In the Senate three Republicans only voted with me. Among the nays were several Senators who, as members of the House, had voted for a Bill involving the same principle in 1869. Mr. Evarts, though absent at the time of this vote, declared his approval of the Bill in debate; and so, I think, did Mr. Dawes, although of that I am not sure. Mr. Edmunds opposed it with all his might and main.

Mr. Sherman, always a good friend of mine, remonstrated with me. He asked me with great seriousness, if I was conscious of the extent of the feeling among the Republicans of the Senate at my undertaking to act in opposition to them on this and one or two other important matters, to which he alluded. I replied that I must of course do what seemed to be my duty, and that in my opinion I was rendering a great service to the Republican Party in getting rid of the controversy in which the people sympathized generally with the Democrats, and that I thought the gentlemen who differed from me, would come to my way of thinking pretty soon. The result proved the soundness of my judgment. I do not think a man can be found in the Senate now who would wish to go back to the law which was passed to put fetters on the limbs of Andrew Johnson. I have asked several gentlemen who voted against the repeal whether they did not think so, and they all now agree that the measure was eminently wise and right. The opposition to the statute of 1887 was but the dying embers of the old fires of the Johnson controversy.

CHAPTER XII FISHERIES

If, on looking back, I were to select the things which I have done in public life in which I take the most satisfaction, they would be, the speech in the Senate on the Fisheries Treaty, July 10, 1886, the letter denouncing the A. P. A., a secret, political association, organized for the purpose of ostracizing our Catholic fellow-citizens, and the numerous speeches, letters and magazine articles against the subjugation of the Philippine Islands.

I do not think any one argument, certainly that my argument, caused the defeat of the Fisheries Treaty, negotiated by Mr. Joseph Chamberlain and Mr. Bayard during Mr. Cleveland's first Administration. The argument against it was too strong not to have prevailed without any one man's contribution to it; and the Senate was not so strongly inclined to support President Cleveland as to give a two-thirds majority to a measure, unless it seemed clearly for the public interest. He had his Republican opponents to reckon with, and the Democrats in the Senate disliked him very much, and gave him a feeble and half-hearted support.

The question of our New England fisheries has interested the people of the country, especially of New England, from our very early history. Burke spoke of them before the Revolutionary War, as exciting even then the envy of England. One of the best known and most eloquent passages in all literature is his description of the enterprise of our fathers. Burke adds to that description:

"When I reflect upon the effects, when I see how profitable they have been to us, I feel all the pride of power sink, and all presumption in the wisdom of human contrivances melt and die away within me. My rigor relents. I pardon something to the spirit of Liberty."

The War of the Revolution, of course, interrupted for a time the fisheries of the American colonies. But the fishermen were not idle. They manned the little Navy whose exploits have never yet received from history its due meed of praise. They furnished the ships' companies of Manly and Tucker and Biddle and Abraham Whipple. They helped Paul Jones to strike terror into St. George's Channel. In 1776, in the first year of the Revolutionary War, American privateers, most of them manned by our fishermen, captured three hundred and forty- two British vessels.

The fisheries came up again after the war. Mr. Jefferson commended them to the favor of the nation in an elaborate and admirable report. He said that before the war 8,000 men and 52,000 tons of shipping were annually employed by Massachusetts in the cod and whale fisheries. England and France made urgent efforts and offered large bounties to get our fishermen to move over there.

For a long time the fisheries were aided by direct bounties. Later the policy of protection has been substituted.

John Adams has left on record that when he went abroad as our representative in 1778, and again when the Treaty of 1783 was negotiated, his knowledge of the fisheries and his sense of their importance were what induced him to take the mission. He declared that unless our claims were fully recognized, the States would carry on the war alone. He said:

"Because the people of New England, besides the natural claim of mankind to the gifts of Providence on their coast, are specially entitled to the fishery by their charters, which have never been declared forfeited."

In the debate on the articles of peace in the House of Lords, Lord Loughborough, the ablest lawyer of his party, said:

"The fishery on the shores retained by Britain is in the next article not ceded, but recognized as a right inherent in the Americans, which though no longer British subjects, they are to continue to enjoy unmolested."

This was denied nowhere in the debate.

John Adams took greater satisfaction in his achievement when he secured our fisheries in the treaty of 1783 than in any other of the great acts of his life.* After the treaty of 1783 he had a seal struck with the figures of the pine tree, the deer and the fish, emblems of the territory and the fisheries secured in 1783. He had it engraved anew in 1815 with the motto, "Piscemur, venemur, ut olim." I have in my possession an impression taken from the original seal of 1815. This letter from John Quincy Adams tells its story:

"QUINCY, September 3, 1836.

"My Dear Son: On this day, the anniversary of the definitive treaty of peace of 1783, whereby the independence of the United States of America was recognized, and the anniversary of your own marriage, I give you a seal, the impression upon which was a device of my father, to commemorate the successful assertion of two great interests in the negotiation for the peace, the liberty of the fisheries, and the boundary securing the acquisition of the western lands. The deer, the pine tree, and the fish are the emblems representing those interests.

"The seal which my father had engraved in 1783 was without the motto. He gave it in his lifetime to your deceased brother John, to whose family it belongs. That which I now give to you I had engraved by his direction at London in 1815, shortly after the conclusion of the treaty of peace at Ghent, on the 24th of December, 1814, at the negotiation of which the same interests, the fisheries, and the bounty had been deeply involved. The motto, 'Piscemur, venemur, ut olim,' is from Horace.

"I request you, should the blessing of heaven preserve the life of your son, Charles Francis, and make him worthy of your approbation, to give it at your own time to him as a token of remembrance of my father, who gave it to me, and of yours.

"JOHN QUINCY ADAMS." "My son Charles Francis Adams."

[Footnote] * See Ante, p. 131. [End of Footnote]

The negotiations of 1815 and 1818 were under the control of as dauntless and uncompromising a spirit, and one quite as alive to the value of the fisheries and the dishonor of abandoning them as that of John Adams himself. If John Quincy Adams, the senior envoy at Ghent, and the Secretary of State in 1818, had consented to a treaty bearing the construction which is lately claimed he never could have gone home to face his father. When the War of 1812 ended, Great Britain set up the preposterous claim that the war had abrogated all treaties, and that with the treaty of 1783 our rights in the fisheries were gone. There was alarm in New England; but it was quieted by the knowledge that John Quincy Adams was one of our representatives. It was well said at that time that, as

"John Adams saved the fisheries once, his son would a second time."

When someone expressed a fear that the other commissioners would not stand by his son, the old man wrote in 1814, that—

"Bayard, Russell, Clay, or even Gallatin, would cede the fee-simple of the United States as soon as they would cede the fisheries." (pp. 21-22).

These fisheries still support the important city of Gloucester, and are a very valuable source of wealth to the hardy and enterprising people who maintain them. Their story is full of romance. A touching yearly ceremonial is celebrated at the present time in Gloucester in commemoration of the men who are lost in this dangerous employment.

But the value of the fisheries does not consist chiefly in historic association or in the wealth which they contribute to any such community.

They are the nursery of seamen, more valuable and less costly than the Naval School at Annapolis. They train the men who are employed in them to get to be at home on the sea. They are valuable for naval officers and for sailors. Whenever there shall be a war with a naval power, they will be thrown out of employ, and will seek service in our Navy. All the English authorities, I believe, concur in this opinion. I read in my speech a very interesting letter from Admiral Porter who testified strongly to that effect.

While it is true that many of our common sailors engaged in our cod and other fisheries are of foreign birth, it is equally true that they, almost all of them, come to live in this country, get naturalized and become ardent Americans. This is true of the natives of the British Dominions. But it is still more true of the Scandinavians, a hardy and adventurous race, faithful and brave, who become full of the spirit of American nationality.

