now constitutes the State of Virginia was more torn and trampled upon than any section of the self-constituted Confederacy. For four years it had been a battle- ground of the rebellion. From the James to the Potomac, from the 196 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. sea to the Alleghanies, it had never ceased to resound with the tread of two hostile armies. Everywhere, in painful contrast with its for- mer beauty and prosperity, it showed the ravages of war it was im- poverished, devastated, helpless. Of the proud State that went into secession only a fragment remained. The secession of Virginia from the United States was the signal for the secession of the western counties of the State from Virginia. While the table lands and the valleys of the eastern counties were crushed under the tread of armed men, forty of the western counties formed a new State without asking the consent of the old one. The new State of West Virginia, the only State except Nevada admitted during the war, was the child of neces- sity. There had long been antagonism between the two sections. Formidable mountain ranges separated them, and the inhabitants of each saw little of the other. They had no comity of interest and no unity of sentiment. The interests of the eastern counties were on the seaboard, those of the western counties on the Ohio. The inhabitants of tidewater Virginia were rich, proud, haughty slaveholders, claim- ing descent from the cavaliers of old England, and with estates that were manorial in extent and methods of administration. Far different were the men of the mountains. For the most part they were descend- ants of hardy frontiersmen, a majority of whom had fought in the Revolution and the Indian wars. Their land patents were certificates of patriotic service in founding the Nation. They had few slaves, and their devotion to the Union was greater than their interest in slavery. When Virginia seceded at Richmond they set up a new government for the whole State at Wheeling, with Francis II. Pierpont as Gov- ernor, but the experiment was an anomaly, and it was soon determined to organize a new State and claim admission into the Union. The Ordinance to organize the new State was adopted August 20, 1801, and approved by the people on the fourth Thursday of October. The Convention to frame the new Constitution assembled at Wheeling on the 20th of November, and their work was ratified by a popular vote on the first Thursday of April, 1802. No provision had been made for the abolition of slavery in the Constitution, and it was sent back to the Convention and the people by the Senate for a provision that would assure gradual emancipation. Mr. Sumner desired a more radical provision, but his amendment was opposed by men as ad- vanced as Wade, of Ohio; Foot and Collamer, of Vermont, and Howe, of Wisconsin. The bill passed the Senate July 14, 1802, by a vote of 23 to 17, all the Democrats, except Mr. Rice, of Minnesota, voting against it. The Republicans who voted with the minority were Chandler and Howard, of Michigan, because the people concerned had done nothing voluntarily toward emancipating the slaves; Sumner and Wilson, of PRESIDENT JOHNSON'S POLICY. 197 Massachusetts, because the Senate had not adopted the anti-slavery amendment; and Trumbull, of Illinois, and Cowan, of Pennsylvania, because of the irregularity of the whole proceeding. The measure did not come up in the House until the 9th of Decem- ber. The debate was spirited, but of no great importance, because the question w r as not so much one of constitutionality as of expe- diency. The view of the strict coustructionists was voiced by the venerable John J. Crittendeu, of Kentucky, who said this would be " a new-made Union the old majestic body, cut and slashed by passion, by war, coming to form another government, another Union." This was the view that a great war should work no change in ideas or conditions. Thaddeus Stevens expressed the view dictated by sound common sense, discarding the notion that the consent of Vir- ginia was in any way necessary to the proposed act. " Governor Pierpont," he said, " is an excellent man, and I wish he were the Governor elected by the people of Virginia. But according to my principles operating at the present time, I can vote for the admission of West Virginia without any compunctions of conscience only with some doubt about the policy of it. None of the States now in rebellion are entitled to the protection of the Constitution. These proceedings are in virtue of the laws of war. We may admit West Virginia as a new State, not by virtue of any provision of the Con- stitution, but under our absolute power which the laws of war give us in the circumstances in which we are placed. I shall vote for this bill upon that theory, and upon that alone. I will not stultify myself by supposing that we have any warrant in the Constitution for this pro- ceeding." " Let there not be two Virginias," pleaded Mr. Segar, who, by a construction as broad as that against which he was contending, was permitted to represent the district in which Fortress Monroe was included; " let us remain one and united. Do not break up the rich cluster of glorious memories and associations which gather over the name and the history of this ancient and once glorious Common- wealth." The bill was passed by 96 to 54 votes, all the Representatives voting for it being Republicans. Among the Republicans who voted against it wereConway, of Kansas; Francis Thomas, of Maryland, and Roscoe Conkling, of New York. When West Virginia became a State Gov- ernor Pierpont's Virginia capital was transferred from Wheeling to Alexandria, and the fiction of a State Government was maintained until President Johnson found it convenient to recognize the skeleton in the effort to infuse new life into the old State of Virginia. The attempt was a failure, not only because it was prematurely made, 198 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. but from the impossibility of building a stable structure on so feeble a foundation. Mr. Stevens said all its archives, property, and effects could be carried to Richmond in an ambulance. In Arkansas, Ten- nessee, and Louisiana the reputed State governments, which Mr. Lin- coln had ineffectually tried to galvanize into life, were now adopted by President Johnson with results as unsatisfactory as in all the other cases. The failure of President Johnson's plan of Reconstruction was not due so much to its character, or to the character of the men to whom the task was committed, as to the advantage that was taken of an effort that was prematurely made to re-establish slavery in the South in substance if not in form. It soon became apparent that the assent to the Thirteenth Amendment was intended to be a gross deception. Northern opinion was derided in every Southern State, and the au- thority of Congress was treated as if it was without effect in the Slave States. The North had conquered, and then the South proceeded to do as it pleased. Unrepentant rebels acted as if it was the United States that had tired of the war not the Southern Confederacy that had failed. Every Southern man who accepted the results of the war honestly was ostracized General Longstreet being a con- spicuous example and the freedmen were treated with a cruelty and injustice that were unknown in the days when " Uncle Tom's Cab- GEN. JAMES LONGSTREET. in " drew tears from Northern eyes, and implanted hate in Southern hearts. The vagrancy acts, adopted by the Southern Legislatures almost simul- taneously and in defiance of Congress, were not only unjustifiable but atrocious. A vagrant became only another name for a slave. Vagrants in Alabama were " stubborn or refractory servants," and " servants who loiter away their time." Every man or woman w r ith a black skin was a servant. Mobile was given a charter that made the municipal corporation the direct and active agent in re-enslaving the blacks. By the terms of this new charter the mayor, aldermen, and common council were empowered " to cause all vagrants," . " all such as have no visible means of support," . . . "all who can show 7 no reasonable cause of employment or business in the city," . . . " all who have no fixed residence or can not give a good ac- count of themselves," . . . "or are loitering in or about tippling- houses," " to give security for their good behavior for a reasonable time and to indemnify the city against any charge for their support, PRESIDENT JOHNSON'S POLICY. 199 and in case of their inability or refusal to give security, to cause them to be confined to labor for a limited time, not exceeding six calendar months, which said labor shall be designated by the said mayor, aldermen, and common council, for the benefit of said city." When such enactments as this are recalled it is easy to see why Johnson's " policy " and Reward's hopes were foredoomed to failure. In Alabama a " vagrant " could be sold or hired for only six months for the crime of being both poor and black, but in Florida the term was made a whole year, and not only were negroes to be tried only in courts specially established for the trial of negroes, but no present- ment, indictment, or written pleading was required. Inability to pay the costs in such proceedings was in itself sufficient ground for en- slavement, not for the actual amount to be paid in labor, but for the shortest term of service for which a white man would agree to pay them. The Florida enactments, conceived in mere cruelty, are as- tounding. For merely intruding himself " into any religious or other public assembly of white persons or into any railroad car or other vehicle set apart for w y hite persons," the wretched negro was to u stand on the pillory for one hour, and then whipped with thirty-nine lashes on the bare back." The possession of arms by a negro w r as rigorously punished in all the States. The Louisiana Legislature, with an equal disregard of English grammar and common humanity, decreed that " every adult freed man or woman shall furnish themselves with a comfortable home and visible means of support within twenty days after the passage of this act," and that " any freed man or woman failing to obtain a home and support as thus provided shall be im- mediately arrested by any sheriff or constable in any parish, or by the police officers in any city or town in said parish where said freedman may be, and by them delivered to the Recorder of the parish, and by him hired out, by public advertisement, to some citizen being the highest bidder, for the remainder of the year." Besides such inhuman enactments as these, the condition of the negro was rendered still more intolerable by the imposition of odious and unjust taxes, that were strenuously exacted. These laws, the full recital of which would require a volume, were an integral part of President Johnson's scheme, to which Congress would have given assent if the scheme had been accepted. The only explanation of the madness that pervaded the South after the close of the war is the imbruted condition in which the slave system and an unsuccessful war for slavery had left the Southern people. To Mr. Seward, to whose eloquent pleadings in behalf of a mag- nanimous policy for the South President Johnson's scheme of Recon- struction was owing, these results could not fail to bring a deep sense 200 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. of disappointment, humiliation, and shame. To his friends he ex- pressed his surprise and chagrin that the South should respond with such shameless and vicious ingratitude to the magnanimous tenders of sympathy and friendship from the National Administration. A bolder man would have openly declared that the policy was a failure, and insisted upon its abandonment. Instead of doing this, he sought to avert consequences he had not foreseen through the Provisional Governors of the President's selection, and almost before he was aware of it he was engulfed in the whirlpool that surged around the Administration. Holding himself responsible for the policy of mag- nanimity that Johnson had substituted at his request for one of rigor and punishment, he could not persuade himself to desert the admin- istration he had started on the road to misfortune and discomfiture. Like Marcy in the Cabinet of President Pierce, and Webster in the Cabinet of President Tyler, he sought to mitigate a policy the con- sequences of which it would be cruel to his memory to say he ap- proved, and so remained at his post until retreat became impossible. He had tried to become the masterful spirit of Lincoln's administra- tion but failed, and submitted gracefully, to succeed in his proper sphere. With Johnson he succeeded in imposing his ideas upon the President only to fail. " Action has been devoured by his own dogs," Toombs said, when Seward was defeated for the Republican nomina- tion at Chicago in 1860. Now he was indeed the cuckold for which Actreon is the synonym it was no longer the full Republican hounds by which he was devoured, but the bloodhounds of the Southern plan- tations; and Andrew Johnson w r as his Diana, the Inexorable. He sank from his pre-eminence as the Great Secretary to the position of a mere satellite, when his opinionated and ambitious Chief went " swinging around the circle." " The Democratic plan of restoration was consistent with the Con- stitution and the best," said a Democratic writer at the close of John- son's administration; " Mr. Lincoln's the next best, and that of the Republicans the worst." If restoration with restrictions went so near nullifying the results of the war in the first year of the peace, it is easy enough to see that restoration without restrictions would have meant the resuscitation of slavery. IV. THE CONGRESS AND THE PRESIDENT. Meeting of the Thirty-ninth Congress Dissatisfaction with the Presi- dent's Policy Thaddeus Stevens Charles Sumner Their Lead- ership New Men in the Two Houses Delegations from the Southern States Mr. Stevens's Theory Henry J. Raymond, the Champion of the Administration Hurtful Democratic Support Shellabarger's Reply to Raymond The Specific Act The Democratic Position Establishment of the Freedman's Bureau Administration Republicans The Civil Rights Bill General James H. Lane The Fourteenth Amendment The Tenure of Office Bill The Reconstruction Acts Riot in New Orleans The Fortieth Congress Military Government for the South. HE profound disgust that President Johnson's Restoration Policy had inspired in the Republican party was mani- fested immediately upon the assembling of the 39th Con- gress. So completely had the Peace Democracy been beaten in the elections of 1864, that in the House Mr. Colfax was re- elected Speaker by 139 votes to 36 for James Brooks, of New York. The President's message, although it was unexpectedly moderate in tone and indicated no purpose to break with the majority in the two Houses, was received with scant courtesy. Indeed, the message had not yet been received when the unmistakable unfriendliness of Con- gress toward the Administration was shown in a number of ways. Speaker Colfax, on assuming the chair in the House, instead of mak- ing a mere colorless speech of thanks for the honor conferred upon him, incorporated in what had always been a mere ceremonial address some positive declarations touching the work before the body over which he was called to preside. " In this great work," he said, " the world should witness the most inflexible fidelity, the most earnest de- votion to the principles of liberty and humanity, the truest patriotism, and the wisest statesmanship." Mr. Stevens's motion for a Joint Com- mittee on Reconstruction followed immediately upon the organiza- tion of the House. The objection of Mr. Eldridge, of Wisconsin, to the reception of the resolution was summarily disposed of by a motion to suspend the rules, that was carried by 129 ayes to 35 noes. A sug- gestion of Mr. Dawson, of Pennsylvania, that the resolution should be postponed until after the receipt of the President's message went 202 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. unheeded, and the resolution was adopted by the same vote with which it was received. In the Senate Mr. Sumner outlined a radical policy of Reconstruction without reference to what the President might or might not say on the subject. This precipitancy, and the character of the men by whom it was promoted, was an unmistakable index to the complete repudiation of all the acts of the Administration by Congress that quickly followed, and was pressed with increasing- vigor and bitterness while Johnson remained the Chief Executive. The two men who made the onslaught on the policy that Seward had advised and that Johnson had pursued were not so much types as embodiments of the militant spirit of the North. Both had been giants in repelling the aggressions of the slaveholders in Congress at the time of the arrogant supremacy of the South Thaddeus Ste- vens in the House and Charles Simmer in the Senate. The war found them out of sympathy w r ith an Administration that, with all their strength, they were not strong enough to antagonize openly while the conflict lasted. Their arena was the floors of Congress, but all eyes were directed to the battlefields of the Union from Sumter to Appomattox, and these forums shrank into comparative insignificance while battles remained to be fought and won. With surrender and peace the opportunity came to them to assert the leadership for which they had longed, and to crown their careers with the highest achieve- ments of the statesman. Both were men of a high order of talent, but both were lacking in some of the most necessary attributes of a suc- cessful leader of men. They were good special pleaders, but not great lawyers. They were both constructionists to the point of obstruction. They were not logicians they were dogmatic propounders of a theory that was right because they propounded it. They were great leaders, but leaders without a party and without a following. Their places were secure to them for so many years as the tributes of mere men to demigods. They enjoyed all the advantages of popularity without being popular. Of the two, Stevens w r as by far the abler. He had the stronger will and the clearer perceptions. With Pluto's iron counte- nance, he had the natural feet of Arion. His thunderbolts were the darts of Jove. With all his inflexibility of character, he could be genial and even generous. If he was without tender emotions, he was always sternly just to the strong, but he hated the shams of the slave- holding class as fiercely as the impoverished Southron hated the grinning humility of the freedmen after the war. Sumner was not as saturnine in appearance as Stevens, but he was scarcely less inflexible in countenance and character. His best speeches were marred by the pedantry of the recluse, and his efforts at practical legislation had the faults and weaknesses of briefs drawn by a law r yer who had never THE CONGRESS AND THE PRESIDENT. 203 practiced. lu tJie Senate lie towered like Jove, " above them all by his great looks and power imperial," but even when he took the initia- tive, in fact, it was left to other Senators, with less of the mien of the Grecian Jupiter, to clothe his propositions with simplicity of form. With two such men in the lead the one in the House and the other in the Senate the forensic contests in the 39th Congress could not fail to become Titanic, and it was soon shown that there were Titans in both Houses besides Tellus Stevens and Caelum Sumner. The obstacles that confronted President Johnson's administration in Congress were not so much in the principles by which the results of his policy would have to be tested, as in the character of the results themselves; not so much in the leaders of the opposition to his policy in the two Houses, as in the elements that made the opposition Re- publican; not so much in the forces opposed to the Johnson plan, as in the elements that aligned themselves in its support. The condition of the reconstructed States and the obnoxious legislation of the re- constructed Legislatures, in themselves, made the recognition of the Johnson plan, as an accomplished fact, impossible. The fact that the President ignored this feature in his message only tended to anger those whom it could not deceive. Among these men, especially in the House, was an unusual number of new members who had been effi- cient soldiers in the war. General Marston again represented New Hampshire. General Banks, after a checkered military career, re- sumed the seat he had left in 1857 to become Governor of Massachu- setts. General John H. Ketcham, the only Congressman who never made a speech and yet obtained an influential standing in the House, appeared for the first time from New York. Ohio sent General Ruth- erford B. Hayes, destined to become President of the United States. From Wisconsin came General Halbert E. Paine on crutches, having lost one of his legs in battle. In the Senate, in place of William A. Richardson, the friend of Douglas, was Richard Yates, the distin- guished War Governor of Illinois. Many of the Republican Repre- sentatives who were beaten in the reaction of 1862 had been again returned on the tidal wave that re-elected Lincoln in 1864. Among these the most eminent were Roscoe Conkling, of New York, and John A. Bingham and Samuel Shellabarger, of Ohio. General Schenck and General Garfield were in their second terms, and James G. Blaine was rapidly coming into prominence. Such men as these could not stand idly by while Mr. Johnson and Mr. Seward frittered away the results of the war. But more hurtful to the Administration than these only less hurtful than the President's Democratic champions were the men who came to Washington, either at the beginning of the Congress or soon afterward, demanding the right to represent the 204 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. Southern States. As many as four of Johnson's Provisional Govern- ors claimed seats in the Senate Lewis E. Parsons, of Alabama; William Marvin, of Florida; William L. Sharkey, of Mississippi, and Benjamin F. Perry, of South Carolina. Georgia got back into the Union with both feet, sending as Senators in Congress Alexander 11. Stephens and Herschel V. Johnson. The dismounted rebel brigadiers appeared in the House wing of the Capitol with all the confidence of conquerors General Cullen A. Battle, of Alabama; General Philip Cook and General W. T. \Vofford, of Georgia; Colonel Arthur E. Rey- uolds and Colonel Richard Pinson, of Mississippi; Colonel Josiah E. Turner, Jr., of North Carolina; and Colonel John 1). Kennedy and General Samuel McGowan, of South Carolina. The South had come back to Washington to insist on the inalienable rights of Statehood, and to rule the nation as it had ruled it before the war. Instead of attempting to untie the Gordian knot of Statehood under the Constitution in the manner of lawyers like Reverdy Johnson in the Senate and William E. Niblack in the House, Mr. Stevens adopted the Alexandrian method and severed it. He claimed that the States that seceded from the Union must come back to it as new States or remain as conquered provinces. " The separate action of the Presi- dent or the Senate or the House," he said, " amounts to nothing either in admitting new States or guaranteeing Republican forms of government to lapsed or outlawed States." Then came the shot that was aimed at the Executive, although the President was not men- tioned by name or directly alluded to in any part of Mr. Stevens's speech. u Whence springs the preposterous idea," he asked, " that any one of these, acting separately, can determine the right of States to send Representatives or Senators to the Congress of the Union? " Mr. Stevens did not design at that time to extend the suffrage to the blacks by Federal action, but by excluding the entire population from the basis of representation in Congress to compel the States, in their own interest, to extend the franchise. He gave notice, however, that the freedmen were not to go unprotected. " We have," said he, " turned, or are about to turn, loose four million slaves without a hut to shelter them or a cent in their pockets. The diabolical laws of slavery have prevented them from acquiring an education, under- standing the commonest laws of contract, or of managing the ordi- nary business of life. This Congress is bound to look after them until they can take care of themselves. If we do not hedge them around with protecting laws, if we leave them to the legislation of their old masters, we had better have left them in bondage. Their condition will be worse than that of our prisoners at Andersonville. If we fail in this great duty now when we have the power, we shall deserve to receive the e'xecration of history and of all future ages." THE CONGRESS AND THE PRESIDENT. 205 The cry that this is a white man's government, which had been proclaimed in so many Democratic platforms during the war, he de- nounced with great vigor and bitterness. " Sir," he said, " this doc- trine of a white man's government is as atrocious as the infamous sentiment that damned the late Chief Justice to everlasting fame, and I fear to everlasting fire." This speech of Mr. Stevens gave great offense to the Administration. It was determined that it must be answered before it had time to enter the mind and heart of the Republican masses answered by a man who stood high in the councils of the party, who would speak with authority for the large Republican element that was expected to rally to the support of the President. In the manner in which the defense was at- tempted, as well as in the choice of the champion, it is easy to recognize the deft hand and keen brain of Mr. Seward. The ungrateful task, as it proved, fell upon Henry J. Raymond, the ac- complished editor of the New York Times. Mr. Ray- mond was still a compara- tively young man, gifted, admired, and ambitious. As a newspaper writer he was especially brilliant, and his paper was characterized by a literary culture and schol- arly tone never before at- tained by any American journal. In their mental traits and intellec- tual graces the man and the paper were counterparts of each other. Besides, Raymond was a politician of long experience. He had been a member of the New York Assembly. He had been Lieutenant-Governor of his State, and was a parliamentarian of rare tact and skill. He began his journalistic career with Mr. Greeley on the Tribune, and for a number of years their personal and political relations were very close. It was not long after their business connection was severed that they parted company politically. When the political firm of Seward, Weed & Greeley w r as dissolved, it became Seward, Weed & Raymond. The Times had avoided the political vagaries for which the Tribune was famous, and as the Seward organ in New York Citv it HENRY J. RAYMOND. 206 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. displaced the Tribune as a mouthpiece of the party. In 1864 Mr. Ray- moiid was the leader of the New York delegation in the Republican National Convention, and its platform was the work of his graceful pen. He helped to give Johnson the nomination for the Vice-Presi- dency, and so helped to make him President. Elected to Congress with the assured friendship of Seward and Lincoln, he expected to en- ter the House with all the advantages of position and influence that generally come to men only after long service. With Seward, the master spirit of Johnson's administration, he failed to conceive that Lincoln's death had impaired his prospects that his championship of Johnson's policy would so completely identify him with a bad cause that he would share in its ruin. If Lincoln had lived, and had pursued the policy that the friends of the Administration claimed was his, it would have been an honor to go down with the ship, but to leave one's career behind him for the sake of Andrew Johnson was too great a sacrifice to excite an}' emotion, except that of pity. Mr. Stevens's speech was made on the 18th of December, and so Mr. Raymond was compelled to hurry his response, so as to make it before the adjournment for the Christmas holidays, which was set for the 22d. He was ready to make his argument on the morning of the 21st, but an accident intervened that delayed his speech until later in the day. An Ohio Democrat of the Vallandighani type, who was never heard of afterward William E. Finck claimed the floor, and was graciously accorded it by a majority that was pleased to see the Administration subjected to a tactical blunder at the begin- ning of the struggle. The one thing that could not fail to be the most hurtful to the President's policy at that time was the support of the Peace Democracy. Finck, unfortunately for the cause he had at heart, was insensible to the shame of his party, or to the fatal conse- quences of any proffers of sympathy or support from it to any cause at that time. The inappositeness of Finck's speech was still further aggravated by an inapposite series of resolutions offered the same day by Mr. Voorhees, of Indiana. Voorhees was the personification of inappositeness in politics. With a fine presence and a haughty mien, he had caught his political inspirations from the Southern statesmen who had left Congress before he entered it. He stood ready now to welcome them back with fraternal hands from bloody fields. Such were the two too ready champions of a cause in behalf of which Raymond was about to plead with his own party to stay its hands and turn away from its purpose. Mr. Raymond felt the incongruity of his intended effort with his environment, and he did not fail to show his resentment and adminis- ter a stinging rebuke, not only to the men but to the party guilty of THE CONGRESS AND THE PRESIDENT. 207 these impertinences. " I have no party feeling/' he said, in beginning his speech, " which would prevent me from rejoicing in the indications apparent on the Democratic side of the House of a purpose to concur with the loyal administration of the Government and with the loyal majorities in both Houses of Congress in restoring peace and order to our common country. I can not, however, help wishing, sir, that these indications of an interest in the preservation of our Government had come somewhat sooner. I can not help feeling that such expressions? can not now be of as much use to the country as they might once have been. If we could have had from that side of the House such indica- tions of an interest in the preservation of the Union, such heartfelt sympathy with the friends of the Government for the preservation of that Union, such hearty denunciations for all those who were seeking its destruction while the war was raging, I am sure we might have been spared some years of war, some mill- ions of money, and rivers of blood and tears." Raymond's principal aim was to controvert Stevens's theory of dead States. " The gentle- man from Pennsylvania," he said, " believes that what we have to do is to create new State;? out of this conquered territory, at the proper time, many years distant, retaining them mean- while in a territorial condition, and subjecting them to precisely such a state of discipline and tutelage as Congress and the Government of the United States may see fit to prescribe. If I be- SAMUEL SHELLABARGER. lieved in the premises he assumes, possibly, though I do not think probably, I might agree with the conclusion he has reached ; but, sir, I can not believe that these States have ever been out of the Union, or that they are now out of the Union. If they were, sir, how and when did they become so? By what specific act, at what precise time, did any one of those States take itself out of the Ameri- can Union? " After the recess Mr. Shellabarger answered Mr. Raymond on this point with a caustic summary, that is in itself the history and the substance of the debate. " I answer him," said the earnest member from Ohio, " in the words of the Supreme Court, ' The causeless waging against their own Government of a war which all the world acknowledges to have been the greatest civil war known in the history of the human race.' The war was waged by these people as States, and it went through long, dreary years. In it they threw off and defied the authority of your Constitution, your laws, and your Govern- ment. Thev obliterated from their State constitutions and laws every 208 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. vestige of recognition of your Government. They discarded all their official oaths, and took in their places oaths to support your enemies' government. They seized, in their own States, all the Nation's prop- erty. Their Senators and Representatives in your Congress insulted, bantered, defied, and then left you. They expelled from their land or assassinated every inhabitant of known loyalty. They betrayed and surrendered your arms. They passed sequestration and other acts in flagitious violation of the law of nations, making every citizen of the United States an alien enemy, and placing in the treasury of their rebellion all money and property due such citizens. They framed iniquity and universal murder into law. For years they besieged your Capital and sent your bleeding armies in rout back here upon the very sanctuaries of your national power. Their pirates burned your unarmed commerce upon every sea. They carved the bones of your uiiburied heroes into ornaments and drank from goblets made out of their skulls. The}' poisoned 3 T our fountains, put mines under your soldiers' prisons, organized bands whose leaders were concealed in your homes, and whose commissions ordered the torch to be carried to your cities, and the yellow fever to your wives and children. They planned one universal bonfire of the North, from Lake Ontario to the Missouri. They murdered, by systems of starvation and exposure, sixty thousand of your sons as brave and heroic as ever martyrs were. They destro}'ed, in the four years of horrid war, another army so large that it would reach almost around the globe in marching-columns. And then to give to the infernal drama a fitting close, and to concen- trate into one crime all that is criminal in crime and all that is de- testable in barbarism, they murdered the President of the United States. I allude to these horrid events, not to revive frightful mem- ories, or to bring back the impulses toward the perpetual severance of this people which they provoke. I allude to them to remind us how utter was the overthrow and the obliteration of all government, divine and human; how total was the wreck of all constitutions and laws, political, civil, and international. I allude to them to condense their monstrous enormities of guilt into one crime, and to point the gentleman from New York to it, and to tell him that that was the specific act." Raymond made a rejoinder to Shellabarger before the debate closed. but without effect. His speech was ingenious and it was praised for its cleverness, but it met with no practical sympathy, and when the test vote was taken only one Republican in the House voted with Mr. Raymond his colleague and friend, William A. Darling. While he lived Mr. Raymond believed he could have made a serious diver- sion among the Republicans in Congress if he could have had the THE CONGRESS AND THE PRESIDENT. 209 benefit of the hostility of President Johnson's Democratic friends. He was especially indignant at Mr. Voorhees, whose ill-timed reso- lution, that " the President is entitled to the thanks of Congress and the country for his faithful, wise, and successful efforts to restore civil government, law, and order to the States lately in rebellion," was the cause of the break with the President, and the disaster that made Raymond the approved ally of the discredited Democracy. The theory of Mr. Stevens that the insurrectionary States were, in fact, in a territorial condition, and must be readmitted before they could again exercise their rights under the Constitution, never be- came an accepted dogma of the Republican party. Its assertion was as necessary in practice as the assertion of the right to coerce a State had been five years before. It was a condition, not a theory, with which Congress had to deal. The enunciation of the theory gave the Democrats the hope of re-establishing their party upon the opposite doc- trine once a State always a State. It was a party that at all times in its long history had been willing to cover obnoxious conditions with the broad mantle of specious dogma. In the century of its existence it has never once pursued a policy on any one great question that outlasted the con- dition the garment of dogma was in- tended to protect; without excep- tion the mantle of Democracy has proved a shirt of Xessus to the Re- public. The Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions of 1798, framed by Jefferson and containing the doc- trine of State rights were intended as a mere political expedient, but proved the germs of nullification and secession. The Missouri Compromise w r as Democratic doctrine in 1820, and its repeal in 1854.' The power of the people of the Territories to admit or exclude slavery was Democratic doctrine in 1856, and the power to admit and protect, but not to exclude it, in 1860. The right of a State to secede was Democratic doctrine in 1861-4, and now in 1865 all the deductions and theories of nearly seventy years, based on the Resolutions of 1798, w r ere cast to the winds for a dogma unknown to Democratic tradi- tions the inalienable rights of Statehood. " I have now," said Reverdy Johnson, of Maryland, the Democratic champion of Andrew Johnson in the Senate, " and I have had from the first, a very decided REVERDY JOHNSON. 210 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. opinion that they are States in the Union, and that they never could have been placed out of the Union without the consent of their sister States. The insurrection terminated, the authority of the Govern- ment was thereby reinstated; co inxtantl they were invested with all the rights belonging to them originally I mean as States. . . . In my judgment, our sole authority for the acts which have been done during the last four years was the authority communicated to Con- gress by the Constitution to suppress insurrection. If the power can only be referred to that clause, in my opinion speaking, I repeat, with great deference to the judgment of others the moment the in- surrection was terminated there was no power whatever left in the Congress of the United States over those States; and I am glad to see, if I understand his message, that in the view I have just expressed I have the concurrence of the President of the United States." The Democratic contention was in effect that the fact that a great war of eleven States had been w r aged for four years against the Union was to be blotted out of the Federal calendar, and the story of that war left to become a mere American " Froissart's Chronicle " for the amusement of schoolboys. The South was to come back, like the prodigal of old, as if the rebellious States had never repudiated the paternal Constitution and the maternal Union. Slavery was to be abolished, it is true, but the serfdom of Russia had been substituted for the milder form of Southern bondage. The crime of rebellion was not only to go unpunished, but it was to be rewarded, and Andrew Johnson was to rule over the Republic under the banner of the Democ- racy and in the interest of the South. For once in the history of the world the failure of a great rebellion was to work no real harm to the rebels, and the conquerors were expected to divest themselves of the rights and the duties of the conquest. The settlement of these irre- concilable theories with the conditions involved was the matter in dispute between Congress and the President. The remedial measures that w r ere necessary to the rehabilitation of the States that were conquered, but still rebellious, and the forensic concomitants of the remedial legislation extended over two Con- gresses. The whole period was a tourney of Republican champion- ship of the right, in an arena rendered lurid by the blood-red glare of a false Democratic patriotism. Every measure and every phase of the debates brought the white and black knights of the Blended Rose and the Burning Mountain into bold relief. Mr. Shellabarger came, as we have seen, as a veritable Sir Galahad, whose snow-white shield fitted him to sit in the " Siege Perilous." He was the most moderate of the Republican leaders, and held the Republican majority in the House intact for the right, not because he was the ablest, but for the better THE CONGRESS AND THE PRESIDENT. 211 reason that he was the wisest of them all. Voorhees was the Knight of the Lions. Henry Wilson was the Knight of the Rainbow, not be- cause of his gorgeous raiment, but because he came panoplied with a measure that w r as the bow of promise for the crushed and persecuted freednien. " I have no desire to say harsh things of the South," he said in introducing the bill for the establishment of the Freedmen's Bureau, " nor of the men who have been engaged in the Rebellion. I do not ask their property or their blood; I do not wish to disgrace or degrade them; but I do wish that they shall not be permitted to disgrace, degrade, or oppress anybody else. I offer this bill as a measure of humanity, as a measure that the needs of that section of the country imperatively demand at our hands. I believe that if it should pass it will receive the sanction of nineteen-twentieths of the loyal people of the country. Men may differ about the power or the expediency of giving the right of suf- frage to the negro; but how any hu- mane, just, and Christian man can for a moment permit the laws that are on the statute books of the Southern States, and the laws now pending before their Legislatures, to be exe- cuted upon men whom we have de- clared to be free, I can not compre- hend." The debate on Mr. Wilson's bill in the Senate called out another dis- play of that singular inapposite- HENRY WILSON. ness in support of the President's policy that was the most remarkable feature of the epoch. Willard Saulsbury, of Delaware, rushed into the affray as a simple 'Prentice Knight the Sim Tappertit of the Senate. He headed the " United Bull-dogs," and led them against the " tyrant masters " in the Re- publican party, when he pledged to the President " the support of two million men in the States which have not been in revolt, and who did not support him for his high office." Edgar Cowan, of Pennsyl- vania, was a Carpet Knight, who continued to kneel to the slaveholder in the Senate, after Grant and Sherman had knocked the shackles from the slave in the tented field. " One man out of ten thousand," said Mr. Cowan, " is brutal to a negro, and that is paraded here as a type of the whole people of the South; whereas nothing is said of the other nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine men who treat the negro well." Cowan had been elected to the Senate as a Republican 212 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. with the record of a Radical, but as the event proved he was without the stability to stand for principle and the party against patronage and the President. With Cowan were four other Republican re- cusants Doolittle, of Wisconsin; Gratz Brown, of Missouri; Dixon, of Connecticut, and Norton, of Minnesota. It is not surprising that these men yielded to the blandishments of the Administration, when it is remembered that Seward was the power behind the throne in the White House, and that Chase, on the bench of the Supreme Court, was giving the sanction of his high station to the policy of the Presi- dent. In all these was the leaven that soon lifted them out of the Republican party and allied them with a faction with which they could have no natural sympathy. The great measures of the 39th Congress were the establishment of the Freedmen's Bureau, the Civil Rights Bill, the Fourteenth Amend- ment to the Constitution, the Recon- struction Act, and the Tenure of Office Act. One of the last acts of the 38th Congress was the establishment of a Freedmen's Bureau. It soon turned out that the measure was premature in its adoption and inadequate in its provisions. General Oliver O. Howard was appointed Commission- er under this act by Secretary Stanton, with the natural result that was sure to accrue to any one who at- tempted to thwart the Southern con- spiracy for the subjection of the blacks reproach, accusation, calumny, obloquy. Howard was a man of irreproachable character and great ability. His record as a soldier was unusually distinguished, and the inflexibility of his courage was emphasized by an empty sleeve. A selfish man or even a prudent one would have declined the position. The duties with which the Commissioner was charged were possible of execution only in time of war, and the act was to expire in one year from the end of the rebellion. The war was over before it was possible to put it into execution. By one of its provisions the Commissioner was authorized, under the direction of the President, to set apart, for the use of loyal refugees and freedmen, such tracts of land within the insurrectionary States as were abandoned, or to which the United States Government had acquired title by confiscation, sale, or otherwise. Of these GEN. O. O. HOWARD. THE CONGRESS AND THE PRESIDENT. 213 lands a tract of not more than forty acres might be assigned to every male citizen, whether refugee or freednian; and the person to whom it was so assigned was to be protected in the use and enjoyment of the land for the term of three years. These provisions, it was said at the time, induced every negro in the South to expect " forty acres and a mule " as a gift from a paternal government. But for the President's policy of restoration the Bureau might have been able to go out of business at the end of the year, or, if continued, have been charged only with the duty of affording succor to the indigent. The false hopes of speedy independence of Congress that his policy gave to the Southern States led to the legislative enactments that pre- vented their return to the Union during Johnson's administration, and compelled a Supplemental Act for the protection of the freedmeu. This bill was more comprehensive and far-reaching than the previous act, and met with determined opposition from the Democrats in Con- gress, and was vetoed by the President. Because of some imperfec- tions, it failed to pass over the veto in the Senate. The Republicans who had voted for the bill, but now voted to sustain the President, were Messrs. Dixou, Doolittle, Morgan, Norton, and Van Winkle. The course of Mr. Morgan, of New York, and Mr. Van Winkle, of West Virginia, was at first the occasion of some uneasiness. It was feared that Mr. Morgan had yielded to the persuasions of Secretary Seward, and that Mr. Van Winkle had come under the reactionary influences that were known to be active in his State. A bill not so comprehen- sive, but with enlarging provisions to make the existing act more effective, originating in the House, was then accepted by the Senate. The President vetoed this measure also, but it was passed over his veto and became a law. There was a great outcry against the Freed- men's Bureau all over the country on the part of the Democrats, who had proclaimed the war a failure two years before, and who were now eager to sustain the South in the re-enslavement of the negroes. This opposition was especially exerted to prevent the election of the Re- publican candidates for Congress in I860, but the country was in no temper to accept the policy of the President and his Democratic allies. The Civil Rights bill, designed to confer upon the manumitted slaves of the South the civil rights enjoyed by the white man, except the right of suffrage, to give them equality in all things before the law, and to nullify every State law, wherever existing, that should be in conflict with the enlarged provisions of the Federal statute, was passed by the Senate, with only two Republicans, Messrs. Doolittle and Norton, voting against it, and by the House, without a dissenting Republican vote. The President exercised his right of veto, but the 214 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. bill was speedily passed in spite of the President's objections. When the vote was about to be taken in the Senate an incident occurred that shows the temper of the time. Mr. Cowan asked that the vote be deferred as a courtesy to Mr. Dixon, of Connecticut, and Mr. Wright, of New Jersey, who were ill. The Democratic Senators were eager for the courtesy, but it was opposed with a greater show of feeling than is usual in the Senate. " If the President of the United States," said bluff Ben Wade, " can impose his authority upon a question like this and can by a veto compel Congress to submit to his dictation, he is an emperor and a despot. Because I believe the great question of Congressional power and authority is at stake here, I yield to no importunities on the other side. I feel myself justified in taking every advantage which the Almighty has put in my hands to defend the power and authority of this body. I will not yield to these appeals of comity on a question like this, but I will tell the Presi- dent and everybody else that if God Almighty has stricken a mem- ber of this body so that he can not be here to uphold the dictation of a despot, I thank Him for it, and I will take every advantage of it I can." The Senate adjourned, notwith- standing Mr. Wade's excited ap- peal, but when the vote was taken on the following day Mr. Dixon was still absent. The vote was only 33 to 15. If Mr. Dixon had been in his seat and Mr. Stockton, of New Jersey, had not been unseated, the necessary two-thirds could not have been obtained. Mr. Van Winkle again voted with the little band of Republican dissidents, and there was one new defection Mr. Lane, of Kansas. Lane's defection was not only alarming to the Republicans, but it was very sad in its con- sequences. General Lane had a remarkable history. Both he and his father, Amos Lane, had been Democratic Representatives in Con- gress from Indiana. James H. Lane was at the head of an Indiana regiment of volunteers at the battle of Buena Vista, and as a Douglas Democrat, afterward, his ardor carried him to Kansas during the exciting conflict on that battleground for slavery. No one contrib- uted more toward making Kansas a Free State, and his services were JAMES H LANE. THE CONGRESS AND THE PRESIDENT. 215 rewarded by his election to the United States Senate when Kansas was admitted into the Union. Mr. Lincoln's administration had no bolder champion, and slavery no more inveterate enemy. He must have labored under a temporary aberration when he voted to sustain the President's veto. " The mistake has been made," he said, sor- rowfully, soon after his vote was given. " I would give all I possess if it were undone." Afterward his mind gave way altogether, and he committed suicide, July 11, 1866. In the House the strength of the Democratic opposition \vas in- creased from 36 to 41, but the Administration Republicans never became formidable. The joint resolution reported from the Committee on Reconstruc- tion proposed an amendment to the Constitution which embraced four propositions: (1) A definition and safeguard of citizenship; (2) a basis of representation in Congress that would not allow the white men of the South an apportionment based on four and one-half mil- lions of disfranchised negroes; (3) restraint of the pardoning power in the qualification of Senators and Representatives in Congress, Elec- tors of President and Vice-President, and civil and military officers of the United States; and (4) the inviolability of the national debt, and security against the assumption of any debts incurred in aid of in- surrection or rebellion against the United States, or claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave. The debate on these propositions in both Houses, especially on that relating to the basis of representation, was elaborate and able, but it has no great historical interest. In the Sen- ate the lead was taken by Mr. Fessenden. Mr. Sunmer, as usual, in- dulged himself in a disquisition of learned length and thundering sound, but was more than usually inapt in practical statesmanship. He was for universal suffrage before it was clear that it was either desirable or necessary. It would be impossible to follow the sugges- tions, objections, and amendments affecting these four propositions, except in great detail, which would be tedious and not germane to the purpose of this history. The Fourteenth Amendment, as adopted, is the real beginning of its effect upon the Republican party and subse- quent legislation. These will be seen in the Reconstruction acts adopted before the close of the 39th and in the 40th Congress. The first State to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment was Connecti- cut, June 30, 1866 precisely a fortnight after its submission. New Hampshire followed on the 7th of July, and Tennessee twelve days later. The result was that Tennessee w r as restored to her place in the Union by joint resolution, and her Senators and Representatives admitted to their seats before the adjournment of Congress on the 216 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. 28th of July. In the other ten of the insurrectionary States the amendment was rejected. Two days after the adjournment of Congress occurred the savage political massacre in New Orleans. The Convention to revise the Constitution of Louisiana in 1864 had been called to reassemble by its president. The purpose was to submit a new Constitution to the people of the State for their approval. The right of the Convention to do this was probably imaginary, but it was a question for the courts and not for a mob. A mob undertook to settle it by assassi- nation. About forty persons were killed outright and fully one hun- dred and fifty were wounded, many of them mortally. The riot was the result of the connivance of the MaA'or, and it had the par- ticipation of the police. General Sheridan, in command of the mili- tary department, reported official- ly that " the killing was in a man ner so unnecessary and atrocious as to compel me to say it w r as mur- der." Other parts of the South were emulous of the bloody dis- tinction in which New Orleans had pre-eminence. The negro race, in widely scattered communities, was subjected to unprovoked butchery. This defiance of its authority left only one way open to Congress military government. A wave of indignation swept over the North that was voiced in the autumn elections. In the 40th Congress the House of Representatives, chosen in 18G6, was Republican three to one. The supremacy of the Republican party over the combined forces of the administration in the loyal States was overwhelming and enduring. In New York the desertion of Sew- ard and Weed and Raymond was sternly rebuked by the re-election of Governor Fenton. In New York City the Tribune, with fresh vigor in its editorial direction, supplanted the Times as the organ of the party. In the State, Roscoe Conkling obtained a supremacy that he maintained until he rashly threw it away in a quarrel with Garfield's administration. In Pennsylvania General Cameron, flaunted by the Curtin faction, which had always marched in the rear in all great popular movements affecting slavery, regained the leadership and held it until his political enemies in the party sought and found a GEN. PHILIP H. SHERIDAN. THE CONGRESS AND THE PRESIDENT. 217 refuge with the rank and file of the Democracy. In Ohio, in Indiana, and in Illinois, in all the States of the Northwest, the Republican victories were repetitions of the triumphs of 1864. The President's policy was rebuked with a unanimity and resentment never before exhibited by the people in the condemnation of a recreant Adminis- tration. The 40th Congress may be considered a virtual continuation of its predecessor, for provision had been made for its assembling' immediately upon the adjournment of the 39th Con- gress. Some changes had occurred in the composition of both Houses, but there was no change in the determined attitude of the majority toward the President and the South. The Senate received some new members, who were destined to exert a powerful influence over Congress and the county. Roscoe Conkling succeeded Ira Harris from New York; Simon Cameron took the place previously filled by the eccentric- Edgar Cowan for Pennsylvania; Oliver P. Morton replaced Henry S. Lane, of In- diana, and Justin S. Morrill, of Ver- mont, began a career that was to exceed {\ -\j in length Benton's thirty years in the Senate. George F. Edmunds had succeeded Solomon Foot in the pre- vious Congress. Other new Senators were James W. Patterson, of New Hampshire; Charles D. Drake, as the successor of B. Gratz Brown, of Missouri; Cornelius Cole, of California, and Henry W. Corbett, of Ore- gon. In the House the military element had noteworthy additions. General John A. Logan came back from Illinois, and General Cadwal- ader C. Washburn from Wisconsin. A distinguished Union soldier was a Representative from Iowa General Grenville M. Dodge. General Benjamin F. Butler, of Massachusetts, appeared in the House for the first time. One of the Representatives from Indiana was Morton C. Hunter, who had been colonel of an Indiana regiment and commanded a brigade in Sherman's Atlanta campaign. Other Representatives with good war records w r ere John Coburn, of Indiana, and Austin Blair, the War Governor of Michigan. Norman B. Judd, Lincoln's early friend, represented one of the Chicago districts. Of the new Republican members, who had yet to win their spurs but became prominent, the most noteworthy were John A. Peters, of Maine; 218 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. Jacob H. Ela, of New Hampshire; Worthington C. Smith, of Vermont; Henry H. Starkweather, of Connecticut; William H. Robertson and Dennis McCarthy, of New York; George A. Halsey, of New Jersey; Henry L. Cake, of Pennsylvania, and Green B. Raum, of Illinois. Among the Democrats the only one to win distinction was James B. Beck, of Kentucky. Henry J .Raymond had wrecked his career in Congress, and there were no Administration Republicans except Charles G. Phelps, of Maryland, and Thomas E. Noel, of Missouri. The President's last message to the 39th Congress was more con- ciliatory in tone than had been anticipated, but he showed no appre- ciation of the hostility to his policy in the North, and restated his case as if it was still a living issue. His position only excited derision. His course had the effect of preventing the reinstatement of such of the Southern States as would have been willing to follow the example of Tennessee. Alabama would have reconsidered the rejection of the Fourteenth Amendment, but Mr. Johnson encouraged the rebel ele- ment to continue its resistance. The result of this persistence was the Reconstruction bill reported by Mr. Stevens, February 6, 1867. It was the first really drastic measure proposed for the government of the unreconstructed South. The ten disorganized States were di- vided into five military districts. The civil power was practically ob- literated. It was a measure that should have been adopted instead of the Administration policy at the close of the war, but the same in- fluences that were against a special session of Congress in 1865 were still operative in 1867. Some true and tried Republicans were doubt- ful of its utility even when the necessity for it became imperative. It w r as not passed without hesitation and reluctance. As the Congress neared its close, it looked as if all legislation on the subject of Recon- struction would be defeated. All the Republican differences were finally adjusted, how r ever, and with some modifications the bill was passed. The President returned it with his veto. His argument against placing the States under military rule was cogently urged, and if the Administration and Congress had been more in accord it might have proved effective. The veto had been delayed until the last day permitted by the Constitution. It did not reach the House, in which the bill had originated, until Saturday, and Congress would adjourn on Monday at noon. The minority w r as determined to prevent its passage by dilatory motions, or " talking against time." In spite of the opposition the rules were suspended and the bill was passed by 135 ayes to 48 noes. The Senate concurred by 38 ayes to 10 noes. The first of the drastic Reconstruction measures was a law. Equally hurried with the passage of the Reconstruction bill over the Presidential veto was the action of Congress on the Tenure-of -Office THE CONGRESS AND THE PRESIDENT. 219 bill. It was a measure previously unknown in the usage of the Fed- eral Government. It grew out of the excitement and bitterness inci- dent to the conflict between Congress and the President and a fear of the aggressions of the Executive. It was not a measure in conso- nance with the traditions or tendencies of the Republican party, and it was adopted with doubts and misgivings. It was not passed with any feeling of satisfaction or pride by the party, and when the Ad- ministration ceased to vex the Congress it was quickly repealed, be- cause it was felt to be personally degrading to the incumbent of the Presidential office. After the adjournment of the 39th Congress the 40th Congress was speedily organized. Mr. Colfax was again elected Speaker. The principal business of the session was to perfect the Reconstruction Act of the previous Congress. This provided for impartial suffrage, but it was lacking in the detail necessary to its practical operation. The first of the Supplementary bills was passed on the 19th of March. This bill declared that " if the Constitution shall be ratified by a majority of the votes of the registered electors qualified to vote, at least one-half of all the registered voters voting upon the question, a copy of the same, duly certified, shall be transmitted to the President of the United States, who shall forthwith transmit the same to Con- gress, and if it shall appear to Congress that the election was one at which all the registered and qualified electors in the State had an opportunity to vote freely and without restraint, fear, or the influence of fraud, and if Congress shall be satisfied that such Constitution meets the approval of a majority of all the qualified electors in the State, and if the said Constitution shall be declared by Congress to be in conformity with the provisions of the act to which this is supplementary, and the other provisions of said act shall have been complied with and the said Constitution shall have been approved by Congress, the State shall be declared entitled to representation, and Senators and Representatives shall be admitted therefrom as therein provided." When Congress adjourned on the 30th of March it w r as for a recess until the 3d of July. In the meantime Henry Stanbery, who had be- come Attorney-General upon the reconstruction of the Cabinet in 1866, gave two opinions intended to neutralize the effects of both acts. The result was that the July session was devoted to the passage of a second Supplementary Act, again over the President's veto, to meet the objections and obstructions suggested by the Attorney- General. With this act the Reconstruction measures of Congress were complete, and General Grant was invested with an authority over the recalcitrant States that was independent of the will or power of the President. 220 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. The Military Governors assigned to the new and responsible duties under the Reconstruction acts were Major-General Schofield for the district of Virginia; Major-General Sickles for the district of North and South Carolina; Major-General Pope for the district of Georgia, Alabama, and Florida; Major-General Ord for the district of Missis- sippi and Arkansas, and Major-General Sheridan for the district of Louisiana and Texas. The President was hostile to Pope, Sickles, and Sheridan, and through his intervention they were replaced by Meade, Canby, and Hancock, respectively. Under these military rulers the real work of Reconstruction in the rebellious States w r as begun and carried forward to completion. Arkansas having ratified the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution and complied with the provisions of the Reconstruction acts, a bill was introduced in the House by Mr. Stevens, May 7, 1868, to admit the State to repre- sentation in Congress. Similar measures soon followed for the States of North Carolina, South Carolina, Louisiana, Georgia, and Florida. All these bills were vetoed by the President and passed over his veto. Virginia, Mississippi, and Texas w r ere not restored until 1870. With the return of the States to the Union under the terms of Con- gress military government ceased, and the period of Reconstruction came to an end. V^dAAVA^v V. IMPEACHMENT. Character and Acts of President Johnson Cabinet Changes The Philadelphia Convention of 1866 The Arm-in- Arm Fiasco Mr. Raymond's Last Effort Northern and Southern Conventions- Leaders For and Against the Administration James Speed- Address of the Southern Loyalists " Swinging Around the Circle " The President's Stump Speeches Soldiers' Conven- tion at Cleveland Soldiers' and Seamen's Convention at Pitts- burg Efforts at Impeachment in Congress Removal of Secre- tary Stautou The President Impeached by the House of Repre- sentatives Tried by the Senate The Managers on Behalf of the House The Counsel for the President Impeachment Fails A Mistaken Remedy. HE impeachment of President Johnson by the House of Rep- resentatives was the closing drama of the stirring epoch of Reconstruction. The undertaking was passionate and ill-advised, but the President must take a share of the blame because of his infirmities of temper, his want of tact, and his persistent wrong-headedness. He inspired not only political enmities, but intense personal dislike. His bald egotism and coarse invective were the real foundations of the detestation in which he was held by the people. His bold assumption of the right to restore the rebellious States to their places in the Union without consulting the Congress, his inflexible adhesion to his own policy as the only plan of Restora- tion, and his unexampled exercise of the veto power made even even- tempered men in the House and Senate indignant, and passionate men his implacable foes. His words as well as his acts were his constant accusers. In all his personal attributes he was the opposite of Lincoln, the beloved, and this made him to be hated all the more fiercely when he claimed that he had inherited his policy of Reconstruction from his lamented predecessor. It was impossible that a man of his coarse moral and intellectual fiber, his egregious vanity and smirking am- bition, and his dogged persistence and devious methods should escape execration. Another disadvantage from which Mr. Johnson suffered, from the be- ginning to the end of his term, was due to the manner in which he came to his high office. There is an ingrained prejudice in the hearts of the 222 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. American people against Vice-Presidents who become President. This prejudice owes its existence, no doubt, to the conflict between John Tyler and his party after the death of the first President Harrison. Tyler's quarrel with his Cabinet and then with his party, made the office ominous for all those who came after him when its possibilities are realized. Mr. Filluiore was almost as unfortunate as Mr. Tyler. Unlike Tyler, Fillmore did not find a refuge in the Democratic party, but he disappointed the expectations of the men who nominated and elected him, reversed the policy of his predecessor, and divided his party and exposed it to defeat and disruption. Harrison's Secretary of State, Daniel Webster, adhered to Tyler's administration to the detriment of his own prestige, while Clay organized the Whig party against the President. Webster again became Secretary of State in Fillmore's administration, but even with the sympathy and assistance of Clay he was unable to protect it against the assaults of Seward and the young men among the Whigs. Now Seward, as Secretary of State in Johnson's administration, was to drink draughts as bitter as those he had administered to Webster fifteen years before. The por- tents of an unfortunate Presidency, that Tyler and Fillmore had left as a warning to Johnson, were not long in asserting themselves with all their dread significance. Still another danger to which the third of the accidental Presidents was exposed was the eagerness of Andrew Johnson to emulate An- drew Jackson. The two men were alike only in the names their mothers gave them. Andre\v Jackson w r as a man not of words, but of action. Andrew Johnson was fluent of speech, but not quick to act. Jackson was impulsive as well as tenacious. Johnson was tenacious, but not impulsive. Flatterers, however, played upon the weakness of the second Andrew, and convinced him that he had all the heroic qualities it was the fashion to impute to the first. Johnson was ready to believe that he could treat Stevens and Congress as Jackson treated Riddle and the Bank that he could bring South Carolina back into the Union with a hand as mighty as Jackson had shown in holding her there against the nullifiers. The delusion would have been amus- ing if it had not proved so disastrous. It was, of course, impossible that President Johnson should pursue the policy that he had marked out for his Administration with a Cabinet inherited from President Lincoln. The first break came on July 1, 1866, when William Dennison, the Postmaster-General, re- signed. Dennison made no secret of the cause of his retirement his inability to accept Johnson's plan of Reconstruction. He was suc- ceeded by Alexander W. Randall, of Wisconsin, who was a rather blatant supporter of the President's policy. A week later James IMPEACHMENT. 223 Speed resigned as Attorney-General, and was succeeded by Henry Staubery, of Ohio. Speed resigned because the Administration was rapidly drifting toward the Democratic party, and Stanbery accepted for the same reason. Speed's resignation was followed by that of James Harlan, Secretary of the Interior, and the vacancy was filled by the appointment of Orville H. Browning, a Republican with Demo- cratic sympathies. This left of the original Lincoln Cabinet only Seward and Welles, with Stanton, the Secretary of War, and McCul- loch, the Secretary of the Treasury. Stanton and Johnson w r ere at daggers' points, and McCulloch was not a partisan. If Stanton had resigned in 1806, it is possible that the impeachment, of which his removal was the provoking cause two years later, would have come earlier and with greater effect. The inciting cause of the Cabinet crisis was the determination to form an Administration party in conjunction with the Northern Dem- ocrats and the Southern Restorationists. It took shape in what was called the " arm-in-arm convention," which met in Philadelphia, Au- gust 14, 1866. It was the intention to make it a very imposing demon- stration of Administration Republicans and all shades of Democrats, North and South. The number of prominent Republicans who par- ticipated was not great. New York, through the influence of Secre- tary Seward, had the strongest and most noteworthy delegation, the representatives including Thurlow Weed, Henry J. Raymond, John A. Dix, Marshall (). Roberts, and Robert S. Hale. Three Administra- tion Senators Dixon, Cowan, and Doolittle and two of the new members of the Cabinet Randall and Browning were active in the movement, and participated in the Convention. Montgomery Blair consented to become a delegate. Democrats w r ho had been famous for their virulence during the war attended in such numbers that the Convention was described as a " nest of copperheads." Among the men known chiefly for their violent opposition to the war were Clement L. Vallandigham, of Ohio; George W. W r oodward, Francis W. Hughes, and James Campbell, of Pennsylvania; Fernando and Benjamin Wood, and James Brooks, of New York, and Edward J. Phelps, of Vermont. All of these, and many others in the Conven- tion, had been as vicious as Vallandigham in denouncing President Lincoln, but Vallandigham was made the scapegoat for the sins of the other Peace Democrats. Some of his fellow-conspirators refused to sit with him, and he consented to withdraw. Two years later he was conspicuous in the Democratic National Convention at New York. There were delegates from every Southern State, and it was re- solved to emphasize the national character of the assemblage by a striking spectacle of the reunion of the North and South. A building 224 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. called the " Wigwam " had been specially adapted for the use of the Convention, and it was agreed that the delegates should enter this vast auditorium by a joint procession of the States of the two sections, arm in arm. Massachusetts and South Carolina, typified by General Darius N. Couch and ex-Speaker James L. Orr, were placed in the lead. This spectacular exhibition was mercilessly ridiculed in the ensuing campaign. The " Wigwam " became " Noah's Ark," and it was said that there w r ent in, two and two with Noah into the ark, " of clean beasts, and of beasts that are not clean, and of fowls, and of everything that creepeth upon the earth." The great purpose of the Convention was to insist upon the right of every State to representa- tion in Congress, but with the fatality that is apt to attend the efforts of very clever men, Mr. Raymond in his speech carried his argument to its logical sequence. " It is alleged," he said, " that the con- dition of the Southern States and people is not such as renders safe their readmission to a share in the government of the coun- try; that they are still disloyal in sentiment and purpose; and that neither the honor, the credit, nor the interest of the Nation would be safe if they were readmitted to a share in its councils. . . . W T e have no right for such reasons to deny to any portion of the States or people rights expressly conferred upon them b}^ the Constitution of the United States, and we have no right to distrust the GEN. DARIUS N. COUCH. purpose or the abilit}^ of the people of the Union to protect and defend, under all con- tingencies and by whatever means may be required, its honor and its welfare." The fat was in the fire. The Republican masses were in no mood to accept a sentiment so repugnant to humanity and justice in the existing condition of the South. The arm-in-arm, Noah's Ark Convention was followed a fortnight later by two other conventions in Philadelphia. They met on 'the same day and acted in unison, although they were separately or- ganized. One was composed entirely of loyalists from the South the other of conspicuous Republicans in the North. The Southern convention comprised many men whose loyalty had been put to the double test of personal courage and personal interest. Johnson's Provisional Governor, Andrew J. Hamilton, came all the w r ay from Texas; Governor Brow r nlow "Parson" Brownlow 7 headed the delegation from Tennessee; John Minor Botts was one of the delegates IMPEACHMENT. 225 from Virginia. James Speed, of Kentucky, just out of the Cabinet, was made the permanent chairman. In the Convention there were many conspicuous Republicans from the border States besides Mr. Speed the venerable Rev. Dr. Robert J. Breckinridge, of Kentucky; Senator Creswell and Francis Thomas, of Maryland; Governor Bore- man and Nathan Goff, of West Virginia; and Governor Fletcher, of Missouri. In the two conventions was a number of the leading editors of the country Horace Greeley, of the New York Tribune; John W. Forney, of the Philadelphia Press; C. C. Fulton, of the Baltimore American; Carl Schurz, then of the Detroit Post, and Frederick Has- saurek, of Cincinnati, being the most prominent. In the Northern Convention were nearly all the conspicuous Senators and Repre- sentatives in Congress, and Governors of the States, besides many eminent citizens who never took an active part in politics except on the highest plane of patriotic duty. John Ja- cob Astor came from New York, and E. W. Fox headed a delegation of business men from St. Louis. It was not a convention of Radicals, but a thorough embodiment of the spirit of resistance to President Johnson's Restoration policy. Governor Curtin, of Pennsylvania, presided, and the Convention culminated in a mass meeting more imposing than any that had ever been held in an American city. It was the voice of the Southern loyalists that it was most necessary should be heard in the loyal North in repudiation of the Johnson JAMES SPEED. Convention, and in indicating the true Repub- lican sentiment in the South. " Why was that convention here? " Mr. Speed asked, on taking the chair. " It was here in part be- cause the great cry came up from the white man of the South : My Constitutional and my natural rights are denied me; and then the cry came up from the black man of the South: My Constitutional and my natural rights are denied me. These com- plaints are utterly antagonistic, the one to the other; and this convention is called to say which is right. Upon that ques- tion, if upon none other, as Southern men, you may speak out your mind. Speak the truth as you feel it; speak the truth as you know it; speak the truth as you love permanent peace, as you may hope to establish the institutions of this Government so that our children and our children's children shall enjoy a peace that we have not known. . . . The convention to which I have referred, as I read its history, came here to simply record its abject submission to 226 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. the commands of one man. That convention did his commands. The loyal Congress of the United States had refused to do his commands; and whenever you have a Congress that does not absolutely and firmly refuse, as the present Congress had done, to merely act as the recording secretary of the tyrant at the White House, American liberty is gone forever." The address adopted by the Southern Convention was a bitter and powerful arraignment of the President and the Administration. Its points were made the basis of the appeals to the Northern voters in the ensuing campaign with telling effect, and the canvass itself was one of excitement and enthusiasm never before witnessed except in Presidential years. To this excitement and enthusiasm another fea- ture was added that was singularly damaging to the President's character and the prestige of his administration. This was his un- fortunate tour of the Middle and Western States from Washington, by way of Philadelphia, New York, and Albany, to Chicago. Other Presidents, beginning with General Washington, had made tours of the country, but none of them indulged in political harangues to the people. The President left the capital on the 28th of August, accom- panied by Secretaries Welles and Randall, Admiral Farragut and General Grant. Secretary Sew r ard joined the party in New York. Everywhere great crowds met these eminent gentlemen to demand a speech and bandy words with the President of the United States. The tour was a succession of humiliating spectacles, but the most disgraceful scene occurred at Cleveland. Mr. Johnson was chaffed unmercifully by the crowd, and he replied to the taunts and jeers with coarse wit and undignified repartee. In a stump speaker this w r ould have been well enough, and even effective; in the President it was not only undignified, but hurtful to his cause. This was the journey that was called " swinging around the circle." One reason that made Cleveland more pronounced in its ribald treatment of President Johnson than the other cities in which he met the crowds on equal terms was its selection as the meeting place for a Soldiers' Convention in behalf of the Administration. This Conven- tion, over which the venerable General Wool was called to preside, met on the 17th of September. Wool was very old, and had not played an important part in the war because of his age. The soldier of 1812 was completely out of his reckoning in 1866. He denounced the Abolitionists in the manner of the officers of the army before the war, so many of whom fought against the Union, while few of those who were true to the flag voted as they fought. The most conspicuous officers of the regular army who were active in the Convention were Generals Granger and Custer. The other soldiers who had been IMPEACHMENT. 227 Democrats before and during the war were John A. McClernand, of Illinois; J. W. Denver, of California; Willis A. Gorman, of Minnesota; James B. Steedman, of Ohio, and a few others. The most noteworthy speech in the Convention was made by General Thomas Ewing. Ewing's defection would have been important if it had not been spo- radic, but as he was the only soldier in the Convention who had been a genuine Kepublican, it went for nothing. Even had the Convention shown something of the character it arrogated to itself the effect would have been neutralized by an incident that marked the proceed- ings. A Confederate Convention, in session at Memphis, sent a tele- gram of sympathy, and was answered with thanks for the " mag- nanimity and kindness " of the message. Nothing was so cer- tain to anger the Union soldiers not so much against the Presi- dent as against his plan of Re- construction, and the response came in a great Soldiers' and Seamen's Convention at Pitts- burg, on the 26th of September. The Pittsburg Convention was an echo from a hundred battlefields. It was a reunion of the line and staff, the rank and file of all the Union armies. Every loyal State except far- away Oregon was represented. Chamberlain came from Maine and Macauley from Indiana, Palmer and Farnsworth from Illinois, and Schenck and Cox from Ohio; Cochrane, Barnum, and ^ GEN. J. D. COX. Barlow from New York, and Geary, Hartranft, Negley, and Collis from Pennsylvania. A private soldier, L. Edwin Dudley, was made temporary chair- man, and when the intrepid General John A. Logan was un- able to come to preside as permanent president the Conven- tion turned instinctively to the gallant General Jacob D. Cox. It was a convention that could have been turned into an army of 25,000 veterans in an hour. The President was told that " his attempt to fasten his scheme of Reconstruction upon the country is as dangerous as it is unwise; that his acts in sustaining it have retarded the restoration of peace and unity; that they have converted conquered rebels into impudent claimants to rights which they have 228 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. forfeited and to places which they have desecrated. If the President's scheme be consummated it would render the sacrifice of the Nation useless, the loss of our buried comrades vain, and the war in which we have so gloriously triumphed a failure, as it was declared to be by President Johnson's present associates in the Democratic National Convention of 1864." The President on his tour saw an aroused nation, but this state of feeling on the part of the people only excited him to greater anger. The result of the elections increased his fury. He not only exercised the veto power constantly, recklessly, ruthlessly, but despite the fact that, with a majority in Congress that w r ould last as long as the Ad- ministration, and great enough to pass all vetoed measures in spite of the President's objections, the increasing tension could only have con- sequences that must prove disastrous. Kumors of impeachment be- came rife, and it was not long after Congress assembled on the 7th of January, 1867, when it became apparent that these rumors were not without foundation. Three attempts looking to that end were made on that first day after the holiday recess. None of them was successful until late in the day, but Air. Ashley, of Ohio, rising to a question of privilege, at last managed to project the matter into the House. " I charge him," said that earnest and impetuous statesman, "with an usurpation of power and violation of law : in that he has corruptly used the appointing power; in that he has corruptly used the pardoning power; in that lie has corruptly used the veto power; in that he has corruptly disposed of the public property of the United States; in that he has corruptly interfered in elections, and com- mitted acts which in contemplation of the Constitution are high crimes and misdemeanors." Ashley's charges were gross exaggerations, and in any other state of feeling or against any other President they would have been re- ceived with scant courtesy. Under the conditions that prevailed they were referred to the Judiciary Committee, which reported a mass of testimony, most of it unimportant, and left the question to the 40th Congress. Moderate Kepublicans were hopeful this would be the end of the proceeding, but Ashley again pressed the matter, express- ing the hope that " this Congress will not hesitate to do its duty be- cause the timid in our ranks hesitate." It is doubtful if any further action would have been taken if the Democrats had remained silent, but the two talking members from New York, James Brooks and Fer- nando Wood, made characteristic speeches, and the question became a party issue. The Judiciary Committee wa.s charged to continue the investigation, and the work of taking irrelevant and inconclusive testimony went on during the summer and autumn. In the mean IMPEACHMENT. 229 time startling stories of the President's intentions were circulated by the unscrupulous and believed by the credulous. There were stories that Johnson was meditating the role of a Cromwell; that he had a project of bringing in the Southern Senators and Representa- tives, and, with the Democrats, forming a Congress regardless of the Republican majority; that he had imparted his purposes to General Grant, and asked Grant to support him with the army. Such stories were unworthy of credence, but they found believers because John- son had said and done so many foolish things that he was thought capable of any folly. People did not stop to reflect that Grant would not have listened to such propositions for a moment that if they had been made he would indignantly have repelled and exposed them. Although Grant's testimony showed that the most serious of the charges was without founda- tion, a majority of the committee reported a resolution that " An- drew Johnson, President of the United States, be impeached of high crimes and misdemeanors." This report was not unanimous on the part of the majority of the whole committee, two Republic- ans, Mr. Wilson, of Iowa, and Mr. Woodbridge, of Vermont, submit- ting a minority report. Impeach- ment under such circumstances could not succeed, and the resolu- tion was beaten by 108 noes to only 50 ayes. Among the leading Re- publicans who voted in the nega- tive were Allison, Banks, Bingham, Blaine, Dawes, Garfleld, Halsey, Hooper, Moorhead, Peters, Poland, Robertson, the three Washburns, and E. B. Washburne. If it had not been for the conflict between the President and Secretary Stanton this would have been the end of the matter. President Johnson had been seeking to get Stanton out of the War Department for a long time. At last Stanton's resignation was asked, August 5, 1867. The Secretary of War refused to resign, and was sus- pended under the Tenure of Office Act on the 12th, General Grant being designated to administer the Department until the Senate acted on the suspension. The communication to the Senate was made on the 12th of December, but that body did not act until January 13, JAMES F. WILSON 230 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. 1868, when it refused to consent to the suspension. Grant at once left the Department, and Stanton returned to the office from which he had been ousted. The President would have been more than human if he had failed to remove a member of the Cabinet so dis- tasteful to the Executive, whatever the legal aspects of the case might be, and Stanton was removed on the 21st of February. It was then that Senator Sumner sent his laconic message to Stanton " Stick." The Senate resolved that the President had no power to remove the Secretary of War, and the same day impeachment was again moved in the House. The resolution, which was offered by Mr. Covode, of Pennsylvania, was referred to the Committee on Reconstruction, from which it was reported with a recommendation that it pass, the next day, the 22d. There was a brief debate, the Republicans who had voted against the previous resolution now taking the lead in favor of im- peachment. Among these were Bing- ham and Spalding, of Ohio; Wash- burne and Ingersoll, of Illinois, and Wilson, of Iowa. The resolution was passed on the 24th by 126 ayes to 47 noes; absent or not voting, 17. None of the Republicans voted against im- peachment, while only one Democrat was recorded as absent or not voting. Committees were appointed to in- form the Senate of the action of the House and to prepare articles of impeachment, and seven managers w r ere chosen to conduct the case be- fore the Court of Impeachment. These were John A. Bingham, George S. Boutwell, James F. Wilson, Ben- jamin F. Butler, Thomas Williams, John A. Logan, and Thaddeus Stevens. They are here given in the order of the vote they re- ceived. Mr. Stevens came last because his health was greatly im- paired, and there was a fear that he was physically unequal to the work imposed upon the managers. They were all lawyers eminent in the States from which they came. After Stevens, Butler was the most distinguished at the Bar, but the aggregate ability and learning of this array of counsel were very great. As lawyers they all thor- oughly believed in the justice of their cause and the necessity of the course they were pursuing. Mr. Boutwell was, perhaps, the coolest in temperament of the seven, but even he was intense in his convic- EDWIN M. STANTON. IMPEACHMENT. 231 tiou that the President's removal was necessary to the public welfare. The charges were formally presented on the 5th day of March before the Senate, sitting as a Court of Impeachment, with Chief Justice Chase presiding. The managers were attended by the House as the Grand Inquest of the Nation. The articles of impeachment were read by Mr. Bingham, after which the Senate adjourned until the 13th, when the counsel for the President appeared before the Court. The President's counsel, headed by Attorney-General Henry Stan- bery, comprised Benjamin II. Curtis, William M. Evarts, William S. Groesbeck, and T. A. Nelson. Mr. Stanbery was eminent at the Ohio Bar, and throughout the West he enjoyed a high reputation as a law- yer of the first rank. He resigned his place in the Cabinet to defend his chief. Judge Curtis had been for six years a Justice of the Su- preme Court, obtaining his appoint- ment through the influence of Mr. Webster, but he resigned in 1857 to return to the practice of his pro- fession. He was a man of great learning and ability, and his char- acter was as highly esteemed as his talents were admired. Mr. Evarts was the leader of the Bar of the city and State of New York. He was conspicuous as an advocate as well as for his great legal learn- ing. It was the President's wish to secure the services of Judge Black, but he withdrew at the last moment, and Mr. Groesbeck took his place. Groesbeck's selection was made at the suggestion of Mr. Stanbery. He had a high reputation at the Cincinnati bar, but was not yet known as a great lawyer outside of Ohio. Mr. Nelson was the President's personal choice. The counsel for the President asked forty days for the preparation of his answer, but only ten days were allowed," and it was made on the 23d of March. All the preliminary proceedings being completed, the formal trial began on the 30th, General Butler making the opening argument. It was very volumi- nous, but exhaustive as it was in presenting the legal aspects of im- peachment, it was especially strong in its presentation of the point upon which the House of Representatives depended for conviction the intentional violation of the Tenure of Office Act and of the Con- JOHN A. BINGHAM. 232 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. stitution of the United States in the removal of Mr. Stanton from the office of Secretary of War. The introduction of the testimony fol- lowed, and was completed on the 5th of April, after which the Senate adjourned for five days. The case for the President was opened by Judge Curtis, his speech requiring two days for its delivery. His argument was a masterly presentation of the law from the highest judicial standpoint, and some of its points were unanswerable. Witnesses were then called, but part of the testimony was excluded by the Senate after it was pronounced admissible by the Chief Justice. Offers were made to prove that Mr. Stanton, as a member of the Cabinet, had advised the President that the Tenure of Office Act was unconstitutional, and also that members of the Cabinet appointed by Lincoln were not included in its provisions. Even if these exclusions were good law they were bad politics. After the testimony was concluded the clos- ing arguments of counsel occupied the attention of the country as well as of the High Court of Impeachment. The speeches in their order were made by General Logan and Mr. Boutwell for Congress, and Mr. Nelson and Mr. Groesbeck for the President; then by Mr. Stevens and Mr. Williams for Congress, Mr. Evarts and Mr. Stanbery for the President, and finally by Mr. Bingham for Congress. Neither Mr. Stevens nor Mr. Stanbery was able to deliver his address. Mr. Stevens's argument was read by General Butler, and Mr. Stanbery 's by one of the officers of the Attorney-General's Department. Twenty- nine Senators filed opinions in the case, five of whom were Democrats Hendricks, of Indiana; Johnson and Vickers, of Maryland; Davis, of Kentucky, and Buckalew, of Pennsylvania. The vote on the ar- ticles voted upon was 35 " guilty " and 19 " not guilty." The change of a single vote from " not guilty " to " guilty " would have been suffi- cient to corivict. Besides the recognized Administration Republicans Dixon, of Connecticut; Doolittle, of Wisconsin; Norton, of Minne- sota, and Patterson, of Tennessee Mr. Ross, of Kansas, w r ho had succeeded General Lane, voted for acquittal. The great trial was over, Mr. Johnson escaping only by the aid of a Republican vote that caused surprise and some painful surmises when Mr. Ross voted " not guilty." Secretary Stanton promptly resigned after the failure of impeach- ment, and was succeeded by General John M. Schofield, whose nomi- nation was confirmed by the Senate. The later judgment of the American people is that the attempt to impeach President Johnson was a mistake, but the character of his Administration and his Reconstruction policy finds no more favor now than when Congress and the country were in a condition of IMPEACHMENT. 233 resentment, that was sometimes unjust because it was earnest for a restoration that would preserve the fruits of the great triumph that had been obtained only through four years of war. Any other Presi- dent than Andrew Johnson would probably have piloted his Adminis- tration through the Period of Reconstruction not only without a con- flict with Congress, but to his own enduring fame. DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF THE EPOCH. FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT TO THE CONSTITUTION. SECTION 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. SEC. 2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole num- ber of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of Electors for Presi- dent and Vice-President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the executive and judicial officers of a State, or the mem- bers of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabi- tants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State. SEC. 3. No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Con- gress, or Elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, w T ho, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State Legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Con- stitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may, by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability. SEC. 4. The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations, or claims shall be held illegal and void. DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF THE EPOCH. 235 SEC. 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article. RECONSTRUCTION ACT OF THE THIRTY-NINTH CONGRESS. WHEREAS, No legal State Government, or adequate protection for life or property now exist in the rebel States of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Florida, Texas, and Arkansas; and whereas, it is necessary that peace and good order should be enforced in said States until loyal and republican State governments can be legally established; Therefore Be it enacted, etc., That said rebel States shall be divided into military districts and made subject to the military authority of the United States, as hereinafter prescribed, and for that purpose Vir- ginia shall constitute the first district; North Carolina and South Carolina the second district; Georgia, Alabama, and Florida the third district; Mississippi and Arkansas the fourth district, and Louisiana and Texas the fifth district. SEC. 2. That it shall be the duty of the President to assign to the command of each of said districts an officer of the army, not below the rank of brigadier-general, and to detail a sufficient military force to enable such officer to perform his duties and enforce his authority within the district to which he is assigned. SEC. 3. That it shall be the duty of each officer assigned as afore- said to protect all persons in their rights of person and property, to suppress insurrection, disorder, and violence, and to punish, or cause to be punished, all disturbers of the public peace and criminals, and to this end he may allow local civil tribunals to take jurisdiction of and to try offenders, or, when in his judgment it may be necessary for the trial of offenders, he shall have power to organize military com- missions or tribunals for that purpose; and all interference under color of State authority with the exercise of military authority un- der this act shall be null and void. SEC. 4. That all persons put under military arrest by virtue of this act shall be tried without unnecessary delay, and no cruel or un- usual punishment shall be inflicted; and no sentence of any military commission or tribunal hereby authorized affecting the life or liberty of any person shall be executed until it is approved by the officer in command of the district, and the laws and regulations for the govern- ment of the army shall not be affected by this act, except in so far as they conflict with its provisions : Provided, That no sentence of death under the provisions of this act shall be carried into effect without the approval of the President. 236 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. SEC. 5. That when the people of any one of said rebel States shall have formed a constitution of government in conformity with the Constitution of the United States in all respects, framed by a convention of delegates elected by the male citizens of said State twenty-one years old and upward, of whatever race, color, or previous condition, who have been resident in said State for one year previous to the day of such election, except such as may be disfranchised for participation in the rebellion, or for felony at common law, and when such constitutions shall provide that the elective franchise shall be enjoyed by all such persons as have the qualifications herein stated for electors of delegates, and when such constitution shall provide that the elective franchise shall be enjoyed by all persons as have the qualifications herein stated for electors of delegates, and when such constitution shall be ratified by a majority of the persons voting on the question of ratification who are qualified as electors for delegates, and when such constitution shall have been submitted to Congress for examination and approval, and Congress shall have approved the same, and when said State, by a vote of its Legislature elected under such constitution, shall have adopted the amendment to the Consti- tution of the United States, proposed by the 39th Congress, and known as article fourteen, and when said article shall have be- come a part of the Constitution of the United States, said State shall be declared entitled to representation in Congress, and Senators and Representatives shall be admitted therefrom on taking the oaths prescribed by law, and then and thereafter the preceding sections of this act shall be inoperative in said State: Provided, That no person excluded from the privilege of holding office by said proposed amend- ment to the Constitution of the United States shall be eligible to election as a member of the convention to frame a constitution for any of said rebel States, nor shall any such person vote for members of such convention. SEC. 6. That until the people of said rebel States shall be by law admitted to representation in the Congress of the United States, any civil governments which may exist therein shall be deemed pro- visional only, and in all respects subject to the paramount authority of the United States at any time to abolish, modify, control, or super- sede the same; and in all elections to any office under such provisional governments all persons shall be entitled to vote, and none others, who are entitled to vote under the provisions of the fifth section of this act; and no person shall be eligible to any office under any such provisional governments who would be disqualified from holding office under the provisions of the third article of said constitutional amendment. DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF THE EPOCH. 237 SUPPLEMENTARY RECONSTRUCTION ACT OF THE FORTIETH CONGRESS, Be it enacted, etc., That before the first day of September, eighteen hundred and sixty-seven, the commanding general in each district defined by an act entitled " An Act to Provide for the more efficient Government of the llebel States," passed March second, eighteen hun- dred and sixty-seven, shall cause a registration to be made of the male citizens of the United States, twenty-one years of age and up- ward, resident in each county or parish in the State or States in- cluded in his district, which registration shall include only those per- sons who are qualified to vote for delegates by the act aforesaid, and who shall have taken and subscribed the following oath or affirma- tion: " I, , do solemnly swear (or affirm), in the presence of Almighty God, that I am a citizen of the State of ; that I have resided in said State for , or the parish of - , in said State (as the case may be); that I am twenty-one years old; that I have not been disfranchised for participation in any rebellion or civil war against the United States, nor for felony committed against the law r s of any State or of the United States; that I have never been a mem- ber of any State Legislature, nor held any executive or judicial office in any State, and afterw r ard engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof; that I have never taken an oath as a member of Congress of the United States, or as an officer of the United States, to support the Constitution of the United States, and afterward engaged in insur- rection and rebellion against the United States, or given aid or com- fort to the enemies thereof; that I will faithfully support the Consti- tution and obey the laws of the United States, and will, to the best of my ability, encourage others so to do, so help me God"; which oath or affirmation may be administered by any registering officer. SEC. 2. That after the completion of the registration hereby provided for in any State, at such time arid places therein as the com- manding general shall appoint and direct, of which at least thirty days' public notice shall be given, an election shall be held of dele- gates to a convention for the purpose of establishing a constitution and civil government for such State loyal to the Union, said conven- tion in each State, except Virginia, to consist of the same number of members as the most numerous branch of the State Legislature of such State in the year eighteen hundred and sixty, to be apportioned among the several districts, counties, or parishes of such State by the commanding general, giving to each representation in the ratio of voters registered as aforesaid, as nearly as may be. The 1 convention in Virginia shall consist of the same number of members as repre- sented the territory now constituting Virginia in the most numerous 238 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. branch of the Legislature of said State in the year eighteen hundred and sixty, to be apportioned as aforesaid. SEC. 3. That at said election registered voters of each State shall vote for or against a convention to form a constitution therefor under this act. Those voting in favor of such a convention shall have writ- ten or printed on the ballots by which they vote for delegates, as aforesaid, the words " For a convention," and those voting against such a convention shall have written or printed on such ballots the words " Against a convention." The person appointed to superintend said election, and to make return of the votes given thereat, as here- in provided, shall count and make return of the votes given for and against a convention; and the commanding general to whom the same shall have been returned shall ascertain and declare the total vote in each State for and against a convention. If a majority of the votes given on that question shall be for a convention, then such conven- tion shall be held as hereinafter provided; but if a majority of said votes shall be against a convention, then no such convention shall be held under this act: Provided, That such convention shall not be held unless a majority of all such registered voters shall have voted on the question of holding such convention. SEC. 4. That the commanding general of each district shall ap- point as many boards of registration as may be necessary, consisting of three loyal officers or persons, to make and complete the registra- tion, superintend the election, and make return to him of the votes, lists of voters, and of the persons elected as delegates by a plurality of the votes cast at said election; and upon receiving said returns he shall open the same, ascertain the persons elected as delegates accord- ing to the returns of the officers who conducted said election, and make proclamation thereof; and if a majority of the votes given on that question shall be for a convention, the commanding general, within sixty days from the date of election, shall notify the delegates to assemble in convention, at a time and place to be mentioned in the notification, and said convention, when organized, shall proceed to frame a constitution and civil government according to the provision of this act and the act to which it is supplementary; and when the same shall have been so framed, said constitution shall be submitted by the convention for ratification to the persons registered under the provisions of this act at an election to be conducted by the officers or persons appointed or to be appointed by the commanding general, as hereinbefore provided, and to be held after the expiration of thirty days from the date of notice thereof, to be given by said convention, and the returns thereof shall be made to the commanding general of the district. DOCUMENTARY HISTORY. OF THE EPOCH. 