The Democrats however made a strenuous contest and sought to counterbalance the weakness of their national contest by strong State tickets. In Indiana Mr. Hendricks was nominated for Governor, and it was hoped that the influence of his name would secure the advantage of success in the preliminary October struggle. In Pennsylvania a vigorous canvass was conducted under the skillful management of William A. Wallace. But all these efforts were unavailing. The October elections clearly presaged Republican victory. The Republicans carried Pennsylvania, in spite of surprising and questionable Democratic gains in Philadelphia; they held Ohio by a satisfactory majority; and in Indiana, Conrad Baker was elected Governor over Mr. Hendricks. With this result in the October States the November battle could not be doubtful.

The Democratic leaders however did not yet surrender the field. They made one more energetic effort to snatch the victory which seemed already in the grasp of their adversaries. But their counsels were divided. One element proposed to try heroic surgery and cut off the diseased member. While the echoes of the October verdict were still resounding, the New-York World, the leading Metropolitan organ of the Democratic party, in a series of inflammatory articles demanded that General Blair should be withdrawn from the ticket. This disorganizing demonstration met with little favor in the ranks of the party, and only served as a confession of weakness without accomplishing any good. A more significant and better advised movement was that of Governor Seymour himself. He had thus far borne no public part in the campaign, but he now took the field in person to rally the broken cohorts of his party and if possible recover the lost ground. Up to this time General Blair, through his self-assertion and his bold proclamation of Democratic designs, had been the central figure of the canvass. It was now determined that Blair should go to the rear and that Governor Seymour should go to the front and make a last and desperate effort to change the line of battle.

He started the week following the October elections, and went through Western New York, Ohio, Illinois and Pennsylvania; ending his tour only with the close of the National canvass. Delivering at least one extended address each day at some central point, and speaking frequently by the way, his journey fastened the attention of the country and amply illustrated his versatile and brilliant intellectual powers. No man was more seductive in appeal, or more impressive in sedate and stately eloquence. With his art of persuasion he combined rare skill in evading difficult questions while preserving an appearance of candor. His speeches were as elusive and illusive as they were smooth and graceful. In his present series of arguments he labored to convince the country that if the Democrats elected the President they would still be practically powerless, and that apprehension of disturbance and upheaval from their success was unfounded. He sought also to draw the public thought away from this subject and give it a new direction by dwelling on the cost of government, the oppression of taxes, the losses from the disordered currency and the various evils that had followed the trials and perils through which the country had passed. But it was not in the power of any man to change the current of public feeling. The popular judgment had been fixed by events and by a long course of concurrent evidences, and no single plea or pledge could shake it. The election resulted in the success of General Grant. Virginia, Mississippi, and Texas, in which Reconstruction was not yet completed, did not choose electors. Of the remaining thirty-four States Mr. Seymour carried but eight. General Grant's majority on the popular vote was 309,584. Of the electors he had 214 and Mr. Seymour had 80.

CHAPTER XVI.

While the result of the Presidential election of 1868 was, upon the record of the electoral votes, an overwhelming victory for the Republican party and its illustrious candidate, certain facts tended to qualify the sense of gratulation and triumph on the part of those who give serious study to the progress and results of partisan contests. It was the first Presidential election since the close of the war, and the candidates represented in sharp and definite outline the antagonistic views which had prevailed among Northern men during the period of the struggle. General Grant was the embodiment of the war feeling, and presented in his own person the spirit of the contest for the Union and the evidence of its triumph. The Democratic candidate, if not open to the charge of personal disloyalty, had done much as Governor of New York to embarrass the National Administration in the conduct of the war, and would perhaps have done more but for the singular tact and address with which Mr. Lincoln had prevented an open quarrel or even a serious conflict of authority. Mr. Seymour was indeed unpleasantly associated in the public mind with the riot which had been organized in the city of New York against the enforcement of the draft. He had been a great favorite of the Peace party, and at the most critical point in the civil struggle he had presided over a National convention which demanded that the war should cease.

Under these circumstances it was not altogether re-assuring to the ardent loyalists of the country, that the city of New York, whose prosperity depended in so great a degree upon the preservation of the Union, should now give Mr. Seymour a majority of more than sixty thousand over General Grant, and that the Empire State, which would cease to be Imperial if the Union ceased to exist, should in a popular contest defeat General Grant by fully ten thousand votes. New Jersey made an equally discouraging record by giving Mr. Seymour a majority of three thousand. The Pacific coast, whose progress and prosperity depended so largely upon the maintenance of the Union, presented an astonishing result,—California giving General Grant a majority of only 514, while Oregon utterly repudiated the great leader and gave her electoral vote for Mr. Seymour. Indiana, in the test vote of the October election for governor, was carried for the Republicans by only 961; Ohio gave a smaller majority in the hour of National victory than she had given during any year of the civil struggle, while Pennsylvania at the same election gave the party but ten thousand majority. In the city and county of Philadelphia the Democrats actually had a majority of nearly two hundred votes. The Republican majorities in these three States were considerably increased in the November election by the natural falling off of the Democratic vote, but the critical and decisive battle had been fought in each State in October. It was a very startling fact that if Mr. Seymour had received the electoral vote of the solid South (which afterwards came to be regarded either as the rightful inheritance or the fraudulent prerogative of the Democratic part), he would, in connection with the vote he received in the North, have had a majority over General Grant in the Electoral College. Considering the time of the election, considering the record and the achievements of the rival candidates, the Presidential election of 1868 must be regarded as the most remarkable and the most unaccountable in our political annals.

The result was not comforting to the thoughtful men who interpreted its true significance and comprehended the possibilities to which it pointed. Of the reconstructed States (eight in number) General Grant received the electoral votes of six,—North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama, Arkansas, and Florida. A full vote was secured in each, and the lawfulness and fairness of the result under the system of Reconstruction were not questioned. The vote of Georgia was disputed on account of some alleged irregularity in her compliance with the Acts of Reconstruction, and the suspicion that the Presidential election was not fairly conducted. But in Louisiana there was no moral doubt that violence and disorder had done their evil work. The result in that State was declared to be in favor of Mr. Seymour. The subject was brought before Congress, and the counting of the votes of these States was challenged; but as the alleged irregularity in Georgia and the alleged fraud in Louisiana had not been legally investigated, Congress (Republican at that time by a large majority in both branches) declined to exclude them from the electoral count.

There was great dissatisfaction on the part of a considerable number of Republicans in Congress with the determination to admit the vote of Louisiana without some qualifying record or explanation. In the House General Schenck offered a resolution, declaring that "the vote of the State was counted because no proof was formally submitted to sustain the objections thereto." General Shanks of Indiana offered a much more decisive resolution, declaring that "in the opinion of the House the acceptance of the electoral vote of Louisiana will encourage the criminal practice of enforcing elections in the States lately in rebellion, and involves the murder of thousands of loyal people." The rule of the House required unanimous consent to admit these resolutions, and they were strenuously objected to by Fernando Wood, Charles A. Eldridge, and other leading Democrats of the House.

In the Senate Mr. Morton of Indiana submitted a resolution, declaring that "while there is reason to believe from common report and information that the late Presidential election in Louisiana was carried by force and fraud, still there being no legal evidence before the Senate on that subject the electoral vote of Louisiana ought to be counted." No debate being allowed under the rule regulating the proceedings of the Senate in regard to the count of the electoral vote, the resolution was defeated. It received however the support of twenty-four Republican senators, some of them among the most prominent members of the body. Mr. Sumner, Mr. Chandler, Mr. Conkling, Mr. Cameron, Mr. Morton, Mr. Morgan, and Mr. Morrill of Vermont were among those who thought some record should be made of the Senate's knowledge of the frauds in Louisiana, even if they were unable on strictly legal grounds to reject her electoral vote. Other Republican senators evidently thought, as they were unable legally to reject the vote, it was not wise to make any record on the question.

Subsequent investigation abundantly established the fact (of which at the time Congress did not possess legal knowledge) that the State of Louisiana had been carried for Mr. Seymour by shameless fraud, by cruel intimidation, by shocking violence. As incidental and unmistakable proof of fraud, it was afterwards shown from the records that in the spring election of 1868, in the parish of Orleans 29,910 votes had been cast, and that the Republicans had a majority of 13,973; whereas in the ensuing autumn, at the Presidential election, the returns for the same parish gave General Grant but 1,178 votes, while Mr. Seymour was declared to have received 24,668. In the parish of Caddo, where in the spring election the Republicans had shown a decided majority, General Grant received but one vote. In the parish of Saint Landry, where the Republicans had prevailed in the spring election by a majority of 678, not a single vote was counted for General Grant, the returns giving to Mr. Seymour the entire registered vote—4,787. In other parishes the results, if less aggravated and less startling, were of like character, and the State, which the Republicans had carried, at an entirely peaceful election in the spring, by a majority of more than 12,000, was now declared to have given Mr. Seymour a majority of 47,000.