Mr. Bayard who was, I think, inspired by a patriotic and praiseworthy desire to establish more friendly relations with Great Britain, seemed to me to give away the whole American case, and to have been bamboozled by Joseph Chamberlain at every point. The Treaty gave our markets to Canada without anything of value to us in return, and afforded no just indemnity for the past outrages of which we justly complained, and gave no security for the future.

The Treaty, which required a two-thirds majority for its ratification, was defeated by a vote of twenty-seven yeas to thirty nays. There were nine Senators paired in the affirmative, and eight in the negative. The vote was a strict party vote, with the exception of Messrs. Palmer and Turpie, Democrats, who were against it.

I discussed the subject with great earnestness, going fully into the history of the matter, and the merits of the Treaty. I think I may say without undue vanity that my speech was an important and interesting contribution to a very creditable chapter of our history.

CHAPTER XIII THE FEDERAL ELECTIONS BILL

In December, 1889, the Republican Party succeeded to the legislative power in the country for the first time in sixteen years. Since 1873 there had been a Democratic President for four years, and a Democratic House or Senate or both for the rest of the time. There was a general belief on the part of the Republicans, that the House of Representatives, as constituted for fourteen years of that time, and that the Presidency itself when occupied by Mr. Cleveland, represented nothing but usurpation, by which, in large districts of the country, the will of the people had been defeated. There were some faint denials at the time when these claims were made in either House of Congress as to elections in the Southern States. But nobody seems to deny now, that the charges were true. Mr. Senator Tillman of South Carolina stated in my hearing in the Senate:

"We took the Government away. We stuffed ballot boxes. We shot them. We are not ashamed of it. The Senator from Wisconsin would have done the same thing. I see it in his eye right now. He would have done it. With that system—force, tissue ballots, etc.—we got tired ourselves. So we called a Constitutional Convention, and we eliminated, as I said, all of the colored people whom we could under the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments.

"I want to call your attention to the remarkable change that has come over the spirit of the dream of the Republicans; to remind you, gentlemen of the North, that your slogans of the past—brotherhood of man and fatherhood of God—have gone glimmering down the ages. The brotherhood of man exists no longer, because you shoot negroes in Illinois, when they come in competition with your labor, and we shoot them in South Carolina, when they come in competition with us in the matter of elections. You do not love them any better than we do. You used to pretend that you did; but you no longer pretend it, except to get their votes.

"You deal with the Filipinos just as you deal with the negroes, only you treat them a heap worse."

No Democrat rose to deny his statement, and, so far as I know, no Democratic paper contradicted it. The Republicans, who had elected President Harrison and a Republican House in 1888, were agreed, with very few exceptions, as to the duty of providing a remedy for this great wrong. Their Presidential Convention, held at Chicago in 1888, passed a resolution demanding, "effective legislation to secure integrity and purity of elections, which are the fountains of all public authority," and charged that the "present Administration and the Democratic majority in Congress owe their existence to the suppression of the ballot by a criminal nullification of the Constitution and the laws of the United States."

In the Senate at the winter session of 1888 and at the beginning of the December session of 1889, a good many Bills were introduced for the security of National elections. Similar Bills were introduced in the House. A special Committee was appointed there to deal with that subject. I had, myself, no doubt of the Constitutional authority of Congress, and of its duty, if it were able, to pass an effective law for that purpose.

I was the Chairman of the Committee on Privileges and Elections, and it was my duty to give special attention to that subject. I had carefully prepared a Bill in the vacation, based on one introduced by Mr. Sherman, providing for holding, under National authority, separate registrations and elections for Members of Congress. But when I got to Washington, I found, on consultation with every Republican Senator except one, that a large majority were averse to an arrangement which would double the cost of elections throughout the country, and which, in States where personal registration every year is required, would demand from every citizen his presence at the place of polling or registration four times every alternate year. That is, in the years when there were Congressmen to be elected he must go twice to be registered—once for the State election, and once for the Congressional—and twice to vote. So I drew another Bill. I say I drew it. But I had the great advantage of consultation with Senator Spooner of Wisconsin, a very able lawyer who had lately come to the Senate, and I can hardly say that the Bill, as it was finally drafted, was more mine or his. This Bill provided, in substance, that there should be National officers of both parties who should be present at the registration and election of Members of Congress, and at the count of the vote, and who should know and report everything which should happen, so that all facts affecting the honesty of the election and the return might be before the House of Representatives. To this were added some section providing for the punishment of bribery, fraud and misconduct of election officers.

In the meantime the House of Representatives had appointed a special Committee charged with a similar duty. Members of that Committee saw me, and insisted, with a good deal of reason, that a measure which concerned the election of members of the House of Representatives, should originate in that body. Accordingly the Senate Committee held back its Bill, and awaited the action of the House, which sent a Bill to the Senate, July 15, 1890. The House Bill dealt not only with the matter of elections, but also with the selection of juries, and some other important kindred subjects. Our Committee struck out from it everything that did not bear directly on elections; mitigated the severity of the penalties, and reduced the bulk of the Bill very considerably. The measure was reported in a new draft by way of substitute. It remained before the Senate until the beginning of the next Session, when it was taken up for action. It was a very simple measure.

It only extended the law which, with the approbation of both parties, had been in force in cities of more than twenty thousand inhabitants, to Congressional districts, when there should be an application to the Court, setting forth the necessity for its protection. That law had received the commendation of many leading Democrats, including S. S. Cox, Secretary Whitney, the four Democratic Congressmen who represented Brooklyn, and General Slocum, then Representative at large from the State of New York. It had been put in force on the application of Democrats quite as often as on that of Republicans. We added to our Bill a provision that in case of a dispute concerning an election certificate, the Circuit Court of the United States in which the district was situated should hear the case and should award a certificate entitling the member to be placed on the Clerk's roll, and to hold his seat until the House itself should act on the case. That provision was copied from the English law of 1868 which has given absolute public satisfaction there. This was the famous Force Bill, and the whole of it—a provision that, if a sufficient petition were made to the court for that purpose, officers, appointed by the court, belonging to both parties should be present and watch the election; that the Judge of the Circuit Court should determine, in case of dispute, what name should be put on the roll of the House of Representatives, in the beginning, subject to the Constitutional power of the House to correct it, and that a moderate punishment for bribery, intimidation and fraud, on indictment and conviction by a jury of the vicinage, should be imposed. That was the whole of it.

But the Southern Democratic leaders, with great adroitness, proceeded to repeat the process known as "firing the Southern heart." They persuaded their people that there was an attempt to control elections by National authority. They realized that the waning power of their party at the South, many of whose business men saw that the path of prosperity for the South as well as for the North lay in the adoption of Republican policies, might be reestablished by exciting the fear of negro domination. The Northern Democrats, either very ignorantly or wilfuly, united in the outcry. Governor William E. Russell of Massachusetts, a gentleman of large influence and popularity with both parties, telegraphed to President Cleveland a pious thanksgiving for the defeat of this "wicked Bill."

Some worthy Republican Senators became alarmed. They thought, with a good deal of reason, that it was better to allow existing evils and conditions to be cured by time, and the returning conscience and good sense of the people, rather than have the strife, the result of which must be quite doubtful, which the enactment and enforcement of this law, however moderate and just, would inevitably create.

On reflection, I came myself to the conclusion that, while the Bill was reasonable and there was no reasonable doubt of the power of Congress to enact it, yet the attempt to pass it, if it were to fail, would do the cause infinite mischief. It would be an exhibition of impotence, always injurious to a political party. It would drive back into the Democratic Party many men who were afraid of negro domination; who looked with great dislike on the assertion of National power over elections, and whom other considerations would induce to act with the Republicans. So I thought it was best to ascertain carefully the prevailing opinion and see if we were likely to get the Bill through, and, if we found that unlikely, not to proceed far enough to have a debate in either House.