239 SEC. 5. That if, according to said returns, the constitution shall be ratified by a majority of the votes of the registered electors quali- fied as herein specified, cast at said election (at least one-half of all the registered voters voting upon the question of such ratification), the President of the Convention shall transmit a copy of the same, duly certified, to the President of the United States, who shall forthwith transmit the same to Congress, if then in session, and if not in session, then immediately upon its next assembling; 'and if it shall, moreover, appear to Congress that the election was one at which all the regis- tered and qualified electors in the State had an opportunity to vote freely and without restraint, fear, or the influence of fraud, and if the Congress shall be satisfied that such constitution meets the approval of a majority of all the qualified electors in the State, and if the said constitution shall be declared by Congress to be in conformity with the provisions of the act to which this is supplementary, and the other provisions of said act shall have been complied with, and the said constitution shall be approved by Congress, the State shall be declared entitled to representation, and Senators and Representatives shall be admitted therefrom as therein provided. SEC. 6. That all elections in the States mentioned in the said " Act to Provide for the More Efficient Government of the Rebel States," shall, during the operation of said act, be by ballot; and all officers making the said registration of voters and conducting said elections shall, before entering upon the discharge of their duties, take and subscribe the oath prescribed by the act approved July second, eighteen hundred and sixty-two, entitled " An Act to Pre- scribe an Oath of Office": Provided, That if any person shall know- ingly and falsely take and subscribe any oath in this act prescribed, such person so offending and being thereof duly convicted, shall be subject to the pains, penalties, and disabilities which by law are provided for the punishment of the crime of willful and corrupt perjury. SEC. 7. That all expenses incurred by the several commanding generals, or by virtue of any orders issued, or appointments made, by them, under or by virtue of this act, shall be paid out of any moneys in the treasury not otherwise appropriated. SEC. 8. That the convention for each State shall prescribe the fees, salary, and compensation to be paid to all delegates and other officers and agents herein authorized or necessary to carry into effect "the purposes of this act not herein otherwise provided for, and shall provide for the levy and collection of such taxes on the property in such State as may be necessary to pay the same. SEC. 9. That the word article, in the sixth section of the act to which this is supplementary, shall be construed to mean section. 240 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. SUPPLEMENTARY RECONSTRUCTION ACT OF JULY 19, 1867. Be it enacted, etc., That it is hereby declared to have been the true intent and meaning of the act of the 2d day of March, 1867, entitled " An Act to Provide for the more efficient Government of the Rebel States," and of the act supplementary thereto, passed on the 23d day of March. 1867, that the government then existing in the rebel States of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Florida, Texas, and Arkansas, were not legal State governments; and that thereafter said governments, if con- tinued, were to be continued subject in all respects to the military commanders of the respective districts, and to the paramount author- ity of Congress. SEC. 2. That the commander of any district named in said act shall have power, subject to the disapproval of the General of the Army of the United States, and to have effect till disapproved, when- ever in the opinion of such commander the proper administration of said act shall require it, to suspend or remove from office, or from the performance of official duties and the exercise of official powers, any officer or person holding or exercising, or professing to hold or exer- cise, any civil or military office or duty in such district under any power, election, appointment, or authority derived from, or granted by, or claimed under, any so-called State or the government thereof, or any municipal or other division thereof; and upon such suspension or removal such commander, subject to the disapproval of the Gen- eral as aforesaid, shall have power to provide from time to time for the performance of the said duties of such officer or person so sus- pended or removed, by the detail of some competent officer or soldier of the army, or by the appointment of some other person to perform the same, and to fill vacancies occasioned by death, resignation, or otherwise. SEC. 3. That the General of the Army of the United States shall be invested with all the powers of suspension, removal, appointment, and detail granted in the preceding section to district commanders. SEC. 4. That the acts of the officers of the army already done in removing in said districts persons exercising the functions of civil officers^ and appointing others in their stead, are hereby confirmed: Provided, That any person heretofore or hereafter appointed by any district commander to exercise the functions of any civil office, may be removed either by the military officer in command of the district, or by the General of the Army. And it shall be the duty of such com- mander to remove from office, as aforesaid, all persons who are dis- loyal to the tjovernment' of the United States, or who use their official DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF THE EPOCH. 241 influence in any manner to hinder, delay, prevent, or obstruct the due and proper administration of this act and the acts to which it is supplementary. SEC. 5. That the boards of registration provided for in the act en- titled " An Act Supplementary to the Act entitled ' An Act to Pro- vide for the more efficient Government of the Rebel States,' passed March 2, 1867, and to Facilitate their Restoration," passed March 23, 1867, shall have power, and it shall be their duty, before allowing the registration of any person, to ascertain upon such facts or information as they can obtain, whether such person is entitled to be registered un- der said act, and the oath required by said act shall not be conclusive on such question, and no person shall be registered unless such board shall decide that he is entitled thereto; and such board shall also have power to examine, under oath (to be administered by any mem- ber of such board), any one touching the qualification of any person claiming registration; but in every case of refusal by the board to register an applicant, and in every case of striking his name from the list as hereinafter provided, the board shall make a note or mem- orandum, which shall be returned with the registration list to the commanding general of the district, setting forth the grounds of such refusal or such striking from the list: Provided, That no person shall be disqualified as member of any board of registration by reason of race or color. SEC. 6. That the true intent and meaning of the oath prescribed in said supplementary act is (among other things), that no person who has been a member of the Legislature of any State, or who has held an executive or judicial office in any State, whether he has taken an oath to support the Constitution of the United States or not, and whether he was holding such office at the commencement of the rebellion, or had held it before, and who has afterward engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof, is entitled to be registered or to vote; and the words, " executive or judicial office in any State " in said oath mentioned shall be construed to include all civil offices created by law for the administration of any general law of a State, or for the administra- tion of justice. SEC. 7. That the time for completing the original registration provided for in said act may, in the discretion of the commander of any district, be extended to the first day of October, 1867; and the boards of registration shall have power, and it shall be their duty, commencing fourteen days prior to any election under said act, and upon reasonable public notice of the time and place thereof, to revise, for a period of five days, the registration lists, and upon being satis- 242 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. fled that any person not entitled thereto has been registered, to strike the name of such person from the list, and such person shall not be allowed to vote. And such board shall also, during the same period, add to such registry the names of all persons who at that time possess the qualifications required by said act who have not been already registered; and no person shall, at any time, be entitled to be regis- tered or to vote, by reason of any executive pardon or amnesty, for any act or thing which, without such pardon or amnesty, would disqualify him from registration or voting. SEC. 8. That section four of said last-named act shall be con- strued to authorize the commanding general named therein, when- ever he shall deem it needful, to remove any member of a board of registration and to appoint another in his stead, and to fill any va- cancy in such board. SEC. 9. That all members of said boards of registration, and all persons hereafter elected or appointed to office in said military dis- tricts, under any so-called State or municipal authority, or by detail or appointment of the district commanders, shall be required to take and to subscribe the oath of office prescribed by law for officers of the United States. SEC. 10. That no district commander or member of the board of registration, or any of the officers or appointees acting under them, shall be bound in his action by any opinion of any civil officer of the United States. SEC. 11. That all the provisions of this act and of the acts to which this is supplementary shall be construed liberally, to the end that all the intents thereof may be fully and perfectly carried out. AMENDATORY RECONSTRUCTION ACT OF MARCH 11, 1868. Be it enacted, etc., That hereafter any election authorized by the act passed March 23, 1867, entitled " An Act Supplementary to ' An Act to Provide for the more efficient Government of the Rebel States,' passed March 2, 1867, and to Facilitate their Restoration," shall be decided by a majority of the votes actually cast; and at the election in which the question of the adoption or rejection of any constitution is submitted, any person duly registered in the State may vote in the election district where he offers to vote when he has resided therein for ten days next preceding such election upon presentation of his certificate of registration, his affidavit, or other satisfactory evidence, under such regulations as the district commanders may prescribe. SEC. 2. That the constitutional convention of any of the States mentioned in the acts to which this is amendatory may provide that DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF THE EPOCH. 243 at the time of voting upon the ratification of the Constitution, the registered voters may vote also for members of the House of Repre- sentatives of the United States, and for all elective officers provided for by the said Constitution; and the same election officers, who shall make the return of the votes cast on the ratification or rejection of the Constitution, shall enumerate and certify the votes cast for members of Congress. THE PERIOD OF RESTORATION. I. THE GRANT AND COLFAX CAMPAIGN. Fourth Republican National Convention General Grant Grant and Johnson Organization of the Chicago Convention Sickles and Hawley The Platform of 1868- General Logan Contest for the Vice-Presidency Wade and Colfax Popularity of Schuyler Col- fax Tender of the Nominations Democratic National Conven- tion Pendletou Chief Justice Chase The Intrigues Nomina- tion of Horatio Seymour Frank P. Blair, Jr., for Vice-President The Campaign Analysis of the Result The Electoral Count Louisiana The Fifteenth Amendment Inauguration of Presi- dent Grant. | HE Fourth Republican National Convention met at Chicago May 20, 1868, only four days after the first vote in the Senate on the Articles of Impeachment. There was no concealment of the keen disappointment that was felt at the President's escape. But this feeling of disappointment in no way diminished the enthusiasm of the party. As had always been the case with these great Republican gatherings, the Convention was largely made up of young men. Among these were Eugene Hale, of Maine; William E. Chandler, of New Hampshire; George B. Loring, of Massachusetts; Charles C. Van Zandt, of Rhode Island; Joseph R. Hawley, of Connecticut; Chauncey M. Depew and Frank Hiscock, of New York; General Harry W T hite, of Pennsylvania, and Emory A. Storrs, of Illinois. There was a large number of men who filled dis- tinguished positions in their States then or afterward William Claf- lin, Governor of Massachusetts; Lyman Tremaine, Attorney-General, and Charles Andrews, afterward Chief Justice of New York; John A. J. Creswell, of Maryland, afterward in Grant's Cabinet; John A. Bingham, of Ohio; Richard W. Thompson, of Indiana, Secretary of the Navy under President Hayes; James Speed, of Kentucky, and Governor Fletcher, of Missouri. The distinguished soldiers of the Union included John A. Logan, of Illinois; Daniel E. Sickles, of New York, and Carl Schurz, of Missouri. Among the delegates New York sent Moses H. Grinnell; New Jersey, A. G. Cattell; Pennsylvania, Colonel John W. Forney; and Indiana, Henry S. Lane. It was a Con- THE GRANT AND COLFAX CAMPAIGN. 245 vention grandly representative of the past history of the party, in- stinct with the purposes that inspired the Reconstruction policy of Congress, and typical of the future that was in store for the country. The Chicago Convention of 1868 was in marked contrast with that of 1860. Of the two men in whom the interest centered eight years before one was dead and the other was dead to the party. Abraham Lincoln had been foully murdered. William H. Seward had shared the disgrace of Johnson's Administration. Weed and Evarts, so con- spicuous before, were now only conspicuous through their absence. The Whig influences that then were potent, now were obliterated. A great war had intervened, to be followed by a period of agitation the most stirring and bitter in American political history. Out of the war had come one great soldier triumphant in arms and faith- ful in peace. There was only one candidate for the Presidential nomi- nation Ulysses S. Grant. He was not the candidate of the politi- cians, who would have preferred that the nomination should go to a party chief, but the popular will was so unmistakable that no de- termined effort was made to forestall the popular choice. After the war General Grant's position w T as a singularly trying one. Toward the President and toward Congress he maintained re- lations of peculiar delicacy. As the head of the army it was his duty to co-operate in carrying out any plan for the restoration of the South that the Legislative and Executive Departments of the Government might agree upon. As the policy of the President and the plan of Congress were diametrically opposed to each other, it was difficult for him to please either easy to offend both. That he gave serious offense to neither, through a discretion and dignity that showed that he possessed high qualities as a man as well as great genius as a soldier, was a proof to the people that he ought to rule after he had conquered. His course had been closely watched by the country, sometimes with fear that he was about to err, but it was to end with complete faith in his judgment and patriotism. That Mr. Johnson did not entirely despair of molding Grant to his views, or at least of using him for the aims the Administration had so much at heart, is shown by the onerous duties that were thrust upon him by the Presi- dent. As early as the autumn of 1865 an attempt was made to use his prestige for the benefit of the Administration. In November, when General Grant w r as about to start on a tour of inspection in the South, the President asked him " to learn, as far as possible, during his tour, the feelings and intentions of the citizens of the Southern States toward the National Government." Grant complied, and made a perfunctory report in which he expressed the belief that " the mass of thinking men of the South accept the present situation of affairs 246 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. in good faith," but at the same time he thought that " four years of war have left the people possibly in a condition not ready to yield that obedience to civil authority which the American people have been in the habit of yielding, thus rendering the presence of small garrisons throughout those States necessary until such time as labor returns to its proper channels and civil authority is fully established." The report contained some other expressions of opinion that were hopeful, but not optimistic. The friends of the Administration, how- ever, professed to find in Grant's language strong justification of the President's position on the question of Reconstruction, and began to use the report to the general's prejudice. Nobody was quicker to see this than Grant himself. His early impressions were not con- firmed by closer inquiry, and no one more thoroughly approved the Reconstruction measures of the Republican party w r hen the real con- dition of the South was ascertained. A soldier more impulsive or impetuous would have resented the affair as a trick, but Grant ig- nored it, and the country was not long in ignorance of his later con- clusions. His acceptance of the office of Secretary of War ad interim, when Stanton was suspended by the President, was another instance in which Grant found himself in dangerous contact with the Admin- istration. He protested against the suspension of Stanton, and ac- cepted the War Department with great reluctance. When the Senate acted on the suspension, restoring Stanton to his functions, Grant at once gave up all control of the Department. Johnson afterward said that Grant promised either to remain or resign, but Grant answered, " I made no such promise." It was a case in which no question of veracity could arise in the minds of the people. They believed Grant. He had established his claim to the confidence as well as the gratitude of the country. It was determined that the chief hero of the war should be the leader in the restoration that should have followed the peace, but was delayed by the course of Andrew Johnson, his Demo- cratic allies, and an unrepentant South. In spite of the fact that the Presidential nomination was a foregone conclusion, the Convention had a number of interesting features. Although impeachment had already partly failed, hope of Johnson's conviction was not yet abandoned. This gave an aggressive spirit to the delegates, that was felt in the Convention and expressed in the Platform. The war party of the previous epoch was about to enter upon its great work as the party of peace. A broad national financial and industrial policy was required, and great interest was shown in molding the policy of the party so that its principles would conserve the true interests of the country. Besides, there was a keen compe- tition for the second place on the ticket. These rivalries were exerted THE GRANT AND COLFAX CAMPAIGN. 247 so early that they were felt in the organization of the Convention. There was no difficulty over the selection of the temporary chairman, the place being accorded to General Carl Schurz, in recognition of his independent course when he was sent to investigate the condition of the South by the President in 1865. His report was so unsatisfac- tory to the Administration that an effort was made to suppress it. This was prevented by the Senate, and it proved a very important document when Congress undertook to formulate a plan of Recon- struction. For permanent President there were two candidates General Sickles and General Hawley. Sickles had made a brilliant reputation in the war, and lost a leg at Gettysburg. As one of the Military Governors in the South, under the Reconstruction Acts, he incurred the hostility of the Administration, and he, of course, became all the more popular with the Republican masses because of the enemies he had made. Hawley was also distinguished as a soldier, and had supported the Civil Rights bill on the broad ground that he was not ashamed to sleep in a tavern, or go to a theater, or be buried in a graveyard with his colored brother. In the Committee on Organ- ization the vote for Sickles and Hawley was a tie. As Sickles was from New York, and Fenton was the candidate of the New York delegation for Vice-President, Hamilton Harris, of Albany, who had the casting vote, decided the contest in favor of Hawley. In his speech on taking the chair General Hawley gave a forecast of the future policy of the party. " For every dollar of the national debt," he said, " the blood of a soldier is pledged. . . . Every bond, in letter and spirit, must be as sacred as a soldier's grave." These pa- triotic maxims w r ere received with loud applause by the Convention, and were embodied in the platform as the principles of Republican action. The Republican Platform of 1868, reported on the second day of the Convention and adopted with enthusiasm, differed from previous declarations in the absence of any reference to the vexed question of so many years slavery. In its place a new principle became con- spicuous equal suffrage. This, and the maintenance of the public faith, were the great questions of the new epoch. In one respect the Convention and its declaration of principles fell short of the high mis- sion of the Republican party. It failed to demand equal suffrage in all the States, declaring that " the question of suffrage in the loyal States properly belongs to the people of those States." This was an unworthy surrender to expediency a sacrifice of the consistency and courage of the party. The motive that prompted it was the fear of losing the electoral votes of Indiana and California, where the preju- dice against negro suffrage was very strong. It can not be claimed 248 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. that this insincere device was necessary in Indiana indeed, it is not even likely that it kept California in the Grant column, notwith- standing the fact that the Kepublican majority in that State was only 512. But the party in deeds was more consistent and courageous than the Convention in words, and the declaration went unheeded. On the financial issue the platform was earnest and unequivocal. The arraignment of the President was severe and reflected Republican feeling. On all questions, except equal suffrage, the platform was a signboard that pointed the pathway that the party was destined to follow. The nomination of General Grant in the Convention was made by General John A. Logan in a vigorous and eloquent speech. Logan was a type of the Republicans that the war and the issues of the war had made. Although he was a Douglas Democrat, the district that he represented in Southern Illinois in 1861 w r as almost as completely secessionist as those across the Mississippi in Arkansas, or across the Ohio in Kentucky. His constituents deeply resented his loyalty in Congress when the war began, and when he returned to raise a regiment after the adjournment they at first turned from him in disdain. But his eloquence and zeal overcame their prejudices, and the regiment was raised. His first battle with his regiment brought a recommendation from Grant that he be made a brigadier-general. In the subsequent campaigns no soldier of the Union was more intrepid than " the Black Eagle of Illinois," and, a major-general at the close of the war, he was now in a position to repay Grant's recom- mendation for his first promotion by naming Grant to the Chicago Convention for President of the United States. No othf ' candidate was named in opposition, a thing unprecedented in National Conven- tions and Grant was nominated by a unanimous vote, not merely by making the vote unanimous. When the result was announced it was received with a great shout just as if it had been a surprise. The nomination for Vice-President was no mere perfunctory regis- try of the will of the people. As many as eleven candidates had hopes of carrying off the prize. Of these the most hopeful were Wade, of Ohio; Fenton, of New York; Wilson, of Massachusetts, and Colfax, of Indiana. The other candidates who were supported by the dele- gations from their own States were Curtin, of Pennsylvania; Hamlin, of Maine; Speed, of Kentucky; Harlan, of Iowa, and Creswell, of Maryland. The nomination of Henry Wilson, which was the first made, came from the Virginia delegation. Then an obstreperous delegate from Pennsylvania, disobeying the instructions of his State Convention, named Schuyler Colfax. This impertinence disconcerted the friends of Colfax for a moment, but when the applause that fol- THE GRANT AND COLFAX CAMPAIGN. 249 lowed the mention of his name ended he was formally nominated by Henry S. Lane, of Indiana. The nomination of Wade followed, and was seconded by General Schurz. Fenton was put in nomination by Lyman Tremaine. Each nomination being- accompanied by a speech, speech-making began to be tiresome, and the delegates were begin- ning to show their impatience with the orators. Mr. Spalding. in sup- porting the candidature of Senator Wade, pointed out the fact that this was the first time in the National Convention when the Ohio delegation was a unit for an Ohio candidate; and General Sickles made an eloquent speech in behalf of Governor Fenton, whose ambi- tion had prevented him from becoming President of the Convention. But even speech-making must come to an end, and at last the ballot- ing began. There were five ballots, as follows: 1st. 2d. 3d. 4th. 5th. Benjamin P. Wade, of Ohio 147 170 178 206 38 Keuben E. Fenton, of New York . 126 144 139 144 69 Henry Wilson, of Massachusetts. 119 114 101 87 Sclmyler Coif ax, of Indiana 115 145 165 186 541 Andrew G.Curtin, of Pennsylvania 51 45 40 Hannibal Hamlin, of Maine 28 30 25 25 James Speed, of Kentucky 22 James Harlan, of Iowa 16 John A. J. Creswell, of Maryland. 14 Samuel C. Pomeroy, of Kansas. . 6 William D.Kelley, of Pennsylvania 4 An analysis of the vote shows that Mr. Wade started with a good lead and gained strength on the three succeeding ballots. He had been seventeen years in the Senate and was then its president. If Johnson had been convicted in the impeachment trial W r ade would have been the logical candidate for Vice-President, and there is no reason to doubt that he would have been nominated. Next to Wade in strength at the outset was Fenton. In Congress he had not been conspicuous as a parliamentarian, but he was a man of sound judgment and an acute political manager. He had been twice elected Governor of New York, and had wrested the control of the party in that State from the powerful grasp of Thurlow Weed. He held the second place in the balloting until the fourth ballot, when he was passed by Mr. Colfax. On the first ballot Senator W T ilson had three more votes than Colfax, but he lost steadily, while the Speaker gained as the voting proceeded, until on the fifth ballot it became apparent that Wade and Colfax were close together, with Colfax in the lead. 250 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. Then there was a break, and Colfax was nominated. Wade's failure was due in a measure to the traditional insincerity of Ohio delegations toward Ohio candidates. On the second ballot four of the Ohio dele- gates broke from Wade and went over to Colfax. Wade's strength on the fourth ballot came from Pennsylvania. If Ohio had not been divided, the ticket would have been Grant and Wade, instead of Grant and Colfax. The popularity of Schuyler Colfax at the time of his nomination was very great. He had been three times chosen Speaker of the House of representatives a record only surpassed by that of Henry Clay. He had presided with dignity and commanding skill during the most passionate period in the history of Congress. His parlia- mentary ability had been demonstrated by the success that attended the labors of two Congresses in passing all party measures over the Presidential veto. He was a thorough party man, tried and approved, and his nomination meant that the party had not repeated the mis- take of 18(54. No similar nomination ever before created so much enthusiasm. When he left the Speaker's room that day the employees of the Capitol gathered round him. Passing through the Capitol grounds and along Pennsylvania avenue he was greeted everywhere by a multitude rejoicing in his nomination. In the Convention, and afterward in the campaign, he had the assistance of the corps of Washington correspondents, and when he was elected he was, after General Grant, the most popular man in the United States. The formal tender of the nominations to Grant and Colfax was made at General Grant's house in Washington, on the 29th of May. The addresses to the two candidates, who were standing side by side, were made by General Hawley, attended by the committee appointed by the Convention. A brilliant company gathered to hear the speeches and witness the ceremony. General Hawley's addresses were both eloquent. Grant's response accepting the nomination was very brief, but, like all his utterances, fitting and direct. Colfax made a longer reply, but it, too, was very brief and pointed. " Since the General of our armies, with his heroic followers, crushed the re- bellion," Mr. Colfax said, speaking of the party, " the keynote of its policy, that loyalty should govern what loyalty has preserved, has been worthy of its honored record in the war." Then the campaign began without waiting for the action of the discredited Democracy. Grant's letter of acceptance contained the historic phrase that was heard everywhere throughout the canvass " Let us have peace! " Great interest was felt throughout the country in the action of the Democratic National Convention, which had been called to meet in New York on the Fourth of July. Historically this interest is as great THE GRANT AND COLFAX CAMPAIGN. 251 now as it was then politically. The party that had come out of the war disgraced by the pusillanimous platform of 1864 was determined to begin a new life regardless of its past record. When the Conven- tion met in Tammany Hall a meeting-place that was in itself typical of the influences that were to control its action the charac- ter of the platform and the composition of the ticket were still prob- lematical. There were three names in which the interest centered for the place at the head of the ticket George H. Pendleton, of Ohio; Andrew Johnson, of Tennessee, and Salmon P. Chase, of Ohio. Each of these men represented a distinct policy. Pendleton was the logical candidate, and the financial plank of the platform was made to fit the new Democratic heresy of which he was the champion. This was the famous " Ohio idea." The proposition was to pay the national debt in the depreciated paper currency that a long war had entailed upon the country. If not the author of this " idea," Mr. Pendleton was its most zealous advocate, and his friends believed he could be nomi- nated on this issue. It took form in the platform in the declaration in favor of " One currency for the Government and the people, the laborer and the officeholder, the pensioner and the soldier, the pro- ducer and the bondholder." To the Democratic cry of " The same currency for the bondholder and the plowholder," the Republicans had an effective answer, " The best currency for both plowholder and bondholder." Pendleton succeeded in imposing his financial ideas upon his party, but missed the prize that he expected as a candidate to fit the platform. Johnson had wrecked his administration for a Democratic nomi- nation, and was even more unfortunate than Pendleton. The Demo- cratic minority in Congress encouraged and supported him in his long conflict with the majority, and then showed him that although Democrats loved the treason, they despised the traitor. He received 65 votes on the first ballot in the Convention, but was then aban- doned, except by a handful of supporters for a few ballots. He made a few friends in the South, but his sacrifices were in vain, and he went out of the Convention without a party, and with his administration more completely discredited than was Tyler's twenty-four, and Fill- more's sixteen years before. The real interest of the Convention turned on the candidature of Chief Justice Chase. Although he only received one-half of a vote in any of the twenty-one ballots, his possible nomination was the pivot on which all the intrigues in the metropolis turned. The men by whom his candidature was promoted were the astute leaders of the New York Regency, and a few of the extreme Democrats of the war period, notably Alexander Long and Clement L. Vallandigham. There 252 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. was nothing remarkable in the fact that Chase was found in such peculiar company. He never had been a thorough Republican. He was a Democrat by instinct, and if there had been no slavery question he never would have been in opposition to the Democratic party. Five years before he had sought to bring about a reorganization of the Democracy to promote his nomination as a candidate against Mr. Lincoln in 1864. He did not despair of effecting such a reorganiza- tion in 1868. But on one point he was inflexible insistence upon universal suffrage as distinctive Democratic doctrine. So strong was his desire to become President of the United States that it is probable he would have accepted the nomination of the New York Convention, even without this declaration, if his friends had been able to secure it for him. The purpose was to place him before the people without regard to his views on this question, and without any attempt to harmonize his principles with the principles of the platform. In the long series of ballotings that finally resulted in the nomination of Horatio Seymour this purpose was never lost sight of. The determination to beat Pendleton was as strong in the Demo- cratic Convention in New York in 1868 as the successful effort to defeat Seward in the Republican Convention in Chicago in 1860. The expedients by which this was finally effected were very adroit. The first diversion was the use of the name of Thomas A. Hendricks, of Indiana. This naturally caused a break in the Indiana delegation, and served to draw off a part of Pendleton's support. New York dropped Sanford E. Church, who had been used to mask the purpose of the New York politicians, and voted for Hendricks with an osten- tatious air of satisfaction. Pendleton had reached his highest vote on the eighth ballot, and was steadily declining. Meanwhile General W. S. Hancock had been steadily gaining strength, and he soon passed Hendricks and obtained the lead. Between the eighteenth and the twenty-first ballots the contest seemed to be between Hancock and Hendricks, with Hendricks constantly encroaching on Hancock's lead, until there was a difference of only 31 votes betw r een them. The following table will show the general course of the balloting: 1. 8. 16. 18. 19. 21. George H. Pendleton, of Ohio 105 1561 1071 561 Andrew Johnson, of Tennessee 65 6 51 10 WinfieldS. Hancock, of Pennsylvania 331 28 1131144113511351 Sanford E. Church, of New York 33 Asa Packer, of Pennsylvania 26 26 22 Joel Parker, of New Jersey 13 7 7 31 James E. English, of Connecticut ..... 16 6 6 19 THE GRANT AND COLFAX CAMPAIGN. 253 James R. Doolittle, of Wisconsin ____ 13 12 12 12 12 12 Thomas A. Hendricks, of Indiana ____ 2| 75 70i 87 107i 132 Salmon P. Chase, of Ohio ........... - i i All others... ..................... 9 3^ 33 The twenty-second ballot was ordered, but it had progressed through only a few States when some votes were cast for Horatio Seymour, the President of the Convention. Mr. Seymour promptly interposed, and declined to be a candidate. The voting went on with- out decisive result, and it was not intended that there should be a de- cisive result until the following day, when it was arranged that Mr. Seymour should leave the chair and, taking the floor, urge the nomi- nation of Chief Justice Chase. This plot was defeated by the action of the Ohio delegation. The delegation had withdrawn Pendleton's name in the morning, and w r as thoroughly angered by the course of events. During the progress of the tw r enty-second ballot the dele- gates were in consultation, but re-entered the Convention in time for the call of the State, and created a sensation by casting the vote of Ohio for Horatio Seymour. Mr. Seymour protested, but New York sustained the action of Ohio, and there was a stampede for Seymour. The Convention became a bedlam, and while the uproar lasted Mr. Seymour was overborne and the nomination was made. With Mr. Seymour nominated the Convention determined to give him a running mate who would emphasize the most extreme and revolutionary propositions of the platform. The candidate selected was General Frank P. Blair, Jr. The Blair family had not only re- turned to the Democratic party to which it naturally belonged, but Frank Blair, the younger, had written an extraordinary letter in which he said: " There is but one way to restore the Government and the Constitution, and that is for the President to declare these acts null and void, compel the army to undo its usurpations at the South, dispossess the carpet-bag State governments, allow the white people to reorganize their own governments, and elect Senators and Repre- sentatives." This extreme doctrine was echoed in the declaration of the platform, " that we regard the Reconstruction Acts of Congress as usurpations, unconstitutional, revolutionary, and void." Thus the candidates fitted the platform, and the canvass turned upon the two issues upon which the Democratic party chose to fight the battle the payment of the national debt in depreciated paper currency and the overthrow of Reconstruction. The campaign was marked by great earnestness, but it possessed fewer of the uniformed marching clubs than was usual before the war. Four years of fighting had given the young men a surfeit of parading, 254 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. and torchlight processions were no longer as popular as they once were. There was no lack of enthusiasm, however, and there never was a more earnest or confident canvass. The platforms, the candi- dates, and the reckless utterances of Southern men like Wade Hamp- ton and Robert Toombs, put the Democrats on the defensive from the outset. Hampton took to himself great credit for the declaration that the Reconstruction Acts were usurpations, unconstitutional, revolu- tionary, and void. Toombs, speaking at Atlanta, declared that " these so-called governments and legislatures which have been established in our midst shall at once be made to vacate. The Convention at New York appointed Frank Blair specially to oust them." Such avowals could not fail to injure Blair, and, through Blair, the ticket of which he was a part. So pronounced was his unpopularity, in consequence, that before the canvass ended the New York World turned against him, and frantically demanded that he should be withdrawn from the ticket. This was after the October elections, in a year when the Oc- tober States had gone Republican. Vigorous efforts were made by the Democrats to carry the State tickets in Pennsylvania and Indiana. In the latter State Mr. Hendricks was nominated for Governor, with the hope that his personal popularity might secure the success of the ticket, but he was beaten. As a last resort, Mr. Seymour followed the example of Mr. Douglas in 1860, and made an electioneering tour through Western New York, Ohio, Illinois, and Pennsylvania. He spoke once, and sometimes twice, daily, and only ended his tour on the eve of the elections. As he was a versatile and brilliant orator, seductive in appeal, and able and earnest in urging a bad cause, the Democrats indulged the hope that he might be able to reverse the results of the October elections and secure the electoral votes of Penn- sylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. In all these States the Repub- licans had majorities so low as to approach the danger line. In In- diana Conrad Baker's majority over Hendricks was only 961. Phila- delphia gave a small Democratic majority, and in the State, which was expected to give 20,000, there was a meager Republican major- ity of about 10,000. In Ohio also there was a marked decrease in the Republican strength, and altogether the case was not so hopeless for Seymour and Blair as it had seemed earlier in the canvass. The unexpected hopefulness of the outlook for the Democrats not only aroused the Republicans, but the business interests of the country to the dangers of the situation. The triumph of the Greenback party, merely because there was a strong prejudice against negro suffrage, could not fail to prove a disaster, not only to the restoration of the South, but to the business prosperity of the North. A movement of the business men to defeat the Democrats was made in the closing THE GRANT AND COLFAX CAMPAIGN. 255 weeks of the campaign that averted the danger and gave the Repub- licans an overwhelming triumph. In 1868 the Republicans carried twenty-six States for Grant and Colfax, and the Democrats secured the electoral vote of seven States for Seymour and Blair. Georgia would have increased the Demo- cratic States to eight, but the vote of that State was treated as was the vote of Missouri in 1820. If there had been a solid South in 1868, as there has been since 1876, Mr. Seymour would have had a majority in the Electoral College. Grant and Colfax received 214 electoral votes and Seymour and Blair 80. In the Republican column were all the Southern States except Virginia, Mississippi, and Texas, which did not vote; Georgia, the vote of which was not counted; Louisiana, which was carried by the Democrats by intimidation and fraud; and Delaware, Maryland, and Kentucky. In the Democratic column, by a reaction that unfortunately does not stand by itself in American politics, were the three States of New York, New Jersey, and Oregon. Two of these, New York and New Jersey, gave Mr. Seymour one-half of his electoral vote. New Jersey always has been an uncertain State. It voted for McClellan in 1864, for Grant in 1872, and for Tilden in 1876 side by side with New York. The defection of New York was owing to the immense Democratic vote of New York City. No other part of the country had so great a stake in Republican success as the metropolis, but the Tammany vote in national contests is always cast regardless of local interests. This can be explained only by the char- acter of the population foreign by birth, un-American in sympathy, and easily controlled by the political leaders. Mr. Seymour was very popular in 1868 with the element that had resisted the draft in 1863. It was this element that gave him the electoral vote of the State, be- cause he had resisted the war, against the great soldier who had achieved the triumph of the Republic. Although the vote of Louisiana was counted in the joint convention of the two Houses, both branches of Congress being Republican, it was known at the time that the returns were fraudulent, and that the elections had been conducted with intimidation and violence. Sey- mour's alleged majority of 47,000 was greater than the entire Demo- cratic vote of the State. The vote claimed for Seymour was 80,225 that allotted to Grant 33,263. In 1860 the combined Democratic vote for Breckinridge and Douglas was 30,306 the vote for Bell 50,510 making a total of 80,816. Notwithstanding the fact that the white vote of Louisiana was not so great by many thousands in 1868 as in 1860, Mr. Seymour was given a reputed vote of only a few hundreds 591, to be exact short of the whole vote of the State before the war. In 1867 the registered vote was 45,109. The seven electoral votes of 256 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. Louisiana could do Mr. Seymour no good, and they could do General Grant no harm. There was as yet no official evidence of the intimida- tion and outrages in the State, and so it was agreed to receive and count the returns. But subsequent investigations show a worse con- dition than was even suspected. " From these investigations/' it was said in an official report after the inquiry ordered by Congress, " it appears that over two thousand persons were killed, wounded, and otherwise injured in that State within a few weeks of the Presidential election of 1868; that half the State was overrun by violence, midnight raids, secret murders, and open riots, which kept the people in con- stant terror, until the Republicans surrendered all claims, and then the election was carried by the Democracy." Although Louisiana had resumed her place in the Union only a few months before, we al- ready hear of the Ku-Klux conspiracy that kept the South in a con- dition of anarchy for many years, and that made the work of restora- tion so difficult. The effort of 1865 to make the Southern States Slave States once more had been thwarted, but Louisiana now set an ex- ample of fraud and force that kept the South in a condition of dis- order until the frenzy had spent itself. Before General Grant was in- augurated President of the United States the last of the Constitu- tional Amendments was adopted the Fifteenth. It is very brief, but very comprehensive: The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. It took its place in the organic law as the final pledge of the Ameri- can people to the oppressed race. This was a step far in advance of the declaration of the Chicago platform, but it was an act of necessity as well as of justice. It was opposed by the Democrats, as the two previous amendments had been, but the opposition was not so strenu- ous or so bitter. In the debate in the Senate Garrett Davis, of Ken- tucky, charged that it was intended by the Republican party to per- petuate its own power. To this Mr. Wilson, of Massachusetts, made an effective reply. " The Senator from Kentucky know r s and I know," Mr. Wilson said, " that this whole struggle to give equal rights and equal privileges to all citizens of the United States has been an un- popular one; that we have been forced to struggle against passion and prejudice engendered by generations of wrong and oppression; that we have been compelled to struggle against great interests and powerful political organizations. I say to the Senator from Ken- tucky that the struggle of the last years to give freedom to four and a half millions of men w r ho were held in slavery, to make them citizens of the United States, to clothe them with the right of suffrage, to give them the privilege of being voted for, to make them in all re- THE GRANT AND COLFAX CAMPAIGN. 257 spects equal to the white citizens of the United States, has cost the Ixepubliean party a quarter of a million votes." The morning of March 4, 1869, opened with a pouring rain, but before the time arrived for the inaugural procession to begin its inarch to the Capitol the clouds parted and the sun shone in all its splendor. One feature of these quadrennial pageants was missing the presence of the retiring President at the right side of the Presi- dent-elect. The failure to perform his share in the official etiquette, that usage had given the force of an unwritten law, was an involun- tary but a fitting close to Johnson's turbulent and discredited ad- ministration. In only two previous instances had there been a similar failure to observe the etiquette of the occasion when John Adams hastily left Washington to avoid meeting Thomas Jefferson, and when John Quincy Adams refrained from escorting Andrew Jackson to the Senate Chamber. In this case, however, Johnson was not to blame for the apparent discourtesy to the President-elect. Grant's dislike of him was so great, because of Johnson's effort to place him in a false position in connection with the removal of Secretary Stanton, that lie was unwilling to ride to the Capitol in the same carriage with his predecessor. Johnson left the Capitol at noon, w r here it was said he had been detained signing bills, and Grant drove unaccompanied, except by his private secretary. The procession was unusually im- posing. The colored military turned out in force. The streets and grounds leading to the east front of the Capitol were densely crowded. Never before, not even in war times, was Washington so full of strangers. No unusual incidents attended the ceremony, and no un- toward event marred the occasion. In the evening the inaugural ball was given in the new wing of the Treasury Department, but the White House was in the hands of the upholsterers, and it was not oc- cupied by the President's family for some days after the inaugura- tion. An era of peace had set in, that, through many vicissitudes, was to end in perfect reconciliation between North and South before the close of the century. II. THE PUBLIC CREDIT. War Finance and Currency The Demand Notes Suspension of Specie Payments Measures of Relief The Legal Tenders El- bridge G. Spaulding The Democratic Contention Republicans Opposed to the Measure Popularity of the Greenbacks Value of the Legal Tender Notes to the Government Fluctuations in Gold The National Banking System Constitutionality of the Legal Tender Acts Payment of the National Debt in Coin Sec- retary McCulloch Secretary Boutwell Efforts at Funding the National Debt Panic of 1873 The Greenback Craze Failure of Congress to Afford Relief Election of a Democratic House of Representatives The Resumption Act of 1875 Demonetization of Silver. ET it be understood," said President Grant in his Inaugu- ral Address, " that no repudiator of one farthing of our public debt will be trusted in public place, and it will go far to strengthen our public credit, which ought to be the best in the world." It was inevitable that after four years of civil war, followed by four years of conflict between the Congress and the Administration, the national finances and currency should be deranged and the public credit impaired. The national loans had followed each other rapidly. Bonds were issued in vast amounts and bearing high rates of interest. Paper currency, practically irredeemable, had become a necessity, and it was, in fact, the only currency of the people when General Grant succeeded Andrew Johnson as President of the United States. Secretary Chase, when he recommended the first issues of Treasury notes, was hopeful that the integrity of such issues might be main- tained. " But the greatest care will be requisite," he said, " to pre- vent the degradation of such issues into an irredeemable paper cur- rency, than which no more certainly fatal expedient for impoverish- ing the masses and discrediting the government of any country can well be devised." The first issue of non-interest-bearing Treasury notes was for fifty millions of dollars. They were called " demand notes," because they were payable on demand. Although these notes were as good as gold, and were maintained at par throughout the entire period of gold flue- THE PUBLIC CREDIT. 259 tuations, it was with difficulty that the issue was floated. In fact, not more than two-thirds of the fifty millions were actually issued. Some of the railroads at first declined to accept them for fares and freight. One of the clerks of the Treasury Department, Mr. J. W. Schuckers, afterward Chase's biographer, had difficulty in paying his hotel bill with them at one of the prominent Philadelphia hotels. A New York bank refused to receive a large sum in " demand notes," except as a special deposit, and thus unwittingly gave the depositor the benefit of their appreciation, which kept pace with gold. All this is not sur- prising when it is remembered that when Secretary Chase began his financial operations the Government of the United States was utterly without credit. When the Secretary of the Treasury went to New York in 18(51 to get his first loan, the London Times said he had " co- erced |50,000,000 from the banks, but he would not fare so well at the London Exchange." The London Economist was confident that the United States could not float any of their loans, " for Europe won't lend them; America cannot." " No pressure," said the Times, at a later period, " that ever threatened is equal to that which now hangs over the United States; and it may safely be said that if, in future generations, they faithfully meet their liabilities, they will fairly earn a fame which will shine throughout the world." It was this fame the Republican party was determined that the United States should earn when it nominated and elected General Grant. The Government had shown its capacity to borrow; now it was to show its capacity to pay. Not only the loans, but the issues of Treas- ury notes not payable on demand, in the mean time, had reached colossal proportions. It is not the purpose of this chapter to follow these operations in detail. The effort to maintain the specie standard had come to an end as early as December 30, 1861, when the New York banks suspended. It would be scarcely true to say that their example was followed by the country banks. Most of these had ceased to pay specie long before. Indeed, many of them had not resumed specie payments after the panic of 1857. The suspension of the New York banks touched the public credit more nearly than it was felt in its effects upon the banking system of the country, as it was then conducted. For many years the Government had paid coin over its counters. The demand notes had a coin basis. When these were presented for redemption the Treasury would soon be drained of its coin. For ten years before the war we had been sending the imperish- able product of our mines abroad, and receiving in return perishable products from Europe, because we could buy foreign fabrics cheaper than we could make domestic goods. We were a nation of spend- thrifts under the long epoch of Democratic rule, and when we came 260 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. to measure ourselves by the world's standard we found we had parted with our patrimony. It had become impossible for the Treasury longer to pay specie. The world's treasures were not for us. Con- federate bonds were taken in Europe at better prices, and in larger amounts, than the bonds of the United States. Our greatest enemy was the money power of Europe, with the Rothschilds in the lead. Mr. Chase's demand notes became, for the time being, so far as the discredited banks were concerned, as discredited as their own notes. There was only one way out of the difficulty Treasury notes that could be made to pass as currency, and plenty of them. As usually happens when a great measure of public relief is under consideration at Washington, there were two plans. One was the plan of the Administration, as represented by the Treasury Depart- ment ; the other was the plan of Congress, as represented by the House Committee on Ways and Means. Secretary Chase favored a Banking Association. The Committee on Ways and Means proposed the issue of United States notes, to be receivable in payment of Government duesofever3 T kind,andto be a legal tender in payment of all debts, both public and private. In the end both plans were adopted, Mr. Chase's plan taking shape in the system of national banks which still exists, and the other plan being formulated in the Legal Tender bill, reported to the House of Representatives from the Committee on Ways and Means by E. G. Spaulding, January 22, 1862. The paternity of the legal tender plan is usually attributed to Thaddeus Stevens, because at the time he was Chairman of Ways and Means, but Mr. Spaulding is entitled to rank as the author of the measure. Elbridge G. Spaulding had served a term in Congress as early as 1849-51. He was afterward State Treasurer of New York, a member of the Canal Board of that State, and president of the Farm- ers' and Mechanics' Bank of Genesee, at Buffalo. He was again elected to the 36th Congress, and was serving on the Committee on Ways and Means in the 37th Congress because of his recognized finan- cial ability. He introduced the original Legal Tender bill into the House December 30, 1861, the day the New York banks suspended. Mr. Spaulding made a very able speech in behalf of the measure a measure of necessity, not of choice, a measure that the Constitution justified in the emergency, and he declared that by this plan " the Government will be able to get along with its immediate and pressing necessities without being obliged to force its bonds on the market at ruinous rates of discount; the people under heavy taxation will be shielded against high rates of interest, and capitalists will be afforded fair compensation for the use of their money during the pending struggle for national existence." One of the most determined op- THE PUBLIC CREDIT. 261 poueuts of the measure was Mr. Pendletou, of Ohio. In arguing against the legal tender feature of the bill he said, " The feature of this bill which first strikes every thinking man, even in these days of novelties, is the proposition that these notes shall be made a legal tender in discharge of all pecuniary obligations, as well as those which have accrued in virtue of contracts already made as those which shall hereafter be made. Do gentlemen appreciate the full im- port and meaning of that clause? Do they realize the full extent to which it will carry them? Every contract for the payment of gold and silver coin, every promissory note, every bill of exchange, every lease reserving rent, every loan of money reserving interest, every bond issued by this Government, is a contract to which the faith of the obligor is pledged, that the amount, whether rent, interest, or prin- cipal, shall be paid in the gold and silver coin of the country." Six years later he was a candidate for President of the United States on the opposite ground that the principal and interest of United States bonds should be paid in greenbacks. When legal tender notes were necessary to save the Union Mr. Pendleton wanted only gold and silver; \vhen the country needed a specie basis to assure its pros- perity he wanted greenbacks. The Democratic contention both in the House and Senate while the bill was before Congress was that it was a departure from the obliga- tion to pay intrinsic value. " If you violate that by this bill, w r hich you certainly do," Mr. J. A. Bayard, of Delaware, declared, in an em- phatic interrogatory, " how can you expect that the faith of the com- munity will be given to the law which you now pass, in which you say that you will pay hereafter the interest on your debt in coin? Why should they give credit to that declaration? If you can violate the Constitution of the United States, in the face of your oaths, in the face of its palpable provision, what security do you offer to the lender of money? " The Senate had wisely amended the bill, as it passed the House, providing for the payment of the interest on the national debt in coin. It was this provision that the Democrats declared could not be maintained, and that they afterward attempted to annul. That a measure at once so necessary and so dangerous should meet with Republican opposition was to be expected. None was more re- luctant to accept it than the Secretary of the Treasury. Indeed his reluctance at one time threatened its defeat. At last he was com- pelled to come out openly in favor of the bill. " It is true," Mr. Chase wrote to Mr. Spaulding, " I came with reluctance to the conclusion that the legal tender clause is a necessity, but I came to it decidedly and I supported it earnestly. I do not hesitate when I have made up 262 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. 1113- mind, however much regret I may feel over the necessity of the conclusion to which I came. . . . Immediate action is of great im- portance. The Treasury is nearly empty. I have been obliged to draw for the last installment of the November loan; so soon as it is paid, I fear the banks generally will refuse to receive the United States notes. You will see the necessity of urging the bill through without delay.'' Some of the ablest Republicans in the House voted against the bill. Among them were Valentine B. Horton, of Ohio; Justin S. Morrill, of Vermont; Roscoe Conkliug, F. A. Colliding, and Theodore M. Pom- ero}% of New York; Albert G. Porter, of Indiana; Owen Lovejoy, of Illinois; William H. Wadsworth, of Kentucky; Benjamin F. Thomas, of Massachusetts, and Edward H. Rollins, of New Hampshire. Sen- ator Surnner, apt as he was to be ahead of his party on all questions affecting slavery, was even more reluctant than Secretary Chase to consent " to incur all the unquestionable evils of inconvertible paper, forced into circulation by act of Congress, to suffer the stain upon our national faith, to bear the stigma of a seeming repudiation, to lose for the present that credit which in itself is a treasury, and to teach debtors everywhere that contracts may be varied at the will of the stronger." The actual condition, however, compelled him to consent, " reluctant!}', painfully," but he declared that he could not " give such a vote without warning the Government against the dan- ger of such an experiment. The medicine of the Constitution must not become its daily bread." The vote in the Senate against the legal tender feature included Anthony, of Rhode Island; Collamer and Foot, of Vermont; Fessenden, of Maine; King, of New York; Cowan, of Pennsylvania; Foster, of Connecticut, and Willey, of Virginia. On the final passage three Republicans Collamer, Cowan, and King and four Democrats voted against the bill. The United States legal tender notes, popularly called the " green- backs," proved unexpectedly popular. Besides the issue of one hun- dred and fifty millions under the act of February 25, 1862, two other acts authorizing additional issues were passed July 11, 1862, and March 3, 1863, the entire amount of currency thus created reaching four hundred and fifty millions. Even this vast amount was after- ward increased, including Treasury notes under the act of March 3, 1863, and March 3 and June 3, 1864. The legal tenders, outstanding June 30, 1864, amounted to a total of $600,431,119, of which $780,990 were demand notes; $431,178,670 were legal tender notes proper, $15,- 000,000 were three-years' six per cent, compound (currency) interest- bearing notes; $44,520,000 were one-year five per cent, (currency) notes; and $108,951,450 were two-years' five per cent, (currency) notes. The public debt was $1,740,489 49. THE PUBLIC CREDIT. 263 It must be admitted that the immense issues of Treasury and legal tender notes increased the public debt more rapidly than would have been the case had it been possible to conduct the war on a coin basis, but on the other hand these extensive issues enabled the Government to " float " its bonds successfully, and kept the aggregate of the debt far below what it would have been if the notes of the banks had been used instead of this national currency. The legal tender feature was not only justified by political and military necessity, but it enabled the American people to pluck the flower, safety, from the nettle, dan- ger. Without it the Government notes w r ould have been no better than the notes of the suspended banks. Indeed, without it the banks would have rejected and discredited the " greenbacks," the large Democratic element hostile to the war would have combined to refuse them, and the national credit would have been utterly and hope- lessly ruined. It quickly proved not only a measure of relief for the Government, but the source of prosperity for the country in the midst of war. It secured prompt and ample supplies for the army and navy. It invigorated the industries of the people. It was a substitute for money that at the time performed all the functions of money. The depreciation as measured with gold w r as gradual, and in the main salaries and wages advanced with the advance in prices. The pre- mium on gold became only a name a symbol for speculators who gambled upon the fluctuations of the gold market. The state of the currency was not really measured by the fluctuations in gold, which rose and fell without any apparently adequate cause. Gold rose when there was no increase in the currency, and fell when it was increased by large additions. The price of gold was only a barometer of mili- tary success or failure from the standpoint of the gamblers of the Stock Exchange and the gold room. The premium in New York in 1862 rose from 3 per cent, on the 13th of January to 4f per cent, on the 13th of February; then it fell to 1$ per cent, on the 13th of March. Afterward there was a rise, but on the 13th of June it had reached only 5 per cent. On the 15th of July it was 17; on the 15th of Octo- ber 32|, and on the 31st of December 34. During the year 1863 the fluctuations were greater than in 1862, the premium rising and fall- ing with the w T ar bulletins. On the 25th of February gold had ad- vanced to 72, but upon the receipt of favorable news from the South- west it fell to 40 on the 26th of March. On the 2d of April it had risen to 58, but a favorable report of an attack on Fort Sumter brought it down to 461. The battle of Gettysburg and the surrender of Vicks- burg brought gold as low as 23^. The highest premium during the rest of the year was 56f. In 1864 the premium rose from 52 on the 2d of January to 88 on the 14th of April. It fell again to 67 on the 29th, 264 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. but on the 22d of June the passage of the Gold bill sent it up to 130, to be followed the next day by a fall of 15 points. When the resigna- tion of Secretary Chase was announced July 1, 1864, gold reached 185, but the next day it dropped to 130. After further fluctuations it had fallen to 87 on the 10th of September. It would be idle to look for any adequate cause for these wide divergences, and people paid no atten- tion to the premiums on gold, unless a stray " demand note " came to light to be turned into " greenbacks " at a great advance on its face value. The constitutionality of the legal tender issues had not yet become a practical question, just as the constitutionality of the income tax was held in abeyance. The history of the " greenbacks " shows how little practical value the principles of the economists have, for they made the prosecution of war possible and saved what the prophets of finance said they were fated to destroy. The creation of the National Banking system, although it was al- most co-ordinate with the extensive issues of legal tenders, was neither a war measure nor one that attained great political impor- tance, either during the War Period or the Period of reconstruction. The National banks were necessary to a national currency. The State banks, although no longer on a specie-paying basis, still retained and exercised the right of issuing circulating notes. At first they were hostile to any change, but the circulation of the legal tenders soon brought their notes into disfavor even in the localities where they were issued. In order to make a system of National banks possible it was necessary to tax the State banks out of existence. It is un- necessary in this place to follow the steps by which the new system was established. The central idea of the system was to establish a uniform circulation of equal value throughout the country upon the foundation of national credit combined with private capital. The banking associations were required to invest a fixed capital in United States bonds, and privileged to receive in return United States notes, to be employed in discounts and exchanges. The State banks were allowed to reorganize under the act. The measure was under discussion in Congress, and before the country previous to its becom- ing a law, June 3, 1864, for a longer period than any of the great financial or military measures of war times. The system not only proved successful in freeing the country from the objectionable State banks, but it was of great service to the Government in placing the national loans and funding the debt. It was not until 1867 that final judicial action was taken on the con- stitutionality of the Legal Tender Act by the Supreme Court of the United States. The decision was in the now famous case of Hepburn against Griswold. In 1860 Mrs. Hepburn made a promissory note by THE PUBLIC CREDIT. 265 which she was to pay to Henry Griswold, February 20, 1862, the sum of $11,250. The note not being paid at maturity, which was five days before the Legal Tender Act was approved, suit was brought in the Louisville Chancery Court, where Mrs. Hepburn, in 1864, tendered f 12,720 in United States legal tender notes in payment of Griswold's claim, principal and interest. The tender was not accepted, but the case was decided against him. This action was reversed by the Court of Errors of Kentucky, whereupon Mrs. Hepburn appealed to the Supreme Court of the United States. The case was argued at the De- cember Term, 1867, and elaborately reargued at the December Term, 1868. It had not yet been decided when President Grant took office, but the decision was announced at the December Term, 1869. By the decision the Legal Tender Act was declared unconstitutional. The opinion was read by Chief Justice Chase, Justices Harlan, Clifford, Grier, and Field concurring. Justice Miller read a dissenting opinion for himself and Justices Swayne and Davis. This was re- garded as a Democratic judgment, none of the Justices who swept away the law that had contributed so much to the perpetuity of the Republic being in sympathy with the Republican party. When the majority of the Court was Republican, as it soon became by the ap- pointment of Justices Strong and Bradley, the Supreme Court re- versed the decision in cases that, it was claimed, were governed by the judgment in Hepburn against Griswold. There was a great out- cry against this action by Democrats, who, only a short time before, were in favor of paying the interest on the national debt in legal ten- ders. Justice Bradley, especially, was subjected to the most virulent abuse. The controversy was an unfortunate one, not so much because the question was decided both ways, as because it was decided at all. Equity required that Mrs. Hepburn should pay her indebtedness in coin, and the interests of the country required that in the near future there should be a return to coin payments. But if Griswold had been compelled to accept " greenbacks " his case would not have been harder than that of thousands of men who went into debt on a cur- rency basis and were compelled to pay on a gold basis. If the neces- sity to resort to legal tender notes should present itself in the future to save the life of the nation, these conflicting decisions w r ould stand in the way of a remedy that proved vastly beneficial only to be doubly dishonored. The equities involved in the conflicting decisions of the Supreme Court in regard to the constitutionality of the Legal Tender Acts was applicable with even greater force to the payment of the national debt at the beginning of President Grant's administration. The two parties were diametrically opposed to each other on this question 266 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. when the President sent his first annual message to Congress in De- cember, 1869. The Republicans stood on the firm ground that pay- ment of Government obligations should be in coin, unless payment in paper money had been previously agreed upon; the Democrats in- sisted that all such obligations might be paid in paper, unless pay- ment in coin had been previously agreed upon. In his message the President expressed the belief " that immediate resumption, even if practicable, would not be desirable," but he said that " a return to a specie basis should be commenced immediately." All this time Hor- ace Greeley was asserting his famous epigram that the way to resume was to resume. As a matter of fact, resumption was not a question of will, but of ability. Before there could be resumption it was neces- sary that the national debt should be refunded at a lower rate of in- terest than was carried on the face of the various issues of United States bonds. This neither of Chase's successors at the head of the Treasury had been able to accomplish. Both Mr. Fessenden and Mr. McCulloch were more concerned with raising money to meet pressing obligations than with reducing the rates of interest that enabled them to find takers of their bonds. Mr. Fessenden soon withdrew from a position for which his temperament scarcely fitted him. Mr. McCulloch had been in office only a short time when President Lin- coln was assassinated. Under President Johnson he was weakened by the odium that attached to a hated Administration. But he was a careful, methodical man, and a sound financier. As early as the au- tumn of 1865 he was looking forward to the time when the irredeem- able paper money of the Government might be made convertible. " The present inconvertible currency of the United States," he said in a speech in Indiana at that time, " was a necessity of the war; but now that the war has ceased, and the Government ought not to be longer a borroAver, this currency should be brought up to the specie standard, and I see no way of doing this but by withdrawing a por- tion of it from circulation." He secured the withdrawal and cancel- lation of nearly fifty millions of legal tender notes under the act of 1866, but in the main Mr. McCulloch's energies, apart from the routine work of the Department, were directed toward funding the immense temporary obligations of the Government. His administration of the Treasury was highly creditable, especially when his environment is considered, and he turned over the Department to his successor, Mr. Boutwell, with a reputation that again brought him back to it in later years, under an administration that had none of the antago- nisms that made his work so difficult from 1865 to 1869. The appoint- ment of George S. Boutwell as Secretary of the Treasury under Presi- dent Grant was not favorably regarded by business men. He was THE PUBLIC CREDIT. 267 known as an active partisan in Congress, and was supposed to be narrow in his views of finance and limited in financial knowledge. Grant's choice for the place had been a man eminent for business suc- cess Alexander T. Stewart, the millionaire merchant of New York. As an importer Stewart was ineligible under the laws, and the nomi- nation was withdrawn very reluctantly by the President and to the great disappointment of the ambitious merchant. Grant, accustomed to military methods, wanted Congress to make Stewart eligible by joint resolution, but Congress declined to make a precedent by oblig- ing the soldier President. Mr. Boutwell was not a great financier, but neither was he narrow or ignorant, and his management of the Treasury was careful and creditable. The gradual retirement of the legal tenders, the reduction of taxation, and the funding of the na- tional debt in bonds, with interest not to exceed four and a half per cent., were the tasks that Secretary Boutwell set for himself. Con- gress responded with the necessary legislation, and under the acts of July 14, 1870, and January 20, 1871, authority was given for the issue of 1500,000,000 in bonds at five per cent., payable in ten years, $300,- 000,000 at four and a half per cent., payable in fifteen years, and 11,000,000,000 at four per cent., payable in thirty years all to be pay- able in coin and exempt from taxation, and to be issued without any increase of the national debt. The contemplated funding operations were delayed by the war between France and Germany, and in 1871, when confidence was partly restored, it was found possible to dispose of the five per cents only. One of the causes that impeded funding the national debt in low in- terest-bearing bonds at that time was the existence of so many finan- cial vagaries in the public mind. The exemption of the bonds from taxation and their payment in coin had been so stubbornly resisted in Congress that capitalists held aloof, uncertain of the future. With gold at 110 and constant exportations of bullion, with the balance of trade against us and production almost at a standstill, with the national banks weakened by prejudice and opposition; with the cur- rency deranged by the demand for the increased issue of fiat money, on the one hand, and the destruction of the legal tender quality of the greenbacks on the other, and with resumption forced so far into the future as to seem only a dream, it was not only impossible that Mr. Boutwell should succeed in funding the debt, but there were por- tents that distrust would be followed by disaster. These culminated in the panic of 1873. The monetary panic of 1873 was the beginning of reaction. The crisis was due to some extent to the contraction of the currency, in consequence of the retirement of legal tenders, and the rapid payment 268 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. of the public debt. Its chief causes, however, were speculation and overtrading, and the losses involved in the transition from inflation toward resumption and a sound currency. The financial heresies of the Democratic platform of 1808, and the greenback craze, that finally resulted in the organization of the Greenback party, were con- tributing causes. Business men especially in the West and South- west believed that an increased circulation of notes would relieve the depression that followed the monetary crisis. Even President Grant was disposed to regard renewed inflation as a remedy. " In view of the great actual contraction that has taken place in the cur- rency,-' he said in his annual message in December, 1873, " and the comparative contraction continuously going on, due to the increase of manufactures and all the industries, I do not believe there is too much of it now for the dullest period of the year. Indeed, if clearing- houses should be established, thus forcing redemption, it is a question for your consideration whether banking should not be made free, re- taining all the safeguards now required to secure billholders." Many of the Republican Senators and Representatives shared in the views of the President, and the Finance Committee of the Senate reported a bill fixing the maximum limit of United States notes at f 382,000,000. This was afterward increased to |400,000,000, which was $44,000,000 above the amount of legal tender notes then in circulation. More than this, the Senate went so far as to refuse to allow a clause for future reduction. An enlargement of the circulation of the National banks was made at the same time. The House w r as not in entire accord with the Senate, but the differences were in matters of detail only, and the Senate bill was agreed to by both Houses without any radical changes in its provisions. In the mean time, however, the President had re- ceded from his own recommendations, and he vetoed the bill. In con- sequence of the veto Congress failed to pass any measure of relief. This led to so much dissatisfaction that a Democratic House of Repre- sentatives was chosen in 1874, for the first time since 1862. The de- feat was a warning that was not allowed to go unheeded, and an act to provide for the resumption of specie payments was passed before the adjournment of the 43d Congress. The Resumption Act of 1875 was the basis upon which the return to specie payments was finally achieved. " Nearly ten years had elapsed since the w r ar closed," says Mr. Elaine in his " Twenty Years of Congress," " and although the subject was one which constantly engaged the attention of financiers and to a large extent enlisted the interest of the public, it had never been framed into a practical legislative measure. It had now been accom- plished, as might well be said, in a day. The pressure upon the Repub- THE PUBLIC CREDIT. 269 licans, caused by the Democratic victory of the preceding autumn, was very great. The Democratic Senators and Representatives, though recording themselves unanimously in opposition to the measure, were not willing to risk its defeat by the parliamentary strategy of delay, as they might easily have done. Their party leaders had no faith in the measure, but they knew how troublesome was the subject; they knew that it had proved the stumbling-block in the Re- publican policy for years, and they were more than willing that it should be taken out of the way on the eve of their accession to the control of the House of Representatives. If the act should prove to be successful their hostility to it might be forgotten, and they could well arraign their opponents for so long neglecting to enact it. If, on the other hand, it should prove unsuccessful, it would remain a standing reproach to the financial policy of the Republican party. Benefits, as they well knew, are soon forgotten, while injuries are tenaciously remembered; and this they believed was as true of parties as of persons. In short, as the leaders of the Democracy viewed it, the Resumption Act, passed over their combined vote, could do them no harm, while the chances were that it would inure to their advan- tage." Closely allied with the Resumption Act, as it turned out when the time came for resumption, January 1, 1879, was the Coinage Act of 1873. This was the measure that many years afterward became so conspicuous in party politics as " the crime of 1873." The act omitted the standard silver dollar from the coinage of the United States. The silver coins authorized in this act w r ere: the " trade dollar," the half- dollar, quarter dollar, and dime. The weight of the " trade dollar " was fixed at 420 grains troy; of the half-dollar at twelve and one-half grammes; of the quarter dollar at six and one-fourth grammes, and of the dime at one-fifth of the half-dollar. The standard for both gold and silver coins was not changed, except that the allo3 r for the gold coin might be wholly of copper, or have one-tenth part of it silver. The weight of the gold coins was fixed at 510 grains for the double eagle, 258 grains for the eagle, 129 grains for the half- eagle, seventy-seven and four-tenths for the three-dollar piece, sixty-four and one-half grains for the quarter-eagle, and twenty-five and eight-tenths for the gold dollar. These gold and silver coins, and none other, were thereafter to be issued; and except the " trade dollar " and silver for the sum of five dollars, gold was the only coinage that had a legal tender quality affixed to it by law, under this act. By the joint resolution, approved July 22, 1876, the legal tender quality of the "trade dollar" was abolished, and the Secretary of the Treasury was authorized to limit its coinage 270 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY " to such an amount as he may deem sufficient to meet the export demand for the same." With resumption the question arose as to the meaning of the word " coin " in the Resumption Act of 1875. Did it mean gold and silver, or gold only? It was found that demonetization had been accom- plished by the omission of the standard silver dollar from the coinage of the United States. The omission had attracted no attention and had met with no opposition. When the legal tender quality of the " trade dollar " was withdrawn in 1876, silver, as a standard of value, disappeared from the coinage. After that remonetization became an issue, as will be found in the subsequent chapters of this work. III. DIPLOMATIC RELATIONS OF THE UNITED STATES. Unfriendliness of Europe During the Civil War England's Hostility The Trent Affair English and French Neutrality Mr. Day- ton's Indignant Protest Recognition of the Southern Confed- eracy Ocean Belligerency Failure of the Johnson-Clarendon Treaty President Grant's Recommendations Hamilton Fish The Joint High Commission Treaty of Washington Settlement of Pending Difficulties with Great Britain Purchase of Alaska Opposition to the Treaty in the House The United States and Russia Treaty for the Annexation of San Domingo Mr. Sum- ner's Hostility to the Treaty Sumner and Grant Reactionary Influences of the Period. HE diplomatic relations of the United States were skillfully managed by Secretary Seward during the long period be- tween the inauguration of President Lincoln and the retire- ment of President Johnson. As a result of the Civil War many delicate and dangerous controversies had arisen with powers hostile to the Union, especially Great Britain and France. Without provocation of any kind Lord John Russell exhibited an unfriendly spirit toward the incoming Administration even before Mr. Lincoln took office. The cause of his haste was, no doubt, the supposed foreign policy of Mr. Seward for averting the war. There is no other possible explanation of Lord John's threats, when he undertook to " warn a government which was making political capital out of blustering demonstrations, that our patience might be tried too far." The gov- ernment of which he spoke so hotly had not yet an existence. This spirit entered into all the diplomatic relations of Great Britain and the United States at that time. So eager was Her Majesty's Govern- ment for a dissolution of the Union that it did not w r ait for the arrival of Charles Francis Adams, the new American Minister, in England before issuing a proclamation recognizing the belligerency of the confederated Southern States. At the same time Lord John Russell concerted measures looking to virtual intervention with France, and actual negotiations were conducted with the Confederate Government during the summer of 1861. France recognized the Southern Con- federacy with a like precipitation, and in all these transactions acted as an ally of Great Britain. 272 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. No opportunity was presented for Great Britain to be dangerously arrogant and aggressive until the affair of the " Trent " occurred, near the close of 1801. On the 9th of November, Captain Wilkes, of the United States steamer " San Jacinto," seized the persons of James M. Mason and John Slidell, Ministers from the Southern Confederacy to Great Britain and France, respectively, on board the British mail steamer " Trent," from Havana to Kingston. The manner of the de- mand for the surrender of these rebel commissioners was as peremp- tory and offensive as it was possible to make it. Mr. Seward made the surrender and virtually the required apology. The Secretary of State placed the surrender on the ground that Captain Wilkes had not brought the " Trent " into a Prize Court and submitted the whole question to a judicial examination. It was afterward contended, notably by Senator Sumner, that we could not have refused to sur- render Mason and Slide! 1 without trampling on our own principles and in disregard of the precedents we had sought to establish. This was a sounder legal view than the ground taken by Mr. Seward, but it was the manner of the demand rather than the demand itself that sank deep into the hearts of the American people, and renewed the old feeling of hostility to England that nearly forty years have not been able entirely to eradicate. America never has forgotten and never can forget that Great Britain was preparing to go to war w r ith us not to right a wrong done to her sovereignty, but to divide the Union. The neutrality of Great Britain and Prance the malignant neu- trality, as it has been fitly called left many questions for settlement after the war that w r ere necessarily kept in abeyance while the war lasted. In according ocean belligerency to the Confederate States these great pow r ers were guilty of a crime against an independent nation. The character of this neutrality was vigorously described in the indignant protest of Minister Dayton, when the Confederate steamer " Georgia " received a hospitable welcome at Brest. " The 1 Georgia,' " Mr. Dayton said, " like the ' Florida,' the ' Alabama,' and other scourges of peaceful commerce, was born of that unhappy de- cree which gave the rebels, who did not own a ship-of-war or com- mand a single port, the right of an ocean belligerent. Thus encour- aged by foreign powers, they began to build and fit out in neutral ports a class of vessels constructed mainly for speed, and whose ac- knowledged mission is not to fight, but to rob, to burn, and to fly. Although the smoke of burning ships has everywhere marked the track of the ' Georgia ' and the ' Florida ' upon the ocean, they have never sought a foe or fired a gun against an armed enemy. To dignify such vessels with the name of ships-of-war seems to me, with defer- DIPLOMATIC RELATIONS OF THE UNITED STATES. 273 euce, a misnomer. Whatever flag may fly from their masthead, or whatever power may claim to own them, their conduct stamps them as piratical. If vessels of war, even, they would by this conduct have justly forfeited all courtesies in the ports of neutral nations. Manned by foreign seamen, armed by foreign guns, entering no home port, and waiting no judicial condemnation of prizes, they have already- devastated and destroyed our commerce to an extent, as compared with their number, beyond anything known in the records of pri- vateering." When the question of recognizing the Southern Confederacy was before Parliament, William E. Gladstone, who was forgiven for un- kindness by America before he died, w r as Chancellor of the Ex- chequer. He opposed recognition, but not on grounds calculated to endear him to the American people. He told the House that " the main result of the American contest is not, humanely speaking, in any degree doubtful." He thought " there never was a war of more destructive, more deplorable, more hopeless character." The contest, in his judgment, was " a miserable one." " We do not," said he, " be- lieve that the restoration of the American Union by force is attain- able. I believe that the public opinion of this country is unanimous upon that subject. It is not, therefore, from indifference, it is not from any belief that this war is waged for any adequate or worthy object on the part of the North, that I would venture to deprecate in the strongest terms the adoption of the motion of the honorable and learned gentleman." The " honorable and learned gentleman " was Mr. Roebuck, who, in a debate in the House of Commons in 1864, de- clared that " the whole proceedings in this American war are a blot upon human nature; and when I am told that I should have sym- pathy for the Northern States of America, I turn in absolute disgust from their hypocrisy. If there is a sink of political iniquity, it is at Washington. They are corrupt; they are base; they are cowardly; they are cruel." It was not until the eve of President Grant's inauguration that the wrongs resulting from the unfriendly course of Great Britain were put in train for settlement. Mr. Adams had proposed a friendly arbi- tration of the Alabama claims to Earl Russell under instructions from Secretary Seward, but the proposal was flatly and peremptorily declined on the part of the British Government. Later Lord Stanley, afterward Earl Derby, who succeeded Earl Russell in the Foreign Office, as flatly and peremptorily refused a second proposal of like character. When Reverdy Johnson succeeded Mr. Adams as Minister to England in 1868, a third and more successful effort was made. Mr. Gladstone had succeeded Mr. Disraeli as Prime Minister, and Lord Clarendon was Foreign Secretary instead of Lord Stanley. With 274 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. Lord Clarendon Mr. Johnson negotiated a treaty, but when the terms of this instrument were known it was found the American had been completely outwitted by the Englishman. Mr. Johnson's success con- sisted wholly in negotiating a treaty, such as it was. This treaty left the great injury done to the United States as a nation by Great Britain during the war entirely out of the case, and put the matter upon the basis of a mere claims convention. It was promptly re- jected. " The truth must be told not in anger, but in sadness," said Mr. Sumner, in reporting the treaty to the Senate. " England has done to the United States an injury most difficult to measure. Con- sidering when it was done and in what complicity, it is most unac- countable. At a great epoch of history, not less momentous than that of the French Revolution or that of the Reformation, when civilization was fighting a last battle w T ith slavery, England gave her influence, her material resources, to the wicked cause, and flung a sword into the scale with slavery." The Johnson-Clarendon treaty was rejected a few weeks after President Grant became the Chief Executive. The rejection left our relations with Great Britain at the beginning of Grant's administra- tion where they were before. In his first annual message, in Decem- ber, 1809, the President spoke of the failure of the treaty and the reason for its rejection. The message committed the Government of the United States to the maintenance of a claim for National damages as well as for individual losses. Grant had the great virtue of pa- tience. He patiently waited, a year, but nothing was done. It was evident that nothing would be done unless England was compelled to act by a pressure that could not easily be evaded. The President's second annual message in December, 1870, applied the pressure. The President said that " the Cabinet at London does not appear willing to concede that her Majesty's Government was guilty of any negli- gence, or did or permitted any act of which the United States has just cause of complaint "; and reasserted that " our firm and unalterable convictions, are directly the reverse." In view of all this he asked that Congress should " authorize the appointment of a commission to take proof of the amounts and the ownership of these several claims, on notice to the representative of her Majesty at Washington, and that authority be given for the settlement of these claims by the United States, so that the Government shall have the ownership of the pri- vate claims as well as the responsible control of all the demands against Great Britain." It was evident from this proposition that the Administration in- tended to press the matter as a grave international question. It in- dicated not only a distinct and vigorous diplomatic policy, but a DIPLOMATIC RELATIONS OF THE UNITED STATES. 275 policy iii accord with the impulses and traditions of the Republican party. The credit of it has always been attributed jointly to the President and the Secretary of State. It certainly partook of the characteristics of both. In its simplicity, directness, and vigor it reveals the soldier. In its guarded effectiveness it was the work of a trained statesman. From that time until the end was reached through the Treaty of Washington the negotiations were guided by the skillful hand of Hamilton Fish. Mr. Fish was not in President Grant's Cabinet as it was originally announced. When Grant took office the State Department was given to E. B. Washburne. It was understood, however, that Mr. Wash- burne would soon retire to accept the French Mission. This arrange- ment was carried out, and Mr. Fish became Secretary of State. This selection was the most surprising of all of Grant's appointments, but it turned out to be the most fortunate. As a young man Mr. Fish had been prominent in New York politics. After serving in the New York Legislature, he was a member of Con- gress, 1843-5. He became Governor of New York in 1849, and a Senator in Congress in 1851. For more than ten years he had taken no active part in politics. Although only sixty j-ears of age, the politicians thought him su- perannuated. But he brought to the Depart- ment the peculiar gifts that were needed for its successful administration, especially at that time. He was a man of high character for probity and honor, of fine culture, exten- sive acquirements, and distinguished family. It was soon found that he had kept fully abreast with the times in the knowledge of the for- eign relations of the United States, and was in all respects the equal of any of his predecessors as a Foreign Secretary. His great wealth and recognized social position enabled him, aided by his accomplished wife, to dispense an unostentatious but generous and elegant hos- pitality, that gave character to his diplomacy and the Administra- tion. For once the croakers made a mistake when they complained of the selection of Hamilton Fish for the first place in Grant's Cabinet. President Grant's message made a profound impression in London. The situation in Europe was such that the course he proposed became exceedingly embarrassing for Great Britain. The Franco-Prussian war had rendered the relations of the Great Powers uncertain, if not threatening. In a war between England and Russia the traditional 276 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. friendship between the great empire of the East and the great repub- lic of the West would count for much a neutrality like that to which Great Britain had subjected the United States would count for more. British commerce could be swept from the seas by armed vessels that escaped from American ports after the manner of the escape of the " Alabama " and other Confederate vessels from British ports during our Civil War. Under the circumstances, immediate war with the United States would have been preferable to the American policy that meant a menace for Great Britain in the hour of danger. It was now Great Britain's turn to become eager for a settlement, because the United States showed their purpose to gather in the outstanding claims, post their books, and wait! A Washington correspondent, when asked who created the Joint High Commission and the Geneva Tribunal, said: u Morton, Rose & Co. for Great Britain, and Morton, Bliss & Co. for the United States." The initiative was taken by Sir John Rose, the London partner of Levi P. Morton, the New York banker, afterward Vice-President of the United States. The result of Sir John's visit to Washington was a letter from Sir Edward Thornton, the British Minister, to Secretary Fish, January 26, 1871, communicating instructions from Lord Gran- ville in regard to a better adjustment of the fishery question and all other matters affecting the relations of the United States to the British North American possessions. Sir Edward was authorized by his Government to propose the creation of a Joint High Commis- sion, the members to be named by each Government, w r hich should meet in Washington, and discuss the question of the fisheries and the relations of the United States to Her Majesty's possessions in North America. The tone of his answer shows that the proposal was not a surprise to Mr. Fish. He said in reply that " in the opinion of the President the removal of differences which arose during the rebellion in the United States, and which had existed since then, growing out of the acts committed by several vessels, which have given rise to the claims generally known as the Alabama Claims, will also be essential to the restoration of cordial and amicable relations between the two Governments." The Treaty of Washington was remarkable for the celerity with which it was negotiated. Sir Edward Thornton only waited long enough to hear from Lord Granville by cable before sending his an- swer to Secretary Fish. Within two months after President Grant's message went to Congress the preliminary steps w T ere taken, and the Joint High Commission appointed. The Commissioners on behalf of Great Britain were the Earl de Grey and Ripon, president of the DIPLOMATIC RELATIONS OF THE UNITED STATES. 277 Queen's Council; Sir Stafford Northcote, late Chancellor of the Ex- chequer; Sir Edward Thornton, British Minister at Washington; Sir John Maedouald, Premier of the Dominion of Canada, and Montague Bernard, professor of international law in the University of Oxford. On the part of the United States they were Hamilton Fish, Secre- tary of State; Kobert C. Schenck, who had just been appointed Min- ister to Great Britain; Samuel Nelson, Justice of the Supreme Court; E. Kockwood Hoar, late Attorney-General, and George H. Williams, late Senator of the United States from Oregon. The secretaries were Lord Tenterden, Under-Secretary of the British Foreign Office, and J. C. Bancroft Davis, Assistant Secretary of State of the United States. The British Commissioners arrived in Washington before the close of February, 1871, and the Treaty was concluded on the 8th day of May. This was something unprecedented in British diplomacy. The treaty took cognizance of four questions at issue between the two countries, and it was agreed that the Alabama Claims should be ad- justed at Geneva, Switzerland, by arbitration; that all other claims for damages sustained by citizens of the United States and subjects of Great Britain, between 1801 and 1865, should be determined by a commission to meet at Washington; that the San Juan dispute should be referred to the Emperor of Germany as umpire, and that the ques- tion in regard to the fisheries should be settled by a commission to meet at Halifax, Nova Scotia. The Geneva award was for |15,500,000, an amount, as it was afterward ascertained, that was in excess of the actual damages sustained by citizens of the United States in conse- quence of the depredations of the rebel cruiser. All the other ques- tions in dispute were settled to the satisfaction of both countries. But the greatest triumph of Mr. Fish's diplomacy, and the one that gives him a high place as a statesman, was the agreement upon the three rules of international law T by which, as neutrals, the two countries were to be bound in time of war. These rules were: " First, to use due diligence to prevent the fitting out, arming, or equipping, within its jurisdiction, of any vessel which it has reasonable ground to believe is intended to cruise or to carry on war against a power with which it is at peace ; and also to use like diligence to prevent the departure from its jurisdiction of any vessel intended to cruise or carry on war as above, such vessel having been specially adapted, in whole or in part, within such jurisdiction, to warlike use. " Secondly, not to permit or suffer either belligerant to make use of its ports or waters as the base of naval operations against the other, or for the purpose of the renewal or augmentation of military supplies or arms, or the recruitment of men. " Thirdly, to exercise due diligence in its own ports and waters, and, as to all persons within its jurisdiction, to prevent any violation of the foregoing obligations and duties." While Mr. Fish's diplomacy was more successful in dealing with Great Britain than the effort of Mr. Seward, the purchase of Alaska 278 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. by President Johnson's Administration succeeded, but President Grant's negotiations for the acquisition of San Domingo failed. The purchase of Alaska from Russia was effected by the treaty of March 30, 1867, and completed by the appropriation of the purchase money, $7,200,000 in gold, July 27, 1868. If it had not been for the tradi- tional friendship of Kussia for the United States this purchase would have failed, even after it w r as made. The American people had no appreciation of the real value of the territory ceded to them it was only a " lump of ice," and the popular branch of Congress was no better informed. In the Senate the opposition was not so marked, and the treaty w r as ratified with comparatively little difficulty. In the House many leading Republicans opposed the appropriation. C. C. Washburu, of Wisconsin, took the lead in opposition. He said of the treaty that nobody asked for it; that it was secretly negotiated so that the opposition to it could not be heard; that we were to be put to never-ending expense in governing a nation of savages, and that the country was absolutely without value. General Butler thought that if we were to pay for the friendship of Russia it would be cheaper to give the Czar the cash and let him keep Alaska. The men who knew the least about the Territory were the most pronounced in de- claring it to be entirely worthless. Mr. Peters, of Maine, said it was "intrinsically valueless"; Mr. Price, of Iowa, Mr. Shellabarger, of Ohio, and Mr. McCarthy, of New T York, were among those who argued against the purchase. In its favor were Mr. Stevens and Mr. L. Myers, of Pennsylvania; Mr. Spalding, of Ohio, and Mr. Higby, of California. The principal champion of the measure in the House was General Banks, chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs. His speech was very able, and in regard to the friendship of Russia for the United States exceedingly interesting. " In the darkest hour of our peril during the rebellion," he said, " when we were enacting a history which no man yet thoroughly comprehends, when France and England were contemplating the recognition of the Confederacy, the whole world was thrilled by the appearance in San Francisco of a fleet of Russian war vessels, and nearly at the same time, whether by accident or design, a second Rus- sian fleet appeared in the harbor of New York. Who knew how many more there w r ere on their voyage here? From that hour France, on one hand, and England, on the other, receded, and the American Government regained its position and its power. . . . Now, shall we flout the Russian Government in every court in Europe for her friendship? Whoever of the Representatives of the American people in this House, on this question, turns his back, not only upon his duty, but upon the friends of his country, upon the Constitution of his DIPLOMATIC RELATIONS OF THE UNITED STATES. 279 Government, and the honor of his generation, can not long remain in power." An effort was made by the House to share in the treaty-making power of the Senate, but a compromise was effected in conference, and the necessary appropriation was made. Mr. Seward was less for- tunate in his attempted purchase of the Danish Island of St. Thomas, in the West Indies, but President Grant's effort to acquire San Do- mingo, in 1870, met with even more marked disfavor. The reasons for the acquisition of the Dominican Republic were very strong, but they were not understood by Congress or the country. The circum- stances attending the negotiations were not fortunate. The agent sent to San Domingo by the President was General O. E. Babcock, who had been a member of General Grant's staff during the war. It did not appear that he had been authorized by the State Department to negotiate a treaty, but he came back with not only a convention for the lease of the bay and peninsula of Samana, but with a treaty of annexation. When the treaty was sent to the Senate it was soon developed that some of the leading Senators were not only opposed to the scheme, but ready to antagonize the President. This was especially the case with Senator Sumner, who was offended because, as Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations, he had not been consulted in the negotiations. He opposed its ratification with great bitterness, in a speech unworthy of the orator, and needlessly hostile to the President. In his arraignment of the Administration he went out of his way to beseech the Vice-President " as a friend of General Grant to counsel him not to follow the examples of Franklin Pierce, of James Buchanan, and of Andrew Johnson." " The negotiation for annexation," Sumner said, u began with a political jockey named Buenaventura Baez; and he had about him two other political jockeys, Casneau and Fabens. These three to- gether, a precious co-partnership, seduced into their firm a young- officer of ours, who entitles himself aide-de-camp to the President of the United States. Together they got up what was entitled a pro- tocol, in which the young officer, entitling himself aide-de-camp to the President, proceeded to make certain promises for the President. I desire to say that there is not one word showing that at the time this aide-de-camp, as he called himself, had any title or instruction to take this step. If he has, that title and that instruction have been withheld. No inquiry had been able to penetrate it. ... I ask you " (addressing the Vice-President), " do you know any such officer in our Government as * aide-de-camp ' to His Excellency the President of the United States? Does his name appear in the Constitution, in any statute, in the history of this country anywhere? If it does, then 280 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. your information is much beyond mine. . . . However, he as- sumed his title, and it doubtless produced a great effect with Baez, Casneau, and Fabens, the three confederates. They were doubtless pleased with the distinction. It helped on the plan they were en- gineering. The young aide-de-camp pledged the President as follows: ' His Excellency, General Grant, President of the United States, promises privately to use all his influence in order that the idea of annexing the Dominican Republic to the United States may acquire such a degree of popularity among members of Congress as will be necessary for its accomplishment.' Shall I read the rest of the docu- ment? It is somewhat of the same tenor. There are questions of money in it, cash down, all of which must have been particularly agreeable to the three confederates." The speech led to a complete break in the personal relations of these two great men, and it was not long until Sumner was as vigor- ously opposing Grant's Administration as he had opposed the policy of Andrew Johnson. As a result of the quarrel Sumner was dropped from the chairmanship of the Committee on Foreign Relations, and General Cameron was given the place. Sumner's friends charged this indignity, as they chose to regard it, to Grant, but as the Senator was no longer in sympathy with the majority in the Senate, or with the Republican party, he had no just cause for complaint. Forbearance with Sumner would have been a heroic virtue, for it was one in which he never indulged himself toward others. As a matter of fact, Sum- ner never was a Republican in the party sense, and his deposition was not a wrong on the part of the Republican majority in the Senate to a party associate. It was not true, as Mr. Elaine afterward as- serted, that the action of the Senate was in effect notice to the whole world that Mr. Sumner was to have no further connection with a great international question, the relations of Britain and the United States, to which he had given more attention than any other person connected with the Government. Mr. Edmunds was nearer the true ground when he declared that the question was " whether the Senate of the United States and the Republican party are quite ready to sacrifice their sense of duty to the whims of one single man, whether he comes from New England, or from Missouri, or from Illinois, or from anywhere else." Mr. Sumner, on his part, was not so magnani- mous toward Mr. Blaine, for when Blaine charged him at a later period with being recreant to the party, he retorted that " with so many others devoted to the cause I have always served I had not missed you until you reported your absence." The San Domingo treaty was beaten in the Senate by a tie vote 28 to 28 but President Grant, with characteristic tenacity, clung to a DIPLOMATIC RELATIONS OF THE UNITED STATES. 