There was no pretense that there had been a revolution of public opinion in the State to justify these returns. It was not indeed denied that General Grant was personally far stronger before the people of Louisiana than any Republican candidate at previous State or Parish elections. The change was simply the result of fraud, and the fraud was based on violence. Various investigations ordered by Congress establish this view. "From these investigations," as was stated in a subsequent report, "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 constant terror, until the Republicans surrendered all claims, and then the election was carried by the Democracy."

The same report states that in the parish of Orleans "riots prevailed for weeks, filling New Orleans with scenes of blood, and Ku-Klux notices were scattered throughout the city warning the colored men not to vote." In the parish of Caddo, where as already stated only one vote was counted for General Grant, "there occurred one of the bloodiest riots on record, in which the Ku-Klux killed and wounded over two hundred Republicans, hunting and chasing them for two days and nights through fields and swamps. Thirteen captives were taken from the jail and shot, and a pile of twenty-five dead bodies were found buried in the woods." These atrocious crimes immediately preceded the election, and "having thus conquered the Republicans and killed and driven off their white leaders, the masses of the negroes were captured by the Ku-Klux, marked with badges of red flannel, enrolled in clubs, led to the polls and compelled to vote the Democratic ticket, after which they were given certificates of that fact."

One of the most alarming features connected with this series of outrages was the promptness with which Louisiana resorted to violence after her re-admission to the right of representation in Congress. Her senators and representatives had taken their seats in their respective Houses only the preceding summer, and her right to participate in the Presidential election was established at the same time. Within less than five months after her formal reconstruction, outrages which would be exceptional in the governments of Algiers or Egypt were committed in utter defiance of law, and without any attempt at punishment by the authorities of the State. Not to punish was in effect to approve.

As a mere question of figures, it is impossible that Mr. Seymour could have received the 80,225 votes with which he was credited. Indeed, his alleged majority of 47,000 over General Grant was greater than the total vote which the Democratic party could honestly cast in Louisiana. In the Presidential election of 1860, when circumstances tended to call every Democrat in the South to the polls, the united vote of Breckinridge and Douglas in Louisiana was but 30,306, while the total vote, including that given for John Bell, was but 50,510. In 1867 the entire registered white vote of Louisiana was but 45,199. The white voting population of the State, therefore, was certainly no larger in 1868 than in 1860—if as large. It was not denied that since the close of the war a considerable number of white men had joined the Republican party; white it was not even claimed that a single negro voted the Democratic ticket in 1868, except as he was led to the polls under the cover of Ku-Klux weapons, terrorized by the violence of that association of lawless men.

It amounts therefore to a mathematical demonstration, that nearly one-half of Mr. Seymour's vote was fraudulent; and of that fact concealment is no longer attempted from any respectable source. It has been matter of surprise to the cotemporaries of Mr. Seymour, that sensitive as he has shown himself on many occasions in regard to the record of his political life, he would consent, after investigation and exposure of the atrocities had been made, to remain in history without protest as the beneficiary of a vote that was demonstrably fraudulent in its character,—a vote that was tainted with crime and stained with the blood of innocent men. It is assuredly not to be presumed that violent acts and murderous deeds are less repulsive to Mr. Seymour than to any other refined Christian gentleman. But his silence in respect to the wicked transactions of his supporters in Louisiana, when he was a candidate for the Presidency, has persuaded many honest-minded Democrats that the whole narrative of crime was a slander, concocted in the interest of the Republican party. It has served also a far more deplorable purpose, for it has in large measure aided in screening from public reprobation, and possibly from exemplary punishment, the guilty principals and the scarcely less guilty accomplices in the maiming and murder of American citizens, who were only seeking to exercise their Constitutional right of suffrage.

The Republican victory of 1866 led to the incorporation of impartial suffrage in the Reconstruction laws. The Republican victory of 1868, it was now resolved in the councils of the party, should lead to the incorporation of impartial suffrage in the Constitution of the United States. The evasive and discreditable position in regard to suffrage, taken by the National Republican Convention that nominated General Grant in 1868, was keenly felt and appreciated by the members of the party when subjected to popular discussion. There was something so obviously unfair and unmanly in the proposition to impose negro suffrage on the Southern States by National power, and at the same time to leave the Northern States free to decide the question for themselves, that the Republicans became heartily ashamed of it long before the political canvass had closed. When Congress assembled, immediately after the election of General Grant, there was found to be a common desire and a common purpose among Republicans to correct the unfortunate position in which the party had been placed by the National Convention; and to that end it was resolved that suffrage, as between the races, should by organic law be made impartial in all the States of the Union—North as well as South.

Various propositions were at once offered, both in the Senate and House, to amend the Constitution of the United States in order to attain impartial suffrage. It was both significant and appropriate that the draught proposed by Mr. Henderson of Missouri was taken as the basis of the Amendment first reported to the Senate. In the preceding Congress, when the Fourteenth Amendment was under consideration (in the spring of 1866), Mr. Henderson had proposed substantially the same provision, and had solemnly warned his Republican associates that though they might reject it then, it would be demanded of them in less than five years. This declaration was all the more suggestive and creditable, coming from a senator who represented a former slave-holding State. And it was not forgotten that Mr. Henderson had with equal zeal and equal foresight been among the earliest to propose the Thirteenth Amendment. Mr. Henderson's proposition, now submitted and referred to the Judiciary Committee, was in these words: "No State shall deny or abridge the right of its citizens to vote or hold office, on account of race, color, or previous condition." It was reported from the Judiciary Committee by Mr. Stewart of Nevada, with an amendment proposing another form of statement; namely, "The right of citizens of the United States to vote and hold office shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude."

During the debate on the question Mr. Hendricks of Indiana reproached the Republican party for forcing this question now upon Congress, when in the platform of principles upon which they appealed for popular support they had distinctly waived it, and when the Legislatures to which it must go for ratification had been elected without the slightest reference to it in the popular mind. In order to prevent what might seem to be an unfair submission of the Amendment, Mr. Dixon of Connecticut proposed that it should be referred to conventions in the respective States instead of to the Legislatures, and thus give the people, in the election of members of the conventions, a full opportunity to pass upon the merits of the question. It was contended on the other hand by Republican senators, that no subject had been more fully matured in the popular mind than this had been by the discussion which had taken place since the beginning, and especially since the close, of the war. But this was not a candid or truthful statement of the case, as had been abundantly shown by the action of the National Republican Convention. Only a few of the leaders of the party had openly announced themselves in favor of negro suffrage in the Nation; a few were openly hostile, while the great majority of the prominent members feared it and refrained from open expression in regard to it. The mass of the party, as is usual on questions of this character, had made their own conclusions, and their earnestness of convictions finally forced, if it did not persuade, the reluctant chiefs to adopt it. When they at last came to it, there was a natural disposition to represent it as one of the cardinal principles of the party. The Democratic criticisms, as to the time and method of presenting the Amendment, were well aimed and practically remained unanswered for the simple reason that no adequate or logical response could be made to them.

Mr. Garrett Davis of Kentucky charged that the Republican party, in proposing this Amendment, was simply seeking to perpetuate its power in the country; but on this point he was effectively answered by Mr. Wilson of Massachusetts. "The senator from Kentucky knows, and I know," said Mr. Wilson, "that this whole struggle to give equal rights and equal privileges to all citizens of the United States has been an unpopular 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 Kentucky that the struggle of the last eight years to give freedom to four and a half millions of men who 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 respects equal to the white citizens of the United States, has cost the Republican party a quarter of a million votes."

The House of Representatives had been considering the question of the suffrage amendment at equal step with the Senate. On the 11th of January Mr. Boutwell of Massachusetts, from the Committee on the Judiciary, proposed an Amendment to the Constitution in these words: "The right of any citizen of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State, by reason of the race, color, or previous condition of slavery of any citizen or class of citizens of the United States.—The Congress shall have power to enforce by proper legislation the provisions of this Article."