Accordingly I visited the House of Representatives, saw several of my Massachusetts colleagues and some other leaders. They agreed that, if I found that the Bill could not, in all probability, pass the Senate, it should be arranged to lay it aside in the House without making any serious movement for it there. After that arrangement was made there was a Senate caucus. I brought up the matter and moved the appointment of a Committee to consider the whole question of legislation with reference to the security of elections. A gentleman who had recently become a Member of the Senate rose and quite angrily objected to taking up the matter for consideration. He declared that he would not consent to have the subject introduced in a Republican caucus. The proceedings of such caucuses are supposed to be kept from the public. But they are pretty sure to leak out. I could not very well get up and say that my reason for asking for a committee was to see whether the law should be suppressed or not. So I did not urge my motion. But I did the best I could.

Before reporting the Bill I saw every Republican Senator and obtained his opinion upon it. I have in my possession the original memoranda of the various answers. Not only a majority of the Republican Senators, but a majority of the whole Senate declared emphatically for an Election Bill. I further consulted them whether the authority, in case of a disputed election, to order, upon hearing, the name of the person found to be elected to be placed on the roll should be lodged in the United States Courts, or in some special tribunal. Two or three preferred that the court should not be invoked. But a majority of the whole Senate favored vesting the power in the courts, and those who preferred another way stated that they were willing to abide by the judgment of the Committee.

When the House Bill came up, it was, on the 7th of August, 1890, reported favorably with my Bill as a substitute. Meantime the McKinley Tariff Bill, which Mr. Cleveland had made, so far as he could, the sole issue in the late election, had been matured and reported. It affected all the business interests of the country. They were in a state of uncertainty and alarm. Mr. Quay of Pennsylvania proposed a resolution to the effect that certain enumerated measures, not including the Election Bill, should be considered at that session, and that all others should be postponed. That, I suppose, would have had the entire Democratic support and Republicans enough to give it a majority. It would have postponed the Election Bill without giving any assurance of its consideration at the short session. So a conference of Republicans was held at which an agreement was made, which I drew up, and signed by a majority of the entire Senate. It entitled the friends of the Election Bill to be assured that it would be brought to a vote and passed at the short session, if there were then a majority in its favor. This is the agreement, of which I have the original, with the original signatures annexed, in my possession.

"We will vote: 1. To take up for consideration on the first day of the next session the Federal Election Bill, and to keep it before the Senate to the exclusion of other legislative business, until it shall be disposed of by a vote. 2. To make such provision as to the time and manner of taking the vote as shall be decided, by a majority of the Republican Senators, to be necessary in order to secure such vote, either by a general rule like that proposed by Mr. Hoar, and now pending before the committee on rules, or by special rule of the same purport, applicable only to the Election Bill."

At the next December session the Bill was taken up for consideration and, after a few days' debate, there was a motion to lay it aside. Since the measure had been first introduced, the sentiment in certain parts of the country in favor of the free coinage of silver had been strengthened. Several of the Republican Senators were among its most zealous advocates. There was a motion to lay aside the Election Bill which was adopted by a bare majority—the Democrats voting for it and several of the Silver Republican Senators, so-called. All but one of these had signed their names to the promise I have printed. I never have known by what process of reasoning they reconciled their action with their word. But I know that in heated political strife men of honor, even men of ability, sometimes deceive themselves by a casuistic reasoning which would not convince them at other times.

The Election Bill deeply excited the whole country. Its supporters were denounced by the Democratic papers everywhere, North and South, with a bitterness which I hardly knew before that the English language was capable of expressing. My mail was crowded with letters, many of them anonymous, the rest generally quite as anonymous, even if the writer's name were signed, denouncing me with all the vigor and all the scurrility of which the writers were capable. I think this is the last great outbreak of anger which has spread through the American people.

I got, however, a good deal of consolation from the stanch friendship and support of the Republicans of Massachusetts, which never failed me during the very height of this storm. Whittier sent me a volume of poetry which he had just published, with the inscription written on the blank leaf in his own hand, "To George F. Hoar, with the love of his old friend, John G. Whittier." I think I would have gone through ten times as much objurgation as I had to encounter for those few words.

There has never since been an attempt to protect National elections by National authority. The last vestige of the National statute for securing purity of elections was repealed in President Cleveland's second Administration, under the lead of Senator Hill of New York. I have reflected very carefully as to my duty in that matter. I am clearly of the opinion that Congress has the power to regulate the matter of elections of Members of the House of Representatives and to make suitable provisions for honest elections and an honest ascertainment of the result, and that such legislation ought to be enacted and kept on the statute book and enforced. But such legislation, to be of any value whatever, must be permanent. If it only be maintained in force while one political party is in power, and repealed when its antagonist comes in, and is to be constant matter of political strife and sectional discussion, it is better, in my judgment, to abandon it than to keep up an incessant, fruitless struggle. It is like legislation to prohibit by law the selling of liquor. I believe that it would be wise to prohibit the sale of liquor, with the exceptions usually made in prohibitory laws. But if we are to have in any State, as we have had in so many States, a prohibitory law one year, another with different provisions the next, a license law the next, and the difficulty all the time in enforcing any of them, it is better to give the attempt at prohibition up and to adopt a local option, or high license, or some other policy. In other words, it is better to have the second best law kept permanently on the statute book than to have the best law there half the time.

So, after Senator Hill's repealing act got through the Senate, I announced that, so far as I was concerned, and so far as I had the right to express the opinion of Northern Republicans, I thought the attempt to secure the rights of the colored people by National legislation would be abandoned until there were a considerable change of opinion in the country, and especially in the South, and until it had ceased to be a matter of party strife. To that announcement, Senator Chandler of New Hampshire, who had been one of the most zealous advocates of the National laws, expressed his assent. That statement has been repeated once or twice on the floor of the Senate. So far as I know, no Republican has dissented from it. Certainly there has been no Bill for that purpose introduced in either House of Congress, or proposed, so far as I know, in the Republican press, or in any Republican platform since.

The question upon which the policy of all National election laws depends is, At whose will do you hold your right to be an American citizen? What power can you invoke if that right be withheld from you? If you hold the right at will of your State, then you can invoke no power but the State for its vindication. If you hold it at the will of the Nation, as expressed by the people of the whole Nation under the Constitution of the United States, then you are entitled to invoke the power of the United States for its enforcement whenever necessary. If you hold it at the will of the white Democracy of any State or neighborhood then, as unfortunately seems to be the case in a good many States, you will be permitted to exercise it only if you are a white man, and then only so long as you are a Democrat.

I have had during my whole life to deal with that most difficult of all political problems, the relation to each other, in a Republic, of men of different races. It is a question which has vexed the American people from the beginning of their history. It is, if I am not much mistaken, to vex them still more hereafter. First the Indian, then the Negro, then the Chinese, now the Filipino, disturb our peace. In the near future will come the Italian and the Pole and the great population of Asia, with whom we are soon to be brought into most intimate and close relation.

In my opinion, in all these race difficulties and troubles, the fault has been with the Anglo-Saxons. Undoubtedly the Indian has been a savage; the Negro has been a savage; the lower order of Chinamen have been gross and sometimes bestial. The inhabitants of the Philippine Islands, in their natural rights, which, as we had solemnly declared to be a self-evident truth, were theirs beyond question, have committed acts of barbarism. But in every case, these inferior and alien races, if they had been dealt with justly, in my opinion, would have been elevated by quiet, peaceful and Christian conduct on our part to a higher plane, and brought out of their barbarism. The white man has been the offender.

I have no desire to recall the story of the methods by which the political majorities, consisting in many communities largely of negroes and led by immigrants from the North, were subdued.

This is not a sectional question.