281 hope of its final success. He discussed the question in his annual mes- sage in December, 1870, and asked that " by joint resolution of the two Houses of Congress, the Executive be authorized to appoint a com- mission to negotiate a treaty with the authorities of San Domingo for the acquisition of that island, and that an appropriation be made to defray the expenses of such commission." All that he could obtain was the appointment of commissioners to proceed to San Domingo to make inquiries into the political condition of the island and its agricultural and commercial value. The Commissioners were Ben- jamin F. Wade, of Ohio; Andrew D. White, of New York, and Samuel O. Howe, of Massachusetts, all men of high character. They reported in favor of the policy recommended by the President, but without re- sult. President Grant regarded the report as a vindication of the attempt to secure the annexation of the Dominican Republic, and he never ceased to regret the failure of the scheme. Twenty-eight years later the war with Spain demonstrated the wisdom of his policy. " If Simmer's conduct in the San Domingo business failed to please the Administration," wrote one of the biographers of the Massachu- setts Senator, " it did not fail to please the Republic of Hayti, who, grateful to the defender of her independence, presented him with a gold medal in token of her sense of the generous service rendered to her as a black nation." The medal, now deposited in the Massachusetts State Library, is not a token of any real service to the Republic of Hayti, the inde- pendence of which was not threatened, but of the conflict between the ideas of the man of action and the inaction of the man of ideas. Events have shown that the foresight of the soldier was truer than the wisdom of the statesman. San Domingo would have been bene- fited directly, and Hayti indirectly, by annexation in 1870. The United States would not only have gained great material advantages from the development of San Domingo, but we would have had a base of inestimable value in the operations against Spain in 1898. Grant's policy not only exhibited the foresight of the soldier, but the wisdom of the statesman. We can now see that the President's words in his last annual message have been justified by events. " If my views had been concurred in," he said, " the country would be in a more pros- perous condition to-day both politically and financially. ... I do not present these views now as a recommendation for a renewal of the subject of annexation, but I do refer to it to vindicate my previous action in regard to it." It was an unfortunate circumstance in connection with the San Domingo annexation scheme that General Babcock, by whom the treaty was negotiated, was afterward compromised by the friends of 282 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. the notorious " Whisky King." Mr. Suinner had created the im- pression that there was a job in the treaty in which Babcock was interested. The smirching that Babcock's reputation received in 1875 seemed to confirm Suniner's allegation, and thus the President was made to share in the suspicions that attached to the original negotiations. These circumstances were at the bottom of the Presi- dent's justification of himself in his last message to Congress. While it must be admitted that the diplomacy of Grant's admin- istration failed through the opposition of Republicans in the Senate, except in the settlement of our long pending differences with Great Britain, the failure leaves no reproach for the soldier President. It was due to the narrowness of a few men who were hostile to Grant, as they had been hostile to Lincoln, and to the readiness with which the country forgot the isolation and dangers of the Civil War. We forgot that the malignant neutrality of England and France while the war lasted meant enmity to the Union. We forgot that by the aid and intervention of France a neighboring Republic had been subverted and an empire established on our Southern borders. We forgot that all the States of Europe, with the exception of Russia, were unfriendly to us in the hour of trial, and at heart were unfriendly to us still. We allo\ved ourselves to become so absorbed in the work of restora- tion that we neglected safety in the future because it involved the fanciful dangers of extension. We cried out against the alleged per- sonalism and one-man power of Grant's administration, and built a sea-wall of prejudice against our destiny as a nation. All this was inevitable, perhaps. Reaction was the natural consequence of reconstruction and restoration. The reaction set in early in Grant's first term, and we shall find it the most potent force in opposition to his re-election. This reactionary spirit was most seriously felt in retarding the progress and prosperity of the South, but its aims and purposes were most clearly exhibited in the Liberal Republican move- ment of 1872. IV. THE SOUTH FIRST DECADE AFTER THE WAR. Georgia Repudiates the Fifteenth Amendment Consequent Action of Congress Outrages in the South Origin of the Ku-Klux Klau Mr. Cox on the Ku-Klux Strength of the Organization Ku-Klux Outrages in North Carolina Condition of South Caro- lina Disorders in Georgia and Alabama Outrages in Missis- sippi Condition of the South in 1874 The Carpet-baggers- Judge Black on Carpet-bag Government His Impeachment De- nied Responsibility of the Democratic Party Legislation of Congress General Amnesty and Civil Rights A Democratic Recognition of Organized Intimidation and Terrorism. [HE South accepted all the amendments, including the Fif- teenth, and then treated them as without force or effect. Georgia was the first State to show open defiance of the measures of Reconstruction. While her Senators and Rep- resentatives were waiting for formal leave to take their seats in the 41st Congress, the Legislature which had complied with the condi- tions that rendered their return possible, decided that colored men were not entitled to serve as legislators, or to hold office in that State. The blacks were accordingly expelled from the Legislature, while white men who were ineligible under the Fourteenth Amendment were allowed to remain. The Fifteenth Amendment was then re- jected. Congress passed an act declaring the Legislature thus consti- tuted illegal, and, in order to make the measure effective, Georgia was required to ratify the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution before the Senators and Representatives w r ould be admitted to Con- gress. To meet these requirements, the Legislature, as originally constituted, was reassembled, and the amendment was finally rati- fied, February 2, 1870. Although reconstruction was complete, restoration was still far in the future. Everywhere in the South the right of the negro to vote was resisted and denied. So bitter was the hostility to impartial suf- frage that a number of organizations was formed for the purpose of depriving the negro of the rights conferred on him by the Constitu- tion and law r s of the States and the United States. The most note- worthy of these was known as the Ku-Klux-Klan. It was made up in part of returned Confederate soldiers, and in part of very young 284 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. men, who had reached early manhood after the war. These young desperadoes were armed as freebooters. They rode by night and w r ore disguises. Negroes and white Republicans were their victims. The laws were openly and even ostentatiously defied. They hesitated at no cruelty were deterred by no considerations of humanity. Ter- rorism became the general condition throughout the South. The outrages included nearly every crime in the criminal code, from the mere beating of black men to arson and murder. Wholesale mas- sacres were not uncommon. Arrest and punishment for these wrongs were rendered difficult and almost impossible. White men who had no share in the outrages w r ere prevented by fear from giving incul- pating testimony. Willing witnesses were subjected to torture, and in many cases doomed to death. Unwilling witnesses were beaten and their houses burned over their heads. " Murder with them was an occupation and perjury a pastime," said a member of the klan. The Ku-Klux Klan originated as early as 1866. It began in the vicious frivolities of some young Tennesseeans, and in the end became the engine of a series of outrages that have scarcely a parallel in history. It has been claimed that the organization at first had no political purpose that it was instituted merely to scare the super- stitious blacks. The original Ku-Klux went " mumicking about," telling horrid tales to frighten the negroes. They visited the houses of the colored people, threatening and maltreating them, and relat- ing preposterous stories. One Ku-Klux said he. had been killed at Manassas, " and since then some one has built a turnpike over his grave, and he has to scratch like h 1 to get up through the gravel." Some of them carried a flesh bag in the shape of a heart, and went " hollering for fried nigger meat." One carried an India rubber stomach to frighten negroes by swallowing pailsful of water. Even Democratic writers with prejudices in favor of the truth have been compelled to admit the political objects of these secret, oath-bound organizations. " Certain it is," wrote S. S. Cox, in his " Three Decades of Federal Legislation," in 1885, " that they soon came to be made use of, in the most arbitrary, cruel, and shocking manner, for the further- ance of political ends, and for the crushing out of Republicanism in the Southern States, to which party the colored people were almost unanimously attached. The crimes and outrages narrated in these pages had their origin, almost exclusively, in political causes in the effort on the part of the whites to set at naught the rights of suffrage guaranteed to the negroes, and to exclude from Federal, State, county, and local offices all persons whose reliance for election to such offices was mainly, if not altogether, on negro votes. The members were sworn to secrecy, under the penalty of death for THE SOUTH FIRST DECADE AFTER THE WAR. 285 breach of fidelity. Their ordinary mode of operation as gathered from the mass of evidence was to patrol the country at night. They went well armed and mounted. They wore long white gow r ns. They masked their faces. Their appearance terrified the timid and super- stitious negroes who happened to see them as they rode past, and who then regarded them as ghostly riders. But most frequently they surrounded and broke into the cabins of the negroes; frightened and maltreated the inmates; warned them of future vengeance; and prob- ably carried off some obnoxious negro or ' carpet-bagger/ whose fate it was to be riddled with murderous bullets, hung to the limb of a tree, or mercilessly whipped and tortured, for some offense, real or imaginary, but generally because he was active in politics or in negro schools or churches." Among those who belonged to one of the secret societies that went by the general name of the Ku-Klux Klan w r as the Confederate Cav- alry leader, General Forrest. The " order " of which Forrest was a member bore the title of " Pale Faces." In its constitution and by- laws it was designated only by three stars, *** or *%. Forrest esti- mated the strength of the Ku-Klux organization in Tennessee at 40,000. In North Carolina the Ku-Klux were so numerous, and their outrages so atrocious, that in 1870 Governor Holden issued proclama- tions declaring the counties of Alamance and Caswell in insurrec- tion. In Alamance County, where the white population numbered 8,234 and the colored population only 3,640, fifty-four outrages were reported in 1870, while in only three of the sixteen counties in which the negro population was one-third greater than the white popula- tion only two or three outrages occurred in each. A part of the recital of outrages committed in North Carolina is here quoted from Mr. Cox's book because he was always a Democrat and a fair-minded and honest man. He says: " It is impossible to pass over the outrages committed upon Mr. James M. Justice. He was an attorney-at-law, and a man of respectability. He resided at Kutherfordton, in Ruther- ford County. He was a Republican, and a member of the State Legislature. As an attorney, he aided in the prosecution of members of the Ku-Klux Klan. He had given offense to the order. In one of their secret conclaves they decreed that he must be put to death. His execution was ordered. The raid took place on the night of Sun- day, June 11, 1871. Eighty or more men, in the usual disguise, marched into the village. They had left their horses on the outskirts. They surrounded his house. It was raining very hard. They broke open the door of his dwelling with an ax, and several of them entered. Hearing the noise, Mr. Justice rose out of bed and attempted to go to his gun, but was interrupted. They lighted matches and found their 286 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. victim before them with only his nightshirt on. They ordered him to come out of the house. He begged to be let alone. They informed him that his time had come. They dragged him out of his house. When he resisted he was struck with a big pistol and fell down in- sensible. After he came to consciousness he was forced to walk sev- eral hundred yards into the woods. There the fiends held a council over him. Although he had screamed loudly for help when taken out of his house, and although the neighborhood was populous, none of the neighbors dared to come to his relief. In the woods he pleaded hard for his life, but the general voice was for killing him. Finally, through the influence of the leader, who seemed to possess more intelligence and humanity than his followers, they contented themselves by ex- torting promises from Mr. Justice. His life was spared, and he was permitted to return home without further suffering at their hands. His only offense had been his politics and his prosecution of the Ku- Klux for their crimes. In his testimony, Mr. Justice recited many instances of outrages that had been perpetrated in Rutherford, Cleve- land, Lincoln, and (Jaston counties. He could not enumerate them, but could only say that there were more than one hundred of such outrages. Many men had come to him and exhibited the marks of lashes on their backs and the wounds received from guns and pistol shots. Mr. Justice could not remember all the whippings he had heard of, but they were very numerous. Among them was that of an old white man, John Nodine, a soldier of the War of 1812, and a citizen of the State, who had been whipped for voting the Republican ticket. " But perhaps the most hideous case of whipping recited by Mr. Justice was that of Aaron Biggerstaff. He was an old, white-haired gentleman. A large gang of raiders armed with guns and pistols broke into his house by night. They pulled the old man out of his bed. They dragged him into the road in front of his house. There they beat him w r ith hickories and kicked him with their feet for a long time, and then brought him back into his house. This barbarous punishment was inflicted upon him merely on account of his politics, and because of his harboring another man named McGahey, who had retaliated for an outrage committed on his family, and had shot one of the gang connected with it. Twenty of the members of the band who had thus maltreated Biggerstaff were arrested and brought be- fore Judge Logan, of the State Circuit Court; but Biggerstaff, his son and daughter, while on their way to Charlotte to prosecute the prisoners, were attacked and treated with great cruelty, and the old man would have been hanged by the gang had it not been that the son, who recognized several of them, had managed to escape. Being THE SOUTH FIRST DECADE AFTER THE WAR. 287 afraid of the consequences if they proceeded further in their out- rages, they ordered Biggerstaff and his daughter to return home and not to say anything about what had happened to them. Thirty men were subsequently tried before the United States Circuit Court for participation in the first raid upon Biggerstaff. Sixteen of them were found guilty, and eight not guilty. As to the other six cases, a nolle proscqui was entered. For participation in the second raid upon Biggerstaff and his family, while they were on the road to Charlotte, five men were arraigned. Three pleaded guilty, while a nolle prosequi was entered for the other two." In South Carolina the terrorism in Edgefield county was so great, in 1868, that out of 4,200 colored voters in the county only 800 voted. The Ku-Klux previous to the State and Presidential elections paid domicilary visits to black and white Republicans, shooting some, whipping many, and warning all not to vote the Republican ticket. " In reference to South Carolina," wrote Mr. Cox, " the report of the Joint Select Committee of the two Houses of Congress of 1872 con- tains such a mass of revolting details that one can not decide where to begin their citation or \vhere to stop. Murders, or attempts to mur- der, are numerous. Whippings are without number. Probably the most cruel and cowardly of these last was the whipping of Elias Hill. He was a colored man who had, from infancy, been dwarfed in legs and arms. He was unable to use either. But he possessed an intelli- gent mind, had learned to read, and had acquired an unusual amount of knowledge for one in his circumstances. He was a Baptist preacher. He was highly respected for his upright character. He was emi- nently religious, and was greatly revered by the people of his own race. It was on this ground that he was visited by the Ku-Klux, brutally beaten, and dragged from his house into the yard, where he was left in the cold at night, unable to walk or crawl. After the fiends had left, his sister brought him into the house. Although this man was a Republican, his testimony gave evidence of the mildness and Christian forbearance of his character, as well as his freedom from ill-will toward the white race. In answer to a question as to his feeling toward the whites, he replied that he had good-w r ill, love, and affection toward them; but that he feared them. He said that he had never made the wrongs and cruelties inflicted by white people on his race the subject of his sermons, but that he preached the Gospel only repentance toward God, and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ." In Georgia, as in North and South Carolina and the other States where the Ku-Klux organization existed, the outrages were in pro- portion to the preponderance of the white population over the blacks. There the white men, whose principal occupation was to make raids 288 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. upon the cabins of the negroes and upon the teachers of negro schools, called their society " The Brotherhood." Although professing to be the defenders of society, these midnight prowlers in their hideous dis- guises rarely encountered a foe unless they were twenty to one, and there were cases in which a well-directed shot put to flight a strong squadron of the " Brotherhood." In Alabama, as in Georgia, opposi- tion to the education of the negro was very pronounced. In 1870 William C. Luke, a white school teacher, was murdered near the village of Cross Plains, in Calhoun county. Alexander Boyd, the prosecuting attorney of Greene county, was assassinated the same year in the public square in the town of Eutaw by a band of twenty- five disguised men because of his activity in prosecuting men charged with Ku-Klux outrages. No effort was made to arrest the murderers, and none of Mr. Boyd's legal brethren had the courage to attend his funeral. President Lakin, of the State University at Tuscaloosa, was compelled to vacate his office, and many of the students were driven off by the threats of the Ku-Klux. In 1868-9 many of the preachers of the Methodist Episcopal Church South, and a few belonging to other denominations, were maltreated by the Ku-Klux " order." Two presiding elders, the Rev. J. A. McCutcheon and the Rev. John W. Tailby, were driven aw r ay from their districts; the Rev. Mr. Sullivan, the Rev. James Dorman, and the Rev. George Taylor were whipped; Dean Reynolds was whipped, and left for dead, with both arms broken; the Rev. Jesse Kingston, a local preacher, was shot in 1869; the Rev. Mr. Johnson was shot in the pulpit the same year, and a colored preacher and his son were shot dead on the West Point and Montgomery road. It seems necessary to emphasize the fact that in Alabama, as elsewhere, the outrages were most frequent in counties where the negroes were fewest. None of the States was subjected to more frequent or more atrocious Ku-Klux outrages than Mississippi. In those counties in which the ratio of the negro population was in inverse proportion to the strength of the Ku-Klux organization war was made upon the schools, the churches, and the courts. Judge Bramlette was shot dead on the bench at Meridian; a colored Baptist church w r as burned, besides a number of houses, and many negroes were killed. Mr. Flournoy, the Superintendent of Schools for Pontotoc county, was raided by a band of Ku-Klux in 1871, but, having received notice of the intended raid, he resisted the attack, assisted by some of his neighbors, and drove off the assailants. There were sixty-four public schools in the county, of which only twelve were for colored children. Among the teachers were eleven Republicans, one a colored man, to forty-three Democrats. The Republican teachers were all driven off and some of them were THE SOUTHFIRST DECADE AFTER THE WAR. 289 whipped. Similar conditions prevailed in other counties. Another school superintendent, A. P. Huggins, was given as many as seventy- live lashes by a mob, and was whipped to insensibility for refusing to leave the county when ordered by the " Klan." " It ought to be said/' says Mr. Cox, " not in extenuation of the crime, but in explanation of it, that the popular dislike to Mr. Huggins arose from his active in- strumentality in the exaction of heavy taxes and his alleged ex- travagant and dishonest use of the school moneys that passed through his hands. He was supposed to pay extravagant wages to teachers and exorbitant prices for school buildings and furniture. He had graduated as a philanthropist in the school of the Freedmen's Bureau, where he had not learned the lesson: i Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn.' ' It is not improbable that Superin- tendent Huggins was wickedly maligned as w*ell #s cruelly beaten. Similar conditions to those already described prevailed in Tennes- see, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas, but Virginia was almost wholly free from Ku-Klux outrages. Florida escaped Ku-Klux disorders to a greater degree than any of the other Gulf States. The Democrats of the North encouraged these disorders by claiming that they were due to repression, whereas repression and military government were rendered necessary by the disorders and the defiant tone assumed by the conquered Confederates. The outrages continued over a period of fully twenty years, and would be repeated far into the twentieth century if the negroes were resolute in asserting their rights as citizens. The writer of these pages made a tour of the four States of Ten- nessee, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana in 1874. It was a time when the Northern newspapers were full of reports of negro riots, in which few white men, but many blacks, were killed. On his way from Louisville to Humboldt, Tenn., where a riot had occurred a few days before, he stopped at Paris, Ky., for breakfast. After breakfast a Southern gentleman in the smoking car said politely: "Will you oblige me by looking out of the window for half an hour while you smoke, and then tell me what impresses you most of what you have seen? " The request was unusual, but because it was unusual it met with ready acquiescence. "Well, w r hat have you seen?" asked the Southerner when the time had expired. " The only thing that to me seems peculiar," was the answer, " is the fact that so many negroes, who are not working, are lurking in the fields of corn as if in hiding." " Ah, that is it," said the questioner. " They are keeping out of the way of the night riders." The Southern man entered into a long and careful consideration of 290 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. the condition of the South for the benefit of the Northern traveler. When the two strangers separated they exchanged cards, he of the South asking him of the North to visit him at his place of business in Memphis. The visit was made a few days later. " Why did you make that peculiar request of me in the smoking car? " asked the Northern man of the Southerner during the inter- view. " Well, you see, I took the fancy that you were the representative of a New York newspaper, and I wanted you to see for yourself/' was the response. " Because of these night rides of our young men busi- ness is prostrate in the South. It will not revive while the present condition lasts. I thought that if the truth should be told in a power- ful Northern newspaper, friendly to the South, it would be an aid toward the revival of business by helping to bring existing conditions to an end." The letters that were the results of the hints and suggestions of the Memphis merchant contributed to the end he had so much at heart. But Robert Tyler, a son of President John Tyler, wrote to the journal of which the Northern traveler was the representative, ask- ing that he be dismissed for misrepresenting the South. " His lies are so dispassionate and so free from any appearance of political feeling," said Mr. Tyler, " that they will all the more readily be believed on that account." On the contrary, what Mr. Tyler called lies were really helpful to the South because they were true. The exposure of the truth was the first step toward the end of a condition that had become intolerable. The wrongs and outrages of the Ku-Klux were to a great extent smothered in the North by the outcry against Northern men in the South who were known by the opprobrious name of " carpet-baggers." They were for the most part agents of the Freedmen's Bureau, minis- ters of the Gospel, and school teachers. Carpet-baggers and carpet- bag rule were subjects of Democratic vituperation for many years. One of these diatribes, from the pen of Judge Jeremiah S. Black, is worthy of reproduction here for its bitterness and sonorous wrong- headedness, if for no other reason: " The people would not have been wholly crushed either by the soldier or the negro if both had not been used to fasten upon them the domination of another class of persons which was altogether unendurable. These were called carpet-bag- gers, not because the word is descriptive or euphonious, but because they have no other name whereby they are known among the children of men. They were unprincipled adventurers, who sought their for- tunes in the South by plundering the disarmed and defenseless people; some of them were the dregs of the Federal army the THE SOUTH FIRST DECADE AFTER THE WAR. 291 meanest of the camp-followers; many were fugitives from Northern justice; the best of them were those who went down after the peace, read}' for any deed of shame that was safe and profitable. These, combining with a few treacherous i scalawags,' and some leading- negroes to serve as decoys for the rest, and backed by the power of the general government, became the strongest body of thieves that ever pillaged a people. Their moral grade was far lower, and yet they were much more powerful than the robber-bands that infested Germany after the close of the Thirty Years' War. They swarmed over all the States, from the Potomac to the Gulf, and settled in hordes, not with intent to remain there, but merely to feed on the substance of a prostrate and defenseless people. They took whatever came within their reach, intruding themselves into all private cor- porations, assumed the functions of all offices, including the courts of justice, and in many places they even ' ran the churches.' By force and fraud, they either controlled all elections, or else prevented elections from being held. They returned sixty of themselves to one Congress, and ten or twelve of the most ignorant and venal among them were at the same time thrust into the Senate. " This false representation of a people by strangers and enemies, who had not even a boiia fide residence among them, was the bitterest of all mockeries. There was no show of truth or honor about it. The pretended representative was always ready to vote for any measure that would oppress and enslave his so-called constituents; his hos- tility was unconcealed, and he lost no opportunity to do them injury. Under all these wrongs and indignities the Caucasian men of the South were prudent, if not patient. No brave people, accustomed to be free, ever endured oppression so peacefully or so wisely. The Irish, with less provocation, were in a state of perpetual turbulence; the Poles were always conspiring against the milder rule of their Rus- sian masters; but Southern men made haste slowly to recover their liberties. They could not break the shacktes of usurped control; some of the links gradually rusted and fell away of themselves. The gross impolicy of desolating the fairest half of the country impressed itself more and more upon the Northern mind; the mere expense in money of maintaining this vulgar tyranny became disgusting. The negroes gradually opened their eyes to the truth that they were as badly im- posed upon as the whites. With consummate skill, the natural leaders of the people hoarded every fresh acquisition of self-governing power. State after State deposed its corrupt governors by impeach- ment or otherwise, and brought its official criminals to justice, until all were redeemed except Florida, South Carolina, and Louisiana. A more particular look at the condition of the last-named State is needed, because it was the principal theater of the i Great Fraud.' 292 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. " The agricultural and commercial wealth of Louisiana made her a strong temptation to the carpet-baggers. Those vultures sniffed the prey from afar; and, as soon as the war was over, they swooped down upon her in flocks that darkened the air. The State was delivered into their hands by the military authorities, but the officers imposed some restraints upon their lawless cupidity. They hailed with delight the advent of negro suffrage, because to them it was merely a legal- ized method of stuffing the ballot-box, and they stuffed it. Thence- forth and down to a very recent period, they gorged themselves with- out let or hindrance. The depredations they committed were fright- ful. They appropriated, on one pretense or another, whatever they could lay their hands on, and then pledged to themselves the credit of the State for uncounted millions more. The public securities ran down to half-price, and still they put their fraudulent bonds on the market, and sold them for what they would fetch. The owners of the best real estate, in town or country, were utterly impoverished, be- cause the burdens upon it were heavier than the rents would dis- charge. During the last ten years the City of New Orleans paid, in the form of direct taxes, more than the estimated value of all the property within her limits, and still has a debt of equal amount un- paid. It is not likely that other parts of the State suffered less. The extent of their spoliation can hardly be calculated, but the testimony of the carpet-baggers themselves against one another, the reports of committees sent by Congress to investigate the subject, and other information from sources entirely authentic make it safe to say that a general conflagration, sweeping over all the State from one end to the other, and destroying every building and every article of personal property, would have been a visitation of mercy in comparison to the curse of such a government. This may seem at first blush like gros exaggeration because it is worse than anything that misrule evei did before." Some of these things are true, but they became true only because the white men of the South preferred anarchy to peace, and right, and justice, and humanity. After four years of war the men who had fought for slavery not only sought to exercise all the rights of citizens without any feeling of repentance, or sense of shame, but they tried to re-enslave the freedmen by enactments so inhuman that it is only possible to find a parallel for them in the slave codes before the Christian era, when workingmen were without souls. In no honor- able sense were the secret societies of the South the " Brotherhood," the " Pale Faces," the " Invisible Empire," and the " Knights of the White Camellia,'" all finally compounded in the Ku-Klux Klan political organizations. They were established to continue in dark- THE SOUTH FIRST DECADE AFTER THE WAR. 293 ness the war that had failed after hundreds of bloody battles. For these crimes one party, and only one, was responsible the Democ- racy. What a hideous history this party has, not only before and during the war, but after it. So imbruted had it become by three- quarters of a century of devotion to slavery, that even with peace it was willing to lend itself to any infamy. Had it not been for the degrading attitude of the Northern Democracy the South would have quickly returned to its allegiance and its duty. It was because of the encouragement of the Democratic party that the white men of the South resolved upon and persisted in a war of extermination of the negro race. It was this hatred of the freedmen that made Constitu- tional Amendments, Reconstruction Acts, and military government necessary to restoration. If the Confederate veterans had returned to their homes and resumed the vocations of peace like the soldiers of the Union; if the Southern leaders had refrained from adopting inhuman enactments to oppress and re-enslave the negro; if the Southern peo- ple had accepted the fortunes of war without resort to secret societies and night raids upon the blacks, there would have been no military governors, no Force bills, no carpet-bag governments, and no uni- versal suffrage for many a long year. Many of the ills of transition would have been avoided if there had been no Peace Democracy in war times, and no War Democracy in times of peace. The carpet- bagger would have been a blessing, and not a curse, if anarchy had not been fostered in every Southern State by the Democratic party and its narrow, selfish, and bigoted leaders. Whatever may be the truth in regard to Judge Black's sweeping charges of the spoliations of the carpet-bag governments in the South, it is not true that the Republican party was responsible for them. The same causes that made repression necessary made them possible. It was misrule begotten of disorder. But it was a reckless libel upon men as fairly honest and intelligent as the South has ever had in Con- gress to say of the carpet-bag element that " ten or twelve of the most ignorant and venal among them " were thrust into the Senate. The Senators from the South during the brief period of Republican su- premacy were fully equal, as regards intelligence and integrity, to their successors, and, it may be added, to their predecessors. It can not be denied that the negroes elected to Congress made creditable Representatives. If the objects aimed at by the majority in Congress during the periods of Reconstruction and Restoration were unaccom- plished, or only partly accomplished, it was because prejudice stood in the way of principle because a great and noble purpose was thwarted by narrow personal and partisan interests. In the end the results will justify the wisdom of Congress and of Republican policy. 294 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. A glance at the legislation of Congress, affecting the South during General Grant's administration, is necessary to a complete under- standing of the efforts that were made by the Government to meet the dangerous situation created by the desperate elements of the Southern States. By the Act of April 20, 1871, " to enforce the pro- visions of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States " (commonly known as the Ku-Klux Act, or the En- forcement Act), the President was empowered to go to the extreme length of suspending the writ of Habeas Corpus where peace and order could not otherwise be restored. Before acting under the provisions of that vigorous statute, General Grant gave warning to the Southern people by proclamation, May 3, 1871, that they might themselves, by good behavior, prevent the necessity of its enforcement. " Sensible," said the President, " of the responsibility imposed upon the Executive by the Act of Congress to which public attention is now called, and reluctant to call into exercise any of the ordinary powers thereby con- ferred upon me, except in case of imperative necessity, I do, neverthe- less, deem it my duty to make known that I will not hesitate to ex- haust the powers thus vested in the Executive whenever and wher- ever it shall become necessary to do so, for the purpose of securing to all citizens of the United States the peaceful enjoyment of the rights guaranteed to them by the Constitution and laws.'' A standing grievance of the Democratic party throughout the seven years following the war w r as the political disability affecting large classes in the Southern States under the Fourteenth Amend- ment to the Constitution. In many cases this disability was removed by special acts of Congress, beginning with Roderick R. Butler, of Tennessee, in 1868. The 40th Congress extended amnesty to fully fifteen hundred persons, and the number of those relieved by the 41st Congress reached thirty-three hundred. Then, in 1871, came the Amnesty bill, which left under disability participants in the Rebellion not exceeding seven hundred and fifty persons. The passage of this measure was delayed by the unwillingness of the Democratic party to accept political amnesty for their political friends in the South in conjunction w r ith the liberation of the colored man from odious personal discrimination. When the Amnesty bill came before the House Mr. Rainey, of South Carolina, speaking for his race, said : u It is not the disposition of my constituents that these disabilities should longer be retained. We are desirous of being magnanimous: it may be that we are so to a fault. Nevertheless, we have open and frank hearts toward those who were our former oppressors and task- masters. We foster no enmitv now, and we desire to foster none, for THE SOUTH FIRST DECADE AFTER THE WAR. 295 their acts in the past to us or to the Government we love so well. But while we are willing to accord them their enfranchisement and here to-day cast our votes that they may be amnestied; while we declare our hearts open and free from any vindictive feelings toward them, Ave Avould say to those gentlemen on the other side that there is an- other class of citizens in the country who haA r e certain rights and im- munities Avhich they would like you, sirs, to remember and respect. . . . We invoke you, gentlemen, to show the same kindly feeling toward us, a race long oppressed, and in demonstration of this hu- man and just feeling I implore you, give support to the Civil Rights bill, Avhich he have been asking at your hands lo! these many days." The Civil Rights bill, which was originated by Mr. Simmer, \vas not made a part of the Amnesty bill, because the former could be passed by the majority, w T hile the latter required a two-thirds vote. In the House the Amnesty bill Avas passed before the passage of the Civil Rights bill Avas pressed, but the Senate determined that the two measures should keep even pace, and the Civil Rights bill Avas first adopted. The Amnesty bill Avas then passed. The Civil Rights bill, as it passed the Senate, was amended so as to eliminate provisions relating to equality in jury service and the public schools. This oc- curred in the absence of Mr. Sumner. Simmer afterward voted against the Amnesty bill in consequence, and the Civil Rights bill failed in the Plouse through Democratic opposition. This was in 1872. In January, 1874, Mr. Sumner again introduced his Civil Rights bill in the Senate, but the period of reaction had already begun, and it was too late to secure the measure of justice for the negro. For many years the black man was practically disfranchised in the South, and he is even now only slowly gaining his rights as a citizen. It is impossible to contemplate the condition of the South during the first decade after the war without an impulse of pity stronger than the feelings of indignation that the outrages of the Ku-Klux naturally inspire. The conditions imposed upon the South were never tyrannical they Avere not even harsh. The transition from rebellion to allegiance Avould have been easy if outrage had not compelled repression. Repression followed, it did not precede organized in- timidation and terrorism. It was not resistance to Republican policy that renders the history of the epoch so disgraceful, but the character of Avhat a Democratic historian calls resistance. " It Avas directed," he says, " against the colored people and against their white allies and leaders. It made an objectiA^e point of the agents of the Freed- men's Bureau, ministers of the Gospel, and school teachers all ad- venturers from the North, or men who had, in quest of fortune, em- igrated into these States. All of these classes were regarded as 296 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. public or private enemies. They were designated by the opprobrious title of ' carpet-baggers.' The history of these outrages tills many volumes of reports made by joint and separate committees of the two Houses .of Congress. It is from these volumes, from reports of mili- tary commanders in the South, and from other official documents, that the following epitome, exhibiting the lawlessness that prevailed in the Southern States during the second decade between 1865 and 1875, is made. These documents are so full of the details of crime and violence, and are so voluminous, that it is exceedingly difficult to select from them, or to convey a correct idea of their revelations." As this is a Democratic indictment, it must be regarded as unanswerable in view of the fact that the Democracy was the ally of the Ku-Klux. V. THE GRANT AND AVILSON CAMPAIGN. Republican Discontent The Liberal Republican Movement Conven- tion at Cincinnati Horace Greeley Nominated for President and B. Gratz Brown for Vice-President Republican National Convention at Philadelphia President Grant Renoininated The Opposition to Vice-President Colfax Henry Wilson Nomi- nated The Republican Platform Democratic National Conven- tion at Baltimore Indorsement of the Cincinnati Ticket and Platform Grant and Greeley The Canvass Mr. Greeley's Tour Results of the Autumn Elections *Greeley's Overwhelm- ing Defeat His Death The Electoral Count. HE Presidential election of 1872 turned upon the discontent of a considerable wing of the Republican party with Presi- dent Grant's administration. For the first time in the his- tory of American politics a party was organized that owed its existence mainly to the personal resentments of prominent polit- ical leaders. In almost every State there w r as an eminent Republican who had been estranged since the elections of 1868. The deposition of Senator Sumner from the chairmanship of the Committee on For- eign Relations had driven him into opposition to the Administration in the Senate and alienated his friends. Other Senators who joined Sumner in his hostility to General Grant and to the measures and policy of the Government were Fenton, of New York; Trumbull, of Illinois, and Schurz, of Missouri. In New York the party had been divided into two wings two years before through the rivalries of Mr. Fenton and Mr. Conkling for the leadership. Fenton had been the Republican leader in that State from 1863 to 1869. When Conkling was elected to the United States Senate he determined to obtain the control of the party. The contest occurred in the State Convention, in 1871. Both the New York Senators were on the ground, Mr. Fenton guiding his friends in the Convention from his chamber through his lieutenants, while Mr. Conkling led his forces in person on the floor of the Convention. New York City had sent two sets of delegates, each claiming regularity for itself to the exclusion of the other. One of these delegations represented the friends of Mr. Greeley, who had been beaten for the nomination for Governor the year before by Gen- eral Stewart L. Woodford, and tvas in the interest of Mr. Fenton. 298 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. The other was a Conkling delegation. The Convention was on the point of settling the controversy by admitting both delegations with an equal voice and vote, but Mr. Conkling, through one of those exhibi- tions of forceful oratory for which he was then famous, succeeded in THE GRANT AND WILSON CAMPAIGN. 299 changing its purpose. The exclusion of the Greeley-Fenton delega- tion left Mr. Colliding in full control of the Convention and of the party organization. Conkling's supremacy Was confirmed a few weeks later by the overthrow of the " Tweed Kin-gP? in New York City, and the complete triumph of the Republicans dri the November elections. Trumbull had never been in hearty accord' with the Republican party, and Schurz was an erratic politician, unwilling to follow where he could not lead. Those four eminent Senators gave the Liberal Re- publican movement of 1872 a fictitious prestige that made it seem more formidable than it proved. The name of Liberal Republicans was first applied to a successful faction in Missouri in 1871, and it was under a call emanating from a State Convention of this faction that the National Liberal Repub- lican Convention was held at Cincinnati, May 1, 1872. Like the first Republican National Convention of 1856, the delegates were self-ap- pointed. Among those who had been conspicuous as Republicans in their States were Judge Henry R. Selden, General John Cochrane, Theodore Tilton. William Dorsheimer, and Waldo Hutchins, of New York; Colonel A. K. McClure and John Hickman, of Pennsylvania; Stanley Matthews, George Hoadly, and Judge R. P. Spalding, of Ohio; George W. Julian, of Indiana; John Wentworth, Leonard Swett, Lieutenant-Governor Koerner and Horace White, of Illinois; Carl Schurz, William M. Grosvenor, and Joseph Pulitzer, of Missouri; Cas- sius M. Clay, of Kentucky; Frank W. Bird and Edward Atkinson, of Massachusetts; David A. W T ells, of Connecticut, and John D. Defrees, of the District of Columbia. There were many others only less con- spicuous. With a few exceptions, these afterward became Democrats. David Dudley Field, of New York, was also a volunteer delegate, but he was excluded from the Convention by the friends of Mr. Greeley because of his outspoken sentiments in favor of Free Trade. Mr. Matthews was made temporary, and Mr. Schurz permanent President of the Convention. The work of the Convention resulted only in lame and impotent con- clusions. The Platform was prefaced with a violent arraignment of the Republican party, the Administration, and the President. Gen- eral Grant w r as accused in terms as sonorous and bitter as the accusa- tions of George III. in the Declaration of Independence. Such accusa- tions could only react upon the accusers. In most other respects the Convention borrowed its platform from the party it professed to an- tagonize. It recognized the equality of all men before the law, and the duty of equal and exact justice to all; it promised fidelity to the Union, emancipation and enfranchisement, and declared opposition to any reopening of questions settled by the amendments to the Con- 300 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. stitution; it demanded the immediate and absolute removal of all disabilities imposed on account of the Rebellion; it asserted that local self-government with impartial suffrage would guard the rights of all citizens more securely than any centralized power, and insisted on the supremacy of the civil over the military power; it urged the neces- sity of a reform of the civil service, and declared that no President should be a candidate for re-election; and it denounced repudiation, opposed further land grants, and advocated a return to specie pay- ments. The questions of Protection and Free Trade were remitted to the people in their Congress districts, and to the decision of Congress, free from Executive interference or dictation a compromise that was not a settlement. Seven candidates for President were voted for, and six ballots were taken as follows: 1st 2d 3d 4th 5th Oth Charles Francis Adams, Massachusetts . 203 243 264 279 258 324 Horace Greeley, New York 147 245 258 251 309 332 Lyman Trumbull, Illinois 110 148 156 141 81 19 B. Gratz Brown, Missouri 95 2 2 2 2 David Davis, Illinois 92^ 75 41 51 30 6 Andrew G. Curtin, Pennsylvania 62 Salmon P. Chase, Ohio 21 1 24 32 Both the candidate and platform were grievous disappointments to the men who had called the Convention and to a large number of those who composed it. The Western delegates were nearly all Free Traders, and the Missouri group was especially pronounced in op- position to Protection. It was a Free Trade party the latter had in view when they called the Convention. Instead of meeting their wishes, the Convention surrendered Free Trade as a principle, and then nominated the most eminent advocate of Protection in the coun- try on a platform molded in accordance with his views of the best way to straddle an issue. But Horace Greeley's nomination was not effected without determined opposition. At the outset the nomina- tion of Charles Francis Adams seemed a foregone conclusion. Mr. Adams lacked the popular qualities of Judge David Davis, who was the candidate that his supporters most feared. In manner he was cold, austere, and even repellent. But he possessed great personal and political prestige. He w T as the son of one President and the grandson of another. He had had large experience in public affairs, both as a member of Congress and in the diplomatic service. His supporters claimed that his name would inspire public confidence. If it had not been for the violence of their hostility to Judge Davis it is THE GRANT AND WILSON CAMPAIGN. 301 probable they would have succeeded in nominating him. Davis was in many respects the reverse of Adams. He possessed many elements of popularity. He had been the intimate friend of Lincoln, whereas, Mr. Adams placed a low estimate upon Lincoln's character and abilities. He was rich, but honest, and that he had the confidence of the Labor Keformers was shown by his nomination for the Presidency by a National Labor Reform Convention at Columbus, Ohio, in the preceding February. It was then expected that the entire opposition could be concentrated on his candidature. The friends of Adams at Cincinnati rendered such concentration impossible. They charged Da vis's friends with bringing a large body of hirelings from Illinois and packing the Convention in his interest they even announced their intention to oppose him if he was nominated. This opposition proved fatal to Davis, but it did not benefit Adams. As Davis's strength declined Greeley's increased. On the second ballot it was seen that the real contest was between Adams and Greeley, with Greeley in the lead. On the third and fourth ballots Adams again passed Greeley, but on the fifth Greeley forged far ahead. On the last ballot, the sixth, Adams showed his full strength, but as Greeley still had the lead his success was assured, and he was declared by formal vote the nominee of the Convention. Two of the candidates before the Convention for the Presidency, B. Gratz Brown, of Missouri, and Lyman Trumbull, of Illinois, con- tested the nomination for Vice-President, Mr. Brown being nomi- nated on the second ballot. The other candidates voted for on the first ballot were George \V. Julian, of Indiana; Gilbert C. Walker, of Virginia; Cassius M. Clay, of Kentucky; Jacob D. Cox, of Ohio; James M. Scovell, of New Jersey, and Thomas W. Tipton, of Nebraska. Brown's defection as a Republican began with his support of the policy of President Johnson in the United States Senate. Under the circum- stances it was impossible that he should give strength to a ticket of which Mr. Greeley was the head. The interest in the Republican National Convention, w T hich met at Philadelphia on the 5th of June, centered in the nomination of a can- didate for Vice-President. The opposition to the renomination of President Grant had expended itself at Cincinnati. But in spite of the certainty of the forecasts in regard to its action, the Convention of 1872 was one of the most imposing in the history of the Republican party. Every delegation embraced men distinguished in public life and in the military service of the Union. As many as eleven delegates had been, or were then or afterward. Governors of their States. These were William Claflin and Alexander H. Rice, of Massachusetts; General A. E. Burnside, of Rhode Island; General Joseph R. Hawley, 302 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. of Connecticut; General Rutherford B. Hayes, of Ohio; Henry S. Lane, Oliver P.Morton, and Conrad Baker, of Indiana; Governor Culloni and Ilichard J. Oglesby, of Illinois, and Governor Fairchild, of Wiscon- sin. Among the other distinguished delegates were General John A. Logan, of Illinois; General John B. Henderson, of Missouri; William A. Howard, of Michigan; former Attorney-General James Speed, of Kentucky, and Amos T. Ackerman, of Georgia, Attorney-General in Grant's Cabinet. The New York delegation was headed by the ven- erable Gerrit Smith, and included William Orton, Horace B. Claflin, General Stewart L. Woodford, William E. Dodge, and John A. Gris- wold. From New Jersey came A. G. Cattell and Cortlandt Parker. In the Pennsylvania delegation were Morton McMichael, Glenni W. Scofleld, and William H. Koontz. From the South were Judge Thomas Settle, of North Carolina; James L, Orr, of South Carolina, and John 11. Lynch, the colored orator, of Mississippi. As a special compliment to Philadelphia, Mr. McMichael was made temporary chairman. His address on taking the chair was one of those ora- torical masterpieces for which he was famous. " The malcontents," he said, " who recently met in Cincinnati were without a constituency; the Democrats who are soon to meet at Baltimore will be without a principle. The former, having no motive in common but personal disappointment, attempted a fusion of repellent elements, which has resulted in explosion; the latter, degraded from the high estate they once held, propose an abandonment of their identity, which means death." The selection of Judge Settle for permanent president was due entirely to the hostility of the Washington correspondents to the renomination of Vice-President Colfax. No public man ever received more favors from this band of intelligent newsgatherers than Mr. Colfax. After his election as Vice-President, in 1868, he alienated them by a change of manner that they regarded as unpardonable. They determined to oppose him when he became a candidate the second time, and his defeat was mainly due to their activity and zeal against him. The crusade against him w T as led by J. B. McCulloch, then the editor of the St. Louis Democrat, but the preliminary skirmish for the selection of Settle as Chairman of the Convention was directed by G. (). Seilhamer, the Washington correspondent of the New York Herald, w v ho was aided by a volunteer staff of young journalists hotly opposed to Colfax. 'The trend of sentiment at the outset was in favor of the selection of Judge Orr, of South Carolina, but Judge Settle's fitness and strength were depicted with such confidence and earnestness in the news columns of the Herald that the honor went to North Carolina in the belief that it was in response to a popular move- THE GRANT AND WILSON CAMPAIGN, 303 meiit. The episode from first to last was one of the most curious in the history of American politics, and it was the first and last time that a band of aggressive newspaper men, unknown to the general public, controlled the action of a National Convention. After the organization of the Convention on the second day the nomination of General Grant was made without excitement. On the roll-call there was no dissenting vote. For the Vice^Presidency there was only one ballot, and Henry Wilson appears on the final record of the balloting as the only candidate opposed to Mr. ColfaXi As a mat- ter of fact, Virginia had cast its 22 votes for Governor Lewis, Tennes- see its 26 votes for Horace Maynard, and Texas its 16 votes for Gov- ernor Davis. Neither Wilson nor Colfax had a majority. Before the announcement of the result the chairmen of the Virginia and Ten- nessee delegations were asking recognition from the chair. If Vir- ginia w r as first recognized Wilson's nomination was assured; if the courtesy should be extended to Tennessee Colfax would be renomi- nated. The chair was in doubt, and Judge Settle waited to be prompted by the correspondent to whom he was indebted for his position. A page was hastily dispatched to the stage with the legend u Recognize Virginia," and then came the recognition, " Mr. Popham, of Virginia." The nomination was made. Mr. Wilson received 364^ votes and Mr. Colfax 321i Henry Wilson at the time of his nomination had served sixteen years in the United States Senate as the colleague of Charles Sumner. He began life as a shoemaker, but through his own efforts he obtained a good education. He took an active interest in Massachusetts poli- tics before his election to the Senate, serving in the State Legislature and the Constitutional Convention of 1853. Although without his col- league's gift of invective, he was a sensible and effective speaker, and he was Sunmer's superior in practical statesmanship. Never a great Senator, he was always a useful one. He wore his heart on his sleeve. Even when defending Sumner he avoided giving offense to Sumner's enemies, and he was in every way worthy of the praise accorded him in the last resolution of the Platform of 1872. For the first time in the history of the Republican party the Plat- form sounded no aggressive battle-cry. As the party of achievement, the duty that now devolved upon it was to preserve what had been gained. The first declaration, accordingly, was a brief but nervous recital of these achievements. The party was pledged to promote complete liberty and exact equality in the enjoyment of all civil, political, and public rights by appropriate Federal and State legisla- tion; it claimed for the recent Constitutional Amendments that they should be supported because they were right; it took strong ground in 304: HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. favor of a reform of the civil service; it favored protection for Ameri- can industries, and it recommended the repeal of the franking priv- ilege, opposed further land grants to corporations, approved addi- tional pensions, and justified Congress and the President in their measures for the suppression of violent and treasonable organizations in the South. With the Republican ticket in the field and commanding the en- thusiastic approval of the great mass of the party, it still remained for the Democratic Convention to act. The only hope of defeating the Republicans lay in the Liberal Kepublican revolt; but this revolt would be powerless without Democratic encouragement and support. For a while there was some doubt as to what action the Democrats would take. If Mr. Adams, Judge Davis, or Senator Trumbull had been nominated, as was the expectation of the Democracy, there would have been no hesitation. With Mr. Greeley as the head of the ticket, unexpected obstacles were to be encountered. He had stood in the past for every principle to which the Democratic party was op posed. After Henry Clay he was the foremost advocate of protection for American industries. Slavery had had no more stalwart antag- onist. It is true he had pursued a vacillating course during the civil war, sometimes hysterically urging " On to Richmond " movements, and sometimes encouraging embarrassing peace negotiations. Ex- cept with the few malcontents whom he followed rather than led, he had ceased to influence Kepublican sentiment. It happened, how- ever, that his nomination \vas received with more favor in the South than in the North. His readiness to go on Jefferson Davis's bail bond, his earnest championship of universal amnesty, and his fault-finding with the methods of Keconstruction and Restoration had secured him the favor of the old ruling element in the Slave States. He was re- garded in the South as the wedge that would cleave +he Republican party in the North. While some Democratic journals, like the New York World, declared that the Democracy could not indorse a candi- date involving a stultification so humiliating and complete, others, like the Cincinnati Enquirer and St. Louis KcpuMican, advocated Greeley's indorsement without hesitation or delay. The Tennessee Democratic Convention, held only a week after the nomination of Greeley and Brown, instructed its delegates to support that ticket at Baltimore. The New York Democrats took the same course a w r eek or two later. Before the close of June sixteen other Democratic State Conventions had followed the example of Tennessee and New York. When the Democratic National Convention met on the 9th of July there was no longer any doubt in regard to its action. The Baltimore Convention accepted the Cincinnati platform and candidates without THE GRANT AND WILSON CAMPAIGN. 305 qualification or evasion. Martin Van Buren, who had been the vic- tim of the enthusiasm of the " log cabin " canvass of 1840, was credited with saying that the campaign would be either a farce or a tornado. In spite of the apparently irreconcilable character of the metaphor, it turned out to be both, General Grant's victory being the most complete in the annals of American politics. The Baltimore Convention of 1872 was not less distinguished in its composition than that which had adjourned at Philadelphia a month before. There were one or more representative men in every delega- tion. Connecticut sent William H. Barnum and Charles E. English; New York, John T. Hoffman, General Henry W. Slocum, S. S. Cox, Clarkson N. Potter, and John Kelly; New Jersey, John P. Stockton and Theodore II. Randolph; Pennsylvania, William A. Wallace, Sam- uel J. Randall, and Lewis C. Cassidy; Delaware, Thomas F. Bayard: [Maryland, Montgomery Blair; Ohio, Henry B. Payne, and California, William M. Gwin. From the South came a great array of Confederate strength Fitz Hugh Lee, Bradley T. Johnson, and Thomas S. Bo- cock, of Virginia; Zebulon B. Vance, of North Carolina; Governor Aiken, of South Carolina; Generals Gordon, Colquit, and Hardeman, of Georgia; John H. Reagan, of Texas; George G. Vest, of Missouri; General John S. Williams, of Kentucky, and Henry G. Davis, of West Virginia. The temporary chairman was Thomas Jefferson Randolph, a grandson of Thomas Jefferson, and James R. Doolittle, of Wiscon- sin, was made permanent President. The proceedings were devoid of interest or enthusiasm, but they were not without a grotesque sig- nificance. The Democratic party which had championed slavery, promoted secession and rebellion, and opposed the Constitutional Amendments and the enfranchisement of the negro, had now come to lay its past at the feet of Horace Greeley and to adopt him as its Moses. This sacrifice was a stern necessity, not a pleasant duty, and it was made with a grim resoluteness that was in marked contrast with the jaunty confidence of 1868 and the reckless bravado of 1864. Every principle for which the Democracy had ever contended was reversed. Not only was emancipation, which the Democrats as a body had always regarded as a wrong, accepted by them, but enfranchise- ment as well. The Confederate brigadiers now remembered " with gratitude the heroism and sacrifices of the soldiers and sailors of the Republic." They promised in the same breath " to mete out equal and exact justice to all, of whatever nativity, race, color, or persuasion, religious or political," and that no act of the Democratic party " should ever detract from the justly earned fame, nor withhold the full reward " of the patriotism of the champions of the Union. It was declared that " the public credit must be sacredly maintained," and 306 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. u repudiation in every form and guise " was heartily denounced. The cup was a bitter one, but it was drunk standing and apparently with- out a grimace. Christian at the gate w r as not more humble than the Pliables and Worldly-Wiseinen of the Democracy in their contrition before Good-Will Greeley. The results were not what was expected, but the first steps were taken in the pathway that led from the City of Destruction. Mr. Greeley did not receive the entire vote of the Convention, 21 votes from Pennsylvania being cast for Jeremiah S. Black, 15 from New Jersey and Delaware for James A. Bayard, and 2 for William S. Groesbeck. Greeley's vote was 686, and Brown's 713. For Vice- President John W. Stevenson, of Kentucky, received 6 votes, and 13 were blank. There was, of course, much Democratic dissatisfaction with the action of the Baltimore Convention, and a " straight " Demo- cratic Convention was held at Louisville on the 3d of September, at which Charles O'Conor, of New York, was nominated for President, and John Quincy Adams, of Massachusetts, for Vice-President. Neither of the candidates accepted, but they were voted for by dis- contented Democrats in nearly all the States. The two leading candidates for the Presidency were personal and political antitheses. Each was, opposed by the friends of the other on the ground of personal unfitness. General Grant was assailed with newspaper vituperation as bitter as that directed against General Washington by Freneau in the National Gazette and Bache in the Aurora. The Greeley Platform was in itself a base and disgraceful libel. All this naturally inspired exaggerated and distorted portrait- ures of Mr. Greeley's personal traits and peculiarities. That his dis- qualifications were very great could not be gainsaid. Irresistible in his own sphere of moral and economic discussion, he was feeble and vacillating in the conduct of affairs. Those who knew him best, and most admired his ability, earnestness, sincerity, and courage, most distrusted his fitness for the high office to which he aspired. The cool, common sense of the plain people was quick to determine from his erratic utterances and whimsical political projects in the previous decade that he lacked tact, penetration, sagacity, steadfastness of purpose, and practical wisdom. Against such qualities Grant's Aveak- nesses, even when they were conceded, were regarded as innocuous when contrasted with the dangers involved in the election of Greeley. From Grant the country knew what to expect. No man could foresee the consequences of Greeley's election. In view of all this it only needs to be said that Mr. Greeley's nomination showed the inaptness of the Liberal Republicans and the desperation of the Democrats. The Republican canvass was opened in New York by Roscoe Conk- THE GRANT AND WILSON CAMPAIGN. 307 ling, in July, in a speech that was a review of all the questions bear- ing on the campaign, both personal and political. Senator Sherman followed in Ohio, and nearly all the leading men of the party were heard in elaborate addresses during the months of September and October. But the noise and apparently the enthusiasm of the cam- paign were in the camps of the enemy. The Greeley canvass began with great confidence and vigor. When the campaign was well under way Mr. Greeley made a speech-making tour through Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana, with a view of influencing the October elections. Everywhere he was met by great crowds, and no candidate ever be- fore addressed so many of his political opponents. His speeches were adroit and able. They were varied, forcible, and, as statements of his case, effective. They were replete with dogmatic earnestness, sim- plicity, and clearness of expression, and the wide information for which he was remarkable. As intellectual efforts they ranked with the deliverances of Stephen A. Douglas and Horatio Seymour on similar tours. Some of the Republican leaders showed signs of un- easiness as to the ultimate effects of his canvass, not so much because of the strength and power of his speeches as from the interest they excited. It soon became apparent, however, that the Republican masses could not be seduced from their allegiance to the party, and the results of the preliminary State elections showed that a cam- paign that had begun with a concerted charge all along the line of battle would end in a rout. The first State to vote after the opening of the Presidential cam- paign was North Carolina. The election was held on the first of August. Great enthusiasm was excited among the friends of Mr. Greeley by the returns from the eastern part of the State, which were received several days in advance of those from the western and mountain counties, and were adverse to the Republicans. When it became known that instead of being defeated the State had given a substantial Republican majority, the tide began to turn, and de- pression took the place of enthusiasm in the Democratic ranks. The results in Maine and Vermont, in September, added to their despond- ency. The verdicts in the three October States were awaited with great interest. In Pennsylvania the Republican candidate for Gov- ernor was General John F. Hartranft. He was vigorously opposed by Colonel Forney in the Philadelphia Press, and threatened by the fac- tional antagonisms that alw r ays distracted the party in that State. In Ohio there was a leaven of Republican discontent, but as it was not a Gubernatorial year, the opposition was not so bitter on the surface as in Pennsylvania and Indiana. In the latter State Thomas A. Hendricks, the leading Democrat of Indiana, consented to become 308 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. the Democratic candidate for Governor against General Thomas M. Browne, a popular Republican, and his election was anticipated, if not conceded. The results in the three States were a sure presage of the overwhelming defeat of Greeley and Brown in November. Hart- ranft carried Pennsylvania by over 35,000. The Republican majority in Ohio was more than 14,000. Although he was elected Governor of Indiana Mr. Hendricks had a meager majority of 1,148. This was an assurance that Grant and Wilson would carry the State by a greater majority than Indiana had ever given to a Republican Presi- dential ticket since the election of Lincoln in I860. Since the unopposed election of Monroe in 1820 the popular ma- jority in a Presidential vote was never so great as Grant received in 1872. .Grant received 3,579,132 votes and Greeley 2,834,125. The vote for ,0'Conor was 29,489, and for Black, Prohibitionist, 5,008. In the great States the Republican majorities were unprecedented. Grant carried Pennsylvania by 137,538; Massachusetts by 74,212; Iowa by 60,370; Michigan by 60^,100; Illinois by 57,006; New York by 53,455; South Carolina by 49,587; Ohio by 37,501; Mississippi by 34,887; North Carolina by 24,675, and Indiana by 22,515. Mr. Greeley carried none of the Northern States, and only six States in the South Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, Tennessee, and Texas. The Electoral vote was 286 to 66. Only Scott, in 1852, and McClellau, in 1864, received the votes of fewer Electors under like conditions. The canvass had been a farce and the result was a tornado. The Presidential campaign of 1872 had a melancholy sequel. The last days of the canvass Mr. Greeley spent at the bedside of his dying- wife. She did not live long enough to share in the sorrow of the de- feat. Before the close of the month he was laid at rest by her side. His strong constitution and his vigorous intellect gave way at the same time. Overtaxed energies, bitter disappointment, and a great personal bereavement all contributed to an end that was in the nature of a tragedy. In consequence of the death of Mr. Greeley the Electoral vote for President of the opposition was scattered among four candidates, Thomas A. Hendricks receiving 42, B. Gratz Brown 18, Charles J. Jenkins 2, and David Davis 1. Georgia cast three votes for Horace Greeley, but these were not counted. The votes of Arkansas and Louisiana were also excluded from the count. VI. SIX YEARS OF CONGRESS. Organization of the Forty-first Congress Conspicuous Members Mr. Elaine, Speaker of the House Repeal of the Tenure of Office Act Change in the Government of the District of Columbia New Members of the Forty-second Congress The Salary Grab Credit Mobilier Scandal The Exposure and Its Consequences- Eminent Men Implicated Senate and House in the Forty-third Congress Death of Charles Sumner Two Epochs Contrasted. HE 41st Congress, the first of the three Republican Con- gresses that were complete during the two administrations of President Grant, had a larger proportion of new mem- bers in the House of Representatives than has been usual in our National Legislature. Of the two hundred and forty-three Representatives only ninety-eight w r ere members of the previous House. In the Senate, also, there were some radical changes, but these were in the character of the few Senators w r ho now appeared for the first time rather than in any sweeping change in the composi- tion of the august body. A conspicuous figure who took his seat in the Senate, March 4, 1869, was Hannibal Hamlin, of Maine, who was now a Senator for the fourth time in his long and distinguished career. He had come back for a long service before giving place to his successor. Mr. Doolittle, of Wisconsin, was succeeded by Matthew H. Carpenter, an eminent western lawyer and already a picturesque figure in Washington society. From Missouri came Carl Schurz, a German by birth, who had been conspicuous in many States, but deeply rooted in none. Tennessee sent William G. Brownlow the famous " Parson Brown- low." None of these three new Senators fitted the niche for which he had been chosen. Carpenter was brilliant, but his success failed to meet his own anticipations, or the expectations of his friends, be- cause he attempted too much. In seeking to maintain his place at the bar while performing his duties in the Senate he overtaxed his strength, impaired his usefulness, and brought his career to a prema- ture close. Schurz was entirely unfitted to wear the Senatorial toga. His popularity had been very great, but it was already on the wane, and his unsteadiness in politics soon dissipated it altogether. Brown- low was even more unsuited to the Senate than Schurz. He was ec- 310 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. centric, his health was not good, and he was too old for the arena in which he found himself after a long and turbulent career. Other new Republican Senators were William A. Buckingham, of Connecti- cut; Keuben E. Fenton, of New York; John Scott, of Pennsylvania, and Daniel D. Pratt, of Indiana. The two most conspicuous additions to the Democratic side of the Chamber were Allen (_}. Thurmau, of Ohio, and Thomas F. Bayard, of Delaware. Mr. Thurman had sat in the 29th Congress, and had served a full term on the Su- preme Bench of Ohio. In the Senate he took high rank from the hour that he entered it. As a debater he was strong, direct, and manly, and some of the most flattering tributes to his character and abilities came from his political opponents. Among these Mr. Blaine was especially outspoken in his admiration of Mr. Thurman's broad cul- ture and refined enjoyments his taste for poetry and romance, his love for Moliere, Racine, and Balzac, and the pleasure that he took in the acted drama and the lyric stage. Such tastes were seldom ac- corded him in the popular apprehension, while the new Senator from Delaware was given ungrudging credit for generous culture and eminent legal attainments. Mr. Bayard came of a family distin- guished in public life, but while he occupied as high places as his father before him, he earned no special distinction in the Senate, and his public career has been noteworthy for some remarkable mistakes. Another new Senator, with an ancestry notable in American history, was John P. Stockton, of New Jersey, but he made no mark in a body that contained few great men. The Senators from the South, whose presence was marked by the fact that they filled seats long vacant, require no enumeration here. While not deserving the obloquy that was heaped upon them, they were not qualified by ability or training for places in the Senate, and they have returned to the obscurity from which they came. Only one f them will be recalled with interest, Henry R. Revels, of Mississippi, and he only because he was the first man of color to occupy a seat in the Senate of the United States. A few men of legislative experience, who were not members of the 40th Congress, were in the House. Among the most prominent of these were William A. \Vheeler and S. S. Cox, of New York, the one a Republican and the other a Democrat. Mr. Wheeler had served in the 37th Congress and Mr. Cox had been a Representative from Ohio, 185T-G5. A large contingent came to the House through the Legisla- tures of their States, including George F. Hoar, of Massachusetts; John Cessna, of Pennsylvania, and Eugene Hale, of Maine. Two dis- tinguished Union soldiers were among the new members Henry W. Slocum, Democrat, of Brooklyn, and James S. Negley, Republican, of Pittsburg. Noteworthy among the new members were Stephen W. SIX YEARS OF CONGRESS. 311 Kellogg, Connecticut; Noah Davis, New York; Washington Town- send, Pennsylvania; John Beatty, Ohio; Omer D. Conger, Michigan; Horatio C. Burchard, Illinois; George W. McCrary, Iowa, and Gus- tavus A. Fiukelnburg, Missouri, Republicans; and Clarkson N. Pot- ter, New York, and Erastus Wells, Missouri, Democrats. The ablest men from the South were Oliver H. Dockery, of North Carolina, and Horace Maynard, of Tennessee. James G. Blaine, of Maine, was chosen Speaker, receiving 135 votes to 57 cast for Michael C. Kerr, of Indiana. Mr. Blaiue had served six years in Congress before he attained the Speakership. During his first term in the House he gave little indi- cation of his genius for politics and his qualifications for leadership. His first committee assignments were unimportant, and he did not speak often. His parliamentary train- ing as Speaker of the Maine House of Representatives stood him in good stead, however, and few men on the floor were so apt in objections and points of order. His associates in the House soon learned that he was a man of varied, extensive, and accurate infor- mation, and he demonstrated his gift for colloquy in some of his earliest speeches. In the 39th Congress he showed that his strength was as great as his self-restraint had been in the 38th, and his third term found him an active leader on the floor, as well as a recog- nized authority on all the great ques- tions of the period. His popularity kept pace with the recognition of his abilities and the acknowledg- ment of his leadership in the 40th Congress; and his election as Speaker of the new House was only a fit tribute to his pre-eminence. The work of the 41st Congress began March 4, 1867. Aside from the legislation already described in the chapters relating to the public credit, our diplomatic relations, and reconstruction and restoration. Congress found little time for measures of historical importance. The Tenure of Office Act was repealed, but not without resistance on the part of the Senate. In the bill as it passed the House the repeal was absolute. As amended by the Senate, it was only a suspension until the next session of Congress. Mr. Thurman aptly described this amendment as a declaration that the act is to be enforced when it will have no practical effect, and not to be enforced \vhen it would JAMES G. BLAINE. 312 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. have practical effect. What a few Senators, under the lead of Mr. Trumbull, Mr. Edmunds, and Mr. Schurz desired was, that the re- moval of Democrats appointed to office by President Johnson should be rendered easy, but when it was done that the law should remain as before. It was soon found, however, that, if the issue was suspen- sion or repeal, the act would be repealed. In view of this the proposi- tion was withdrawn, and the bill recommitted to the Judiciary Com- mittee, which reported a substitute for the existing law. This was ingeniously framed to destroy the law and at the same time to main- tain a semblance of it in a hypothetical and shadowy provision for the restoration of suspended officials. The House would not consent to this reserve. The whole subject was then referred to a Conference Committee, and the result was a new enactment by which the act was practically extirpated. In reporting the agreement of the Conference Committee to the Senate Mr. Trumbull said: " The suspended officer would go back at the end of the session unless somebody else was con- firmed in his place"; but in the House its effect was, in the opinion of Mr. Bingham, that " no authority without the consent of the Presi- dent can get a suspended officer back into the same office again." Mr. Binghain's view was the correct one, Mr. Trumbull's construction of the amendment being made merely to cover the retreat of the Senate. From that time to this there has been in effect no Tenure of Office Act. A radical change in the government of the District of Columbia was made just before the close of the 41st Congress. Up to that time local self-government had not been attempted in any broad sense in any part of the District. The two cities of Washington and George- town had separate charters. The administration of justice was largely in the control of the Levy Court, created by the statutes of Maryland. There had been remarkable growth and expansion in the Federal territory since it was established in 1790, but much of it was incongruous and anomalous. Washington itself was a city cre- ated by the Act of Congress. It was the habit in Madison's time to speak of it as " the only virgin capital in the world." But Georgetown was a city of some importance before the cornerstone of the first of the public buildings was laid, and when the site of Washington was only farm land. As planned by Major L'Enfant, the capital was a city of magnificent distances. The plan was one that required many years for its vindication, but such as L'Enfant made it it remains to- day. In 1871 Washington was no longer This embryo Capital, where fancy sees Squares in morasses, obelisks in trees Which second-sighted seers even now adorn With shrines unbuilt and heroes yet unborn, SIX YEARS OF CONGRESS. 313 but it was still an ill-paved, ill-lighted, and unattractive city. This condition made a new government necessary, so that improvement might become not only practicable, but possible. It was accordingly determined to sw r eep away the separate charters of the two cities and the old Levy Court, and to give the District a government assimilating with that of the Territories. Under the Act of 1871 the District of Columbia was provided with a Governor, and a Legislative Assembly composed of a Council and House of Delegates. The Governor and Council were appointed by the President, and the House of Delegates w r as elected by the people. The Government of the District was given the power to borrow money to an amount equivalent to " five per cent, of the assessed value of property in said District "; and to borrow without charter limitation, " provided the law authorizing the same shall, at a general election, have been submitted to the people, and have received a majority of the votes cast for members of the Legislative Assembly at such election." This system lasted only three years, but in that time a great trans- formation was effected. Prom being one of the worst-paved and worst-lighted cities in the country, Washington became one of the best in the world, but there were, of course, scandals in connection with the cost of the improvements. These were exaggerated by the newspapers in all parts of the country. In consequence of the agita- tion the District was divested of its Territorial privileges, and its government placed in the hands of three Commissioners, but in the meantime, as already indicated, under Governor Shepherd's energetic direction, a revolution had been wrought in the appearance of the capital. In the 42d Congress the House of Representatives contained a score of new members who became conspicuous in that body, and some of them afterward in the Senate. Maine sent William P. Frye and Connecticut General Joseph R. Hawley, both of whom are now Senators from their respective States. Mr. Frye was then only thirty- nine years old, but he had served with distinction in the Maine Legis- lature, and he soon took rank as one of the ablest debaters in Con- gress. General Hawley had previously won distinction in the field, in journalism, and in politics. He had been twice a candidate for Governor of Connecticut against James E. English, in contests so evenly matched that he was elected in 1866, and beaten by a few r hundred votes in 1867. He was a forcible speaker, and at once became an active member of the House. New York sent Ellis H. Roberts, who, like Hawley, was a prominent journalist. Roberts had made the Utica Herald as powerful in Republican politics as was the Hartford 314 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. C our ant under Hawley. Among 1 the other new members who were afterward conspicuous in the House were H. Boardman Smith and Walter L. Sessions, of New York; Alfred Harnier, of Pennsylvania; James Monroe and Charles Foster, of Ohio; Jeremiah M. Wilson, of Indiana; Charles B. Farwell, of Illinois; Jeremiah Rusk and Gerry W. Hazelton, of Wisconsin; Mark H. Dunnell and General John T. Averill, of Minnesota, and Isaac C. Parker, of Missouri. Mr. Blaine was again elected Speaker, receiving 120 votes to 92 votes cast for George W. Morgan, of Ohio. In the Senate there was a number of changes, including General John A. Logan, as the successor of Rich- ard Yates, Illinois; Matt W. Ransom, a former Confederate officer, in place of Joseph C. Abbott, North Carolina; Henry G. Davis, of Mary- land; General Frank P. Blair, Jr., of Missouri, and Powell Clayton, of Arkansas. The principal measures of the 42d Congress were the Amnesty and Civil Rights bills, and the so-called Force bill. The tax and tariff legislation was important, but as it was only a link in a chain that will require treatment in a subsequent chapter, its consideration is deferred. This Congress fixed the ratio of representation at 131,425. Before it expired it passed an act abolishing the franking privilege. The measure that attracted the most publicity at the time was the Salary Retroactive Act, generally called the " Salary Grab." It was adopted in the form of an amendment to the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial Appropriation bill, and provided that on and after March 4, 1873, the pay of the President should be |50,000 instead of $25,000, which w r as the salary at that time; that of the Chief Justice of the United States $10,500, and of the Associate Justices of the Supreme Court $10,000 each; that the Vice-President and the Speaker of the House should receive $10,000 each; that the Cabinet officers should receive $10,000 each, and three of the Assistant Secretaries $6,500 each; that the salaries of the Senators, and Representatives and Dele- gates should be increased from $5,000 to $7,500 a year each; that the members of the 42d Congress should be paid at that rate, from the beginning of the Congress, two years before (thus giving to each Con- gressman, as " back-pay," $5,000, but with certain deductions on account of mileage), and that $1,200,000 should be appropriated to cover this " back-pay." The country was furious when the people learned that the members of Congress had voted themselves " back-pay " in an Appropriation bill in the last hours of the last session. Such was the outcry that some of the members w T ho had already drawn the increased pay re- turned it to the Treasury, while many of those who had not draAvn it refused to accept it. As a result of the popular wrath the provision SIX YEARS OF CONGRESS. 315 for the increased salaries was repealed within a fortnight after the meeting of the 43d Congress. Apart from the popular wrath over the " Salary Grab," great pub- lic interest was excited by the so-called Credit Mobilier exposures. This so-called Credit Mobilier had its origin in a corporation called the Pennsylvania Fiscal Agency, incorporated by the Pennsylvania Legislature away back in 1859. The " Fiscal Agency," according to A. K. McClure, who was a member at the time, " began in the vagary of old Duff Green, Tyler's editor, who was a visionary man; and the Legislature humored him by the presentation of the charter he solicited. He came to Harrisburg in the fall of 1859, without a cent, and being a kindly old bore, whose name and years were venerable, he wormed the charter from the members by personal solicitation. We all supposed that he wanted to assume the consolidation and care of our State debt, which is divided up in parcels, and scattered around in many forms. The charter got from Duff Green into the hands of Charles M. Hall, who sold it to the Credit Mobilier people some say to their proxy, George Francis Train." The incorporators named in the charter were Samuel J. Reeves, a wealthy iron man, of Philadelphia; Ellis Lewis, Chief Justice of Penn- sylvania; Garrick Mallory, a distinguished Philadelphia lawyer; David R. Porter, the father of Horace Porter; Jacob Zeigler, clerk of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives; Horn R. Kneas, a Phila- delphia politician; Robert J. Ross, a banker at Harrisburg; W. T. Dougherty, the brother of another Harrisburg banker; Isaac Hugus, a Democratic State Senator; C. M. Reed, a prominent citizen of Erie; Asa Packer, the Lehigh millionaire; Jesse Lazear, a Congressman from Greene County; C. S. Kauffman, a member of the Legislature from Lancaster County; Henry M. Fuller, a Native American Congress- man, and C. L. Ward, an operator, of Towanda. In spite of these eminent names the Fiscal Agency was a chimera, and none of the incorporators had any connection with it when the name was changed to the Credit Mobilier of America by the Pennsylvania Legislature in 1807. Under its new name the corporation was used to veil the op- erations of the Union Pacific Railroad Ring. The first exposure of the Credit Mobilier was made in the New York Sun in August, 1872. In a letter to Henry S. McComb, Oakes Ames, a member of Congress from Massachusetts, said he had " placed some Credit Mobilier stock in Congress where it would do the most good," and from a memorandum given by Ames to McComb it ap- peared that the persons implicated were James G. Blaine, of Maine; James W r . Patterson, of New Hampshire; Henry Wilson, Henry L. Dawes, George S. Boutwell, and Thomas P. Eliot, of Massachusetts; 316 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. James Brooks, of New York; William D. Kelley and Glenni W. Sco- field, of Pennsylvania; John A. Bingbam and James A. Garfield, of Ohio; Schuyler Coif ax, of Indiana, and Joseph S. Fowler, of Tennes- see. The defendants named in a suit brought by McComb against the Credit Mobilier were Sidney Dillon, John B. Alley, Roland G. Hazard, Charles McGhrisky, Oliver W. Barnes, Thomas Rowland, Paul Pohl, Jr., Oakes Ames, Charles II . Neilson, Thomas C. Durant, James M. S. Williams, Benedict Stewart, John Duff, Charles M. Hall, and H. G. Fant. Of these McGhriskj^, Barnes, Rowland, Pohl, and Neilson had little or no share in the affairs of the Credit Mobilier. The allottment of shares to the thirteen members of Congress named above was made about 1868. McComb's suit w r as brought to recover the value of these shares. The original purpose of the exposure in the Sun was political. It was intended to promote the canvass of Horace Greeley for the Presi- dency. While it failed to have any appreciable effect upon the cam- paign it proved a veritable bombshell in Congress. Two separate in- vestigations were ordered by the House of Representatives and one by the Senate, resulting in recommendations for the expulsion of Representatives Ames and Brooks and Senator Patterson. Ames and Brooks both died soon afterw r ard. They were censured, not ex- pelled, but it was believed death in both cases was caused by the shock of the exposure and the strain incident to the investigation. Mr. Patterson remained in the Senate until the expiration of his term, vainly seeking, then and afterward, to have his character re- habilitated. Vice-President Colfax went out of office politically ruined and mentally wrecked. An effort was made in the House to censure Messrs. Kelley, Garfield, Samuel Hooper, and Speaker Elaine, but it was not successful. In the course of the investigations other members of Congress besides those already indicated were implicated by the testimony, including Mr. Allison and James Wilson, of Iowa. The exculpatory explanations of Henry Wilson, Blaine, Dawes, Bing- ham, Garfield, Kelley, Scofield, and one or two others were the sub- jects of much criticism, but the question of their culpability was al- lowed to sink out of sight as the memory of the great scandal faded from men's minds. As to the actual culpability of the men implicated it was greatly exaggerated by the newspapers and political agitators. For this reason the scandal wrought little real injury to men like Blaine and Garfield in later years, and it is forgotten, notwithstand- ing it was the absorbing topic of the last session of the 42d Congress. The victory of 1872 was so sweeping in both the Presidential elections and the elections for members of Congress that the Repub- licans looked forward with confidence to a long lease of power. Al- SIX YEARS OF CONGRESS. 317 though a political revolution was impending, it was not foreseen. The Republican majority in the 43d Congress was much greater than in its immediate predecessor, and he would have been a bold prophet who should have predicted that a Democratic House of Representa- tives w r as to follow r two years later, w r ith a Democratic Speaker in the chair occupied by Mr. Elaine. As it turned out, the 43d Congress marked the close of the uninterrupted Republican ascendency that had continued since 1801. With the organization of the 43d Congress a number of new Sena- tors, then or afterward conspicuous in public life, appeared in the Senate. The most prominent of these who w^ere transferred from the House were William B. Allison, of Iow r a; Aaron A. Sargent, of California, and Richard J. Oglesby, of Illinois. Kansas sent John J. Ingalls, a native of Massachusetts, as the successor of Samuel C. Pomeroy, and James W. Nye, of Nevada, was succeeded by John P. Jones. Among the Republican Senators from the South w T ere Stephen W. Dorsey, of Arkansas; John J. Patterson, of South Carolina, and Simon B. Conover, of Florida. All these were Northern men, Mr. Dorsey belonging to Ohio before the war, and Mr. Patterson and Mr. Conover being respectively natives of Pennsylvania and New Jersey. General John B. Gordon, conspicuous in the Confederate service, came from Georgia. With the exception of Justin S. Morrill, of Vermont, William B. Allison, of Iowa, and William M. Stewart, of Nevada, General Gordon is without associates in the Senate who were in that body when he entered it. He is the oldest Senator from the South in continuous service. There were also some conspicuous changes in the House, the new Representatives including E. Rockwood Hoar, of Massachusetts; Ly- man Tremaine, of New York; Hugh J. Jewett, of Ohio; William R. Morrison, of Illinois; John A. Kasson, of Iowa; Alexander H. Stephens, of Georgia, and L. Q. C. Lamar, of Mississippi. Mr. Hoar had been Attorney-General in President Grant's Cabinet. Among those not so widely known as these were Thomas C. Platt, Stewart L. Woodford, and Henry J. Scudder, of New York; William W T alter Phelps, New Jersey; Lemuel Todd, A. Herr Smith, and Hiester Cly- mer, of Pennsylvania; Eppa Hunton and John Harris, of Virginia; Milton Savior, Henry B. Banning, Milton I. Southard, and Richard C. Parsons, of Ohio; Julius C. Burrows and Jay A. Hubbell, of Michi- gan; Stephen A. Hurlbut, Joseph G. Cannon, and Greenbury L. Fort, of Illinois; Charles G. Williams, of Wisconsin; James Wilson and James W. McDill, of Iowa; Richard Bland (Silver Dollar Bland), T. T. Crittenden, and Edwin O. Stanard, of Missouri; William A. Phil- lips, of Kansas, and Horace F. Page, of California. Of these Platt 318 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. and Burrows are in the Senate, and Cannon is still a member of the House. As Minister to Spain in 1897-8 General Woodford was charged with the delicate negotiations preceding the rupture with that country. General Hurlbut was a ready debater and earned dis- tinction in the House. Stephen B. Elkiiis, who entered Congress as a delegate from New Mexico in his thirty-second year, has since been prominent in Republican politics and public life. It was the close of an epoch, with many of the new men who had been conspicuous dur- ing the long period of Republican ascendency already in their graves, and others to follow in rapid succession, leaving only the names already indicated on the rolls of Congress in the closing years of the century. Apart from the passage of the Supplementary Civil Rights bill, the political legislation of the 43d Congress was not important. " If the publication of my works were completed and my Civil Rights bill passed," Charles Sumner said to Henry Wilson just before the summons came, " no visitor could enter the door that would be more welcome than Death." He died June 11, 1874. " You have come upon the stage too late, sir," Colonel Benton said to Sumner, when the young Massachusetts Senator made his first appearance in the Sen- ate in 1851. " All our great men have passed away. Mr. Calhoun and Mr. Clay and Mr. Webster are gone. Not only have the great men passed away, but the great issues, too, raised from our form of government and of deepest interest to its founders and their imme- diate descendants, have been settled, sir. The last of these was the National Bank, and that has been overthrown forever. Nothing is left you, sir, but puny sectional questions and petty strifes about slavery and fugitive-slave laws, involving no National issues." When Benton thus spoke to the Free-Soil Senator from Massachusetts noth- ing had, in fact, been settled, and within ten years the puny sectional strifes about slavery were to result in a great civil war, ending with the destruction of slavery. So far were our great men from having passed away that Webster's successor in the Senate will be remem- bered when the great expounder of the Constitution is deposed from the high place he once held in the minds of men. It is the era of Lin- coln, not that of Jackson, that has the first place in American his- tory. DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF THE EPOCH. REPUBLICAN PLATFORM OF 1872. The Republican party of the United States, assembled in National Convention in the City of Philadelphia on the fifth and sixth days of June, 1872, again declares its faith, appeals to its history, and an- nounces its position upon the questions before the country. During eleven years of supremacy it has accepted with grand courage the solemn duties of the time. It suppressed a gigantic rebellion, emancipated four millions of slaves, decreed the equal cit- izenship of all, and established universal suffrage. Exhibiting un- paralleled magnanimity, it criminally punished no man for political offenses, and warmly welcomed all who proved loyalty by obeying the laws and dealing justly with their neighbors. It has steadily de- creased with firm hand the resultant disorders of a great war, and initiated a wise and humane policy toward the Indians. The Pacific Railroad and similar vast enterprises have been generously aided and successfully conducted, the public lands freely given to actual set- tlers, immigration protected and encouraged, and a full acknowledg- ment of the naturalized citizen's rights secured from European pow- ers. A uniform national currency has been provided, repudiation frowned down, the national credit sustained under the most extraor- dinary burdens, and new bonds negotiated at lower rates. The rev- enues have been carefully collected and honestly applied. Despite annual large reductions of the rates of taxation, the public debt has been reduced during General Grant's Presidency at the rate of a hundred millions a year. Great financial crises have been avoided, and peace and plenty prevail throughout the land. Menacing foreign difficulties have been peacefully and honorably composed, and the honor and pow r er of the nation kept in high respect throughout the world. This glorious record of the past is the party's best pledge for the future. We believe the people will not intrust the government to any party or combination of men composed chiefly of those who have resisted every step of this beneficent progress. 2. The recent amendments to the National Constitution should be cordially sustained because they are right, not merely tolerated be- cause they are law, and should be carried out according to their spirit by appropriate legislation, the enforcement of which can safely be intrusted only to the party that secured these amendments. 3. Complete liberty and exact equality in the enjoyment of all civil, political, and public rights should be established and effectually 320 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. maintained throughout the Union by efficient and appropriate State and Federal legislation. Neither the law nor its administration should admit any discrimination in respect of citizens by reason of race, creed, color, or previous condition of servitude. 4. The National Government should seek to maintain honorable peace with all nations, protecting its citizens everywhere, and sym- pathizing with all the peoples who strive for greater liberty. 5. Any system of the civil service under which the subordinate positions of the Government are considered rewards for mere party zeal is fatally demoralizing, and we therefore favor a reform of the system by laws which shall abolish the evils of patronage and make honesty, efficiency, and fidelity the essential qualifications for public positions, without practically creating a life-tenure of office. 6. We are opposed to further grants of the public lands to corpora- tions and monopolies, and demand that the national domain be set apart for free homes for the people. 7. The annual revenue, after paying current expenditures, pen- sions, and the interest on the public debt, should furnish a moderate balance for the reduction of the principal, and that revenue, except so much as may be derived from a tax upon tobacco and liquors, should be raised by duties upon importations, the details of which should be so adjusted as to aid in securing remunerative wages to labor, and promote the industries, prosperity, and growth of the whole country. 8. We hold in undying honor the soldiers and sailors whose valor saved the Union. Their pensions are a sacred debt of the nation, and the widow's and orphans of those who died for their country are en- titled to the care of a generous and grateful people. We favor such additional legislation as will extend the bounty of the Government to all soldiers who were honorably discharged, and who, in the line of duty, became disabled, without regard to the length of service or cause of such discharge. 9. The doctrine of Great Britain and other European pow r ers con- cerning allegiance " Once a subject always a subject " having at last, through the efforts of the Republican party, been abandoned, and the American idea of the individual right to transfer allegiance having been accepted by European nations, it is the duty of our Gov- ernment to guard with jealous care the rights of adopted citizens against the assumption of unauthorized claims of their former gov- ernments, and we urge continued careful encouragement and pro- tection of voluntary immigration. 10. The franking privilege ought to be abolished and the way pre- pared for a speedy reduction in the rates of postage. 11. Among the questions which press for attention is that which DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF THE EPOCH. 321 concerns the relations of capital and labor, and the Republican party recognizes the duty of so shaping legislation as to secure full protec- tion and the amplest field for capital, and for labor, the creator of capital, the largest opportunities and a just share of the mutual profits of these two great servants of civilization. 12. We hold that Congress and the President have only fulfilled an imperative duty in their measures for the suppression of violent and treasonable organizations in certain lately rebellious regions, and for the protection of the ballot-box; and therefore they are en- titled to the thanks of the nation. 13. We denounce repudiation of the public debt, in any form or dis- guise, as a national crime. We witness with pride the reduction of the principal of the debt, and of the rates of interest upon the balance, and confidently expect that our excellent national currency will be perfected by a speedy resumption of specie payment. 14. The Republican party is mindful of its obligations to the loyal women of America for their noble devotion to the cause Of freedom. Their admission to wider spheres of usefulness is viewed with satis- faction; and the honest demand of any class of citizens for additional rights should be treated with respectful consideration. 15. We heartily approve the action of Congress in extending am- nesty to those lately in rebellion, and rejoice in the growth of peace and fraternal feeling throughout the land. 16. The Republican party proposes to respect the rights reserved by the people to themselves as carefully as the powers delegated by them to the States and to the Federal Government. It disapproves of the resort to unconstitutional laws for the purpose of removing evils by interference with the rights not surrendered by the people to either the State or the National Government. 17. It is the duty of the general Government to adopt such meas- ures as may tend to encourage and restore American commerce and shipbuilding. 18. We believe that the modest patriotism, the earnest purpose, the sound judgment, the practical wisdom, the incorruptible integ- rity, and the illustrious services of Ulysses S. Grant have commended him to the hearts of the American people, and with him at our head we start to-day upon a new march to victory. 