Mr. Boutwell made one of the strongest and most pointed arguments delivered in Congress for the adoption of the Fifteenth Amendment. He showed that by the Fourteenth Amendment we had declared that "all persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the States wherein they reside." "There are," said he, "citizens in Kentucky and Maryland eligible to-day to the office of President or Vice-President of the United States, yet who cannot vote for representatives in Congress, or even for a State, county or town officer. What is the qualification for the office of President? He must be a native-born citizen of the United States and thirty-five years of age. Nothing more! These are the only qualifications for the office of President. By the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, we have declared that all the black men in Maryland and other States shall be citizens of the United States. Certain State governments have for the present denied those people the right to vote, and yet one of them is eligible to the Presidency of the United States and another to the Vice-Presidency. Is there such an anomaly in our Government? Are we prepared to admit its existence unless the Constitution imperatively requires it?"

The speech of Mr. Boutwell was answered by Mr. Beck of Kentucky and Mr. Eldridge of Wisconsin, their respective arguments resting mainly upon the propriety of leaving the regulation of suffrage within the power of the States, where it was originally left by the Constitution. After several ineffectual attempts to amend the Constitutional Amendment as reported from the Judiciary Committee, the House, on the 30th of January (1869), passed it by ayes 150, noes 42, not voting 31.

When the House Amendment reached the Senate it was at once taken up for consideration, and the Amendment which that body had been considering was laid aside. This was done for the purpose of expediting an agreement between the two branches. Numerous modifications and additions were then proposed, including the one originally reported by the Judiciary Committee. Every modification or substitute failed, until Senator Wilson offered the following: "No discrimination shall be made in any State among the citizens of the United States in the exercise of the elective franchise, or in the right to hold office in any State, on account of race, color, nativity, property, education, or religious creed." Mr. Trumbull declared that the adoption of this Amendment would abolish the constitutions of perhaps all, certainly of half, the States of the Union. He then pointed out that the constitution of almost every State prescribed a qualification of age for the governor of the State, and of a certain length of residence, many of them requiring a natural-born citizen; and that the effect of Mr. Wilson's Amendment would be to level all the constitutions, and radically reverse the deliberate judgment of the people of the States who had ordained them. Serious objections were also made against prohibiting an educational test, as would be the effect of Mr. Wilson's Amendment. Mr. Wilson frankly avowed his hostility to an educational test, and declared that the one existing in Massachusetts had never proved valuable in any sense. Against all objections and arguments Mr. Wilson's Amendment was adopted by the Senate.

A proposition was now introduced and supported with equal zeal by Mr. Morton of Indiana and Mr. Buckalew of Pennsylvania, proposing an amendment to the pending resolution, which should in effect be a sixteenth amendment to the Constitution. Its aim was to take from the States the power now confided in them by the Constitution, to direct the manner in which electors of President and Vice-President shall be chosen. The declared motive for the change was to prevent the possibility of the electors being chosen by the State Legislatures, as had been done in some cases, and to guarantee the certainty of a popular vote in their selection in every State of the Union. To insure this result it was proposed in the amendment that the entire power over the choice of electors should be transferred to Congress. After a brief debate the amendment was agreed to,(1) and the two proposed articles, included under one resolution, were adopted by ayes 39, noes 16, and sent to the House for concurrence.

The House not being willing to accept the Senate's Amendments, refused by formal vote to concur, and asked for a conference. The Senate took the unusual step of declining a conference, promptly receded from its own Amendments, and sent to the House the original proposition of that body. The House, not to be outdone by the Senate in capricious change of opinion, now refused to agree to the form of amendment it had before adopted, and returned it to the Senate with the added requirement of nativity, property, and creed, which the Senate had originally proposed. The rule indeed seemed to be for each branch to desert its own proposition as soon as there was a prospect that the other branch would agree to it. The strange controversy was finally ended and the subject brought into intelligible shape by a conference committee, which reported the Fifteenth Amendment in the precise form in which it became incorporated in the Constitution. It received the sanction of the house by a vote far beyond the two-thirds required to adopt it, the ayes being 145, the noes 44. In the Senate the ayes were 39, the noes were 13. The action of Congress on the Amendment was completed on the 26th of February, six days before General Grant was installed in the Presidency.

The gradual progress of public opinion in the United States on questions relating to slavery and to the personal and political rights of the negro race, may be clearly traced in the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution.

—The Thirteenth Amendment, proposed by Congress while the war was yet flagrant, simply declared that neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall exist within the United States or in any place subject to National jurisdiction.

—The Fourteenth Amendment advanced the negro to the status of a citizen, but did nothing affirmatively to confer the right of suffrage upon him. Negatively it aided him thereto, by laying the penalty of a decreased representation upon any State that should deny or in any way abridge his right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice-President of the United States, representatives in Congress, the executive and judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof.

—The Fifteenth Amendment, now proposed, did not attempt to declare affirmatively that the negro should be endowed with the elective franchise, but it did what was tantamount, in forbidding to the United States or to any State the power to deny or abridge the right to vote on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. States that should adopt an educational test or a property qualification might still exclude a vast majority of negroes from the polls, but they would at the same time exclude all white men who could not comply with the tests that excluded the negro. In short, suffrage by the Fifteenth Amendment was made impartial, but not necessarily universal, to male citizens above the age of twenty-one years.

The adoption of the Fifteenth Amendment seriously modified the effect and potency of the second section of the Fourteenth Amendment. Under that section a State could exclude the negro from the right of suffrage, if willing to accept the penalty of the proportional loss of representation in Congress, which the exclusion of the colored population from the basis of apportionment would entail. But the Fifteenth Amendment took away absolutely from the State the power to exclude the negro from suffrage, and therefore the second section to the Fourteenth Amendment can refer only to those other disqualifications never likely to be applied, by which a state might lessen her voting population by basing the right of suffrage on the ownership of real estate, or on the possession of a fixed income, or upon a certain degree of education, or upon nativity, or religious creed. It is still in the power of the States to apply any one of these tests or all of them, if willing to hazard the penalty prescribed in the Fourteenth Amendment. But it is not probably that any one of these tests will ever be applied. Nor were they seriously taken into consideration when the Fourteenth Amendment was proposed by Congress. Its prime object was to correct the wrongs which might be enacted in the South, and the correction proposed was direct and unmistakable; viz., that the Nation would exclude the negro from the basis of apportionment wherever the State should exclude him from the right of suffrage.

When therefore the nation by subsequent change in its Constitution declared that the State shall not exclude the negro from the right of suffrage, it neutralized and surrendered the contingent right before held, to exclude him from the basis of apportionment. Congress is thus plainly deprived by the Fifteenth Amendment of certain powers over the representation in the South, which it previously possessed under the provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment. Before the adoption of the Fifteenth Amendment, if a State should exclude the negro from suffrage, the next step would be for Congress to exclude the negro from the basis of apportionment. After the adoption of the Fifteenth Amendment, if a State should exclude the negro from suffrage, the next step would be for the Supreme Court to declare that the act was unconstitutional, and therefore null and void. The essential and inestimable value of the Fourteenth Amendment still remains in the three other sections, and pre-eminently in the first section.

The contentions which have arisen between political parties as to the rights of negro suffrage in the Southern States, would scarcely be cognizable judicially under either the Fourteenth or the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution. Both of those Amendments operate as inhibitions upon the power of the State, and do not have reference to those irregular acts of the people which find no authorization in the public statutes. The defect in both Amendments, in so far as their main object of securing rights to the colored race is involved, lies in the fact that they do not operate directly upon the people, and therefore Congress is not endowed with the pertinent and applicable power to give redress. By decisions of the Supreme Court, the Fourteenth Amendment has been deprived in part of the power which Congress no doubt intended to impart to it. Under its provisions, as construed by the Court, little, if any thing, can be done by Congress to correct the evils or avert the injurious consequences arising from such abuses of the suffrage as distinguished the vote of Louisiana in the Presidential election of 1868, and in the numerous and flagrant cases which followed that baleful precedent of unrestrained violence and unlimited wrong. Those outrages are the deeds of individual citizens or of associated masses, acting without authority of law and in defiance of law. Yet when a vitiated public opinion justifies their course, and when indictment and conviction are impossible, the injured citizen loses his rights as conclusively as if the law had denied them, and indeed far more cruelly.

Undoubtedly a large proportion of the members of Congress, while following the lead of those who constructed the Fourteenth Amendment, sincerely believed that it possessed a far greater scope than judicial inquiry and decision have left it. It is hazarding little to say that if the same political bodies which submitted the Amendment to the people could have measured both the need of its application and the insufficiency of its power, it would have been seriously changed, and would have conferred upon the National Government the unquestioned authority to protect individual citizens in the right of suffrage, so far as that suffrage is used in the choice of officers of the United States. The opportunity was neglected and may never return. It is not at all probable that any political party will succeed in time of peace, upon financial and industrial issues, in electing two-thirds of the Senate and two-thirds of the House of Representatives. No further change in the Constitution of the Republic is probable therefore, within any period whose line of thought or action may now be anticipated with reasonable certainty; and if a sudden political convulsion should possibly give two-thirds of each branch of Congress to one political party, it would be found impracticable to propose any change in the Constitution, in the direction of enlarging the scope of liberty, that would be likely to secure the support of three-fourths of the States of the Union.