It is not a race question. The suffrage was conferred on the negro by the Southern States themselves. They can always make their own rules. If the negro be ignorant, you may define ignorance and disfranchise that. If the negro be vicious, you may define vice and disfranchise that. If the negro be poor, you may define poverty and disfranchise that. If the negro be idle, you may define idleness and disfranchise that. If the negro be lazy, you may define laziness and disfranchise that. If you will only disfranchise him for the qualities which you say unfit him to vote and not for his race or the color of his skin there is no Constitutional obstacle in your way.

So it was not wholly a race or color problem. It was largely a question of party supremacy. In three states, Alabama, South Carolina and Florida, white Democrats charged each other with stifling the voice of the majority by fraudulent election processes, and in Alabama they claimed that a majority of white men were disfranchised by a false count of negro votes in the black belt.

It was not wholly unnatural that the men who, in dealing with each other, were men of scrupulous honor and of undoubted courage should have brought themselves to do such things, or at any rate to screen and sympathize with the more hot- headed men who did them. The proof in the public records of those public crimes is abundant. With the exception of Reverdy Johnson of Maryland there is no record of a single manly remonstrance, or expression of disapproval from the lips of any prominent Southern man. But they had persuaded themselves to believe that a contest for political power with a party largely composed of negroes was a contest for their civilization itself. They thought it like a fight for life with a pack of wolves. In some parts of the South there were men as ready to murder a negro who tried to get an office as to kill a fox they found prowling about a hen roost. These brave and haughty men who had governed the country for half a century, who had held the power of the United States at bay for four years, who had never doffed their hats to any prince or noble on earth, even in whose faults or vices there was nothing mean or petty, never having been suspected of corruption, who as Macaulay said of the younger Pitt, "If in an hour of ambition they might have been tempted to ruin their country, never would have stooped to pilfer from her," could not brook the sight of a Legislature made up of ignorant negroes who had been their own slaves, and of venal carpet- baggers. They could not endure that men, some of whom had been bought and sold like chattels in the time of slavery, and others ready to sell themselves, although they were freemen, should sit to legislate for their States with their noble and brave history. I myself, although I have always maintained, and do now, the equal right of all men of whatever color or race to a share in the government of the country, felt a thrill of sadness when I saw the Legislature of Louisiana in session in the winter of 1873.

There was a good deal to provoke them also in the character of some of the Northern men who had gone to the South to take an active part in political affairs. Some of them were men of the highest character and honor, actuated by pure and unselfish motives. If they had been met cordially by the communities where they took up their abode they would have brought to them a most valuable quality of citizenship. If Northern immigration and Northern capital had been welcomed at the South it would have had as helpful and influence as it had in California and Oregon. But the Southern men treated them all alike. I incline to think that a large number of the men who got political office in the South, when the men who had taken part in the Rebellion were still disfranchised, and the Republicans were still in power, were of a character that would not have been tolerated in public office in the North. General Willard Warner of Alabama, a brave Union soldier, a Republican Senator from that State, was one of the best and bravest men who ever sat in that body. Governor Packard of Louisiana was I believe a wise and honest man. But in general it was impossible not to feel a certain sympathy with a people, who whatever else had been their faults never were guilty of corruption or meanness, or the desire to make money out of public office, in the intolerable loathing which they felt for these strangers who had taken possession of the high places in their States.

President Grant gave the influence and authority of his Administration toward maintaining in power the lawfully chosen Republican State Governments. But in spite of all he could do they had all been overthrown but two when the Presidential election was held in 1876. Those two were South Carolina and Louisiana. The people of those two States had chosen Republican Governors at the State election held on the same day with the election of the President. But these Governors could not hold their power twenty-four hours without the support of the National administration. When that was withdrawn the negro and carpet- bag majority was powerless as a flock of sheep before a pack of wolves to resist their brave and unscrupulous Democratic enemy, however inferior the latter in numbers.

In attempting to give a dispassionate account of the history of this great question which has entered so deeply into the political and social life of the American people almost from the beginning, it is hard to measure the influence of race prejudice, of sectional feeling, and of that other powerful motive, eagerness for party supremacy.

Suffrage was conferred upon the negro by the Southern States themselves. Under the Constitution every State can prescribe its own qualifications for suffrage, with the single exception that no State can deny or abridge the right of a citizen of the United States to vote on account of race, color or previous condition of servitude.

But I am bound to say, indeed it is but to repeat what I have said many times, that my long conflict with their leaders has impressed me with an ever-increasing admiration of the great and high qualities of our Southern people. I said at Chicago in February, 1903, what I said, in substance, twenty years before in Faneuil Hall, and at about the same time in the Senate:

"Having said what I thought to say on this question, perhaps I may be indulged in adding that although my life, politically and personally, has been a life of almost constant strife with the leaders of the Southern people, yet as I grow older I have learned, not only to respect and esteem, but to love the great qualities which belong to my fellow citizens of the Southern States. They are a noble race. We may well take pattern from them in some of the great virtues which make up the strength, as they make the glory, of Free States. Their love of home; their chivalrous respect for women; their courage; their delicate sense of honor; their constancy, which can abide by an opinion or a purpose or an interest of their States through adversity and through prosperity, through the years and through the generations, are things by which the people of the more mercurial North may take a lesson. And there is another thing—covetousness, corruption, the low temptation of money has not yet found any place in our Southern politics.

"Now, my friends, we cannot afford to live, we don't wish to live, and we will not live, in a state of estrangement from a people who possess these qualities. They are our kindred; bone of our bone; flesh of our flesh; blood of our blood, and whatever may be the temporary error of any Southern State I, for one, if I have a right to speak for Massachusetts, say to her, 'Entreat me not to leave thee, nor to return from following after thee. For where thou goest I will go, and where thou stayest, I will stay also. And they people shall be my people, and thy God my God.'"

In July, 1898, I was invited to deliver an address before the Virginia Bar Association. I was received by that company of distinguished gentlemen with a hospitality like that I had found in Charleston the year before. Certainly the old estrangements are gone. I took occasion in my address to appeal to the Virginia bar to give the weight of their great influence in sustaining the dignity and authority of the Supreme Court, in spite of their disappointment at some of its decisions of Constitutional questions. They received what I had to say, although they knew I differed from them on some of the gravest matters which concerned the State, and had been an anti-slavery man from my youth, with a respect and courtesy which left nothing to be desired. At the banquet which followed the address, this toast was given by William Wirt Henry, a grandson of Patrick Henry, himself one of the foremost lawyers and historians of the South. I prize very highly the original which I have in his handwriting.

"Massachusetts and Virginia. "Foremost in planting the English Colonies in America; "Foremost in resisting British tyranny; "Foremost in the Revolution which won our Independence and established our free institutions; "May the memories of the past be the bond of the future."

My own endeavor, during my long public life, has been to maintain the doctrine of the Declaration of Independence, which declares the right of every man to political equality by virtue of his manhood, and of every people to self-government by virtue of its character as a people. This our fathers meant to lay down as the fundamental law of States and of the United States, having its steadfast and immovable foundation in the law of God. It was never their purpose to declare that ignorance or vice or want of experience of the institutions of a country should not disqualify men from a share in the Government. Those things they meant to leave to the discretion of the power, whether State or National, which was to prescribe the qualifications of suffrage. But they did not mean that the accident of birthplace, or the accident of race, or the accident of color, should enter into the question at all. To this doctrine I have, in my humble way, endeavored to adhere. In dealing with the Chinese, or any class of immigrants, I would prescribe as strict a rule as the strictest for ascertaining whether the immigrant meant in good faith to be an American citizen, whether he meant to end his life here, to bring his wife and children with him, whether he loved American institutions, whether he was fit to understand the political problems with which the people had to deal, whether he had individual worth, or health of body or mind. I would make, if need be, ten years or twenty years, as the necessary period of residence for naturalization.

I would deal with the Negro or the German or the Frenchman or the Italian on the same principle. But the one thing I have never consented to is that a man shall be kept out of this country, or kept in a position of inferiority, while he is in it, because of his color, because of his birthplace, or because of his race.