19. Henry Wilson, nominated for the Vice-Presidency, known to the whole land from the early days of the great struggle for liberty as an indefatigable laborer in all campaigns, an incorruptible legis- lator, and representative man of American institutions, is worthy to associate with our great leader and share the honors which we pledge our best efforts to bestow upon them. 322 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. LIBERAL REPUBLICAN PLATFORM, 1872. The Administration now in power had rendered itself guilty of wanton disregard of the laws of the land, and of usurping powers not granted by the Constitution; it has acted as if the laws had binding iorce only for those who were governed, and not for those who govern. It has thus struck a blow at the fundamental principles of Constitu- tional Government and the liberties of the citizen. The President of the United States has openly used the powers and opportunities of his high office for the promotion of personal ends. He has kept notoriously corrupt and unworthy men in places of power and responsibility, to the detriment of the public interest. He has used the public service of the Government as a machinery of corruption and personal influence, and has interfered with tyrannical arrogance in the political affairs of States and municipalities. He has rewarded with influential and lucrative places men who had acquired his favor by valuable presents, thus stimulating the de- moralization of our political life by his conspicuous example. He has shown himself deplorably unequal to the task imposed upon him by the necessities of the country, and culpably careless of the responsibilities of his high office. The partisans of the Administration, assuming to be the Kepublican party and controlling its organization, have attempted to justify such wrongs and palliate such abuses to the end of maintaining partisan ascendancy. They have stood in the way of necessary investigations and indis- pensable reforms, pretending that no serious fault could be found with the present administration of public affairs, thus seeking to blind the eyes of the people. They have kept alive the passions and resentments of the late civil war, to use them for their own advantage; they have resorted to ar bitrary measures in direct conflict with the organic law, instead of appealing to the better instincts and latent patriotism of the Southern people, by restoring to them those rights the enjoyment of which is indispensable to a successful administration of their local affairs, and would tend to revive a patriotic and hopeful national feeling. They have degraded themselves and the name of their party, once justly entitled to the confidence of the nation, by a base sycophancy to the dispenser of executive power and patronage, unworthy of Ke- publican freemen; they have sought to silence the voice of just criticism and stifle the moral sense of the people, and to subjugate public opinion by tyrannical party discipline. They are striving to maintain themselves in authority for selfish DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF THE EPOCH. 323 ends by an unscrupulous use of the power which rightfully belongs to the people, and should be employed only in the service of the country. Believing that an organization thus led and controlled can no longer be of service to the best interests of the Republic, we have resolved to make an independent appeal to the sober judgment, con- science, and patriotism of the American people. We, the Liberal Republicans of the United States, in National Convention assembled at Cincinnati, proclaim the following prin- ciples as essential to just government: 1. We recognize the equality of all men before the law, and hold that it is the duty of Government, in its dealings with the people, to mete out equal and exact justice to all, of whatever nativity, race, color, or persuasion, religious or political. 2. We pledge ourselves to maintain the union of these States, eman- cipation, and enfranchisement, and to oppose any reopening of the questions settled by the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments of the Constitution. 3. We demand the immediate and absolute removal of all disabili- ties imposed on account of the rebellion which was finally subdued seven years ago, believing that universal amnesty will result in com- plete pacification in all sections of the country. 4. Local self-government, with impartial suffrage, will guard the rights of all citizens more securely than any centralized power. The public welfare requires the supremacy of the civil over the military authority, and the freedom of the person under the protection of the habeas corpus. We demand for the individual the largest liberty con- sistent with public order, for the State self-government, and for the nation a return to the methods of peace and the Constitutional limita- tions of power. 5. The civil service of the Government has become a mere instru- ment of partisan tyranny and personal ambition, and an object of selfish greed. It is a scandal and reproach upon free institutions, and breeds a demoralization dangerous to the perpetuity of Republican Government. We, therefore, regard a thorough reform of the civil service as one of the most pressing necessities of the hour; that hon- esty, capacity, and fidelity constitute the only valid claims to public employment; that the offices of the Government cease to be a matter of arbitrary favoritism and patronage, and that public station shall become again a post of honor. To this end it is imperatively required that no President shall be a candidate for re-election. 6. We demand a system of Federal taxation which shall not un- necessarily interfere with the industry of the people, and which shall 324 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. provide the means necessary, to pay the expenses of the Government, economically administered; the pensions, the interest on the public- debt, and a moderate reduction annually of the principal thereof; and recognizing that there are in our midst honest but irreconcilable differences of opinion with regard to the respective systems of pro- tection and free trade, we remit the discussions of the subject to the people in their Congressional districts, and the decision of Congress thereon, wholly free from executive interference or dictation. 7. The public credit must be sacredly maintained, and we denounce repudiation in every form and guise. 8. A speedy return to specie payments is demanded alike by the highest considerations of commercial morality and honest govern- ment. 9. We remember with gratitude the heroism and sacrifices of the soldiers and sailors of the Republic, and no act of ours shall ever de- tract from their justly earned fame or the full rewards of their patriotism. 10. We are opposed to all further grants of lands to railroads or other corporations. The public domain should be held sacred to actual settlers. 11. We hold that it is the duty of the Government in its intercourse with foreign nations to cultivate the friendships of peace by treating with all on fair and equal terms, regarding it alike dishonorable to demand what is not right or to submit to what is wrong. 12. For the promotion and success of these vital principles and the support of the candidates nominated by this Convention, we in- vite and cordially welcome the co-operation of all patriotic citizens without regard to previous political affiliations. SUPPLEMENTARY CIVIL RIGHTS BILL. The first conviction under the act was in Philadelphia, in Febru- ary, 1876. Fields Cook, pastor of the Third Baptist Colored Church of Alexandria, Virginia, was refused sleeping and eating accommo- dations at the Bingham House by Upton S. Newcomer, one of its clerks; and upon the trial of the case, in the United States District Court, John Cadwalader, Judge, instructed the jury as follows: " The Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States makes all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, citizens of the United States, and provides that no State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State . . . deny to any person within its jurisdic- tion the equal protection of the laws. This amendment expressly DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF THE EPOCH. 325 gives to Congress the power to enforce it by appropriate legislation. An Act of Congress of March 1, 1875, enacts that all persons within the jurisdiction of the United States shall be entitled to the full and equal enjoyment of the accommodations, advantages, facilities, and privileges of inns, public conveyances on land or water, theaters and other places of public amusement, subject only to the conditions and limitations established by law, and applicable alike to citizens of every race and color, and makes it a criminal offense to violate these enactments by denying to any citizen, except for reasons by law ap- plicable to citizens of every race and color . . . the full enjoy- ment of any accommodations, advantages, facilities, or privileges enumerated. As the law r of Pennsylvania had stood until the 22d of March, 1867, it was not wrongful for innkeepers or carriers by land or water to discriminate against travelers of the colored race to such an extent as to exclude them from any part of the inns or public con- veyances which w r as set apart for the exclusive accommodation of white travelers. The Legislature of Pennsylvania, by an act of the 22d of March, 1867, altered the law in this respect as to passengers on railroads. But the law of the State was not changed as to inns by any act of the State Legislature. Therefore, independently of the amendment of the Constitution of the United States and of the act of Congress now in question, the conduct of the defendant on the occa- sion in question might, perhaps, have been lawful. It is not necessary to express an opinion on this point, because the decision of the case depends upon the effect of this act of Congress. I am of the opinion that under the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution the enact- ment of this law was within the legislative power of Congress, and that we are bound to give effect to the act of Congress according to its fair meaning. According to this meaning of the act I am of opinion that if this defendant, being in charge of the business of re- ceiving travelers in this inn, and of providing necessary and proper accommodations for them in it, refused such accommodations to the witness, Cook, then a traveler, by reason of his color, the defendant is guilty in manner and form as he stands indicted. If the case de- pended upon the unsupported testimony of this witness alone, there might be some reason to doubt whether this defendant was the person in charge of this part of the business. But under this head the ad- ditional testimony of Mr. Annan seems to be sufficient to remove all reasonable doubt. If the jury are convinced of the defendant's iden- tity they w 7 ill consider whether any reasonable doubt of his conduct or motives in refusing the accommodations to Fields Cook can exist. The case appears to the Court to be proved; but this question is for the jury, not for the Court. If the jury have any reasonable doubt, they 326 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. should find the defendant not guilty; otherwise they will find him guilty. The jury brought in a verdict of guilty, March 1, 1876, and the Court imposed a fine of THE PERIOD OF REACTION. I. REVOLUTION IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. The Forty-fourth Congress Michael C. Kerr, Speaker Noteworthy Changes in Both Houses Failure of the Amnesty Bill Andrew Johnson Again in the Senate New Members in the Forty-fifth Congress Failure of the Army Appropriation Bill in the Forty- fourth Congress The Use of Troops at the Polls Coinage of the Silver Dollar Organization of the Forty-sixth Congress Changes in the Senate and House of Representatives A Power- less Democratic Majority. HE period of reaction set in with a Republican reverse in 1874 as marked as the Republican victory in 1872. There were premonitions of the coming political revolution in 1873, when William Allen was elected Governor of Ohio over Edwin F. Noyes, the Republican candidate, and when General Dix was beaten for Governor of New York by Samuel J. Tilden. But the completeness of the reaction was not fully appreciated until the 44th Congress met, March 6, 1875. The House of Representatives was organized by the election of Michael C. Kerr, of Indiana, as Speaker, by 173 votes, to 106 for Mr. Blaine, a result that was a com- plete reverse of the relative strength of parties in the preceding Con- gress. The ascendency thus gained in the House by the Democrats was maintained without interruption for six years; and in the 46th Congress the Democratic party, for the first time since 1856, was in control of both Houses of Congress. Mr. Kerr had served ten years in the House when he was chosen Speaker. He was an able man, but one who never cared to make a display of his strength. His health at the time of his election was much impaired, and it was not often that he w r as able to occupy the chair. His death occurred August 19, 1870, during the recess. His successor in the Speakership was Samuel J. Randall, of Pennsylvania, who was afterward elected Speaker of the 45th and 46th Congresses. Mr. Randall had entered the 38th Con- gress, and served continuously during the intervening thirteen years. He was a strong partisan, but a fairminded presiding officer, and he was as popular w r ith the House as either of his predecessors. In a Congress that contained so many new men there was a number who had already attained, or were destined to attain, prominence in 328 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. Democratic leadership. In the Senate there were altogether ten new Democratic Senators who were successors of Kepublicans: William W. Eaton, of Connecticut; Francis Kernan, of New York; William A. Wallace, of Pennsylvania; Joseph E. McDonald, of Indiana; Francis M. Cockrell, of Missouri; Allen T. Caperton, of West Virginia; Robert E. Withers, of Virginia; Charles W. Jones, of Florida; Samuel B. Maxey, of Texas, and Andrew Johnson, of Tennessee. William Pink- ney Whyte came from Maryland. In the House the Democratic mem- bership was equally noteworthy. Among those from the North were : Frank Jones, of New Hampshire; Charles P. Thompson and Chester W. Chapin, of Massachusetts; Abram S. Hewitt and Scott Lord, of New York; George A. Jenks and W T illiam S. Stenger, of Pennsylvania; John A. McMahon, of Ohio; Alpheus S. W T illiams, of Michigan; Will- iam Pitt Lynde, of Wisconsin; and Carter H. Harrison, William M. Springer, William A. J. Sparks, and John V. LeMoyne, of Illinois. Three Representatives from the South had served in Congress before the war: Alfred M. Scales, of North Carolina, 1857-9; John I). C. At- kins, of Tennessee, 1857-9; and Otho R. Singleton, of Mississippi, 1853- 61. Thomas L. Jones, of Kentucky, had also served in the House. The new Southern representative Democrats w r ere: J. Randolph Tucker and John Goode, Jr., of Virginia; Charles R. Faulkner, of West Virginia; Joseph C. S. Blackburn and Milton J. Dunham, of Ken- tucky; Washington C. Whitthorne, of Tennessee; Benjamin H. Hill, of Georgia; Charles E. Hooker, of Mississippi; Randall E. Gibson and E. John Ellis, of Louisiana, and John H. Reagan, of Texas. Of these, Tucker had been Attorney-General of his State, Goode a member of the Confederate Congress, Faulkner a conspicuous Confederate, Hill a member of the Confederate Senate, and Reagan Confederate Post- master-General. These men were typical of the Democratic repre- sentation from the South during the rest of the century. Among the Republicans who entered Congress for the first time in 1875 were: Henry W. Blair, of New Hampshire; Charles H. Joyce, of Vermont; William W. Crapo, Julius H. Seelye, and Henry L. Pierce, of Massachusetts; Martin I. Townsend, Elbridge G. Lapham, Lyman K. Bass and Simeon B. Chittenden, of New York; Winthrop W. Ketch- urn, of Pennsylvania, and Gen. Thomas J. Henderson, of Illinois. In the Senate were Gen. A. E. Burnside, of Rhode Island; Henry L. Dawes, of Massachusetts; Isaac P. Christiancy of Michigan; Angus Cameron, of Wisconsin; Samuel J. R. McMillan, of Minnesota, and Newton Booth, of California. Of the men conspicuous in Recon- struction very few remained. The work of the 44th Congress was almost wholly devoted to political issues and to the questions growing out of the disputed REVOLUTION IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. 329 Presidential election of 1876. An abortive effort was made to pass a final Amnesty Bill, but it failed to receive the necessary two-thirds vote in the House, because the Republicans insisted that Jefferson Davis should be excepted. This was steadily refused. " If Mr. Davis thought that he was ungenerously treated by the Republicans," Mr. Elaine wrote, " he must have found ample compensation in the con- duct of both Southern and Northern Democrats, who kept seven hundred prominent supporters of the rebellion under disability for the simple and only reason that the ex-President of the Confederacy could not share in the clemency." An event associated with the history of the 44th Congress was the death of ex-President Johnson, at his home in East Tennessee, July 31, 1875. In the few weeks that the Senate was in session during his brief service, he made a speech assailing President Grant, whom he ac- cused of seeking a third term, and charged with endangering the liberties of the country. After six years spent in retirement, Mr. Johnson still cherished the animosities of the period of Reconstruc- tion, and, judging from his speech, his only motive in returning to the Senate was to find an arena in w r hich he could renew the contro- versies of his unfortunate administration. After his death the mem- ory of these animosities and controversies quickly faded out of the minds of men. With many new members, the 45th Congress was scarcely dis- tinguished politically from its immediate predecessor. In the Senate were James G. Elaine, of Maine; Edward H. Rollins, of New Hamp- shire; George F. Hoar, of Massachusetts; Samuel J. Kirkwood, of Iowa; Preston B. Plumb, of Kansas, and Alvin Saunders, of Nebraska, Republicans, and John R. McPherson, of New Jersey; David Davis, of Illinois; James B. Beck, of Kentucky; A. H. Garland, of Arkansas; Isharu G. Harris, of Tennessee; Benjamin H. Hill, of Georgia; Richard Coke, of Texas, and Lafayette Grover, of Oregon, Democrats. John Sherman entered President Hayes' Cabinet, and was succeeded by Stanley Matthews; General Cameron, of Pennsylvania, resigned in 1877, and was succeeded by his son, J. Donald Cameron. Oliver P. Morton, of Indiana, died November 1, 1877, and was succeeded by Daniel W. Voorhees, Democrat. Among the new members of the House were: Thomas B. Reed, of Maine; George D. Robinson, George B. Loring, William Claflin, and William W. Rice, of Massachusetts; John T. Wait, of Connecticut; Frank Hiscock, John H. Starin, George A. Bagley, A. B. James, and George W. Patterson, of New York; Rus- sell Errett, Thomas M. Bayne, John I. Mitchell, and Gen. Harry White, of Pennsylvania; Gen. Jacob D. Cox, Joseph W. Keifer, Gen. Thomas Ewing, and William McKinley, of Ohio; Thomas M. Browne 330 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. and William M. Baker, of Indiana, and Horace Davis, of California. Of these new men William McKinley was destined to take the highest rank. The new House of Representatives was organized October 15, 1877, a special session of Congress being rendered necessary by the failure of the Army Appropriation bill at the preceding session. Mr. Randall received 149 votes for Speaker to 132 for James A. Garfield. From July until October, 1877, the army was maintained without lawful ap- propriations. The cause of this condition of affairs was the deter- mination of the Democrats in the 44th Congress that a provision should be inserted in the bill for the support of the army forbidding its use in maintaining what was known as the Packard State govern- ment in Louisiana. The Senate refused to concur in this amendment, and the bill was lost. The whole question was reopened as soon as the 45th Congress was organized, and it was the chief subject of con- troversy during the first two years of President Hayes' administra- tion. Although Packard's claim to be Governor of Louisiana was bet- ter than that upon which General Hayes was awarded the electoral vote of the State, the President was determined from the outset, after his inauguration, to disregard the State elections in the three States on which his own title depended. The Senate stood firm, notwith- standing the President's surrender, and the amendment again failed on the eve of the final adjournment, March 3, 1879. The necessary appropriations were again withheld, notwithstanding the course of the Executive in preventing the use of the troops in protecting col- ored citizens at the polls in the Southern States. The result of this policy of President Hayes was the practical disfranchisement of the colored voters of the South, and the surrender of every Southern State to the Democratic party. It w T as a policy that gave great um- brage to Republicans everywhere, and assured a third triumph for the Democrats in the elections for members of Congress in 1878. As the Democrats had a temporary majority in the Senate in the 40th Congress, they finally succeeded in forcing the repeal of the kiws pro- viding protection for all citizens in the South. The distinctive measure of the 45th Congress was the passage of the Act for the coinage of the silver dollar. The question at issue was practically the same that was decided in the election of President McKinley in 1890, but parties had not yet divided on the use or disuse of a double standard. All the operations of the Government, as an essential element in the resumption of specie payments, were con- ducted on a gold basis. Mr. Sherman, the Secretary of the Treasury, in his first annual report in 1877, said that in the work of refunding, he had informed his associates in an official letter that " as the Gov- REVOLUTION IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. 331 eminent exacts in payment for bonds their full face in coin, it is not anticipated that any future legislation of Congress or any action of any Department of the Government will sanction or tolerate the re- demption of the principal of these bonds, or the payments of the in- terest thereon in coin of less value than the coin authorized by law at the time of their issue being gold coin." He earnestly urged Con- gress to give its sanction to this assurance. The President, in his mes- sage, also declared that if the United States had the right to pay its bonds in silver coin the benefit would be overbalanced by the injurious effects of such payments against the honest convictions of the public creditors. In direct hostility to these recommendations, Mr. Matthews, Mr. Sherman's successor in the Senate, moved a concurrent resolution, declaring that " all bonds of the United States are payable in silver dollars of 412^ grains, and that to restore such dollars as a full legal tender for that purpose is not a violation of public faith or the rights of the creditor." A motion to refer the resolution to the Committee on the Judiciary was defeated ayes, 19; nays, 31. It was kept before the Senate for immediate consideration and discussion. Thirty-four Senators made elaborately prepared speeches on the subject, and the resolution was finally adopted without amendment as a declaration of the financial creed of Congress. In the meantime a bill for the free coinage of silver dollars of 412| grains, to be full legal tender- for all debts, public and private, had been hastily passed by the House, and was pending in the Senate. This was the famous Bland Silver Dollar bill. There was another long debate by the senatorial financiers, after which the measure was adopted by the two Houses, with amend- ments limiting the coinage to not less than $2,000,000 or more than $4,000,000 per month, all seigniorage to accrue to the Treasury, and authorizing the President to propose an international conference for the adoption of a common ratio for gold and silver. The bill was vetoed by President Hayes, but was passed over the veto. This was the beginning of the silver question, the history of which must be told in one of the closing chapters of this volume. As the last session of the 45th Congress closed without making provision for the expenses of the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial departments of the Government, or for the support of the army, a called session of the 46th Congress was necessary. The extra session began March 18, 1879. Mr. Randall was again elected Speaker of the House, receiving 143 votes, to 125 for General Garfield. Thirteen members, elected as Greenbackers, voted for Hendrick B. Wright, of Pennsylvania. Mr. Wright had served in the 33d, the 37th, and the 45th Congresses as a Democrat. It was not until his election to the 4Cth Congress that he was classed as a Greenbacker. His political 332 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. associates in the House were William M. Lowe, of Alabama; Adlai E. Stevenson, afterward Vice-President, and Albert P. Forsytlie, of Il- linois; Gilbert De la Matyr, of Indiana; James B. Weaver and Edward H. Gillette, of Iowa; George W. Ladd and Thompson H. Murch, of Maine; Nicholas Ford, of Missouri; Seth H. Yocum, of Pennsylvania, and George W T . Jones, of Texas. The Greenback-Labor party had been a factor of considerable importance in politics in alliance with the Democrats since 1873, but after 1880 its influence waned. Among the prominent Republicans who entered the House at this time were: Levi P. Morton, Richard Crowley, and Warner Miller, of New York; George M. Robeson, of New Jersey; Henry H. Bingham, of Pennsylvania; Thomas L. Young, of Ohio; Roswell G. Horr and John S. Newberry, of Michigan, and William D. W T ashburn, of Minnesota. Washburn was the fourth of seven brothers to obtain a seat in the House of Representatives. The only Republicans from the South were Milton G. Urner, of Maryland; Joseph Jorgenson, of Virginia; Daniel L. Russell, of North Carolina, and Leonidas C. Houck, of Ten- nessee. Ohio sent two noteworthy Democrats Frank H. Hurd, an earnest advocate of free trade, and A. J. Warner, an equally earnest advocate of free silver. In the Senate were Henry W. Blair, of New Hampshire, and Orville H. Platt, of Connecticut, the latter a Repub- lican, who succeeded William H. Barnum, Democrat. After an ab- sence of two years, General Logan was again in the Senate from Illi- nois as the successor of Mr. Oglesby. Mr. Chandler, of Michigan, after a brief experience in the Cabinet, w r as also back in the seat he had occupied for many years. His death occurred before the close of the year. On the Democratic side of the chamber the most conspicuous figure was George H. Pendleton, of Ohio. As the leader of the mi- nority in the House during the war, he had the advantage of a long legislative experience. The Southern States were now represented al- most entirely by Democrats, William Pitt Kellogg, of Louisiana, and Blanche K. Bruce, of Mississippi, being the only remaining Repub- licans. The new Senators from the South included: Zebulon B. Vance, of North Carolina; John S. Williams, of Kentucky, and George G. Vest, of Missouri. It was said at the time that the rebel brigadiers were again in the saddle. Although the Democrats had a majority in both houses of Con- gress for the first time in almost a quarter of a century six in the Senate, and, with their Greenback allies, thirty in the House they were powerless under a Republican President, except in the matter of the use of troops at the polls, in which President Hayes was in ac- cord with Southern sentiment. In spite of his surrender on w r hat was the vital question with the South, the " Fraudulent President," REVOLUTION IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. 333 as the Democracy persisted in calling General Hayes throughout his administration failed to conciliate the vindictive feeling which at- tended his peculiar accession to power. The revolution in the House of Representatives in 1874, and the subsequent supremacy of the Dem- ocrats in Congress, have delayed the history of a series of events that were the most potent causes in giving vitality to the reaction, the ef- fects of which continued to be felt for nearly a quarter of a century. II. THE HAYES AND WHEELER CAMPAIGN. Incipient Movement for a Third Term for General Grant Possible Republican Candidates for President Mr. Elaine The Mulligan Letters Senator Morton Secretary Bristow and the Whisky King Organization of the Republican National Convention of 187(5 The Platform Nominations and the Ballots Rutherford B. Hayes Nominated William A. Wheeler for Vice-President Rise of Samuel J. Tilden His Methods and Nomination The Campaign Doubtful Results of the Elections. N 1876, for the first time since I860, the nomination of a Presidential candidate by the Republicans was not a fore- gone conclusion in advance of the meeting of the nominat- ing body. There was some talk in the sensational news- papers of giving General Grant a third term, but apparently these journals only suggested it so that they might vehemently oppose it. There certainly was no organized movement with this object in view. It continued to be persistently asserted, however, that General Grant desired to be again a candidate, and the Republicans of Pennsylvania allowed themselves to become so fully convinced of the allegation that in 1875 the Republican State Convention adopted a resolution declar- ing unalterable opposition to the election to the Presidency of any person for a third term. This called out a letter from General Grant to General Harry White, the President of the Pennsylvania Con- vention, in which he said : " Now for the third term. I do not want it, any more than I did the first "; but because, he added, that the people were not restricted to two terms by the Constitution, that the time might come when it would be unfortunate to make a change at the end of eight years, and that he " would not accept a nomination if it were tendered, unless it should come under such circumstances as to make it an imperative duty circumstances not likely to rise." it was boldly proclaimed that these phrases meant that it was an imper- ative duty for the Republicans again to nominate Grant, and for Grant to accept. How utterly baseless was the story of Grant's can- didature was shown by a vote of the House of Representatives in De- cember, 1875. An Illinois Democrat offered a resolution, " that, in the opinion of this House, the precedent established by Washington and other Presidents of the United States, in retiring from the Presi- dential office after their second term, has become by universal con- THE HAYES AND WHEELER CAMPAIGN. 335 curreuce a part of our Republican system of government, and that any departure from this time-honored custom would be unwise, un- patriotic, and fraught with peril to our institutions." It was adopted by a vote of 234 to 18. This ended all talk of a third term for the time being, and the people began seriously to think of a candidate for a first term. The second nomination of Mr. Lincoln, and the two nominations of General Grant being practically unopposed, had opened the way for an entirely new set of Republican candidates for the Presidency, after sixteen years of Republican supremacy. The great leaders of the party in the formative and war periods were either dead or in re- tirement. It happened, as a consequence, that none of the men sug- gested for the nomination in 1876 was ever before a candidate before a National Convention. With new men and new issues to engage the attention and absorb the interest of the people, the preliminary dis- cussion of the claims of candidates took a very wide range. Alto- gether seven contestants developed sufficient strength in advance of the convention to make the nomination of any one of them a possibil- ity. These seven candidates were: James G. Elaine, of Maine; Oliver P. Morton, of Indiana; Benjamin H. Bristow, of Kentucky; Roscoe Conkling, of New York; Rutherford B. Hayes, of Ohio; John F. Hart- ranft, of Pennsylvania, and Marshall Jewell, of Connecticut. It became apparent early in the preliminary canvass that Mr. Blame was far in advance of all his competitors in popularity and prestige. As Speaker of the House of Representatives, he developed qualifica- tions for political leadership that he had failed to show at the be- ginning of his career. After six years in the chair he added greatly to his strength with the people as the leader of the Republican mi- nority in the 44th Congress. But his brilliancy, his daring, and his achievements made him enemies as well as friends. These enmities became an active element in his canvass at the critical moment when his success seemed assured. No assault upon a Presidential aspirant was ever more bitter and vindictive. The assault was deferred until within a few days of the meeting of the Republican National Conven- tion at Cincinnati, which was set for June 14. It took shape in a resolution of the House of Representatives to investigate the Pacific Railroad, which, it was hinted, would include an investigation of Mr. Blaine's transactions in railroad bonds. The insinuations were that he had been bribed by a gift of bonds of the Fort Smith and Little Rock Railroad Company to use his influence in Congress in behalf of that road, and it was asserted that a number of his letters were in existence that showed guilty complicity in the affairs of the company. This was the correspondence that became widely known as the " Mul- 336 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. ligan letters." The letters related to some investments of Mr. Blaine in Fort Smith and Little Rock bonds, but there was no proof that the transactions were not entirely innocent. These letters had been se- cured by a man named Mulligan, by whom they were shown to the committee charged with the Pacific Railroad investigation. When Mr. Blaine heard of the use that was being made of his letters, he went to Mulligan, and, after considerable entreaty, succeeded in ob- taining the correspondence. The possession of the letters was fol- lowed by an act of remarkable daring and courage. Instead of de- stroying or concealing the supposed proofs of his guilt, he went into the House on June 5, only nine days before the Cincinnati Convention, and, making it a question of personal privilege, read the entire cor- respondence and had it printed in the record. This intrepid action broke the effect of the insinuations and surmises by means of which Mr. Elaine's enemies were seeking to prevent his nomination, but even such intrepidity was not entirely effective, and his failure a fortnight later must be attributed to this cause. Some of the delegates be- lieved the charges to be true, and among those who disbelieved them there were some who thought it dangerous to nominate a man who was so seriously assailed. Another unfortunate circumstance that probably cost Mr. Blaine some votes was a temporary prostration by sunstroke on the Sunday preceding the Convention. After Mr. Blaine, the most prominent of the candidates for the nomination was Senator Morton. His acknowledged ability, his zeal as a party man, and his services as the War Governor of Indiana dur- ing the Rebellion, and in the Senate in the period of Reconstruction, entitled him to respectful consideration, and would have made him a formidable candidate for President. Mr. Bristow's pretensions to the nomination were a sign of the unrest in the party. He was not a man of great popularity, wide reputation, or eminent ability, but owed his temporary prominence entirely to his connection with Presi- dent Grant's administration as Secretary of the Treasury. He was one of General Grant's discoveries, succeeding William A. Richardson in the Treasury Department. For a number of years the heavy tax OLIVKR P. MORTON. THE HAYES AND WHEELER CAMPAIGN. 337 on distilled spirits had been a great temptation to fraud in the pro- duction of whisky, and combinations existed in many parts of the countrj 7 , especially in the West, by which the tax was evaded. Sec- retary Bristow set for himself the task of ferreting out the " Whisky Rings," and exposing and punishing frauds upon the revenue. His operations were conducted with great secrecy, and, for a time, were very successful. His methods created the impression that he was acting independently of the Administration, if not in conflict with it. Among those who were accused of complicity with these frauds was General Babcock, one of the President's secretaries. This not only involved a number of persons near the President, but even President Grant, in suspicions of insincerity in prosecuting the men guilty of frauds upon the revenue, while the credit for the prosecutions that was withheld from the Administration was freely bestowed upon the Secretary of the Treasury. In this way Mr. Bristow was able to de- velop surprising strength as a Presidential candidate, becoming the favorite of the sincere and honest Republicans who were urgent for administrative reform. Senator Conkling was backed by the powerful delegation from his own State, and was aided, besides, by the good will and good wishes of General Grant. He was not eager for the nomination for himself, but he entered the convention determined to beat Blaine, in which he succeeded. Neither Governor Hayes, of Ohio, nor Governor Hartranft, of Pennsylvania, was regarded as for- midable at any time previous to the convention, and the delegation secured the nomination for the Ohio candidate only because the dele- gates from Pennsylvania made no serious effort to obtain it for Hart- ranft. Governor Jewell had no support beyond the delegation from his own State. The Republican National Convention of 1870 was as noteworthy as any of the great national councils of the party that had preceded it. Among the distinguished delegates from the different States were: Eugene Hale, William P. Frye, Nelson Dingley, Jr., and Charles A. Boutelle, of Maine; E. Rockwood and George F. Hoar, Richard H. Dana, Jr., and James Russell Lowell, of Massachusetts; Governor Van Zandt and Nelson W. Aldrich,,of Rhode Island; General Hawley and Samuel Fessenden, of Connecticut; George William Curtis, Alonzo B. Cornell, Theodore M. Pomeroy, Stewart L. Woodford, Clar- ence A. Seward, William H. Robertson, Frank Hiscock, Thomas C. Platt, James N. Matthews, and Charles Emory Smith, of New York; William J. Sewell, George A. Halsey, and Garret A. Hobart, of New Jersey; J. Donald Cameron, p]dward McPherson, John Cessna, Henry M. Hoyt, and Henry H. Bingham, of Pennsylvania; the venerable Senator Wade and Governor Noyes, of Ohio; Henry P. Baldwin and 338 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. William A. Howard, of Michigan ; John M. Harlan and James Speed, of Kentucky; Charles B. Farwell and Robert G. Ingersoll, of Illinois; Richard W. Thompson, of Indiana; Nathan Goff, Jr., of West Vir- ginia; Philetns Sawyer, of Wisconsin; Alexander Ramsey and Dwight M. Sabin, of Minnesota; Jerome B. Chaffee and Henry M. Teller, of Colorado; John P. Jones, of Nevada; and Governor Packard and Sen- ator Kellogg, of Louisiana. These, it will be observed, included a number of names, new to this history, that afterward took a con- spicuous place in the annals of the party. Theodore M. Ponieroy, of New York, was made temporary chair- man of the Convention, and Edward McPherson, of Pennsylvania, permanent President. Mr. McPherson had been a member of Con- gress early in the war, and Clerk of the National House of Repre- sentatives during the entire period of Mr. Elaine's Speakership. Gen- eral Hawley was chairman of the Committee on Resolutions to which was committed a task scarcely less important than the duty that de- volved upon the Convention of nominating a ticket. On only one question was there a marked divergence of views in the Committee in framing the Platform. This difference was in regard to the financial policy of the party. The Resumption Act of 1875, providing for a return to specie payments in 1879, was thought by some members of the committee to be premature, and there were doubts of the wis- dom of its explicit indorsement. A long debate ensued, but it w r as finally determined to intrust the whole duty of framing a platform to a sub-committee, comprising General Hawley, former Attorney-Gen- eral Speed, Governor Dingley, of Maine; Governor Chamberlain, of South Carolina; Governor Waters, of Arkansas; James II. Howe, of Wisconsin, and Charles Emory Smith, of New York. This Commit- tee succeeded in framing a Platform that was clear and emphatic on the leading issues. Starting with a reaffirmation of the cardinal truths contained in the Declaration of Independence, suggested by the Centennial year, it recognized the pacification of the South and the protection of all its citizens as a sacred duty; the enforcement of the Constitutional Amendments was enjoined, and the obligation of removing any just cause of discontent was coupled with that of se- curing to every American citizen complete liberty and exact equality in the exercise of all civil, political, and public rights; the Public Credit Act, the measure first signed by President Grant, was referred to with the declaration that its " pledge must be fulfilled by a con- tinuous and steady progress to specie payments." The platform also embraced a distinct declaration for a radical reform of the civil service, making a broader and more precise enunciation than was con- tained in the Liberal platform of 1872, though the assigned reason THE HAYES AND WHEELER CAMPAIGN. 339 for that revolt, as given by its champions, was the alleged hostility of the Republican party to improvement in the Government service. The Protective policy was upheld; the extirpation of polygamy was de- manded, and an investigation into the Chinese question, then begin- ning to distract California, was recommended. In the Convention efforts were made to strike out the eleventh resolution relating to the Chinese, and to substitute for the fourth resolution a more urgent plank in favor of resumption; but both propositions failed, the former by 532 nays to 215 yeas, and the latter without a count. The candidates were all formally placed in nomination before the balloting began. Mr. Thompson, of Indiana, presented Senator Mor- ton, and Mr. Bristow was put in nomination by Judge Harlan, of Ken- tucky. Mr. Bristow's nomination was indorsed in glowing speeches by two of the literary delegates George William Curtis, of New York, and Richard Henry Dana, Jr., of Massachusetts. Mr. Blaine was nom- inated by Col. Robert G. Ingersoll, of Illinois, in a speech that at once became famous, and is still quoted as a brilliant example of Con- vention oratory. Elaine's nomination was seconded by William P. Frye, of Maine, and the Rev. Mr. Turner, a well-known colored preacher, of Georgia. Senator Conkling was put in nomination by Gen. Stewart L. Woodford, of New York; Governor Hayes by Ex- Governor Noyes, of Ohio; Governor Hartranft by Linn Bartholomew, of Pennsylvania, and Marshall Jewell by Stephen W. Kellogg, of Con- necticut. When the speech-making was over the ballots followed each other in quick succession, with the following results: 1st. 2d. 3d. 4th. 5th. 6th. 7th. Blaine 285 296 293 292 286 308 351 Morton 125 120 113 108 95 85 Bristow 113 114 121 126 114 111 21 Conkling 99 93 90 84 82 81 Hayes 61 64 67 68 104 113 384 Hartranft 58 63 68 71 69 50 Jewell 11 Scattering ; 3 4 3 5 5 5 Whole number 754 754 755 754 755 755 756 Necessary 378 378 378 378 378 378 379 On the first ballot Mr. Blaine received a vote exceeding that of four of his competitors, the two highest and the two lowest; on the second ballot, when the unit rule by which some of the delegates were bound was abrogated by the convention, he had a strength that 340 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY, fell only two votes short of that of his two highest opponents and his successful competitor. On the sixth ballot he was only TO votes short of a majority in a total of 755, and on the final ballot it required the combination of the entire strength of the opposition, with the excep- tion of a small contingent that remained true to Bristow, to defeat him. Elaine and Bristow on the first ballot were the only candidates who had more than a local strength, the support of the former being divided among twenty-eight States and seven Territories, and of the latter among nineteen States and one Territory. Mr. Morton's support was wholly from the South, except the 30 votes from his own State, Indiana. Seventy of Mr. Conkling's 99 votes came from New York. Hayes had the 44 votes of Ohio and IT from other States. The vote for Hartranft was that of the Pennsyl- vania delegation. The subsequent concen- tration upon Hayes was only expressive of the bitterness of feeling in opposition to Blaine. It was a grave political blunder in itself, apart from its consequences, which could not be fore- seen. Governor Hayes had no qualities that o u g h t to have com- mended him to the Con- vention as a more desira- ble candidate than Mr. Blaine. He occupied no commanding position before the country. In the Civil War his services were praiseworthy, but not more distin- guished than those of hundreds of others who were not thought of for the Presidency. In Congress he had not taken rank as a leader, either on the floor, or in the work of the committee room. Whatever pres- tige he possessed was due to the fact that he had beaten the two lead- ing Democrats of Ohio for the Governorship Allen G. Thurman in 1867 and George H. Pendleton in 1869. He was elected Governor of Ohio for the third term in 18T5, and thus enjoyed the advantage of being in office at the time the Republican National Convention was RUTHERFORD B. HAYES. THE HAYES AND WHEELER CAMPAIGN. 341 held in the leading city of his State. If the Convention had been held in Philadelphia it is not improbable that Governor Hartranft would have received the nomination. It was the absence of personal and political antagonisms in a word, of positive strength that made him acceptable as a candidate in a Convention distracted by personal and political feuds. The nomination created no enthusiasm, but, after the disappointment over Mr. Elaine's defeat had passed away, the whole party labored for the election of Governor Hayes, forgetful of the conditions that had rendered his nomination pos- sible. Five names were presented for the Vice-Presidency those of Will- iam A. Wheeler and Stewart L. Woodford, of New York; Marshall Jewell and Joseph R. Hawley, of Connecticut; and Frederick T. Frelinghuysen, of New Jersey but the balloting showed such a great preponder- ance in favor of Mr. Wheeler that all the other candidates were withdrawn, and he was nominated by acclamation. In Con- gress Mr. W T heeler's most important serv- ice was as Chairman of the Committee on the Pacific Railroad; but he earned most prominence before the country through what was know r n as the " Wheel- er Compromise." It grew out of the dis- turbed condition of Louisiana in 1874-5. There existed in that State an organiza- tion, affiliated with the Ku-Klux, known as the White League. Many negroes were killed by members of the League for the crime of being Republicans. In many parishes white Republicans were either ostracized or driven away, if they were not murdered. Honest elections were rendered impos- sible, and since 1872 the right to administer the State govern- ment had been in dispute. There were, in fact, two State govern- ments from 1872 to 1875, Governor Kellogg, Republican, adminis- tering one, and Governor McEnery, Democrat, the other. The two Houses of Congress recognized the Kellogg government in March, 1875, and the contentions in regard to the rights to seats in the Louisi- ana House of Representatives were adjusted by an award of a Special Committee of the National House of Representatives in April. As Mr. Wheeler was a member of this Committee, and was active in ef- fecting the adjustment, the settlement was popularly called the " Wheeler Compromise." This compromise was accepted and ob- WILLIAM A. WHEELER. 342 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. served until the elections of 1876 gave occasion for new frauds, and renewed contentions. With a weak ticket, headed by a man of respectable but negative character, the Republicans found themselves confronted by the ablest Democratic leader of his epoch. This was Samuel J. Til- den. The story of his rapid rise to supremacy in the Democratic party is one of the romances of American politics. A close student of political affairs, he had never been closely identified with party management. Thirty years before he had served in the New York Legislature, and as a member of the Constitutional Convention of 1846. A disciple of Van Buren, he had taken part with the Barn- burners in the Free Soil movement of 1848, but was not long an active opponent of slavery extension. During the next twenty years he held aloof from politics almost altogether, devoting himself to his profession as a lawyer, and amassing a large fortune as an acute man of business. The only public position that he held during the stirring periods of the war and reconstruction w r as that of a member of the New York Constitutional Convention of 1867. But he re- mained a Democrat, and succeeded Dean Richmond as Chairman of the Democratic State Committee, in which he was treated as a re- spectable nonentity by the New York Democracy. No one thought of Tilden as a Presidential possibility when Horatio Seymour was nominated in 1868, or Horace Greeley indorsed by the Baltimore Convention in 1872. The echoes of Mr. Greeley's disastrous cam- paign had scarcely died away when Mr. Tilden took the first steps that were to lead to his nomination in 1876. His opportunity came in the downfall of the " Tweed Ring," in the exposure of which he took an active and vigorous part. Although the work of bringing the members of the powerful combination of which Tweed was the chief to punishment began in 1871, it was not until 1873 that the convic- tion of some of the conspirators was accomplished. In the interval Mr. Tilden had not only labored in the courts and as a member of the Assembly for the extirpation of this shameless conspiracy in all the ramifications, but he had grasped the party leadership in the City and State of New York, and boldly marked out a career for himself in his sixtieth year that other men had hopefully and vainly cher- ished during the long period that he seemed indifferent to the prize. After the complete overthrow of the " Tweed Ring," the next step toward the Presidency the Governorship was easy. Mr. Tilden became the Democratic candidate for Governor of New York in 1874, and was lifted from that stepping-stone to a Presidential nomination on the great tidal wave of that year. As Governor of New York, he waged a vigorous war upon the corrupt " Canal Ring," that was to THE HAYES AND WHEELER CAMPAIGN. 343 the State what the shameful u Tweed King " had been to the City of New York. His success made his ascendancy over the Democratic party in his own State supreme, and his supremacy in New York en- abled him to create a national force in his interest as potent as it was compact as inspiring as it was fondly believed it would prove irre- sistible. Mr. Tildeu's claim to distinction as a Presidential aspirant rests not so much upon the fact that he created a party in his own behalf as that he re-created the Democracy. The Democratic party, as he found it in 1874, was a poor, tattered, beshredded fragment of the great inheritance that had come down to a new generation from Jefferson and Jackson. It was discredited by an odious war record. On the great financial questions that were to be the real issues of the future it had trimmed its sails to every wind of doctrine. No party that ever existed clung so tenaciously to galvanized tradi- tions, or discarded them so lightly at the suggestion of temporary expediency. But it was still a power for voicing the discontent of the people, if it could find a mind to direct and a hand to guide it. Mr. Tildeu saw his opportunity, and he embraced it with a skill un- matched in the annals of American politics, except by the organizing ability of Jefferson, and the deft manipulation of Van Buren. These were his political masters, and he possessed many of the gifts of both, without the subtler qualities of either. His plan was to vitalize the Democracy by promoting Republican discontent. The demand for administrative reform, which was expressive of this discontent, he appropriated to his own use and that of the Democracy as com- pletely as if he had invented it. His fitness for the task was osten- tatiously exhibited by the success of his methods in the government of the Empire State. All this was backed by a political organization more perfect than had been known since the early years of the De- mocracy. In the brief period of two years, Mr. Tilden gained the un- disputed control of the Democratic party, and he entered the Na- tional Convention at St. Louis, in 1876, with a strength that no other candidate could hope successfully to dispute. An attempt was made to divert a part of his support to other candidates, including Gov- ernor Hendricks and General Hancock, but it failed disastrously, Mr. Tilden lacking only a few votes of the necessary two-thirds on the first ballot. Before the second ballot ended the vote was declared to be unanimous, and Mr. Hendricks was then nominated for Vice- President without opposition further than a declaration of the In- diana delegation that it was not informed of his willingness to accept the second place on the ticket. The Democratic National Convention of 1876 met at St. Louis on 344 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN . PARTY. June 28. Henry Watterson, of Kentucky, was made temporary, and Gen. John A. McClernand, of Illinois, permanent President of the Convention. Among the delegates were many of the conspicuous Democrats of the country, including Judge Abbott, of Massachusetts; Francis Kernan and William Dorsheimer, of New York; Leon Abbett, of New Jersey; William A. Wallace and Samuel J. Randall, of Penn- sylvania; Gen. Thomas Ewing, of Ohio; Daniel W. Voorhees and Governor Williams, of Indiana; James R. Doolittle and William F. Vilas, of Wisconsin, and Robert M. McLane, of Maryland. The in- terests of Mr. Tilden in the Convention were ostensibly in charge of Senator Kernan, but in reality under the direction of Mr. Dors- heimer, who had left the Republican party with the Liberal Repub- lican movement four years before, and had become active in Demo- cratic politics as Tilden's lieutenant. Mr. Dorsheimer was a type of the men Mr. Tilden brought into active leadership in the Demo- cratic politics of New York. They were mostly young politicians, who implicity obeyed the orders of their great chief, and, with Gov- ernor Tilden, constituted a new Albany Regency. Few of the con- spicuous Democrats of previous years w r ere in sympathy with the new " machine," and some of them were in open and earnest opposition. These enmities led to a futile attempt to organize a movement at St. Louis to defeat Tilden. It was led by John Kelly, who had succeeded in reconstructing Tammany, and was its acknowledged chief. Mr. Kelly's hostility was based on the assumption that if nominated, Mr. Tilden could not carry his own State, and that con- sequently he would be defeated. In accord with Mr. Kelly were Augustus Schell, the Chairman of the Democratic National Com- mittee; Erastus Corning, the veteran leader of the New York State Democracy; and Chief Justice Church, of the New York Court of Ap- peals. It is a proof of the thoroughness and virility of Mr. Tilden's reorganization of the Democracy that it was not only able to resist such powerful influences, but gained strength from a movement that was so evidently the result of jealousy and enmity. The Platform adopted at St. Louis was the longest and most di- dactic declaration of principles that had ever emanated from a Na- tional Convention. It was credited to the pen of Manton Marble, the editor of the New York World, but it was prepared under the eye and with the direction of Mr. Tilden himself. It was at once an indict- ment of the Republican party and an appeal to the people, but with Reform as its keynote, it was vague and indefinite in its enunciation of methods. It was resonant, but not convincing. It charged the Republican party with making no advances toward, or preparation . for, resumption, and then denounced the resumption clause of the act THE HAYES AND WHEELER CAMPAIGN. 345 of 1875, and demanded its repeal. It assailed the existing tariff as " a masterpiece of injustice, inequality, and false pretense/' and de- manded that " all custom house taxation shall be only for revenue." It assailed the Republican party for the alleged failure " to make good the promise of the legal tender notes," but indicated no Demo- cratic plan by which to obtain a sound currency. It was a platform that committed the Democracy to no principles of finance or govern- ment, and gave no promise of Democratic policy. With this platform of phrases and platitudes, and with one candidate appealing to the hard-money sentiment in the North and East, and the other to the soft-money vagaries of the South and West, it aimed to hold together the Democrats of the Jackson School and the " New Lights," who for eight years had been captivated by the " Ohio Idea." The canvass was devoid of the incidents that in previous years had made Presidential campaigns stirring political episodes. There were no log cabin and hard cider barbecues, as in 1840; no Wide Awake processions, *as in I860. There were no great popular gatherings ad- dressed by the Democratic candidate, as had been the devices of Mr. Douglas in 1860, Mr. Seymour in 1868, and Mr. Greeley in 1872. Gov- ernor Hayes left his campaign in the hands of the party leaders, and it was ably and skillfully directed by Zachariah Chandler, of Mich- igan, the Chairman of the Republican National Committee. Mr. Til- den took a more active personal control of his canvass, directing his efforts toward securing the electoral vote of a " solid South," together with the votes of New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, Indiana, and possibly Oregon. The October States, Ohio and Indiana, did not clearly foreshadow the result in November, the former going Repub- lican by 9,000, and the latter Democratic by 5,000. The trend, how- ever, was favorable to Mr. Tilden. As Ohio was not in the list of States necessary to his success, its loss was not vital, while the in- dications were that Mr. Hendricks would be able to carry his own State for the ticket of which he was a part by a majority as large, if not larger, than that by which Gen. Benjamin Harrison had been beaten for Governor. This proved to be no miscalculation, and Til- den was successful in all the other States on his list except Oregon, which had been conceded to be in doubt. According to the early re- ports on the night after the election, Mr. Tilden's expectations in re- gard to a " Solid South " had also been realized. The Democrats went to their beds firmly convinced that his election was assured, and the Republicans feared that the South, for the first time since 1856, had elected a President of the United States. There was one ray of hope, however, in a message that was flashed over the wires at an early hour on the morning after the election. It came from the 346 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. Chairman of the Republican National Committee, and was in these words: " Rutherford B. Hayes has received one hundred and eighty- five electoral votes, and is elected." The information on which this message was based will be told in detail in the following chapter, giving the history of the most extraor- dinary contest that ever took place in the settlement of the choice of an American President. In all thirty-eight States voted for Presi- dent and Vice-President, November 7, 1876. The whole number of electoral votes was 369. The solid South would give Mr. Tilden 138 votes, and these, with the 65 votes of Connecticut, New Jersey, and Indiana, would make a total of 203. Mr. Chandler's information led him to believe that South Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana had gone Republican, and it was upon this claim that the disputed election turned. An incident of the campaign was the candidature of Peter Cooper, of New York, and Samuel F. Gary, of Ohio, as the nominees of the Green- back, or Independent National party. Mr. Cooper was a millionaire man- ufacturer of New York, whose monument is and always will be, the great public benefaction created by him in New York City the Cooper Union. He was a man of irreproach- able character, but inclined to politi- cal crotchets, and not entirely free from the vanity of a self-made man long subjected to adulation because of his great wealth and prac- tical benevolence. Mr. Gary was a quixotic politician, who was placed on the ticket as Mr. Cooper's running mate after Newton Booth, of California, had declined to be a candidate. The ticket was not looked upon as a serious element in the canvass, but the candidates received a small vote in twenty-four of the thirty-eight States. In only one State, Indiana, was it large enough to in- fluence the result. The popular vote of Indiana was: For Tilden, 213,526; for Hayes, 208,011, and for Cooper, 17,233. It will thus be seen that Mr. Cooper's candidature, lightly as it has been regarded, may have been the cause of the failure of the Republicans to obtain the 15 electoral votes of Indiana, which would have rendered only the vote of South Carolina necessary to the election of Hayes and Wheeler. The aggregate " Greenback " vote was 81,737. PETER COOPER. III. THE ELECTORAL COUNT. The Disputed States Visiting Statesmen Opinions on the Mode of Counting the Electoral Vote Committees Appointed by the House and Senate Electoral Commission Bill Processes that Led to an Agreement Plans of the House Committee Justice Davis Obstacles in the Way of the Agreement The Senate Plan A Commission not a Tribunal All Plans Hinge on the Question of Justice Davis's Bias The Plan Agreed Upon The Commission Constituted and Organized- The Count Begun The Florida Case Heard The Cases of Louisiana, Oregon, and South Carolina The Cipher Dispatches and Attempts at Bribery. HE dispute over the returns that were to make Hayes or Til- den President of the United States lasted from November 8, 1876, when Chairman Chandler's claim was announced, until March 2, 1877, when the title to the Presidency was finally awarded to Rutherford B. Hayes. The interval was one of great excitement and peril. Both Republicans and Democrats were persistent in claiming a victory in the three disputed States. Every Republican knew that in these three States a Republican majority, ui)oii an honest vote and legal count, was assured. In South Caro- lina and Louisiana the colored voters, who were unanimously Repub- lican, greatly outnumbered the whites. In Florida, where the two i-Mces were nearly equal in number, there w r as a sufficient population of white Republicans to make a Republican majority a certainty. The importance of a fair count was manifest. A proposition was made almost immediately, and at once acted upon, that each party should send a number of prominent men to the States in which the elections were disputed to see that the count was fairly and honestly made. Some of these were appointed by President Grant, and the others by the Democratic National Committee. Both sets were pop- ularly known as " the visiting statesmen," but neither set accom- plished anything practical, or contributed in any marked degree to- ward allaying the prevailing excitement. President Grant, however, took effective measures for preventing an outbreak in the two States where the greatest danger existed. On November 10, only three days after the Presidential election, he sent to General Sherman, 34:8 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. commanding the Army, the following memorable dispatch: " In- struct General Augur in Louisiana, and General Ruger in Florida, to be vigilant with the force at their command to preserve peace and good order, and to see that the proper and legal boards of canvassers are unmolested in the performance of their duties. Should there be any grounds for suspicion of a fraudulent count on either side it should be reported and denounced at once. No man worthy of the office of President should be willing to hold it if counted in or placed there by fraud. Either party can afford to be disappointed in the result. The country can not afford to have the result tainted by the suspicion of illegal or false returns." When the time came for the meeting of the Electoral Colleges in the three States in which the elections were in dispute, on December 6, the candidates for election on both the Presidential tickets met, and each body proceeded to act as if it had been legally chosen. In South Carolina the Board of State Canvassers certified to the election of the Hayes electors on the face of the returns, and the Republican electors met and cast the vote of the State for Hayes and Wheeler. The Democratic electors also met and cast a ballot for Tilden and Hendricks. The Democratic contention was that detachments of the army stationed near the polls had prevented a fair and free elec- tion. The result was two sets of returns. In Florida there were allegations of fraud on both sides, and the result was double re- turns, as in South Carolina. The canvassing board and the Gov- ernor certified to the election of the Hayes electors, but the Demo- cratic electors, fortified by a decision of the State courts, met and voted for Tilden. In Louisiana there was anarchy that threatened to end in civil war. There were two Governors, two returning boards, two electoral colleges. By a trick, one electoral vote from Oregon was also placed in the disputed column. The Democratic Governor adjudged one of the Republican electors, who held a small postmas- tership, ineligible, and gave a certificate to the highest candidate on the Democratic list. Thus, the result was in actual doubt when the 44th Congress met for its last session in December, 1876. The grave questions that confronted Congress and the country were: Had the President of the Senate, by virtue of his office, the right to count the electoral vote? Did the Constitution invest him with discretionary power to decide what were not the electoral votes of a State? Must both Houses of Congress acquiesce in counting the votes of a State before they could be counted, or would the objection of either House be fatal to anv electoral returns? THE ELECTORAL COUNT. 349 The first two contentions were the Republican claim. Prelimi- nary to counting the electoral votes cast at the Presidential election of 1864, the two Houses, in February, 1865, adopted a joint rule di- recting that " no electoral vote objected to shall be counted except by the concurrent vote of the two Houses." The rule was not after- ward renewed, but it was observed in counting the electoral votes of 1868 and 1872. Objection to it would have been fatal, but the ques- tion was not raised. Now the validity of the rule was vital to Demo- cratic hopes, for the election of Tilden would hinge upon it. Neither contention could be satisfactory to the American people in a matter of such supreme importance as the election of a Presi- dent of the United States. According to the Republic- an view that is, the view of some Republicans the Acting Vice-President, Mr. Ferry, who was a Republic- an, could count the votes of the three disputed States in favor of Mr. Hayes, and he would be the President- elect, in defiance of the will of either or both Houses of Congress. According to the Democratic view that is, the view of some Democrats the House of Representa- tives, which was Demo- cratic, could reject the votes of any one of the three dis- puted States, or the dis- puted vote of Oregon, and Mr. Tilden would be the President-elect. In- sistence on either of these propositions meant an outbreak. The Demo- crats especially were defiant. Threats were openly made that Hayes should never be inaugurated, and a fiery Democratic editor, Henry Watterson, announced that a hundred thousand Democrats would march to Washington and install Mr. Tilden in office. The Republic- ans were not so threatening, but not less determined, unless a practi- cal solution of the difficulty was found. In the end, both sides aban- doned their pretensions, and Congress sought a basis of settlement that would be more equitable than either of these unsatisfactory prop- ositions. THOMAS W. FERRY, 350 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. Mr. McCrary, of Iowa, introduced a resolution into the House of Representatives, providing for a committee, to act in conjunction with a similar committee from the Senate, to consider the whole sub- ject of the disputed votes, and to recommend to Congress a course to be followed. This resolution was reported from the Judiciary Com- mitte on December 14 by Mr. Knott, of Kentucky, the Chairman. The resolution was adopted almost unanimously. The committee con- sisted of seven members, who were named by Speaker Randall on the 22d, as follows: Henry B. Payne, of Ohio; Eppa Hunton, of Vir- ginia; Abram S. Hewitt, of New York, and William M. Springer, of Illinois, Democrats; George W. McCrary, of Iowa, George F. Hoar, of Massachusetts, and George Willard, of Michigan, Republicans. On the 18th the Senate adopted a similar resolution, and appointed a committee of seven, consisting of George F. Edmunds, of Vermont; F. T. Frelinghuysen, of New Jersey; John A. Logan, of Illinois, and Oliver P. Morton of Indiana, Republicans and Allen G. Thurman, of Ohio; Thomas F. Bayard, of Delaware, and Matt. W. Ransom, of North Carolina, Democrats. The resolution declared the duty of the committee to be " to pre- pare and report without delay such a measure, either legislative or constitutional, as may in their judgment be best calculated to ac- complish the desired end." The two committees, acting as one, re- ported January 18, 1877, a bill " to provide for and regulate the counting of votes for President and Vice-President, and the decision of questions arising thereon, for the term commencing March 4, 1877.'' Every member of the Senate and House Committees, with the ex- ception of Senator Morton, of Indiana, joined in this report. The process by which the two committees reached a common ground led each of them, acting separately, and without consultation or knowledge of w T hat the other was doing, to almost identical con- clusions the device of an independent tribunal. This result was almost inevitable from the conditions. Most of the plans proposed led directly to one of two results, which could be foreseen as its logical consequence the seating of Mr. Tilden, or the seating of Mr. Hayes. It was certain that the Republicans would not agree to a plan that they knew in advance would make Mr. Tilden President. It was equally certain that the Democrats would not agree to a plan that they knew in advance would make Mr. Hayes President. Any such plan, even if agreed upon by the committees, would be sure to fail, either in the Democratic House or the Republican Senate. The element of judicial uncertainty that would sustain the hopes of both parties was a necessary incident to an agreement. Indeed, it may be doubted whether the Electoral Commission would have been assented THE ELECTORAL COUNT. 351 to if each party had not believed that the political balance was so nearly adjusted that the preponderance was to its side, without being- visible to the other. The draft of a bill for an independent tribunal was first sub- mitted to the House Committee by Mr. McCrary, January 10, 1877. Mr. McCrary w r as a lawyer of unusual ability, and as a constructive statesman he ranked very high. According to Mr. McCrary's draft, the tribunal was to consist of the Chief Justice of the United States and of a certain number of the Associate Justices of the Supreme Court in the order of their seniority. As soon as the plan came under discussion it became apparent that Chief Justice Waite would not be acceptable to the Democrats. It was alleged that during the canvass he had spoken of Mr. Tilden in terms of personal hostility, his language befitting a partisan, rather than a judge. Whether this w r as so or not, it is certain the Chief Justice had no desire to serve on the Commission. As the plan was finally agreed upon by the House Committee the tribunal was to consist of the five senior Justices of the Supreme Court. These w r ere Justices Clifford, Swayne, Davis, Miller, and Field. Two of these w r ere Democrats and two Republicans, and Justice Davis was not regarded as either a Republican or a Democrat. Although appointed to the Supreme Bench by President Lincoln, Jus- tice Davis soon ceased to sympathize with the Republican party. If not a Democrat, he was in closer affiliation with the Democracy than with the Republicans. The selection of Justice Davis as one of the Commissioners was an element in the Electoral Commission bill in all its phases. It was said at the time that Abram S. Hew T itt had given Mr. Tilden the assurance, or a strong intimation, that Justice Davis would be selected, and that it was thus that Mr. Tilden's as- sent to the Commission was secured. It is certain that the Demo- crats were led to support the bill almost unanimously because they believed he would be selected. Republican opposition to the plan was manifested for the same reason. That the expectation amounted to a certainty was accepted by both sides, and its failure of realiza- tion was due to an event that was not forseen, as will be shown here- after. Apart from the selection of the tribunal, there were obstacles in the w r ay of an agreement that were not easily removed. Mr. Mc- Crary's bill made the decision of the proposed tribunal binding un- less both Houses of Congress should vote to overrule it. The Dem- ocrats insisted on an amendment to the effect that the decision should have no binding quality unless concurred in by both Houses. To this the Republican members of the Committee would not consent, and the change was made by the Democratic majority. The bill 352 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. further provided that to the five eminent Judges to comprise the tri- bunal were to be referred " the certificates objected to, together with the objections, and all papers and evidence in the possession of the President of the Senate, or of either of the Houses of Congress re- lating thereto." And power was to be granted them " to send for persons and papers, and to compel the attendance of witnesses; also to cause testimony to be taken before one or more Commissioners, to be appointed by them for that purpose." While the House Committee was formulating a plan for the set- tlement of the question in dispute, the Senate Committee reached a conclusion that was identical with that of the House in principle, but differed from it in detail. The Senate wanted a mixed tribunal to be made up of representatives of the legislative as well as the judicial branch of the Government. The Commission was to consist of thirteen members, nine to be taken from Congress, and four from the Supreme Court. Each House was to name five members, one of the ten to be eliminated by lot. As the House of Repre- sentatives was Democratic and the Senate Republican, this would leave the political majority a matter of chance. This plan was humorously called the " dice-box " prin- ciple. While the House \vas ready to assent to the mixed Com- mission, the Democrats were afraid they might lose when it came to the elimination of the superfluous Commissioner, and they insisted if there was to be a " lot," that it must apply to the judiciary members of the tribunal. There was a general discussion of the grave ques- tion whether the body to which the electoral count was to be sub- mitted should be called a " tribunal " or a " commission," and the lat- ter title was finally selected. It was also decided that the Commis- sion should consist of fifteen members five from each of the bodies represented. Then came a prolonged contest over the selection of the five representatives of the Supreme Court. Finally an agreement was substantially reached, which provided for taking six of the justices in the order of their seniority Clifford, Swayne, Davis, Miller, Field, and Strong one to be dropped by lot. This agreement was reached on Saturday, all the members of the two committees assenting to it ex- cept Mr. Springer, of the House. The Joint Committee adjourned to give Mr. Springer time to think over the proposition over Sunday, but when it again met on Monday a great change had been wrought. In spite of the injunction of secrecy, the plan that came so near being adopted on Saturday had been made public through the col- umns of a New York newspaper. Among the Democratic Representa- tives it raised a storm of objection and ridicule, and at the joint meeting of the two committees on Monday, Mr. Payne announced THE ELECTORAL COUNT. 353 to his associates that, since their plan had become known, the op- position to that feature which provided for selecting six Justices of the Supreme Court and dropping one by lot, had developed to a de- gree that satisfied him that it could never receive the sanction of the House. Following this announcement, the assent of the House Committee to the proposition was withdrawn, and it was again pro- posed to take the five senior Justices outright. This plan, Mr. Payne argued, would assure the non-partisan character of the Commission without a resort to the lot system. The only question really at issue was the political leanings of Jus- tice Davis. It was claimed that he was an independent, leaning no more to one side than to the other. To this Mr. Edmunds, sometimes called the St. Jerome of the Senate, because of his remarkable re- semblance to the pictures of that saint, retorted that Judge Davis was one of those " Independents who stood always ready to accept Democratic nominations " ; that " such men are generally the most extreme in their partisanship," and that he " would rather intrust a decision to an out and out Democrat than to a so-called Independent." It was alleged, indeed, that Justice Davis was a Democrat. " Judge Davis," said Mr. Springer, " is just about as much of a Democrat as Horace Greeley was in 1871. He is not now, and never was, a Democrat. His most intimate friends, among whom I may count myself, do not know to-day whether he favored Tilden or Hayes. He did not vote at all. They only know that he is absolutely honest and fair." During the discussion Senator Morton was moody, glum, and silent, but he finally rose on his crutches to cast a firebrand among his associates. He declared that he entertained great doubt about the power of calling in any outside tribunal to settle this momentous question. If, however, there is such a power, " why not call in the whole Supreme Court? Is it not more simple? It will not have the appearance of being fixed. All parties will be satisfied. Their de- cision would be acquiesced in by all." After the Indiana Senator had denounced the plan as a " contrivance," Mr. Frelinghuysen, of New Jersey, declared that to drop one judge by lot could not pos- sibly be susceptible to the charge of " being fixed." " Those fellows," said Mr. Edmunds, " who believe it foreordained that Hayes is to be President think the Constitution, as it is, sufficient for that purpose. They will oppose any legislation whatever on the subject." Mr. Bayard, more sanguine, perhaps, than some of the others, said: " If we seven men of both Houses could agree, would there not be a weight in such an agreement sufficient to carry it through? Would it not be a most noble example of abnegation of partisanship? I am one who believes that whatever measure is recommended by this Com- 354 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. mittee will be adopted." Mr. Hewitt, who, as Chairman of the Demo- cratic National Committee, was credited with representing the views as well as the interests of Mr. Tilden, was pressed by Mr. Conkling to suggest a way out of the entanglement. " My colleague," replied Mr. Hewitt, " is aware of the disadvantages I labor under in making suggestions. He has doubtless observed that I have little to say in this discussion. Owing to my peculiar relations, I am un- justly supposed to speak for another. But my per- sonal views are not always necessarily in harmony with those of the person for whom I am supposed to speak." He stated his conviction, however, that the bill with the " lot " fea- ture could never pass. The Committees were unable to agree, and when they met again on Tuesday morning they took up the dis- cussion w T here they had left it the day before. Mr. Payne again urged the House plan, and was supported by Mr. Hewitt, who said his idea was, to take five from each body, namely, five from the Senate, five' from the House, and five from the Judiciary. " In selecting the latter," he said, " there is an obvious propriety in selecting those longest on the bench, as farthest removed from the passions of the party politics of the day. Those recently appointed on the bench are too fresh from the domain of politics to have gotten over a natural bias that they took with them." " The proposition of the House Committee," Mr. Frelinghuysen said, " is really to make a Com- mission of eight Democrats and seven Republicans. Judge Davis has twice aspired to the nomination by the Democrats for the Presi- dency. Perhaps he has now aspiration for the future. His vote might turn the Government over to the Democrats, or retain the Republicans in power. It is not a fair proposition." Mr. Hewitt declared that to the best of his information, Judge Davis was " neu- tral." " The best evidence of his neutrality," said Senator Ed- munds, "'is the same as that of Greeley and Chase. He is fishing after Democratic nominations." At this point Senator Thurman suggested an even number of judges. " I do not believe," he said, " they would range themselves on party lines. No doubt they would decide as they believed right." Then came a suggestion supported by Mr. Hoar and Mr. Willard, for " an evenly divided Commission, which, in case of inability to decide, should be empowered to call in an outsider, some eminent American not in public life, as umpire." Then the Senate Committee came forward with a new proposition. It was to take the four senior Justices Clifford, Davis, Swayne, and Miller and these to select a fifth. This, it seems, had the ac- quiescence of the Democratic members of the Senate Committee. It was not approved, however, by the House Democrats. " I confess," THE ELECTORAL COUNT. 355 said Mr. Payne, " that I am at a loss to understand how this last proposition is based on any assumption that the Commission should be equal. Judge Davis is not a Democrat. You ask us to take as a Democrat one who is not more than half a Democrat against two ab- solute Republicans. I can see no equality in such a proposition." This later plan, however, had the support of Senator Bayard, who said: " To me it is rather saddening that the agreement should hinge on the quantum of bias in Judge Davis. I know Judge Davis only slightly; know him only as a lawyer of limited practice knows judges who sit on the bench before him. I believe he is no more of a Demo- crat than a Republican on existing issues. I can not but believe that in this hour of great danger to the institutions of the country there will be evolved a feeling above party, a feeling that shall regard the country as paramount to all merely partisan ends or considerations. Party view is not the only view to take, nor the strongest. For that reason I have voted for this proposition, though not fully meeting my views. . . . All this weighing and balancing may turn out to be perfectly useless. The mere fact of their selection under the cir- cumstances would of itself tend to make them non-partisan." The day again ended without an agreement. On the following day a proposition originating with Mr. Hewitt was made, providing that Justice Clifford, a Democrat, and Justice Swayne, a Republican, should name two Commissioners, and these four should name the fifth. This proposition was summarily re- jected. Finally it was determined to take the Associate Justices from the First, Third, Eighth, and Ninth : Judicial Circuits, and let these four name a fifth member of the Supreme Court to sit upon the Commission. " This plan," said the Vermont Senator, " has the merit of being based on geographical considerations, Justice Clif- ford representing New England, Justice Strong the Middle States, Justice Miller the Northwest, and Justice Field the Pacific slope." This plan avoided the selection of the judges by name, and received the sanction of the Committees. Before the Committees adjourned for the day, after reaching an agreement, Mr. Edmunds and Mr. Thurman were directed to prepare an address to accompany the sub- mission of the bill to Congress. When they again met the next morning, January 18, 1877, for the last time, the address was consid- ered and adopted, with such changes as were considered necessary. The critical Representative from Massachusetts, Mr. Hoar, raised an objection to the phrase that " it is comparatively unimportant who is President." " In my opinion," he said, " it is of immense impor- tance which party rules the country." Senator Conkling announced the broad proposition that it is " always unwise, in large transactions, 356 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. to do anything unnecessary." He then proceeded to criticise the phrase in the address, " If such jurisdiction is not invested by the Constitution, this bill creates it." He maintained that no jurisdic- tion was created by the Constitution which is not vested somewhere. " Can we," he asked, " by a legislative act create a jurisdiction? We may create a tribunal to exercise jurisdiction; but can we create the jurisdiction itself? " " This report," he said, " is to be put under a microscope. It is to be examined with great care. No man can vote for this bill unless he believes the power bestowed exists some- where." Mr. Hoar suggested the following phraseology: " If the Constitution, requiring the exercise of this jurisdiction, does not designate a tribunal or officer to execute it, this bill provides such a tribunal." " I prefer," replied the New York Senator, " to say just what we mean. If w r e have that right, it is because the Constitu- tion requires both Houses to do it; or, the Constitution not making such requirements, expects the law-making power to provide it. This is our pediment. Take that from under us and we are gone. This bill goes to the theory of regulating and adjusting the power already held. Mr. Hoar's amendment implies that the law-making power is vested in the tribunal. That is not my theory. Mine is that the Constitution requires Congress to declare a President. The two Houses employ this tribunal as an auxiliary, as eyes and hands. We do not delegate this power. We keep it all. This is our own minis- tration." Senator Bayard closed the discussion. The bill went through the two Houses with impetuous promptitude. Mr. Cox wrote afterward: " Its chief opponents in the Senate were Mr. Morton and Mr. Sherman, and in the House, Mr. Garfield, of Ohio, and Mr. Mills, of Texas. Almost the first response to the sub- mission of the bill came from Massachusetts, where a prolonged struggle over Senator Boutwell's seat was suddenly ended in the tri- umph of Mr. Hoar. Speeches of rare eloquence and power were made for the bill in both Senate and House. Mr. Conkling spoke for two days. Among other things, he riddled to shreds the pretension that the Vice-President had the right to ' count ' the electoral votes. Senator Hill, of Georgia, made a speech of unusual cogency. It breathed throughout the true patriotic spirit. He favored the ex- pedient with all his acumen and eloquence. His enthusiasm kindled a lambent flame charged with electric force. As he reached his peroration he was handed a telegram, announcing that the protracted contest for Senator in his State had just ended in the senatorial toga being again placed on his shoulders. The popular tide was now all one way. It was irresistible. What would be the consummation? The Democrats felt secure in the justice of their cause. No matter THE ELECTORAL COUNT. 357 to them who might be the fifth judge whose choice was to determine the party bias of the Commission. No one doubted, however, that the choice of the fifth judge would fall upon Mr. Justice Davis. He was the only one left on the bench on whom the two Democrats and the two Republican judges could possibly unite. He was, to be sure, an unknown element, but notwithstanding this, the Democrats had more confidence in his impartiality than the Republicans seemed to have." How the action of a Commission so equipoised might have eventu- ated must be a subject for speculation, and speculation only. Justice Davis, whose political leanings were so fruitful a theme of discus- sion in the committees, and in whom centered alike the hopes of Democrats and the fears of Republicans, was not born to sit on the Electoral Commission. The bill was passed in the Senate on January 24 by 47 ayes to 17 nays, and by the House two days later by 191 ayes to 86 nays. The mode prescribed in the act for selecting the Elec- toral Commission was by viva voce vote in the Senate and House. The tacit understanding was that the Senate should appoint three Republicans and two Democrats, and the House three Democrats and two Republicans. This was done as follows: SENATORS George F. Edmunds, Oliver P. Morton, and Frederick T. Frelinghuysen, Republicans; and Thomas F. Bayard and Allen G. Thurman, Democrats. REPRESENTATIVES Henry B. Payne, Eppa Hunton, and Josiah G. Abbott, Democrats; and James A. Garfield and George F. Hoar, Re- publicans. The four Justices of the Supreme Court absolutely appointed by the terms of the act were Nathan Clifford, Samuel F. Miller, Stephen J. Field, and William Strong. It was considered certain, when the Senate voted on January 24, that Justice Davis would be the choice of his four judicial associates, but on the following day, the 25th, he was elected a Senator of the United States by the Illinois Legisla- ture. Chosen by a Democratic Legislature, and reckoned as a Demo- crat, there would have been manifest impropriety in his selection, in view of the previous contention of the Democratic members of the House Committee that he was not a Democrat. Justice Davis's ac- ceptance of an election so unexpected and so fatuous from the Demo- cratic standpoint, removed him from the list of possibilities for the fifth judgeship of the Commission, and the four judges designated by the act unanimously agreed upon Justice Joseph P. Bradley. The Electoral Commission was organized January 31, 1877. The next day the two Houses of Congress met in the Representatives' Chamber to count the vote. The galleries were packed with a vast 358 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. multitude of spectators, black and white. In the corridors there was an eager, pushing throng of people from every State in the Union. The Capitol palpitated with suppressed excitement. When the two Houses were seated Senator Thomas W. Ferry, of Michigan, presi- dent pro tcmpore of the Senate, took the chair. Speaker Randall sat by his side. The certificates containing the electoral votes of the States were opened, one by one, in alphabetical order by acting Vice- President Ferry, and by him handed to the tellers to be announced and recorded. The votes of Alabama and Arkansas were recorded for Tilden. Then California, Colorado, and Connecticut were counted for Hayes. When the three votes of Delaware were set down for Tilden there was a hush of expectation that meant that the critical moment had come. Florida was reached. The chair announced two sets of returns, saying that under the law these must go to the Electoral Commission. The joint convention then took a recess to await the action of the Commission, and the interest was transferred to the historic chamber occupied by the Supreme Court. The fifteen members of the Electoral Commission occupied the bench of the Justices of the Supreme Court. The five judges formed the center of the group, Justice Clifford, the senior judge, presiding. On the right of the judges were the five Senators, and on the left the five Representatives. Before this august tribunal was an array of counsel eminent for forensic ability and learning. On the Repub- lican side were William M. Evarts, Stanley Matthews, E. W. Stoughton, and Samuel Shellabarger. In behalf of the Democratic claim there was an array still more formidable and distinguished. It comprised Jeremiah S. Black, Charles O'Conor, John A. Campbell, formerly of the Supreme Court; Lyman Trumbull, Montgomery Blair, Ashbel Green, George Hoadly, Richard T. Merrick, William C. Whit- ney, and Alexander Porter Morse. The allegations in behalf of the Tilden returns were that the Hayes electors were not duly chosen; that the certificate of the Governor to their election was the result of a conspiracy; that its validity, if any, had been annulled by a subsequent certificate by the Governor, to the effect that the Tilden electors were chosen; that a court decision made certain the election of the Democratic electors; and that one of the Republican electors was a Shipping Commissioner under appoint- ment from the Government of the United States at the time of his election, and was therefore disqualified. The Republican objection to the Tilden votes was that the returns were not duly authenticated by any person holding at the time an office under the State of Florida. These questions were argued at great length, the case claiming the attention of the Commission until February 7, when it THE ELECTORAL COUNT. 359 was decided. The decision was that it was not competent for the Commission " to go into evidence aliunde the papers opened by the President of the Senate, to prove that other persons than those regu- larly certified by the Governor " were appointed. With reference to the case of the elector alleged to have been disqualified, it was de- cided that the evidence did not show that he held an office on the day of his appointment. Each of the fifteen members of the Commission read his opinion in secret session, fourteen of them being evenly di- vided seven in favor of the Tilden electors, and seven in favor of the Hayes electors. This placed the final responsibility for the de- cision upon Justice Bradley, who was the last to be heard. His dec- laration that his vote must be given for counting the Florida vote for Hayes divided the Commission on party lines, eight to seven. When the result was known the disappointment and chagrin of the Demo- crats were exceedingly keen and bitter. They at once declared that they were being defrauded, that Mr. Hayes was to obtain title against the law and the evidence, that Hayes was to occupy the place that the people had voted to confer upon Tilden. Justice Bradley was made a target for abuse more virulent than had been exhibited in assailing a Judge of the Supreme Court since the attempt to impeach Samuel Chase in 1805. The men who had supported the Commis- sion when they expected to profit by it through Justice Davis now denounced it because it had failed them through Justice Bradley. " The Democrats of the Commission," wrote Mr. Cox, " felt the humiliation of this departure from constitutional methods. Judge Bradley would never have been guilty of such stultification unless he had deliberately decided to accept its full consequences and to gather its substantial fruits. Such an excoriation as Mr. Payne, the Nestor of the House Commission, gave this unjust judge for his be- trayal of the high trust reposed in him has probably not been heard since Sheridan's philippic against Hastings. Sadder, but wiser men, were the Democratic i seven ' when they marched out of the Supreme Court room that memorable afternoon." The outcry thus begun was repeated so continuously and persistently that the mass of the Democratic party was made to believe that the Electoral Commis- sion was a trap; that Mr. Tilden was a victim of a conspiracy; that Mr. Hayes was to be made a fraudulent President. Even Justice Field joined in the denunciations, and in the condemnation of the tribunal of which he was a member. " The country," he said, " may submit to the result, but it will never cease to regard our action as unjust, and as calculated to sap the foundations of public morality." The eight members of the Commission who certified the result were: Justices Miller, Strong, and Bradley; Senators Edmunds, Morton, 360 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. and Frelinghuyseu, and Representatives Hoar and Garfield. The two Houses again met on February 10 and received this decision. Formal objection was made to the decision of the Electoral Com- mission, and the Houses separated to consider it. The Senate, by a strict party vote, decided that the votes should be counted. The House of Representatives, by a vote which was on party lines, ex- cept that one Democrat voted with the Republicans, voted that the electoral votes given by the Tilden electors should be counted. The two Houses not having agreed in rejecting the decision of the Com- mission, it stood, and the joint session was resumed. The votes of Florida having been recorded, the count proceeded until Louisiana was reached. This was the second case for the Electoral Commis- sion, and another recess was taken to await the decision. The Commission met on February 12 to hear and determine the Louisiana case. As in the case of Florida, the Republican objec- tions to the Tilden returns were brief and formal. It was claimed that the Kellogg government had been recognized by every depart- ment of the Government of the United States as the true govern- ment of Louisiana, and that the certificates of the Hayes electors cer- tified by him were in due form. The Democrats made a great variety of objections to the Hayes votes. They asserted that John McEnery was the lawful Governor of the State; that the certificates asserting the appointment of the Hayes electors were false; and that the can- vass of votes by the Returning Board was without jurisdiction and void. Special objection was made to three of the electors: two of them as being disqualified, under the Constitution, and the third, Governor Kellogg, because he certified to his own election. Among the arguments, one of the most eloquent was made by Mr. Carpenter, the former Republican Senator from Wisconsin, who disclaimed ap- pearing for Mr. Tilden. " He is a gentleman," Mr. Carpenter said, " whose acquaintance I have not the honor of; with whom I have no sympathy; against whom I voted on the seventh day of November last; and if this tribunal could order a new trial, I should vote against him again, believing, as I do, that the accession of the Democratic party to power in this country to-day would be the greatest calamity that could befall the people, except one; and that one greater calam- ity would be to keep him out by fraud and falsehood." After this dis- claimer, he added: " I appear here for ten thousand legal voters of Louisiana, who, without accusation or proof, indictment or trial, notice or hearing, have been disfranchised by four villains, incor- porated with perpetual session, whose official title is ' the Returning Board of Louisiana.' " An attempt was made to introduce testimony before the Commission, the propositions including offers to prove that THE ELECTORAL COUNT. 361 ten thousand votes cast for Tilden had been discarded by the Re- turning Board in order to count in Mr. Hayes; to show that the Re- turning Board was unconstitutional and its acts void; that it was not legally constituted, and had no jurisdiction; and that statements as to riot, tumult, and other wrongs were forged by the Board. All these offers, and a number of others, were ruled out by the Com- mission by the usual vote of eight to seven, and the Electoral vote of Louisiana was ordered to be counted for Hayes. When the decision in the Louisiana case was submitted to the joint convention on February 19, objections were made, and the two Houses separated to act upon them. The Senate voted by 41 to 28 that the decision should stand a strict party vote but in the House there was a slight Republican defection, two Republicans voting with the Democrats. One of these was Professor Seelye, afterward President of Amherst College, who declared his inability to see the justice of counting the vote of Louisiana for either Hayes or Tilden. The vote was 173 against, to 99 in favor, of accepting the result. On the 20th the two Houses resumed the count, but only the re- turns from Maryland and Massachusetts were disposed of without dis- pute, objection being made by the Democrats that one of the Repub- lican electors of Michigan held a Federal office at the time of his elec- tion. This objection was overruled by each House separately, and then the count proceeded. Similar action was taken in regard to an elector for Nevada. The next dispute was over the Oregon post- master whose election had been set aside by the Democratic Gov- ernor. As this was a case for the Electoral Commission, there was another recess to allow it to be heard. The Commission decided unanimously against the made-up vote of the electors, which gave one vote to Tilden, but again divided eight to seven on counting the entire vote of the State for Hayes. The results in the two Houses were the usual divisions on party lines. Objection was made to one of the Pennsylvania electors that he was a Centennial Commissioner. The other electors, regarding him as ineligible, treated the place as vacant, and chose another person to fill it. The Senate agreed, with- out a division, to a resolution that the vote be counted. The House rejected it, 135 to 119, the affirmative consisting entirely of Demo- crats, and the negative containing only 15 of that party. The full vote of Pennsylvania was accordingly counted under the law, the two Houses not having agreed to reject. Rhode Island furnished a case not very different, but the two Houses this time concurred unanimously in deciding that the disputed vote should be counted. This brought the count to South Carolina, the last of the cases for the Electoral Commission. 362 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. The dispute over the South Carolina returns rested on the claim of the Democrats that no legal election had been held in the State, and that the army and the Deputy United States Marshals stationed at and near the polls prevented the free exercise of the right of suf- frage. The Republicans asserted that the Tilden board was not duly appointed, and that the certificates were wholly defective in form, and lacking the necessary official certification. The papers having been referred to the Electoral Commission, that body met again on the 26th. Senator Thurman was obliged to retire from service upon the Commission on account of illness, and Senator Francis Kernan was substituted for him. After a day devoted to arguments, the Commission voted unanimously that the Tilden electors were not the true electors of South Carolina, and, by the old majority of eight to seven, that the Hayes electors were the constitutional electors duly appointed. The two Houses separated upon objections to the de- cision of the Commission, and as before, the Senate sustained the find- ing, while the House voted to reject it. There were two further objections, the first to a vote cast by an elector for Vermont, substituted for an ineligible person who had been chosen by the people, on which the result was the same as in the other similar cases; and finally, a case of the same kind in Wis- consin, which was decided in like manner. The Vermont case was complicated by the presentation by Mr. Hewitt, of New York, of a packet purporting to contain a return of electoral votes given in Vermont. The President of the Senate having received no such vote, nor any vote different from that of the regularly chosen Hayes elec- tors, refused to receive it. The Wisconsin case was simple enough. One of the electors was a pension surgeon under the United States, and it was claimed that he was ineligible. The Senate voted to sus- tain the eligibility of the elector, but the House was still in session on March 2, without result, when the doorkeeper announced the Senate of the United States for the joint convention of the two Houses. The failure of the House of Representatives to act was not a bar to the count. The vote of Wisconsin was counted, and the count of the thirty-eight States being concluded, the result was an- nounced, 185 electoral votes for Hayes and Wheeler, 184 votes for Tilden and Hendricks. After the Senate had filed out of the hall, the House, which had been in continuous session for thirty-one days, adjourned. A sequel to the Electoral count was the discovery of the dis- patches in cipher that had passed between Mr. Tilden's alleged agents in New York and persons interested in securing electoral votes for Tilden in South Carolina, Florida, and Oregon. During an inquiry THE ELECTORAL COUNT. 363 into the Oregon case by a Senate Committee some thirty thousand political telegrams (mainly in cipher) had been brought into the cus- tody of the committee by subpoenas to the Western Union Telegraph Company. The great mass of these telegrams was returned to the company without translation. About seven hundred, however, had been retained by an employee of the Committee. These dispatches, when translated, revealed astonishing attempts at bribery in order to secure Tilden electors. Smith M. Weed, a " visiting statesman " from New York to South Carolina, telegraphed to W. T. Pelton, Mr. Tilden's nephew, November 16, 1876, that " the Board demanded $75,000 for giving us two or three electors," and that " something be- yond will be needful for the interceder, say $10,000." Two days later Mr. Weed telegraphed: " Majority of Board have been secured. Cost is $80,000; one parcel to be sent of $65,000, one of $10,000, one of $5,000; all to be given in $500 or $1,000 bills; notes to be accepted as parties accept, and given up upon votes of South Carolina being given to Tilden's friends. Do this at once, and have cash ready to reach Baltimore Sunday night." But before the money could be ob- tained and taken to South Carolina the Canvassing Board reported the returns to the Court, showing on their face the election of Hayes electors. This put an end to the attempt at bribing the Canvassing Board, but not to the efforts to secure South Carolina electors for Tilden. In Florida, Manton Marble and C. W. Woolley, of New York, acted with Mr. Pelton. On November 22 Marble telegraphed to Pel- ton:" Woolley asked me to say, let forces be got together immediately for contingencies either here or in Louisiana." This followed a few days later: " Have just received a proposition to hand over at any time required, Tilden decision of Board and certificate of Governor, for $200,000." When Pelton answered, " Proposition too high," Mar- ble and Woolley made renewed efforts, and found that an elector could be had for f 50,000. As Pelton decided that " they could not draw until the vote of the elector was received," this attempt at bribery also failed. In this correspondence Mr. Marble figured as " Moses." His last message to Pelton was in these words: " Proposition failed. Finished responsibility as Moses. Last night Woolley found me, and said he had nothing, which I knew already. Tell Tilden to saddle Blackstone." The Oregon negotiations were conducted by J. N. H. Patrick, who was deputed for the work by George L. Miller, a member of the Democratic National Committee for Nebraska. On November 28, Patrick telegraphed Mr. Pelton that Governor Grover would issue a certificate of election to one Democratic elector (Cro- nin), and added, " Must purchase Republican elector to recognize and act with the Democrat, and secure vote to prevent trouble. Deposit 364 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. ),000 to my credit." This telegram was indorsed " Kelly." Mr. Pel- ton replied to Mr. Patrick, " If you will make obligation contingent on result in March, it will be done, and incremable slightly if neces- sary," and was answered that the fee could not be made contingent; whereupon the sum of f 8,000 was deposited to his credit on December 1, in New York, but intelligence of it reached Oregon too late to carry out any attempt to corrupt a Republican elector. Thus it will be seen that a Presidential canvass that began with loud protests of the ne- cessity of reform was supplemented by persistent and shameless efforts to bribe the electors of three States. IV. ADMINISTRATION OF PRESIDENT HAYES. The Cabinet Secretary Sherman and Resumption Civil-Service Re- form Early Appointments and Removals The Spoils System Thomas A. Jenckes, the Pioneer Civil-Service Reformer The Commission of 1871 Competitive Examinations Introduced Restriction of Chinese Immigration Propositions Affecting the Election of President and Vice-President, and the Method of Counting the Electoral Votes Rule Adopted in 1881. HE Administration of President Hayes, coming into power under the conditions described in the preceding chapter, could not fail to excite and receive the bitter hostility of the Democratic party. The Electoral count was treated by the Democratic press and Democratic politicians as a conspiracy, and Hayes was regarded merely as a de facto Executive. Even his surrender to the South by the withdrawal of the troops from the Southern States failed to soften the bitterness of Democratic de- nunciation, while it estranged many radical Republicans. Senator Conkling was conspicuous in opposition, as were also Senator Logan and the younger Cameron when he entered the Senate. The Cabinet was a strong one, likely to be helpful in making a popular administration. With such advisers as William M. Evarts, Sec- retary of State; John Sherman, Secretary of the Treasury; and George W. McCrary, Secretary of War, the three leading Depart- ments of the Government were under as able direction as in any previous administration. The other selections Richard W.Thompson as Secretary of the Navy, Carl Schurz as Secretary of the Interior, David M. Key as Postmaster-General, and Charles Devens as At- torney-General were less happily made, but none of them excited violent antagonisms. General Schurz, it is true, had bitterly as- sailed President Grant in the Senate, but he was not yet regarded as hopelessly out of sympathy with the party. That the Cabinet was chosen to foster the growing independent sentiment in the Repub- lican ranks must be admitted, but in this respect it was not able to exert any marked political influence. Upon the whole, the tendency of the Hayes Administration was to soften party asperities, although these broke out with increased virulence upon the accession of Presi- dent Hayes's successor. 