The Constitutional Amendments were proposed and adopted under the belief that they would be honorably observed and enforced in all the States alike. The presumption was certainly in favor of that loyal obedience to the organic law of the Republic without which Anarchy has already begun its evil work. If however, by reason of infidelity to the Constitutional provisions in some sections, if by violence in resisting them in others, it be suggested that they should have been drawn with greater circumspection, with a broader comprehension of all the contingencies of the future, the fact yet remains that they are of priceless value to the Government and the people. They have added largely to the muniments of personal liberty; they have immeasurably increased the just power of the National Government; they have exerted a constantly growing force against the spirit that organized the Rebellion; they have strengthened the bonds of the Union against every form of danger which it has hitherto encountered.

Without the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments the Thirteenth would have proved of little value to the oppressed race which it declared to be free. In every step taken after the simple article of emancipation was decreed, the Republicans who controlled the Government met with obstacles from without and from within. There were thousands in their own ranks who did not wish the negro advanced to citizenship; there were tens of thousands who were unwilling to see him advanced to the elective franchise. But happily there were hundreds of thousands who plainly saw that without the rights of citizenship his freedom could be maintained only in name, and that without the elective franchise his citizenship would have no legitimate and (if the phrase be allowed) no automatic protection.

To the brave men who led the Republican party to its duty and its mission, who overcame the numbers of the opposition, who lifted their associates from the slough of prejudice and led them out of the darkness of tradition, let there be all honor and praise. They gave hope to the hopeless, help to the helpless, liberty to the downtrodden. They did more: they elevated the character and enlightened the conscience of the oppressing race. The struggle is not yet ended, the final battle is not yet fought; but complete victory sooner or later is assured. The three great Amendments to the Constitution were bought with a great price—even the blood of the slain—and they will assuredly, in their letter and in their spirit, be vindicated and enforced. Mr. Lincoln taught his countrymen the lesson that he who would be no slave must be content to have no slave. It is yet to be learned with equal emphasis that he who would preserve his own right to suffrage must never aid in depriving another citizen of the same great boon. In moral as in physical conflicts it may be easy to determine who strikes the first blow, but it is difficult to foresee who may strike the last.

[(1) The proposition of Messrs. Morton and Buckalew for a Sixteenth Article of Amendment was as follows:—

"The second clause, first section, second article of the Constitution of the United States shall be amended to read as follows: 'Each State shall appoint by vote of the people thereof qualified to vote for representatives in Congress, a number of electors equal to the whole number of senators and representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress; but no senator or representative, or person holding an office of trust or profit under the United States, shall be appointed an elector; and the Congress shall have power to prescribe the manner in which such electors shall be chosen by the people.'"]

CHAPTER XVII.

General Grant was inaugurated on Thursday, the 4th of March, 1869, amid a great display of popular enthusiasm. All parties joined in it. The Republicans, who had been embarrassed by President Johnson's conduct for the preceding four years, felt that they had overcome a political enemy rather than a man whom they had themselves placed in power; and the Democrats, who had supported Johnson so far as was necessary to embarrass and distract the Republicans, were glad to be released from an entangling alliance which had brought them neither profit or honor. Contrary to the etiquette of the occasion, the incoming President was not escorted to the Capitol by his predecessor. The exceptions to this usage have been few. John Adams was so chagrined by the circumstances attending his defeat that he would not remain in Washington to see Mr. Jefferson installed in power; and the long-established hatred which General Jackson and John Quincy Adams so heartily sustained for each other forbade any personal intercourse between them. General Grant had conceived so intense a dislike of Johnson, by reason of the effort to place him in a false position in connection with the removal of Stanton, that he would not officially recognize his predecessor, even so far as to drive from the White House to the Capitol in the same carriage.

The Inaugural Address of the President was brief and characteristic. "I have," said he, "taken the oath of office without mental reservation, and with the determination to do to the best of my ability all that it requires of me. The responsibilities of the position I feel, but accept them without fear. The office has come to me unsought. I commence its duties untrammeled. I bring to it a conscientious desire and determination to fill it to the best of my ability, and to the satisfaction of the people." He declared that on all subjects he should have "a policy to recommend, but none to enforce against the will of the people. Laws are to govern all alike, —those opposed as well as those who favor them. I know of no method to secure the repeal of bad or obnoxious laws so effective as their stringent execution." He was very emphatic upon the duty and necessity of upholding the public credit and paying the public debt. "Let it be understood," said he, "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." "The question of suffrage," he said, "is one which is likely to agitate the public so long as a portion of the citizens of the Nation are excluded from its privileges in any State. It seems to me very desirable that this question should be settled now; and I entertain the hope and express the desire that it may be by the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution."

General Grant had never been in any way connected with the civil administration of Nation or State. The charge of being a mere military chieftain had been in vain preferred against some of his most illustrious predecessors; but with the possible exception of General Taylor, no President ever came to the office with so little previous experience in civil affairs. Washington's fame, prior to his accession to the Presidency, rested mainly on his victorious leadership of the Revolutionary army; but he had, as a young man, served in the Provincial Assembly of Virginia, had been a member of the Continental Congress, and had, after the close of his miliary career, presided over the convention that framed the Constitution. Jackson was chosen President on account of his campaign in the South-West, ending in his brilliant triumph at New Orleans; but his experience in civil life had already been long and varied. He entered Congress as a representative from Tennessee when Washington was President, took his seat in the Senate of the United States the day John Adams was inaugurated, and afterwards served as a judge of the Supreme Court of Tennessee. All these civil duties had been performed before he received a military commission. After his stormy career in the army had ended, he was again sent to the Senate during the second term of President Monroe. President Taylor, like General Grant, had been simply a soldier; but the people remembered that his service in the Executive Chair was faithful, resolute, and intelligent; and they remembered also that some of the greatest military heroes of the world had been equally distinguished as civil rulers. Cromwell, William III., Frederick the Great, the First Napoleon, left behind them records of civil administration which for executive force and personal energy established a fame as great as they had acquired on the field of battle. The inexperience of General Grant had not therefore hindered his election, and left no ground for apprehension as to the successful conduct of his administration.

The President had so well kept his own counsels in regard to the members of his Cabinet that not a single name was anticipated with certainty. Five of the appointments were genuine surprises.

—Elihu B. Washburne, long the faithful friend of General Grant, was nominated for Secretary of State. He had just entered upon his ninth term as representative in Congress from Illinois, and resigned immediately after swearing in Mr. Blaine as Speaker,—a duty assigned to him as the oldest member of the House in consecutive service. He was elected to Congress in 1852, from the Galena district, and his first term began on the day Franklin Pierce was inaugurated President. His period of service was crowded with events of great magnitude, commencing with the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, and ending with the elevation to the Presidency of the chief hero in the great civil war, to which that repeal proximately led. During all these years Mr. Washburne was an aggressive, courageous, faithful representative, intelligent in all his actions, loyal to the Nation, devoted to the interests of his State.

—Jacob D. Cox, of Ohio, who had acquired credit in the war, and added to it by his service as Governor of his State, was nominated for Secretary of the Interior, and was universally considered to be an admirable selection. His thorough training and his intellectual strength fitted him for any station.

—E. Rockwood Hoar of Massachusetts was named for Attorney-General. His learning as a lawyer had been previously recognized by his appointment to the Supreme Bench of his State,—a bench always eminent for the legal ability and personal character of its members, and for the value of its decisions. Outside of his mere professional sphere, Judge Hoar was known as a man of generous culture, varied knowledge, and the keenest wit. In party relations he had originally been an anti-slavery Whig, and was prominent and influential in organizing the Republican party.

—John A. J. Creswell of Maryland was nominated for Postmaster-General. He was the best living representative of those loyal men of the Border States who had proved a tower of strength to the Union cause. He was the confidential friend, the eloquent eulogist, of Henry Winter Davis, and had by service in both House and Senate won general recognition as a man of ability and great moral courage.

These four appointments met with general approbation. If their names had not all been anticipated, they were nevertheless welcome to the great mass of the Republican party. Two other nominations created general astonishment. Alexander T. Stewart, the well-known merchant of New York, was named for Secretary of the Treasury; and Adolph E. Borie of Philadelphia, long known in that city as a man of probity and wealth, was named for Secretary of the Navy. No new nomination was made for Secretary of War, and the hope with many was that General Schofield might be continued in a place whose duties he had so faithfully and so successfully discharged.