One matter in connection with the management of the Elections Bill I have never been able to think of since without a shudder. The Democrats in the Senate, led by Mr. Gorman, the most skilful of their leaders, endeavored to defeat the bill by the tactics of delay. If the debate could be prolonged so that it was impossible to get a vote without the loss of the great Appropriations Bills, or some of them, the bill, of course, must be laid aside. So the Republicans, on the other hand, as is usual in such cases, refrained from debate, leaving their antagonists to take up the time. Every afternoon at about five o'clock some Democrat would come to me saying that he was to take the floor, but that he did not feel well, or was not quite ready with some material, and ask me as a personal favor to let the matter go over until the next morning. This happened so often that I became satisfied it was a concerted scheme, and made up my mind that I would not yield to such a request again.

But one afternoon Senator Wilson of Maryland, a quiet and most estimable gentleman, whom I had known very well, and for whom I had a high regard, came to me and said he felt quite unwell; he could go on that afternoon, if I insisted upon it; but he would like much better to put off speaking till the next day. I was just beginning my answer to the effect that I had heard that so often that I had determined I would not yield again to the request. But I said to myself, It cannot be possible that this man would undertake to deceive me. He is a gentleman of high character, absolutely honorable and incapable of falsehood. So I answered, Of course, Mr. Wilson, if you are ill, I will consent to your desire. Mr. Wilson made his speech the next day. This was December 15. A few weeks after, on the 24th of February, Mr. Wilson died suddenly of heart disease. It was an affection of which he had been conscious for some years, and which he had for some time expected would cause sudden death. I dare say if he had been compelled to proceed with his speech that day it would have been fatal. In that case my life would have been embittered by the memory.

We had a meeting of the Republican members of the Committee, for consultation, before we reported the Bill. Mr. Evarts, while he approved the principle of the measure, shared very strongly my own hesitation, caused by the fear of the political effect of the defeat of a measure likely to excite so much angry strife throughout the country. After hearing the opinion of those who favored going on with the Bill, Mr. Evarts said: "I spent a Sunday with Judge Kent on the Hudson a good many years ago, with several New York lawyers. We all went to the Episcopal church in the forenoon, and dined with the Judge after church. During the service one of the company kept far behind in the responses, which annoyed the Judge a good deal. At dinner he broke out, 'Davis, why can't you descend into hell with the rest of the congregation?' I will descend into hell with the rest of the congregation."

Mr. Evarts made the descent and stood loyally by the measure in the debate to the best of his great ability.

CHAPTER XIV CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENTS AND THE PRESIDENTIAL SUCCESSION BILL

When I entered the Senate, I found one very serious inconvenience and one very great public danger in existing conditions.

The great inconvenience grew out of the fact that by the Constitution the session of Congress must end on the fourth of March every other year. A third of the Senate goes out at the same time, and every fourth year the Presidential term ends. That session of Congress meets, according to our usage, on the first Monday of December. The meeting cannot well come much earlier without preventing the members of the two Houses of Congress from taking part in the political campaign, where they are justly expected by the people to give an account of their stewardship, and to discuss the questions to be considered by the people in the election. So there are but thirteen weeks in which to pass fourteen or fifteen great Appropriation Bills, making it impossible to deal with any other great subject except by unanimous consent. The result is also that the Appropriation Bills are put in the power of a very few men indeed. The House has to submit to the dictation of the Appropriation Committee, and cannot be allowed to debate, or even to have a separate vote on matters which nearly the whole House would like to accomplish, if there were time, but which the Chairman of the Appropriation Committee, who is usually omnipotent with his associates, may happen to dislike. On the other hand, in the Senate, where there is no cloture rule, any single member, or at best, a very few members, can defeat an Appropriation Bill and compel an extra session by exercising their right of uncontrolled debate.

Besides; people from all parts of the country like to attend the inauguration of a new President. The fourth of March is at an inclement season, and is apt to be an inclement day, and it may come on Saturday or Sunday or Monday. So persons who attend may be obliged to be away from home over Sunday, and a great many persons have lost their health or life from exposure in witnessing the inauguration.

I prepared a Constitutional amendment providing that the inauguration should take place on the last Thursday in April. I have reported this to the Senate several times. It has always passed that body with scarcely a dissenting vote, on debate and explanation. If that had been adopted, if the session were to begin in the middle of November, a week after the November elections— which could be accomplished by an act of Congress—instead of thirteen weeks, to which the session is now limited, there would be a session of twenty-three or twenty-four weeks. This would give time for the consideration of such legislation as might be needful. It would probably, also, permit the shortening somewhat of the long session, which not infrequently extends to July or August. But the plan has never found much favor in the House. Speaker Reed, when he was in power, said rather contemptuously, that "Congress sits altogether too long as it is. The less we have of Congress, the better."

The public danger is found in the fact that there is no provision in the Constitution for the case where the President-elect dies before inauguration. The provision is:

"In case of the Removal of the President from Office, or of his Death, Resignation, or Inability to discharge the Powers and Duties of the said Office, the same shall devolve on the Vice-President, and the Congress may by Law provide for the Case of Removal, Death, Resignation or Inability, both of the President and Vice-President, declaring what Officer shall then act as President, and such Officer shall act accordingly, until the Disability shall be removed, or a President shall be elected."

Strictly construed, it is only in the case of the death, inability, etc., of a President, that a Vice-President can succeed, or in the case of the death, inability, etc., of the President and Vice-President both, that Congress has power to declare on whom the office shall devolve. It must be a President and Vice-President that die; not merely a President and Vice- President-elect. That his is not an imaginary danger is shown by the fact of the well-known scheme to assassinate Lincoln on his way to the seat of the Government, and also by the fact that either the President or the Vice-President has died in office so many times in the recollection of men now living. President Harrison died during his term; President Taylor died during his term; Vice-President King died during Pierce's term; Vice-President Wilson died during Grant's term; President Garfield died during his term; Vice-President Hendricks died during Cleveland's term; Vice-President Hobart died during McKinley's term, and President McKinley during his own second term. So within sixty years eight of these high officials have died in office; five of them within thirty years; four of them within twenty years.

I have also drawn and repeatedly procured the passage through the Senate of an amendment to the Constitution to protect the country against this danger. That also has failed of attention in the House. I suppose it is likely that nothing will be done about the matter until the event shall happen, as is not unlikely, that both President and Vice-President- elect shall become incapacitated between the election and the time for entering upon office.

I was more successful in providing against another situation that might prove quite awkward. In Washington's Administration Congress exercised, as far as it could, the power given by the Constitution to provide against the death or disability of both the President and Vice-President, if it should happen after they had entered upon office, as follows:

"In case of removal, death, resignation or inability of both the President and the Vice-President of the United States, the President of the Senate, or, if there is none, then the Speaker of the House, for the time being, shall act as President, until the disability is removed or a President elected."

There is a tradition that when this awkward arrangement was made, the proposition that the Secretary of State should succeed in the case of such vacancy was defeated by the suggestion that Mr. Jefferson had too much power and consequence already. The arrangement seemed to me clearly objectionable. In the first place the Vice-President, who, it is supposed, has died or become incapable, is the Constitutional President of the Senate. The Senate, under the practice and construction of its power which prevailed down to a very recent period, only elected a President pro tempore when the Vice-President vacated the chair. His office terminated when the Vice-President resumed it, and there was no Constitutional obligation on the Senate to elect a President pro tempore at all. So it was quite uncertain whether there would be a President pro tempore of the Senate at any particular time, especially when the Senate was not in session. There have been two instances where the President of the Senate has refused to vacate the chair, for the reason that he did not desire to have a President pro tempore elected, and thereby have an honor conferred on a member of another party than his own. That happened once in the case of Vice-President Gerry, and again, within my personal knowledge, in the case of Vice-President Arthur. When he succeeded to the Presidency there was no President of the Senate who would have taken his place if he too had happened to be assassinated. So of the Speaker of the House. For a great many years the first session of a newly-elected House of Representatives has begun in December. There is no Speaker from the previous fourth of March until that time. Beside, the Senate, whose members hold office for six years and of whom only one-third goes out every two years, is very apt to have a majority whose political opinions are opposed to those which have prevailed in the last Presidential election. So, if the President and Vice-President both die before taking their seats, the President of the Senate is quite likely to bring into the Executive Office opinions which the people have just rejected in the election.