366 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. The most noteworthy achievement of the Administration of Presi- dent Hayes was the resumption of specie payments, January 1, 1879. Generous credit must be accorded to Secretary Sherman for its ac- complishment in despite of Republican doubts and Democratic oppo- sition. In the Senate Mr. Sherman was the principal advocate of the Resumption Act of 1875. Not a single Democratic member of the Senate supported the measure, and two Republicans Sprague, of Rhode Island, and Tipton, of Nebraska voted against it; and in the House fully twenty Republicans opposed it, some like Judge Kelley, of Pennsylvania, who regarded it as premature, and others like the Messrs. Hoar and Mr. Dawes, of Massachusetts, and General Haw- ley, of Connecticut, who thought the time set for resumption too far in the future, and the means provided for its accomplishment inade- quate. The demand for the repeal of the Resumption Act was made a cardinal principle in the Democratic platform of 1876, and it would have been repealed by the 45th Congress if the Democrats had had a majority in both Houses. Among those against repeal in 1878 was General Garfield. " Only twelve years have passed," he said, " for as late as 1865 this House, with but six dissenting votes, resolved again to stand by the old ways and bring the country back to sound money only twelve years have passed, and what do we find? We find a group of theorists and doctrinaires, who look upon the wisdom of the fathers as foolishness. We find some who advo- cate what they call 'absolute money'; who declare that a piece of paper stamped a ' dollar ' is a dollar; that gold and silver are a part of the barbarism of the past, which ought to be forever abandoned. We hear them declaring that resumption is a delusion and a snare. We hear them declaring that the eras of prosperity are the eras of paper money. They point us to all times of inflation as periods of blessing to the people and prosperity to business, and they ask us no more to vex their ears with any allusions to the old standard the money of the Constitution. Let the wild swarm of financial literature that has sprung into life within the last twelve years witness how widely and how far we have drifted. We have lost our old moorings, and have thrown overboard our old compass; we sail by alien stars, looking not for the haven, but are afloat on a harborless sea. Suppose you undo the work that Congress has attempted, to resume specie payment, what will result? You will depreciate the value of the greenback. Suppose it falls ten cents on the dollar? You will have destroyed ten per cent, of the value of every deposit in the savings banks, ten per cent, of every life insurance policy and fire insurance policy, of every pension to the soldier, and of every day's wages of every laborer in the nation. The trouble w r ith our greenback dollar is this: It has ADMINISTRATION OF PRESIDENT HAYES. 367 two distinct functions, one a purchasing power and the other a debt- paying power. As a debt-paying power it is equal to one hundred cents; that is, to pay an old debt. A greenback dollar will, by law, discharge one hundred cents of debt. But no law can give it purchasing power in the general market of the world, unless it rep- resents a known standard of coin value. Now, what we want is, that these two qualities of our greenback dollar shall be made equal- its debt-paying power and its general purchasing power. When these are equal the problem of our currency is solved, and not until then. Summing it all up in a word, the struggle now pending in this House is, on the one hand, to make the greenback better, and on the other, to make it worse. The Resumption Act is making it better every day. Repeal this act, and you make it indefinitely worse. In the name of every man who wants his own when he has earned it, I de- mand that we do not make the wages of the poor man shrivel in his hands after he has earned them; but that his money shall be made better and better, until the plowholder's money shall be as good as the bondholder's money; until our standard is one, and there is no longer one money for the rich and another for the poor." Fortunately the effort at repeal, against which Garfield's earnest words were directed, was defeated ; for when the day came for Specie Resumption it was found that the Treasury was fully prepared, and not only was resumption achieved without the predicted disturbances of trade, but it was followed by an era of prosperity so immediate that it was worth many votes to the Republican party in 1880. A question that was given unusual prominence during the ad- ministration of President Hayes was that of Civil-service Reform. The causes which led to the necessity of reform have an interest that is almost wholly historical. When the national Government was es- tablished the Federal judges were appointed for life, but Congress decided that all other officers were removable at the will of the Executive. Until after the election of President Jefferson, in 1800, there were practically no removals. As the men in office in 1801 were nearly all Federalists, Mr. Jefferson conceived the idea that his own supporters ought to have a fair proportion of the offices. He accordingly began making removals, and during his two administra- tions, made forty-seven, Federalists being replaced by Republicans, as the Democrats were then called. Under his successors, down to 1820, the removals reached only sixty-five. An act was passed May 15, 1820, providing for a four years' term. There was much opposi- tion to this four years' law, the paternity of which was imputed to William H. Crawford, Secretary of the Treasury, who, it was charged, was using the power of removal in the Treasury Department to pro- 368 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. mote his efforts to make himself President Monroe's successor. There was probably no substantial ground for the imputation. Between 1820 and 1829 there were few removals, and it was not until the in- auguration of President Jackson that the system of partisan appoint- ments assumed large proportions. Under Jackson and Van Buren the power of removal was used so extensively that it became a potent political factor, and it was continued under every successive adminis- tration, without any serious effort at its restriction, down to 1865. The pioneer of Civil-service Reform by legislative enactment was Thomas A. Jenckes, of Rhode Island. He introduced a bill into the House of Representatives " to regulate the civil service of the United States," December 20, 1865. A few months later B. Gratz Brown, of Missouri, submitted a resolution to the Senate for " such changes in the Civil Service as shall secure appointments to the same after previous examinations by proper Boards, and as shall provide for promotions on the score of merit or superiority." In an appropria- tion bill, passed March 3, 1871, Congress appended a section author- izing the President " to prescribe such regulations for the admission of persons into the Civil Service of the United States as may best pro- mote efficiency therein, and ascertain the fitness of each candidate in respect to age, health, character, knowledge, and ability for the branch of service in which he seeks to enter; and for this purpose he may employ suitable persons to conduct such inquiries, prescribe their duties, and establish regulations for the conduct of persons who may receive appointments in the Civil Service." Under this author- ity, President Grant appointed a Commission, composed of Messrs. George William Curtis, Joseph Medill, Alexander G. Cattell, David- son A. Walker, E. B. Ellicott, Joseph H. Blackfan, and David C. Cox. This Commission was unable to achieve any practical results be- cause Congress failed to grant the requisite power; but President Hayes, without waiting for legislation, sought to make reforms in the Civil Service by directing competitive examinations for certain positions, and by forbidding the active participation of office-holders in political campaigns. This was the first attempt to put the prin- ciple of competitive examinations into practice, and it led to the passage of the Civil-service Reform Act of 1884. The system has since been extended, until at present it has a wide application. Another question that assumed extensive proportions during the administration of President Hayes was that of Chinese immigration. President Grant had previously, in his annual message in 1875, called the attention of Congress to the evils arising from the importation of Chinese women, and to the necessity of the restriction of the immi- gration of Chinamen, who " come under contracts with head men ADMINISTRATION OF PRESIDENT HAYES. 369 who own them almost absolutely." California was the principal sufferer from the unrestricted immigration of Chinese, and Mr. Sar- gent submitted a resolution, April 20, 1870, asking the Senate to u recommend to the President to cause negotiations to be entered upon with the Chinese Government to effect such change in the ex- isting treaty between the United States and China as will lawfully permit the application of restrictions upon the great influx of Chinese subjects to this country." This led to a thorough examination of the Chinese question by a joint Committee of Congress, and finally to the passage of a bill " to restrict the immigration of Chinese into the United States," early in 1879. President Hayes vetoed the bill, be- cause it abrogated the Burlingame treaty of 1868 without notice, and, the veto being sustained by Congress, he opened negotiations with the Chinese Empire, for a modification of the treaty. To that end he dispatched three Commissioners to China, gentlemen of the highest in- telligence, adapted in every way to the important duties intrusted to them James B. Angell, President of Michigan University, also appointed Minister Plenipotentiary to China; John F. Swift, of Cal- ifornia, and William Henry Trescot, of South Carolina. They nego- tiated two treaties one relating to the introduction of Chinese into the United States, and the other to general commercial relations. Both treaties were ratified by the Senate, and laws restricting the immigration of Chinese were subsequently enacted. Under these enactments Chinese immigration has been so restricted that it is now almost prohibited. The disputed election of 1876 led to a large number of propositions to amend the Constitution, and to supply constitutional omissions by law. None of these propositions has been passed upon by both Houses of Congress. The propositions made during Mr. Hayes's ad- ministration during the special session of Congress, October 15, 1877, and the regular session, which was a continuation of it were as follows: Mr. Cravens, of Arkansas, offered a resolution of amendment to the Constitution, providing that the people should vote directly for Presi- dent and Vice-President. Each State was to have a number of Presi- dential votes equal to its electoral votes under the present system, which votes were to be apportioned in each State among the several candidates, in the proportion of the votes given to each; the legisla- ture of each State was to direct the manner in which the Presidential vote of the State was to be ascertained; on a day to be fixed by Con- gress, or, in case of disagreement between the two Houses, on a day to be named by the President, not less than fifteen nor more than thirty days before March 4, a joint meeting of the two Houses was to be 370 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. held, the President of the Senate was to open the Presidential votes, certified to by the Governor of the State, and one list from each State was then to be counted under the direction of the two Houses; a majority of all the Presidential votes was requisite to a choice. In case no choice had been made by such a majority, then the two Houses, in joint convention, were to elect a President by viva voce vote, each Senator and member having one vote, the choice being limited to the two highest on the list, unless two persons should have an equal number of votes next to the highest; one Senator and a majority of the Representatives from two-thirds of the States were to constitute a quorum for the purpose of this election. In case no person should receive a majority of the Congress so voting, the President in office was to continue to be President until a choice was effected. The election of Vice-President was to be made in the same manner, and at the same time as that of President. Whenever the office of Vice-President became vacant there was to be an election by joint convention of Congress, within ten days after the next meeting of Congress, or within twenty days, if Congress should be in session at the time the vacancy occurred. Mr. Springer, of Illinois, made a proposition, of which the leading features were: A Presidential term of six years, the President not to be immediately re-eligible; each State to have a number of Presi- dential votes equal to its electoral votes, according to the present system, except that States having but one Representative in Congress were to have but one Presidential vote, and States having but two Representatives were to have but three votes; a direct vote for Presi- dent and Vice-President; a canvassing board in each State with min- isterial powers only, consisting of the Governor, Secretary of State, and Chief Justice of the highest court; to aggregate the votes, appor- tion to each candidate his proportional part of the Presidential votes of the State, and to make return thereof to the President of the Sen- ate; the two Houses to be in session on the third Monday of January after a Presidential election. A joint meeting to be held, to be pre- sided over by the President of the Senate, unless he should be a candidate for the office of President, and in that case by the Speaker of the House of Representatives, and if he were similarly disquali- fied, then by a presiding officer, chosen by the joint convention; a plurality of votes to elect both the President and the Vice-President; the joint convention to be the judge of the returns and qualifications of the persons who shall be President and Vice-President. If no con- clusion upon the returns should be reached by the second Monday in February, the convention was to vote viva voce upon the question who was constitutionally elected President and who Vice-President, a majority of those present to determine all questions. ADMINISTRATION OF PRESIDENT HAYES. 371 Mr. Maish, of Pennsylvania, proposed a popular election of Presi- dent, without the intervention of any electors. The votes were to be returned to the Secretary of State of each State, and to be by him opened in the presence of the Governor and the Chief Justice of the highest court, and these three officers were to apportion electoral votes to each candidate in accordance with the returns. This prop- osition did not deal with the matter of a count of the votes. Mr. Finley, of Ohio, proposed a direct vote of all the people for President and Vice-President, disregarding State lines altogether; a plurality of votes was to elect in each case, but if two persons had an equal and the highest number of votes, then the House of Represent- atives was to choose the President from those two; or, if the failure was in relation to the Vice-Presidency, then the Senate was to make the choice. In each case the voting was to be viva voce, and each member was to have one vote; the canvass of returns for President and Vice-President was to be made by Congress in a manner to be de- termined by joint rules or by law, and if the two Houses could not agree, the matter in dispute was to be referred to the Supreme Court for final decision. Mr. Eaton, of Connecticut, proposed in the Senate an amendment constituting a tribunal for the decision of controverted questions arising out of Presidential elections. Not less than twelve months be- fore the occurrence of such an election the Governor of each State was to appoint, with the consent of the Senate of the State, five quali- fied persons, who were to hear and determine all questions of contest in relation to the choice of electors, and to transmit their report, sealed, to the President of the Senate. A resolution offered by Mr. Riddle, of Tennessee, proposed a direct election by the people, a clear majority being required for a choice. In case such majority should not be obtained, then a second election was to be held within two months of the time of the first vote, when the choice should be limited to the two highest on the list. In case of no choice, by reason of a tie, on this second trial, the two Houses of Congress, in joint convention, each member having one vote, were to elect. Mr. Sampson, of Iowa, proposed that the relative power of the States should be as it now is; that the people should vote directly for the Executive; that the persons having a plurality for the offices of President and Vice-President in any State should receive the full Presidential vote of that State, or, in case of a tie, that the votes should be equally divided among those having the highest number; and if no person received a majority of Presidential votes, the choice of either President or Vice-President w r as to be made, as the Consti- tution now provides for cases of no choice made by the electors. 372 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. In May, 1878, Mr. Southard, of Ohio, from a committee of the House of Representatives, appointed for the purpose, reported a plan. It dispensed with electors altogether. Each State was to be entitled to as many Presidential votes as it would have electors under the pres- ent system. The people having voted directly for President and Vice-President, the vote for each candidate in any State was to be ascertained by multiplying the number of votes given for any per- son by the number of Presidential votes assigned to the State and dividing the product by the whole number of votes cast, and the fractions were to be ascertained to the third place of decimals. The returns were to be made to the Secretary of State of each State, who was to open them in the presence of the Governor and the State Auditor or Controller, and the apportionment of Presidential votes was to be made by them as a canvassing board. Contests as to an election might be passed upon by the highest judicial tribunal in each State, and the decision was to be sent to the President of the Senate at Washington. The votes were to be counted by the two Houses of Congress, assembled under the presidency of the Presi- dent of the Senate, and all votes were to be counted unless the two Houses concurred in rejecting them; or, if there was a decision by the highest court of the State upon a contest, that decision was to stand unless the two Houses concurred in overruling it. If there were dual returns, or two decisions purporting to be by the highest court, that was to be accepted which the two Houses should decide to be the true return or the true decision. A plurality of votes was to elect the President, and, in case of a tie, the election was to be made in the manner now provided for in the case of a failure to elect by the electors. This proposition never came up for discussion. A determined effort was made by the Senate, during the session of 1878-79, to amend the law relative to the count of votes by a statute covering the whole subject. The bill was managed by Mr. Edmunds, of Vermont. It changed the time for the appointment of electors in the several States to the first Tuesday of October in each fourth year. If a vacancy should occur in both the offices of President and Vice-President more than two months before the first Tuesday of October in any year other than that in which electors would be regu- larly appointed, a new election was to be held. The time for the meeting and voting of the electors was to be the second Monday in January following their appointment. The fourth section was as follows: " Each State may provide by law enacted prior to the day in this act named for the appointment of the electors, for the trial and determination of any controversy concerning the appointment of electors, before the time fixed for the meeting of the electors, in any ADMINISTRATION OF PRESIDENT HAYES. 373 manner it may deem expedient. Every such determination made pursuant to such law so enacted before said day, and made prior to the said time of meeting of the electors, shall be conclusive evidence of the lawful title of the electors who shall have been so determined to have been appointed, and shall govern in the counting of the elec- toral votes, as provided in the Constitution, and as hereinafter regu- lated." The provisions of the bill in relation to the count followed in general the custom of Congress under the twenty-second joint rule, with these exceptions: No vote from a State from which there was but one return could be rejected without a concurrent vote of the two Houses. If there were two or more returns, that only could be counted which was decided to be the true return in the manner pro- vided in the section just quoted. If there were no such determina- tion, or if there were two or more decisions purporting to have been made in accordance with a law passed in conformity with that sec- tion, that return, or that decision only, could be accepted which the two Houses acting separately should decide by affirmative vote to be in accordance with the Constitution and the laws. When the two Houses separated to consider objections to electoral votes, each mem- ber of either House might speak once only for five minutes, and at the expiration of two hours it would become the duty of the pre- siding officer to put the main question. After several days of debate this bill was passed by the Senate, 35 to 26. The negative vote con sisted entirely of Democrats; the majority was made up of Repub- licans, with the exception of Messrs. Bayard, Merrimon, and Mor- gan, Democrats, and Judge Davis, of Illinois, Independent. In May, 1880, the Democrats having a majority in the Senate, Mr. Morgan, of Alabama, reported from a select committee a joint rule for the government of the two Houses in counting the electoral votes. It differed from the rescinded twenty-second rule in several particu- lars. No vote from a State which sent but one return was to be re- jected except by the affirmative action of both branches of Congress. If two or more returns should be offered, neither was to be counted unless the two Houses agreed in deciding that one of them was the true and correct return. Provision was also made for one hour's de- bate in each House upon objections, no member to speak more than once, nor longer than ten minutes; and also for debate by unanimous consent in the joint meeting. It was further provided that an appeal might be taken from a decision by the presiding officer, which was to be overruled only by concurrent action of both Houses. This pro- posed rule was considered at length. Mr. Edmunds endeavored to have his bill, already summarized, with some changes, substituted 374 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. for the rule. This was voted down, as were all other amendments, and the rule was adopted by the Senate by a vote of 25 to 14, a party vote, except that Mr. Davis, of Illinois, voted with the Demo- crats. In the House the Republicans endeavored to have the rule re- ferred to a committee, but their motions having that object in view were voted down. Finally the matter was postponed until the first Monday in December, 1880. It was under consideration several times during the session, but the Republicans persistently opposed it, and on the last day that it was considered, January 26, 1881, they filibus- tered successfully against its passage. Early in February of the same year a resolution was adopted which carried the conduct of the count back to the method so long in use before the twenty-second joint rule was adopted. It provided, how- ever, for two tellers on the part of the Senate, which was an innova- tion introduced by the Electoral Commission Law of 1877. The sec- ond resolution directed that in case it should appear that the elec- toral vote of any State had been given on any other day than that fixed by law, the declaration of the result should be in the alterna- tive form first introduced in 1821, with respect to the vote of Missouri. This rule was adopted by both Houses. In the Senate there was no division. In the House the second resolution was opposed by 77 members, of whom six were Democrats and three Greenbackers. While these futile attempts at legislation, resulting only in a re- currence to early methods of counting the electoral votes, with the ad- dition of two tellers for the Senate as in 1877, were in progress, re- sumption had been accomplished, and the country was on the high road to renewed prosperity. V. THE GARFIELD AND ARTHUR CAMPAIGN. Political Rivalries in 1880 General Grant a Candidate for a Third Term The Delegates to the Republican National Convention The Unit Rule in the Republican National Committee Chair- man Cameron's Arbitrary Ruling Opening of the Convention- Chairman Cameron's Speech Senator Hoar Presides Rules Against the Unit Rule Lively Parliamentary Contests Mr. Conkling's Mischievous Resolution The Contested Seats Dis- trict Representation Adopted The Platform The Nominating Speeches Roscoe Conkling Nominates General Grant General Garfield's Speech Nominating John Sherman The Ballots Garfield Nominated Chester A. Arthur for Vice-President The Candidates General Hancock Nominated by the Democrats The Campaign Results of the Elections. EITHER in the measures of President Hayes's administration nor in differences of opinion on party questions was there any cause for the great Republican feud that made the Republican National Convention of 1880 the most stirring and dramatic in the history of the party. The contentions of the six days that it remained in session had their origin in the political am- bitions of party leaders. The contest was for leadership, not for prin- ciples. Elaine's defeat at Cincinnati, in 1876, still rankled in the hearts of his admirers, who were determined that he should be nom- inated in 1880. That defeat was due to the inveterate hostility of Roscoe Conkling. Each was implacable toward the other, and as the time approached for the nomination of a candidate for the Presidency in 1880 it became clear that every political interest would be subor- dinated to the struggle between the giants. They had long been enemies. Their personal hostility had begun when they were serving together in the House of Representatives, and finally Mr. Conkling's bitterness became so extreme that he sacrificed his own political as- pirations for the destruction of Elaine's Presidential ambition. In doing this General Grant was also made to suffer in reputation, for, as the result of the quarrel between Conkling and Elaine, he was made to appear to desire a third term, upon which the long contest in the Chicago Convention of 1880 turned. Nothing in the history of the Republican party is more to be re- gretted than the attempt to make Grant a candidate for President for the third time. Grant had only lately returned from his mem- 376 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. orable tour around the world. The acerbities of his last administra- tion had passed out of the minds of the people, and the country was proud of the honors that had been bestowed upon him in every land that he had visited. It was while the enthusiasm thus aroused was at its height that the plans were laid for promoting Grant's candida- ture in order to defeat Blaine. Senator Conkling in New York, Sen- ator Cameron in Pennsylvania, and Senator Logan in Illinois, under- took to control their State Conventions to this end. In these three States the delegations were instructed to vote as a unit for General Grant, but not without strong opposition in all of them. In New York the majority was only 38, in a total vote of 397, and in Pennsylvania it was 20. Similar action was taken in Illinois by a small majority, nine delegates already chosen in the Congress districts being set aside by the State Convention. This course naturally aroused opposition, not only in the States immediately concerned, but all over the country. The leading Republican newspapers took strong ground against the action dictated by the three powerful leaders Conkling, Cameron, and Logan. In New York, the New York Tribune, the Albany Journal, and the Utica Herald; in Pennsylvania, the Philadelphia Press, and in Illinois the Chicago Tribune, not only vigorously com- bated the third term project, but denounced the methods of its pro- moters. Some of the instructed delegates announced their intention to disregard their instructions. Among these were William H. Rob- ertson, of Westchester County, N. Y., and James McManes, of Phil- adelphia. All this presaged a determined fight in the Convention for the complete abrogation of the unit rule, and led to the pro- longed contest that ended with the nomination of General Garfield. The Convention was one of unusual distinction, even when com- pared with the Republican National Conventions that had gone be- fore it. Seven of the States sent United States Senators with their delegations: New York, Roscoe Conkling; Pennsylvania, J. Donald Cameron; Massachusetts, George P. Hoar; Illinois, Gen. John A. Lo- gan; Kansas, Preston B. Plumb; Louisiana, William P. Kellogg, and Mississippi, Blanche K. Bruce. General Garfield was already com- missioned as a Senator from Ohio, and other delegates, who were soon to enter the Senate, were: Eugene Hale and William P. Frye, of Maine; William, J. Sewell, of New Jersey; Omer D. Conger, of Michi- gan; Gen. Benjamin Harrison, of Indiana; Philetus Sawyer, of Wis- consin, and Dwight M. Sabin, of Minnesota. Besides Senator Cam- eron, there were four delegates who had been in General Grant's Cabinet George S. Boutwell, of Massachusetts; J. A. J. Creswell, of Maryland; Edwards Pierrepont, of New Y r ork, and George H. Will- iams, of Oregon. Among the younger men in the party, who were THE GARFIELD AND ARTHUR CAMPAIGN. 377 already prominent or were coming into prominence, were: William E. Chandler, of New Hampshire; President Seelye and Henry Cabot Lodge, of Massachusetts; Henry C. Robinson, of Connecticut; Chester A. Arthur, of New York; William Walter Phelps, of New Jersey; Gen. James A. Beaver and Col. Matthew IS. Quay, of Pennsylvania; Emory A. Storrs, of Illinois; Governor Henderson and J. S. Clark- son, of Iowa, and Governor Warmoth, of Louisiana. Thus it will be seen the Convention was representative of the leading men of the party during the rest of the century. The meeting of the Convention was fixed for Wednesday, June 2, but the battle began days before the vast assemblage gathered in Exposition Hall. On Monday and Tuesday, the Chicago hotels were seething masses of heated political disputants. The abrogation of the unit rule was the one subject under discussion. The first strug- gle was in the Republican National Committee. A secret meeting- was called, at which Mr. Chandler, of New Hampshire, offered two resolutions. The first was a mere formal approval of the call for the Convention, and was adopted without opposition. The other was a recognition of the right of each delegate in a Republican National Convention " freely to cast, and to have counted, his individual vote therein, according to his own sentiments, and, if he so decides, against any unit rule or other instructions, passed by a State Con- vention, which right was conceded without dissent, and was exer- cised in the Conventions of 1860 and 1868, and was, after full de- bate, affirmed by the Convention in 1876, and has thus become a part of the law of Republican Conventions, and until reversed by a convention itself, must remain a governing principle." Senator Cameron, the Chairman of the National Committee, ruled this reso- lution out of order. Because of this ruling there was a scheme to de- prive Cameron of his power unless he promised not to enforce the unit rule, but he declined to give the promise, and the majority of the Committee was content with naming George F. Hoar, of Massa- chusetts, for temporary Chairman of the Convention. Cameron's au- tocratic course was hotly denounced at the headquarters of the State delegations, in the corridors of the hotels, and in the streets. As is apt to be the case with extreme measures, in retaliation twenty-two members of the New York delegation signed a paper declaring their purpose " to resist the nomination of Gen. U. S. Grant at all hazards," and avowing the conviction that in New York, at least, his nomina- tion would insure defeat. A revolt in the Pennsylvania delegation followed the next morning. In order to prevent further defections the Grant men, through Gen. Chester A. Arthur, of New York, of- fered a compromise, that was accepted. This agreement declared 378 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. that Senator Hoar should be accepted as temporary Chairman of the Convention, and that no attempt should be made to enforce the unit rule, or have a test vote in the Convention, until the committee on credentials had reported, when the unit rule question should be de- cided by the Convention in its own way. The seating of the great Convention on the day of the opening was in itself a spectacle. As the noon hour approached the spectators began to gather, but when the clock struck twelve there were not a thousand persons in the hall. An hour later a mass of ten thousand living, breathing beings was crowded within the great building. The interest centered in the delegations in turn, as they arrived and took their places. The Alabama delegation was the first to file in as a body. It was a motley exhibit of the wonderful revolution in Ameri- can politics that had been accomplished since the birth of the lie- publican party. Every shade of color was represented, from the pure white to the unadulterated African. Arkansas followed with Dor- sey, the last Republican Senator from that State, in the lead. Then the delegations poured in in such a continuous stream that it was impossible to single them out by States until they were seated. Prom every State came men distinguished in the war for the Union and the councils of the party. General Sewell, and Kilpatrick, the dashing cavalry leader, were with the men from New Jersey. " Long John " Wentworth towered above the Illinois delegation. The white locks of Marshall Jewell gave a romantic touch to the plain, earnest Con- necticut faces around him. General Beaver, on his crutch, swung himself down the aisle, and into place at the head of the Pennsyl- vania delegation. Near him were the refined face of Colonel Quay and the rugged features of John Cessna, suggestive of his aggressive personality. In the center of the delegation from Mississippi was the olive-hued Bruce, and the tall, spare form of the venerable War Gov- ernor, Dennison, was seen among the men from Ohio. By Dennison's side was General Garfield, bright and alert, but without any pre- monitions of what this vast assemblage meant for him. As the champion of John Sherman many expectant eyes regarded him; but two other figures, perhaps, attracted even more attention. They were men who would be singled out for observation in any assem- blage. One had the swarthy visage and long, straight hair of an In- dian the other the splendid front and haughty mien of a modern Charlemagne. These were Logan and Conkling, the spokesmen of the hero, Grant. Five minutes before the clock struck one, Chairman Cameron mounted the platform with elastic step. When he was on his way to begin the contest that all men foresaw, he was asked, " What of the battle? " and answered back, " We have three hundred THE GARFIELD AND ARTHUR CAMPAIGN. 379 to start with, and shall stick until we win." Ten minutes later he calmly opened the Convention with moderate words, and the great fight was on. " Let there be but one motive governing our actions," Senator Cam- eron said, " and let that be a determination to place in nomination the strongest possible candidates, men strong in themselves, strong in the confidence and affections of the people, and men who will com- mand the respect of the civilized world. Do not for a moment doubt the strength of our institutions. They have been tried in blood, and come from the contest better, stronger, and purer than the most ar- dent patriot dared to hope. No combination of circumstances, no co- terie of individuals, no personal ambition can ever prevail against the intelligence and inborn love of liberty which are implanted in the hearts of Americans. When the nominations are made, and the Con- vention has completed its work, let there be but one sentiment ani- mating all earnest, sincere, and unselfish Republicans, and let that be, that each shall vie with the other in carrying our grand old party through the coming contest to victory." After this brief speech Senator Hoar was presented as the tempor- ary Chairman of the Convention, and then, after another address, that was a compact contrast of the two great political parties of the country, the committees on Organization, Credentials, Rules and Resolutions were appointed. With the appointment of the commit- tees, the interest centered in their action, which it was known would virtually decide the nomination for the Presidency. In all the com- mittees the anti-Grant members were in the majority. Mr. Conger, of Michigan, was made Chairman of the Committee on Credentials, by a vote of 29 to 11 for Mr. Tracy, of New York. The Committee on Rules made General Garfield chairman. In the Committee on Organiza- tion, Senator Hoar had 31 votes for permanent President of the Con- vention to 9 for Mr. Creswell, of Maryland. These votes, however, were no lest of the strength of the opposition to General Grant in the Convention, which would depend upon the report of the Committee on Credentials and the abrogation of the unit rule. There were many contests, and the report was not made until Friday, and not finally disposed of until Saturday. In the meantime, the permanent organi- zation being effected, the Parliamentary gladiators amused them- selves by sparring for points. The first clash between the opposing factions w r as over a proposition to request the Committee on Rules to report, so that the Convention could proceed to business. The effort failed on the morning of the second day, to give General Sharpe, of New York, time to make a minority report, but it was re- newed at the evening session. There was another clash and some 380 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. strong language was used. General Logan said that the committee had agreed to defer their reports until after the action on contested seats, and that the rules ought not to be adopted before they knew who were entitled to seats in the body, especially as one of the rules to be reported would limit each speaker to five minutes. Mr. Hen- derson, of Iowa, denied that there was any such compact, and as- serted, on the authority of a Kentucky member, that the minority report was in fact ready to be reported in the morning. This the Kentucky member characterized as a misstatement, whereupon an- other committeeman shouted excitedly that the statement was accur- ate and true. As a test of strength, General Sharpe moved to amend the pending motion by ordering the Committee on Credentials to make its report. On the vote on his amendment Sharpe asked that the question be taken by yeas and nays, and the chair, in the ab- sence of any adopted rules, so ordered. The calling of the roll began, Alabama leading off with 19 yeas. When this vote was announced a delegate from that State, rising, desired to vote in the negative. Mr. Hoar replied: " If the gentleman wishes to vote ' No/ his vote will be received and recorded." This was a distinct repudiation of the unit rule, and, under the ruling of the chair, it was adhered to throughout the ballot. The amendment was lost by 406 nays to 318 ayes, a re- sult that clearly foreshadowed the failure of the third term move- ment, unless General Grant should be able to draw sufficient support from the other candidates to nominate him. On the morning of the third day, Friday, Mr. Conkling created a di- version for which there could be no adequate reason. He offered a resolution declaring it to be the sense of the Convention " that every member of it is bound in honor to support its nominee, whoever that nominee may be, and that no man shall hold his seat here who is not ready so to agree." When it was put upon its passage it received an almost unanimous vote, only three delegates from West Virginia vot- ing against it. As soon as it was passed its mischievous intent was made apparent. Mr. Conkling moved that the delegates " who have voted that they will not abide the action of the Convention do not de- serve to have seats, and have forfeited their votes in the Convention." A. W. Campbell, editor of the Wheeling Intelligencer, the most promi- nent of the three West Virginia independents, vigorously defended their action, but the most important speech in the debate that en- sued was that of General Garfield. He expressed the fear that the Con- vention was about to commit a grave error. " Every delegate save three," he said, " had voted for a resolution, and the three had risen in their places and stated that they intended to support the nominee of the Convention. Was every delegate to have his Kepublicanism in- THE GARFIELD AND ARTHUR CAMPAIGN. 381 quired into before he was allowed to vote? Delegates were respon- sible for their votes, not to the Convention, but to their constituents. He himself would never, in any convention, vote against his judg- ment. If this Convention expelled these men, it would have to purge itself at the end of every vote, and inquire how many delegates who had voted ' No ' should go out. He trusted that the gentleman from New York would withdraw his resolution and let the Convention pro- ceed with its business." Mr. Conkling inquired of the chair whether the three gentlemen from West Virginia said that they would vote for the nominee of the Convention. The chair said that it was not his province to answer the question. Conkling then said that he would not press his resolution, if his question was answered in the affirma- tive, and finally withdrew it. General Garfield's temperate speech was the first important step in the Convention toward his nomina- tion. After the breeze of Friday morning had blown over, the reports from the Committee on Rules were submitted, with the understanding that they were not to be acted upon until after the report of the Com- mittee on Credentials. This Committee had examined the cases of fifty contesting delegates, and finally made two reports, which oc- cupied the time of the Convention for the rest of the day, Friday, and were not finally disposed of until Saturday morning. In the Louis- iana contest the Committee recommended the admission of the War- moth delegation; in Alabama the admission of Rapier, Smith, and Warner; in Illinois the admission of the contestants for the seats of the sitting members from nine Congress Districts. They reported against the contestant in the Second Illinois District, and did not sustain the objections to the delegates-at-large from that State. They reported in favor of the sitting members from the Ninth and Nine- teenth Districts of Pennsylvania, and the Third District of West Vir- ginia, and in favor of the contestants from the Second and the Third Districts of Kansas. They recommended that the delegates from Utah should keep their seats. The committee suggested that the final decision of many of these contests depended upon the adop- tion by the Convention of the principle of District representation. Mr. Clayton, of Arkansas, presented the minority report. The rec- ommendation of the majority, if adopted, would, the minority consid- ered, reverse the long-established usage of the party in many States. They urged that there was a vacancy in the district claimed by Ra- pier, and that the sitting members were entitled to the seats which the majority report awarded to Smith and Warner. They reported that there seemed to have been no District conventions in Alabama, at which the contestants had been chosen. Their authority there 382 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. could rest only on the action of the State Convention. The minority claimed that if the principle of District representation was a sound one more than half of the delegates sitting in the Convention were there without right. In the case of Illinois, they made an elaborate statement of facts, and denied the charge that the State Convention had entered into a gigantic conspiracy to defraud the electors. The report took the ground that the local quarrels, as in Cook County, should be left to the State Convention, and not transferred to the National Convention. It ended with the recommendation that the sitting delegates should be allowed to keep their seats. After the corrected list of delegates had been presented, Mr. Cessna, of Pennsylvania, moved to adopt all of the report on which the com- mittee had agreed, and then proceed to the separate consideration of the disputed issues involving the contests in Alabama, Illinois, West Virginia, and Utah. Mr. Conkling called for the considera- tion of the questions which fell within the list of undisputed cases. Mr. Conger said that this list embraced the cases of Louisiana, the Second District of Illinois, the Illinois delegates-at-large, the Second and the Fourth Districts of Kansas, and the Ninth and the Nineteenth Districts of Pennsylvania. General Logan inquired how it happened that there was any report about the four delegates-at-large from Il- linois. Mr. Conger replied that petitions against the rights of the four delegates-at-large had been presented to the Convention and referred to the committee, and that it was therefore necessary for the com- mittee to notice the subject. A Kansas delegate objected to includ- ing his State in the list of undisputed questions, and Mr. Cessna amended his motion by allowing separate action on the Kansas case. General Sharpe moved to amend Cessna's original motion by striking from the majority report so much of it as related to the Illinois delegates-at-large. Mr. Conger, referring to Logan, said that he made no apology to the gentleman, or to the State of Illinois, or to this great body of people, for the moral courage of this committee, which enabled it to say to the world that the gentleman was entitled to his seat. Cessna's amendment was then adopted without dissent. The question was then on Sharpe's amendment. Mr. Haywood, of Cal- ifornia, pointed out that if it should prevail the seats of the Illinois delegates would be contested, while the committee proposed to put their title beyond question or dispute in history. It was modified so as to strike from the majority report as much of it as implied that there was any contest regarding the Illinois delegation-at-large, and adopted. Cessna's original motion was then adopted. In the settle- ment of the disputed claims to representation the first case in order was Alabama, and after full debate a motion to substitute the re- THE GARFIELD AND ARTHUR CAMPAIGN. 383 port of the minority for that of the majority was defeated, the ayes being 306, the nays 449. The Convention thus reaffirmed the cardinal doctrine of District representation. The case of Illinois, which had excited more interest than all others, next came up. The discussion was prolonged and animated, and the result was not reached until nearly two o'clock in the morning. Nine districts were at stake, but the vote was taken on each separately, and the delegates chosen in the districts were admitted by a vote of 387 to 353. In the cases of West Virginia and Kansas there was some dispute as to the facts, but they were decided upon the same principle. The abrogation of the unit rule was complete in the action of the Convention on every disputed seat, and it only needed the adoption of the report of the Committee on Rules to settle the question of Dis- trict representation as the future policy of the party. There were only verbal changes in the rules of 1876, except in one instance. This related to cases where the vote of a State is divided. The old rule prescribed that where the vote was divided the chairman of the delegation should announce the number of votes cast for any candi- date or for or against any proposition. The committee reported in favor of adding the following: " But if exception is taken by any delegate to the correctness of such announcement by the chairman of his delegation, the President of the Convention shall direct the roll of members of such delegation to be called, and the result shall be recorded in accordance with the votes individually given." As a parliamentary device to prevent the adoption of this principle as the settled policy of the party, General Sharpe moved that the Conven- tion proceed to ballot for a candidate for President of the United States. General Garfleld raised the point of order that under the order of the Convention the report of the Committee on Rules was before the body, and that Sharpens motion to proceed to entirely different business was not in order. The chair ruled Sharpe's motion in order. Upon a viva i~oce vote, the negative had it. A call of States was demanded, and resulted: Yeas, 287; nays, 479. The result was hailed with great applause. General Garfield said that the Con- vention had wasted on this vote time enough to have adopted the rules and gone to work. He asked that the question now be taken without further debate. But General Sharpe moved to substitute the minority report for the majority. This motion was rejected. Mr. Boutwell moved to amend the majority report by adding, " And said committee (the National Republican Committee) shall, within twelve months, prescribe a method or methods for the election of delegates to the National Convention to be held in 1884, and announce the same to the country and issue a call for that Convention in conformity 384 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. therewith." Mr. Butterworth, of Ohio, moved an amendment that nothing in such rules or method shall be so construed as to prevent the several Congress Districts in the United States from selecting their own delegates to the National Convention. Mr. Boutwell ac- cepted the amendment, and his motion, as amended, was adopted. Then the rules were adopted as a whole. The platform reported and adopted at Chicago was the least dis- tinctive declaration of principles that ever emanated from a Repub- lican National Convention. It presented no overmastering issue, which was in marked contrast with every previous platform since 1856. The protection of American industries became the controlling question in the campaign, but the tariff plank was only a repetition of the declaration of 1876. The restriction of Chinese immigration was approved. The Democratic party was charged with sustaining fraudulent elections, with unseating members of Congress who had been lawfully chosen, with viciously attaching partisan legislation to appropriation bills, and with seeking to obliterate the sacred mem- ories of the war. " The solid South," it was declared, " must be di- vided by the peaceful agencies of the ballot; and all honest opinions must there find free expression." As reported from the Committee on Resolutions, the platform was silent on Civil-service Reform, but in Convention it was resolved " that the Republican party adopts the declaration of President Hayes that the reform in the civil ser- vice shall be thorough, radical, and complete, and to that end de- mands the co-operation of the Legislative with the Executive Depart- ments of the Government." It was late on Saturday when the preliminary work of the Con- vention was finished, but it was determined, after a recess, to de- vote Saturday evening to the presentation of Presidential candidates. Ten minutes were allowed for nominating speeches, and five minutes for the orator seconding each nomination. The candidates were put in nomination by a call of the States, but it was not until Michigan was reached that the first name was brought forward. It was pro- posed by James F. Joy, and was the name of James G. Elaine. The speech caused a shade of disappointment to pass over the Conven- tion, because it lacked the oratorical brilliancy with which Colonel Ingersoll had put Mr. Elaine in nomination four years before. When Minnesota was called, E. F. Drake presented the name of William W T indom. The next nomination was that of General Grant by Ros- coe Conkling. " The need of the hour," Mr. Conkling said, " is a candidate who can carry doubtful States, North and South, and be- lieving that he, more surely than any other, can carry New York against any opponent, and can carry not only the North, but several THE GARFIELD AND ARTHUR CAMPAIGN. 385 States of the South, New York is for Ulysses S. Grant. He alone of living Republicans has carried New York as a Presidential candidate. Once he carried it even according to a Democratic count, and twice he carried it by the people's votes, and he is stronger now the lie- publican party, with its standard in his hand, is stronger now than in 1868 or 1872. Never defeated in war or in peace, his name is the most illustrious borne by any living man. His services attest his greatness, and the country knows them by heart. Standing on the highest eminence of human destination, and having filled all lands with his renown, modest, simple, and self-poised, he has not seen only the titled, but the poor and the lowly, in the uttermost ends of the earth, rise and uncover before him. He has studied the needs and defects of many systems of government, and he has come back a better American than ever, with a wealth of knowledge and experi- ence added to the hard common sense which so conspicuously dis- tinguished him in all the fierce light that beat upon him throughout the most eventful, trying, and perilous sixteen years of the nation's history. Never having had ' a policy ' to enforce against the will of the people, he never betrayed a cause or a friend, and the people will never betray or desert him. Villified and reviled, ruthlessly aspersed by numberless persons, not in other lands, but in his own, the as- saults upon him have strengthened and seasoned his hold on the pub- lic heart. Never elated by success, never depressed by adversity, he has ever, in peace as in war, shown the very genius of common sense. The terms he prescribed for Lee's surrender foreshadowed the wisest principles and prophecies of true reconstruction." In conclusion he said that the Convention was master of a supreme opportunity. It could make the next President, and also make sure of his peaceful in- auguration. It could break that power which mildews the South. It could make the Republican army march to certain victory with its greatest marshal at its head. When Mr. Conkling's speech was ended the Grant men in the Convention and in the galleries indulged in an outbreak of enthusiasm that was uncontrollable. The galler- ies made the building shake. On the floor the delegates, collecting the flags that marked the places of the different delegations, marched along the aisles, cheering and shouting. This uproar lasted fully twenty minutes, before Mr. Bradley, of Kentucky, who seconded Grant's nomination, was allowed to speak. When General Garfield rose to nominate John Sherman, he spoke of the feeling that had just swayed the vast assemblage in a tone of gentle deprecation and deep solicitude. " No emotion touches my heart more quickly," he said, " than a sentiment in honor of a great and noble character. But as I sat on these seats and witnessed these 386 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. demonstrations, it seemed to me you were a human ocean in a tem- pest. I have seen the sea lashed into a fury and tossed into a spray, and its grandeur moves the soul of the dullest man. But I remember that it is not the billows, but the calm level of the sea, from which all heights and depths are measured. Gentlemen of the Convention, your present temper may not mark the healthful pulse of our people. When our enthusiasm has passed, when the emotions of this hour have subsided, we shall find the calm level of public opinion below the storm, from which the thoughts of a mighty people are to be measured, and by which their final action will be determined. Not here, in this brilliant circle, where fifteen thousand men and women are assembled, is the destiny of the Republic to be decreed; not here, where I see the enthusiastic faces of seven hundred and fifty-six dele- gates waiting to cast their votes into the urn and determine the choice of their party; but by four million Republican firesides, where the thoughtful fathers, with wives and children about them, with the calm thoughts inspired by love of home and love of country, with the history of the past, the hopes of the future, and the knowledge of the great men who have adorned and blessed our nation in days gone by there God prepares the verdict that shall determine the wisdom of our work to-night." General Garfield's speech was courteous, con- ciliatory, and prudent, and it would have made votes for his can- didate if speeches ever made votes. The claims of John Sherman could not have been better presented, but many of the delegates and many persons in the gallery felt that if Ohio had offered Garfield in- stead she would have had a better chance to win. After the nomination of Sherman only two names remained to be presented, those of George F. Edmunds, of Vermont, and Elilm B. Washburne, of Illinois. The former was proposed by Mr. Billings and the latter by Mr. Cassidy, of Wisconsin. It was within a few minutes of midnight when the Convention adjourned. A Sunday of excite- ment and suspense followed, but when the sun rose in a clear sky on Monday morning it was found that much of the boisterous element had been eliminated from the throng in the streets. In Exposition Hall, when the Convention met, there was still much of the eager expectation of the previous Wednesday, with little of the wild en- thusiasm of Saturday. Chairman Hoar came in ahead of time and looked as serene as the morning, cooled by the breezes from the lake. As soon as the tall form and silvered locks of Roscoe Conkling were seen, a mighty shout was raised, that was even heartier and longer than the demonstration of Saturday. More spontaneous and not less hearty was the welcome that was accorded to Garfield. Few of the delegates showed in their faces the calm defiance of Conkling, or the THE GARFIELD AND ARTHUR CAMPAIGN. 387 dark and lowering determination of Logan. There was a spirit of unrest among Mr. Elaine's friends that showed their alternations of hope and fear. Before the balloting the chair announced that no de- bate or changing of votes would be permitted, and then the voting- began that was not to be conclusive until the next day. In all thirty- six ballots were cast, as follows: Windom. Garfield. 10 10 1 10 1 10 1 10 1 10 2 10 2 10 1 10 2 10 1 10 2 10 1 10 1 Grant. Blaine Sherman. Washburne. . Edmu 1 304 284 93 30 34 2 305 282 94 31 32 3 305 282 93 31 32 4 305 281 95 31 32 5 305 281 95 31 32 6 305 280 95 31 32 7 305 281 94 31 32 8 306 284 91 32 31 9 308 282 90 32 31 10 . 305 282 92 33 31 11 305 281 93 32 31 12 304 283 92 33 31 13 305 285 89 33 31 14 305 285 89 35 31 15 309 281 88 36 31 16 306 283 88 36 31 17 303 284 90 36 31 18 305 283 91 35 31 19 305 279 96 32 31 20 308 276 93 35 31 21 305 276 96 35 31 22 305 275 97 35 31 23 304 275 97 36 31 24 305 279 93 35 31 25 302 281 94 35 31 26 303 280 93 36 31 27 306 277 93 36 31 28 307 279 91 35 31 29 305 278 116 35 12 30 306 279 120 33 11 31 308 276 118 37 11 32 309 270 117 44 11 33 309 276 110 44 11 34 312 275 107 30 11 35 313 257 99 23 11 36.. 306 42 3 5 1 1 1 1 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 1 1 1 17 50 399 388 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. There were a few scattering votes besides those for Garfield dur- ing the balloting, one for General Harrison, of Indiana, on the third ballot; one for President Hayes on the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth ballots; one for George W. McCrary, of Iowa, on the thirteenth bal- lot; one for Edmund J. Davis, of Texas, on the seventeenth ballot, and one for Governor Hartranft, of Pennsylvania, on the nineteenth, twentieth, twenty-first, and twenty-second ballots. An examination of the foregoing table will show that Grant's vote never rose above 313 nor fell below 303. Elaine's strength was increased only twice, on the thirteenth and fourteenth ballots, and then only by a single vote. The voting was almost without incident. On the first ballot the vote of New York was cast 51 for Grant, 17 for Elaine, and 2 for Sherman; Pennsylvania voted 32 for Grant, 23 for Elaine, and 3 for Sherman. The first vote cast for General Garfield was by Mr. Grier, of Pennsylvania. General Garfield took no heed of the votes given him singly or in pairs, but when he received seventeen votes on the thirty-fourth ballot he challenged the right of delegates to vote for him without his consent, but was overruled by the chair. The next ballot showed that a break was imminent, and then it came. On the thirty-sixth and last ballot Connecticut led off with 11 votes for Garfield. The storm, however, did not break until Illinois gave him most of her Washburne vote, and General Harrison cast for him 29 of the 30 votes of Indiana. Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, and Mississippi all followed with large addi- tions to Garfield's strength. When Ohio was called there was some delay, but the delegation finally came round with forty-three votes for Garfield, the missing delegate being Garfield himself. General Beaver announced the Pennsylvania vote as 37 for Grant and 21 for Garfield. When Vermont added her 10 Edmunds votes, and Wis- consin gave Garfield her 18, the work was complete. The motion to make the nomination unanimous was made by Mr. Conk- ling, and seconded by General Logan. " I wish you would say this is no act of mine," General Garfield said to the correspondent of the Cleveland Herald. " I wish you would say that I have done every- thing and omitted nothing to secure Secretary Sherman's nomination. I want it plainly understood that I have not sought this nomination, and have protested against the use of my name. If Senator Hoar had permitted I would have forbidden anybody to vote for me. But he took me off my feet, before I had said what I intended. I am very sorrj 7 it has occurred; but, if my position is fully explained, a nomina- tion, coming unsought and unexpected like this, will be the crown- ing gratification of my life." After the nomination of Garfield the Convention took a recess for THE GARFIELD AND ARTHUR CAMPAIGN. 389 consultation in regard to the candidate for the Vice-Presidency. It was agreed by a majority of the delegates to concede the candidate to Grant's friends, and Mr. Conkling named Chester A. Arthur, of New York. There was only one ballot, the vote being: For Chester A. Arthur, 468; Elihu B. Washburne, of Illinois, 199; Marshall Jewell, of Connecticut, 43; Horace Maynard, of Tennessee, 30; Edmund J. Davis, of Texas, 20; Blanche K. Bruce, of Mississippi, 8; James L. Alcorn, of Mississippi, 4; Thomas Settle, of Florida, 2, and Stewart L. Woodford, of New York, 1. The nomination was made unanimous, and the Convention adjourned. The nomination of General Garfield was not expected by the coun- try, but it was accepted by the opponents of a third term for General Grant as the best that could have been made, when it was found that Mr. Blaine could not be nom- inated. Garfield had a brilliant military history. He had the prestige of a distinguished career in Congress, and for ten years he had ranked among the foremost of the Republican leaders. He was conspicuous for eloquence, for wide knowledge of the legis- lative and administrative history and needs of the country, and for his liberal and progressive Republicanism. No candidate that could have been named at the time possessed so many elements of popularity with the people. The selection of General Arthur as Garfield's associate on the ticket was received in some quarters with dismay. He was regarded by a large section of the party as unfitted by political instincts and training for a place on the ticket. He had held only one political position, that of Collector of the Port of New York, from which he had been removed by Secretary Sherman. He had been connected with Governor Morgan's administration during the war, serving with ability and credit as Quartermaster-General of the State of New York. He had been graduated at Union College, and held respectable rank at the New York Bar. The only objection to his fitness was the fact that he had been the active leader of the party in the politics of New York City. This objection was too narrow to have weight in the canvass, and the feeling of dissatisfaction soon passed away. CHESTER A. ARTHUR. 390 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. On the day following the adjournment of the Republican National Convention the Greenback party met at Chicago and nominated James B. Weaver, of Iowa, for President, and B. J. Chambers, of Texas, for Vice-President. The Prohibitionists nominated Neal Dow, of Maine, and A. M. Thompson, of Ohio, for President and Vice-Presi- dent at Cleveland on June 17, and finally came the Democratic Na- tional Convention at Cincinnati, on the 22d. The nomination of Gen. Winfield S. Hancock for President was made by changes after the roll-call on the second ballot, the results of the balloting being as follows: Candidates. Ballots. After 1st. 2d. drug's Winfield S. Hancock, Pennsylvania 171 320 705 Thomas F. Bayard, Delaware 153| 113 2 Henry F. Payne, Ohio 81 Allen G. Thurman, Ohio 68^ 50 Stephen J. Field, California 65 65^ William R. Morrison, Illinois 62 Thomas A. Hendricks, Indiana 50 31 30 Samuel J. Til den, New York 38 6 1 Horatio Seymour, New York 8 Samuel J. Randall, Pennsylvania 128-j Scattering 31 22 William H. English, of Indiana, was nominated for Vice-President, his only opponent being Richard M. Bishop, of Ohio, who was with- drawn before the close of the ballot. The Democratic platform of 1880 was in marked contrast with the elaborate pronouncement of 187f. It contained a compact and energetic denunciation of the " grand fraud of 1876-7," and declared in favor of " honest money, consisting of gold and silver, and paper convertible into coin on demand," and of " a tariff for revenue only." It was upon this tariff plank that the canvass turned, and finally ended in General Hancock's defeat. General Hancock's nomination was received by the Democrats with a heartiness that amounted to enthusiasm. As a soldier candidate his military record was without a flaw. Brave, gallant, and patriotic, a soldier distinguished in the Peninsula campaign, at Antietam, in the decisive action that marked the bloody fighting on the third day at Gettysburg, and in General Grant's final campaign from the Wilderness to Appomattox, and a chivalrous gentleman, he was a worthy representative of that class of War Democrats who never regarded the war as a failure, and never faltered in their devotion to the Union by seeking an armistice THE GARFIELD AND ARTHUR CAMPAIGN. 391 from the enemy. A graduate of West Point, and brevetted for gal- lant conduct at Contreras and Cherubusco, in the Mexican war, he had fulfilled, during the rebellion, all the promises of his military edu- cation and all the expectations of his early career. He was the strongest candidate who could have been nominated by the Demo- crats, and during the early weeks of the canvass it looked as if his election was a foregone conclusion. The campaign of 1880 was one of extraordinary bitterness. Gen- eral Garfleld was assailed even more savagely than was Fremont in 1856, or Grant in 1872. At one time the figures " 329 " were chalked on the sidewalks, painted on dead walls, and printed in bold type in Democratic newspapers everywhere. These figures were intended to represent the number of dollars Garfield was alleged to have re- ceived as a Credit Mobilier dividend. He was accused of complicity with corrupt contracts as a member of Congress, and with impro- prieties of many kinds and degrees. Finally the famous forged " Morey Letter " was lithographed and printed, and scattered broad- cast, especially in the Pacific States, to convey the impression that Garfield was in favor of " Chinese cheap labor." Morey was a myth, but Garfield's handwriting was imitated with such success that the genuineness of the forgery was vouched for by Abram S. Hewitt and Samuel J. Randall, among others. In California the forged letter had the effect of giving the electoral vote of the State to General Hancock, because it was impossible to disavow the forgery in time to reach the voters. At the outset the auspices were not favorable for Republican suc- cess. In Maine the September election for Governor and members of the Legislature was adverse, the Democrats electing their candidate for Governor by the narrow margin of 164 votes. The discourage- ment occasioned by the unexpected result in Maine was only momen- tary, and was followed by special exertions to carry the two October States, Ohio and Indiana. Mr. Conkling, who had been " sulking in his tent," was induced to take the stump, and, in company with Gen- eral Grant, made a campaigning tour in Ohio. The Camerons, father and son, also made speeches in Ohio and Indiana. Both States were carried by the Republicans, results that made the canvass more hope- ful, but not entirely assured. The Democrats expected to make the campaign turn on the " grand fraud of 1876-7," as the question that " precedes and dwarfs every other," but the people were indifferent to this " fraud issue," while the Republicans succeeded in concentrating the interest of the coun- try on a Protective Tariff, which was menaced by the tariff -for-rev- enue-only plank of the Democratic platform. It was unquestionably 392 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. the introduction of this issue into the canvass that saved Garfield and Arthur from defeat. General Garfield had a small plurality of the popular vote over General Hancock; but Garfleld and Arthur carried twenty States, with 214 electoral votes, while Hancock and English carried nineteen States with 155 electoral votes. Hancock had the vote of the " Solid South," and Garfield carried all the other States, except New Jersey, Nevada, and five of the six votes of California. The electoral count was under the rule adopted in February, 1881, but was entirely devoid of incident DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF THE EPOCH. REPUBLICAN PLATFORM OF 1876. When, in the economy of Providence, this land was to be purged of human slavery, and when the strength of the government of the peo- ple, by the people, and for the people, was to be demonstrated, the Republican party came into power. Its deeds have passed into his- tory, and we look back to them with pride. Incited by their mem- ories to high aims for the good of our country and mankind, and look- ing to the future with unfaltering courage, hope, and purpose, we, the representatives of the party, in National Convention assembled, make the following declaration of principles: 1. The United States of America is a nation, not a league. By the combined workings of the National and State Governments, under their respective constitutions, the rights of every citizen are secured, at home and abroad, and the common welfare promoted. 2. The Republican party has preserved these governments to the hundredth anniversary of the nation's birth, and they are now em- bodiments of the great truths spoken at its cradle " That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that for the attainment of these ends governments have been instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the con- sent of the governed." Until these truths are cheerfully obeyed, or, if need be, vigorously enforced, the work of the Republican party is unfinished. 3. The permanent pacification of the southern section of the Union, and the complete protection of all its citizens in the free enjoyment of all their rights, is a duty to which the Republican party stands sacredly pledged. The power to provide for the enforcement of the principles embodied in the recent constitutional amendments is vested, by those amendments, in the Congress of the United States; and we declare it to be the solemn obligation of the legislative and executive departments of the government to put into immediate and vigorous exercise all their constitutional powers for removing any just causes of discontent on the part of any class, and for securing to every American citizen complete liberty and exact equality in the exercise of all civil, political, and public rights. To this end we im- peratively demand a Congress and a Chief Executive whose courage and fidelity to these duties shall not falter until these results are placed beyond dispute or recall. 4. In the first act of Congress signed by President Grant, the Na- 394 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. tional Government assumed to remove any doubt of its purpose to dis- charge all just obligations to the public creditors, and " solemnly pledged its faith to make provision at the earliest practicable period for the redemption of the United States notes in coin." Commercial prosperity, public morals, and national credit demand that this promise be fulfilled by a continuous and steady progress to specie pay- ment. 5. Under the constitution, the President and heads of departments are to make nominations for office, the Senate is to advise and consent to appointments, and the House of Representatives is to accuse and prosecute faithless officers. The best interests of the public service demand that these distinctions be respected; that Senators and Rep- resentatives who may be judges and accusers should not dictate ap- pointments to office. The invariable rule in appointments should have reference to the honesty, fidelity, and capacity of the appointees, giving to the party in power those places where harmony and vigor of administration require its policy to be represented, but permitting all others to be filled by persons selected with sole reference to the efficiency of the public service, and the right of all citizens to share in the honor of rendering faithful service to the country. C. We rejoice in the quickened conscience of the people concerning political affairs, and will hold all public officers to a rigid responsibil- ity, and engage that the prosecution and punishment of all who be- tray official trusts shall be swift, thorough, and unsparing. 7. The public school system of the several States is the bulwark of the American Republic, and, with a view to its security and perma- nence, we recommend an amendment to the Constitution of the United States, forbidding the application of any public funds or property for the benefit of any schools or institutions under sectarian control. 8. The revenue necessary for current expenditures, and the obliga- tions of the public debt, must be largely derived from duties upon im- portations, which, so far as possible, should be adjusted to promote the interests of American labor and advance the prosperity of the whole country. 9. We reaffirm our opposition to further grants of the public lands to corporations and monopolies, and demand that the national do- main be devoted to free homes for the people. 10. It is the imperative duty of the Government so to modify exist- ing treaties with European governments, that the same protection shall be afforded to the adopted American citizen that is given to the native-born; and that all necessary laws should be passed to pro- tect emigrants in the absence of power in the States for that purpose. 11. It is the immediate duty of Congress to fully investigate the ef- DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF THE EPOCH. 395 i feet of the immigration and importation of Mongolians upon the moral and material interests of the country. 12. The Republican party recognizes, with approval, the substan- tial advances recently made toward the establishment of equal rights for women by the many important amendments effected by Re- publican legislatures in the laws which concern the personal and property relations of wives, mothers, and widows, and by the ap- pointment and election of w r omen to the superintendence of educa- tion, charities, and other public trusts. The honest demands of this class of citizens for additional rights, privileges, and immunities, should be treated with respectful consideration. 13. The constitution confers upon Congress sovereign power over the territories of the United States for their government; and in the exercise of this power it is the right and duty of Congress to pro- hibit and extirpate, in the Territories, that relic of barbarism polyg- amy; and w T e demand such legislation as shall secure this end and the supremacy of American institutions in all the Territories. 14. The pledges which the nation has given to her soldiers and sailors must be fulfilled, and a grateful people will alw r ays hold those who imperiled their lives for the country's preservation in the kindest remembrance. 15. We sincerely deprecate all sectional feeling and tendencies. We, therefore, note with deep solicitude that the Democratic party counts, as its chief hope of success, upon the electoral vote of a united South, secured through the efforts of those who were recently arrayed against the nation; and we invoke the earnest attention of the country to the grave truth that a success thus achieved would reopen sec- tional strife, and imperil national honor and human rights. 16. We charge the Democratic party with being the same in char- acter and spirit as when it sympathized with treason; with making its control of the House of Representatives the triumph and opportunity of the nation's recent foes; with reasserting and applauding, in the na- tional capital, the sentiments of unrepentant rebellion; with sending Union soldiers to the rear, and promoting Confederate soldiers to the front; with deliberately proposing to repudiate the plighted faith of the Government; with being equally false and imbecile upon the overshadowing financial questions; with thwarting the ends of jus- tice by its partisan mismanagement and obstruction of investigation; with proving itself through the period of its ascendency in the lower house of Congress, utterly incompetent to administer the government; and we warn the country against trusting a party thus alike un- worthy, recreant, and incapable. 17. The National Administration merits commendation for its hon- 396 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. orable work in the management of domestic and foreign affairs, and President Grant deserves the continued hearty gratitude of the American people for his patriotism and his eminent services in war and in peace. 18. We present, as our candidates for President and Vice-Presi- dent of the United States, two distinguished statesmen, of eminent ability and character, and conspicuously fitted for those high offices, and we confidently appeal to the American people to intrust the ad- ministration of their public affairs to Rutherford B. Hayes and Will- iam A. Wheeler. DEMOCRATIC PLATFORM OF 1876. We, the delegates of the Democratic party of the United States, in National Convention assembled, do hereby declare the administra- tion of the Federal Government to be in urgent need of immediate reform; do hereby enjoin upon the nominees of this Convention, and of the Democratic party in each State, a zealous effort and co-opera- tion to this end; and do hereby appeal to our fellow-citizens of every former political connection to undertake, with us, this first and most pressing patriotic duty. For the Democracy of the whole country, we do here reaffirm our faith in the permanence of the Federal Union, our devotion to the Constitution of the United States, with its amendments universally accepted as a final settlement of the controversies that engendered civil war, and do here record our steadfast confidence in the per- petuity of republican self-government. In absolute acquiescence in the will of the majority the vital principle of republics; in the supremacy of the civil over the military authority; in the total separation of church and state, for the sake alike of civil and religious freedom; in the equality of all citizens before just laws of their own enactment; in the liberty of individual conduct, unvexed by sumptuary laws; in the faithful education of the rising generation, that they may preserve, enjoy, and transmit these best conditions of human happiness and hope w r e behold the noblest products of a hundred years of changeful history; but while uphold- ing the bond of our Union and great charter of these, our rights, it behooves a free people to practice also that eternal vigilance which is the price of liberty. Reform is necessary to rebuild and establish in the hearts of the whole people the Union, eleven years ago happily rescued from the danger of a secession of States, but now to be saved from a corrupt centralism which, after inflicting upon ten States the rapacity of carpet-bag tyranny, has honeycombed the offices of the Federal DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF THE EPOCH. 397 Government itself with incapacity, waste, and fraud; infected States and municipalities with the contagion of misrule, and locked fast the prosperity of an industrious people in the paralysis of " hard times." Reform is necessary to establish a sound currency, restore the pub- lic credit, and maintain the national honor. We denounce the failure, for all these eleven years of peace, to make good the promise of the legal tender notes, which are a chang- ing standard of value in the hands of the people, and the non-payment of which is a disregard of the plighted faith of the nation. We denounce the improvidence which, in eleven years of peace, has taken from the people, in Federal taxes, thirteen times the whole amount of the legal-tender notes, and squandered four times their sum in useless expense without accumulating any reserve for their re- demption. We denounce the financial imbecility and immorality of that party which, during eleven years of peace, has made no advance toward re- sumption, no preparation for resumption, but, instead, has obstructed resumption, by \vasting our resources and exhausting all our surplus income; and, while annually professing to intend a speedy return to specie payments, has annually enacted fresh hindrances thereto. As such hindrance we denounce the resumption clause of 1875, and we here demand its repeal. We demand a judicious system of preparation, by public economies, by official retrenchments, and by wise finance, which shall enable the nation soon to assure the whole world of its perfect ability and of its perfect readiness to meet any of its promises at the call of the creditor entitled to payment. W T e believe such a system, well devised, and, above all, intrusted to competent hands for execution, creating, at no time, an artificial scarcity of currency, and at no time alarming the public mind into a withdrawal of that vaster machinery of credit by which ninety-five per cent, of all business transactions are performed. A system open, public, and inspiring general confidence, would, from the day of its adoption, bring healing on its wings to all our harassed industries set in motion the wheels of commerce, manufactures, and the mechanic arts, restore employment to labor, and, renew, in all its natural sources, the prosperity of the people. Reform is necessary in the sum and modes of Federal taxation, to the end that capital may be set free from distrust and labor lightly burdened. W T e denounce the present tariff, levied upon nearly four thousand articles, as a masterpiece of injustice, inequality, and false pretense. It yields a dwindling, not a yearly rising, revenue. It has impover- ished many industries to subsidize a few. It prohibits imports that 398 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. might purchase the products of American labor. It has degraded Americau commerce from the first to an inferior rank on the high seas. It has cut down the sales of American manufactures at home and abroad, and depleted the returns of American agriculture an industry followed by half our people. It costs the people five times more than it produces to the treasury, obstructs the processes of production, and wastes the fruits of labor. It promotes fraud, fosters smuggling, enriches dishonest officials, and bankrupts honest merchants. We demand that all customhouse taxation shall be only for revenue. Reform is necessary in the scale of public expense Federal, State, and Municipal. Our Federal taxation has swollen from sixty mill- ions gold, in 1800, to four hundred and fifty millions currency, in 1870; our aggregate taxation from one hundred and fifty-four mill- ions gold, in 1860, to seven hundred and thirty millions currency, in 1870 or, in one decade, from less than five dollars per head to more than eighteen dollars per head. Since the peace, the people have paid to their tax-gatherers more than thrice the sum of the national debt, and more than twice that sum for the Federal Government alone. We demand a rigorous frugality in every department and from every officer of the Government. Reform is necessary to put a stop to the profligate waste of public lands, and their diversion from actual settlers, by the party in power, which has squandered 200,000,000 of acres upon railroads alone, and, out of more than thrice that aggregate, has disposed of less than a sixth directly to tillers of the soil. Reform is necessary to correct the omission of a Republican Con- gress, and the errors of our treaties and our diplomacy which have stripped our fellow-citizens of foreign birth and kindred race, re- crossing the Atlantic, of the shield of American citizenship, and have exposed our brethren of the Pacific coast to the incursions of a race not sprung from the same great parent stock, and in fact now, by law, denied citizenship through naturalization, as being neither ac- customed to the traditions of a progressive civilization nor exercised in liberty under equal laws. We denounce the policy which thus discards the liberty-loving German and tolerates a revival of the coolie trade in Mongolian women, imported for immoral purposes, and Mongolian men, held to perform servile labor contracts, and de- mand such modification of the treaty with the Chinese Empire, or such legislation within constitutional limitations, as shall prevent further importation or immigration of the Mongolian race. Reform is necessary, and can never be effected but by making it the controlling issue of the elections, and lifting it above the two false DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF THE EPOCH. 399 issues with which the office-holding class and the party in power seek to smother it. 1. The false issue with which they would enkindle sectarian strife in respect to the public schools, of which the establishment and support belongs exclusively to the several States, and which the Democratic party has cherished from their foundation, and is re- solved to maintain, without prejudice or preference for any class, sect, or creed, and without largesses from the treasury to any. 2. The false issue by which they seek to light anew the dying em- bers of sectional hate between kindred peoples once estranged, but now reunited in one indivisible republic and a common destiny. Reform is necessary in the civil service. Experience proves that efficient, economical conduct of the governmental business is not pos- sible if its civil service be subject to change at every election, be a prize fought for at the ballot-box, be a brief reward of party zeal, instead of posts of honor assigned for proved competency, and held for fidelity in the public employ; that the dispensing of patronage should neither be a tax upon the time of all our public men, nor the instrument of their ambition. Here, again, promises, falsified in the performance, attest that the party in power can work out no prac- tical or salutary reform. Reform is necessary, even more, in the higher grades of the public service. President, Vice-President, Judges, Senators, Representa- tives, Cabinet Officers these, and all others in authority are the people's servants. Their offices are not a private perquisite; they are a public trust. AVhen the annals of this Republic show the disgrace and censure of a Vice-President; a late Speaker of the House of Rep- resentatives marketing his rulings as a presiding officer; three Sen- ators profiting secretly by their votes as law-makers; five chairmen of the leading committees of the late House of Representatives ex- posed in jobbery; a late Secretary of the Treasury forcing balances in the public accounts; a late Attorney-General misappropriating public funds; a Secretary of the Navy enriched, or enriching friends, by percentages levied off the profits of contractors with his depart- ment; an Ambassador to England concerned in a dishonorable speculation; the President's private secretary barely escaping con- viction upon trial for guilty complicity in frauds upon the revenue; a Secretary of War impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors the demonstration is complete, that the first step in reform must be the people's choice of honest men from another party, lest the disease of one political organization infect the body politic, and lest by mak- ing no change of men or parties we get no change of measures and no real reform. 400 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. All these abuses, wrongs, and crimes the product of sixteen years' ascendency of the Republican party create a necessity for reform, confessed by the Republicans themselves; but their reformers are voted down in convention and displaced from the cabinet. The party's mass of honest voters is powerless to resist the 80,000 office- holders, its leaders and guides. Reform can only be had by a peaceful civic revolution. We de- mand a change of system, a change of administration, a change of parties, that we may have a change of measures and of men. AY-vo/m/, That this Convention, representing the Democratic party of the United States, do cordially indorse the action of the present House of Representatives, in reducing and curtailing the expenses of the Federal Government, in cutting down salaries and extrava- gant appropriations, and in abolishing useless offices and places not required by the public necessities; and we shall trust to the firmness of the Democratic members of the House that no committee of con- ference and no misinterpretation of the rules will be allowed to de- feat these wholesome measures of economy demanded by the country. AY.so/m/, That the soldiers and sailors of the Republic, and the widows and orphans of those who have fallen in battle, have a just claim upon the care, protection, and gratitude of their fellow-citi- zens. REPUBLICAN PLATFORM OF 1880. The Republican party, in National Convention assembled, at the end of twenty years since the Federal Government was first com- mitted to its charge, submits to the people of the United States its brief report of its administration: It suppressed a rebellion which had armed nearly a million of men to subvert the national authority. It reconstructed the union of the States with freedom, instead of slavery, as its cornerstone. It trans- formed four million of human beings from the likeness of things to the rank of citizens. It relieved Congress from the infamous work of hunting fugitive slaves, and charged it to see that slavery does not exist. It has raised the value of our paper currency from thirty-eight per cent, to the par of gold. It has restored upon a solid basis payment in coin for all the national obligations, and has given us a currency absolutely good and equal in every part of our extended country. It has lifted the credit of the nation from the point where six per cent, bonds sold at eighty-six to that where four per cent, bonds are eagerly sought at a premium. Under its administration, railways have increased from 31,000 miles in 1860, to more than 82,000 miles in 1879. DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF THE EPOCH. 401 Our foreign trade has increased from f 700,000,000 to $1,150,000,000 in the same time; and our exports, which were $20,000,000 less than our imports in 1860, were $204,000,000 more than our imports in 1879. Without resorting to loans, it has, since the war closed, defrayed the ordinary expenses of Government, besides the accruing inter- est on the public debt, and disbursed, annually, over $30,000,000 for soldiers' pensions. It has paid $888,000,000 of the public debt, and, by refunding the balance at lower rates, has reduced the annual interest charge from nearly $151,000,000 to less than $89,000,000. All the industries of the country have revived, labor is in demand, wages have increased, and throughout the entire country there is evidence of a coming prosperity greater than we have ever enjoyed. Upon this record, the Republican party asks for the continued con- fidence and support of the people; and this Convention submits for their approval the following statement of the principles and purposes which will continue to guide and inspire its efforts: 1. We affirm that the work of the last twenty years has been such as to commend itself to the favor of the nation, and that the fruits of the costly victories which we have achieved, through immense dif- ficulties, should be preserved; that the peace regained should be cher- ished; that the dissevered Union, now happily restored, should be per- petuated, and that the liberties secured to this generation should be transmitted undiminished to future generations; that the order es- tablished and the credit acquired should never be impaired; that the pensions promised should be paid; that the debt so much reduced should be extinguished by the full payment of every dollar thereof; that the reviving industries should be further promoted; and that the commerce, already so great, should be steadily encouraged. 2. The Constitution of the United States is a supreme law, and not a mere contract; out of Confederate States it made a sovereign nation. Some powers are denied to the nation, while others are denied to the States; but the boundary between the powers delegated and those re- served is to be determined by the national and not by the State tri- bunals. 3. The work of popular education is one left to the care of the sev- eral States, but it is the duty of the National Government to aid that work to the extent of its constitutional ability. The intelligence of the nation is but the aggregate of the intelligence in the several States, and the destiny of the nation must be guided, not by the genius of any one State, but by the average genius of all. 4. The Constitution wisely forbids Congress to make any law re- specting an establishment of religion; but it is idle to hope that the nation can be protected against the influences of sectarianism while 402 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. each State is exposed to its domination. We, therefore, recommend that the Constitution be so amended as to lay the same prohibition upon the Legislature of each State, to forbid the appropriation of public funds to the support of sectarian schools. 5. We reaffirm the belief, avowed in 1876, that the duties levied for the purpose of revenue should so discriminate as to favor American labor; that no further grant of the public domain should be made to any railway or other corporation; that slavery having perished in the States, its twin barbarity polygamy must die in the Territor- ies; that everywhere the protection accorded to citizens of American birth must be secured to citizens by American adoption. That we esteem it the duty of Congress to develop and improve our water- courses and harbors, but insist that further subsidies to private per- sons or corporations must cease. That the obligations of the Re- public to the men who preserved its integrity in the day of battle are undiminished by the lapse of fifteen years since their final victory to do them perpetual honor is, and shall forever be, the grateful privi- lege and sacred duty of the American people. 6. Since the authority to regulate immigration and intercourse be- tween the United States and foreign nations rests with the Congress of the United States and its treaty-making powers, the Republican party, regarding the unrestricted immigration of the Chinese as an evil of great magnitude, invokes the exercise of that power to restrain and limit that immigration by the enactment of such just, humane, and reasonable provisions as will produce that result. 7. That the purity and patriotism which characterized the early career of Rutherford B. Hayes in peace and war, and which guided the thoughts of our immediate predecessors to select him for a Presi- dential candidate, have continued to inspire him in his career as chief executive, and that history will accord to his administration the hon- ors which are due to an efficient, just, and courteous discharge of the public business, and will honor his interposition between the people and proposed partisan laws. 8. We charge upon the Democratic party the habitual sacrifice of patriotism and justice to a supreme and insatiable lust for office and patronage. That to obtain possession of the National and State Gov- ernments, and the control of place and position, they have obstructed all efforts to promote the purity and to conserve the freedom of suffrage; have devised fraudulent certifications and returns; have labored to unseat lawfully-elected members of Congress, to secure, at all hazards, the vote of a majority of the States in the House of Repre- sentatives; have endeavored to occupy, by force and fraud, the places of trust given to others by the people of Maine, and rescued by the DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF THE EPOCH. 403 courageous action of Maine's patriotic sons; have, by methods vicious in principle and tyrannical in practice, attached partisan legislation to appropriation bills, upon whose passage the very movements of Government depend; have crushed the rights of the individual; have advocated the principle and sought the favor of rebellion against the nation, and have endeavored to obliterate the sacred memories of the war, and to overcome its inestimably valuable results of nationality, personal freedom, and individual equality. Equal, steady, and com- plete enforcement of the laws, and protection of all our citizens in the enjoyment of all privileges and immunities guaranteed by the Con- stitution, are the first duties of the nation. The danger of a Solid South can only be averted by the faithful performance of every promise which the nation made to the citizen. The execution of the laws, and the punishment of all those who violate them, are the only safe methods by which an enduring peace can be secured, and genuine prosperity established throughout the South. Whatever promises the nation makes, the nation must perform; and the nation can not with safety relegate this duty to the States. The Solid South must be divided by the peaceful agencies of the ballot, and all opinions must there find free expression; and to this end honest voters must be protected against terrorism, violence, or fraud. And we affirm it to be the duty and the purpose of the Republican party to use all legiti- mate means to restore all the States of this Union to the most perfect harmony which may be practicable; and we submit to the practical, sensible people of the United States to say whether it would not be dangerous to the dearest interests of our country, at this time to sur- render the administration of the national Government to a party which seeks to overthrow the existing policy, under which we are so prosperous, and thus bring distrust and confusion where there is now order, confidence, and hope. 9. The Republican party, adhering to a principle affirmed by its last National Convention, out of respect for the constitutional rule cover- ing appointments to office, adopts the declaration of President Hayes, that the reform of the civil service should be thorough, radical, and complete. To this end it demands the co-operation of the legislative with the executive department of the Government, and that Con- gress shall so legislate that fitness, ascertained by proper practical tests, shall admit to the public service; and that the power of re- moval for cause, with due responsibility for the good conduct of sub- ordinates, shall accompany the power of appointment. NATIONAL (GREENBACK) PLATFORM, 1880. The civil government should guarantee the divine right of every 404 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. laborer to the results of his toil, thus enabling the producers of wealth to provide themselves with the means for physical comfort, and facili- ties for mental, social, and moral culture; and we condemn, as un- worthy of our civilization, the barbarism which imposes upon wealth- producers a state of drudgery as the price of a bare animal existence. Notwithstanding the enormous increase of productive power by the universal introduction of labor-saving machinery and the discovery of new agents for the increase of wealth, the task of the laborer is scarcely lightened, the hours of toil are but little shortened, and few- producers are lifted from poverty into comfort and pecuniary inde- pendence. The associated monopolies, the international syndicates, and other income classes, demand dear money, cheap labor, and a strong government; and hence, a weak people. Corporate control of the volume of money has been the means of dividing society into hos- tile classes, of an unjust distribution of the products of labor, and of building up monopolies of associated capital, endowed with power to confiscate private property. It has kept money scarce, and the scarcity of money enforces debt-trade, and public and corporate loans; debt engenders usury, and usury ends in the bankruptcy of the borrower. Other results are deranged markets, uncertainty in man- ufacturing enterprises and agriculture, precarious and intermittent employment for the laborer, industrial war, increasing pauperism and crime, and the consequent intimidation and disfranchisement of the producer, and a rapid declension into corporate feudalism. Therefore, we declare: 1. That the right to make and issue money is a sovereign power, to be maintained by the people for their common benefit. The dele- gation of this right to corporations is a surrender of the central at- tribute of sovereignty, void of constitutional sanction, and conferring upon a subordinate and irresponsible power an absolute dominion over industry and commerce. All money, w r hether metallic or paper, should be issued, and its volume controlled, by the Government, and not by or through banking corporations; and, when so issued, should be a full legal tender for all debts, public and private. 2. That the bonds of the United States should not be refunded, but paid as rapidly as practicable, according to contract. To enable the Government to meet these obligations, legal-tender currency should be substituted for the notes of the national banks, the national banking system abolished, and the unlimited coinage of silver, as well as gold, established by law. 3. That labor should be so protected by National and State author- ity as to equalize its burdens and insure a just distribution of its re- sults. The eight-hour law of Congress should be enforced, the sani- DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF THE EPOCH. 405 tary condition of industrial establishments placed under rigid control, the competition of contract convict labor abolished, a bureau of labor statistics established, factories, mines, and workshops in- spected, the employment of children under fourteen years of age for- bidden, and wages paid in cash. 4. Slavery being simply cheap labor, and cheap labor being simply slavery, the importation and presence of Chinese serfs necessarily tends to brutalize and degrade American labor; therefore, immediate steps should be taken to abrogate the Burlingame treaty. 5. Railroad land grants forfeited by reason of non-fulfillment of contract should be immediately reclaimed by the Government, and, henceforth, the public domain reserved exclusively as homes for ac- tual settlers. 6. It is the duty of Congress to regulate interstate commerce. All lines of communication and transportation should be brought under such legislative control as shall secure moderate, fair, and uniform rates for passenger and freight traffic. 7. We denounce as destructive to property and dangerous to lib- erty the action of the old parties in fostering and sustaining gigantic land, railroad, and money corporations, and monopolies invested with, and exercising powers belonging to the Government, and yet not responsible to it for the manner of their exercise. 8. That the Constitution, in giving Congress the power to borrow money, to declare war, to raise and support armies, to provide and maintain a navy, never intended that the men who loaned their money for an interest-consideration should be preferred to the soldiers and sailors who periled their lives and shed their blood on land and sea in defense of their country; and we condemn the cruel class legislation of the Republican party, which, while professing great gratitude to the soldier, has most unjustly discriminated against him and in favor of the bondholder. 9. All property should bear its just proportion of taxation, and we demand a graduated income tax. 10. We denounce as dangerous the efforts everywhere manifest to restrict the right of suffrage. 11. W T e are opposed to an increase of the standing army in time of peace, and the insidious scheme to establish an enormous military power under the guise of militia laws. 12. We demand absolute democratic rules for the government of Congress, placing all representatives of the people upon an equal footing, and taking away from committees a veto power greater than that of the President. 13. We demand a Government of the people, by the people, and for 406 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. the people, instead of a Government of the bondholder, by the bond- holder, and for the bondholder; and we denounce every attempt to stir up sectional strife as an effort to conceal monstrous crimes against the people. 