The President was very anxious to have Mr. Stewart in his Cabinet, and was therefore surprised and chagrined to find, after he had been nominated, that under the law he was not eligible to the office of Secretary of the Treasury. In the Act establishing the Treasury department, passed at the first session of the First Congress under the Federal Government, it was provided that no person could be appointed secretary, assistant secretary, comptroller, auditor, treasurer, or registrar, who was "directly or indirectly concerned or interested in carrying on the business of trade or commerce." It was further provided that any person violating this Act should be deemed guilty of a high misdemeanor, and upon conviction, fined three thousand dollars, removed from office, and forever thereafter rendered incapable of holding any position under the Government of the United States. General Grant frankly informed the Senate that he had ascertained Mr. Stewart's disability after the nomination, and suggested that "in view of these provisions of law and the fact that Mr. Stewart has been unanimously confirmed by the Senate, he be exempted, by joint resolution of the two Houses of Congress, from the operation of this law."

As soon as the President's message was read, Mr. Sherman of Ohio asked "unanimous consent to introduce a bill repealing as much of the Act of September 2, 1789, as prohibits the Secretary of the Treasury from being concerned in carrying on the business of trade or commerce; and providing instead that in no case shall he act on any matter, claim, or account in which he is personally interested." Mr. Sumner objected to the introduction of the bill, suggesting that it ought to be "most profoundly considered before it is acted upon by the Senate." These proceedings were on Saturday, March 6th. On Monday Mr. Sherman did not call up the bill, it having been ascertained in private conferences that the Senate was unwilling to pass it. On Tuesday General Grant withdrew the request, Mr. Stewart resigned, and Hon. George S. Boutwell was nominated and confirmed as Secretary of the Treasury.

Mr. Boutwell was at that time fifty-one years of age. He had enjoyed a large experience in public affairs. He had served seven years in the Massachusetts Legislature, had been Bank Commissioner, Secretary of the Board of Education, a member of the Constitutional Convention of 1853, and Governor of the Commonwealth. Under the National Government he had been Commissioner of Internal Revenue, and six years a representative in Congress. He was an industrious student, a strong debater, possessed of great capacity for work, and had always maintained a spotless reputation.

The surprises in connection with General Grant's cabinet were not yet ended. A week after the inauguration Secretary Washburne resigned, and a few days later was appointed Minister to France. He was succeeded in the State Department by Mr. Hamilton Fish of New York. Mr. Fish was a member of one of the old Knickerbocker families. He had inherited wealth, was of the highest social rank, and enjoyed in a marked degree the confidence and respect of his fellow-citizens. He was bred to the law, and as a young man took deep interest in political affairs, earnestly attaching himself to the fortunes of Mr. Clay in his contest against General Jackson, and having the great advantage of Mr. Webster's personal friendship. He had served in both branches of the New-York Legislature, was a representative from New-York City in the Twenty-eighth Congress, was chosen Governor of his State in 1848, and in 1851 succeeded Daniel S. Dickinson in the United-States Senate, where he served for a full term as the colleague of Mr. Seward. At the close of his senatorial service he was but forty-eight years of age, and by his own wish retired from all participation in political affairs, thought he heartily united with his fellow Republicans of New York in the effort to nominate Mr. Seward for the Presidency in 1860. It was therefore an almost equal surprise to the country that General Grant should call Mr. Fish from his retirement, and that Mr. Fish, at sixty years of age, should again be willing to enter the political field. His career as Secretary of State was fruitful in good works. He was throughout the eight years of his service devoted to his official duties, and it was his good fortune to be connected with public events of exceptional importance. He brought great strength to the Cabinet of General Grant, and added in many ways to the prestige and power of the administration.

The changes in the Cabinet continued. Immediately after Mr. Washburne's resignation as Secretary of State, General Schofield retired from the War Department, and was succeeded by General John A. Rawlins, who had been chief of staff to General Grant during some of his most important campaigns. General Rawlins was born in Galena, and was a personal friend of General Grant before the outbreak of the war. He was a lawyer, but had held no civil position, and entered the Cabinet with only a military experience. He was in ill health, and died in the following September, when General Sherman succeeded him as Secretary ad interim, and administered the affairs of the War Department until the appointment of General Belknap at the close of October.

Mr. Borie, though gratified with the compliment of being called to the Cabinet, had no aptitude or desire for public affairs. He urgently requested General Grant to accept his resignation, and in June, three months after his appointment, he was succeeded by Mr. George M. Robeson. Mr. Robeson was connected with some of the old families of New Jersey that became especially distinguished in the Revolutionary war. He received a thorough intellectual training in his youth, and graduated at Princeton College in 1847. He studied law in the office of the Chief Justice of his State, and came to the bar under the most favorable auspices. He began practice as soon as he had attained his majority, and rapidly advanced in his profession. At thirty-six years of age he was appointed Attorney-General of his State, and discharged the duties of that important office with an ability which justly added to his legal reputation. He has displayed great power in arguing questions of Constitutional Law. While engaged in the Attorney-Generalship he was appointed Secretary of the Navy by President Grant. He was then thirty-nine years of age, and beyond his legal learning was a man of literary taste and general knowledge of affairs. Mr. Fish and Mr. Robeson were the only members of General Grant's Cabinet appointed the first year of his administration who served throughout his Presidency.

General Grant would not resign his military commission in season for President Johnson to control the Army changes which would follow. There was no dispute about his immediate successor. Not only the rank, but the illustrious services, the high personal character, and the popular estimate of Lieutenant-General Sherman established his right to the promotion. But discussion arose in army circles and among the people as to the Lieutenant-Generalship. Those holding the rank of Major-General were five in number,—Henry W. Halleck, whose commission bore date August 19, 1861; George G. Meade, August 18, 1864; Philip H. Sheridan, November 8, 1864; George H. Thomas, December 15, 1864; and Winfield S. Hancock, July 26, 1866. The President had the right under the law to fill the office of Lieutenant-General by selection, and he was not bound even by usage to regard any claim based only upon seniority of commission.

General Halleck's distinction had not been won by service in the field. He was a graduate of West Point with a good record in the Mexican war. He was appointed Major-General at the outbreak of the Rebellion on account of his well-known ability and the presumption of his fitness for high command—a presumption which proved to be not well founded. Meade had gained his commission by the splendid victory of Gettysburg. Sheridan, besides earning his commission by his brilliant success in the valley of Virginia, had been personally and most impressively commended by President Lincoln: his success was in fact political as well as military, for it totally destroyed General McClellan as a candidate for the Presidency. Thomas had received his promotion on account of the great victory at Nashville, without which Sherman might have been seriously embarrassed in his march to the sea. General Hancock was commissioned after the war for general efficiency as a soldier and for heroism on many battle-fields. No task could be more invidious than to decide between officers of merit so marked. If Mr. Johnson could have had the opportunity, it was well known that he would appoint Thomas to succeed General Sherman; not so much from love as Thomas as from hatred of Sheridan,—a hatred which did honor to Sheridan. It was the fixed purpose of General Grant to defeat this; not from unfriendliness towards Thomas, but from a profound admiration of the military genius of Sheridan, quickened by a very strong personal attachment to him.

There was little discussion as to the relative claims of Sheridan and Thomas. Sheridan undoubtedly ranked Thomas in command, while Meade outranked both. General Meade however was not put in rivalry with these two distinguished officers. Not rated so high in military skill as at least four other commanders of the Army, it had happened to General Meade to meet the chief commander of the rebel army on the most critical battle-field of the war, and to win a victory which may well be termed the turning-point in the civil struggle. The only battle fought on the soil of a Northern State, it was quite natural that an extraneous interest should attach to Gettysburg, and it is almost the only field of the war which steadily attracts the visits of tourists and patriots alike.

In the end there was no doubt complete satisfaction in the Army and among the people at large with the promotion of Sheridan, which was ordered by President Grant the very day of his inauguration, directly after Sherman had been gazetted as General. There was at the same time a strong popular desire that the heroic achievements of Meade and Thomas should be marked by some form of National recognition; not, however, in any way to interfere with the just reward of Sheridan. The proposition to make three Lieutenant-Generals was canvassed in military and Congressional circles; but the general aversion to a large military establishment in time of peace prevented its favorable consideration, and these eminent soldiers received no attention or favor from Congress after their work had been crowned with success by the suppression of the Rebellion and the complete restoration of the Union. Thomas left Washington soon after President Grant's inauguration to take command of the Department of the Pacific. He was disappointed in his expectations and depressed in feeling. He died suddenly a year later (March 28, 1870) at the age of fifty-four. His death was noticed in a peculiarly impressive manner by a meeting of the two branches of Congress in the Hall of Representatives, to hear addresses commemorative of his character. General Meade, born a year earlier, survived him for a brief period,—dying November 6, 1872. He had evinced no dissatisfaction with the measure of his reward, and had been especially gratified by the privilege of maintaining his headquarters in Philadelphia (from which city he was originally appointed to the Army) and of passing his closing years on the soil of the noble State with which his fame is inseparably associated.