On the other hand, the Secretary of State is always a member of the party that has prevailed in the last election, and is usually the member of the party, next to the President himself, highest in its confidence. Our Secretaries of State, with rare exceptions, have been among the very ablest public men of the country. Among them have been Timothy Pickering, John Marshall, James Madison, James Monroe, John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, Martin Van Buren, Edward Livingston, Louis McLane, John Forsyth, Daniel Webster, John C. Calhoun, James Buchanan, John M. Clayton, Edward Everett, Elihu B. Washburne, Hamilton Fish, William M. Evarts, James G. Blaine, Thomas F. Bayard, John Sherman, and John Hay. These men, with scarcely an exception, have been among the very foremost statesmen of their time. Several of them have been Presidents of the United States, and a good many more of them have been prominent candidates for the Presidency. On the other hand, the list of Presidents of the Senate contains few names of any considerable distinction. Another objection to the arrangement was the fact that the President of the Senate and the Speaker of the House might be changed at the will of the body that elected them. So the acting President might be displaced at the will of a political body. There is a good deal of reason, also, for claiming that if Congress declare that the officer shall act as President, he must discharge the duties of his office and the duties of the President at the same time, a burden which would be very hard for one man to support. Accordingly I drew and introduced the existing law, which reads as follows:

"Be it enacted, etc., That in case of removal, death, resignation or inability of both the President and Vice-President of the United States, the Secretary of State, or if there be none, or in case of his removal, death, resignation or inability, then the Secretary of the Treasury, or if there be none, or in the case of his removal, death, resignation or inability, then the Secretary of War, or if there be none, or in case of his removal, death, resignation or inability, then the Attorney-General, or if there be none, or in case of his removal, death, resignation or inability, then the Secretary of the Interior, shall act as President until the disability of the President or Vice-President is removed or a President shall be elected:

"Provided, That whenever the powers and duties of the office of President of the United States shall devolve upon any of the person named herein, if Congress be not then in session, or if it would not meet in accordance with law within twenty days thereafter, it shall be the duty of the person upon whom said powers and duties shall devolve to issue a proclamation convening Congress in extraordinary session, giving twenty days' notice of time of meeting.

"Sec. 2. That the preceding section shall only be held to describe and apply to such officers as shall have been appointed by the advice and consent of the Senate to the offices therein named, and such as are eligible to the office of President under the Constitution, and not under impeachment by the House of Representatives of the United States at the time the powers and duties of the office shall devolve upon them respectively.

"Sec. 3. That sections one hundred and forty-six, one hundred and forty-seven, one hundred and forty-eight, one hundred and forty-nine and one hundred and fifty of the Revised Statutes are hereby repealed. (January 19, 1886)."

There was some objection to it at first. It was resisted very strenuously to the end by Senator Edmunds. But after full discussion it passed the Senate with few dissenting votes.

In the House Mr. Reed, afterward Speaker, appealed without success to the political feeling of his associates, demanding to know if they would rather have Mr. Bayard, who was then Secretary of State, than John Sherman, who then happened to be President of the Senate, for President of the United States. But the House, also, by a large majority, passed the measure.

CHAPTER XV PRESIDENT CLEVELAND'S JUDGES

I earnestly supported William B. Hornblower against the opposition of Senator Hill, when he was nominated by Mr. Cleveland for Judge of the Supreme Court of the United States. I was then on the Judiciary Committee. I made very careful inquiry, and had reason to believe that the best lawyers in New York thought highly of him. Judge Gray told me that Mr. Hornblower had argued a case in the Court not long before, and that as the Judges walked out Judge Blatchford said to him: "I hope you have as good a man in your Circuit to succeed you, when the time comes, as we have in ours in Mr. Hornblower to succeed me."

I did not, however, support Mr. Wheeler H. Peckham. The newspapers circulated the story extensively that—to use the phrase of one of them—I "led the opposition." That was not true. I expected to vote for Mr. Peckham until just before the vote was taken. I had communicated my expectation to support him to Senator Vilas, who had charge of the case. I thought before the vote was taken it was my duty to tell him I had changed my mind. So I went round to his seat and told him. Nobody else knew my purpose till I voted.

I had no political sympathy with Senator Hill, still less with the claim often imputed to the Senate by writers of newspapers, but of which I have never seen the slightest evidence, that Senators have the right to dictate such appointments. But I thought Mr. Cleveland ought not to have made such an appointment without consulting Mr. Hill, who was a lawyer of eminence and knew the sentiment of the majority of the Democratic Party. Mr. Cleveland had nominated in succession two persons to an office which ought to be absolutely non- partisan, who belonged to a very small company of men devoted to his personal fortunes, who had bitterly attacked Mr. Hill. I should not, however, have deemed this objection sufficient to justify a vote against Mr. Peckham, but for the fact that I became satisfied he was a man of strong prejudices, with little of the judicial temper or quality about him, and quite likely to break down under the strain of heavy responsibility.

I urged Mr. Vilas to ask President Cleveland to send in the name of Mr. Hornblower again, having some hope that the Senate would reconsider its action in his case. But President Cleveland solved the difficulty quite skilfully by sending in the name of Senator White of Louisiana, a most admirable gentleman and Judge, and afterward, when there came another vacancy, that of Rufus W. Peckham of New York, both of whom were confirmed, I believe, without an objection.

I just referred to Senator William F. Vilas, of Wisconsin. I should like to put on record my great esteem for his character as a man, and the excellence of his service as a Senator. He was on the Judiciary Committee while I was Chairman, and also for a time when his party had the majority. He was industrious, wise, conservative, courteous, and fair, a most admirable lawyer, full of public spirit, well acquainted with the mechanism of the Government, and doing always much more than his full share of the work of the Committee and of the Senate. I hope the country may have again the benefit of his great ability in some department of the public service.

Chief Justice Fuller said with singular felicity:

"Mr. Justice Lamar always underrated himself. This tendency plainly sprung from a vivid imagination. With him the splendid passions attendant upon youth never faded into the light of common day, but they kept before him as an ideal, the impossibility of whose realization, as borne in upon him from time to time, opposed him with a sense of failure. Yet the conscientiousness of his work was not lessened, nor was the acuteness of his intellect obscured by these natural causes of his discontent; nor did a certain Oriental dreaminess of the temperament ever allure him to abandon the effort to accomplish something that would last after his lips were dumb."

Matthew Arnold says in one of his essays that Americans lack distinction. I have a huge liking for Matthew Arnold. He had a wonderful intellectual vision. I do not mean to say that his three lectures on translating Homer are the greatest literary work of our time. But I think, on the whole, that I should rather have the pair of intellectual eyes which can see Homer as he saw him, than any other mental quality I can think of. But Mr. Arnold has never seemed to me to be fortunate in his judgment about Americans. He allows this quality of distinction to Grant, but denies it, for all the world, to Abraham Lincoln. The trouble with Mr. Arnold is that he never travelled in the United States, when on this side the Atlantic. He spent his time with a few friends who had little love for things American. He visited a great city or two, but never made himself acquainted with the American people. He never knew the sources of our power, or the spirit of our people.