14. In the furtherance of these ends we ask the co-operation of all fair-minded people. We have no quarrel with individuals, wage no war on classes, but only against vicious institutions. We are not content to endure further discipline from our present actual rulers, who, having dominion over money, over transportation, over land and labor, over the press and the machinery of government, wield unwarrantable power over our institutions and over life and prop- erty. DEMOCRATIC PLATFORM OF 1880. The Democrats of the United States, in Convention assembled, de- clare: 1. \Ve pledge ourselves anew to the constitutional doctrines and traditions of the Democratic party, as illustrated by the teachings and examples of a long line of Democratic statesmen and patriots, and embodied in the platform of the last National Convention of the party. 2. Opposition to centralization, and to that dangerous spirit of en- croachment which tends to consolidate the powers of all the depart- ments in one, and thus to create, whatever the form of government, a real despotism; no sumptuary laws; separation of the church and state for the good of each; common schools fostered and protected. 3. Home rule; honest money, consisting of gold and silver, and paper, convertible into coin on demand; the strict maintenance of the public faith, State and National; and a tariff for revenue only; the subordination of the military to the civil power, and a general and thorough reform of the civil service. 4. The right to a free ballot is a right preservative of all rights; and must and shall be maintained in every part of the United States. 5. The existing administration is the representative of conspiracy only; and its claim of right to surround the ballot-boxes with troops and deputy-marshals, to intimidate and obstmct the elections, and the unprecedented use of the veto to maintain its corrupt and despotic power, insults the people and imperils their institutions. W r e exe- crate the course of this administration in making places in the civil service a reward for political crime, and demand a reform, by statute, which shall make it forever impossible for a defeated candidate to bribe his way to the seat of a usurper by billeting villains upon the people. 6. The great fraud of 1876-7, by which, upon a false count of the DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF THE EPOCH. 407 electoral votes of two States, the candidate defeated at the polls was declared to be President, and, for the first time in American history, the will of the people was set aside under a threat of military violence, struck a deadly blow at our system of representative government. The Democratic party, to preserve the country from the horrors of a civil war, submitted for the time, in the firm and patriotic belief that the people would punish the crime in 1880. This issue precedes and dwarfs every other. It imposes a more sacred duty upon the people of the Union than ever addressed the consciences of a nation of free men. 7. The resolution of Samuel J. Tilden, not again to be a candidate for the exalted place to which he was elected by a majority of his countrymen, and from which he was excluded by the leaders of the Kepublican part}-, is received by the Democrats of the United States with deep sensibility; and they declare their confidence in his wis- dom, patriotism, and integrity unshaken by the assaults of the com- mon enemy; and they further assure him that he is followed into the retirement he has chosen for himself by the sympathy and respect of his fellow-citizens, who regard him a one who, by elevating the standard of the public morality, and adorning and purifying the pub- lic service, merits the lasting gratitude of his country and his party 8. Free ships, and a living chance for American commerce upon the seas; and on the land no discrimination in favor of transportation lines, corporations, or monopolies. 9. Amendments of the Burlingame treaty; no more Chinese immi- gration, except for travel, education, and foreign commerce, and, therein, carefully guarded. 10. Public money and public credit for public purposes solely, and public land for actual settlers. 11. The Democratic party is the friend of labor and the laboring man, and pledges itself to protect him alike against the cormorants and the commune. 12. We congratulate the country upon the honesty and thrift of a Democratic Congress, which has reduced the public expenditure f 10,- 000,000 a year; upon the continuation of prosperity at home and the national honor abroad; and, above all, upon the promise of such a change in the administration of the Government as shall insure a genuine and lasting reform in every department of the public service, THE PERIOD OF DEFEAT AND RECOVERY. I. THE REPUBLICAN FEUDS OF 1881-2. Appointment of Collector Robertson Resignation of Senators Conk- ling and Platt Long Contest in the New York Legislature The Senators Defeated Assassination of President Garfleld A Stal- wart of the Stalwarts Comments of the Newspapers Repub- lican Feud in Pennsylvania Revolt of 1882 Cleveland and Fol- ger Contest in New York Discontent in Other States Causes of Republican Reverses Mahone Movement in Virginia Presi- dent Arthurs Cabinet A Successful Administration. ENERAL GARFIELD was scarcely inaugurated when the feud broke out to which the Republican National Conven- tion of 1880 was the prelude. The new Cabinet was not one to give satisfaction to the wing of the party that had supported General Grant at Chicago. The appointment of Mr. Elaine as Secretary of State could not be openly resented by Mr. Conkling when it was made, but a collision between the two great party chiefs was inevitable sooner or later. It came sooner than was expected. If not actually sought, causes of offense were not avoided by either. The President at the outset was not indisposed to oblige Mr. Conk- ling and his friends in the matter of filling the Federal offices in New York. A number of appointments were made that were acceptable to the New York Senators and the Vice-President. There was, or it was claimed that there was, a tacit understanding that the one place that was of greater political importance than all the others together should not be filled in the immediate future. This was the office of Collector of the Port at New York. General Edward A. Merritt, the Collector, had been appointed by President Hayes as the successor of General Arthur. Collector Merritt was not active in using the Fed- eral patronage, which was very great, against the existing Repub- lican organization in New York City, and for this reason the domi- nant faction was satisfied with his retention. But before the nomi- nations already made were confirmed by the Senate the President was induced to nominate General Merritt as Consul-General at Lon- don, and to name William II. Robertson, of Westchester County, for Collector of the Port at New York. No action could have been more THE REPUBLICAN FEUDS OF 1881-2. 409 offensive to Senator Conkling, and the Conkling faction in New York City and State, and it was generally believed at the time that it was intended as a challenge of Mr. Conkling's supremacy in New York politics. Judge Robertson was a man of high character and recognized abil- ity. He had served in the Senate of New York and as the representa- tive from the Westchester District in the 40th Congress. As a politician he was impatient of the dictation of party chiefs, and he had the courage to oppose Mr. Conkling's arbitrary methods of party discipline. He was the leader of the anti-Grant element in the New York delegation at Chicago, and had been the first and most active of the New York delegates in disavowing and disregarding the unit rule in the Conven- tion. During the two days' balloting he led the Elaine delegates in open hostility to Grant, and in equally open de- fiance of Conkling, support- ing Elaine while there was a possibility of his nomination and afterward transferring Elaine's strength to Garfield. Under these circumstances his nomination for the Collec- torship was notice to the sen- ior Senator from New York that Mr. Elaine's friends would insist upon a share in the management of the party in the Empire State. To meet this situation Mr. Conkling sought to have his friends confirmed by the Senate while the confirmation of Robert- son w r as held in abeyance. This course was resented by the Presi- dent, who withdrew all the other nominations, thus making a direct issue of Judge Robertson's confirmation. Vice-President Arthur and Senators Conkling and Platt remonstrated against this action in a letter to the President, but the remonstrance went unheeded. Sen- ator Conkling then sought to defeat Robertson by urging the " cour- tesy of the Senate " against his confirmation. A bitter contest ensued, in which the friends of the administration in the Senate took sides against the Senators from New York. The nomination was made March 23, 1881, and was confirmed on the 10th of May. WM. 11 JKOBERTSON. 410 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. The confirmation of Judge Robertson was immediately followed by the resignations of the New York Senators. These resignations caused great excitement throughout the country, and especially in New York, where the Legislature was still in session. They came as a surprise to Mr. Conkling's political friends, as well as the friends of Mr. Elaine and the administration. Even Vice-President Arthur was not consulted, and only learned of the resignations in the perform- ance of his official duty as presiding officer of the Senate. When the letters of resignation reached Governor Cornell, at Albany, he sought to have them reconsidered and withdrawn, but without effect. Mr. Conkling was obdurate, and insisted upon a " vindication " for him- self and Senator Platt. Then came the long contest in the Legislature over the election of the successors of the two Senators. The Demo- crats nominated Francis Kernan for the long term and John C. Jacobs for the short term. The Republicans who resented the course pursued by Conkling and Platt made no nominations, but, after a few ballots, concentrated upon William A. Wheeler as the successor of Mr. Conk- ling, and Chauncey M. Depew as the successor of Mr. Platt. On the first ballot for the short term, Mr. Conkling had 35 votes, and Mr. Platt started with 29 for the long term, to which he had been elected only a few months before. Mr. Wheeler started with 22 votes, to 15 for Sherman S. Rogers, 10 for Alonzo B. Cornell, 3 each for Theodore M. Pomeroy, Richard Crowley, Henry E. Tremaine, and Reuben E. Fenton, and 2 each for Charles J. Folger, William M. Evarts, and Thomas G. Alvord. Wheeler showed no decided gain until the six- teenth ballot, when he received 38 votes. On the twenty-third ballot he reached his high-water mark, 50 votes, 79 being necessary to a choice. As w r as the case with Mr. Conkling, Mr. Platt received no increase of votes after the first ballot. Mr. Depew started with 25 votes, to 11 for Alonzo B. Cornell, 8 each for Elbridge G. Lapham and Warner Miller, 5 for Charles J. Folger, 4 for Richard Crowley, 3 each for William M. Evarts and Hamilton Ward, 2 each for James W. Wadsworth, Silas B. Dutcher, and Noah Davis, and 1 each for Henry E. Tremaine and Sherman S. Rogers. Mr. Depew's highest vote was 55 on the fourteenth ballot, 76 being necessary to a choice. On July 8, after forty-one ballots had been taken, a caucus of the Re- publican members of the Legislature was called, at which sixty-seven members were present. Six ballots w r ere taken for a candidate to succeed Mr. Platt, on the last of which W T arner Miller received 65 votes. This led to Mr. Miller's election on the forty-eighth ballot, when he received 76 votes. In the caucus Elbridge G. Lapham was nominated to succeed Mr. Conkling, receiving 34 out of 66 votes. This nomination gave Mr. Lapham 67 votes on the forty-second ballot, 75 THE REPUBLICAN FEUDS OF 1881-2. 411 being necessary to a choice. The balloting continued without result until the fifty-fifth ballot, thus showing that Mr. Lapham could not be elected while Mr. Conkling continued to be a candidate. Fi- nally a caucus was agreed to, which met on July 22, and nominated Mr. Lapham, who received 61 votes to 28 for Mr. Conkling. Thus the contest that had begun on May 31 was brought to a close by the election of Elbridge G. Lapham. This defeat of Mr. Conkling was the end of a great career in the United States Senate, but Mr. Platt lived to regain the confidence of the Republican party of New York, and now fills the place in the Senate from which he so precipitately retired at the beginning of his Senatorial life. While these factional fights over the Senatorship were in progress at Albany an event occurred at Washington that somehow became associated in the public mind with the great feud that had occurred in the Republican party. At twenty-two minutes past nine o'clock, on the morning of July 2, two shots in rapid succession were fired in the waiting-room of the Pennsylvania Railroad station in Sixth Street, near Pennsylvania Avenue. Almost at the same instant Sec- retary Blaine rushed from the room and called for an officer. The President had been shot down by an assassin while on his way through the station to take a train. The murderer was Charles Gui- teau, a disappointed office-seeker, who had gone to the station in ad- vance of the Presidential party with the intention of shooting the President. On his person, after his arrest, was found a letter that led many people to the hasty conclusion that the crime had some political significance. " The President's tragic death \vas a sad necessity," this letter said, " but it will unite the Republican party and save the Republic. Life is a flimsy dream, and it matters little when one goes; a human life is of small value. During the war thousands of brave boys went down without a tear. I presume the President was a Christian, and that he will be happier in Paradise than here. It will be no worse for Mrs. Garfield, dear soul, to part with her husband this way than by natural death. He is liable to go at any time, any- way. I had no ill will toward the President. His death was a political necessity. I am a lawyer, a theologian, and a politician. I am a Stalwart of the Stalwarts. I was with General Grant and the rest of our men in New York during the canvass. I have some papers for the press, which I shall leave with Byron Andrews and his com- pany, journalists, at No. 1420 New York Avenue, where all the re- porters can see them. I am now going to the jail." It was addressed " To the W 7 hite House," and signed " Charles Guiteau." Guiteau's declaration that he was a Stalwart of the Stalwarts seemed, to imag- inative persons, to point to some connection between the assassin and 412 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. the President's political opponents in the party in New York. Stal- warts was the name assumed by the Conkling wing of the party, the other faction being contemptuously called " Half-breeds." The use of nicknames had been a practice in New York politics since the be- ginning of the century. The followers of Aaron Burr were called " Quids," or " Tertium Quids," the third party men. Other similar designations have been " Hunkers " and " Barnburners," " Locofo- cos," " Mugwumps," and " Goo-Goos." It was natural, perhaps, that Guiteau's claim that he was a " Stal- wart " among the " Stalwarts " should lead some of the " Half- breeds " to impute his crime to the faction with which he sought to identify himself, and some of the newspapers in New York treated the event as " Faction's latest crime." " For though the murderer was obviously of unsound mind," said the Times, " it is impossible to ignore the causes which led immediately to this act; which directed his ill-regulated will to final aim. He was a disappointed office- seeker, and he linked the bitterness of his personal disappointment with the passionate animosity of a faction. His resentment was in- flamed and intensified by the assaults upon the President which have been common in too many circles for the past few months. Certainly, we are far from holding any party or any section of a party respon- sible for this murderous act, but we believe it our duty to point out that the act w r as an exaggerated expression of a sentiment of narrow and bitter hatred which has been only too freely indulged. It is not too much to say, in the first place, that if Mr. Garfield had not been the chief of a service in which offices are held out as prizes to men of much the same merit and much the same career as this murderer, he would not have been exposed to this attack." " President Garfield has been shot down," the Tribune said, " not by a political faction, but by the spirit which a political faction has begotten and nursed. But for that spirit, there was hardly a man in this country who seemed at sunrise yesterday more safe from murderous assault. . . It does not appear that the assassin of yesterday had ever been thought a lunatic by any associate or acquaintance, until the deadly shots were fired. Was he i crazed by political excitement,' then, as many say? At what point, if ever, did the madness of faction become the madness of irresponsibility? Do the leaders of faction ever in- tend all the mischief which grows from the wild and desperate spirit which they create, feed, and stimulate, week after week? Is it not their constant crime against self-government that, by kindling such a spirit, they send weak or reckless men beyond the bounds of right or reason? This assassin, it seems, was not ignorant that he was trying to kill one President and make another. His language and letters THE REPUBLICAN FEUDS OF 1881-2. 413 prove that be knew what he was doing only too well. As ' a Stalwart of the Stalwarts,' his passion w r as intense enough to do the thing which other reckless men had wished were done." Outside of New York the imputations were even more direct. " The Stalwarts," said the Baltimore American, " have indeed destroyed the President at last. What the ultimate consequences of this coup d'etat will be it is impossible at this moment to predict." " Guiteau is a miserable ne'er-do-well," exclaimed the Springfield Republican, " who shares the common feeling that all the offices are in the dispensation of the Presi- dent of the United States, and that he has a claim on that functionary for patronage. He is in sympathy with Arthur and Conkling in the struggle over the New York Custom House. His wits have become only a degree more disordered than those of Conkling himself, and, being a much w r eaker and feebler man, his vengeance has taken the direct and vulgar form of a pistol shot, rather than the more re- fined form of resigning the seats of the Republican majority in the United States Senate and demanding a vindication from the State of New York." " While no sane man," said the Chicago Tribune, " will admit a suspicion that this attempted assassination has any connec- tion with the New York case, still on the theory that this assassin was deranged in his mind, and taking his ow r n letters as indicating the direction of his insanity, no one will question that had not the factious controversy taken place this attempted murder would not have suggested itself to this man Guiteau." Such outcries as these only tended to embitter faction, and they helped to extend a feud that concerned only the New York offices to nearly every State in the Union. It is not true, however, that the great feud of 1881, greatly promoted as it was by the two senatorial contests in New York, had its origin in Mr. Conkling's quarrel with the Administration. In Pennsylvania there had been a faction fight between the " Regulars " and the " In- dependents," over the election of a Senator of the United States to succeed William A. W T allace, that was not less bitter than the con- test between the " Stalwarts " and the " Half-breeds " in New York. When the Pennsylvania Legislature met in January, 1881, Henry W. Oliver, Jr., received the nomination of the Republican caucus for United States Senator. Galusha A. Grow, the vigorous Republican leader of the early days of the party, desired to become a candidate, but his friends, finding themselves a minority, refused to enter the caucus. The result was that Oliver was supported by the " Regu- lars," while Grow became the candidate of the " Independents." An election consequently became impossible. While the " deadlock " lasted both the candidates withdrew, with a view of breaking it, but 414 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. V as the " Kegulars " substituted General James A. Beaver for Mr. Oliv- er, the " Independents " refused to accept him, General Beaver having been the Grant leader of the Pennsylvania delegation at Chicago, in 1880. After many fruitless efforts at compromise between the lead- ers on both sides, the two factions agreed to conference committees to select a candidate by a three-fourths vote. These committees found it difficult to agree, but finally John I. Mitchell, Representative in Congress from the Sixteenth District, was accepted, and after being nominated in a full caucus, elected. This settlement, however, failed to compose the differences in the party, and the effects of the feud were felt in the State election in the autumn of 1881, and culminated in open revolt in the election for Gov- ernor in 1882. The accession of President Arthur upon the death of President Gar- field, September 19, 1881, was not a factor in the Pennsylvania election of that year. In 1882, when the " In- dependents " nominated John Stew- art for Governor in opposition to General James A. Beaver, the candi- date of the " Kegulars," dissatisfac- tion with Arthur's Administration was very pronounced. The Republi- cans who nominated Stewart de- clared it to be their purpose to take up the work that fell when Garfield fell. They professed to have found in Garfield's election "the triumph of true reform in the Civil Service, and of an enlarged liberty of action for the masses of the Republican party in the nomination of their candidates and in the conduct of their party affairs," and deplored the overwhelming evidence presented in Pennsylvania "that the ca- lamity of his assassination has been followed by the overthrow of these reforms in the hands of his successor." These allegations were without any foundation in fact. It was the nomination of Gen- eral Beaver, the supremacy of " the machine," that the independ- ent platform called "Boss Rule," that caused the revolt of 1882. As the differences could not be, or at least were not recon- ciled, the election of Robert E. Pattison, the Democratic candidate, was the result. This result was intended as a drastic measure of dis- cipline to compel the " Regulars " to recognize the independent ele- GALUSHA A. GROW. THE REPUBLICAN FEUDS OF 1881-2. 415 ment in the party. The faction in itself was not new, either in 1882, when it defeated General Beaver for Governor, or in 1881, when it prevented the election of Mr. Oliver as United States Senator. There had been two Republican factions in Pennsylvania ever since the birth of the party. There are two factions still, and open revolt in any year is only a question of opportunity to arouse opposition to the dominating forces. In New York the influences and the results in 1882 were almost identical with those in Pennsylvania. The Democrats in their State Convention discarded their party favorites and nominated an entirely new man for Governor. The candidate of Tammany Hall was Eos- well P. Flower. Hisprincipal opponent was General Henry W. Slocum. On the third ballot Tammany deserted Flower and threw the full strength of that powerful organization for Grover Cleveland. Cleve- land had been Sheriff of Erie County, and was at the time Mayor of his city. He had had no legislative experience, and was never promi- nent in the politics of the State. He was, however, a man of local re- pute as an independent and efficient executive in the office he then held. His nomination was due to the fact that he was free from the entanglements and antagonisms in the politics of the State, and es- pecially in the City of New York. The Republican candidate was Charles J. Folger, then Secretary of the Treasury, as the successor of Mr. Windom in the Cabinet of President Arthur. He was a man of great ability and large experience. He had served in the State Sen- ate, and had been Chief Justice of the Court of Appeals. A better nomination apparently was impossible. But there were many ele- ments of discontent. The principal cause of dissatisfaction w r as the defeat of Governor Cornell in the State Convention by the use of a forged telegram. The " Half-breeds " opposed Folger on the as- sumption that he was the candidate of the National Administration. Although there was no independent nomination, as in Pennsylvania, fully two hundred thousand Republicans refrained from voting, and the result was Mr. Cleveland's election by a majority of 192,854. The defection was attributed by the " Stalwarts " to the influence of Mr. Blaine, and this imputation cost him the Electoral vote of the State in the Presidential election of 1884. Political discontent was manifest in other States besides Pennsyl- vania and New York, in 1882. There were Republican defections in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Iowa, Nebras- ka, Kansas, Colorado, and California. The ground of opposition in nearly all these States was the alleged necessity of opposing " Boss Rule." This opprobrious term had been used by the Republicans of New York in opposing the " Tweed Ring," but it was first applied to 416 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. Republican politics by Wayne McVeagh at Chicago in 1880, when he used it in street speeches against the nomination of General Grant. Afterward every political leader who possessed actual influence in State or municipal politics, was denounced as a " boss," and " Down with Boss Rule!" became the cry of dissatisfied Republicans in all parts of the country. The phrase only served to express the feeling of discontent with the party within the party, that was resolved upon rebuking the party leadership by voting with the Democrats, or not voting at all. In Massachusetts General Benjamin F. Butler was elected Governor, as a Democrat, by a majority relatively greater than that of Cleveland over Folger in New York, because that State, instead of having too little had had too much reform. The discontent in Massa- chusetts was not in harmony w r ith the causes of dissatisfaction and revolt in the other States. It was a plain case of reaction. In Ohio the liquor question obtruded itself into the politics of the State. A prohibitory constitutional amendment had been adopted, in itself de- fective, and as no legislation had been enacted to enforce it, those who resisted it began to sell as though the right were natural, and in this way became strong enough to prevent taxation or license. The Legislature of 1882, the majority being controlled by the Kepublicans, attempted to pass the Pond liquor tax act. The liquor interests or- ganized, secured control of the Democratic State Convention, nomi- nated a ticket pledged to their interests, made a platform which pointed to unrestricted sale, and by active work and the free use of money, carried the election and reversed the usual majority. In Iowa and Kansas, as well as in Ohio, the liquor question was the cause of Republican reverses. Still other causes were operative in the other States. The reverses resulting from a feeling of discontent, originat- ing in so many diverse causes, w r ere not merely a continuation of the effects of the reaction that began with the panic of 1873, but the signs that pointed to a Period of Defeat. The Republicans were able to maintain their strength unimpaired in a few States New Hampshire, Vermont, Rhode Island, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. In the South there were signs of re- covery. There was an increase of Republican strength in North Car- olina and Tennessee, and Congressmen were gained in Mississippi and Louisiana. In Virginia the situation was greatly improved, Ma- hone's Republican Readjuster ticket carrying the State by a majority of 10,000, thus securing the election of a Congressman-at-large and a United States Senator. The Mahone movement in Virginia began in 1876. General Will- iam Mahone, its originator, was a Confederate officer of distinction and a man of great energy in business as well as in politics. What he THE REPUBLICAN FEUDS OF 1881-2. 417 sought was a readjustment of the Virginia debt, so that West Virginia should bear a fair proportion of the indebtedness of the old State of Virginia. His enemies asserted that his object was repudiation. This charge Mahone denied, asserting that the Bourbons, as he called the Democratic leaders, were actually repudiating it by making no provisions for its payment, either in appropriations or the levying of taxes needed for the purpose. At the time the Republicans were in a helpless minority in Virginia. In order to obtain support for his movement, General Mahone publicly invited an alliance by the adop- tion of a platform that advocated free schools for the blacks, and a full enforcement of the National laws touching their civil rights. As a result of the movement, the Legislature was won, and Mahone was elected to the United States Senate in 1880. It was claimed that he had been chosen as a Democrat, and he gave great offense to the Southern Democracy when he acted with the Republicans. Mahone was bitterly assailed by Senator Hill, of Georgia, for intending to vote with the Republicans in the organization of the Senate in 1881, and the Readjuster Senator from Virginia replied with equal bitter- ness. " The gentleman may not be advised," Mahone said, " that the Legislature that elected me did not require that I should state either that I was a Democrat or anything else. I suppose he could not get here from Georgia unless he was to say that he was a Democrat, any- how. I come here without being required to state to my people what I am. They were willing to trust me, sir, and I was elected by the people and not by a Legislature, for it was an issue in the can- vass. There was no man elected by the party with which I am iden- tified that did not go to the Legislature instructed by the sovereigns to vote for me for the position I occupy on this floor. It required no oath of allegiance blindly given to stand by your Democracy, such as it is, that makes a platform and practices another thing." A re- markable scene of disorder in the Senate marked the colloquy between Hill and Mahone. A number of Republican Senators, including Mr. Hoar and General Logan, defended the Virginian, and General Ma- hone afterward made a very elaborate reply to Hill, in which he gave a complete history of the Readjuster movement in Virginia, and justified his alliance w r ith the Republicans. It was hoped the anti- Bourbon movement, which had taken deep root in Virginia, would be extended to the other Southern States, but .this hope was disap- pointed because of the great Republican feud of 1881-2 and its con- sequent disasters. In all these conflicts men professed to see the hand of Mr. Blaine. There was no actual proof that he had any share in promoting the dis- cords of 1882, but the men who were active in the defection from Pol- 418 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. ger in New York, and in conducting the revolt in Pennsylvania, were almost without exception his friends, and enemies of the Administra- tion. President Arthur assumed the great office that the assassin's bullet had made possible for him under circumstances of peculiar dif- ficulty. His title to the Presidency was perfect, but many of the leading men in the party were disposed to stand aloof, and to treat the new Administration as one not to be trusted. President Arthur met the emergency with dignified modesty and rare tact and discre- tion. His first act was to ask the Cabinet appointed by his predeces- sor to remain in office. All except Wayne McVeagh, of Pennsyl- vania, the Attorney-General, consented to retain their places for the time being. McVeagh's retirement was immediate, a precipitancy that only needs to be described as unnecessary. His successor Ben- jamin Harris Brewster, was not appointed until January 2, 1882. Mr. Windom, the Secretary of the Treasury, was elected to the United States Senate, and resigned from the Cabinet to accept the Senator- ship. Edwin D. Morgan, of New York, was appointed and confirmed as his successor, but declined, and Charles J. Folger qualified No- vember 14, 1881. Mr. Blaine retired a month later, and was succeeded by Frederick T. Frelinghuysen, of New Jersey, December 19, 1881. Postmaster-General James was succeeded by Timothy O. Howe, of Wisconsin, January 2, 1882, and William E. Chandler, of New Hamp- shire, became Secretary of the Navy, and Henry M. Teller, of Colo- rado, Secretary of the Interior, April 17, 1882. Robert T. Lincoln, Sec- retary of War, was the only member of President Garfield's Cabinet who remained in the Cabinet of President Arthur. In all these changes there was nothing revolutionary. The effort to make him a political pariah, as other Vice-Presidents who became President were made or made themselves, was a failure. " How skillfully and courteously he managed the grand trusts of the high office to which he succeeded, is now recognized," Mr. Cox wrote, soon after his adminis- tration closed. " He was well equipped for Executive duties, as a man of education, of great knowledge of affairs, and as a lawyer and a practical man of business. He retired from the office of President with the best wishes of every one with whom he came in contact. He had many severe trials connected with the bad administration of affairs in the Postoffice, and other departments of the government. He also had some stormy times with partisans, because he endeavored to be just to the country; but amid all the distractions of his party and the State, he maintained that decorous dignity which becomes the President of a nation whose past has a wondrous lesson, whose present has such a supreme duty, and whose future such a radiant hope." THE REPUBLICAN FEUDS OF 1881-2. 419 Coming from a Democratic source, this tribute is all the more note- worthy. Every word of it was deserved. The place that must be ac- corded to Arthur's Administration in history is in itself a rebuke of the Republican feuds of which it was the victim, not the occasion. The towering personality of James G. Elaine blinded many Repub- licans to the merits of President Garfield's successor, but neither the feuds of 1881-82 nor his own ambition led President Arthur into the dangerous pathways that had been trodden with such heavy footsteps by John Tyler, Millard Fillmore, and Andrew Johnson. II. PRESIDENT ARTHUR'S ADMINISTRATION. Cause of Hill's Attack oil Mahone The Struggle for the Control of the Senate Changes in the Forty-seventh Congress Both Houses Republican Legislation The Interstate Commerce Commission Passage of the Pendleton Civil-service Reform Bill Tariff of 1883 Report of the Tariff Commission Changes in Tariff Rates Efforts to Pass the Morrison Tariff Bill Changes in the Forty-eighth Congress Waiting for the Presidential Cam- paign Congress and Parties Adrift. HEN Congress met for the first time under the Administra- tion of President Arthur, December 5, 1881, the House of Representatives was again Republican, and the Senate was a tie when Senator David Davis, Independent, voted with the Democrats. This explains the bitter assault on Senator William Mahone, of Virginia, upon the assumption that he had been elected as a Democrat. " I certainly did not say one word," said Mr. Hill, of Georgia, speaking of Senator Mahone, " to justify the gentleman in the statement that I made an assault upon him, unless he was the one man who had been elected as a Democrat and was not going to vote with his party. I never saw that gentleman before the other day. I have not the slightest unkind feeling for him. I never al- luded to him by name; I never alluded to his State; and I can not un- derstand how the gentleman says that I alluded to him except upon the rule laid down by the distinguished Senator from New York, that a guilty conscience needs no accuser. I did not mention the Senator. It had been stated here by the Senator from New York over and over that the other side would have a majority when that side was full. I showed that it was impossible that they should have a majority unless they could get one Democratic vote, with the vote of the Vice-Presi- dent. I did not know who it was; I asked who it was; I begged to know who it was; and to my utter astonishment the gentleman from Virgina comes out and says he is the man. The Senator from Vir- ginia makes a very strange announcement. He charged me not only with attacking him, but with attacking the people of Virginia. Did I say a word of the people of Virginia? I said that the people of no portion of this country would tolerate treachery. Was that attack- ing the people of Virginia? I said that thirty-eight men had been elected to this body as Democrats. Does the Senator deny that? Does he say he was elected here not as a Democrat? He says he was PRESIDENT ARTHUR'S ADMINISTRATION. 421 not required to declare that he was a Democrat, and in the next breath he says he is a truer, better Democrat than I am. . . . Sir, I will not defend Virginia. She needs no defense. Virginia has given to this country and the world and humanity some of the brightest names of history. She holds in her bosom to-day the ashes of some of the noblest and greatest men that ever illustrated the glories of any country. I say to the Senator from Virginia that neither Jeffer- son, nor Madison, nor Henry, nor Washington, nor Leigh, nor Tucker, nor any of the long list of great men that Virginia has produced ever accepted a commission to represent one party and came here and rep- resented another." Mr. Hill claimed that before acting with the Re- publicans it was Mr. Mahone's duty to resign his seat and go back to the Virginia Legislature asking for a re-election. Such obliging conduct on Mahone's part would have given the Democrats the or- ganization and control of the Senate. The Mahone controversy in the Senate occurred at the special session in March. When the Senate again met in special session, October 10, 1881, the two newly-elected Senators from New York, Miller and Lapham, and Nelson W. Aldrich, the new Senator from Rhode Island, chosen to succeed General Burnside, had not yet quali- fied. The Democrats in consequence took snap judgment upon the Republicans by electing Thomas F. Bayard, of Delaware, President of the Senate, by 34 votes to 32 for Henry B. Anthony, of Rhode Island. Three days later, when the three new Senators had quali- fied, this action was reversed, and David Davis was elected, receiving 36 votes to 34 for Mr. Bayard. The Senate, when the regular session of Congress began in De- cember, showed many conspicuous changes since the adjournment of the 46th Congress in March. Newton Booth, of California, had given place to John F. Miller, who was not destined to the prominence of his predecessor. General Joseph R. Hawley was the new Republican Sen- ator from Connecticut. Benjamin Harrison came from Indiana in place of Joseph E. McDonald. This was General Harrison's first ap- pearance in the political arena in which he was one of the few con- testants who ever won the prize of the Presidency. Eugene Hale, of Maine, was the successor of the venerable Hannibal Hamlin, and the seat that James G. Blaine had resigned to become Secretary of State under President Garfield was now occupied by William P. Frye. Arthur P. Gorman succeeded William Pinckney Whyte from Mary- land. Omer D. Conger, long a prominent member of the House from Michigan, succeeded Henry P. Baldwin. The olive-hued Bruce, the last Republican Senator from Mississippi, had accepted an adminis- trative office, and in his seat in the Senate was James Z. George. 422 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. Charles H. Van Wyck succeeded Algernon S. Paddock from Nebraska. James G. Fair, one of the Bonanza kings of Nevada, succeeded Will- iam Sharon. General William J. Sewell entered the Senate from New Jersey. The haughty Conkling had thrown away in a pet the proud place he so long held, and Thomas C. Platt, the junior Senator from New York, chosen as the successor of Francis Kernan, had followed his chief into exile, after service of less than a fortnight. Platt's suc- cessor, Warner Miller, was a man of ability, but the appearance of the commonplace Laphain in Conkling's seat was something almost pathetic. The able Allen G. Thurman, of Ohio, made a conspicuous vacancy in the chamber he had adorned, notwithstanding John Sher- man was his successor. General Garfleld had been elected to succeed Thurman, but became President of the United States on the day he would have entered the Senate. Angus Cameron, of Wisconsin, who had been succeeded by Philetus Sawyer, filled the vacancy occasioned by the death of Matthew H. Carpenter. The most conspicuous of those whose names were stricken from the rolls of the Senate forever will be readily recognized as Conkling, Thurman, General Burnside, and Carpenter. The other new Senators were John I. Mitchell, of Pennsylvania; Nelson W. Aldrich, of Rhode Island; Howell E. Jack- son, of Tennessee; William Mahone, of Virginia, and Johnson N. Cam- den, of West Virginia. The Senators who entered on terms of service as their own successors were Thomas F. Bayard, of Delaware; Charles W. Jones, of Florida; Henry L. Dawes, of Massachusetts; Samuel J. R. McMillan, of Minnesota; Francis M. Cockrell, of Missouri; Sam B. Maxey, of Texas, and George F. Edmunds, of Vermont. In the 47th Congress the House of Representatives contained 150 Republicans, 131 Democrats, 12 Nationals, and 2 Readjusters. J. Warren Keifer, of Ohio, was elected Speaker. Mr. Keifer had been a member of the 45th and 46th Congresses, and had served with dis- tinction in the Civil War. The new Republican members included John R. Buck, of Connecticut; Charles B. Farwell, William Cullen, Lewis E. Payson, John H. Lewis, and Dietrich C. Smith (w r ho suc- ceeded Adlai E. Stevenson, afterward Vice-President), of Illinois; Stanton J. Peele, Robert B. Pierce, Mark L. De Motte, and George W. Steele, of Indiana; Sewell S. Farwell, Marsena E. Cutts, John A. Kasson, and William P. Hepburn, of Iowa; John D. White, of Ken- tucky; Chester B. Darrall, of Louisiana; Nelson Dingley, Jr., of Maine; Ambrose A. Ranney, Eben F. Stone, and John W. Chandler, of Massa- chusetts; Henry W. Lord, Edward S. Lacey, George W. Webber, Ol- iver S. Spaulding, and John T. Rich, of Michigan; John R. Lynch, of Mississippi; Robert T. Van Horn, of Missouri; Ossian Ray, of New Hampshire; John Hart Brewer, John Hill, and Phineas Jones, of New PRESIDENT ARTHUR'S ADMINISTRATION. 423 Jersey; J. Hyatt Smith, Thomas Cornell, Abram X. Parker, George West, Ferris Jacobs, Jr., Charles R. Skinner, and James Wadsworth, of New York; Orlando Hubbs, of North Carolina; Henry L. Morey, Emaimel Slmltz, James M. Ritchie, James S. Robinson, John B. Rice, Rufus R. Dawes, and Addison S. McClure, of Ohio; Joseph A. Scran- ton, Samuel P. Barr, Cornelius C. Jadwin, Robert J. C. Walker, Jacob M. Campbell, Samuel H. Miller, and Lewis F. W T atson, of Pennsyl- vania; Henry J. Spooner, and Jonathan Chace, of Rhode Island; Au- gustus H. Pettibone, and William R. Moore, of Tennessee; William W. Grout, of Vermont; John F. Dezendorf, of Virginia, and Richard Guen- ther, of Wisconsin. The most noteworthy Democrats among the new members were General William S. Rosecrans, of California; Andrew G. Curtin, of Pennsylvania; James K. Jones, of Arkansas; Perry Bel- mont, and Roswell P. Flower, of New York, and William S. Holman, of Indiana. Mr. Holman had been a conspicuous figure in the House of Representatives, but was not a member of the 46th Congress. The Republican leaders who were forging to the front were Thomas B. Reed and William McKinley, Jr. Few of the new men in the 47th Congress became prominent in Republican politics. The principal measures in the 47th Congress were legislation for the punishment of Polygamy, the Chinese Question, the regulation of Interstate Commerce, and Banking and Currency, Civil-service Re- form, and the Tariff. The bill to punish polygamy was not made a party question, only forty-two Democrats voting against it. The Chinese bill was the first attempt to regulate immigration under the amended Burlingame treaty. It was passed by Democratic and Republican votes, 64 Republicans and only 3 Democrats voting against it; but it was vetoed by President Arthur. The bill failed to pass over the President's veto in the Senate, in which it originated, but a new bill, reported in the House April 17, 1882, was passed by both Houses and approved by the President. The effort for the regulation of Interstate Commerce was begun in the 46th Congress, when a bill to establish an Interstate Commerce Commission failed in the House. The question, however, had become one of such pressing importance that the subject was renewed at the first session of the 47th Congress. The unrestricted building of rail- roads had resulted in destructive competition, and was one of the direct causes of the panic of 1873. In 1877, when the country was just beginning to recover from the shock, business was again dis- turbed and depressed by the trouble between the railroad companies and their workmen, which in some places culminated in riot and bloodshed. Notwithstanding these disturbances and the disasters 424 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. that had forced many of the railroad companies into bankruptcy, artificially stimulated railroad building continued, portending evils that soon became realities. Besides, great mishaps ensued from the almost unrestrained power of the railroads in the matter of their charges. By charging some shippers more and others less, by means of secret contracts, the railroad officials opened to themselves a field of unlimited profit. The cost of transportation being such an im- portant factor in the price of commodities, it was easy for the railways to enrich one man and beggar or drive out of business another in the same trade, and this was done according to the personal interests of the man or men who could thus make rates. More than this, it was not at all difficult for the railroad to impoverish one town or city and build up another by discriminating in rates. In the Hepburn com- mittee's investigation of the New York railroads, in 1879, it was shown that the milling business in certain towns of northern New York had been killed by railroads granting rates which favored Min- neapolis and other western points. The merchants of New York at that time complained that the discriminations of the railroads against the metropolis were driving away its trade to Baltimore and other points. The creation of a railroad commission became a recognized necessity in many of the States, and Congress was asked to establish an Interstate Commission to prevent unjust discriminations. Al- though no action was taken by Congress at the time, the question re- mained an open one, and after many renewed efforts the Interstate Commerce Act was finally approved February 4, 1887. A bill to enable national banking associations to extend their cor- porate existence was passed in 1882. " The civil service," President Garfield said, in his Inaugural Ad- dress, " can never be placed on a satisfactory basis until it is regu- lated by law. For the good of the service itself, for the protection of those who are intrusted with the appointing power against the waste of time and obstruction to the public business caused by the in- ordinate pressure for place, and for the protection of incumbents against intrigue and wrong, I shall at the proper time, ask Congress to fix the tenure of the minor offices of the several Executive Depart- ments, and prescribe the grounds upon which removals shall be made during the terms for which incumbents have been appointed." Presi- dent Arthur, in his first annual message, discussed the question at length; but the Pendleton Civil-service Act was not passed until early in 1883. This measure was supported by Republicans and Demo- crats, but the opposition was made up almost entirely of Democrats, only seven Republicans voting against the bill in the House. The law established the Civil Service Commission, authorized competitive examinations, and provided for appointments and promotions in the PRESIDENT ARTHUR'S ADMINISTRATION. 425 government service. The measure was enlarged by provisions pro- hibiting United States officials from paying to or collecting from each other money for political purposes. If President Garfleld had lived it would not have been possible to secure a more satisfactory reform of the Civil Service. The one measure in the 47th Congress on which party lines were strictly drawn was the revision of the tariff. The Tariff of 1883 marked the beginning of a new crusade against Protection, while not boldly advocating Free Trade. The M on-ill Tariff of 1861 had re- mained practically undisturbed for more than twenty years. Dur- ing half of that period it was regarded merely as a tariff for revenue, notwithstanding its Protective features. There had been modifica- tions and reductions, but no change that attracted the attention of the country, or precipitated a political conflict. As the Republican platform of 1880 contained a distinctive protective plank, and Gen- eral Hancock had been beaten on the issue of a " tariff for revenue only," the majority in the House of Representatives considered them- selves pledged to a broad application of the principle of Protection. The Senate was looking to revision with a view to reduction. The first step was the creation of the Tariff Commission of 1882. The Commission comprised John L. Hayes, of Massachusetts, Chairman; Henry W. Oliver, Jr., of Pennylvania; Austin M. Garland, of Illinois; Jacob A. Ambler, of Ohio; Robert P. Porter, of the District of Colum- bia; Jno. W. H. Underwood, of Georgia; Duncan F. Kenner, of Louis- iana; Alexander R. Boteler, of West Virginia, and Wm. H. McMahon, of New York. It was, or was intended to be, a non-partisan Commis- sion, charged with the difficult task of correcting the incongruities of the existing tariff, and adapting the rates of duty to the newer and more diversified industries that were claiming the attention of Con- gress. The Commission worked laboriously between May and De- cember, 1882, sitting in various places, and hearing every interest that sought relief or encouragement. The report contemplated a reduc- tion of duties of at least 25 per cent, along the entire line of imports, and formed the basis of the Tariff bill of 1883, although Congress did not adopt all the recommendations of the Commission. At the time the report was made a House bill to reduce Internal Revenue taxation was pending in the Senate. This the Senate amended so freely that little or nothing of the original measure was left, and a tax bill was adroitly turned into a Tariff bill. The House was disposed to resent the Senate bill as an invasion of the Consti- tutional right of the House of Representatives to originate revenue bills, but the w T hole question was finally referred to a Committee of Conference, which agreed upon a bill that was passed by both Houses. This was the Tariff Act of 1883. It was a compromise, 426 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. forced upon the House by the reactionary tendencies of the Senate. Like most compromises it not only failed to give satisfaction, but re- opened an agitation that had lain dormant for nearly a quarter of a century. The demand of the manufacturers for reduced duties on raw materials and an increased free list had not been met. The pro- ducing classes, on the other hand, believed that their interests had been sacrificed to the demands of the manufacturers. The Tariff had once more become an issue on which the people had no settled convic- tions. The indorsement of a protective policy in 1880 had been re- versed by the " tidal wave " of 1882, and the 48th Congress contained 201 Democrats to 119 Republicans in the House, with 4 Independents and 1 Greenbacker, but this condition was neutralized by the fact that there were 40 Republicans in the Senate to 36 Democrats. A determined effort was made in the House in the 48th Congress to pass what was known as the Morrison Tariff bill, which provided for the horizontal reduction of duties to the amount of twenty per cent. This bill was reported March 11, 1884, but it encountered powerful Democratic opposition from the outset. Thirty-nine Democrats voted with the Republicans against agreeing to its consideration, and thir- ty-seven Democrats voted in favor of striking out its enacting clause, while six Democrats refrained from voting. The latter motion was carried by 158 yeas to 155 nays. This disposed of the question for the time, and there was no further attempt at Tariff legislation until 1886, when the Morrison bill was again beaten. A Treasury State- ment, issued in 1884, shows the average ad valorem rates for the six months ending December 31, 1882, as compared with the average ad valorem rates for the six months ended December 31, 1883: ARTICLES. AVERAGE AD VALOREM RATE DURING THE SIX MONTHS ENDING DECEMBER 31 . INCREASE* DECREASR- 1882. 1883, CORRECTED RATES. All dutiable merchandise . 42.34 52.17 39.12 55.46 50.19 27.97 66.71 37.61 58.69 42.88 54.49 71.22 44.43 36.71 42.85 32.97 45.58 38.92 21.78 62.19 39.53 49-87 55.99 55.58 89.50 43.84 -5.63 -9.32 -6.15 -9.88 -11.27 -6.01 -4.52 *1.92 -8.82 *13.11 *1.09 *18.28 -0.59 Sugar and melada ... . . Iron and steel and manufactures thereof Wool : Clothing wool Combing wool ... Carpet wool Manufactures of wool Manufactures of cotton , . Manufactures of silk . . Earthen and china ware Glass and glassware Spirits and wines '..... Malt liquors It appears, therefore, as nearly as can now be ascertained, that the Act of March 3, 1883, of itself and aside from the influence of other PRESIDENT ARTHUR'S ADMINISTRATION. 427 conditions caused the following changes in ad valorem rates: On all dutiable merchandise, a fall of 5.63; on sugar and melada, a fall of 9.32; on iron and steel and manufactures thereof, a fall of 6.15; on clothing wool, a fall of 9.88; on combing wool, a fall of 11.27; on carpet wool, a fall of 6.01; on manufactures of wool, a fall of 4.52; on manufac- tures of cotton, an increase of 1.92; on manufactures of silk, a fall of 8.82; on earthen and china ware, an increase of 13.11; on glass and glassware, a rise of 1.09; on spirits and wines, an increase of 18.28; and on malt liquors, a fall of 0.59. All these rates are on the market value of the goods in the countries from which they are exported. In the 48th Congress the changes in the Senate were not great. The new Republican Senators were Thomas M. Bo wen, of Colorado; Shel- by M. Cullom, of Illinois; James F. Wilson, of Iowa; Thomas W. Pal- mer, of Michigan; Dwight M. Sabin, of Minnesota; Charles F. Mander- son, of Nebraska; Austin F. Pike, of New Hampshire; Joseph N. Dolph, of Oregon; Jonathan Chace, of Rhode Island; and Harrison H. Riddleberger, of Virginia. The Republican gains were Mr. Dolph, who succeeded Lafayette Grover, and Mr. Riddleberger, who displaced John W. Johnston. In the House the new Republicans were Ransom W. Dunham, John F. Finerty, Reuben Ellwood, Robert R. Hitt, and Jonathan R. Rowell, of Illinois; David B. Henderson, Hiram Y. Smith, Adoniram J. Holmes, and Isaac S. Struble, of Iowa; Edmund N. Mor- rell, Lewis Hanbuck, Samuel R. Peters, Bishop W. Perkins, and Ed- ward H. Funston, of Kansas; William W. Culbertson, of Kentucky; William P. Kellogg, of Louisiana; Charles A. Boutelle and Seth L. Milliken, of Maine; Hart B. Holton, and Louis E. McComas, of Mary- land; Robert T. Davis, John D. Long, William Whiting, and Francis S. Rockwell, of Massachusetts; Byron M. Cutcheon, Herschel H. Hatch, and Edward Breitung, of Michigan; Milo White, James B. Waken 1 eld, and Knute Nelson, of Minnesota; Elza Jeffords, of Missis- sippi; Archibald J. Weaver and James Laird, of Nebraska; Martin A. Haynes, of New Hampshire; John Kean, Jr., and Benjamin F. Howey, of New Jersey; Darwin R. James, Henry G. Burleigh, Fred- erick A. Johnson, George W. Ray, Newton W. Nutting, Sereno E. Payne, and Stephen C. Millard, of New York; James E. O'Hara, of North Carolina; John W. McCormick, Alphonso Hart, and Joseph D. Taylor, of Ohio; James B. Everhart, I. Newton Evans, William W. Brown, Louis E. Atkinson, and Samuel M. Brainerd, of Pennsyl- vania; Nathan F. Dixon, of Rhode Island; Robert Smalls, of South Carolina; John W. Stewart, of Vermont; John S. Wise, Harry Libbey, Benjamin S. Hooper, and Henry Bowen, of Virginia; Nathan Goff, of West Virginia, and William T. Price, and Isaac Stephenson, of Wis- consin. Leonidas C. Houk, of Tennessee, was again returned, as was also the venerable Luke P. Poland, of Vermont. The most conspicu- 428 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. ous of those who had disappeared was William McKinley, Jr., of Ohio. John G. Carlisle, of Kentucky, was elected (Speaker, his election being- intended as a rebuke of the wing of the Democracy in the 47th Con- gress that had followed the lead of Samuel J. Randall on the Tariff question. The legislation of the 48th Congress was unimportant, partly be- cause the Republican Senate held the Democratic House in check, and partly because the Democrats were unable to agree on a policy. When the Congress met in December, 1883, both parties had the ap- proaching Presidential election in view. The new Tariff had not given satisfaction, and it was clear that Tariff revision would force itself upon the country as an issue in the campaign. The Repub- lican party, true to its traditions, \vas willing to accept the issue in all its bearings, including the Protective feature. The Democrats talked of revision, but were unable to formulate any scheme except the plan of reduction enunciated in the Morrison bill. That was an expedient intended to be without practical effect, and to be used only as a basis for discussion. The Democratic politicians had ceased to be economic statesmen, and were only holding themselves in readi- ness to oppose whatever the Republicans proposed. It was an epoch of discussion, not of action, and it is scarcely surprising that the 48th Congress was more barren in legislation than any of its predecessors. In the beginning of 1884 parties were adrift as well as Congress. The feuds of 1881-82 had left the Republican party in a condition of incertitude. There was no concentration in favor of any particular candidate as in previous Presidential years. It was not even know r n whether Mr. Elaine desired the nomination. Democratic action was also in doubt, but there was a growing sentiment in favor of Govern- or Cleveland, of New York. For the first time in the history of American politics the interest in the two great National Conventions was lukewarm, and parties were waiting for the canvass to shape the issues instead of the issues shaping the canvass. There was no real appreciation of the vitality of the Tariff question. Since his with- drawal from President Arthur's Cabinet, three months after Gar- field's death, Mr. Blaine had been living in retirement, engaged on his " Twenty Years of Congress; from Lincoln to Garfield." Although that work contains an elaborate review of American Tariff legisla- tion previous to 1860, it dismisses the operations of the Merrill Tariff and its changes with a few paragraphs. Other political writers of the epoch are equally indifferent to the subject. It was, however, to become the real question of the future, and the one upon which the fate of candidates and parties hinged in this Epoch of Defeat and Recoverv. III. THE CAMPAIGN OF 1884. General Benjamin F. Butler the First Candidate Nominated In Fa- vor of Greenbacks and Against Monopoly Butler's Arraignment of the Old Parties Potency of Populistic Theories Arthur and Blaine as Presidential Candidates The Republican National Convention A Great Threshing Machine Claims of the Arthur and Blaine Delegates Opening of the Convention Contest for Temporary Chairman Graphic Description of the Scene- Causes of the Contest General Henderson Permanent President Changes in the Rules The Platform The Nominating Speeches Judge West's Speech Arthur Named The Ballots Blaine Nominated How Maine Received the News Gen- eral Logan for Vice-President Cleveland and Hendricks Nomin- ated by the Democrats " Tell the Truth " The Campaign Causes of Elaine's Defeat. HE National Conventions of 1884 show the interest that was felt in the economic questions that had been so long held in abeyance. The first of these was the Convention of the Anti-Monopoly party. This was a new party that had sprung into existence like a mushroom overnight. The Convention met at Chicago on May 14, and nominated General Benjamin F. Butler for President by 122 votes, to 7 for Allen G. Thurman, of Ohio, and 1 for Solon Chase, of Maine. The nomination of a candidate for Vice- President was left to the National Committee, which adopted the can- didate of the National, or Greenback party, General Alanson M. West, of Mississippi. The Greenback National Convention was held at In- dianapolis on May 28, and before nominating General West for Vice- President, it nominated General Butler for President. Butler re- ceived 322 votes, to 99 for Jesse Harper, of Illinois; 2 for Solon Chase, of Maine; 1 for Edward P. Allis, of Wisconsin, and 1 for David Davis, of Illinois. Thus it will be seen that General Butler received two nominations before either of the two great National Conventions met. The Anti-Monopoly party denounced the existing tariff as largely in the interest of monopoly, and demanded that it be speedily and radically reformed in the interest of labor instead of capital. Ac- cording to the platform of the Greenback party, both the old parties in Congress were vying with each other to repeal taxes for the bene- 430 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY, fit of the banks, but as they could not agree upon which taxes to repeal, were squandering the revenue instead of paying the national debt with paper. Butler accepted both nominations, and issued an address " to my constituents," which served as a letter of acceptance. It was a very long document. In this address he vigorously arraigned the old parties, both of which he had served by turns. " The country," he said, " has had no experience for nearly a quarter of a century of what the Democracy would do if they had the power, so that the people are obliged to require the most explicit pledges from them of intended action before we can put the government in their hands. But the farmer and the laboring man do know that a Democratic House of Representatives has just appropriated more money raised by taxation than any other House of Representatives has ever appropriated in time of peace. We also know that the Demo- cratic majority would have made a free-trade tariff, containing all the odious features of the present war tariff, so far as regards its monstrous inequalities, by a horizontal reduction of the tariff to break down very many rising and struggling industries, and to bring destruc- tion to the homes of our workingmen and the home markets of the American producers. Who does not know that the very fear of the action of the Democracy in Congress has so paralyzed American en- terprise and business that mills are everywhere closing, mines shut up, furnaces blown out, and every kind of employment so curtailed thatthemechanicsand workingmen are not earning enough to support life in comfort; so that the farmer even, deprived of a home market, and crushed down by discriminating rates of transportation, finds his corn, wheat, and wool lower than it has been within the present gen- eration? Can the people, therefore, trust the machine Democracy with power, upon a shifting, evasive, and deceptive platform? " He then turned his attention to the Republicans. " The Republican party in its inception," he declared, " was emphat- ically the party of the people. It had in it substantially neither mo- nopolist nor capitalist. It was as poor as was the convention of dele- gates who framed the Declaration of Independence. Taking out five men, the rest could hardly pay their board bills. The Republican party was formed upon a grand and noble idea to do for one class of workingmen what the Democratic party, even under Jefferson and Jackson, had failed to do. Their Democracy had dealt only with the white man. The Democracy of the Republican party dealt with the black man, and aimed to give him freedom and equal rights. For that purpose, and that alone, was the party formed. It was the radical party, and so radical a party of the people that the aristocratic part of the Whig party, the old adversaries of the Democracy of the days THE CAMPAIGN OF 1884. 431 of Jackson, merged themselves in the Democracy without a drop of Democratic blood, as they hoped, in their veins, or a thought for the people, except as the lowest classes in their party, and such of them as a quarter of a century has spared are found with the Democracy to-day, largely guiding its councils in the manner we have seen. The necessity for money to carry on the war drew all the bankers and cap- italists into the Republican party. The immense fortunes almost necessarily growing out of the vast expenditures of the war fell into the hands of men who attached themselves to the party that fed them, as the iron is attracted to the magnet, and monopolized industries and enterprises. The necessity to bind together the eastern and western shores of the Republic by methods of quick transportation, giving reason for immense subsidies, granted to make three systems of railroad across the continent, with all their branches and feeders, created wealth in corporations and individuals to a degree before unheard of in this or any other country, and brought all those inter- ests substantially into the Republican party. And if any stayed in the Democratic party they were in confederation with the same class, to so arrange politics that whichever party came in power, capital, in all its varied and powerful forms, would be sure of control, and the people ground up as ' between the upper and nether millstone.' Thus it will be readily seen, and he who runs may read, that the Repub- lican party is the party of monopoly, of corporate interests in every form of industry, and every department of business and finance. . . In the matter of finance there is nothing to hope from the Republican party any more than from the Democratic party. The bankers and capitalists of both parties uniting together have controlled for twenty years the financial legislation of the nation. And the result? What have we just seen? With money enough in the country for all its wants, and no substantial drain from abroad; with an accumulation of wealth such as the world has never seen; with a crop of corn and wheat almost untouched, and another one about to be garnered; with a stock of petroleum already produced sufficient for the consumption of the world for a year; with nearly a year's stock already produced of cotton goods; with more than six months' stock of woolen goods as they will average; with a production of iron that leaves its further production impossible; with provisions in such abundance that the means of sustaining life are cheaper than before for fifty years; yet, because of our financial systems in every class of business, embarrass- ments and failures to an unheard of extent, with banks locking up their money in millions upon millions, and allowing their customers, who, by our financial system have been made dependent upon them, to be ruined; the producing laborer goes about the streets unem- 432 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. ployed, and the farmer's wheat, which with our fathers was a meas- ure of value, is a drug in the market, and that which he raises to-day, produced by the sweat of his face, is without profit to his industry." Although General Butler's candidature had no greater political im- portance than the candidature of Peter Cooper eight years before, the platform on which he stood and the principles that he advocated were significant of the unrest in the two great parties of the country. In spite of the opposition of the Kepublican factions that claimed to have inherited the policy of Garfield's administration the " Half-breeds " in New York and the " Independents " in Pennsylvania, especially President Arthur had given satisfaction to the party and the country. It was not surprising, therefore, that he should look forward to a nomination from the Kepublican National Convention. It was sur- prising, however, that a " business meeting " in New York in his in- terest should be used to his injury by the friends of General Logan and Mr. Elaine, on the charge that there was " a flavor of Wall Street " about it. This cry is a proof that the populistic principles of General Butler's address could be used with effect in the Kepub- lican party in the manipulation of a great National Convention in 1884. The time fixed for the meeting of the Republican National Conven- tion was June 3, but the friends of the candidates began to gather in Chicago as early as May 30. It was claimed at the outset that Blaine was the choice of the Republican States, while Arthur's strength was almost wholly in Democratic States; that Blaine would be as strong in New York as Arthur, while Arthur might not be able to carry Pennsylvania. The key of the situation on Saturday and Sun- day preceding the Convention was the support of the Southern dele- gations. If the South could be kept solid for Arthur it was believed by the President's managers that his nomination was assured. In view of this condition the first efforts of Elaine's friends were directed toward breaking the Southern delegations. The first defection was in the Arkansas delegation under the lead of Powell Clayton. This hap- pened before the majority of the Northern delegates had arrived. It was followed by the demoralization of the Southern delegates, and later by the disintegration of the delegations. The confidence and en- thusiasm of Mr. Elaine's supporters became irresistible, but Arthur's friends until the last refused to confess themselves beaten. " It's all right," cheerfully remarked Collector Gould, of Buffalo, who was looking after things; " Arthur will be nominated just the same, and I would advise you to say so. Henry Clay had the hurrah, too, but the other fellow had the votes, and that's us." One of the newspaper correspondents described each of the Chi- THE CAMPAIGN OF 1884. 433 cago headquarters on the day preceding the Convention as a great threshing-machine, in which 820 delegates were being threshed out and winnowed into the hoppers marked Blaine, Arthur, Logan, and the rest. The biggest of these threshers filled a whole corridor of the Grand Pacific, and on each side of the Blaine thresher stood " those mighty delegate hunters, Steve Elkins and Tom Donaldson." In at- tendance upon this machine were the " slow-footed Warner Miller," the " bobbing Tom Cooper," the " bald-headed Tom Platt," the " sober, benignant Robertson," and the " expansive Boutelle." There, too, was a free-spoken Californian, who met the mild plea of an Indepen- dent that the business interests feared Blaine with the response, " Why, bless your soul, we have three men in our delegation who pay more taxes than Curtis and his literary crowd ever sneezed at." At the Arthur thresher were James Warren, of Buffalo, " a large, comfortable, and thin-whiskered man "; Frank Hatton, " alert, mus- tached, and bumptious "; the " wiry Burleigh," the " heavy, grouty " General George H. Sharpe, and Mahone, with his " long hair, short, limp cuffs, and rumpled shirtfront." The other threshers were neither so picturesque nor so constantly at work. From first to last it was ap- parent that the contest was between Blaine and Arthur, and the Blaine men were especially expansive in their proclamations of the strength of their candidate. " Blaine," said twenty of the New York delegates in a " message " to the Convention, " can get more votes in the State of New York than any other man, and can carry the State triumphantly. An analysis of the Republican representation in the National Convention, on the basis of the Presidential vote of 1880, shows that from President Arthur's own State a decided ma- jority of the delegates to the Convention are opposed to his nomina- tion; that the overwhelming preponderance of the delegates from the districts giving Republican majorities is for Blaine; that twelve Republican districts and four Democratic districts are for Blaine; that five other districts sent Edmunds, or anti-Arthur delegates, while but five Republican districts sent delegates for Arthur, the large ma- jority of his support coming from ten Democratic districts; that in the Blaine districts there is an aggregate of 63,773 Republican majorities, against 17,456 Republican majorities in the Arthur districts. These facts and figures are conclusive, that in New York, as in other States, where the electoral votes may be given to a Republican candidate for President, the direct Republican expression is in favor of James G. Elaine's nomination; indeed, that he is the accepted leader of the Republican party to a sure victory." If this had been true, James G. Rlaine, not Grover Cleveland, would have been President Arthur's successor. 434 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. As the noon hour approached on the first day of the Convention great crowds flowed toward the Exposition Building, to enter which only ticket-holders had the " open sesame." There a vast multitude witnessed the assembling of the delegates, and awaited the opening of the great quadrennial Council of the Republican party. " At last," wrote one of the historians of the scene, with a pro- fusion of single and double-breasted adjectives that only quotation marks can justify, " Chairman Sabin, with his broad, sallow face and curving mustache, stepped forward and put his hand on the starting bar, picking up a little mallet, sadly out of place in a situation which needed a beetle to deal a controlling blow. A slim clergyman, with a white hand and a small mustache, made an eloquent prayer, which drew subdued applause from people who mistook the peroration not unnaturally for a speech, and the big, broad-shouldered Kansas Mar- tin, who acts as Secretary of the National Committee, read an in- audible call. A little stir, a sort of dressing of ranks, and Sabin's speech ended with the nomination for temporary chairman of Powell Clayton, a tall, sallow, round-headed, crop-haired Arkansan, with an empty sleeve and the expression of a Southwesterner. Lodge, of Massachusetts, a crisp-haired, brown-bearded young fellow, climbs a chair in the Massachusetts delegation and puts up John R. Lynch. One great yell goes up the shrill cry of Southern delegates as a dozen negroes jumped in their seats, camp-meeting fashion. A sturdy, stocky, side-whiskered, drover-like looking man, Butcher, of New York, seconds the nomination, meeting the Edmunds move half-way with an Arthur welcome. Gravity follows in every Elaine .State, while the Arthur States bubble and boil over into the aisle. Frank Hatton, slim and earnest, watches the battle on one side, and Sharpe, with his bulldog face, fairly looks pleasant. Chris Magee, a tall, fine- looking man, seeks a side aisle, while his alternate slips into his seat, and Tom Cooper looks anxiously from a high stage seat. Speech- making begins; George William Curtis on one side, suave, courtly, with a voice of wonderfully sympathetic quality, and a face all soft serenity, speaks, his voice rising and falling from one trembling ca- dence to another; and Stewart on the other side, with a sharp, strident voice, and clear, dark face, and features with a straight, strong pro- file, puts the Elaine side in a great stir and swing and rustle. There are other speeches. Carr, of Illinois, a big, round fellow, with a crackling, explosive voice, rides the buzz triumphantly. Roosevelt's boyish effort is drowned in it. Hoar, a big, broad-chested swimmer in this sea of manifold sound, breasts its current for a few moments, and, after a running wrangle over the method of voting, the slow roll is called. It takes two hours. Man after man, leaning against the THE CAMPAIGN OF 1884. 435 reading desk and shouting his share of 820 names into space, wearies of the work. By relays it goes on. A name is called; up rises a dis- tant man, and shouts the syllabic reply, Powell Clayton, or John K. Lynch. The tally goes on. The cheering is short and small. The interest lies below the names. Illinois starts off for Clayton, and then the votes change to Lynch. A shout goes up. Connecticut shrewdly divides. McKinley leads off in Ohio, with a big purple badge on his breast. New Jersey runs by commentless, but in New York every vote is watched until the full Elaine strength is registered of twenty- nine. In Pennsylvania McManes leads off for Lynch. Grow raises his gray head to vote, and Stewart steps forward with hat and note- book tally in his hand, as the roll runs through Republican districts which vote for Clayton. Once there is a cheer over Tom Platt, and when Virginia is reached and a thin, weazened, long-haired figure, Mahone, rises, the cheering rises and falls like the pulse of a storm. The vote is known before it is announced, and a tall Mississippian jumps on a chair and waves the square yard of blue silk on which the State is marked. Yell, cheer, and shout, hand-clapping and stamping, and at last John R. Lynch, a mulatto of the agile, facile type of ability in many directions, takes the gavel of a National Convention in his hand. The rest is routine, and after, an empty stump-speech, the great barrel of a hall empties, and surmises and speculation over the vote of 431 for Lynch and 387 for Clayton spread over the town." The revolt against the selection of General Clayton a$ temporary chairman by the National Committee, and the choice of John R. Lynch in his stead, can not be attributed to any political necessity or interest. The movement was apparently a spontaneous one, but it resulted from a motive that was purely sentimental the demand of the colored Republicans of the South for recognition in the organiza- tion of the Convention. In view of his desertion from President Ar- thur, Clayton's selection was not regarded by Arthur's friends with enthusiasm, but the Edmunds men were more openly and unequivo- cally hostile to the choice of the National Committee than the Arthur leaders. Once started, the movement to displace General Clayton ac- quired force rapidly, and the friends of Mr. Blaine were not only pow- erless to stop it, but even to appear to wish to stop it. It was an un- gracious thing to do, especially in the case of a Union soldier with an empty sleeve, but General Clayton made the best of the situation, moving that the election of Mr. Lynch should be made unanimous, and, with Henry Cabot Lodge, of Massachusetts, who had moved the substitution, escorting the black presiding officer to the chair. Mr. Lynch himself was not entirely pleased with the unexpected honors thus thrust upon him. He neither expected not desired the position, 436 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. and in his opening address made it clear that he was not thankful for it. Soon after the temporary organization was effected a resolu- tion pledging the delegates to the support of the nominee was offered by Mr. Hawkins, of Tennessee. It was identical with the resolution proposed by Mr. Colliding in 1880, and met a like fate after arousing some bitterness of feeling it was withdrawn. The report of the Committee on Organization, recommending Gen- eral John B. Henderson, of Missouri, for permanent President of the Convention, was made by B. M. Williams, of Indiana, and was adopted without objection. In his address General Henderson alluded to the candidates for the Presidency, beginning with Arthur and ending with Elaine. " New York," he said, " has her true and tried states- man, upon whose administration the fierce, and even unfriendly light of public scrutiny has been turned, and the universal verdict is, ' Well done, thou good and faithful servant.' Vermont has her great states- man, whose mind is as clear as the crystal springs of his native State, and whose virtue is as firm as its granite hills. Ohio can come with a name whose history is the history of the Republican party itself. Illinois can come with one who never failed in the discharge of public duty, whether in council chamber or on field of battle. Maine has her honored favorite, whose splendid abilities and personal qualities have endeared him to the hearts of his friends, and the brilliancy of whose genius challenges the respect and admiration of all. Connecticut and Indiana may come with names scarcely less illustrious than these." It was not until the morning of the third day of the Convention that the Committees on Credentials, Rules, and Resolutions made their re- ports. There was a number of contested seats, but none of them in- volved any serious question of principle or policy, and all the contests were settled in accordance with the report of the Committee on Cre- dentials. The report of the Committee on Rules was not so easily disposed of. Rule 10, which provided for a Republican National Committee, and for the election of delegates to the Republican Na- tional Convention of 1888, gave rise to some debate because of an amendment offered by Mr. Grow, of Pennsylvania. This amendment provided for the election of delegates from the Congress districts in each State and Territory in the same manner as the nomination of members of, or delegates to Congress was made. It was adopted, and the Convention proceeded with the settlement of the order of business which had not been provided for by the Committee; but somehow Rule 10 would not stay adopted. Mr. Sanders, of Mon- tana, moved the adoption of a proviso declaring that no person should be a member of the National Committee who was not eligible as a THE CAMPAIGN OF 1884. 437 member of the Electoral College. This was aimed at Federal office- holders. Its necessity was explained by Mr. Hoar, of Massachusetts. " The gentleman from Montana asked me," he said, " to explain, for the information of the Convention, the law passed by Congress a year ago, commonly known as the Civil-service Act. It was not the purpose of that law to prohibit any Federal officer from exercising all the rights of an American citizen. It is expected that he may con- tribute of his service or of his money to the cause of the political party to which he belongs as he would to the cause of his church, or to any other religious or humane enterprise. That law intended to prohibit the exercise of official power over men in official stations, and to that end the provision, the most stringent of provisions, has been enacted that no person holding an official position shall directly or indirectly receive or solicit a contribution of money from any person holding such office. Now, as to the Federal officer, or a member of the Na- tional Committee, it will equally be an offense, and it will subject him to imprisonment or fine if that committee, either by itself, or by its treasurer, shall receive a contribution or contributions of money from any other Federal officer by placing upon the National Commit- tee gentlemen holding such offices, and prohibiting your fellow-citi- zens from furnishing any service or aid in this campaign by the con- tribution of money; and I believe it was the purpose of the gentleman from Montana to have that clearly understood by the Convention in calling upon me to say what I have. No person holding a Federal office under the Constitution of the United States can be a member of the Electoral College." After this explicit explanation the pro- viso was adopted and made a part of Eule 10. The Convention, however, continued to discuss the method of rep- resentation in National Conventions as regarded delegates-at-large, the claim being made that it was unequal. It was proposed, in addi- tion to four delegates-at-large, to give each State a delegate-at-large for each Representative-at-large, if any, elected at the last preceding Presidential election. This was advocated as a measure of equality, but it was opposed by the delegates from the South as productive of inequality. " Such a proposition," said Mr. Bradley, of Kentucky, " coming from the Democratic party, might come with some force, but from the great Republican party, which professes love and equality for all the States, I must admit my astonishment. It is well known to this Convention that in the South to-day votes are stifled by frauds and force, and yet you are asked to take this basis which has been laid down by Democratic fraud and force, and make it the basis of Republican representation." Nothing came of this attempt to re- strict Southern representation, for after the discussion the motion to 438 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. adopt the minority report, which was the occasion of it, was with- drawn, and that was the end of the matter. Then the Platform was reported from the Committee on Resolutions and adopted without dis- sent. " Very strong and very Blainey," was one of the comments with which the Platform was received. It was what in those days was called a " new departure," in form if not in substance. It took ground in favor of Protection, and pledged the party to correct the inequalities of the Tariff; it favored a readjustment of the duties on foreign wool; it recommended an effort to unite all commercial nations in the estab- lishment of an international standard to fix for all the relative value of gold and silver coinage; it asserted the necessity of legislation to prevent unjust discrimination and excessive charges for transpor- tation; and pronounced in favor of a bureau of labor; the enforcement of the eight-hour law; appropriations from the national revenues for general education wherever needed; extension of the system of civil- service reform, and the settlement of international questions by arbi- tration. It demanded the restoration of the navy to the old-time strength and efficiency, and aimed a blow at polygamy and the politi- cal power of the so-called Mormon church. The Union was described as a nation, not a mere confederacy of States; and the fraud and violence practiced by the Democratic party in the South were sternly denounced. It was a Platform remarkable for length, breadth, and thickness, but, while it touched on many questions, it was not very clear or explicit on any of the issues that were beginning to force themselves upon the country. After the adoption of the Platform the Convention adjourned until evening, when the nominating speeches were made. The first candi- date named was General Joseph R. Hawley, of Connecticut, the nom- inating speech being made by Augustus Brandagee. Senator Cullom nominated General John A. Logan. When Maine was reached in the call of the States there was a clear, loud, wild burst of applause that seemed to come from every throat in the great building. In an in- stant delegates and spectators were on their feet. Staid old politi- cians on the platform, venerable Senators and Representatives long tried in Congress; new delegates, who were never before in a Na- tional Convention, were drawn into the whirlpool of excitement as straws are sucked into the eddies of a river. Every delegate, save a bare patch here and there on the floor, where the friends of Arthur and of Edmunds sat, mounted his chair and took part in the demon- stration. Men put their hats on the tops of canes and waved them high over their heads. Women tore their bright fichus and laces from around their snowy necks, and leaning far forward over the galleries, THE CAMPAIGN OF 1884. 439 frantically swung them to and fro to give emphasis to their shrill screams of joy. Mr. Henderson vainly pounded his gavel for order. Its dull beats upon the hollow desk were no more audible to the wild crowd in the hall than were the strains of the band in the rear to the cheering spectators on the platform. The applause echoed blocks away along the streets leading to the Exposition Building, and the engineers of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, in the rear of the hall, added to the din by loud shrieks from the whistles of their engines. At last, exhausted, the tumult ceased, not on the instant, but by de- grees, fitful cheers being given long after Judge West reached the platform and was escorted to his seat. The man selected to present Elaine's name to the Convention was blind. He was helped to the platform by two sturdy young men, who carefully guarded his progress up the steep steps and along the tor- tuous aisles to the seat provided for him on the left of the presiding officer's chair. His silver gray hair was smoothly brushed away from a noble forehead. Time had implanted deep wrinkles and furrows around the sharp features of an intelligent face. Dressed plainly in black, wearing no ornament save a blue Blaine badge on the lapel of his coat, and a small watchchain, the old man leaned back in his armchair, and faced the surging mob as, fhough blind, he felt him- self its master. For the last time the applause rolled through the hall and ended in a wild roar as the Ohio orator rose to his feet and, lifting his right hand above his head, by gesture compelled silence. Ten minutes of uproar and storm were followed by a stillness in which a w r hisper could be heard as the first clear, distinct, sharp tones of the speaker rolled through the building. The clean-cut sentences, brilliant delivery, and confident manner of the speaker captivated the crowd. They were in sympathy with him from the start, and he re- tained his grasp upon their feelings to the finish. After Judge West had put Mr. Blaine in nomination other speeches in support of it fol- lowed, Cassius M. Goodloe speaking for the South, Thomas C. Platt for New York, and Galusha A. Grow for Pennsylvania. Arthur's welcome followed hard upon the enthusiasm for Blaine. When New York was called it was like match to powder, like the re- flection of light from a turning mirror. Up went half of the New York delegation with a shout; up went the Southern States by squads and platoons; up went the corporal's guard in Pennsylvania. The nominating address was made by Martin I. Townsend, of New York, but the speech of the evening for President Arthur was made by Con- gressman Bingham. The audience, the occasion, the enthusiasm with which the air was tingling, and which at every sentence kindled into cheers, all invited him to give his best in voice and speech and man- 440 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. ner. Three Southern speeches followed: Winston, of North Caro- lina, florid and loud; Lynch, of Mississippi, plain and direct; Pinch- back, of Louisiana, adroit and clear. It only remained to put two more candidates in nomination John Sherman, of Ohio, and Senator Edmunds, of Vermont. The principal speech for Sherman was made by Judge Foraker, and Edmunds was nominated by ex-Governor Long, of Massachusetts, the nomination being seconded by George William Curtis. All that was to follow was to put the strength of the candidates to the test of a vote, and to give the successful competitor a running mate, but this must be the work of another day. Altogether there were four ballots on June 6, as follows: FIRST SECOND THIRD FOURTH James G. Blaine, Maine.. 334^ 349 375 541 278 276 274 207 George F Edmunds, Vermont 93 85 69 41 John A. Logan, Illinois 63> 61 53 7 John Sherman, Ohio 30 28 25 Joseph R. Hawley, Connecticut. . * 13 13 13 15 Robert T. Lincoln, Illinois 4 4 8 2 William T. Sherman, Missouri 2 2 2 On the first ballot the votes of all the States and Territories were divided, except those of California, Colorado, Iowa, Maine, Nevada, Oregon, West Virginia, Arizona, Dakota, and Washington, which went to Blaine; Georgia, Idaho, New Mexico, and Wyoming, which went to Arthur, and Khode Island and Vermont, which went to Ed- munds. The divided vote from the South was, Alabama: Arthur 17, Blaine 1, Logan 1; Arkansas: Blaine 8, Arthur 4, Edmunds 2; Florida: Arthur 7, Blaine 1; Kentucky: Arthur 16, Blaine 51, Logan 2i, Lincoln 1; Louisiana: Arthur 10, Logan 2, Blaine 3; Mississippi: Arthur 17, Blaine 1; Missouri: Arthur 10, Logan 10, Edmunds 6, Blaine 5; North Carolina: Arthur 19, Blaine 2, Logan 1; South Caro- lina: Arthur 17, Blaine 1; Tennessee: Arthur 16, Blaine 7, Logan 1; Texas: Blaine 13, Arthur 11, Logan 2; and Virginia: Arthur 21, Blaine 2, Logan 1. The divided New England States were, Massachusetts: Edmunds 25, Arthur 2, Blaine 1, and New Hampshire: Edmunds 4, Arthur 4. New York voted: Arthur 31, Blaine 28, Edmunds 12, and Pennsylvania: Blaine 47, Arthur 11, Edmunds 1, Logan 1. General Logan was unable to hold his own State, Illinois, intact, the vote be- ing: Logan 40, Blaine 3, Arthur 1, and Blaine captured 21 of the Ohio THE CAMPAIGN OF 1884. 441 votes, leaving only 25 for John Sherman. In the West and North- west the divided States other than those already mentioned were, Indiana: Elaine 18, Arthur 9, Sherman 2, Edmunds 1; Kansas: Elaine 12, Arthur 4, Logan 1, Hawley 1; Michigan: Elaine 15, Edmunds 7, Arthur 2; Minnesota: Elaine 7, Edmunds 6, Arthur 1; Nebraska: Elaine 10, Arthur 6, Edmunds 6. On the second ballot Elaine's gains were scattered between nine States, and comprised 3 votes from Ar- kansas, 2 each from Louisiana, Maryland, Missouri, and Ohio, and 1 each from Alabama, Kansas, North Carolina, and Wisconsin. On the third ballot Elaine's most significant gains were 5 votes from Mis- souri, 3 each from Michigan and Pennsylvania, and 2 each from Nebraska, New Jersey, Ohio, and Virginia. Arthur had lost two votes on the second, and two more on the third ballot. On the last ballot Elaine received intact the votes of Indiana, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Ohio, and Wisconsin, in addition to the solid votes cast for him on previous ballots. Illinois gave him 34 of Logan's votes, but his gain in Massachusetts was only 2 votes, while Arthur gained 4. From the beginning Elaine's nomination was a foregone conclusion, but Arthur's strength at the finish was a splen- did testimonial to the efficiency and success of his administration. Twice defeated for the nomination, once in 1876 by the opposition of New England, Ohio, and the South, and again in 1880 by the deter- mined movement in behalf of General Grant for a third term, James G. Elaine was at. last the choice of the Republican party for President of the United States. While the balloting was in progress Mr. Elaine was swinging in a hammock under a spreading apple tree at his Au- gusta home. A group of ladies surrounded him. " I did not expect a definite result so soon," he said, when the news of the final ballot was received. A few minutes later the old cannon on the wharf at Hallo- well, said to have been used on the " Boxer " in her fight with the " Enterprise," boomed the first gun for Elaine in the State of Maine after his nomination. Then the church bells in Augusta began to ring, and this was followed by the shrieks of steam whistles from the factories and the steamers on the river. Hallowell and Gardiner, two and six miles away, joined in the noisy demonstration. The lawn of the Elaine mansion was soon filled by a throng of the candidate's ju- bilant townsmen, and in the evening there was a procession and a speech by Mr. Elaine from his own doorway. " My friends and my neighbors." he said, " I thank you most sincerely for the honor of this call. There is no spot in the world where good news comes to me so gratefully as here at my own home, among the people with whom I have been on terms of friendship and intimacy for more than thirty years people whom I know and who know me. Thanking you again for the heartiness of the compliment, I bid you good-night." 442 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. After Mr. Elaine's nomination the Convention adjourned until evening, and it was while the people of Augusta were listening to the brief speech from the doorway that General John A. Logan was nom- inated for Vice-President. An attempt was made to make the nomi- nation by acclamation, but it was abandoned. Recourse was then had to a call of the States, General Logan receiving 779 votes, to 6 for Walter Q. Gresham, of Indiana, and 1 for J. B. Foraker, of Ohio. These seven votes withheld from Logan were all from New York. Lo- gan was popular with the masses, and especially with the veterans of the civil war. He had, however, the reputation of being a chronic growler. " Morton will come to me with two requests," President Grant once said, compar- ing Senator Morton, of Indiana, with General Logan. " If I grant one of them he will go away boasting of his influence with the administration. Logan will co-me with thirteen requests. If I grant twelve of them he will go away swearing his wishes are never complied with." As one of the champions of Grant's nomination in 1880, his candidature added strength to the ticket, but it was a ticket that, for the first time in the his- tory of the Republican party after 1860, was" foredoomed to defeat. The Democratic National Convention met in the Exposition build- ing in Chicago on July 8. The Convention was called to order by William H. Barnum, of Connecticut, the Chairman of the National Committee, and Richard B. Hubbard, of Texas, was made temporary President. As soon as the temporary organization was effected the Tammany members of the New York delegation made an attempt to break down the unit rule, as had been done in the Republican National Convention four years before. Grover Cleveland's course as Gov- ernor was highly displeasing to Tammany, and that powerful organi- zation was bitterly opposed to his nomination. The New York Con- vention, while not instructing the delegation to support Cleveland, di- rected it to vote as a unit. Unless this rule was abrogated Tammanv JOHN A. LOGAN. THE CAMPAIGN OF 1884. 443 would be powerless to resist Ms nomination. The attempt failed. On the second day of the Convention William F. Vilas, of Wiscon- sin, was made its permanent President. Without waiting for the re- port of the Committee on Resolutions, it was determined to proceed with a call of the States for the nomination of candidates for Presi- dent of the United States, and the names of Allen G. Thurman, of Ohio; Thomas F. Bayard, of Delaware; Joseph E. McDonald, of In- diana; John G. Carlisle, of Kentucky; Samuel J. Randall,, of Penn- sylvania, and Grover Cleveland, of New York, were formally pre- sented. The nominating speeches consumed the rest of the day, and the morning session of the third day. At the evening session the Platform was reported, and adopted, after which the first ballot was taken, w r ith the following result: Cleveland, 392; Bayard, 170; Thurman, 88; Randall, 78; McDonald, 56; Carlisle, 27; Flower, 4; Hoadly, 3; Hendricks, 1; Tilden, 1. Necessary to a choice under the two-thirds rule, 547. An adjournment was then ordered by a very close vote. When the Convention again met on Friday morning the. Indiana delegation withdrew the name of Mr. McDonald with the avowed purpose of substituting Thomas A. Hendricks. This was done with the hope of stampeding the Convention for Hendricks, but as the voting proceeded it became apparent that Cleveland's nomina- tion could not be prevented. The result of the second ballot was de- clared as follows: Cleveland, 683; Bayard, 81i; Hendricks, 45^; Thur- man, 4; Randall, 4; McDonald, 4. At the evening session Thomas A. Hendricks was nominated for Vice-President by acclamation. Thus was completed the first successful Democratic ticket since 1856. The campaign that ensued was one of extraordinary bitterness. Mr. Blaine was assailed as a corrupt politician, and Mr. Cleveland was accused of the paternity of an illegitimate child, which it was as- serted he had failed to support. Cleveland met the accusations af- fecting him with the blunt adjuration to his friends, " Tell the truth." This phrase, ooldly enough, became a Democratic battlecry of the canvass, and was regarded as " in striking contrast with the at- titude of his opponent on questions deeply affecting his personal in- tegrity." Its singular effrontery was looked upon by his supporters as a proof of manliness and merit. " There was no whining about his private business," said Harper's Weekly, " no seizing of letters, and after a menacing pressure of public opinion, a theatrical reading of such parts as he chose, and with his own comments; there was no des- perate equivocation and attempted concealment. ' Tell the truth ' was the only reply a reply which showed a man honorably unwilling to receive any public trust under false pretenses." Mr. Elaine's letter of acceptance was a comprehensive and states- 444 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. manlike discussion of public questions and the public interests, but the attention of the voters was diverted from the consideration of questions affecting our foreign and domestic commerce, the tariff and the currency, to the issues suited to a campaign of scandal. Mr. Cleveland made a few speeches, but they attracted little attention, and during the greater part of the campaign he remained quietly at Albany performing his duties as Governor of New York. He made a visit to his former home, Buffalo, where he was received with some show of enthusiasm, and he addressed a " business meeting " in New York City, and spoke at Newark, N. J., and Bridgeport, Conn. Mr. Blaine made a more extended campaign tour and was received by vast outpourings of the people. The difference in the reception of the two men was to Democratic writers a sign of culpability in Blaine, of Roman virtue in Cleveland. " In contrast with his campaign and his personal conduct," says one of Mr. Cleveland's biographers, " was the wild pageantry with which Blaine was conducted over the country, culminating in a series of ovations, dinners, and receptions in New York City. One of these, a select assemblage of millionaires to do honor to the Republican candidate, created a strong feeling that his election was chiefly desired by the plutocrats and monopolists; at an- other a misfit preacher named Burchard dropped an ill-timed remark, aspersing the Democracy as the party of ' Rum, Romanism, and Re- bellion,' and to these two incidents many of Mr. Elaine's admirers lay the accountability for the slender adverse plurality which lost to him New York and the Presidency." The cause of Mr. Elaine's defeat lay deeper than the inapt speech of the " misfit preacher named Burchard," or the dinners attended by a few men who had more money than the average man thinks any man ought to have. The campaign of 1884 was the beginning of a long epoch of discontent, in which eminent public service and a con- spicuous public career were elements of weakness rather than of strength. Mr. Blaine had made many enemies, who rejected him as unworthy of their support because he had been a successful politi- cian. Among those who had been prominent Republicans who turned against him were George William Curtis and the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, of New York; Carl Schurz, Secretary of the Interior under President Hayes; Colonel Charles R. Codman, Colonel Thomas Went- worth Higginson, Henry L. Pierce, and the Rev. James Freeman Clarke, of Massachusetts; ex-Senator Wadleigh, of New Hampshire; and ex-Governors Chamberlain, of South Carolina; Blair, of Michigan, and Pound, of Wisconsin. These and others like them were the original " Mugwumps," exerting a powerful influence against the party they had long served. Their influence alone was sufficient to account for THE CAMPAIGN OF 1884. 445 Mr. Elaine's defeat by the slender adverse plurality that lost him New York and the Presidency. Indiana had followed the example of Pennsylvania, and ceased to be an October State, but in Ohio the October elections for State of- ficers were carried by the Republicans. This was considered a fair promise of Mr. Elaine's election in November, but it was in reality the Prohibition vote in the close States that decided the result. The Prohibitionists had become the Prohibition-Home-Protection party, and nominated John P. St. John, of Kansas, for President, and Will- iam Daniel, of Maryland, for Vice-President. The Platform declared in favor of administrative reform, the abolition of all sinecures and useless offices, and election by the people instead of appointment by the President. This afforded an excuse for many dissatisfied Re- publicans to vote for St. John, and while General Butler's candida- ture was prejudicial to both the old parties, the Prohibition vote was almost wholly Republican. St. John's vote deprived Mr. Elaine of the Electoral votes of Connecticut, New Jersey, and New York, and with Butler's Republican support of Indiana also. The vote of Cleveland and Hendricks in the Electoral College was 219 to 182 for Elaine and Logan. It will thus be seen that the result in New York was decisive, Mr. Cleveland receiving the 36 Electoral votes of the State on a plurality of only 1,149, while falling 40,811 below a majority, St. John's vote being 25,016, and Butler's 16,944. " The managers of the defeated party," says one of Mr. Cleveland's biographers, " in their intense disappointment, vented their rage partly upon the Prohibitionists, and to some degree upon the luck- less speech of Rev. Dr. Burchard; their deepest resentment, however, was exhibited against the so-called * Mugwumps,' for whom no terms of reproach were deemed too violent. The Independent Republicans, who had vainly protested against Elaine's nomination, and had con- tributed to his defeat at the polls, received the abuse now heaped upon them with great complacency, and hopefully looked to the new administration for their vindication." For the first time in nearly a quarter of a century the Republican party was defeated in a Presidential election. For the first time in nearly a quarter of a century a Democratic President had been chosen. It was not so much a Democratic triumph as the victory of Repub- lican discontent over the candidates of the Republican party. The Mugwumps were not slow to claim the achievement as theirs, and they were loud in proclaiming that the victory should be interpreted as the triumph of the better elements of all parties. It was indeed the victory of discontent, and as such defeat was to be followed almost inevitably by reaction and recovery. IV. PRESIDENT CLEVELAND'S ADMINISTRATION. An Inexperienced Executive The Cabinet The Forty-ninth Con- gress President Cleveland's Vetoes Interstate Commerce Commission The White House Wedding An Accomplished " Master of Ceremonies " Fiftieth Congress Tariff Revision- President Cleveland's Tariff Message Effect of the Message The Mills Tariff Bill Protection or Free Trade Becomes the Dominating Issue. ROVER CLEVELAND entered upon the Presidency, March 4, 1885, with less acquaintance with men and affairs than any of his predecessors. James K. Polk had served in Congress and had been Speaker of the House of Represen- tatives. Zachary Taylor had been in the military service, and con- sequently in affiliation with civil administration all his life. Frank- lin Pierce had been both a Representative and a Senator in Congress. Abraham Lincoln was a recognized leader in the great movement that had made him the first Republican President of the United States. But Mr. Cleveland had risen, in the brief period of three years, from the Mayoralty of a small inland city, through the Govern- orship of New York, to the highest office in the gift of the American people. He was entirely without experience in Federal administra- tion. He knew personally almost none of the public men with whom he would be required to deal. Even his Cabinet must be composed of men most of whom he had never met. In the selection of his official advisers the President-elect followed the traditions of his predeces- sors. The State Department was given to his most powerful com- petitor for the nomination at Chicago Thomas F. Bayard, of Dela- ware. At the head of the Treasury he placed Daniel Manning, the editor of the Argus at Albany, his chief political sponsor. Another New Yorker, then not widely known, William C. Whitney, was made Secretary of the Navy. Even less known than the two New York Cabinet selections was the new Secretary of War, William C. Endi- cott, of Massachusetts. William F. Vilas, w r ho had presided over the Chicago Convention, was made Postmaster-General. The remaining PRESIDENT CLEVELAND'S ADMINISTRATION. 