Peculiar circumstances surrounded the career of Thomas, imparting great interest and enlisting on his behalf a strong affection among the loyal people of the Nation. The popular regret that he had not been appropriately recognized by the National Government for his great services, was deepened by his untimely death. The regard usually felt by soldiers for their successful leader was exceptionally strong in his case, and manifested itself in many acts of personal devotion. He was commended to popular favor by his steadfast loyalty to the Union, when he was subjected to all the temptations and all the inducements which had led Lee and Johnston into the rebellion. He, like them, was born in Virginia, was reared in Virginia, was appointed to the army from Virginia; but in the hour of peril to the Government he remembered that he was a citizen and soldier of the United States, and had sworn to uphold the Constitution. How well he maintained his faith to his country is written in the history of great battles and great victories!

The grade of General of the Army, originally provided for Washington in 1799, was revived for the avowed purpose of honoring General Grant. As originally reported, the Act was to be exhausted with one appointment; but his provision was struck out and the grade was left open for General Sherman. It was then abolished, leaving to Sheridan the command of the Army as Lieutenant-General (after the retirement of General Sherman), and to his successor with the rank of Major-General, —thus ultimately establishing the command as it had existed before the war. The Act under which General Grant received his highest rank authorized the President "whenever he shall deem it expedient, to appoint a General of the Army of the United States." This Act passed July 25, 1866, and General Grant was immediately promoted. A year and a half later, when General Grant had broken all personal relations with President Johnson, there is little doubt that the latter would have interposed his discretion and failed to "deem it expedient to appoint a General of the Army of the United States." Fortunately his disposition at the time was friendly to General Grant, and led him to do with gladness what the loyal people so unanimously desired for the first soldier of the Nation.

The Forty-first Congress was the second to organize under the new law —March 4th 1869.(1) In the House James G. Blaine of Maine was elected Speaker, receiving 135 votes to 57 cast for Michael C. Kerr of Indiana. Of the two hundred and forty-three representatives on the roll, only ninety-eight had served in the preceding Congress. Among the one hundred and forty-five new members were some men who afterwards became widely and favorably known to the country.

—William A. Wheeler, who had been a member of the Thirty-seventh Congress, now returned from his native district, the most northerly of New York. He possessed admirable traits for a legislator; being a conscientious worker, intelligent in the business of the House, and implicitly trusted by his fellow-members. He was a lawyer and a man of affairs,—engaged at one time in banking, and for many years president of an important railroad company. He was well trained for legislative duty,—having served with distinction in both branches of the New-York Legislature and having been a member of the State Constitutional Convention of 1867. Not prominent as a debater, he yet spoke with directness and fluency, and was always listened to by the House. In all respects he was an admirable representative, watchfully caring for the public interests.

—His Democratic colleague, Clarkson Nott Potter, from the Westchester district, entered the House at forty-four years of age. The son of bishop Alonzo Potter and grandson of Peter Nott of Union College, he had the right by inheritance to the talents with which he was endowed. After leaving college he devoted himself to civil engineering, intending to adopt it as his profession, but his tastes soon inclined him to the law. He was admitted to the bar of New York in 1847 and in a few years acquired a practice from which he derived a handsome fortune. He was well adapted to Parliamentary life and promptly acquired high rank in the House. So unfailing were his courtesy and kindliness that his personal influence was as great with the Republicans as with the Democrats, among whom almost from the day of his entrance he was accorded a leading position.

—Noah Davis took his seat as representative from the strong Republican district of Monroe and Orleans in Western New York. He early attained distinction at the bar and had just left the Supreme Bench of his State, where he had served for eleven years with eminent credit. That high dignity had been conferred upon him before he was forty years of age. He did not find service in the House congenial and promptly abandoned all thought of a legislative career. This was sincerely regretted by his personal friends, who had knowledge of his ability and foresaw brilliant success for him should his ambition lead him to remain in Congress. His subsequent service on the Supreme Bench of New York has added to an already exalted reputation.

—Henry W. Slocum, who now came as a Democratic representative from the city of Brooklyn, was a graduate of West Point in the class of 1852, but remained in the Regular Army only about four years. After his resignation he studied law and was admitted to the bar in Syracuse. When the civil war broke out he joined the Volunteers and rose to high rank. He was appointed a Major-General and placed in command of a corps. His record as an officer was without blemish. Though allied with the Democrats, he was not a bitter partisan, and his course in the House was that of an enlightened and liberal man.

—Eugene Hale entered the House from Maine in his thirty-third year. He began the practice of law as soon as he attained his majority, and was almost immediately appointed county attorney,—a position which he held for nine years. His success at the bar was very marked. Preceding his election to Congress he served in the State Legislature and took a leading position in a body of able men. In the House of Representatives he rose rapidly in the estimation of his associates and was recognized as a sound and careful legislator, of great industry in the committee-room, and of decided ability as a debater. He exhibited an exceptional clearness of statement and power of analysis. He possesses the peculiar tact and aptitude which insure a successful career in a Parliamentary body. He has always been fond of books, and has constantly grown in knowledge and in mental discipline.

The Pennsylvania delegation received some valuable accessions. Washington Townsend of the Chester district brought to his public duties a large experience in affairs, a good standing at the bar, with the common sense, integrity, and trustworthiness found so generally in the Society of Friends.—John B. Packer, a man of steady character and strong parts, came from the Dauphin district.—John Cessna of the Bedford district had served many years in the Legislature of Pennsylvania, had been twice Speaker of the House of Representatives in that State, and had given much attention to Parliamentary law.—William H. Armstrong from the Lycoming district, was a graduate of Princeton, a lawyer, and extensively engaged in business.—James S. Negley, from one of the Pittsburg districts, had served in the Mexican war when only twenty years of age, and at the outbreak of the Rebellion was appointed a Brigadier-General in the Volunteer service. He joined General Sherman in the South-West in the autumn of 1861 and fought through the war, attaining an excellent reputation, and being rewarded with the rank of Major-General.—Daniel J. Morrell of the Johnstown district, who entered the preceding Congress, had grown rapidly in his standing in the House, and, next to Judge Kelley, was quoted as an authority upon all industrial questions.

George W. McCrary and F. W. Palmer of Iowa, Jacob A. Ambler and William H. Upson of Ohio, Horatio C. Burchard and John B. Hawley of Illinois, and Stephen W. Kellogg of Connecticut, were among the members who rose to rank and usefulness in the House.—Gustavus A. Finkelnburg, a young German who spoke English without the slightest accent, came from one of the St. Louis districts and rapidly gained the respect and confidence of all who were associated with him.—S. S. Burdette, a man of force and readiness as a debater, was one of his colleagues, as was also Erastus Wells, a Democrat of character and personality.

—Omar D. Conger of Michigan was a well-trained debater before he entered the House, and at once took a prominent position in its deliberations. He illustrated the virtue of persistence in its highest degree, and had the art of annoying his opponent in discussion to the point of torture.—John Beatty of Ohio, who had served a brief period in the preceding Congress, now appeared for a full term. He had an excellent record as a soldier, was a successful man of affairs, and was endowed with a firmness of purpose which could not be overcome or changed.—James N. Tyner of Indiana, before entering the House, had been an official of the Post-Office Department, and possessed a thorough acquaintance with the details of the postal system of the United States. His knowledge game him prominence at once in an important field of legislation, and aided him in promptly securing the attention and respect of the House.

—Thomas Fitch of Nevada was one of the noticeable figures on the Republican side of the House. Born and educated in New York, he was an editor in Wisconsin, a merchant in Missouri, a miner on the Pacific slope, an editor in San Francisco, a member of the California Legislature, a delegate in the Constitutional Convention of Nevada, reporter of the Supreme Court of that State, elected to Congress—all before he was thirty years of age. The singular variety of his career could hardly be paralleled outside of the United States. If his industry had been equal to his natural gifts he would have been one of the first orators in the country.