Yet there is a good deal of truth in what he says of the Americans of our time. It is still more true of the Englishmen of our time. The newspaper, and the telegraph, and the telephone, and the constant dissemination of news, the public library and the common school and college mix up all together and tend to make us, with some rare and delightful exceptions, eminently commonplace. Certainly the men who are sent to Congress do not escape this wearying quality. I know men who have been in public office for more than a generation, who have had enormous power and responsibility, to whom the country is indebted for safety and happiness, who never said a foolish thing, and rarely ever when they had the chance failed to do a wise one, who are utterly commonplace. You could not read the story of their public career without going to sleep. They never said anything worth quoting, and never did anything that any other equally good and sensible man would not have done in their place. I have a huge respect for them. I can never myself attain to their excellence. Yet I would as lief spend my life as an omnibus horse as live theirs.

But we have occasionally some delightful exceptions. It so happens that some of the best, most attractive men I have known, were from the South. They are men who stood by the Southern people through thick and thin during the Rebellion, and in resisting every attempt on the part of the victorious Northern majority to raise the colored people to a political equality. They have all of them, I believe, been Free Traders. In general they have opposed the construction of the Constitution which has prevailed in New England and throughout the North, and in which I have myself always believed.

I have never had much personal intimacy with any of them. I have had some vigorous conflicts with one or two of them. Yet I have had from each before our association ended, assurances of their warm personal regard. One of them, perhaps, on the whole, the most conspicuous, is Lucius Q. C. Lamar. His very name, Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus, indicates that his father must have looked for his example for his son to follow far away from the American life about him.

Lamar was one of the most delightful of men. His English style, both in conversation and in public speaking, was fresh and original, well adapted to keep his hearers expectant and alert, and to express the delicate and subtle shades of meaning that were required for the service of his delicate and subtle thought.

He had taken the part of the South with great zeal. He told me shortly before he left the Senate that he thought it was a great misfortune for the world that the Southern cause had been lost. He stood by his people, as he liked to call them, in their defeat and in their calamity without flinching or reservation. While he would, I am sure, have done nothing himself not scrupulously honorable, and while there was nothing in his nature of cruelty, still less of brutality, yet he did not stop to inquire into matters of right and wrong when a Southerner had got into trouble, by reason of anything a white Democrat had done in conflict with the National authority. Yet Mr. Lamar desired most sincerely the reconciliation of the sections, that the age-long strife should come to an end and be forgotten, and that the whole South should share the prosperity and wealth and refinement and contentment, which submission to the new order of things would bring.

He was a far-sighted man. He was not misled by temporary excitement or by deference to the majority of his political friends who were less far-sighted than he, into any mistakes. When there was an attempt to break faith in regard to what was called the Wheeler compromise in the Democratic House, Mr. Lamar interposed and prevented it. Just after the count under the Electoral Commission had been completed, there was a very dangerous movement to delay action on the returns from Vermont, which would have prevented the completion of the work before the 4th of March. Mr. Lamar put forth all his powerful influence among his Democratic associates on the floor of the House, and saved the peace of the country. He knew very well that the cause of the South, as he would have called it, and the cause of the Democratic Party itself, would not be promoted by a new civil convulsion, still less by any breach of faith.

He voted against the free coinage of silver in spite of the fact that the people of his State earnestly favored it, and against the express instructions of its Legislature. In 1874, at a time when the passions of the Civil War seemed to blaze higher, and the angry conflict between the sections seemed to blaze higher even than during the war itself, he astonished and shocked the people of the South by pronouncing a tender and affectionate eulogy on Charles Sumner. He testified to Sumner's high moral qualities, to his intense love of liberty, to his magnanimity, and to his incapacity for a personal animosity, and regretted that he had restrained the impulse which had been strong on him to go to Mr. Sumner and offer him his hand and his heart with it. It would have been almost impossible for any other man who had done either of these things to go back to Mississippi and live. But it never shook for a moment the love for Lamar of a people who knew so well his love for them.

Afterward Mr. Lamar was made an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. I voted against him—in which I made a mistake—not because I doubted his eminent integrity and ability, but because I thought that he had little professional experience and no judicial experience, and that his health— he was then beginning to show signs of the disease which ended his life shortly after—was not sufficient for undertaking the great study and the labor which the new office would require. He was not long on the Bench, and was not greatly distinguished as a Judge. But he wrote a few opinions which showed his great intellectual capacity for dealing with the most complicated legal questions, especially such are apt to arise in patent cases.

He was a delightful man in ordinary conversation. He had an infinite wit and great sense of humor. He used to tell delightful stories of queer characters and events that had come within his own observation. My relations to him for a good while were entirely antagonistic. We had some very sharp controversies. He would never tolerate any expression, in his presence, of disrespect to Jefferson Davis. He would always meet the statement that Mr. Davis was a traitor with a vigorous denial. When I made a motion excepting Jefferson Davis from the benefit of the bill to pension the soldiers of the Mexican War, Mr. Lamar compared him to Prometheus, and me to the vulture preying upon his liver. He was the last person from whom I should have expected an expression of compliment, or even of kindness in those days. Yet when the question of my reelection was pending in 1883 and the correspondent of a newspaper which was among my most unrelenting and unscrupulous opponents thought he might get some material which would help him in his attacks, called upon Mr. Lamar in the Democratic cloak room, and asked him what he thought of me, Mr. Lamar replied in language which seems almost ridiculous to quote, and which was inspired only by his indignation at the attempt to use him for such a purpose: "Sir, Massachusetts has never been more powerfully represented in the Senate, not even in the time of Daniel Webster, than by Mr. Hoar."

It was with feeling of great pleasure that in 1886 I saw Harvard confer her highest honor on this delightful Mississippian.

He was, in his time, I think, the ablest representative, certainly among the ablest, of the opinions opposed to mine. He had a delightful and original literary quality which, if the lines of his life had been cast amid other scenes than the tempest of a great Revolution and Civil War, might have made him a dreamer like Montaigne; and a chivalrous quality that might have made him a companion of Athos and D'Artagnan.

His eulogy on Calhoun, with whom in general he sympathized, was a masterpiece of eloquence, but his eulogy on Charles Sumner, which probably no other man in the South could have uttered without political death, was greater still. It was a good omen for the country. At the moment he uttered it, I suppose Charles Sumner was hated throughout the South with an intensity which in this day of reconciliation it is almost impossible to conceive. Yet Mr. Lamar in his place in the House of Representatives dared to utter these sentences:

"Charles Sumner was born with an instinctive love of freedom, and was educated from his earliest infancy to the belief that freedom is the natural and indefeasible right of every intelligent being having the outward form of man. In him, in fact, this creed seems to have been something more than a doctrine imbibed from teachers, or a result of education. To him it was a grand intuitive truth, inscribed in blazing letters upon the tablet of his inner consciousness, to deny which would have been for him to deny that he himself existed. And along with the all-controlling love of freedom he possessed a moral sensibility keenly intense and vivid, a conscientiousness which would never permit him to swerve by the breadth of a hair from what he pictured to himself as the path of duty. Thus were combined in him the characteristics which have in all ages given to religion her martyrs, and to patriotism her self-sacrificing heroes."

After speaking of the kindness of Mr. Sumner to the South, and his spirit of magnanimity, he added:

"It was my misfortune, perhaps my fault, personally never to have known this eminent philanthropist and statesman. The impulse was often strong upon me to go to him and offer him my hand, and my heart with it, and to express to him my thanks for his kind and considerate course toward the people with whom I am identified. If I did not yield to that impulse, it was because the thought occurred that other days were coming in which such a demonstration might be more opportune and less liable to misconstruction. Suddenly and without premonition, a day as come at last to which, for such a purpose, there is no to-morrow. My regret is therefore intensified by the thought that I failed to speak of him out of the fulness of my heart while there was yet time."

That Mr. Lamar well understood what was to be the effect of this wonderful speech upon the whole country is shown by his letter to his wife the next day, in which he says: "I never in all my life opened my lips with a purpose more single to the interests of our Southern people than when I made this speech."