447 places went to the u Solid South," L. Q. C. Lamar, of Mississippi, being made Secretary of the Interior, and Augustus H. Garland, of Arkan- sas, Attorney-General. It was not a strong Cabinet, either intellect- ually or politically, but it was received with as much satisfaction as Avould have been accorded to a stronger aggregation of Democratic politicians. During the first year of his administration President Cleveland was subjected to considerable criticism in his own party for his alleged rigid adherence to the reform in the Civil Service. He did not make removals fast enough to suit many of his supporters, who were eager for the offices, while there was indignation among Republicans at the energy with which the " ax " was wielded, especially in the Postmaster-General's Department. So marked was this feeling that early in the first session of the 49th Congress the Senate, under the lead of Mr. Edmunds, of Vermont, set up the claim, hither- to never advanced, that that body was entitled to the " papers " upon which removals and appointments had been made. The President refused to comply with this request, holding that such documents affected considerations private to himself. Later the Senate re- ceded from its position by confirming the men appointed to the of- fices in question. The 49th Congress, like its predecessor, was Republican in the Senate and Democratic in the House of Representatives. The new Republican Senators were Leland Stanford, of California; Henry W. Blair, of New Hampshire; William M. Evarts, of New York, and John C. Spooner, of Wisconsin. The Democrats new to the Senate were James F. Berry and James K. Jones, of Arkansas; George Hearst, of California; George Gray, of Delaware; Joseph C. S. Blackburn, of Kentucky; Edward C. Walthall, of Mississippi; Henry B. Payne, of Ohio, and W. C. Whitthorne, of Tennessee. Gray succeeded Secre- tary of State Bayard, Walthall Secretary of the Interior Lamar, and Berry Attorney-General Garland. Mr. Carlisle was again elected Speaker of the House, the Democrats having a membership of 184 to 139 Republicans. The Greenback-Labor party had only two Rep- resentatives. Among the Republican additions to the House were Joseph McKenna, of California; Jacob H. Gallinger, of New Hamp- shire; James Buchanan, of New Jersey; Ira Davenport, of New York; Benjamin Butterworth, of Ohio; and John A. Hiestand and Edwin S. Osborne, of Pennsylvania. Kentucky sent one new Republican member, William H. Wadsworth; Missouri two, William Warner and William H. Wade, and Tennessee one, Zachary Taylor. It was a busi- ness Congress, but succeeded in accomplishing little practical legisla- tion. In history the 49th Congress is remarkable only for the num- 448 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. ber of its measures vetoed by the President. The whole account stands thus: FIRST SESSION SECOND SESSION TOTAL 1,095 554 1,649 Approved by the President 814 471 1,285 Failed of approval 281 83 364 115 30 145 Became laws without approval 157 7 167 Unsigned at time of adjournment (" pocketed ") 9 46 55 281 83 364 A majority of these comprised private pension bills, of which the summarv is as follows: FIRST SESSION SECOND SESSION TOTAL Bills passed 747 230 977 Bills approved . . 491 186 677 Failed of approval 256 44 300 Became laws without approval by lapse of time 154 2 156 Vetoed 101 22 123 Unsigned at time of adjournment ("pocketed") ...... 1 20 21 256 44 300 During the second session of the 49th Congress a bill was passed creating an Interstate Commerce Commission, and granting it certain powers to prohibit discrimination in rates of carrying of passengers and freight. The bill was signed by the President, and a Commission appointed for the purpose of carrying its provisions into effect. Of this Commission Thomas M. Cooley, of Michigan, one of the ablest jurists in the country, was elected Chairman. The law was accepted by the people and the railroads with good results. It is pleasant to turn from the public to the domestic features of the President's life. " Up to this time Mr. Cleveland," says one of his many biographers, " was a bachelor; only one other President of the United States had been in the enjoyment of single blessedness when he entered the White House, James Buchanan, the immediate prede- cessor of Abraham Lincoln. But Mr. Cleveland was about to join his PRESIDENT CLEVELAND'S ADMINISTRATION. 449 fortunes with one of the sweetest young ladies America has ever produced. A good judge of men, the President proved by his choice to be an equally good judge of women. Miss Frances Folsom, the daughter of the President's old law partner, Oscar Folsom (who un- fortunately was killed in a runaway accident in 1875), was the young lady whom the President was about to honor with his hand, his heart being already in her possession. Frances, or " Frank " Fol- som, as she was called, was born in Buffalo, N. Y., July 21, 18G4. She was well educated and, by foreign travel, had acquired such grace and self-possession as is rarely seen in so young a person. She was mar- ried in the White House to President Cleveland, June 2, 1886. The ceremony took place in the east parlor, and a large number of influ- ential persons were present, besides members of the President's fam- ily. After the marriage ceremony had been performed by Rev. Dr. Sunderland, Mr. Dan Lamont, who was master of ceremonies, invited the guests, in the President's name, to a sumptuous collation, after which Mr. and Mrs. Cleveland went to Deer Park, Maryland, from June 3 to June 8, when they returned to the White House. Thurs- day, June 15, they held their first State reception, and Mrs. Cleveland surprised every one by her grace and beauty. An older lady, ac- customed to State functions for years, could not have surpassed this young American woman in well-bred ease and grace. The members of the Diplomatic Corps, accustomed to royal receptions, were loud in her praises; no sovereign of Europe, they said, could surpass her in all the requirements of her most difficult position. Fair, fresh, genuine, in figure tall ami graceful, with soft, brown hair, and deep, kindling eyes, she stood before all, the embodiment of all that is best, loveliest, and sweetest in the womanhood of our nation. This be- ginning was but a prelude to what was to follow. She charmed ev- erybody, and for a time even cast the President into the shade. No lady of the White House, not even Dolly Madison, was ever so popu- lar. The country raved about her, and she was no mere bubble blown by the popular breath, but deserved it all; walking like a queen among the people, ruling all hearts by the supreme regality of her exquisite nature. She accompanied the President to public assem- blies, and on his many trips about the country, and, unmoved by the increase of flattery and the fascination of universal homage, showed herself one of the womanliest women in the United States a true helpmeet to her great husband." It is only fair to Mr. Lamont, who was the " master of ceremonies " at the President's wedding, that his characteristics should be de- picted by a pen friendly to Mr. Cleveland. " First among all coun- sellors of the President-elect," wrote W. U. Hensel, one of these 450 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. friendly writers, " then and ever since, was and has been Colonel Daniel S. Lamont, who was soon to be translated from the position of private secretary to the Governor of New York to that of private secretary to the President of the United States. A young man trained in the best school of New York politics, experienced in journ- alism, quick to perceive the value and character of men, discreet in speech, and efficient in commanding the largest share of informa- tion from any visitor, whether he has an ax to grind or comes merely as an interested observer of the action and character of others, he has shown himself the most intelligent, as he has become the best known of all the men who, in the arduous and difficult post of private secretary, have contributed to increase the interest and the pleasure, or to lighten the labor of men in the public life of the United States." The 50th Congress was like its immediate predecessors in political composition and organization, except that John J. Ingalls, of Kansas, had succeeded John Sherman, of Ohio, as President pro tern of the Senate. The new Republican Senators were Francis B. Stockbridge, of Michigan; Cushman K. Davis, of Minnesota; William E. Chandler, of New Hampshire; Frank Hiscock, of New York, and Matthew S. Quay, of Pennsylvania. The Democrats were David Turpie, of In- diana; Rufus Blodgett, of New Jersey; William B. Bate, of Tennessee; John H. Reagan, of Texas; John T. Daniel, of Virginia, and Charles J. Faulkner, of W T est Virginia. The Senate stood 39 Republicans to 37 Democrats, and the House 169 Democrats to 152 Republicans. There were 2 Labor and 2 Independent Representatives. In his third annual message in December, 1887, President Cleveland devoted himself almost wholly to the discussion of tariff revision. This was what was called " sounding the battle-cry." As this mes- sage was the keynote of the ensuing Presidential campaign it is worthy of reproduction in its salient features in this place. " Our scheme of taxation," the President said, after complaining of a congested national treasury, " by means of which this needless sur- plus is taken from the people and put into the public treasury, con- sists of a tariff or duty levied upon importations from abroad, and internal revenue taxes levied upon the consumption of tobacco and spirituous and malt liquors. It must be conceded that none of the things subjected to internal revenue taxation are, strictly speaking, necessaries; there appears to be no just complaint of this taxation by the consumers of these articles, and there seems to be nothing so well able to bear the burden without hardship to any portion of the people. But our present tariff laws, the vicious, inequitable, and illogical source of unnecessary taxation, ought to be at once revised and amended. These law r s, as their primary and plain effect, raise the PRESIDENT CLEVELAND'S ADMINISTRATION. 451 price to consumers of all articles imported and subject to duty, by precisely the sum paid for such duties. Thus the amount of the duty measures the tax paid by those who purchase for use imported ar- ticles. Many of these things, however, are raised or manufactured in our own country, and the duties now levied upon foreign goods and products are called protection to these home manufactures, because they render it possible for those of our people who are manufac- turers to make these taxed articles and sell them for a price equal to that demanded for the imported goods that have paid customs duty. So it happens that while comparatively a few use the imported ar- ticles, millions of our people, who never use and never saw any of the foreign products, purchase and use things of the same kind made in this country, and pay therefor nearly or quite the same enhanced price which the duty adds to the imported articles. Those who buy imports pay the duty charged thereon into the public treasury; but the great majority of our citizens, who buy domestic articles of the same class, pay a sum at least approximately equal to the duty to the home manufacturer. This reference to the operation of our tariff laws is not made by way of instruction, but in order that we may be constantly reminded of the manner in which they impose a burden upon those who consume domestic products, as well as those who con- sume imported articles, and thus create a tax upon all our people. It is not proposed to entirely relieve the country of this taxation. It must be extensively continued as the source of the Government's in- come; and in a readjustment of our tariff the interests of American labor engaged in manufacture should be carefully considered, as well as the preservation of our manufactures. It may be called protection, or by any other name; but relief from the hardships and dangers of our present tariff laws should be devised with especial precaution against imperiling the existence of our manufacturing interests. But this existence should not mean a condition which, without regard to the public welfare or a national e'xigency, must always insure the realization of immense profits, instead of moderately profitable re- turns. As the volume and diversity of our national activities in- crease, new recruits are added to those w r ho desire a continuation of the advantages which they conceive the present system of tariff taxa- tion directly affords them. So stubbornly have all efforts to reform the present condition been resisted by those of our fellow citizens thus engaged, that they can hardly complain of the suspicion, enter- tained to a certain extent, that there exists an organized combination all along the line to maintain their advantage. " We are in the midst of centennial celebrations, and with becom- ing pride we rejoice in American skill and ingenuity, in American 452 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. energy and enterprise, and in the wonderful natural advantages and resources developed by a century's national growth. Yet when an at- tempt is made to justify a scheme which permits a tax to be laid upon every consumer in the land for the benefit of our manufactures, quite beyond a reasonable demand for governmental regard, it suits the purpose of advocacy to call our manufactures infant industries, still needing the highest and greatest degree of favor and fostering care that can be wrung from Federal legislation. It is also said that the increase in the price of domestic manufactures resulting from the present Tariff is necessary in order that higher wages may be paid to our workingmen employed in manufactories than are paid for what is called the pauper labor of Europe. All will acknowledge the force of an argument which involves the welfare and liberal compensation of our laboring people. Our labor is honorable in the eyes of every American citizen, and as it lies at the foundation of our development and progress, it is entitled, without affectation or hypocrisy, to the utmost regard. The standard of our laborers' life should not be measured by that of any other country less favored, and they are en- titled to their full of all our advantages. " By the last census it is made to appear that of the 17,392,099 of our population engaged in all kinds of industries, 7,670,493 are employed in agriculture, 4,074,238 in professional and personal serv- ice (2,934,876 of whom are domestic servants and laborers), while 1,810,256 are employed in trade and transportation, and 3,837,112 are classed as employed in manufacturing and mining. For present pur- poses, however, the last number given should be considerably re- duced. Without attempting to enumerate all, it will be conceded that there should be deducted from those which it includes 375,143 carpenters and joiners, 285,401 milliners, dressmakers, and seam- stresses, 172,726 blacksmiths, 133,756 tailors and tailoresses, 102,473 masons, 76,241 butchers, 41,309 bakers, 22,083 plasterers, and 4,891 en- gaged in manufacturing agricultural implements, amounting in the aggregate to 1,214,023, leaving 2,623,089 persons employed in such manufacturing industries as are claimed to be benefited by a high Tariff. To these the appeal is made to save their employment and maintain their wages by resisting a change. There should be no dis- position to answer such suggestions by the allegation that they are in a minority among those who labor, and therefore should forego an advantage, in the interest of low prices for the majority; their compensation, as it may be affected by the operation of tariff laws, should at all times be scrupulously kept in view; and yet, with slight reflection, they will not overlook the fact that they are consumers with the rest; and they, too, have their own wants and those of their PRESIDENT CLEVELAND'S ADMINISTRATION. 453 families to supply from their earnings, and that the price of the necessaries of life, as well as the amount of their wages, will regulate the measure of their welfare and comfort. But the reduction of taxa- tion demanded should be so measured as not to necessitate or justify either the loss of employment by the working man or the lessening of his wages; and the profits still remaining to the manufacturer, after a necessary readjustment, should furnish no excuse for the sacrifice of the interests of his employees, either in their opportunity to work, or in the diminution of their compensation. Nor can the worker in manufactories fail to understand that while a high tariff is claimed to be necessary to allow the payment of remunerative wages, it certainly results in a very large increase in the price of nearly all sorts of manufactures, which, in almost countless form, he needs for the use of himself and his family. He receives at the desk of his em- ployer his wages and perhaps before he reaches his home is obliged, in a purchase for family use of an article which embraces his own labor, to return in the payment of the increase in price which the tariff permits, the hard-earned compensation of many days of toil. The farmer and the agriculturist, who manufacture nothing, but who pay the increased price which the tariff imposes upon every agricul- tural implement, upon all he wears, and upon all he uses and owns, except the increase of his flocks and herds and such things as his hus- bandry produces from the soil, is invited to aid in maintaining the present situation; and he is told that a high duty on imported w r ool is necessary for the bjenefit of those who have sheep to shear, in order that the price of wool may be increased. They, of course, are not re- minded that the farmer who has no sheep is by this scheme obliged, in his purchase of clothing and woolen goods, to pay a tribute to his fellow farmer as well as to the manufacturer and merchant; nor is any mention made of the fact that the sheep owners themselves and their households must wear clothing and use other articles man- ufactured from the wool they sell at tariff prices, and thus, as con- sumers, must return their share of this increased price to the trades- man. I think it may be fairly assumed that a large proportion of the sheep owned by the farmers throughout the country are found in small flocks numbering from twenty-five to fifty. The duty on the grade of imported wool which these sheep yield is ten cents per pound if of the value of thirty cents or less, and twelve cents if of the value of more than thirty cents. If the liberal estimate of six pounds be al- lowed for each fleece the duty thereon would be sixty or seventy-two cents, and this may be taken as the utmost enhancement of its price to the farmer by reason of this duty. Eighteen dollars would thus represent the increased price of the wool from twenty-five sheep, and 454 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. thirty-six dollars that from the wool of fifty sheep; and at present values this addition would amount to about one-third of its price. If upon its sale the farmer receives this or a less tariff profit, the wool leaves his hands charged with precisely that sum, which in all its changes will adhere to it, until it reaches the consumer. When man- ufactured into cloth and other goods and material for use, its cost is not only increased to the extent of the farmer's tariff profit, but a further sum has been added for the benefit of the manufacturer, under the operation of other tariff laws. In the meantime the day arrives when the farmer finds it necessary^ to purchase woolen goods and ma- terial to clothe himself and family for the winter. When he faces the tradesman for that purpose he discovers that he is obliged not only to return, in the way of increased prices, his tariff profit on the wool he sold, and which then, perhaps, lies before him in manufac- tured form, but that he must add a considerable sum thereto to meet a further increase in cost caused by a tariff duty on the manufacture. Thus, in the end, he is aroused to the fact that he has paid upon a moderate purchase, as a result of the tariff scheme, which, when he sold his wool seemed so profitable, an increase in price more than sufficient to sweep away all the tariff profit he received upon the wool he produced and sold. When the number of farmers engaged in wool- raising is compared with all the farmers in the country, and the small proportion they bear to our population is considered; when it is made apparent that, in the case of a large part of those who own sheep, the benefit of the present tariff on wool is illusory; and, above all, when it must be conceded that the increase of the cost of living caused by such tariff becomes a burden upon those with moderate means and the poor, the employed and the unemployed, the sick and the well, and the young and old, and that it constitutes a tax which, with re- lentless grasp, is fastened upon the clothing of every man, woman, and child in the land, reasons are suggested why the removal or re- duction of this duty should be included in a revision of our tariff laws. " In speaking of the increased cost to the consumer of our home manufactures, resulting from a duty laid upon imported articles of the same description, the fact is not overlooked that competition among our domestic producers sometimes has the effect of keeping the price of their products below the highest limit allowed by such duty. But it is notorious that this competition is too often strangled by combina- tions quite prevalent at this time, and frequently called trusts, which have for their object the regulation of the supply and price of com- modities made and sold by members of the combination. The people can hardly hope for any consideration in the operation of these selfish schemes. If, however, in the absence of such combination, a healthy PRESIDENT CLEVELAND'S ADMINISTRATION. 455 and free competition reduces the price of any particular dutiable ar- ticle of home production below the liinit which it might otherwise reach under our tariff laws, and if, with such reduced price, its man- ufacture continues to thrive, it is entirely evident that one tiring has / / o been discovered which should be carefully scrutinized in an effort to reduce taxation. The necessity of combination to maintain the price of any commodity to the tariff point furnishes proof that some one is willing to accept lower prices for such commodity, and that such prices are remunerative; and lower prices produced by competition prove the same thing. Thus where either of these conditions exists, a case would seem to be presented for an easy reduction of taxation. " The considerations which have been presented touching our tariff laws are intended only to enforce an earnest recommendation that the surplus revenues of the Government be prevented by the reduction of ourcustoms duties, and, at the same time, to emphasize a suggestion that in accomplishing this purpose we may discharge a double duty to our people, by granting to them a measure of relief from tariff taxa- tion in quarters where it can be most fairly and justly accorded. Nor can the presentation made of such considerations be, with any degree of fairness, regarded as evidence of unfriendliness toward our man- ufacturing interests, or any lack of appreciation of their value and importance. These interests constitute a leading and most substan- tial element of our national greatness, and furnish the proud proof of our country's progress. But if in the emergency that presses upon us our manufacturers are asked to surrender something for the pub- lic good, and to avert disaster, their patriotism, as well as a grateful recognition of advantages already afforded, should lead them to will- ing co-operation. No demand is made that they shall forego all the benefits of governmental regard; but they can not fail to be admon- ished of their duty, as well as their enlightened self-interest and safety, when they are reminded of the fact that financial panic and collapse, to which the present condition tends, afford no greater shelter or protection to our manufactures than to our other important enterprises. Opportunity for safe, careful, and deliberate reform is now offered; and none of us should be unmindful of a time when an abused and irritated people, heedless of those who have resisted timely and reasonable relief, may insist upon a radical and sweeping rectification of their wrongs. The difficulty attending a wise and fair revision of our tariff laws is not underestimated. It will require on the part of the Congress great labor and care, and especially a broad and national contemplation of the subject, and a patriotic dis- regard of such local and selfish claims as are unreasonable and reck- less of the welfare of the entire country. Under our present laws 456 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. more than four thousand articles are subject to duty. Many of these do not in any way compete with our own manufactures, and many are hardly worth attention as subjects of revenue. A considerable re- duction can be made in the aggregate by adding them to the free list. The taxation of luxuries presents no features of hardship; but the necessaries of life used and consumed by all the people, the duty upon which adds to the cost of living in every home, should be greatly cheapened. The radical reduction of the duties imposed upon raw material used in manufactures, or its free importation, is of course an important factor in any effort to reduce the price of these neces- saries; it would not only relieve them from the increased cost caused by the tariff on such material, but the manufactured product being thus cheapened, the part of the tariff now laid upon such product, as a compensation to our manufacturers for the present price of raw material, could be accordingly modified. Such reduction, or free im- portation, would serve besides to largely reduce the revenue. It is not apparent how such a change could have any injurious effect upon our manufacturers. On the contrary, it would appear to give them a better chance in foreign markets with the manufacturers of other countries, who cheapen their w y ares by free material. Thus our people might have the opportunity of extending their sales beyond the limits of home consumption saving them from the depression, interrup- tion in business, and loss caused by a glutted domestic market, and affording their employees more certain and steady labor, with its re- sulting quiet and contentment. " The question thus imperatively presented for solution should be approached in a spirit higher than partisanship, and considered in the light of that regard for patriotic duty which should characterize the action of those intrusted w r ith the weal of a confiding people. But the obligation to declare party policy and principle is not wanting to urge prompt and effective action. Both of the great political parties now represented in the Government have, by repeated and authori- tative declarations, condemned the condition of our laws, which per- mit the collection from the people of unnecessary revenue, and have, in the most solemn manner, promised its correction; and neither as citizens nor partisans are our countrymen in a mood to condone the deliberate violation of these pledges. Our progress toward a wise conclusion will not be improved by dwelling upon the theories of pro- tection and free trade. This savors too much of bandying epithets. It is a condition which confronts us not a theory. Relief from this condition may involve a slight reduction of the advantages which we award our home productions, but the entire withdrawal of such ad- vantages should not be contemplated. The question of free trade is PRESIDENT CLEVELAND'S ADMINISTRATION. 457 absolutely irrelevant; and the persistent claim made in certain quar- ters that all efforts to relieve the people from unjust and unnecessary taxation are schemes of so-called free-traders, is mischievous and far removed from any consideration for the public good. The simple and plain duty which we o\ve the people is to reduce taxation to the necessary expense of an economical operation of the Government, and to restore to the business of the country the money which we hold in the Treasury through the perversion of governmental pow r ers. These things can and should be done with safety to all our industries, without danger to the opportunity for remunerative labor which our workingmen need, and with benefit to them and all our people, by cheapening their means of subsistence and increasing the measure of their comforts." The effect of Mr. Cleveland's deliverance was immediate. Tariff revision at once became a question of absorbing political interest. Although the older leaders in the Democratic party shook their heads ominously at the boldness and audacity with which the President forced the issue upon the country, the young politicians welcomed it with avidity. To the Southern Democrats, especially, it was welcome as a return to the doctrine of Free Trade and the principles of the Tariff of 1846. As the South controlled the Committee on Ways and Means, it was believed it would be easy to prepare a Tariff bill in line with the message. What became known as the Mills Tariff bill was reported from the committee, March 1, 1888, and was not finally dis- posed of by the House of representatives until July 21. The debate was opened by Roger Q. Mills, of Texas, the Chairman of the Ways and Means. The other Democratic members of the committee, William L. Scott, of Pennsylvania; Clifton R. Breckenridge, of Arkan- sas; William L. Wilson, of West Virginia, and William D. Bynum, of Indiana, followed with elaborate arguments. Among the Democrat's who were most prominent in support of the measure were the Speaker, Mr. Carlisle; S. S. Cox, of New York; John E. Russell, of Massa- chusetts, and Charles R. Buckalew, of Pennsylvania. The principal Republican opponents of the bill were William D. Kelley, of Pennsyl- vania; William McKinley, of Ohio; Thomas B. Reed, and Charles A. Boutelle, of Maine, and Henry G. Burleigh, of New York. Two Rep- resentatives elected as Republicans, Ashbel P. Fitch, of New York, and Knute Nelson, of Minnesota, favored the principle of the bill, and Samuel J. Randall, of Pennsylvania, led the meager contingent of Democrats that opposed it. The bill was finally passed by the House by 162 ayes to 149 nays, July 21, 1888, in time, with a counter bill in the Senate embodying the Republican doctrine of Protection, to be- come the dominating issue of the Presidential campaign that was then beginning. HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. The Mills bill made significant reductions in existing tariff rates, but it was hastily and crudely drawn, and only served to exhaust the time of the first session of the 50th Congress for political effect, with- out any expectation of practical legislation. The country was not prepared for Free Trade as a direct issue, and the consequences *were disastrous to Mr. Cleveland and his party. President Cleveland gave offense to many Republicans by persist- ing in the veto policy in the 50th Congress that he had pursued so relentlessly in the 49th, and especially by his veto of the Dependent Pension bill. A hasty order for the return of Confederate battle-flags, in 1887, caused so much excitement that it was revoked. But as a whole the Administration was colorless, apart from the impetus given to Tariff revision by the President's bold message in December, 1887, and the passage of the Mills Tariff bill by the House of Representa- tives in 1888. rr-r V. THE CAMPAIGN OF 1888. The Democrats Take the Lead Democratic National Convention at St. Louis The Republican Party " Struggling for Life " Eulo- gies of President Cleveland Irish Flattery Nominating Speech of Daniel Dougherty Taxation is Robbery Cleveland Renomi- nated by Acclamation The Democratic Platform Allen G. Thurmau for Vice-President Republican National Convention at Chicago The Presidential Candidates Organization of the Convention The Platform Balloting Analysis of the Voting Depew Withdraws McKinley's Protest Elaine's Telegrams Read Benjamin Harrison Nominated Levi P. Morton for Vice- President The Candidates Democratic View of the Campaign Elements of Discontent General Harrison's Election. ONTRARY to the practice of previous Presidential cam- paigns during the long period of Republican supremacy, the Democrats, emboldened by their confidence in the Presi- dent's lead in favor of tariff reduction, in 1888, anticipated the Republicans by calling the Democratic National Convention to meet at St. Louis a fortnight earlier than the meeting of the Repub- lican National Convention at Chicago. It was thought as the party was now dominant in Federal politics, with the exception of the United States Senate, that it should take the lead in laying down its principles and naming its candidates. When the National Commit- tee met to settle the meeting-place of the Convention there was a spirited contest for the honor, New York, Chicago, St. Louis, Cincin- nati, and San Francisco all being competitors. St. Louis, for the second time in the history of the Democratic party, was chosen as the Convention city, and the 5th of June was named as the day for the meeting. Long before the Convention met it was apparent that Mr. Cleveland would have no competitor for the Presidential nomination. Every State in the Union not only declared in favor of his renomination, but indorsed his position on the tariff. There w r as a feeling among Democrats that his re-election was assured, and even that the Repub- lican party was no longer a serious menace to Democratic supremacy. These sentiments were voiced by Stephen M. White, of California, 460 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. who was made temporary Chairman of the Convention. " The re- election of Grover Cleveland/' Mr. White said, " is demanded by the patriotic sentiment of the land. The Kepublican party is struggling for life. It can not long survive. Its extended incumbency was due to the fears and doubts succeeding the civil conflict. These forebod- ings have been removed by time and thought; and honest opinion, in spite of illegal force openly used, notwithstanding criminal efforts defeating the public will as expressed at the ballot-box, has driven unworthy servants from office, and has summoned to power an ad- ministration to which no stain or suspicion has ever attached. . . . The honest, intelligent electors, whose judgment is untainted by preju- dice, are prepared to again intrust this Government to the Democratic party. That that organization has accomplished so much, notwith- standing the continued opposition of its foes, is ample evidence that during the next four years its policy will be finally and completely adopted. The coming contest will result in the triumph of Democ- racy. The nominees of this Convention will be the chosen of the peo- ple, and if we do our duty the Kepublican party w T ill be unable to retard the progress of our country." The work of the Convention was not so much to nominate a candi- date for President of the United States as to eulogize the candidate upon whom the party was united. Mr. White's warm indorsement of Cleveland's administration was almost cold in comparison with the praises of the Democratic orators who followed him. On the second day of the Convention, Patrick A. Collins, of Massachusetts, was made its permanent President. His references to the great qualities and surpassing virtues of the candidate had all the glow and fervor of genuine Irish flattery. " We need not wait," he said, " for time to do justice to the character and services of President Cleveland. Honest, clear-sighted, patient, grounded in respect for law and justice, with a thorough grasp of principles and situations, with marvelous and con- scientious industry; the very incarnation of firmness he has nobly fulfilled the promise of his party, nobly met the expectations of his country, and written his name high on the scroll where future Ameri- cans will read the names of men who have been supremely useful to the Republic." Not easily surfeited with the vaunted glories of the man of might who, after the wanderings of a quarter of a century, had led the Demo- cratic hosts out of the wilderness, the Convention w T as eager for still more sounding phrases in praise of the Moses of the Democracy. In order to gratify this unusual taste for oratory, it w r as determined not to wait for the report of the Committee on. Resolutions not to wait even for the President's State in calling the roll before putting Mr. THE CAMPAIGN OF 1888. 461 Cleveland in nomination. The call of the States was accordingly or- dered, and in the name of Alabama, the first on the list, Daniel Dougherty, the " silver-tongued orator v of Philadelphia, mounted the rostrum to present the name of Grover Cleveland. " We are here," he said, " not indeed to choose a candidate, but to name the one the people have already chosen. He is the man for the people. His career illustrates the glory of our institutions. Eight years ago unknown save in his own locality, he for the last four years has stood in the gaze of the world, discharging the most exalted duties that can be confided to a mortal. To-day determines that not of his own choice, but by the mandate of his countrymen and with the sanction of heaven, he shall fill the Presidency for four years more. He has met and mas- tered every question as if from youth trained to statesmanship. The promises of his letter of acceptance and inaugural address have been fulfilled. His fidelity in the past inspires faith in the future. He is not a hope. He is a realization. Scorning subterfuge, disdaining re- election by concealing convictions, mindful of his oath of office to de- fend the Constitution, he courageously declares to Congress, dropping minor matters, that the supreme issue is reform, revision, reduction of national taxation; that the Treasury of the United States, glutted with unneeded gold, oppresses industry, embarrasses business, en- dangers financial tranquillity, and breeds extravagance, centraliza- tion, and corruption; that high taxation, vital for the expenditures of an unparalleled war, is robbery in years of prosperous peace; that the millions that pour into the Treasury come from the hard-earned sav- ings of the American people; that in violation of equality of rights the present tariff has created a privileged class, who, shaping legisla- tion for their personal gain, levy by law contributions upon the neces- saries of life from every man, woman, and child in the land; that to lower the tariff is not free trade it is to reduce the unjust profits of monopolists and boss manufacturers, and allow consumers to retain the rest." After the enthusiasm evoked by the naming of the candidate had subsided, speeches seconding the nomination were made, and then the question of nominating Mr. Cleveland by acclamation was put to the Convention. Without a call of the States and without a dissenting vote this was agreed to, and he was declared the Democratic candi- date for President of the United States. Only one hour and a quarter had been devoted to making the nomination. When the result was attained the Convention adjourned until the following morning to await the report of the Committee on Resolutions. The adoption of the Platform was the business of the third day's proceedings. While taking the same ground in favor of tariff reduc- 462 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. tioii that the President had taken in his message in 1887, the Platform was not such a bold and open avowal of Democratic tendencies in favor of Free Trade. Indeed, as originally reported, it contained no direct allusion to the Mills Tariff bill, which had passed the House, and was pending or rather suspending in the Senate. This oversight was corrected by a resolution recommending the passage of that measure, offered in the Convention by William L. Scott, of Pennsyl- vania, which was adopted and made part of the Platform. Three candidates were named for Vice-President Allen G. Thur- man, of Ohio; John C. Black, of Illinois, and Isaac P. Gray, of Indiana. Only one ballot was necessary, Mr. Thurman receiving 067 votes, to 104 " for Mr. Gray and 31 for General Black. Twenty -three States voted solidly for Thurman, including New York, Ohio, and Pennsyl- vania. In calling Mr. Thurman from his retirement to accept this nomination some fear was expressed, even by Democrats, that he was too old for the position in case of his election. Mr. Thurman, in fact, was younger than Kaiser Wilhelm when he consolidated the German Empire; younger than Gortschakoff when he dominated Russia; younger than Thiers when he became the first President of the French Republic, and as young as Disraeli when he made Queen Victoria Empress of India. The Republican National Convention of 1888, when it met at Chi- cago on the 19th of June, did not have its work cut out for it. With the exception of John Sherman and James G. Blaine, w r ho was not a candidate with his own consent, the list of Presidential aspirants was made up of new names. Some of the men who were to be put in nomination had never before been voted for in a National Convention. When the roll of the States was called on the third day of the Con- vention for the nomination of Presidential candidates Connecticut presented General Joseph R. Hawley; Illinois, Walter Q. Gresham; Indiana, General Benjamin Harrison; Iow r a, William B. Allison; Michigan, Russell A. Alger; New York, Chauncey M. Depew; Ohio, John Sherman; Pennsylvania, Edwin H. Fitler, and Wisconsin, Jere- miah M. Rusk. With such a list of candidates, some of them unknown to the delegates outside of their own States, it is not surprising that the work of the Convention was almost as prolonged as that of the Convention of 1880. The Convention opened with a brief address by Benjamin F. Jones, the Chairman of the National Committee, after which John M. Thur- ston, of Nebraska, was made temporary President. The usual com- mittees being named, the Convention listened to speeches by John C. Fremont and Frederick Douglass, and then adjourned until the next morning. When the Convention met on Wednesday the organization THE CAMPAIGN OF 1888. 463 was perfected by the selection of Morris M. Estee, of California, as permanent President. While waiting for the report of the Committee on Credentials there were more speeches, W. O. Bradley, of Kentucky, and J. B. Foraker, of Ohio, being the orators. A feature of the even- ing session was the adoption of resolutions of respect to the memory of Grant, Arthur, and Logan. The contests were those between the Mahone and Wise delegates from Virginia. The Mahone delegates-at- large were seated, but the seats for the Congress districts were ac- eorded to the Wise claimants. The contest w r as the occasion of a minority report and a long debate in the Convention. The Platform was reported on Thursday morning. The acceptance of the Tariff issue was unequivocal. The Mills bill was denounced and the proposition to place wool on the free list condemned. " The Republican party," said the Platform, " would effect all needed reduc- tion of the national revenue by repealing the taxes upon tobacco, which are an annoyance and burden to agriculture, and the tax upon spirits used in the arts and for mechanical purposes, and by such re- vision of the Tariff laws as will tend to check imports of such articles as are produced by our people, the production of which gives employ- ment to our labor, and releases from import duties those articles of foreign production (except luxuries) the like of which can not be pro- duced at home. If there shall still remain a larger revenue than is requisite for the wants of the Government, we favor the entire repeal of the internal taxes rather than the surrender of any part of our pro- tective system at the joint behest of the whisky ring and the agents of foreign manufacturers." The party leaders failed to foresee the real issue of the currency question in the future, and the Platform not only declared in favor of the use of both gold and silver as money, but condemned " the policy of the Democratic administration in its efforts to demonetize silver." The foreign policy of Cleveland's administra- tion was condemned for its inefficiency and cowardice, and on the Fisheries question with Canada the Administration was denounced for " its pusillanimous surrender of the essential privileges to which our fishing vessels are entitled in Canadian ports under the treaty of 1818, the reciprocal maritime legislation of 1830, and the comity of nations, and which Canadian fishing vessels receive in the ports of the United States." The Platform closed with a denunciation of the hostile spirit shown by the President in his numerous pension vetoes, and the ac- tion of the Democratic House of Representatives in refusing a consid- eration of general pension legislation. General Hawley was put in nomination by Mr. Warner; Mr. Gres- ham by Leonard Swett, one of the confidential friends of Abraham Lincoln; General Harrison by ex-Governor Porter; Mr. Allison by Mr. 464 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. Hepburn, of Iowa; General Alger by Colonel Robert E. Frazer; Mr. Depew by Frank Hiscock; Mayor Fitler, of Philadelphia, by Charles Emory Smith, and General Husk by Senator Spooner. The balloting was as follows: June 22. June 23. June 25. 1234567 Harrison 80 91 94 217 213 231 278 Sherman 229 249 244 235 224 244 231 Alger 84 216 122 135 142 137 120 Gresham Ill 108 123 98 87 91 91 Allison 72 75 88 88 99 73 76 Depew 99 99 91 Rusk 25 20 16 Phelps 25 18 5 Ingalls 28 16 Hawley 13 Fitler.' 24 McKinley 2 3 8 11 14 12 16 Lincoln 3221 2 Miller 2 Douglass 1 Foraker 1 11 Grant 1 Haymond 1 Elaine. 35 33 35 42 48 40 15 Total vote. ... 830 830 830 829 827 830 831 830 Necessary for choice! .... 416 416 416 415 414 416 416 416 It will be seen that on the first ballot 93 votes were cast for candi- dates who had not been formally placed in nomination 35 for James G. Elaine, 28 for John J. Ingalls, 25 for William Walter Phelps, 3 for Robert T. Lincoln, and 2 for William McKinley. When Hawley and Fitler were withdrawn, after the ballot, Sherman gained 20 votes. Alger 32, Gresham 3, Harrison 16, McKinley 1; but Ingalls lost 12, Phelps 7, and Elaine 2. The name of Senator Ingalls was then with- drawn. On the third ballot the greatest gain was for Gresham, who passed Alger by one vote, while Sherman lost five votes. Elaine recov- ered his two lost votes, and McKinley gained 5. After the third ballot the Convention took a recess until evening. The sensation of the evening was the withdrawal of Chauncey M. Depew, w 7 ho had made THE CAMPAIGN OF 1888. 465 no gains on the second ballot and lost 8 votes on the third. It was apparent that Mr. Depew could not be nominated, and he was cha- grined that he had allowed his name to be used. As it was understood that the support of the New York delegation would go to General Harrison, the friends of the other candidates became solicitous, and an adjournment was ordered until Saturday. The event of Saturday Avas the speech of William McKinley, of Ohio, protesting against being voted for as a candidate. " I am here," he said, " as one of the chosen representatives of my State. I am here by a resolution of the Republican party, without one dissenting voice, commanding me to cast my vote for John Sherman, and use every worthy endeavor for his nomination. I accepted the trust, because my heart and judgment were in accord with the letter and spirit and purpose of that resolution. It has pleased certain delegates to cast their votes for me. I am not insensible to the honor they would do me, but in the presence of the duty resting upon me I can not remain silent with honor. I can not consistently with the credit of the State whose credentials I bear and which has trusted me, I can not w T ith honorable fidelity to John Sherman, who trusted me in his cause with his confidence, I can not consistently with my own views of personal integrity, consent or seem to consent to permit my name to be used as a candidate before this Convention. I would not respect myself if I could find it in my heart to do, to say, or permit to be done, that which could even be ground for any one to suspect that I wavered in my loyalty to Ohio, or my devotion to the chief of her choice and the chief of mine. I do request, I demand, that no delegates who w r ould not cast reflection upon me shall cast a ballot for me." The fourth ballot left Sherman still in the lead, but with Harrison a close second. Alger gained 13 votes and Gresham lost 25. On this ballot the Pennsylvania vote remained firm for Sherman with the hope of beating Harrison. On the next ballot, the fifth, Harrison lost 4 votes and Sherman 11, but Alger and Allison showed gains, and McKinley's vote, in spite of his protest, was 14 and Elaine's 48. In view of the change in the relative standing of the candidates, and the desire among the delegates for consultation, the Convention, after the fifth ballot, took a recess until 4 o'clock, and then determined to adjourn until Monday. When the Convention again assembled after the Sunday rest Mr. Boutelle, of Maine, obtained consent to make a privileged announcement, and, mounting the platform, said: " I am under a restraint which I do not feel at liberty to ignore, and without attempting to give constructions or interpretations of my own to the language of one greater than myself by far, I discharge my humble duty, as the representative of the Maine delegation, by 466 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. reading to you, without preface or comment, the following dispatches which I have received : " * EDINBURGH, June 25. " ' To Boutelle and Manley, at Chicago : " ' Earnestly request all friends to respect my Paris letter. " < (Signed) JAMES G. ELAINE.' " The second says: " * EDINBURGH, June 25. " ' I think I have the right to ask my friends to respect my wishes and refrain from voting for me. Please make this and former dis- patches public. (Signed) JAMES G. ELAINE.' " Notwithstanding this announcement Elaine received 40 votes on the sixth ballot, which followed. Harrison's figures were reversed from 213 to 231, but Sherman's vote, which had fallen to 224, was increased to 244. On this ballot Frederick D. Grant received one vote. The trend was now setting so strongly in Harrison's favor that it was expected the seventh ballot would secure his nomination, and vir- tually such was the result. He received 278 votes, which gave him a lead that rendered him invincible. Allison was withdrawn, his with- drawal leaving Sherman utterly without hope. When the vote of Tennessee was cast on the last ballot Harrison was already nominated, and the rest of the voting was a landslide for the nominee. The result was received with great applause. Hats were thrown up by the men, and the ladies in the galleries waved their handkerchiefs and parasols. One of the officers of the Convention climbed to the Chairman's desk and unfurled a banner containing a portrait of Harrison. If the dele- gates had met at Chicago a week before determined to make Harrison the candidate the enthusiasm could not have been greater. The nominations for the Vice-Presidency were Levi P. Morton, of New York; William Walter Phelps, of New Jersey, and William O. Bradley, of Kentucky. There was only one ballot, the vote being: Morton, 561; Phelps, 119; Bradley, 93; Blanche K. Bruce, of Missis- sippi, 11, and Walter F. Thomas, of Texas, 1. General Harrison possessed many attributes and qualities that ren- dered him a popular candidate with Republicans in every part of the country. As the grandson of William Henry Harrison, who died only one month after his inauguration as the first Whig President of the United States, a romantic political interest attached to his candida- ture. As a soldier in the War for the Union, he had risen from the rank of a second-lieutenant in the Seventieth Regiment, Indiana Vol- unteers, to Brigadier-General. Both at the head of his regiment and as the commander of a brigade he distinguished himself by his sol- dierly qualities. He led the assault at Resaca in May, 1864, and at THE CAMPAIGN OF 1888. 467 Peacktree Creek he elicited the admiration of his commanding officer, General Hooker. At the Indianapolis bar after the war he took high rank. In 1870 he was the Republican candidate for Governor of In- diana, but the contest that year was known to be a hopeless one, and he accepted the nomination only as a public duty. He was elected to the United States Senate in 1881, and gained great distinction during his term in that body. His nomination for the Presidency was in every way worthy of the party and its traditions, and of all the can- didates before the Chicago Convention in 1888 he was best suited to win back the government from Grover Cleveland and the Democracy. Mr. Morton was a merchant and banker who had risen from poverty in Vermont to affluence in New York. He had not entered politics until 1876, when he was a candidate for Congress in New York City, but was defeated. In 1878 he was again a candidate, and was elected. Mr. Morton was offered the post of Secre- tary of the Navy in the Cabinet of President Garfield, but he declined, and was appointed Minister to France. As a man of large business experience, distinguished public serv- ice, and unblemished reputation, he added strength to the ticket, and helped the party to enter upon a win- ning campaign. " The campaign," according to one of Mr. Cleveland's biographers, " was a bitter and unrelenting one on the part of the Republicans. They had known for four years what it was to be in the minority. They had also felt what it was to have a President of the United States who represented the reverse of everything that they them- selves had emphasized during the latter stages of the history of their party. So they attempted to make use of the tariff-reform message of the previous year to raise the usual scare about the reduction of wages of workingmen. In this thev had little success, but as the ~ ~ V canvass progressed, it became apparent that there was not enough time to reach the farming population of the country, and to instruct them fully in the meaning of tariff reform. The desperation of Re- publican partisans and the interests of certain classes of manufactur- ers enabled the managers to raise large sums of money, which were used corruptly, and with much effect, in several of the close States. LEVI P. MORTON. 468 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. In this way the vote of Indiana was carried, and in the same way the State of New York gave its electoral vote to Mr. Harrison by a small majority. Probably at no time in our history has there been such a carnival of corruption as was seen at that time. The success achieved was, however, comparatively small, so far as public sentiment wat< concerned, as the party successful in the Electoral College was un- able to command a majority of the votes of the United States." These were merely the utterances of disappointment and chagrin. No Presidential canvass was ever conducted on a higher plane of political morality. There was no attempt to " raise the usual scare about the reduction of the wages of workingmen." Mr. Cleveland's famous message and the Mills bill had effected that without any ex- traordinary efforts of the Republicans. There was no need to " reach the farming population of the country and instruct them in the mean- ing of tariff reform." No class of voters in this country is better in- structed than the American farmers. There was no corrupt pur- chase of voters in Indiana or New York. Presidents are not elected by popular majorities, and it would be a sad day for this country if a plurality of 98,017 should elect in a vote exceeding 11,000,000. A sign of the unrest of the period is found in the multiplicity of candidates in 1888. The Prohibitionists nominated Clinton B. Fisk, of New Jersey, for President, and John A. Brooks, of Missouri, for Vice-President; the Union Labor party, Alson J. Streeter, of Illinois, for President, and Charles E. Cunningham, of Arkansas, for Yice- President; the United Labor party, Robert II. Cowdry, of Illinois, for President, and W. II. T. \Yakeman, of Kansas, for Vice-President; the " American " party, James Langdon Curtis, of New York, for President, and James R. Greer, of Tennessee, for Vice-President, and the National Greenback party and one or two other factions repre- senting the elements of discontent went through the formality of mak- ing nominations. Fisk's vote was 249,665; Streeter's, 146,883; Cow- dry's, 3,073; Curtis's, 1,591; and all the others, 9,854. The total vote was 11,388,007. General Harrison carried twenty States with 233 Electoral votes, and Mr. Cleveland eighteen States with 168 Elec- toral votes. The period that began with defeat had ended in recovery, that was to be followed by another Period of Discontent in which similar politi- cal phenomena were to be repeated. DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF THE EPOCH. REPUBLICAN PLATFORM OF 1884. 1. The Republicans of the United States, in Convention assembled, renew their allegiance to the principles upon which they have triumphed in six successive Presidential elections, and congratulate the American people on the attainment of so many results in legisla- tion and administration by which the Republican party has, after sav- ing the Union, done so much to render its institutions just, equal, and beneficent the safeguard of liberty and the embodiment of the best thought and highest purposes of our citizens. The Republican party has gained its strength by quick and faithful response to the demands of the people for the freedom and the equality of all men; for a united nation, assuring the rights of all citizens; for the elevation of labor; for an honest currency; for purity in legislation, and for integrity and accountability in all departments of the Government; and it accepts anew the duty of leading in the work of progress and reform. 2. We lament the death of President Garfield, whose sound states- manship, long conspicuous in Congress, gave promise of a strong and successful administration, a promise fully realized during the short period of his office as President of the United States. His dis- tinguished success in war and in peace has endeared him to the hearts of the American people. 3. In the Administration of President Arthur we recognize a wise, conservative, and patriotic policy, under which the country has been blessed with remarkable prosperity; and w r e believe his eminent serv- ices are entitled to and will receive the hearty approval of every citizen. 4. It is the first duty of a good Government to protect the rights and promote the interests of its own people; the largest diversity of industry is most productive of general prosperit} 1 " and of the comfort and independence of the people. We, therefore, demand that the im- position of duties on foreign imports shall be made, not for " revenue only," but that in raising the requisite revenues for the Government, such duty shall be so levied as to afford security to our diversified in- dustries and protection to the rights and wages of the laborer, to the end that active and intelligent labor, as well as capital, may have its just reward, and the laboring man his full share in the national prosperity. 5. Against the so-called economical system of the Democratic party, 470 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. which would degrade our labor to the foreign standard, we enter our earnest protest; the Democratic party has failed completely to relieve the people of the burdens of unnecessary taxation by a wise reduction of the surplus. G. The Republican party pledges itself to correct the inequalities of the tariff and to reduce the surplus, not by the vicious and indis- criminate process of horizontal reduction, but by such methods as will relieve the taxpayer without injuring the laborer or the great productive interests of the country. 7. We recognize the importance of sheep husbandry in the United States, the serious depression which it is now experiencing and the danger threatening its future prosperity; and we, therefore, respect the demands of the representatives of this important agricultural in- terest for a readjustment of duty upon foreign wool in view that such industry shall have full and adequate protection. 8. We have always recommended the best money known to the civilized world, and we urge that an effort be made to unite all com- mercial nations in the establishment of the international standard which shall fix for all the relative value of gold and silver coin- si O'fl . We demand the restoration of our navy to its old-time strength and efficiency, that it may in any sea protect the rights of American citizens and the interests of American commerce, and we call upon Congress to remove the burdens under which American shipping has been depressed, so that it may again be true that we have a commerce which leaves no sea unexplored, and a navy which takes no law from superior force. 472 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. IT. Resolved, That appointments by the President to offices in the Territories should be made from the botta fide citizens and residents of the Territories wherein they are to serve. 18. Rexohrd, That it is the duty of Congress to enact such laws as shall promptly and effectually suppress the system of polygamy with- in our Territories, and divorce the political from the ecclesiastical power of the so-called Mormon Church, and that the law so enacted should be rigidly enforced by the civil authorities, if possible, and by the military if need be. 19. The people of the United States in their organized capacity con- stitute a nation and not a mere confederacy of States. The National Government is supreme within the sphere of its National duty, but the States have reserved rights which should be faithfully main- tained; each should be guarded with jealous care, so that the harmony of our system of government may be preserved and the Union kept inviolate. 20. The perpetuity of our institutions rests upon the maintenance of a free ballot, an honest count, and a correct return. We denounce the fraud and violence practiced by the Democratic party in Southern States, by which the will of the voter is defeated, as dangerous to the preservation of free institutions, and we solemnly arraign the Demo cratic party as being the guilty recipient of the fruit of such fraud and violence. 21. We extend to the Republicans of the South, regardless of their former party affiliations, our cordial sympathy, and pledge to them our most earnest efforts to promote the passage of such legislation as will secure to every citizen, of whatever race and color, the full and complete recognition, possession, and exercise of all civil and political rights. DEMOCRATIC PLATFORM, 1884. The Democratic party of the Union, through its representatives in National Convention assembled, recognizes that, as the Nation grows older, new issues are born of time and progress, and older issues per- ish. But the fundamental principles of the Democracy, approved by the united voice of the people, remain, and will ever remain, as the best and only security for the continuance of free government. The preservation of personal rights; the equality of all citizens before the law; the reserved riirhts of the States, and the supremacy of the Fed- eral Government within the limits of the Constitution will ever form The true basis of our liberties, and can never be surrendered without destroying that balance of rights and powers which enables a conti- nent to be developed in peace, and social order to be maintained by DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF THE EPOCH. 473 means of local self-government. But it is indispensable for the practical application and enforcement of these fundamental princi- ples that the government should not always be controlled by one political party. Frequent change of administration is as necessary as constant recurrence to the popular will. Otherwise, abuses grow, and the Government, instead of being carried on for the general wel- fare, becomes an instrumentality for imposing heavy burdens on the many who are governed, for the benefit of the few who govern. Pub- lic servants thus become arbitrary rulers. This is now the condition of the country; hence a change is demanded. The Republican party, so far as principle is concerned, is a remi- niscence. In practice it is an organization for enriching those who control its machinery. The frauds and jobbery which have been brought to light in every department of the Government are suffi- cient to have called for reform within the Republican party; yet those in authority, made reckless by the long possession of power, have succumbed to its corrupting influence and have placed in nomination a ticket against which the independent portion of the party are in open revolt. Therefore, a change is demanded. Such a change was alike necessary in 1876, but the will of the people was then defeated by a fraud which can never be forgotten nor condoned. Again, ill 1880, the change demanded by the people was defeated by the lavish use of money contributed by unscrupulous contractors and shame- less jobbers, who had bargained for unlawful profits or high office. The Kepublican party, during its legal, its stolen, and its bought tenures of power, has steadily decayed in moral character and politi- cal capacity. Its platform promises are now a list of its past failures. It demands the restoration of our navy it has squandered hundreds of millions to create a navy that does not exist. It calls upon Con- gress to remove the burdens under which American shipping has been depressed it imposed and continued those burdens. It professes the policy of reserving the public lands for small holdings by actual settlers it has given away the people's heritage till now a few rail- roads and non-resident aliens, individual and corporate, possess a larger area than that of all our farms between the two seas. It pro- fesses a preference for free institutions it organized and tried to le- galize a control of State elections by Federal troops. It professes a desire to elevate labor it has subjected American workingmen to the competition of convict and imported contract labor. It professes gratitude to all who were disabled or died in the war, leaving widows and orphans it left to a Democratic House of Representatives the first effort to equalize both bounties and pensions. It proffers a pledge to correct the irregularities of our tariff it created and has 474 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. continued them. Its own tariff commission confessed the need of more than 20 per cent, reduction its Congress gave a reduction of less than 4 per cent. It professes the protection of American manu- factures it has subjected them to an increasing flood of manufactured goods and a hopeless competition with manufacturing nations, not one of which taxes raw materials. It professes to protect all Ameri- can industries it has impoverished many to subsidize a few. It professes the protection of American labor it has depleted the re- turns of American agriculture, an industry followed by half our people. It professes the equality of all men before the law, attempt- ing to fix the status of colored citizens the acts of its Congress were overset by the decisions of its courts. It " accepts anew the duty of leading in the work of progress and reform " its caught criminals are permitted to escape through contrived delays or actual conniv- ance in the prosecution. Honeycombed with corruption, outbreak- ing exposures no longer shock its moral sense. Its honest members, its independent journals, no longer maintain a successful contest for authority .in its councils or a veto upon bad nominations. That change is necessary is proved by an existing surplus of more than $100,000,000, which has yearly been collected from a suffering peo- ple. Unnecessary taxation is unjust taxation. We denounce the Republican party for having failed to relieve the people from crush- ing war taxes, which have paralyzed business, crippled industry, and deprived labor of employment and of just reward. The Democracy pledges itself to purify the Administration from corruption, to restore economy, to revive respect for law, and to re- duce taxation to the lowest limit consistent with due regard to the preservation of the faith of the Nation to its creditors and pensioners. Knowing full well, however, that legislation affecting the operations of the people should be cautious and conservative in method, not in advance of public opinion, but responsive to its demands, the Demo- cratic party is pledged to revise the tariff in a spirit of fairness to all interests. But, in making reduction in taxes, it is not proposed to injure any domestic industries, but rather to promote their healthy growth. From the foundation of this Government taxes collected at the Custom House have been the chief source of Federal revenue. Such they must continue to be. Moreover, many industries have come to rely upon legislation for successful continuance, so that any change of law must be at every step regardful of the labor and capi- tal thus involved. The process of the reform must be subject in the execution to this plain dictate of justice all taxation shall be lim- ited to the requirements of economical government. The necessary reduction in taxation can and must be effected without depriving DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF THE EPOCH. 475 American labor of the ability to compete successfully with foreign labor, and without imposing lower rates of duty than will be ample to cover any increased cost of production which may exist in conse- quence of the higher rate of wages prevailing in this country. Suffi- cient revenue to pay all the expenses of the Federal Government economically administered, including pensions, interest, and prin- cipal of the public debt, can be got under our present system of taxation from Custom House taxes on fewer imported articles, bear ing heaviest on articles of luxury, and bearing lightest on articles of necessity. We, therefore, denounce the abuses of the existing tariff; and subject to the preceding limitations, we demand that Federal taxation shall be exclusively for public purposes, and shall not exceed the needs of the Government economically administered. The system of direct taxation known as the " internal revenue " is a war tax, and so long as the law continues, the money derived there- from should be sacredly devoted to the relief of the people from the remaining burdens of the war, and be made a fund to defray the ex- pense of the care and comfort of worthy soldiers disabled in line of duty in the wars of the Republic, and for the payment of such pen- sions as Congress may from time to time grant to such soldiers, a like fund for the sailors having been already provided; and any surplus should be paid into the Treasury. We favor an American continental policy based upon more intimate commercial and political relations with the fifteen sister republics of North, Central, and South America, but entangling alliances with none. We believe in honest money, the gold and silver coinage of the Con- stitution, and a circulating medium convertible into such money with- out loss. Asserting the equality of all men before the law, we hold that it is the duty of the Government in its dealings with the people to mete out equal and exact justice to all citizens of whatever nativit} 7 , race, color, or persuasion, religious or political. We believe in a free ballot and a fair count, and we recall to the memory of the people the noble struggle of the Democrats in the Forty-fifth and Forty-sixth Congresses, by which a reluctant Repub- lican opposition was compelled to assent to legislation making every- where illegal the presence of troops at the polls, as the conclusive proof that a Democratic Administration will preserve liberty with order. The selection of Federal officers for the Territories should be re- stricted to citizens previously resident therein. We oppose sumptuary laws which vex the citizen and interfere with individual liberty. 476 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY, We favor honest civil-service reform and the compensation of all United States officers by fixed salaries; the separation of church and state, and the diffusion of free education by common schools, so that every child in the land may be taught the rights and duties of citizen- ship. While we favor all legislation which will tend to the equitable dis- tribution of property, to the prevention of monopoly, and to the strict enforcement of individual rights against corporate abuses, \ve hold that the welfare of society depends upon a scrupulous regard for the rights of property as defined by law. We believe that labor is best rewarded where it is freest and most enlightened. It should therefore be fostered and cherished. We favor the repeal of all laws restricting the free action of labor, and the enactment of laws by which labor organizations may be incorporated, and of all such legis- lation as will tend to enlighten the people as to the true relations of capital and labor. W T e believe that the public land ought, as far as possible, to be kept as homesteads for actual settlers; that all unearned lands here- tofore improvidently granted to railroad corporations by the action of the Republican party should be restored to the public domain, and that no more grants of land shall be made to corporations, or be allowed to fall into the ownership of alien absentees. We are opposed to all propositions which, upon any pretext, would convert the General Government into a machine for collecting taxes to be distributed among the States or the citizens thereof. In reaffirming the declaration of the Democratic platform of 1856, that the liberal principles embodied by Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence, and sanctioned in the Constitution, which makes ours the land of liberty and the asylum of the oppressed of every nation, have ever been cardinal principles in the Democratic faith, w T e nevertheless do not sanction the importation of foreign la- bor or the admission of servile races, unfitted by habits, training, religion, or kindred, for absorption into the great body of our people, or for the citizenship which our laws confer. American civilization demands that against the immigration or importation of Mongolians to these shores our gates be closed. The Democratic party insists that it is the duty of the Govern- ment to protect with equal fidelity and vigilance the rights of its citizens, native and naturalized, at home and abroad; and to the end that this protection may be assured, United States papers of naturali- zation issued by courts of competent jurisdiction must be respected by the executive and legislative departments of our own Govern- ment and all foreign powers. It is an imperative duty of this Gov- DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF THE EPOCH. 477 eminent to efficiently protect all the rights of persons and property of every American citizen in foreign lands, and demand and enforce full reparation for any invasion thereof. An American citizen is only responsible to his own Government for any act done in his own country or under her flag, and can only be tried therefor on her own soil and according to her laws; and no power exists in this Government to expatriate an American citizen to be tried in any foreign land for any such act. This country has never had a well-defined and executed foreign policy save under Democratic administration. That policy has ever been in regard to foreign nations, so long as they do no act detri- mental to the interests of the country or hurtful to our citizens, to let them alone; that as a result of this policy we recall the acquisition of Louisiana, Florida, California, and of the adjacent Mexican terri- tory by purchase alone, and contrast these grand acquisitions of Democratic statesmanship with the purchase of Alaska, the sole fruit of a Republican administration of nearly a quarter of a century. The Federal Government should care for and improve the Missis- sippi River and other great waterways of the Republic, so as to secure for the interior States easy and cheap transportation to tide water. Under a long period of Democratic rule and policy our merchant marine was fast overtaking and on the point of outstripping that of Great Britain; under twenty years of Republican rule and policy our commerce has been left to British bottoms, and the American flag has almost been sw r ept off the high seas. Instead of the Republican party's British policy, w r e demand for the people of the United States an American policy. Under Democratic rule and policy our mer- chants and sailors, flying the Stars and Stripes in every port, success- fully searched out a market for the varied products of American in- dustry; under a quarter century of Republican rule and policy, de- spite our manifest advantage over all other nations in high-paid la- bor, favorable climates, and teeming soils; despite freedom of trade among all these United States; despite their population by the fore- most races of men, and an annual immigration of the young, thrifty, and adventurous of all nations; despite our freedom here from the inherited burdens of life and industry in Old World monarchies, their costly war navies, their vast tax-consuming, non-producing standing armies; despite twenty years of peace, that Republican rule and policy have managed to surrender to Great Britain, along with our commerce, the control of the markets of the world. Instead of the Republican party's British policy, we demand, in behalf of the Ameri- can Democracy, an American policy. Instead of the Republican party's discredited scheme and false pretense of friendship for Ameri- 478 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. can labor, expressed by imposing taxes, we demand, in behalf of the Democracy, freedom for American labor by reducing taxes, to the end that these United States may compete with unhindered powers for the primacy among nations in all the arts of peace and fruits of liberty. With profound regret we have been apprised by the venerable statesman through whose person was struck that blow at the vital principle of republics, acquiescence in the will of the majority, that he can not permit us again to place in his hands the leadership of the Democratic hosts, for the reason that the achievement of reform in the administration of the Federal Government is an undertaking now too heavy for his age and failing strength. Rejoicing that his life has been prolonged until the general judgment of our fellow- countrymen is united in the wish that that wrong were righted in his person, for the Democracy of the United States we offer to him, in his withdrawal from public cares, not only our respectful sympathy and esteem, but also that best homage of freemen, the pledge of our devotion to the principles and the cause now inseparable from the name of Samuel J. Tilden. With this statement of the hopes, principles, and purposes of the Democratic party, the great issue of reform and change in adminis- tration is submitted to the people, in calm confidence that the popular voice will pronounce in favor of new men and new and more favorable conditions for the growth of industry, the extension of trade and em- ployment, and due reward of labor and of capital, and the general welfare of the whole country. REPUBLICAN PLATFORM, 1888. The Republicans of the United States, assembled by their delegates in National Convention, pause on the threshold of their proceedings to honor the memory of their first great leader, the immortal cham- pion of liberty and the rights of the people, Abraham Lincoln, and to cover also with wreaths of imperishable remembrance and grati- tude the heroic names of our later leaders, who have more recently been called away from our councils Grant, Garfield, Arthur, Logan, Conkling. May their memories be faithfully cherished. We also recall with our greetings and with prayer for his recovery the name of one of our living heroes, whose memory will be treasured in the history both of Republicans and of the Republic the name of that noble soldier and favorite child of victory, Philip H. Sheridan. In the spirit of those great leaders and of our own devotion to human liberty, and with that hostility to all forms of despotism and oppression which is the fundamental idea of the Republican party, we sent fraternal congratulations to our fellow-Americans of Brazil DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF THE EPOCH. 479 upon their great act of emancipation, which completed the abolition of slavery throughout the two American continents. We earnestly hope that we may soon congratulate our fellow-citizens of Irish birth upon the peaceful recovery of Home Rule for Ireland. We reaffirm our unswerving devotion to the National Constitution and to the indissoluble Union of the States; to the autonomy reserved to the States under the Constitution; to the personal rights and lib- erties of citizens in all the States and Territories in the Union, and especially to the supreme and sovereign right of every lawful citizen, rich or poor, native or foreign born, white or black, to cast one free ballot in public elections, and to have that ballot duly counted. We hold the free and honest popular ballot and the just and equal repre- sentation of all the people to be the foundation of our republican Gov- ernment, and demand effective legislation to secure the integrity and purity of elections, which are the fountains of all public authority. We charge that the present Administration and the Democratic ma- jority in Congress owe their existence to the suppression of the ballot by a criminal nullification of the Constitution and Laws of the United States. We are uncompromisingly in favor of the American system of Pro- tection; we protest against its destruction, as proposed by the Presi- dent and his party. They serve the interests of Europe; we will sup- port the interests of America. We accept the issue and confidently appeal to the people for their judgment. The protective system must be maintained. Its abandonment has always been followed by gen- eral disaster to all interests except those of the usurer and the sheriff. We denounce the Mills bill as destructive to the general business, the labor, and the farming interests of the country, and we heartily indorse the consistent and patriotic action of the Republican Repre- sentatives in Congress in opposing its passage. We condemn the proposition of the Democratic party to place wool on the free list, and we insist that the duties thereon shall be adjusted and maintained so as to furnish full and adequate protection to that industry throughout the United States. The Republican party would effect all needed reduction of the Na- tional revenue by repealing the taxes upon tobacco, which are an annoyance and burden to agriculture, and the tax upon spirits used in the arts and for mechanical purposes, and by such revision of the tariff laws as will tend to check imports of such articles as are pro- duced by our people, the production of which gives employment to our labor, and releases from import, duties those articles of foreign pro- duction (except luxuries) the like of which can not be produced at home. If there shall still remain a larger revenue than is requisite for 480 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. the wants of the Government, we favor the entire repeal of the inter- nal taxes rather than the surrender of any part of our protective sys- tem at the joint behest of the whisky ring and the agents of foreign manufacturers. We declare our hostility to the introduction into this country of foreign contract labor, and of Chinese labor, alien to our civilization and Constitution, and we demand the rigid enforcement of the exist- ing laws against it, and favor such immediate legislation as will ex- clude such labor from our shores. We declare our opposition to all combinations of capital organized in trusts or otherwise, to control arbitrarily the condition of trade among our citizens; and we recommend to Congress, and the State Legislatures, in their respective jurisdictions, such legislation as will prevent the execution of all schemes to oppress the people by undue charges on their supplies, or by unjust rates for the transportation of their products to market. We approve the legislation by Congress to prevent alike unjust burden and unfair discriminations between the States. We reaffirm the policy of appropriating the public lands of the United States to be homesteads for American citizens and settlers not aliens which the Republican party established in 1862, against the persistent opposition of the Democrats in Congress, and which has brought our great Western domain into such magnificent devel- opment. The restoration of unearned railroad land grants to the public domain for the use of actual settlers, which was begun under the administration of President Arthur, should be continued. We deny that the Democratic party has ever restored one acre to the people, but declare that by the joint action of Republicans and Demo- crats about twenty-eight millions of acres of unearned lands, origi- nally granted for the construction of railroads, have been restored to the public domain, in pursuance of the conditions inserted by the Republican party in the original grants. W T e charge the Democratic Administration with failure to execute the laws securing to settlers titles to their homesteads, and with using appropriations made for that purpose, to harass innocent settlers with spies and persecutions, under the false pretense of exposing frauds and vindicating the law. The government by Congress of the Territories is based upon neces- sity, only to the end that they may become States in the Union ; there- fore, whenever the conditions of population, material resources, pub- lic intelligence, and morality are such as to insure a stable local government therein, the people of such Territories should be per- mitted, as a right inherent in them, to form for themselves Constitu- tions and State Governments, and be admitted into the Union. Pend- DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF THE EPOCH. 481 ing the preparation for Statehood, all officers thereof should be se- lected from the bona fide residents and citizens of the Territory where- in they are to serve. South Dakota should of right be immediately admitted as a State in the Union, under the Constitution framed and adopted by her people, and we heartily indorse the action of the Re- publican Senate in twice passing bills for her admission. The refusal of the Democratic House of Representatives, for partisan purposes, to favorably consider these bills, is a willful violation of the sacred American principle of local self-government, and merits the condem- nation of all just men. The pending bills in the Senate to enable the people of Washington, North Dakota, and Montana Territories to form constitutions and establish State Governments should be passed without unnecessary delay. The Republican party pledges it- self to do all in its power to facilitate the admission of the Territories of New Mexico, Wyoming, Idaho, and Arizona to the enjoyment of self-government as States, such of them as are now qualified, as soon as possible, and the others as soon as they may become so. The political power of the Mormon Church in the Territories, as exercised in the past, is a menace to free institutions, too dangerous to be longer suffered. Therefore, we pledge the Republican party to appropriate legislation asserting the sovereignty of the Nation in all Territories where the same is questioned, and in furtherance of that end, to place upon the statute books legislation stringent enough to divorce the political from the ecclesiastical power, and thus stamp out the attendant wickedness of polygamy. The Republican party is in favor of the use of both gold and silver as money, and condemns the policy of the Democratic Administration in its efforts to demonetize silver. We demand the reduction of letter postage to one cent per ounce. In a republic like ours, where the citizen is the sovereign and the of- ficial the servant, where no power is exercised except by the will of the people, it is important that the sovereign the people should possess intelligence. The free school is the promoter of that intelligence which is to preserve us as a free Nation; therefore, the State or Nation, or both combined, should support free institutions of learning suffi- cient to afford every child growing in the land the opportunity of a good common-school education. We earnestly recommend that prompt action be taken by Congress in the enactment of such legislation as will best secure the rehabili- tation of our American merchant marine, and we protest against the passage by Congress of a free ship bill, as calculated to work injustice to labor, by lessening the wages of those engaged in preparing ma- terials, as well as those directly employed in our shipyards. We de- 482 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. mand appropriations for the early rebuilding of our navy, for the construction of coast fortifications and modern ordnance, and other approved modern means of defense for the protection of our defense- less harbors and cities, for the payment of just pensions to our soldiers, for necessary works of National importance in the improve- ment of harbors and the channels of internal, coastwise, and foreign commerce, for the encouragement of the shipping interests of the Atlantic, Gulf, and Pacific States, as well as for the payment of the maturing public debt. This policy will give employment to our labor, activity to our various industries, increase the security of our country, promote trade, open new and direct markets for our produce, and cheapen the cost of transportation. We affirm this to be far better for our country than the Democratic policy of loaning the Government's money without interest to " pet banks." The conduct of foreign affairs by the present Administration has been distinguished by its inefficiency and its cowardice. Having withdrawn from the Senate all pending treaties made by Republican administrations for the removal of foreign burdens and restrictions upon our commerce and for its extension into better markets, it has neither effected nor proposed any others in their etead. Professing adherence to the Monroe doctrine, it has seen with idle complacency the extension of foreign influence in Central America, and of foreign trade everywhere among our neighbors. It has refused to charter, sanction, or encourage any American organization for constructing the Nicaragua Canal, a work of vital importance to the maintenance of the Monroe doctrine, and of our National influence in Central and South America, and necessary for the development of trade with our Pacific territory, with South America, and with the islands and fur- ther coasts of the Pacific Ocean. We arraign the present Democratic Administration for its weak and unpatriotic treatment of the fisheries question, and its pusillani- mous surrender of the essential privileges to which our fishing vessels are entitled in Canadian ports under the treaty of 1818, the reciprocal maritime legislation of 1830, and the comity of nations, and which Canadian fishing vessels receive in the ports of the United States. We condemn the policy of the present Administration and the Democratic majority in Congress toward our fisheries as unfriendly and conspicuously unpatriotic, and as tending to destroy a valuable National industry and an indispensable source of defense against a foreign enemy. " The name of American applies alike to all citizens of the Republic, and imposes upon all alike the same obligation of obedience to the laws. At the same time that citizenship is and must be the panoply DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF THE EPOCH. 483 and safeguard of him who wears it, and protect him, whether high or low, rich or poor, in all his civil rights. It should and must afford him protection at home, and follow and protect him abroad, in what- ever land he may be on a lawful errand." The men who abandoned the Republican party in 1884 and continue to adhere to the Democratic party, have deserted not only the cause of honest government, of sound finance, of freedom and purity of the ballot, but especially have deserted the cause of reform in the civil service. We will not fail to keep our pledges because they have broken theirs, or because their candidate has broken his. We there- fore repeat our declaration of 1884, to wit : " The reform of the civil service, auspiciously begun under the Republican administration, should be completed by the further extension of the reform system, already established by law, to all the grades of the service to which it is applicable. The spirit and purpose of the reform should be ob- served in all executive appointments, and all laws at variance with the object of existing reform legislation should be repealed, to the end that the dangers to free institutions which lurk in the power of official patronage may be wisely and effectually avoided." The gratitude of the Nation to the defenders of the Union can not be measured by laws. The legislation of Congress should conform to the pledge made by a loyal people, and be so enlarged and extended as to provide against the possibility that any man who honorably wore the Federal uniform shall become an inmate of an almshouse or dependent upon private charity. In the presence of an overflow- ing treasury it would be a public scandal to do less for those whose valorous service preserved the Government. We denounce the hostile spirit shown by President Cleveland in his numerous vetoes of meas- ures for pension relief, and the action of the Democratic House of Representatives in refusing even a consideration of general pension legislation. In support of the principles herewith enunciated we invite the co-operation of patriotic men of all parties, and especially of all work- ingmen, whose prosperity is seriously threatened by the free-trade policy of the present Administration. DEMOCRATIC PLATFORM, 1888. The Democratic party of the United States, in National Convention assembled, renews the pledge of its fidelity to Democratic faith, and reaffirms the platform adopted by its representatives in the Conven- tion of 1884, and indorses the views expressed by President Cleve- land in his last annual message to Congress as the correct interpreta- 484 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. tion of that platform upon the question of tariff reduction; and also indorses the efforts of our Democratic Representatives in Congress to secure a reduction of excessive taxation. Chief among its principles of party faith are the maintenance of an indissoluble Union of free and indestructible States, now about to enter upon its second century of unexampled progress and renown: devotion to a plan of government regulated by a written constitution strictly specifying every granted power, and expressly reserving to the States or people the entire ungranted residue of power; the en- couragement of a jealous, popular vigilance directed to all who have been chosen for brief terms to enact and execute the laws and are charged with the duty of preserving peace, insuring equality, and establishing justice. The Democratic party welcomes an exacting scrutiny of the admin- istration of the executive power, which four years ago was committed to its trust in the election of Grover Cleveland as President of the United States, but it challenges the most searching inquiry con- cerning its fidelity and devotion to the pledges which then invited the suffrages of the people. During a most critical period of our financial affairs, resulting from over-taxation, the anomalous con- dition of our currency, and a public debt unmatured, it has, by the adoption of a wise and conservative course, not only averted disaster, but greatly promoted the prosperity of the people. It has reversed the improvident and unwise policy of the Repub- lican party touching the public domain, and has reclaimed from corporations and syndicates, alien and domestic, and restored to the people nearly one hundred millions of acres of valuable land, to be sacredly held as homesteads for our citizens. While carefully guarding the interests of the taxpayers and con- forming strictly to the principles of justice and equity, it has paid out more for pensions and bounties to the soldiers and sailors of the Republic than was ever paid before during an equal period. It has adopted and consistently pursued a firm and prudent foreign policy, preserving peace with all nations, while scrupulously main- taining all the rights and interests of our own Government and people at home and abroad. The exclusion from our shores of Chinese labor- ers has been effectually secured under the provision of a treaty, the operation of which has been postponed by the action of a Republican majority in the Senate. Honest reform in the civil service has been inaugurated and main- tained by President Cleveland, and he has brought the public service to the highest standard of efficiency, not only by rule and precept, but by the example of his own untiring and unselfish administration of public affairs. DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF THE EPOCH. 485 In every branch and department of the Government under Demo- cratic control, the rights and the welfare of all the people have been guarded and defended; every public interest has been protected, and the equality of all our citizens before the law, without regard to race or color, has been steadfastly maintained. Upon its record thus exhibited, and upon the pledge of a continu- ance to the people of these benefits, the Democracy invokes a renewal of public trust by the re-election of a chief magistrate who has been faithful, able, and prudent. We invoke, in addition to that trust, the transfer to the Democracy of the entire legislative power. The Republican party, controlling the Senate and resisting in both houses of Congress a reformation of unjust and unequal tax laws, which have outlasted the necessities of war and are now undermin- ing the abundance of a long peace, deny to the people equality before the law and the fairness and the justice which are their right. Thus the cry of American labor for a better share of the rewards of indus- try is stifled with false pretenses, enterprise is fettered and bound down to home markets, capital is disturbed with doubt, and unequal, unjust laws can neither be properly amended nor repealed. The Democratic party will continue with all the power confided to it the struggle to reform these laws in accordance with pledges of its last platform, indorsed at the ballot-box by the suffrages of the people. Of all the industrious freemen of our land the immense majority, including every tiller of the soil, gain no advantage from excessive tax laws, but the price of nearly everything they buy is increased by the favoritism of an unequal system of tax legislation. All unnecessary taxation is unjust taxation. It is repugnant to the creed of Democracy that by such taxation the cost of the necessa- ries of life should be unjustly increased to all our people. Judged by Democratic principles, the interests of the people are betrayed when, by unnecessary taxation, trusts and combinations are per- mitted to exist, w T hich while unduly enriching the few that combine, rob the body of our citizens by depriving them of the benefits of nat- ural competition. Every Democratic rule of governmental action is violated when, through unnecessary taxation, a vast sum of money, far beyond the needs of an economical administration, is drawn from the people and the channels of trade, and accumulated as a demoraliz- ing surplus in the national treasury. The money now lying in the Federal treasury, resulting from super- fluous taxation, amounts to more than $125,000,000, and the surplus collected is reaching the sum of more than $00,000,000 annually. 486 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. Debauched by this immense temptation, the remedy of the Republican party is to meet and exhaust by extravagant appropriations and ex- penses, whether constitutional or not, the accumulation of extrava- gant taxation. The Democratic policy is to enforce frugality in pub- lic expense and abolish unnecessary taxation. Our established do- mestic industries and enterprises should not and need not be endan- gered by a reduction and correction of the burdens of taxation. Oil the contrary, a fair and careful revision of our tax laws, with due allowance for the difference between the wages of American and foreign labor, must promote and encourage every branch of such industries and enterprises by giving them assurances of an extended market and steady and continuous operation. In the interests of American labor, which should in no event be neglected, revision of our tax laws, contemplated by the Democratic party, should promote the advantage of such labor by cheapening the cost of necessaries of life in the home of every workingman, and at the same time secur- ing to him steady and remunerative employment. Upon this question of tariff reform, so closely concerning every phase of our national life, and upon every question involved in the problem of good government, the Democratic party submits its prin- ciples and professions to the intelligent suffrages of the American people. THE PERIOD OF DISCONTENT. I. PRESIDENT HARRISON'S ADMINISTRATION. The Fifty-first Congress Thomas B. Reed Coinage Act of 1890 Bland Silver Coinage Act of 1878 The Purchase of Silver Mc- Kinley Tariff Act of 1890 William McKinley Features of the McKinley Tariff Reciprocity International Conference of 1889 Reaction The Fifty-second Congress Bland Free Coinage Bill A Do-nothing Congress. ITH the election of President Harrison a Republican Con- gress was chosen that gave the new administration the support that is necessary to a successful policy. In the Senate upon the organization of the 51st Congress there were 39 Republicans to 37 Democrats, but this meager majority was afterward increased by the admission of the new States of Montana, North and South Dakota, and Washington. Montana was not represented in the Senate in the 51st Congress. The first Senators from the new States w r ere Gilbert A. Pierce and Lyman R. Case}', of North Dakota; Gideon C. Moody and Richard F. Pettigrew, of South Dakota, and Watson C. Squire and John B. Allen, of Wash- ington, all Republicans. The Republicans who entered the Senate for the first time were Edward O. Wolcott, of Colorado; Anthony Hig- gins, of Delaware; and William D. Washburn, of Minnesota. John W. Daniel and John S. Barbour, of Virginia, Democrats, succeeded William Mahone and H. H. Riddleberger. The new Republican mem- bers of the House were: John J. De Haven and William Vandever, of California; Hosea Townsend, of Colorado; William E. Symonds, Charles A. Russell, and Frederick Miles, of Connecticut; Abner Taylor, W r illiam E. Mason, Charles A. Hill, P. S. Post, William H. Gest, and George W. Smith, of Illinois; Joseph B. Cheadle, of Indiana; John H. Gear, J. H. Sweeney, Daniel Kerr, John F. Lacey, and James P. Dolliv- er, of Iowa; E. J. Turner, of Kansas; J. H. Wilson and H. F. Finley, of Kentucky; H. D. Coleman, of Louisiana; H. Stockbridge, Jr., of Mary- land; Charles S. Randall, Elijah F. Morse, Henry C. Lodge, William Cogswell, Francis T. Greenhalge, John W. Candler, J. H. Walker, and Rodney Wallace, of Massachusetts; Edward P. Allen, C. E. Belknap, Mark S. Brewer, T. D. Bliss, F. W. Wheeler, and S. M. Stephenson, of Michigan; M. H. Dunnell, John Lind, Darwin S. Hall, S. P. Snyder, 488 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. and Solomon G. Comstock, of Minnesota; F. G. Neidringhaus, Nathan Frank, and William M. Kinsey, of Missouri; Thomas H. Carter, of Montana; W. J. Cornell and Gilbert F. Laws, of Nebraska; H. F. Bar- tine, of Nevada; Alonzo Nute and Orren C. Moore, of New Hamp- shire; Chris A. Bergen, of New Jersey; William C. Wallace, M. D. Sti- vers,CharlesJ. Knapp, J. A.Quackeubush, John Sanford, John H. Mof- fitt, Frederick Lansing, James S. Sherman, David Wilber, James J. Belden, Milton Delano, Thomas S. Flood, John Raines, and William G. Laidlaw, of New York; H. P. Cheatham, and H. G. Ewart, of North Carolina; H. C. Hansbrough, of North Dakota; J. A. Caldwell, E. S. Williams, M.M.Boothman, Henry L. Morey, Robert P. Kennedy, Jacob J. Pugsley, C. P. Wickham, Joseph D. Taylor, Martin L. Smyser, and Thomas E. Burton, of Ohio; Smedley Darlington, R. A. Yardley, Mar- riott Brosius, J. W. Rife, M. B. Wright, Henry C. McCormick, Edward Scull, Samuel A. Craig, John Dalzell, J. Warren Ray, C. C. Townsend, W. C. Culberson, and Lewis F. Watson, of Pennsylvania; Warren O. Arnold, of Rhode Island; Oscar F. Gifford and John A. Pickler, of South Dakota; Alfred A. Tay- lor and Henry C. Evans, of Tennessee; T. H. B. Browne and George E. Bowden, of Vir- ginia; John L. Wilson, of Washington; and Charles B. Clark, Nils P. Haugen, and Myron H. McCord, of Wisconsin. The venerable THOMAS B. REED. General N. P. Banks was once more a mem- ber of the House from Massachusetts. Among the Democrats, who were or became prominent, were William McAdoo, of New Jersey; Amos J. Cummings and Roswell P. Flower, of New York; William Mutchler and James Kerr, of Pennsylvania, and W. H. F. Lee, of Virginia. Thomas B. Reed, of Maine, was chosen Speaker of the House, a post he has since held, except in the 52d and 53d Congresses, w r hen the Democrats were in a majority. Mr. Reed had proved himself the strongest member of one of the strongest delegations in Congress. W T ell-informed, able, brilliant, eloquent, witty, with a vein of sardonic aggressiveness in his wit that was always sarcastic, and sometimes bitter, Speaker Reed brought to the chair qualities that made him a fit successor of Banks, of Grow, of Colfax, and of Blaiue. But he had other qualities that w T ere especially needed in the emer- gency in which he was called to the Speakership. Among these his quickness of perception, his readiness of resource, and his indomit- able courage are the most conspicuous. In the 51st Congress PRESIDENT HARRISON'S ADMINISTRATION. 