—Samuel S. Cox had served eight years in the House from Ohio (1857 to 1865) as the representative of the Columbus district. At the close of his last term he went to New York and engaged in the practice of law in company with Mr. Charlton Lewis, a man of brilliant attainments and one of the most accomplished graduates of Yale. But it was not possible for Mr. Cox to keep out of the political field. His talent for the stump, his ready wit, and, above all, his good nature and good sense, commended him to the New York Democrats, and he appeared in the Forty-first Congress from one of the city districts. He had been a model of industry. In all the pressure of Congressional life, to the duties of which he has given assiduous attention, he has devoted much time to literature and has published several original and entertaining books.

The Republican representatives from the South were in part natives of the States which sent them to Congress. Of this class Oliver H. Dockery of North Carolina was the leading man. Of those who had gone to the South after the war the most conspicuous were Lionel A. Sheldon of Louisiana, George C. McKee of Mississippi, Alfred E. Buck and Charles W. Buckley of Alabama. Horace Maynard fairly represented both classes, for although a native of Massachusetts he had lived in Tennessee for nearly a quarter of a century before the war, and was in all respects identified with the interests of the South, and to a large extent shared its prejudices. But he would not join in secession and turned from a supporter of slavery to be a radical Republican. He was a man of considerable ability and great moral worth. He was a valuable representative of his State after the war.

—The Worcester District of Massachusetts sent George Frisbie Hoar as its representative. He is the son of Samuel Hoar, who was honorably conspicuous in the early days of the anti-slavery struggle. His mother was a daughter of the illustrious Roger Sherman, a signer of the Declaration of Independence. Mr. Hoar is a graduate of Harvard College and of the Dane Law School. For twenty years after admission to the bar he gave his time and his energy to professional pursuits, uninterrupted by any political engagements, except a single term in each branch of the Massachusetts Legislature. He began service in the House of Representatives in the full vigor of manhood in the forty-third year of his age, keenly alive to the great interests at stake in the Nation, admirably equipped and disciplined for his duties.

Eminent in his profession, successful in his political career, Mr. Hoar superadds accomplishments which neither the practice of law nor participation in public affairs can give. He has been a student of history, has cultivated a taste for literature, and has acquired a mass of information which proves that his superb private library has not been gathered in vain. In certain fields of learning Mr. Hoar has few peers. It may, indeed, be questioned whether his knowledge of our Colonial and Revolutionary history does not surpass that of any contemporary. Nor has he been content with the mere mastery of details, with the collection of facts and incidents. He has studied their relations and their interdependence, has analyzed their causes and comprehended their effects. Of New England in its Provincial period he could narrate "the rise of religious sects, the manners of successive generations, the revolutions in dress, in furniture, in repasts, in public amusements," even more accurately than Macaulay presented the same features of the same time in Old England. Mr. Hoar has studied the era with a devout enthusiasm for the character of the people,—a people from whom he is proud to claim his own descent, and whose positive virtues (even with the spice of acridness which distinguished them) are faithfully reproduced in his own person.

In truth Mr. Hoar is a Puritan, modified by the religious progress of two centuries, but still a Puritan—in manners, in morals, in deep earnestness, in untiring energy. He is independent without self-assertion, courageous without bravado, conscientious without Pharisaism. In intellectual power, amply developed and thoroughly trained, in force as a debater, both forensic and Parliamentary, Mr. Hoar is entitled to high rank. And his rank will steadily increase, for his mind is of that type which broadens and strengthens by conflict in the arena of discussion.

There was a feeling common to both sides of the House that a new political era had begun with the inauguration of President Grant. Perhaps no one could have accurately defined what was expected, but every one knew that the peculiar conflicts and troubles which had distinguished the years of Mr. Johnson's administration would not be repeated. General Grant's tendencies were liberal and non-partisan, though he recognized an honorable allegiance to the Republican party, which had placed him in power. Many of his personal friends were among the Democrats, and the first few months of his administration promised peace and harmony throughout the country. General Grant had never engaged in a partisan contention, had cast no vote since the outbreak of the war, and was therefore free from the exasperating influence of political controversy. The Democratic members of the House shared fully in the kindly feeling towards the new President. They were in a minority, but among them was a large proportion of able men—men of experience and great skill in debate. It is seldom that the opposition party has such a list of champions as appeared on the Democratic side of the House in the Forty-first Congress. Beck of Kentucky, Randall and Woodward of Pennsylvania, Marshall of Illinois, Brooks, Wood, Potter, Slocum, and Cox, of New York, Kerr, Niblack, Voorhees, and Holman of Indiana, Eldridge of Wisconsin, Van Trump and Morgan of Ohio, unitedly presented a strong array of Parliamentary ability. In different degrees they were all partisans, but of a manly type. Earnest discussion and political antagonism were not allowed by them to destroy friendly relations.

[(1) For complete membership of Forty-first Congress, see Appendix D.]

CHAPTER XVIII.

The changes in the Senate on the 4th of March, 1869, were notable in the character both of the retiring and incoming members.

—Hannibal Hamlin of Maine, entered the Senate for the fourth time. His first election in 1848, to fill out the term of ex-Governor Fairfield, was for three years. He resigned at the close of his second term to accept the governorship of his State, and midway in his third term he was promoted to the Vice-Presidency. From his earliest participation in public life Mr. Hamlin enjoyed an extraordinary popularity. Indeed, with a single exception, he was never defeated for any office in Maine for which he was a candidate. In the great Whig uprising of 1840 he was the Democratic candidate for Congress in the Penobscot district, and was beaten by Elisha H. Allen, afterwards widely known as Chief Justice of Hawaii and Minister from that kingdom to the United States. The candidates were warm personal friends before and after the contest.

—Matthew H. Carpenter succeeded Mr. Doolittle as senator from Wisconsin. He was forty-five years of age and had gained high reputation as a lawyer. He had become well known at the National Capital by his appearance in the Supreme Court, and from his employment by Secretary Stanton, during the war, in some government cases of importance. He was a native of Vermont, but his active career was in the North-West. His ambition as a lad was for the army; and he spent some time at West Point, but left without graduating, and devoted himself to the law. He completed his studies in the office of Mr. Choate in Boston, and began the practice of his profession in Wisconsin. Not long after his settlement in his new home, he lost his sight from over-use of his eyes in study, and for a period of three years was entirely blind. Judge Black, his intimate friend and eulogist, believed that this appalling calamity wrought Mr. Carpenter great good in the end: "It elevated, refined, strengthened all his faculties. Before that time much reading had made him a very full man: when reading became impossible, reflection digested his knowledge into practical wisdom. He perfectly arranged his storehouse of facts and cases, and pondered intently upon the first principles of jurisprudence."

His service in the Senate may rather be termed brilliant than useful. The truth is that Mr. Carpenter attempted to do what no man can accomplish: he tried to maintain his full practice at the bar, and discharge his full duties as senator at the same time. His strength was not equal to the double load. He was endowed with a high order of ability. If he had given all his time to the Senate, or all to the Bar, he would have found few peers in either field of intellectual combat. Aside from the weight of his argument, his manner of speech was attractive. He had an agreeable voice, precisely adapted in volume and tone to the Senate Chamber. He was affluent in language, graceful in manner, and, beyond all, was gifted with that quality—rare, indefinable, but recognized by every one—which constitutes the orator.

—Carl Schurz now took his seat as a senator from Missouri. He was born a Prussian subject, and had just completed his fortieth year. He had been well educated in the gymnasium at Cologne, and in a partial course at the university of Bonn. Though retaining a marked German accent, he quickly learned to speak English with fluency and eloquence, and yet with occasional idiomatic errors discernible when he words are printed. He took active part before German audiences, for Fremont, in the Presidential canvass of 1856, and began to make public addresses in English in 1858, when he espoused the cause of Mr. Lincoln in the famous contest with Douglas. He was widely sought as a speaker in both of Mr. Lincoln's contests for the Presidency, 1860 and 1864. In the latter year he was especially forcible, attractive, and effective. Subsequently he fell off, apparently in strength, certainly in popularity. As a lecturer he lost his hold upon the lyceum, and as a political orator he began to repeat himself, not merely in sense but in phrase. As a senator he did not meet the expectation of his friends. His failure was in large part due to the fact that he has not the power of speaking extempore. He requires careful and studious preparation, and has never attained the art of off-hand parliamentary discussion, which Colonel Benton likened to "shooting on the wing." So deficient is Mr. Schurz in this talent, that he has been known to use a manuscript in an after-dinner response, a style of speech whose chief merit consists in its spontaneity, with apt reference to incidents which could not possibly be foreseen.