I said of this speech in an article in the North American Review:

"The eloquent words of Mr. Lamar so touched the hearts of the people of the North that they may fairly be said to have been of themselves an important influence in mitigating the estrangements of a generation."

The following letter explains my absence from the Senate when Judge Lamar's death was announced:

WASHINGTON, D. C., January 29, 1893

My Dear Madam:

I was kept in bed, under the orders of my physician, the day the death of your husband was announced to the Senate. I regret exceedingly that I could not be in my place to express my sense of the great public loss and my warm personal admiration for his great qualities of intellect and of heart. I served with him in the House of Representatives for more than four years, and in the Senate for more than eight years. It was a stormy and exciting time. We differed widely on very grave questions, and this difference was more than once very sharply manifested in public; but the more I knew him, the more satisfied I became of the sincerity of his patriotism, of his profound and far-sighted wisdom, of the deep fountain of tenderness in his affectionate and simple heart, and of his brave and chivalrous quality of soul. I was more than once indebted to him for very great kindness indeed, under circumstances when I do not think he supposed it would ever come to my knowledge.

Some of his judgments on the Supreme Bench are characterized by marvellous beauty and felicity of style. He maintained his place on that great tribunal to the satisfaction of his friends and that admiration of his countrymen, in spite of failing health and of the fact that the best years of his life had been given to other studies than that of the law.

It is a good omen for our country that the friends and disciples of Charles Sumner unite with the people of Mississippi in their reverence for this noble and manly character.

I am faithfully yours, GEORGE F. HOAR Mrs. Lamar.

CHAPTER XVI SOME SOUTHERN SENATORS

Another most delightful Democrat, with whom it was my pleasure to form quite intimate relations, was Senator Howell E. Jackson of Tennessee. He had been in the Confederate service. I think he did not approve Secession, but like most others who dwelt in the South, thought his allegiance primarily due to his State. He was an admirable lawyer, faithful, industrious, clear-headed and learned in the law. He had been a Whig before the war, and, like other Southern Whigs, favored a moderate protective tariff. He was anxious to have the South take her place as a great manufacturing community, for which her natural resources of iron and coal and her great water power gave her such advantages. He was opposed to the Republican measures of Reconstruction and to placing the negro on a political equality with the whites. But he also discountenanced and condemned any lawless violence or fraud.

Senator Jackson was appointed Judge of the United States Circuit Court by President Cleveland. He held that office when a vacancy on the Bench of the Supreme Court came by the death of Justice Lamar. The election of 1892 had resulted in the choice of President Cleveland. The Democrats in the Senate were determined that no Republican who should be nominated by President Harrison should be confirmed, and did not mean, if they could help it, that the place should be filled during the December session. The only way to get such a confirmation would be for the Republican majority to put the question ahead of all other subjects, to go into Executive session every day as soon as the Senate met, and remain there until the judgeship was disposed of. The Democrats must then choose between defeating the Appropriation Bills, and compelling an extra session, which the in-coming Administration would not like. In order to do that, however, the small Republican majority must hold together firmly, and be willing to take the risk of an extra session.

I called on President Harrison and urged upon him the appointment of Judge Jackson. I represented that it was desirable that there should be some Democrats upon the Bench, and that they should be men who had the confidence of their own part of the country and of the country at large; that Judge Jackson was a man of admirable judicial quality; that he had the public confidence in a high degree, and that it would be impossible for the Democratic Party to object to his selection, while it would strengthen the Bench. So I thought that even if we could put one of our men there without difficulty, it would be wise to appoint Jackson.

President Harrison was very unwilling, indeed, to take this view. He answered me at first in his rough impulsive way, and seemed very unwilling even to take the matter into consideration. But after a considerable discussion he asked me to ascertain whether the Republicans would be willing, if he sent in a Republican name, to adopt the course above suggested, and transact no other business until the result was secured, even at the risk of defeating the Appropriation Bills and causing an extra session. I went back to the Senate and consulted a good many Senators. Nearly all of them said they would not agree to such a struggle; that they thought it very undesirable indeed; that the effect would be bad. So it was clear that nothing could be accomplished in that way. I went back to the White House and reported. I got the authority of the gentlemen I had consulted to tell the President what they said. The result was the appointment of Judge Jackson, to the great satisfaction of the country. He was a very industrious and faithful Judge. But his useful life came to an end soon afterward, I suppose largely as the result of overwork in his important and laborious office.

The Attorney-General said of Mr. Justice Jackson: "He was not so much a Senator who had been appointed Judge, as a Judge who had served for a time as a Senator."

I served with Senator Jackson on the Committee on Claims, and on the Committee on the Judiciary. We did not meet often in social life. He rarely came to my room. I do not remember that I ever visited him in his home. But we formed a very cordial and intimate friendship. I have hardly known a nature better fitted, morally or intellectually, for great public trusts, either judicial or political, than his. In the beginning, I think the framers of the Constitution intended the Senate to be a sort of political Supreme Court, in which, as a court of final resort, the great conflicts which had stirred the people, and stirred the Representatives of the people in the lower House, should be decided without heat and without party feeling. It was, I have been told, considered a breach of propriety to allude to party divisions in early debates in the Senate, as it would be now deemed a breach of propriety to allude to such divisions in the Supreme Court of the United States.

Howell E. Jackson had this ancient Senatorial temperament. He never seemed to me to be thinking of either party or section or popular opinion, or of the opinion of other men; but only of public duty.

He never flinched from uttering and maintaining his opinions. He never caressed or cajoled his political antagonists. It is a great tribute to his personal quality that he owed his election as Senator to his political opponents who, when his own party was divided, joined a majority of his party to elect him. He also, as has been said, owed his appointment as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court to the impression which his probity and ability had made on his political opponents. When sick with a fatal illness he left a sick bed to take his place upon the Bench at the call of duty when the Income Tax case was to be decided. There is no doubt that the effort hastened his death. I do not agree with the conclusion to which he came on that great occasion. But the fact that he came to that conclusion is enough to make me feel sure that there were strong reasons for it, which might well convince the clearest understanding, and be reconciled with the most conscientious desire to do right.

No list of the remarkable Senators of my time would be complete which did not contain the name of Senator Vest of Missouri. He was not a very frequent speaker, and never spoke at great length. But his oratoric powers are of a very high order. On some few occasions he has made speeches, always speaking without notes, and I suppose without previous preparation so far as expression and style go, which have very deeply moved the Senate, though made up of men who have been accustomed to oratory and not easily stirred to emotion. Mr. Vest is a brave, sincere, spirited and straightforward man. He has a good many of the prejudices of the old Southern Secessionist. I think those prejudices would long ago have melted away in the sunshine of our day of returning good feeling and affection, but for the fact that his chivalrous nature will not permit him to abandon a cause or an opinion to which he has once adhered, while it is unpopular. He is like some old cavalier who supported the Stuarts, who lived down into the days of the House of Hanover, but still toasted the King over the water.

Among the most interesting characters with whom it has been my fortune to serve is Senator John W. Daniel of Virginia. Our ways of life, and in many particulars our ways of thinking, are far apart. But I have been led to form a great respect for his intellectual qualities, and for his sincere and far- sighted patriotism.

Mr. Daniel came into the Senate in 1887. He had been known as a very eminent lawyer at the Virginia Bar, author of two excellent law books. He had served a single term in the National House of Representatives. He had won a National reputation there by a very beautiful and brilliant speech at the completion of the Washington Monument. There were two notable orations at the time, one by Mr. Daniel and one by Robert C. Winthrop. These gentlemen were selected for the purpose as best representing two sections of the country. Mr. Winthrop was, beyond all question, the fittest man in the North for such a task. I have a special admiration for the spirit and eloquence with which he performed such duties. To my mind no higher praise could be given Mr. Daniel's address than that it is worthy of that company.