489 they were especially necessary. The Republican majority in the House was only eight 169 Republicans to 161 Democrats. To hold such a slender majority in hand, and with it to achieve practical re- sults in legislation required great ability and skill, as well as the un- bending will of a master of men. But more difficult of management than the slender majority was the powerful minority. Unable to con- trol legislation the Democrats determined to prevent it. Their plan was to break the quorum by refusing to vote. This device was met by another as effective as it was simple. Instead of acknowledging the recalcitrant Democrats as absentees the Speaker counted them as present, and thus enabled the House to pass the party measures which, under a less resolute presiding officer, would have been beaten. This was called " counting a quorum." It was a plan that gave great offense to the Democrats, who denounced it with extraordinary bit- terness, and nicknamed the Speaker " Czar " Reed. The principal legislation of the 51st Congress was the Coin- age Act of 1890 and the so-called McKinley Tariff. The free coinage of silver had been forcing itself upon the attention of Congress with more or less aggressiveness ever since 1877. Previous to 1873 it had existed legally, although in practical operation the coinage of the sil- ver dollar was almost nominal. From the establishment of the mint in 1792 to 1806 the aggregate number of silver dollars coined was 1,439,417, and from 1806 to 1835 there was no coinage whatever of this piece. In 1836 the number of dollar pieces coined was only 1,000. The two years following coinage of dollars was suspended, but was re- sumed in 1839, when 300 were issued, and the coinage was continued until 1873, when the standard silver dollar was supplanted by the trade dollar. The largest, annual coinage of standard silver dollars was made in the years 1871 and 1872, when it was 1,117,136 and 1,- 118,600 respectively, which is equal to nearly two-fifths of the aggre- gate of standard silver dollars coined from 1792 to 1873, which aggre- gate was 7,830,538. The number coined in January and February, 1873, was 296,000, which are included in the above aggregate. The " Demonetization Act " was passed February 12, 1873. At this time and for twelve years before and six years afterward, no gold or silver coins were in actual circulation in the United States. At first no at- tention was paid to the demonetization of the silver dollar, but after the passage of the Resumption Act in 1875, an agitation for its res- toration to the coinage began, which had a partial success in the Coinage Act of 1878. In 1877 what was known as the " Bland bill " passed the House of Representatives. It was prepared and championed by Mr. Bland, of Missouri. This bill provided for the coinage of " silver dollars of the 490 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. weight of 412! grains Troy, of standard silver, as provided in the Act of January 18, 1873. . . . Which coins, together with all silver dollars heretofore coined by the United States of equal weight and fineness, shall be a legal tender, at their nominal value, for all debts and dues, public and private, except where otherwise provided by contract. And, any owner of silver bullion may deposit the same at any United States coinage mint or assay office, to be coined into such dollars for his benefit, upon the same terms and conditions as gold bul- lion is deposited for coinage under existing laws." It gave free coin- age (that is, the same coinage as was given to gold) to any owner of silver bullion who presented it at the mint unlimited coinage of silver dollars for all silver bullion presented to be coined. It made coinage compulsory, at the ratio existing between silver and gold. It was practical monometallism, with silver as the standard, and gold at a premium, for the cheaper metal, when coined, invariably takes the volume of circulation and expels the dearer. The entire character of this bill was changed in the Senate, and as finally passed by both Houses became known as the Bland-Allison Act. As passed, it in- volved the principle of bimetallism, for it limited the coinage of the cheaper metal, silver, and undertook to maintain it at par with gold by providing for its redemption. The Act of February 28, 1878, restored the silver dollar of 412i grains to the coinage with full legal tender power, but did not restore silver bullion to the minting privilege which attached to it prior to 1873, and which was in every respect equal to that bestowed upon gold. This Act re-established the " dollar of the fathers," made it legal tender for all debts, " except when otherwise expressly stipulated in the con- tract," and directed the Secretary of the Treasury to purchase silver bullion monthly " at the market price thereof, not less than two mill- ion dollars' worth per month, nor more than four million dollars' worth per month, and cause the same to be coined monthly, as fast as so purchased, into such dollars." The third section provided that holders of silver dollars " may deposit the same with the Treasurer or any Assistant Treasurer of the United States, in sums not less than ten dollars, and receive therefor certificates of not less than ten dol- lars each." It also provided " that immediately after the passage of this Act the President shall invite the governments of the countries composing the Latin Union, so called, and of such other European nations as he may deem advisable, to join the United States in a conference to adopt a common ratio between gold and silver, for the purpose of establishing internationally the use of bimetallic money and securing fixity of relative value between those metals." This bill represented the thought that pervaded the silver agitation PRESIDENT HARRISON'S ADMINISTRATION. 491 of later years. Those who favored the " Greenback " inflation scheme were its ardent supporters. Kepresentatives from the silver-produc- ing States were strongly in its favor, in the belief that it would en- hance the value of their product. While it made the coinage of silver dollars compulsory to the extent of $2,000,000 a month, it placed a limit at $4,000,000. It was thought that this much circulation in silver dollars could be kept at par with gold, but it was soon found that the silver dollars would not circulate. Out of the 12,136 tons of silver purchased by the Government at a cost of 1308,199,262, and out of the 378,166,793 silver dollars coined therefrom under the Act, at an expense of $5,000,000, not more than one out of every eight found its way into circulation. The Government might as well have saved itself the $5,000,000 expense of coinage, and bought and stored the silver in bullion shape. The bullion was always w r orth more than the coined dollars, and could have been more safely and cheaply cared for in the Treasury vaults than its equivalent in coins. There was no increase in the price of silver bullion, for it declined from $1.12 an ounce in 1879, to 93^ cents an ounce in 1889, or, in other words, it declined to a point where it stood to gold as 22 to 1 per ounce value, and the value of the silver in a silver dollar was only 72 cents. The silver certificate feature of the Act proved of little practical value, and in the main the Act negatived its own provisions, and bred causes for its repeal, which led to the passage of the Coinage Act of July 14, 1890. The bill which became the basis of this Act was prepared on a plan that embraced the views of Secretary of the Treasury Windom. It was submitted to the House and passed. Its provisions were that any owner of silver bullion, not foreign, could bring it to any mint and obtain for it legal tender treasury notes equal in value to the then market value of the silver, which notes were redeemable either in gold or silver bullion, at its then market value, at the option of the Government, or in silver dollars at the holder's option. This bill was amended in the Senate by inserting a clause providing for free and unlimited coinage. It then went to a conference committee, where it took the form in which it was passed finally and became a law. As passed it directed the Secretary of the Treasury to pur- chase 4,500,000 ounces of silver bullion each month at the market price thereof, not exceeding $1 for every 371^ grains of pure silver, and to issue in payment for such purchase Treasury Notes of the United States. These Treasury Notes were made redeemable in coin, gold, or silver, at the discretion of the Secretary of the Treasury, and had full legal tender value. Following this clause was one which read: " It being the established policy of the United States to maintain the 492 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. two metals on a parity with each other upon the present legal ratio, or such ratio as may be provided by law." The Act also provided for the actual coinage of 12,000,000 silver dollars a month up until July 1, 1891. After that date no silver dollars were coined, but the bullion purchased was held in the form of tine silver bars. Under the Act $28,298,455 was coined, and up to April 1, 1891, $89,602,198 in Treasury Notes, to pay for bullion deposited, had been issued, $77,605,- 000 of which were in circulation. At the same date the value of silver bars held by the Treasury was $65,720,000. On November 1, 1891, the total of silver dollars coined and in existence in the United States, under all the Acts, was $409,475,368, of which $347,339,907 was in the Treasury, and only $62,135,461 outside of the Treasury, or in circulation. Against this $323,668,401 silver certificates had been issued, $321,142,642 of which were outside of the Treasury, and $2,525,759 inside. At the same date the stock of silver bullion in the Treasury was $33,094,234. The 54,000,000 ounces of silver which the Government was required to buy yearly, and to issue Treasury Notes therefor, was the exact output of the silver mines in the United States in 1890. A prime ob- ject of the law was, therefore, to furnish a sure market for the product of our mines, at the prevailing price of silver bullion when presented at the Treasury. The Act was a compromise act, and both mine owners and advocates of " free and unlimited coinage " accepted the compromise, as the best that could be done to secure a certain home market for their product, and at the same time increase the circulat- ing medium of the country by just the number of Treasury Notes re- quired to purchase 54,000,000 ounces of silver. It was a general be- lief, at the time of the passage of the Act, that its effect w r ould be to increase the market price of silver. Indeed this was confidently prophesied by mine ow r ners and free silver coinage advocates. In an- ticipation of such rise, silver speculators entered the market and drove silver bullion up to $1.05 an ounce in April, 1890; to $1.08 in May; to $1.15 in August, and to $1.21 in September. But now the natural law of supply and demand began to operate against them. They had to contend with the world's market, and the world's prices, and no longer with a home market and home prices. The inevitable consequence was that the price of silver broke. The country that could sustain a certain amount of silver coin, as a circulating medium, at par with gold, could not sustain the market value of silver bullion at a point above where the laws of supply and demand, as established by the world at large, chose to fix it. In October, 1890, silver fell to $1.09 per ounce, and in December to $1.06. The decline was gradual for a long time. In December, 1891, silver was worth 94| cents an PRESIDENT HARRISON'S ADMINISTRATION. 493 ounce, and the fine silver in a dollar was worth only 73 cents. On May 23, 1892, silver sold for 881 cents per ounce. Therefore, even with so excellent a customer as the Government, and one ready to take the entire output of the silver mines of this country, the mar- ket price of the product declined. The Tariff bill of 1890 was a measure of far greater importance and fraught with more far-reaching consequences than the Coinage Act. It was framed by the Committee on Ways and Means, and took the name of the McKinley bill, from the Chairman of the committee, William McKinley. Mr. McKinley had served thirteen years on the committee before he attained to its leadership. What may be called his maiden speech on the doctrine of Protection was made in 1878, when the Wood bill was under discussion. This speech ranked as one of the ablest delivered at the time, and stamped him as a leader in the economic thought that was to dominate future tariff legislation. His part in the passage of the Tariff of 1883 was so conspicuous that Judge Kelley said of him that he had " distanced all of his colleagues in mastering the details of the tariff." More than any one else Mr. McKinley at this time made the protective idea a paramount doc- trine of the Republican party, carrying it into the workshops and homes of American workiugmen. In 1888, when Mr. Mills sprung his remarkable attack upon American industries upon the House, without consultation with the minority of the Committee on Ways and Means, Mr. McKinley took the lead in resenting the insult, and in making a report remarkable for its exhaustive presentation of facts, minuteness of detail, and invincibility of argument. The re- port was followed by a speech that showed that he was without an equal in the House in fearless, logical, and convincing championship of a Tariff for Protection. The election of President Harrison and a Republican House of Representatives gave him the first claim to the Chairmanship of Ways and Means in the 51st Congress, where, by virtue of his position, it became his duty to incorporate the policy of the party into the form of a statute. He entered upon the work fully equipped by experience, and with all the enthusiasm of his ardent nature. Determined to avoid the errors into which the Demo- crats had previously fallen, he invited all the interests concerned in tariff revision to a hearing, and a bill was framed which was to con- stitute the Tariff Act of 1890, and be popularly known as the " Mc- Kinley bill." The effort was to embody in the bill the experience of all former tariff legislation and what w r as best of all former acts; to impose rates of a distinctively protective character, and in the inter- ests of American labor, on manufactures w r hich could exist here. but whose existence was threatened by foreign competition; to im- 494 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. pose similar rates on goods, such as tin plates, which we do not but could manufacture and ought to; largely to reduce the duty on neces- saries, or exempt them altogether, as by making sugar free; to in- crease the free list by placing all raw materials on it whose importa- tion did not compete with the home growth of the same; to introduce the policy of reciprocity, by which we could gain something by en- larged trade in return for the loss of duties on sugars and such ar- ticles. A great deal of thought was given to the bill, and it was fully debated in Congress. Perhaps no Tariff Act was ever passed in w T hose preparation so many interests had been so fully consulted, and with whose provisions the varied interests were so fully satisfied. Certainly none ever passed that had to undergo more minute criti- cism, whose merits were more elaborately discussed, and respecting which so many prophecies, good and bad, were indulged. Its passage occupied the entire time of the first session of the 51st Congress, and it was not until October 1, 1890, that it became a law. The McKinley Act increased duties on about 115 articles, embracing farm products, manufactures not sufficiently protected, manufactures to be established, and luxuries, such as wines. It decreased duties on about 190 articles, embracing manufactures to be established, or which could not suffer from foreign competition. It left the duties unchanged on 249 articles. It enlarged the free list till it embraced 55.75 per cent, of all imports, or 22.48 more than previous tariffs. The placing of sugar on the free list was a loss of revenue equal to 154,000,000 a year. Yet in its practical workings the act never failed to raise the revenue expected of it, which was ample for all the needs of the Government, with a fair margin to spare. With the McKinley Act were incorporated reciprocity features that had never before been made a part of an American tariff. While the United States were going through their early experiments with Free Trade and Protection there was scarcely a thought of reciproc- ity or reciprocal trade, as we have come to understand it. It was not until 1824 that its advantages began to be discussed. President Adams desired that our government should be represented in the " General Assembly of American Republics," called to meet at Pan- ama, June 22, 1826, and appointed two commissioners subject to the " advice and consent of the Senate." In the Senate the Committee on Foreign Relations reported against the proposed mission, and an acrimonious debate ensued, the Slave Power being hostile to the en- couragement of commercial intercourse with the South American Republics, whose example w r as regarded as " scarcely less fatal than the independence of Hayti to the repose of the slave States of the PRESIDENT HARRISON'S ADMINISTRATION. 495 Union." Finally the Senate grudgingly approved the President's selections, and the House, after a long delay, voted the necessary funds; but the delay was fatal, as it was intended to be, and the congress had adjourned before the commissioners could reach Pan- ama. After President Adams's futile attempt to promote reciprocal trade the idea of reciprocity lay dormant until it was revived by President Garfield. The Garfield scheme was generally attributed to the fer- tile brain of Secretary Elaine. Invitations were issued for a Peace Congress of the independent governments of the two Americas, but they were withdrawn by President Arthur to give Congress an op- portunity to act. A number of bills was introduced into the two Houses, but beyond the appointment of a commission to visit the Cen- tral and South American Republics nothing was done. In 1886 Mr. McCreary, of Kentucky, introduced a bill into the House providing for an international conference at Washington, and for " considering questions relating to the improvement of business intercourse be- tween said countries, and to encourage such reciprocal commercial relations as will be beneficial to all and secure more extensive mar- kets for the products of each of said countries." In opposition to the views of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Mr. Belmont, of New York, made a minority report that contained at least one preg- nant suggestion. "Nothing is now so desirable for our own people," he said, " as a free and reciprocal interchange of products between ourselves and the people of other nations on this continent. But what now hinders such free interchange so much as our tariff laws? If this Government shall invite Brazil, Mexico, and the Republics of Central America and South America to join us in a conference to pro- mote such free and reciprocal interchange of products, what conces- sions in our tariff schedules is the President to be authorized to in- struct our commissioners to propose on our part? The question of our own tariff will naturally and immediately come up for discussion and consideration. Shall, for example, our commissioners be author- ized to offer to the Argentine Republic to admit its wool into our ports free of duty? No one can be more sensible than I am of the great advantages which in our country flow from the free commercial intercourse unvexed by tariffs or custom houses, which the Federal Constitution secures. I wish by some possible and wise contrivance those advantages now enjoyed by and between Maine and California, Florida and Alaska, could be realized by and between every nation and every producer on this hemisphere from Baffin's Bay to Cape Horn." A bill, almost identical with the McCreary bill, had been intro- 496 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. duced into the Senate by Mr. Frye, of Maine. Jt passed the Senate June IT, 188G, but did not become a law until May 24, 1888. Under it an International American Conference was called to meet in Wash- ington, October 2, 1889. James G. Elaine was President of the Con- o ference. It remained in session until April, 1890. The Conference adopted a report which recognized the policy of reciprocit}', and the " need of closer and more reciprocal commercial relations among American States." Secretary Blaine submitted this report to the President, June 19, 1890, with an exhaustive review of its contents. Its gist was that out of a total of $233,000,000 imports furnished to Chile and Argentine alone in 1888, England contributed $90,000,000, Germany $43,000,000, France $34,000,000, and the United States only $13,000,000, and this notwithstanding the facts that our ports were nearest, and the bulk of those imports were of articles we were ac- tually manufacturing better than and as cheaply as foreign nations; that in 1868 our total exports were $375,737,000, of which $53,197.000, or 14 per cent., went to Spanish America, while in 1888 our total ex- ports were $742,3(18,000, of which $09,273,000, or only 9 per cent., went to Spanish America, and that it was the unanimous judgment of the delegates that our exports to these countries and the other Republics could be increased to a great extent by the negotiation of proper reciprocity treaties. These views obtained recognition in the Tariff Act of 1890, which provided that " on and after the first day of January, 1892, whenever and so often as the President shall be satisfied that the government of any country producing and exporting sugars, molasses, coffee, tea, and hides, raw and uncured, or any of such articles, imposes duties or other exactions upon the agricultural or other products of the United States, which, in view of the free introduction of such sugar, molasses, coffee, tea, and hides into the United States, he deem to be reciprocally unequal and unreasonable, he shall have the power, and it shall be his duty to suspend, by proclamation to that effect, the provisions of this Act relating to the free introduction of such sugar, molasses, coffee, tea, and hides, the production of such country, for such time as he shall deem just, and in such case and during such suspension duties shall be levied, collected, and paid upon sugar, mo- lasses, coffee, tea, and hides, the product of or exported from such designated country, as follows." Here follow the rates in detail, the rate on sugar being from 7-10th of a cent per pound to 2 cents per pound, according to test; on molasses 4 cents a gallon; on coffee 3 cents per pound; on tea, 10 cents per pound, and on hides 1^ cents per pound. With such comprehensive legislation a silver purchasing and PRESIDENT HARRISON'S ADMINISTRATION. 497 i coinage act, and a radical Protective Tariff, with still more radical Reciprocity features- it is scarcely surprising that the country, in the height of a Period of Discontent, was aghast at the work of the bold spirits in Congress responsible for these measures. Keaction was to be expected, but in the election for members of Congress in 1890 it was greater than even the most sanguine Democrat could have expected. In as many as seventeen States not a single Republican Representative was elected: Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Ne- braska, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Texas, Vir- ginia, and West Virginia. Five States chose only one Republican: Connecticut, Kentucky, Minnesota, North Carolina, and Wisconsin; and four States sent only two Republicans: Indiana, Kansas, New Jer- sey, and Tennessee. The Republican strength in the Republican States was: For California and Michigan, 4 each; Iowa and Massa- chusetts, 5 each; Illinois, 0; Ohio, 7; New York, 12; and Pennsylvania, IT. Seven States with only one Representative sent Republicans: Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, North Dakota, Oregon, Washington, and Wyoming. The other States that had full Republican delegations were: South Dakota and Vermont, 2 each, and Maine, 4. In the 52d Congress the House of Representatives contained only 88 Republicans to 235 Democrats, and 8 Farmers' Alliance Democrats. The revolution was so sweeping that the Republicans had scarcely a sufficient number of members to represent the minority on the com- mittees. The 52d Congress, although there was an overwhelming- Democratic majority in the House, was not, like its predecessor, a business Congress, and it developed no broad statesmanship or cour- ageous attempts at legislation. There was no attempt at the repeal or a general revision of the McKinley Act. Instead, a series of bills was introduced relating to special articles, such as the IOW T - ering of duties on the manufacture of wool and on tin plates, and the placing of wool, binding twine, etc., on the free list. These make- shifts were the occasion of animated discussion, and most of them passed the House. The whole purpose of the Democratic leaders was to shape the issues based on the legislation of the 51st Congress for the Presidential campaign of 1892, and to stimulate the discontent of the people, so as to bring the Democrats back to power in both the executive and legislative branches of the Government. As a par- tisan policy this proved successful, but only to result in another re- action more complete and permanent than that of 1890-92. On one question the 52d Congress showed a disposition to take distinct grounds in opposition to the theories previously held by 498 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. both parties on the free coinage of silver. The Act of 1890 had failed to realize the expectations of the silver producers. The Democrats of the South and West began to regard the " free and unlimited coin- age of silver " as their only panacea for depressed industrial and trade conditions. To meet their views Mr. Bland introduced into the House the measure known as the Bland Free Silver Coinage bill. He pressed it with his customary vigor, and was hopeful of its success, but when he demanded the previous question to put it upon its pas- sage he was met by an unexpected vote of 148 nays and 148 ayes. A sufficient number of Eastern Democrats voted with the Republicans to defeat it. Charles F. Crisp, of Georgia, had been chosen Speaker in opposition to William M. Springer, of Illinois, because of the sup- port of the Free Silver element in the House, and he served the men who had elected him by breaking the tie in favor of the bill, but it was afterward beaten by dilatory motions. The 51st Congress was popularly known as the " Billion-Dol- lar Congress," because of the enormous proportions of the appropria- tions voted by it. Notwithstanding its successor was the " Do-Noth- ing Congress," the appropriations of the 52d Congress ex- ceeded those of the 51st by $44,000,000. One cause of the im- potence of this Congress the offspring of discontent and reaction was the fact that the majority was too great; it was unwieldy, and it proved too unsophisticated and awkward for dealing with serious questions. But the " popgun " method of treating the tariff had its advantages on the eve of a Presidential campaign. II. THE CAMPAIGN OP 1892. Republican National Convention at Minneapolis The Candidates Platform Opposition to Harrison Mr. Blaine's Candidature- Dramatic Scenes in the Convention The Ballot Harrison Nom- inated Attempt to Stampede the Convention McKinley Whitelaw Reid Nominated for Vice-President Democratic Na- tional Convention Grover Cleveland the Favorite A Virulent and Bitter Platform The Presidential Candidates Cleveland Nominated Adlai E. Stevenson for Vice-President The Peo- ple's or Populist Party an Aggressive Campaign Republican Measures Assailed Result of the Elections A Democratic Tri- umph. RESIDENT HARRISON'S Administration was not suf- ficiently partisan to arouse the enthusiasm of the party, but no distinct purpose to resist the President's renomina- tion was evinced until within a few days of the Republi- can National Convention, which was called to meet at Minneapolis, June 7, 1892. It was not known that the opponents of the President would present the name of William McKinley to the Convention, and Mr. Blaine was not supposed to be a candidate. As Secretary of State he had exerted a powerful, if not controlling influence, over the policy of the Administration, and he seemed content with his com- manding position. But suddenly, only four days before the meeting of the Minneapolis Convention, he resigned from the Cabinet to be- come a candidate for the Presidency. It was then too late, as the result afterward showed, but his erratic action was not out of keep- ing with the previous history of his distinguished career. The Minneapolis Convention was the first departure from the recog- nized Convention cities since the organization of the Republican party Philadelphia, Baltimore, Cincinnati, and Chicago. Fremont and Grant for his second term were nominated in Philadelphia, Lin- coln was nominated the second time at Baltimore, and Hayes was nominated at Cincinnati. The Chicago nominations were: Lincoln in I860, Grant in 18(>8, Garfield in 1880, Blaine in 1884, and Harrison in 1888. Why Minneapolis was chosen in 1892 it would be difficult to say, unless its purpose was to gratify the Northwest. The majority of the delegations were compelled to pass through Chicago on their 500 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. way to the Convention, and for the others Chicago was as easy of access as Minneapolis. As a departure the experiment did not prove satisfactory. Three days were spent by the Convention before the presentation of the names of candidates for President of the United States was reached. William McKiuley was made President of the Convention, and a Platform was adopted favoring Protection for American indus- tries, bimetallism with legislative restriction, a free ballot and an honest count, extension of foreign commerce, the enforcement of the Monroe Doctrine, separation of church and state, efficient protection to railroad employees, reduced postage and extension of free mail de- liven', civil-service, the Nicaragua canal, admissions of Territories as States, the World's Fair, and pensions; and opposing Southern outrages, pauper immigration, trusts, and intemperance. The leaders of the Elaine forces were Senator Quay, of Pennsyl- vania; Thomas C. Platt, of New York; Joseph II. Mauley, of Maine, and J. S. Clarkson, of Iowa. They were determined and aggressive lighters, and did not give up the hope of beating Harrison until they were themselves beaten. " When they went into the Convention at last night's session," wrote a well-informed correspondent on the fourth day, " they were reduced to the necessity of making a demon- stration. They had been thrown into a panic, which they could not disguise, by the bold expedient of the Harrison managers in calling their delegates to make a display of their strength at midday. The caucus proved, as it was intended to do, the determination of the issue, and when the 4(53 men got together, Harrison's nomination was practically assured. It did not suit the purposes of the opposition to recognize this. They had gone so far that a cold plunge could hardly make them any worse off. They undertook to recover some of their lost prestige by forcing an issue on the report of the Committee on Credentials, and fought desperately from 8 o'clock until nearly 1.30 this morning to get something out of it. It was an issue on which it was perfectly well understood that the Harrison people were forty to fifty votes weaker than on the main question. On this account the Op- position expected to win. When the first test was won by the Harri- son men by 463 votes, exactly the number that had been counted at the Market Hall meeting, it was noticed that a majority of the Con- vention was elbow to elbow under the leadership of Depew r on the floor. Exact figures had a striking and impressive effect in show- ing that the organization of the Harrison forces was altogether com- plete, and could not be broken even on a side issue. The next ballot, taken on the majority report of the Credentials Committee, gave the Harrison people thirteen additional votes. It left the opposition in a THE CAMPAIGN OF 1892. 501 state of depression, and was the event which absolutely determined the hopelessness of the Elaine cause." Finally, when the presentation of the names of candidates was reached, and the call of the States was ordered, Senator Wolcott, of Colorado, was the first to answer. He was one of President Harri- son's bitterest opponents in the Convention, and the audience settled down in full confidence of hearing something worth hearing. He made no efforts for theatrical effect, but plunged into the middle of his speech, saying that one man was needed to carry the country above all others, and he named him " James G. Elaine." At the mention of the name flags \vere whisked out of pockets, fans were waved in air, delegates and spectators rose to their feet, and for two minutes Senator Wolcott calmly surveyed a howling, whistling mob below and above. The cheers would die down until the howling mob could catch its breath, then the war cry would be taken up again, but finally delegates and spectators resumed their seats. Then Wol- cott went on in a clear, ringing voice with his eulogy. Some of his words and sentences that called out the most applause were these: " Reciprocity;" " Our candidate has never been President of the United States, but he will be; " " There is a mistaken notion that pub- lic office is a personal gift; " " I rejoice that the opportunity is given me to cast my vote for a man who seeks everything for his country and nothing for himself; " " He stands for all that is brightest and best in American statesmanship; " " There is no true Republican who will not follow where he leads; " " We pledge our unfaltering and loyal support to James G. Elaine." More cheers were evoked as he closed, but it was not like the old Elaine days. When Indiana was called the venerable ex-Secretary of the Navy, Richard W. Thompson " Uncle Dick " rose in his place and stood for a moment as if in doubt. Then, as cries of " Platform! platform!" came from all parts of the hall, he walked straight and steadily up the aisle and ascended the speaker' s tribune. There was something in his plucky manner and sturdy bearing, despite his 83 years, and his white hair and w r rinkled visage, that awakened the admiration of the whole multitude, and as he placed General Harrison in nomination as the " Warrior Statesman," the Harrison forces went wild in their demonstrations. After Harrison was named the call of the States was continued. When Minnesota was called W. H. Eustis, a millionaire Minneapolis lawyer, made a speech seconding the nomination of Elaine, which however, provoked only perfunctory applause. At this point oc- curred one of the dramatic episodes of the Convention. While the cheers were rapidly dying out a pretty woman, with a sweet, girlish 502 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. face and blue, sparkling eyes, rose suddenly among the mass of men and women behind the chairman's desk. She was Mrs. Carson Lake, of Washington. In full view of the vast multitude she waved a silken umbrella round her shapely head and cried: " Elaine! Elaine! James G. Elaine! " Then she grasped her sun umbrella, pure white, with a white silk cord and tassel, opened it, and swung it round her head and danced it up and down, sometimes grasping it with one hand and sometimes with both. " Elaine! Elaine! " she cried again, and thousands of people in the galleries, and the Elaine people among the delegates rose in a mass and shouted. Mrs. J. S. Clarkson, who sat beside her, caught the enthusiasm, too, and springing to her feet, waved a silken flag, and even Mrs. Kerens, whose husband was a stanch Harrison man, added her mite to the tribute to Elaine. It ran wildly, outburst after outburst. Big " Tom " Reed, who sat just in front of Mrs. Kerens, took up the movement. His face melted into a broad grin, and he stood and shouted in honor of his old-time enemy. All over the hall the delegates were crying " Elaine! Elaine! James G. Elaine!" Delegates opened their umbrellas and waved them aloft. Judge Thurston, of Nebraska, waved a big white umbrella with Elaine's name in big black letters. An Illinois delegate, standing on his chair, fan in hand, led the cheers of " Elaine! Elaine! " on the floor like the leader of a chorus in a comic opera. Then the band brought up the rear of the procession with a melody, and just as the crowd in the galleries and on the floor started the stamping again, Chairman McKinley began to pound the table with his gavel. His call brought most of the delegates to order for a minute, but the confusion in the galleries continued. Again the chairman pounded the table, and again his signal mingled with the echoes. After thirty-one minutes of pandemonium. Governor McKinley's voice was at last heard, requesting that as a matter of safety, suggested by those having a knowledge of the building, the stamping of feet be discon- tinued. There was another outburst of applause when New York was reached. This time it was a Harrison demonstration. To Chauncey M. Depew was committed the task of seconding Harrison's nomina- tion. His speech was one of the best to which the Convention listened, and it was finished to the cheering and shouting of the mul- titude and the waving of flags and banners. Harrison also had his fair champions, and they started in to outdo the Elaine episode. Three or four ladies, with Mrs. Depew as a leader, stood on the high platform, waving handkerchiefs, fans and flags, and calling out to the thousands to shout " louder, louder, louder." The frenzied crowd obeyed their call. High it arose; then dying away, then bursting THE CAMPAIGN OF 1892. 503 out afresh. "Harrison! Harrison!" they cried. "Glory, glory halle- lujah." Some one started the song, and sweeping over the wild furore of cheers came the well-known strains. It was superb. While the swelling anthem filled the building a group of men appeared with an immense portrait of the President. The shouts and shrieks were re- newed. It was like a storm with screaming winds and beating sea accompaniment. It was too much for some of the irritated Elaine men, and presently a follower of the Plumed Knight came rushing down the broad aisle carrying a splendid silken banner of the Chi- cago Elaine Club, having on its front the features of the man from Maine. The hosts of Elaine men jumped to their seats. Their Joan of Arc was again waving her white sunshade. It was now a contest of voice against voice, cheer against cheer, of portrait against portrait. The banner of Elaine was planted defiantly in front of the portrait of Harrison. The Harrison bearers pushed their \vay beyond the in- truder and carried their burden back and forth in the aisles, while the band high up near the roof struck up the " Star Spangled Ban- ner." Warner Miller, of New York, gave the Elaine men another chance to prove their lung power by following Depew with a speech for the Maine candidate. The speechmaking only closed when Wisconsin was called, Senator Spooner speaking for Harrison. W T hen the roll was finished only two names were before the Convention, Harrison and Elaine; but a sign of the attempted stampede that was to be made later was shown in the midst of a Elaine outburst, when an al- leged Elaine delegate appeared with a picture of McKinley mounted on a pole, and paraded with it up and down the aisles, to the delight of a large part of the supposed Elaine delegates. The scenes attending the balloting were among the most exciting ever witnessed in a National Convention. It was a hand-to-hand encounter between the Harrison column and the politicians whose hearts were set upon the defeat of the President. There was only one ballot, but even in tabular form it showed the inherent interest of a struggle extending over two hours. The vote was: Harrison, 535^; Elaine, 182; McKinley, 182; Thomas B. Reed, 4, and Robert T. Lin- coln, 1. From the time of the previous adjournment at two o'clock in the morning until the balloting began there was no cessation in the work of President Harrison's opponents. The effect was to convince the Ohio delegation that McKinley could be nominated if Ohio would unite upon him. This meant a direct loss of at least twenty votes for Harrison from Ohio, and, perhaps, defections all along the line. But Ohio yielded to the temptation reluctantly, and in the end only be- 504 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. cause the voting showed a spontaneous movement for McKinley that seemed irresistible if McKinley's State gave the signal for a stampede. The plan was to throw as much of Elaine's strength as possible for McKinley before Ohio was reached. Beginning with Alabama's seven votes the scheme gave promise of success, Connecticut, Massa- chusetts, Michigan, and New York all developing unexpected Mc- Kinley strength, partly at Harrison's expense, but mostly at the ex- pense of Blaine. When Ohio was reached more time was asked, but Chairman McKinley directed the roll to be called. Then Mr. For- aker, rising, said, " I announce that Ohio casts two votes for Harri- son and forty-four for William McKinley, Jr." There was a wild, deafening shout, but Mr. McKinley, as the noise subsided, was heard addressing the Ohio delegation. " I challenge the vote of Ohio," he said. " You can not," responded Foraker, with a good-natured " you- are-in-it-uow " wave of his hand. " You can not." " I am a member of the Ohio delegation," Governor McKinley replied. " You have left the delegation and your alternate is serving. We do not own you," responded Foraker, crisply. McKinley persisted, and the delegation was polled. When the result was announced it was found that one of the two Harrison delegates had receded, and only McKinley's alter- nate voted for the President. Oregon followed for McKinley, and then Pennsylvania, throwing off the Blaine mask, gave him 42 votes to only 3 for Blaine. But the nineteen Pennsylvania delegates who remained true to Harrison stopped the tide, and prevented a stam- pede. The nomination of Harrison was made when the vote of Texas was cast. The whole number of votes in the Convention was 906, the number cast, 904 1-3; necessary to a choice, 453. There was scarcely any talk of a candidate for Yice-President until the nomination for President was made. After that result the Convention took a recess until evening. By tacit consent the naming of the candidate was left to the New York delegation, which agreed upon Whitelaw Reid, the editor of the Tribune. The name of Thomas B. Reed was also presented, but it was withdrawn at the re- quest of the Maine delegation, and Mr. Reid was nominated by unani- mous vote. When the Democratic National Convention met at Chicago on June 21, the nomination of Grover Cleveland was a foregone conclu- sion. There was a number of other candidates. David Bennett Hill, of New York; Horace Boies, of Iowa; Arthur P. Gorman, of Mary- land, and John G. Carlisle, of Kentucky, all had their followers. Tam- many Hall was again opposed to Cleveland, and it was certain that the vote of New York would be given to Hill. Outside of New York he had little strength. Iowa was for Boies, and he had advocates in THE CAMPAIGN OF 1892. 505 the Ohio and other delegations. Neither Gorman nor Carlisle had anything more than a nominal support, even from their own States. It was a Cleveland Convention, and while the Tammany contingent continued the cry until the last, " Hill, Hill, give us Hill," the Pennsylvanians were nearer the sentiment that swayed the ma- jority of the delegates when they sang, " Grover, Grover, four years more of Grover; Out they go. In w r e go, And then we'll be l in clover.' " William C. Owens, of Kentucky, was made temporary, and William L. Wilson, of West Virginia, permanent President of the Convention. u The distinguished leader who presided over the Republican Con- vention," Mr. Wilson said, u boasted that he does not know what tariff reform is. Whoever said that he did? Let us hope, with that charity that eudureth all things and believeth all things, that he is fully as ignorant as he vaunts himself to be. Unfortunately, the peo- ple are not so ignorant of the meaning of protection which is doled out to them in the bill that bears his name. They see that meaning- written large to-day in a prostrated agriculture, in a shackled com- merce, in stricken industries, in the compulsory idleness of labor, in law made wealth, in the discontent of the workingmen, and the despair of the farmer." These words were the keynote to the action of the Convention, to the Platform, and to the campaign. The Plat- form was unusually bitter in denunciation of the Republicans and Re- publican measures. It virulently denounced protection as a fraud and unconstitutional, the McKinley act as the " culminating atrocity of class legislation," and reciprocity as a fraud; declared opposition to trusts, to the giving away of public lands to railroads, to the Coin- age Act of 1890, to State banks, to Republican foreign policy, to pauper immigration, and to Harrison's administration; and in favor of Mississippi improvements, the Nicaragua canal, popular education, the admission of new States, the protection of railway employees, and the abolition of the " sweating system." Mr. Cleveland was put in nomination by Governor Leon Abbett, of New Jersey. His speech vaunted the achievements of the party as the result of the Cleveland policy. " In every State in this Union," he said, " that policy has been placed in Democratic platforms, and our battles have been fought upon it, and this great body of represen- 506 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. tative Democrats has seen its good results. Every man in this Con- vention recognizes the policy of the party. In Massachusetts, it gave us a Russell; in Iowa, it gave us a Boies; in Wisconsin, it gave us a Beck for Governor, and a Yilas for Senator; in Michigan, it gave us Winans for Governor., and gave us a Democratic Legislature, and will give us eight electoral votes for President. In 1889, in Ohio, it gave us James E. Campbell for Governor, and in 1891, to defeat him, it required the power, the wealth, and the machinery' of the en- tire Republican party. In Pennsylvania, it gave us Kobert E. Patti- son; in Connecticut, it gave us a Democratic Governor, who was kept out of office by the infamous conduct of the Republican party; in New Hampshire, it gave us a Legislature, of which we were defrauded; in Illinois, it gave us Palmer for Senator, and in Nebraska, it gave us Boyd for Governor. In the great Southern States, it has continued in power Democratic Governors and Democratic Legislatures; in New Jersey, the power of the Democracy has been strengthened, and the Legislature and the Executive are both Democratic; in the great State of New York, it gave us Hill for Senator and Roswell P. Flow r er for Governor. With all these glorious achievements it is the wisest and best party policy to nominate again the man whose policy made these successes possible. The people believe that these victories which gave us a Democratic House of Representatives in 1890, and Democratic Governors and Senators in Republican and doubtful States, are due to the courage and wisdom of Grover Cleveland. And, so believing, they recognize him as their great leader." Only two other candidates were formally presented: Mr. Boies by Mr. Buncombe, and Mr. Hill by William C. Dewitt, of Brooklyn. It was three o'clock in the morning of the 23d when the balloting began. Cleveland was nominated on the first ballot, receiving 617 1-3 votes to 115 for Hill, 103 for Boies, 36 for Gorman, 16 2-3 for Stevenson, 14 for Carlisle, 2 for Morrison, 2 for Campbell, and 1 each for Pattison, Russell, and Whitney. For Vice-President Adlai E. Stevenson, of Illinois, received 402 votes; Isaac P. Gray, of Indiana, 343; Allen B. Morse, of Michigan, 86; John L. Mitchell, of Wisconsin, 45; Henry Watterson, of Kentucky, 26; Burke Cockran, of New York, 5; and Lambert Tree and Horace Boies, one each. After the ballot Mr. Stevenson w r as nominated by acclamation. The form of discontent that was represented by the " Greenback- ers " in 1880 and 1884, and the United Labor and Union Labor parties in 1888, now became known as the Populist party. It formulated its doctrines at a meeting at Ocala, Fla., and was sufficiently advanced to take its place in the campaign. This it did in the nomination of Gen- eral James B. Weaver, of Iowa, for President. The party was re- THE CAMPAIGN OF 1892. 507 fruited from both the leading parties, and gave as reasons for its ex- istence those found in the preamble to its platform: that corruption dominates the ballot-box, the legislature, the Congress, and touches even the ermine of the bench. The people are demoralized, news- papers largely subsidized or muzzled, public opinion silenced, business prostrated, homes mortgaged, labor impoverished, lands concentrated in the hands of capitalists, workmen denied the right of organization, imported pauperized labor beating down wages, the fruits of toil stolen to build up colossal fortunes, the national power to create money appropriated to enrich bondholders, a vast public debt funded into gold-bearing bonds, silver demonetized, and the currency abridged to fatten usurers, bankrupt enterprises, and enslave in- dustry. The campaign turned on the questions that were given prominence in the platforms: the untried McKinley Tariff, the new policy of Reciprocity, still a theory rather than a condition, the need of a change. Every Republican measure was assailed with unexampled bitterness. Every Republican act was misrepresented. It w r as the passions, not the judgment of the people, to which the Democrats made their appeals. u The mission of the Democratic party/' said one of the orators at Chicago, " is to fight for the under dog. When that party is out of power, we may be sure there is an under dog to light for, and the under dog is the American people. When that party is out of power, we may be sure that some party is in control of our government that represents a section, and not the whole country; that stands for a class, and not the whole people. Never was this truth brought home to us more defiantly than by the recent conven- tion at Minneapolis. W 7 e are not deceived as to the temper of the Republican party. We are not in doubt as to its purposes. Having taxed us for years without cause or mercy, it now proposes to disarm us of all power of resistance. Republican success in this campaign, whether we look to the party platform, the candidates, or the utter- ances of the party leaders, means that the people are to be stripped of their franchise through force bills, in order that they may be stripped of their substance through tariff bills. . . . When you confer upon the Government the power of dealing out wealth, you un- chain every evil that can prey upon and eventually destroy free in- stitutions, excessive taxation, class taxation, billion-dollar Con- gresses, a corrupt civil-service, a debauched ballot-box, and pur- chased elections. In every campaign the privilege of taxing the people will be bartered for contributions to corrupt them at the polls. After every victory a new McKinley bill to repay those contributions with usury, out of taxes taken from the people." A special appeal 508 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. was made to the American workingman. Protection was denounced as u a fraud"; Reciprocity was "a sham"; the Sherman Silver Act was " a cowardly makeshift." The people listened to the claim and yielded to it. The result was a Democratic victory that was a surprise to both parties a victory that was a disaster from the mo- ment of its achievement. Cleveland and Stevenson carried the full Electoral vote of twenty - three States, counting California, one vote from which went to Har- rison. Harrison and Reid carried fifteen States, counting Ohio, one vote from which went to Cleveland, and Oregon, one vote from which was cast for Weaver, the Populist candidate. Weaver carried four States. Michigan gave five Electoral votes to Cleveland and nine to Harrison, and North Dakota one each to Cleveland, Harrison, and Weaver. Cleveland had the Solid South; he also had the Republican States of California, Illinois, Indiana, New York, and Wisconsin. Weaver had Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, and Nevada. In the States of Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, North Dakota, and Wyoming the Democrats ran no Electoral tickets, but voted with the Populists for the purpose of taking these States from the Republicans. The votes in the di- vided States were due to these causes; in California and Ohio, be- cause the vote for the Cleveland and Harrison electors was close; in Michigan, because by act of the Legislature each Congress district voted separately for an elector; in Oregon, because one of the four candidates for electors on the People's party ticket was also on the Democratic ticket, the result being three Republicans and one Peo- ple's party electors; in North Dakota, because one of the two People's party electors who were elected cast his vote for Cleveland, thus caus- ing the Electoral vote of the State to be equally divided between Cleveland, Harrison, and Weaver. Cleveland received 277 Electoral votes to 145 for Harrison and 22 for Weaver. The popular vote was 12,154,542, of which Cleveland re- ceived 5,550,533; Harrison, 5,175,577; Weaver, 1,122,045; Bidwell, Prohibitionist, 279,191; and Wing, Socialist Labor, 21,191. Cleve- land owed his pluralities to the Populists in three States California, Indiana, and Wisconsin. III. PRESIDENT CLEVELAND'S SECOND ADMINISTRATION. Effects of Mr. Cleveland's Election The Fifty-third Congress Presi- dent Cleveland on the Financial Disorders Repeal of the Silver Purchasing Act The Opposition to Kepeal A Battle for Free Silver Coinage of the Seigniorage Wilson Tariff Bill Com- mittee on Ways and Means A Disappointing Measure Income Tax Feature Change in the Rules of the House The Wilson Bill in the Senate Amendments Arguments against the In- come Tax Sugar Trust Scandal The Tariff Bill in Conference President Cleveland's Remarkable Letter Indignant Re- sponse of Mr. Gorman The Bill as Passed a Humiliating Sur- render The President Allows it to Become a Law Another Letter Repeal of Reciprocity Reaction The Fifty-fourth Con- gress Failure of the New Tariff Condition of the Treasury. O Presidential election before it ever resulted in a reaction so immediate and complete as that which attended the sec- ond election of Grover Cleveland. Political victory was followed by commercial disaster. Gold went abroad with a rapidity never before experienced. The Treasury reserve became depleted. Exports fell off. Expenditures exceeded receipts. The Secretary of the Treasury intimated the probability of redeeming silver certificates in silver. Credits shriveled, banks closed, corpora- tions and firms went to the wall, business demoralization became well-nigh universal, mills shut down, labor went idle. The period was one of panic, or rather a suspension of faith and credit that is usually worse than panic. There was a want of confidence that was to rest like an incubus on the entire second administration of Mr. Cleve- land. It was thought that the Sherman Silver Purchasing Act Of 1890 had something to do with the business catastrophe that was the di- rect result of Mr. Cleveland's election. To repeal this measure the 53d Congress was called to meet in special session, August 7, 1893. It was a Democratic Congress in both Houses. A revolution had been wrought in the Senate by the Populist States. Nebraska, Nevada, North Dakota, and Wyoming had all chosen Populist Sena- tors; Kansas and South Dakota were already represented by Popu- 510 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. lists. The Republican Senators from Colorado, Idaho, and the two Dakotas were Populists in fact if not in name. California, New York, and Wisconsin sent Democrats to replace Republicans. Only thirty-seven Republicans remained in a chamber that two years be- fore had forty-seven. In the House there were signs of Republican recovery, 125 Republicans to 88 in the 52d Congress. Thus the Democratic party found itself in possession of all branches of the government for the first time in thirty-two years. It could apply its principles at will, but though a triumphant, it was not to prove a happy party. After all its boastings in the previous campaign, it proved unequal to the work before it. " Our unfortunate financial plight," the President said in his mes- sage to the new Congress, " is not the result of untoward events, nor of conditions related to our natural resources; nor is it traceable to any of the afflictions which frequently check national growth and prosperity. With plenteous crops, with abundant promise of re- munerative production and manufacture, with unusual invitation to safe investment, and with satisfactory assurance to business enter- prise, suddenly financial distrust and fear have sprung up on every side. Numerous moneyed institutions have suspended because abundant assets were not immediately available to meet the demands of frightened depositors. Surviving corporations and individuals are content to keep in hand the money they are usually anxious to loan, and those engaged in legitimate business are surprised to find that the securities they offer for loans, though heretofore satisfactory, are no longer accepted. Values supposed to be fixed are fast becoming conjectural, and loss and failure have invaded every branch of busi- ness. I believe these things are principally chargeable to Congres- sional legislation touching the purchase and coinage of silver by the General Government. This legislation is embodied in a statute passed on July 14, 1890, which was the culmination of much agita- tion on the subject involved, and which may be considered a truce, after a long struggle, between the advocates of free silver coinage and those intending to be more conservative. Undoubtedly the monthly purchases by the Government of four million and five hundred thousand ounces of silver, enforced under that statute, were re- garded by those interested in silver production as a certain guaranty for its increase in price. The result, however, has been entirely dif- ferent, for immediately following a spasmodic and slight rise, the price of silver began to fall after the passage of the act, and has since reached the lowest point ever known. This disappointing result has led to renewed and persistent effort in the direction of free silver coinage. ... It was my purpose to summon Congress in special PRESIDENT CLEVELAND'S SECOND ADMINISTRATION. 511 session early in the coming September that we might enter promptly upon the work of tariff reform, which the true interests of the country clearly demand., which so large a majority of the people, as shown by their suffrage, desire and expect, and to the accomplishment of which every effort of the present Administration is pledged. But while tariff reform has lost nothing of its immediate and paramount importance, and must in the near future engage the attention of Con- gress, it has seemed to me that the financial condition of the country should at once, and before all other subjects, be considered by your honorable body." A bill for the unconditional repeal of the silver purchasing clause of the Act of 1890 was offered by Mr. Wilson, of West Virginia, on August 11, but it was met immediately, and at all its stages by amend- ments looking to free coinage, at ratios from 16 to 1 to 20 to 1. A few Western Republicans voted for all these propositions, and many Democrats voted against them. All these efforts failing, Mr. Bland attempted to revive the Bland-Allison Act of 1878, but this attempt failed also. The debate closed on August 28, and the bill providing for unconditional repeal was passed by the House by 239 yeas to 109 nays. All the Republicans, except the Silver Republicans, voted for it. The Senate passed a substitute for the House bill which contained a declaration in favor of bimetallism through international agree- ment. The vote was 43 yeas to 32 nays. The majority comprised 23 Republicans and 20 Democrats. The minority consisted of 19 Democrats, 9 Silver Republicans, and 4 Populists. The Senate bill was passed on October 28, and the House concurred on November 1 by 194 yeas to 94 nays, not voting 66. Nearly three months were required for this simple act of perfunc- tory legislation three days, or three weeks at most, ought to have been sufficient for its accomplishment. For profound intensity of feeling about nothing, for embittered silliness in all its stages, it was a match for the Secession weeks of the 36th Congress and the weary and virulent years of Reconstruction. The silver purchasing clause of the Sherman Act, so-called, was indeed a miserable makeshift. To make its repeal, or the occasion of its repeal, a test of principle or even of partisanship was a folly even greater than that of its passage. A resolution offered by Mr. Bland at the outset and ordered by the House is in its terms a serious caricature of those solemn proceedings. Fourteen days were allowed for the debate. " Eleven days of the de- bate," the resolution said, " to be given to general debate under the rules of the last House regulating general debate, the time to be equally divided between the two sides as the Speaker may determine. The last three days of debate may be devoted to the consideration of 512 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. the bill and the amendments herein provided for, under the usual five-minute rule of the House, as in Committee of the Whole House. General leave to print is hereby granted. Order of amendments: The vote shall be taken first on an amendment providing for the free coinage of silver at the present ratio. If that fail, then a separate vote to be had on a similar amendment proposing a ratio of IT to 1; if that fails, on one proposing a ratio of 18 to 1; if that fails, on one proposing a ratio of 11) to 1 ; if that fails, on one proposing a ratio of 20 to 1. If the above amendment fails, it shall be in order to offer an amendment reviving the Act of February 28, 1878, restoring the standard silver dollar, commonly known as the Bland-Allison Act; the vote then to be taken on the engrossment and third reading of the bill as amended, or on the bill itself if all amendments shall have been voted down, and on the final passage of the bill without other inter- vening motions." All this was carried out with a fidelity as grave as it was gro- tesque. But the Senate outdid the House in solemn trifling. Mr. Peffer, of Kansas; Mr. Perkins, of California; Mr. Berry, of Arkansas; Mr. Allen, of Nebraska; Mr. Blackburn, of Kentucky; Mr. Stewart, of Nevada, and Mr. Squire, of Washington, all had substitutes for the Finance Committee's substitutes, and substitutes for the substitutes of each other. These substitutes, like the amendments offered in the House, looked to the free coinage of silver; but some of them had a reminiscent quality that the House amendments lacked. Mr. Peffer wanted to go back to the silver coinage of 1834, and this failing, to the Act of January 18, 1837. Mr. Berry would have been content to revive the Act of 1878. Mr. Pasco, of Florida, wanted a commission to ascertain or establish a ratio. There were propositions for additional Treasury notes, for silver coinage with a seigniorage of 20 per cent., and the coinage of the seigniorage. These attempts to open the mints to the products of the Silver States neutralized the effects of repeal. Simple repeal would have been beneficial, if adopted quickly and unconditionally. Menaced by the Populistic free silver theory of a powerful minority in both parties, it soon became manifest that the substantial benefits expected from repeal were not to be realized; that business enterprise must remain prostrate while the impending tariff legislation, for which the Administration and the Congress had received a " mandate " from the people, continued as the main cause of the widespread depression and alarm. As the repeal of the McKinley Tariff was inevitable in a Congress elected to repeal it, it was a mistake to defer its consideration from the special to the regular session of the 53d Congress, with the subsequent delay and uncertainty attending the passage of the Tariff PRESIDENT CLEVELAND'S SECOND ADMINISTRATION. 513 of 1894. In the meantime, the question of the free coinage of silver continued to obtrude itself upon both Houses, while the condition of the Treasury went from bad to worse. When the 53d Con- gress met in regular session, December 4, 1893, the Treasury reserve had fallen below the f 100,000,000 limit deemed safe for redemption purposes. There was a deficit in Treasury receipts of about $68,000,- 000. One loan of $50,000,000 had been called for, and others were ex- pected to follow. As a means of aiding the Treasury, Mr. Bland in- troduced into the House a bill providing for the coinage of the Treas- ury seigniorage. It was championed by all the free silver coinage men, who saw r in it an opportunity they had lost during the extra session of the Congress. The estimated value of this seigniorage was $55,000,000, which, if coined into silver dollars, would be so much straight gain to the Treasury. It was opposed by the Republicans and an able Democratic contingent as sheer inflation, without a particle of security behind it, since the value of silver bullion in the Treasury, against which $153,000,000 of silver certificates had been issued, had fallen from $120,000,000 to $97,000,000. Adding the es- timated value of the seigniorage ($55,000,000) to this $97,000,000, the sums would still be short of the $153,000,000 silver certificates which were to be protected. This bill did not pass, but it served to show that the question of the free coinage of silver was a rapidly growing one, and that the day might not be distant when it would project itself upon the country in a form independent of existing political parties. Although the introduction of a Tariff bill into the House of Repre- sentatives w r as long delayed, and its passage still longer, its prepara- tion began with the re-election of Speaker Crisp and the appointment of the Committee on Ways and Means. With this object in view this important committee was in a measure reconstituted. William L. Wilson, of West Virginia, was made its chairman instead of Will- iam M. Springer, of Illinois, who held the place in the 52d Congress. The appointment of Mr. Wilson was congenial to the President, and it was even said it was made at his instance. Mr. Wilson was a scholarly man, and thoroughly grounded in the prin- ciples of Free Trade, as taught by the political economists. In the application of the doctrines taught in books to the political needs of a revenue-supported government, he was to prove himself far from equal to the task intrusted to him. His ideal of a revenue tariff was the Tariff of 1846, a tariff that served its purpose in its day, but was based on conditions entirely different from those of 1894. With Mr. Wilson on the Committee were not fewer than five Southern Representatives imbued with economic principles akin to his own: 514 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. McMillin of Tennessee, Turner of Georgia, Montgomery of Ken- tucky, Breckinridge of Arkansas, and Tarsney of Missouri. This gave the South a majority of the Committee. The other Democrats were: Whiting of Michigan, Cockran of New York, Stevens of Massachu- setts, Bryan of Nebraska, and Bynum of Indiana. This Democratic majority at once went to work upon the new Tariff bill, its prepara- tion extending over the special session of Congress and through the vacation period, so as to have the measure ready for the first regular session in December. In the preparation of this bill the Democratic majority of the Com- mittee permitted no interference with its work. Complaint was made that the business interests of the country were denied a hear- ing, such as had been accorded when the McKinley bill of 1890 was in preparation, or, if granted a hearing, that their facts and arguments were ignored. But hearings were not deemed necessary, as the theory of the bill was to eliminate the protective principle as far as possible, and to establish a system of purely revenue duties, with as near an approach as circumstances would admit to the principles of free trade. When the bill was reported in the House its opponents quickly pointed out incongruities due to a desire to placate certain sections and favor certain industries. In this respect it was at odds with the Platform adopted by the Democratic National Convention of 1892. A leading feature of the bill was the almost universal de- parture from the principles of specific duties, and the adoption of ad valorem rates. In this respect it copied the old Walker Tariff Act, which went out of existence with the adoption of the Morrill Tariff of 1861. In general terms the bill made sweeping reductions in duties as fixed in the McKinley Act, turned the lumber schedule practically into a free list, placed wool, coal, animals, and iron ore on the free list, and brought all manufactures of wool below the protective rate. The further enlargement of the free list w r as effected by modifications in all the schedules, and especially in those which embraced products of the farm. It struck a direct and exterminating blow at the principle of reciprocity, which had been incorporated into the McKinley Act, and brought about the speedy abrogation of the numerous treaties which had been negotiated under that Act, looking to an enlarge- ment of reciprocal trade relations with other countries, and which had already brought about great increase in commerce. The most conspicuous and at the same time the most unexpected feature of the bill was a tax of two per cent, on all incomes over 14,000. In this country direct taxes had always been so unpopular as to be considered intolerable. An income tax had never been levied before, except during the Civil War, when the vast expendi- PRESIDENT CLEVELAND'S SECOND ADMINISTRATION. 515 tures of the Government rendered it necessary, but as soon as pos- sible after the return of peace it was repealed. While it was in op- eration it met with the bitterest hostility from the Democrats. Even its necessity as a war measure could not justify it in Democratic eyes. It had never been demanded in a Democratic platform, and a proposi- tion to include it in the declaration of the Convention that nominated Cleveland in 1892, would have been repudiated as peremptorily as by the Convention that nominated Buchanan in 1856. The only previ- ous demand for " a graduated income tax " was in the Populist Plat- form, adopted at Omaha in 1892. But President Cleveland com- mended the principle in his annual message in December, 1893, even before the Committee on Ways and Means had offered the new Tariff bill to the House. " The Committee," he said, " after full considera- tion, and to provide against a temporary deficiency which may exist before the business of the country adjusts itself to the new tariff schedules, have wisely embraced in their plan a few additional in- ternal-revenue taxes, including a small tax upon incomes derived from certain corporate investments. These new assessments are not only absolutely just and easily borne, but they have the further merit of being such as can be remitted without unfavorable business dis- turbance whenever the necessity of their imposition no longer exists." In the subsequent discussions of the bill, especially in the Senate, the Populists boldly assumed the paternity of this income tax feature, and their claim to it was not denied. It was due to the blending of Populistic and Democratic theories, almost universal in the South, and the complaint of the West that the rich were not bearing their full share of taxation. When Mr. Wilson brought forward the bill to which his name was given he sustained it in a vigorous speech that was intended to sound the keynote of the argument in its behalf and carry it forward to a happy and a speedy passage. But it soon be- came apparent that the measure in all its features was to be the sub- ject of a prolonged parliamentary struggle. It pleased nobody, its halting friends scarcely more than its open enemies. It was not such a bill as the out and out free traders had expected. Conserva- tive Democrats were alarmed because it threatened their home in- terests and industries. The Republicans denounced it for its glaring inconsistencies and confessed weaknesses. The income tax feature was assailed as a confession in advance that as a revenue measure the bill would fail to produce the necessary revenue, as intended to give to an unequal and unproductive revenue scheme a sectional and re- vengeful direction, and as at odds with all ideas of justice. But Republican opposition from the very outset took the form of resistance in acts rather than in words. The Democratic trick of not 516 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. voting so flagrantly exhibited in the 51st Congress was resorted to so persistently and continuously that headway in the progress of the bill became slow and painful. At last, as the only way out of the dilemma, a change of the rules was made to allow a quorum to be counted a method that had been bitterly denounced w T hen it was practiced by " Czar " Reed. With a majority of 64 on the final pas- sage of the bill, the measure would have gone by default at any of its stages if many of those who voted for it could have had their way. The dominating power that compelled their acquiescence was the idea that the bill was a party necessity. From hour to hour and day to day and week to week, the need of holding the party together, of keeping a quorum for votes that might prove fatal, of making head- way in the face of an interest that flagged as the debate progressed, and as amendment was piled upon amendment, like Pelion upon Ossa, was the dominant force of the struggle. The bill came from the Committee on Ways and Means, December 19, 1893; it passed the House, February 1, 1894. The vote was 204 ayes to 140 nays, seven- teen of the negative votes being cast by Democrats. In the Senate the bill was stripped of all semblance to the original before it was finally reported from the Finance Committee. In the Committee it was referred to a sub-committee of three Senators from contiguous Southwestern States without important commercial or in- dustrial interests Mills of Texas, Vest of Missouri, and Jones of Arkansas. This sub-committee went to work as if it was framing a o Democratic platform for the South; as if it had been instructed to report a tariff bill for the agricultural States, in which the demands of the manufacturing States were to be ignored. It refused hearings to interests that claimed a right to be heard, and attempted to quiet the clamor of which this course was the occasion by sending out circulars inviting opinions as to the effect of changes in tariff rates. It was claimed that hearings would result in waste of time and cause indefinite postponement of conclusions. In spite of the method adopted the Finance Committee did not report until March 8, and even then its report was only tentative. Under Republican fire the consideration of the bill was delayed, the Committee giving it out that it had a more complete and satisfactory measure in reserve. When this was reported it was no longer the Wilson bill, for the measure that had passed the House was loaded down with more than four hundred amendments. As thus transformed its consideration did not begin until May 8. The bill, with its amendments, was de- bated in the Senate for months and subjected to gradual modifica- tions, generally in the direction of increased duties and additional inconsistencies. PRESIDENT CLEVELAND'S SECOND ADMINISTRATION. 517 The debate was one of unusual ability and acrimony, especially on the Income tax feature, which was bitterly opposed by Democratic as well as ^Republican Senators. Senator Hill, of New York, took the ground that it was unwise to incorporate an income tax into a reform bill, or to attach it to any measure of tariff revision. It was a war tax in time of peace. Democracy had never favored such a tax. It was a Populistic measure. It fulfilled no Democratic doctrine or promise. He ridiculed the idea that the United States should copy this form of taxation from England, whose form of government, natural surroundings, and obligations were essentially different. But even in England it was rather tolerated than approved. He repudi- ated the " Spurious Democracy of these modern apostles and proph- ets, who are part Mugwump, part Populist, and the least part Democratic, who seek to lead us astray after false gods, false theories, and false methods." The arguments against the Income tax feature were: (1) That it had no legitimate place in a tariff reform bill; (2) it was neither Democratic nor Republican in principle, had never been approved by the people, was a doctrine of Populism; (3) it was unnecessary, as a revenue measure; (4) it was a direct tax and therefore unconstitu- tional; (5) it was unequal, unjust, and sectional in its operations; (6) it revived an odious war tax; (7) its exemptions stamped it as an of- fensive piece of class legislation, all incomes should be taxed or none: (8) it was retroactive; (9) it usurped a field of taxation lawfully be- longing to the States; (10) it was inquisitorial and offensive; (11) it would lead to conflict between State and Federal authorities; and (12) it selects a class for Federal taxation. The Southern and Pop- ulist Senators were persistent and aggressive in support of the clause. They averred that the tax was favored by a majority of the people; that the laboring classes thought the rich were not bearing their share of taxation; that the officials who had to do with public moneys were corrupt, and the rich could secure from them lower as- sessments; and that millionaires were too numerous, seventy of them averaging estates of $37,000,000 each. Thus supported, and backed by all the power of the Administration as a party measure, it passed the Senate as it had before passed the House. In the Senate, as in the House, its friends were dissatisfied with it, yet willing to vote for it for the sake of party. The Brice-Gorman bill, as the measure was called after its trans- formation in the Senate Finance Committee, was still further dis- credited by a scandal connecting distinguished Democratic Senators with the Sugar Trust. The charge was made that the sugar schedule had been made a matter of bargain and sale; that members of the 518 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. Trust had secretly visited members of the Senate Finance Committee, and had secured a modification of the sugar schedule by means of which it would reap great profits. These profits were to be realized by placing a duty on sugar, but postponing its collection till January 1, 1895, thus giving the Trust a chance to stock up without duty, but at the same time to advance the price of refined sugar to the extent of the duty. The charge was further made that the Secretary of the Treasury had personally written or dictated a change in the sugar schedule in accordance with the wishes of the Trust. Still another charge was made that the Trust demanded and obtained this valuable concession in pursuance of a pre-existing agreement with the leaders of the Democratic party that its interests should be protected for the consideration of a gift of a sum of money, estimated at $500,000, for campaign purposes in 1892. And again, it was charged that informa- tion respecting the work of the Finance Committee had been sent out secretly to New York brokers, and that Senators had taken advantage of this leakage to speculate in sugar stocks. The publication of these charges dragged the high character of the Senate in the mire, and cast a taint on tariff legislation. An investigation w r as ordered. The newspaper men who had made the exposure refused to give the names of their informants, and were turned over to the criminal courts to be tried for contumacy. The sugar magnates who were called to testify admitted the giving of money in unremembered amounts to State, but not National campaigns, on the score of busi- ness, and for which they expected corresponding benefits. Other witnesses testified in a modified way, and some with very proper and natural excuses, to the truth of w r hat had been charged, while even Senators w T hen called did not in every instance place them- selves beyond the suspicion that they had taken advantage of the sit- uation to turn a penny in sugar stock speculation. The revelations were a terrible blow to the national pride, and to every sense of honor and honesty, but they did not serve to loosen the grip which the Trust had on the Senate. On the contrary, they served rather to ex- plain what had before been a rumor, that the position of the Trust was so strong that the fate of the entire Tariff bill depended on its getting the protection it wanted. They also served to explain the in- difference of the Trust to the sugar schedule when the bill was in the House, at which time it was given out that the Trust depended on the Senate for the protection it desired. That there should have been such favoritism shown to a gigantic trust, at a time when the exalted principle of tariff reform was seeking for recognition in our indus- trial and commercial economy, w r as made all the more inexplicable by the clause in the Democratic Platform of 1892, which read: " We PRESIDENT CLEVELAND'S SECOND ADMINISTRATION. 519 recognize in the trusts and combinations which are designed to en- able capital to secure more than its just share of the joint product of capital and labor a natural consequence of the prohibitive taxes which prevent the competition which is the life of honest trade, but believe their worst evils can be abated by law, and we demand the rigid enforcement of the laws made to prevent and control them, together with such further legislation in restraint of these abuses as experience may show to be necessary." Why and how the Senate amendments came to be made amend- ments sufficient in number to constitute a new r bill after the revela- tions concerning the sugar schedule, was a subject for doubts and sus- picions as midsummer approached with the bill still pending. Dem- ocratic inability to legislate on the Tariff became so clear as to be un- deniable, but tariff legislation of some kind was a party necessity. At last the end w r as reached in the Senate, and the transformed bill was passed, July 3, 1894, and sent to the House. It received a ma- jority of five, 39 yeas to 34 nays, the Populists, Allen of Nebraska, and Kyle of South Dakota, voting with the Democrats. Mr. Stewart of Nevada, and Mr. Peffer of Kansas, voted with the Republicans. Mr. Hill, of New York, was the only Democrat opposed to the bill who had the courage to vote against it. In the House there was an understanding that the bill should be re- ferred to a Conference Committee without debate, and after a speech by Mr. Wilson, this was done. In his speech Mr. W r ilson sad that the bill had come back to the House with six hundred and thirty-four amendments to it, and that it no longer represented the principle that revenue taxes under a tariff should be levied on finished products and not on raw materials. Only wool and lumber came back undis- turbed by the Senate. The bill had been rendered further unsatis- factory by numerous changes from ad valorem to specific or com- pound rates of duty. In the contention in conference over the de- parture from ad valorem rates the Senate proved the stronger. The principle of specific rates was too deeply grounded in the practice of civilized governments to be overcome. The Committee found grounds for agreement in many of the schedules, but in regard to the sugar schedule and the items of coal and iron ore, all of which were free in the House bill, the differences seemed irreconcilable, and a disagree- ment was reported on July 19. In reporting the disagreement Mr. Wilson said the committee on the part of the House could not accede to the Senate's demands without further instruction. He pointed out the difference between the rates of duty as originally fixed in the House bill and as found in the Senate bill. In the course of his speech he said : " If it be true, as stated by the gentleman from Ohio 520 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. (Mr. Johnson), of which I have seen myself some confirmation in the press, if it be true that the great American Sugar Trust has grown so strong and powerful that it says that no tariff bill can pass the American Congress in which its interests are not adequately guarded; if, I say, that be true, I hope this House will not consent to an adjourn- ment until it has passed a single bill putting refined sugar on the free list." In conclusion Mr. Wilson eulogized President Cleveland, and then, to the astonishment of the House, read a letter from him dated July 2, 1894, and before the passage of the bill in the Senate. The letter was addressed to Mr. Wilson, and had been in his private keeping ever since its receipt. Mr. Wilson now made it public with President Cleveland's consent. It was such a remarkable letter, and led to such serious consequences, that it came to be regarded as one of the most momentous chapters in the history of the Wilson Tariff bill, if not one of the boldest of executive attempts to influence legisla- tion. " Every true Democrat," the President said in his letter, " and every sincere tariff reformer knows that this bill in its present form and as it will be submitted to the Conference Committee falls short of the consummation for which we have long labored, for which we have suffered defeat without discouragement; which in its anticipation gave us a rallying cry in our- day of triumph, and which, in its promise of accomplishment, is so interwoven with Democratic pledges and Democratic success, that our abandonment of the cause or of the principles upon which it rests means party perfidy and party dis- honor. One topic will be submitted to the conference which em- bodies Democratic principle so directly that it can not be com- promised. We have in our Platforms and in every way possible de- clared in favor of the free importation of raw materials. We have again and again promised that this should be accorded to our people and our manufacturers as soon as the Democratic party was invested with power to determine the tariff policy of the country. The party now has the power. We are as certain to-day as we ever have been of the great benefit that would accrue to the country from the inaugu- ration of this policy, and nothing has occurred to release us from our obligation to secure this advantage to our people. It must be ad- mitted that no tariff measure can accord with Democratic principles and promises, or bear a genuine Democratic badge, that does not provide for free raw material. In these circumstances it may well excite our wonder that Democrats are willing to depart from this, the most democratic of all tariff principles, and that the most inconsis tent absurdity of such a proposed departure should be emphasized by the suggestion that the wool of the farmer be put on the free list, PRESIDENT CLEVELAND'S SECOND ADMINISTRATION. 521 and the protection of tariff taxation be placed around the iron ore and coal for corporations and capitalists. How can we face the peo- ple after indulging in such outrageous discrimination and violation of principles? It is quite apparent that the question of free raw mate- rials does not admit of adjustment on middle ground, since their subjection to any rate of tariff taxation, great or small, is alike viola- tive of Democratic principle and Democratic good faith. . . . Under our party platform and in accordance with our declared party purposes, sugar is a legitimate and logical article for revenue tax- ation. Unfortunately, however, incidents have accompanied certain stages of the legislation which will be submitted to the conference, that have aroused in connection with this subject a national Demo- cratic animosity to the methods and manipulations of trusts and combinations. I confess to sharing in this feeling, and yet, it seems to me, we ought, if possible, to sufficiently free ourselves from preju- dice to enable us coolly to weigh the consideration which, in formu- lating tariff legislation, ought to guide our treatment of sugar as a taxable article. While no tenderness should be entertained for trusts, and while I am decidedly opposed to granting them, under the guise of taxation, any opportunity to further their particular meth- ods, I suggest that we ought not to be driven away from the Democratic principle and policy which lead to the taxation of sugar by the fear, quite likely exaggerated, that in carrying out this principle and policy we may indirectly and inordi- nately encourage a combination of sugar-refining interests. I know that in present conditions this is a delicate subject, and I appreciate the depth and strength of the feeling which its treatment has aroused. I do not believe we should do evil that good may come; but it seems to me that we should not forget that our aim is the completion of a tariff bill, and that in taxing- sugar for proper purposes and within reasonable bounds, whatever else may be said of our action, we are in no danger of running counter to Democratic principles. With all there is at stake, there must be in the treatment of this article some ground upon which we are all will- ing to stand, where toleration and conciliation mav be allowed to solve o the problem without demanding the entire surrender of fixed and conscientious convictions. ... I expect very few of us can say, when our measure is perfected, that all its features are entirely as we would prefer. You know how much I deprecated the incorporation into the proposed bill of the income feature. In matters of this kind, however, which do not violate a fixed and recognized Democratic doctrine, we are willing to defer to the judgment of a majority of our Democratic brethren." 522 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. When the bill got back to the Senate after the disagreement there was a long and acrimonious debate, in which Mr. Cleveland's letter was the principal cause of the bitterness. The Republicans saw in the letter a concession of the President to trusts of all kinds to the Sugar Trust, in his plea for a duty on sugar; to the Nova Scotia Coal Syndicate, in his plea for free coal; to the Cuban Iron Syndicate, in his plea for free iron ore, but some of the Democratic Senators ac- cused him of daring to interfere with the legislative branch of the Government. " Mr. Cleveland is a big man," said Senator Vest, " but the Democratic party is greater than any one man. It has sur- vived Jefferson, Madison, Jackson; it will survive Grover Cleveland. Under what clause of the Constitution did Mr. Cleveland get the right, after a bill had been sent to full and free conference between the two Houses, to make any appeal to his party friends to stand by his individual views? " Senator Gorman's arraignment of the Presi- dent was especially severe. " In patriotism the Democratic Senate," Mr. Gorman said, " had gone to work to save the country and keep their party in power, when suddenly in the midst of their work came the President's letter. It was the most uncalled for, the most extra- ordinary, the most unwise communication that ever came from a President of the United States. It placed the Senate in a position where its members must see to it that the dignity and honor of the chamber must be preserved. It places me in a position where I must tell the story as it occurred. The limit of endurance has been reached." He then went on to tell the history of the tariff bill after its introduction into the Senate. He showed that Senators Jones and Vest had frequent conferences with the President and Secretary Car- lisle during the progress of the work; that Secretary Carlisle had indorsed the completed Senate bill; that no one who had been con- sulted had ever suggested that the bill was in violation of Demo- cratic principles. Senators were called to sustain the truth of these assertions, and after Messrs. Vest, Jones, and Harris had done this Mr. Gorman proceeded to denounce the President in bold and bitter terms, and to defend and uphold the Senate. If there had been deceit anywhere, Mr. Gorman declared, it was with the President and not with the Senate. This startling parliamentary episode caused a profound sensation, and for a time it was believed that the President's letter had made a break in the party that could not be closed. Sena- tor Gorman's speech was made on July 23, and it w T as not until August 13, that a caucus of Democratic Representatives was held that re- sulted in an agreement. The agreement w T as a surrender by the House to the Senate. It was a humiliating surrender, after the bold utterances and solemn PRESIDENT CLEVELAND'S SECOND ADMINISTRATION. 523 pledges of the Chicago platform; after the pronounced views and serious advice of President Cleveland upon tariff reform; after the shameful exposures of the operations of the sugar, iron, and coal trusts, and their dominancy in party affairs; after the pointed letter of the President setting forth the Senate modification of the original Wilson bill as an act of " party perfidy and dishonor"; after a year of heated discussion and energetic effort. The passage of a series of " popgun " bills by the House placing sugar, coal, iron ore, and barbed wire on the free list bills that the Senate was not expected to pass only added to the humiliating character of the surrender and to the proofs of Democratic inaptitude for tariff legislation. After the bill reached the President the interest in its fate became even greater than before its passage. Mr. Cleveland's undisguised friendliness for the original Wilson bill, and his denunciation of the adherents and advocates of the Senate bill, led many persons to expect that he would veto the measure. It was con- tended that in this way only could he save himself from stulti- fication. On the other hand, the sentiment that had in- duced the surrender of the House to the Senate was now di- rected toward securing its approval. The President, owing to ill- ness, was absent from the capital and gave no sign of his intended action. Even after his return to Washington he refused to relieve the tension. Congress, in view of the permissive clause of the Consti- tution making a bill a law after the lapse of ten days, both Houses being in session, had adjourned to August 28. At midnight of the 27th the time limit expired, and the Tariff of 1894 superseded the McKinley tariff. The only utterance of the President in regard to his course in allowing the bill to become a law without his sanction or signature was in a letter, dated August 27, addressed to Mr. Catchings, of Mississippi, and Mr. Clarke, of Alabama, in which he said that he felt the utmost disappointment at being denied the priv- ilege to sign such a bill as he had hoped to see passed one which embodied Democratic ideas of tariff reform. He did not claim to be better than his party, nor intend to shirk any of his responsibilities, but the bill contained provisions not in the line of " honest tariff reform," and " inconsistencies and crudities which ought not to appear in tariff laws." He would not separate himself from his party by a " veto of tariff legislation which, though disappointing, was chargeable still to Democratic effort." Besides, there were incidents attending the passage of the bill in its later stages which made every " sincere tariff reformer unhappy," and which " ought not to be tol- erated in Democratic reform councils." He said he took his " place with the rank and file of the Democratic party, who believe in tariff 524 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. reform and who know what it is, who refused to accept the results embodied in this bill as the close of the war, who are not blinded to the fact that the livery of Democratic tariff reform has been stolen and worn in the service of Republican protection, and who have marked the places where the deadly blight of treason has blasted the counsels of the brave in the hour of their might. The trusts and com- binations the communism of pelf whose machinations have pre- vented us from reaching the success we deserved should not be for- gotten nor fonnven. We shall recover from our astonishment at o " their exhibition of power, and then if the question is forced upon us whether they shall submit to the free legislative will of the people's representatives or shall dictate the laws which the people must obey, we will accept that issue as one involving the integrity and safety of American institutions." The letter provoked wide discussion and received the severest criti- cism of the President's party associates, some of whom denounced it as more fatal to Democratic political prospects than his Wilson letter had been to be the cause of tariff reform. They refused to see in it an excuse for not signing the tariff bill, and looked upon the entire party situation as far more complicated and serious than if the President had signed the bill without comment. With the passage of the Tariff Act of 1894 the Reciprocity Act of 1890 was repealed. Reciprocity was in no sense a party problem, but one of plain business. To sustain it helped no party. There had grown up about it, and by means of it, treaties with nearly every country to the south of us, and with many in Europe, establishing commerce on a reciprocal basis. They fell to the ground with repeal, much to the regret of all treaty countries, and to the anger and con- tempt of not a few of them. The countries of Europe, with which reciprocity treaties had been made, entered their protests in our State Department. These protests passed unheeded. They, therefore, began a system of retaliation by excluding our products from their ports, much to our commercial detriment, and especially to the injury of our agricultural interests. The milling interests, live stock indus- tries, and manufactures of furniture and farming implements in this country felt the loss of reciprocity to a lamentable extent. The largely increased export trade, especially to Cuba, Brazil, and other important countries, which had come about under reciprocity, fell off and the old trade balance against us was re-established. Thus a tariff which had required more than a year for its passage, and that satisfied nobody, became an agency for the humiliation of the coun- try, and for the destruction of American trade as well as American industries. PRESIDENT CLEVELAND'S SECOND ADMINISTRATION. 525 Just before the expiration of President Harrison's term he sent to the Senate a Treaty for the annexation of Hawaii. This treaty was pending when Mr. Cleveland was inaugurated, but five days after- ward it was withdrawn and its withdrawal was followed by efforts to subvert the Provisional Government of Hawaii and to restore the deposed queen. The President's course defeated annexation for the time, but the open effort to restore the Hawaiian monarchy tended to make the Administration unpopular, especially as it was attended by circumstances that afforded ground for ridicule of the President and his advisers. The majority in Congress sustained the President's policy with reluctance and the people repudiated it at the polls. The effects of the reaction that began with the Democratic triumph in 1892 were felt in the elections of 1893, and were destined to assume fuller proportions in 1894. The large Democratic majority in the House was overturned by an equally large Republican majority in the 54th Congress, and the election of a Republican President in 1896 was clearly foreshadowed. The Senate in the 54th Congress contained 44 Republicans, 39 Dem- ocrats, and 6 Populists, but as the Populists generally voted with the Democrats the Republicans were powerless. The new Republican Senators were John H. Gear, of Iowa; Lucien Baker, of Kansas; Knute Nelson, of Minnesota; Thomas H. Carter, of Montana; John M. Thurston, of Nebraska; William J. Sewell, of New Jersey; George W. McBride, of Oregon; G. Peabody Wetmore, of Rhode Island; Arthur Brown and Frank J. Cannon, of Utah; Stephen B. Elkins, of West Virginia, and Francis E. Warren, of Wyoming. A Republican Sena- tor ought to have been chosen from Delaware to succeed Anthony Higgins, but owing to a factional fight in that State there was no election. The Republican Senators who were re-elected were Edward O. Wolcott, of Colorado; George L. Shoup, of Idaho; Shelby M. Cul- lom, of Illinois; William P. Frye, of Maine; George F. Hoar, of Mas- sachusetts; James McMillan, of Michigan; William E. Chandler, of New Hampshire; and Richard F. Pettigrew, of South Dakota. The other Republican Senators were George C. Perkins, of California; Henry M. Teller, of Colorado; Orville H. Platt and Joseph R. Hawley, of Connecticut; Frederick T. Dubois, of Idaho; William B. Allison, of Iowa; Eugene Hale, of Maine; Henry C. Lodge, of Massachusetts; Julius C. Burrows, of Michigan; Cushman K. Davis, of Minnesota; Lee Mantle, of Montana; Jacob H. Gallinger, of New Hampshire; Jeter C. Pritchard, of North Carolina; Henry C. Hansbrough, of North Dakota; John Sherman, of Ohio; John H. Mitchell, of Oregon; J. Donald Cameron and Matthew S. Quay, of Pennsylvania; Nelson W. Aldrich, of Rhode Island; Justin S. Morrill and Redfield Proctor, 526 HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. of Vermont; Watson C. Squire and John L. Wilson, of Washington; and Clarence D. Clark, of Wyoming. It was a Senate that left neither party in power in the last years of Mr. Cleveland's administration. In the House of Representatives the pendulum swung as far for- ward as it had swung backward in the 53d Congress. There were full Republican delegations from sixteen States Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Vermont, Washington, West Virginia, and Wisconsin; not to speak of the States that had only one Representative Delaware, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming. California elected six Republicans to one Democrat; Colorado one Republican to one Populist; Kansas seven Republicans to one Populist; Kentucky five Republicans to six Dem- ocrats; Maryland three Republicans to three Democrats; Massachu- setts twelve Republicans to one Democrat; Missouri eleven Republi- cans to four Democrats; Nebraska five Republicans to one Populist; New York twenty-nine Republicans to five Democrats; North Caro- lina three Republicans to four Populists and two Democrats; Ohio nineteen Republicans to two Democrats; Pennsylvania tw T enty-eight Republicans to two Democrats; Tennessee four Republicans to six Democrats; and Virginia two Republicans to eight Democrats. A Republican was elected in three of the Southern States Alabama, South Carolina, and Texas leaving unbroken to the Solid South only Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, and Mississippi. The country repudiated the Wilson-Gorman-Brice Tariff before it was tried. It was to a hostile Congress that President Cleveland came with his plea for financial relief in his third annual message. Before the 54th Congress met in December, 1895, the income tax feature of the Tariff of 1890 was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of the United States. All the while the Treasury con- dition was growing worse. The gold reserve could not be preserved, and the deficit was increasing daily. In order to meet the expenses of the Government and preserve the National Credit, a resort was had to borrowing. 150,000,000 bonds were sold in order to replenish the Treasury. This did not last long, and another, and still a third issue, became necessary, making a total of |262,000,000, in a little over a year. This use of bonds in order to keep the Treasury in funds was highly exasperating to the free-silver coinage sentiment in the Democratic party, while the country at large felt great disappoint- ment over the fact that the Wilson Tariff was falling so far below the expectations and promises of its projectors in providing revenue sufficient for the needs of Government in time of peace. In the first year of the operation of the McKinley Tariff Act the Government PRESIDENT CLEVELAND'S SECOND ADMINISTRATION. 527 receipts were $37,239,762 in excess of expenditures. In 1892 the receipts were $9,904,453 greater than expenses, and in 1893, $2,341,674 greater. In the first year of the operation of the Wilson Tariff Act, the Government receipts ran $42,805,223 behind expenses, and in the second year about $30,000,000 behind. In 1893, under the McKinley Act, the importation of woolen goods amounted only to $36,000,000 in value, from which the Treasury received $34,000,000 in revenue. Under the new tariff, in 1895, notwithstanding the reduced per capita consumption of such goods, the importation aggregated $60,000,000, from which the Government received a revenue of only $27,000,000. From wool and woolens together the Government obtained a revenue of nearly $44,000,000 in 1892, and only $27,000,000 in 1895. Here was a loss of $17,000,000 revenue in these two articles. At the same time the manufacture of $30,000,000 of woolen goods was transferred to Europe. For the fiscal year of 1894, the last full year under the Mc- Kinley law, the exports of manufactures amounted to $183,718,484 in value. For the calendar year 1895, the first full official year under the Wilson law, the exports of manufactures were $201,152,771, an increase of $17,434,287. But the exports of agricultural products in the corresponding period showed a net decline of $82,648,663. Hence the country gained in the exports of manufactures $17,434,287, and it lost in the exports of agricultural products $82,648,663, or a net loss of $65,214,356 in the exports of these two classes in a single year. In the total exports there was a net loss of $69,000,000 in the first calen- dar year of the new tariff as compared with the last fiscal year of the old tariff. But when the imports are taken also into consideration the difference is still greater. Under the McKinley tariff in the period mentioned the imports were $654,994,622. Under the Wilson tariff they were $801,663,490, showing a net increase of imports of $146,- 668,868. Add that amount to the net loss in exports and it shows a. change in the trade balance of the United States of $215,000,000 on the wrong side of the balance sheet. The House came to the Presi- dent's rescue with a provisional tariff bill designed to increase the customs revenue, but this could not be passed in the Senate owing to the attitude of parties in that body. An administration that began in gloom w r as ending in disaster. It was under these conditions that the political parties began to prepare for the campaign of 1896, IV. THE CAMPAIGN OF 1896. Free Coinage of Silver a Party Menace Bolt of Free Silver Pro- hibitionists Popularity of William McKinley Republican National Convention at St. Louis Opposition to McKinley The Platform Mr. Foraker's Nominating Speech The Ballot Analysis of the Vote The Gold Plank Garret A. Hobart for Vice-President Democratic National Convention Silver Men Reject Hill for Temporary Chairman Senator Daniel Chosen- Contest Over the Platform Free Silver Triumphs Mr. Bryan's Speech Candidates The Ballots Bryan and Sewall Nomi- nated The Campaign Mr. McKinley at Canton Bryan's Tours and Speeches The Candidates Contrasted Mark Hanna Dem- ocratic and Populist Fusion Result of the Elections. S the time approached for the meeting of the National Con- ventions of 189G the sentiment in favor of the free coinage of silver, which the Populists had made a feature of their platform in 1892, but which had been a subject of discus- sion and agitation ever since 1878, presented a menacing front to both political parties. In the Southern and Western States it had become a pervading influence in the Democratic party. The Demo- crats stood in awe of it because they had coquetted with it and encouraged it to secure the election of a President whose adminis- tration outraged and repudiated it. It threatened the allegiance to the Republican party of many Republicans in the mining States, but it was not a serious menace even in these, because the more important principle of Protection served to modify and thwart it. But it sought to obtrude itself upon all companies and to force itself into every platform. - Its advocates, calling themselves " broad-gaugers," appeared even at the Prohibition Convention held at Pittsburg, May 27, 1896, demanding recognition of the free coinage of silver as one of the tenets of the party, and mustered a strength of 387 to 427 in support of their demand. When they failed they seceded from the Convention, and organized another party for the Presidential contest. It was understood that the friends of free silver contemplated a sim- ilar policy for the Republican National Convention, and a " bolt " was actually attempted, the success of which would have been pathetic had not its failure turned out to be dismal. Neither the THE CAMPAIGN OF 1896. 529 device nor the demand could hope to succeed, because the Republi- can masses in 1896 had a candidate whom they regarded as the exponent and embodiment of the principles of the party. There was hardly a time between 1892 and 1896 when Republican sentiment did not point to Major McKinley as a Presidential neces- sity. There were other aspirants for the nomination, all well equipped for the place, and enjoying the respect and confidence of the Republican party, but no name inspired the masses with such hope and enthusiasm as that of McKinley. As the State Conventions met in their order to choose delegates to the National Convention at St. Louis, it became manifest that the popular tide was running irre- sistibly in his favor. No such uprising of the people in behalf of a candidate had been witnessed since Lincoln had been named for a second term. The mighty uprising sprang from the eager, passionate determination of the people to retrieve the stupendous mistake of 1892, with its blight of panic and depression, and to restore the prin- ciples and policies of which McKinley was the foremost representa- tive. His whole congressional career had been a series of courageous battles for protection. In 1888 he had led the opposition to the Mills bill. After the reverses of 1890 and 1892 he upheld the banner of protection on a thousand platforms all over the land, and McKinley and protection w