The loss of Mr. Schurz's popularity—a popularity that was very marked in the earlier period of his career—is due in part to certain unsteady and erratic tendencies, some of which are in strong contrast with characteristics that are recognized as belonging in an especial degree to his race. Through all the centuries since Tacitus drew his vivid picture of the habits and manners of the Germans, their attachment, it might almost be called their passion, for home, has been a marked and meritorious feature of their character. To Fatherland first, and then to whatever country fate or fortune may draw them, their devotion is proverbial. This admirable trait seems altogether wanting in Mr. Schurz. When he left Germany he lived for three years in other countries of Europe,—first in Switzerland, then in France, then in England. In 1852 he came to America, and resided first in Pennsylvania, then in Wisconsin, then in Michigan, then in Missouri, and then in New York. He has not become rooted and grounded anywhere, has never established a home, is not of any locality or of any class, has no fixed relation to Church or State, to professional, political, or social life, has acquired none of that companionship and confidence which unites old neighbors in the closest ties, and give to friendship its fullest development, its most gracious attributes.

The same unsteadiness has entered as a striking feature in the public career of Mr. Schurz. The party he upheld yesterday met with his bitterest denunciations the day before, and to-morrow he will support the political organization of whose measures he is the most merciless censor to-day. He boasts himself incapable of attachment to party, and in that respect radically differs from the great body of his American fellow-citizens. He cannot even comprehend that exalted sentiment of honorable association in public life which holds together successive generations of men,—a sentiment which in the United States causes the Democrat to reverence the memory of Jefferson and Jackson and Douglas, which causes his opponent to glory in the achievements of Hamilton and Clay and Lincoln; a sentiment which in England has bound the Whigs in a common faith and common glory, from Walpole to Gladstone, and their more conservative rivals in a creed of loyalty whose disciples, from Bolingbroke to Beaconsfield, include many of the noblest of British patriots.

For these party associations, to whose influence, under the restraint of intelligent patriotism, the wisest legislation is due, Mr. Schurz has neither approbation nor appreciation. He aspires to the title of "Independent," and has described his own position as that of a man sitting on a fence, with clean boots, watching carefully which way he may leap to keep out of the mud. A critic might, without carping, suggest that it is the duty of an earnest man to disregard the bespattering which fidelity to principle often incurs, and that a beaten path to safe place for one's self is not an inspiring or worthy object of statesmanship.

Nor is Mr. Schurz's independence of party more pronounced or more complete than his independence of true American feeling. He has taken no pride in appearing under the simple but lofty title of a citizen of the United States. He stands rather as a representative German-American. He has made his native nationality a political resource, and has thereby fallen short of the full honor due to his adopted nationality. The large body of American citizens of German birth are intensely attached to their new home, and seek the most complete identification of themselves and their descendants with the development and destiny of the Great Republic. This is wise, and is in accordance with the best traditions and best aspirations of the Teutonic race. But to Mr. Schurz the Republic is not great! "This country," said he, in his Centennial lecture, "is materially great, but morally small."

—Allen G. Thurman came suddenly into prominence in 1867. He was the Democratic nominee for Governor of Ohio against Rutherford B. Hayes. For the three years immediately preceding his candidacy the Republican majorities in the State had averaged nearly 45,000, while in 1863 Vallandingham had been beaten by 101,699. Without premonition or visible cause, in an election for State officers only, and not for representatives in Congress, the total vote of 1867 proved to be larger than had ever been cast in the State, while the majority of General Hayes was less than three thousand. The Legislature was carried at the same time by the Democrats, and it proved that Mr. Thurman had lost the Governorship only to be promoted at once to the United-States Senate. The political revolution was as remarkable in character as it was sudden in time. Ohio had shown profound loyalty to the Union and an enthusiastic support of all measures for its preservation. Mr. Thurman had run counter to the principles and prejudices of a large number of the people of Ohio by his bitter hostility to the war, and yet he now received a larger popular vote than had ever before been given even to a Republican candidate, except in the year 1863 when so many Democrats repudiated Vallandingham.

It was at the full maturity of his powers, in the fifty-sixth year of his age, that Mr. Thurman took his seat in the Senate, March 4, 1869. He had been chosen a representative in Congress for a single term twenty-five years before, and had afterwards served a full term on the Supreme Bench of Ohio, the last two years as Chief Justice of the court. He was not therefore an untried man, but had an established reputation for learning in the law, for experience in affairs, for intellectual qualities of a high order. During the long interval between his service in the House and his installment in the Senate the relation of political parties had essentially changed. Mr. Thurman had changed with the times and with his associates. When he took his seat in the Twenty-ninth Congress the issue in regard to the extension of slavery in the Territories was beginning to enlist public interest. The first impulse of all the representatives from that extensive and opulent domain, which had been saved from the blight of slavery by the Ordinance of 1787, was to aid in extending a similar blessing to all other Territories of the United States. With the exception of Stephen A. Douglas and John A. McClernand of Illinois, and John Pettit of Indiana, all the Democratic representatives from the four North-western States (Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Michigan) voted for the anti-slavery proviso offered by Mr. Wilmot. Mr. Douglas, discerning the future more clearly than his party associates, realized that the chief strength of the Democracy must continue to lie in the South, and that an anti-slavery attitude on the part of the North-western Democrats would destroy the National prestige of the party and lead to its defeat. The Democratic supporters of the Wilmot Proviso had therefore choice of two paths: they must abandon their anti-slavery attitude or they must leave the party. Mr. Thurman adhered to his party. With this exception, his political course has been one of unswerving constancy and fidelity to all the extreme demands and severe creeds imposed upon the Democracy by the South. His Virginia birth, his rearing within the lines of the old Virginia Military reservation in Southern Ohio, his early associations with kindred and his friends, all contributed to his education as a Democrat. He naturally grew to strong influence with his associates, and when he came to the Senate was entitled to be considered the foremost man of his party in the Nation.

His rank in the Senate was established from the day he took his seat, and was never lowered during the period of his service. He was an admirable disciplined debater, was fair in his method of statement, logical in his argument, honest in his conclusions. He had no tricks in discussion, no catch-phrases to secure attention, but was always direct and manly. His mind was not pre-occupied and engrossed with political contests or with affairs of state. He had natural and cultivated tastes outside of those fields. He was a discriminating reader, and enjoyed not only serious books, but inclined also to the lighter indulgence of romance and poetry. He was especially fond of the best French writers. He loved Moliere and Racine, and could quote with rare enjoyment the humorous scenes depicted by Balzac. He took pleasure in the drama, and was devoted to music. In Washington he could usually be found in the best seat of the theatre when a good play was to be presented or an opera was to be given. These tastes illustrate the genial side of his nature, and were a fitting complement to the stronger and sterner elements of the man. His retirement from the Senate was a serious loss to his party—a loss indeed to the body. He left behind him pleasant memories, and carried with him the respect of all with whom he had been associated during his twelve years of honorable service.

—William G. Brownlow, a quaint and eccentric man, took his seat as senator from Tennessee. He was in the sixty-fourth year of his age, and in impaired health. He was born in South-western Virginia in the wild and mountainous region adjacent to the borders of three other States. In early life he was a Methodist preacher of peculiar earnestness and force, with special adaptations to the people among whom his ministry lay. To his Church he always retained an intense attachment and devotion. In his later years he published a work on Methodism, under the strange title of "The Iron Wheel examined, and its False Spokes extracted." He came into public and general notice as the editor of the Knoxville Whig, which, though printed in the mountains of Tennessee when facilities of communication were restricted, attained wide circulation and influence. Its editor was known as "Parson" Brownlow, a sobriquet which attached to him through life. His paper was strongly anti-Jackson, warmly espoused the cause of Mr. Clay, and was distinguished in its editorials by a treatment of public questions so original that for nearly a quarter of a century it was known and quoted by the journals of the whole country.

But the odd and humorous editor, hitherto notorious for his partisan intensity and for the extravagance of his diction, was suddenly transformed into a moral hero. When the wild movement for secession swept over Tennessee, and carried with it even such men as John Bell, Brownlow took his stand for the Union. Threats could not move him, persecution could not break him, the prison had no terrors for him. His devotion to the National cause did not mean simply the waving of the flag and the delivery of patriotic orations; it meant cold and hunger, separation from his family, loss of property, possibly loss of life. He endured all, and faced his bloodthirsty enemies with a courage superior to their own. He won their respect by his brave resistance, and was finally released from jail and banished from the Confederacy. He came North, and remained until the progress of the National arms enabled him to return to his home. His patriotic devotion was rewarded by the boundless confidence of the loyal people of Tennessee. At the close of the war he was chosen Governor, and was now promoted to the Senate of the United States—too late for the exertion of his once strong mental qualities, but early enough to testify by his presence the triumph of loyalty and manhood in the bloody strife through which he had passed.

—Thomas F. Bayard, who entered the Senate at the opening of the Forty-first congress, was little known to the public, except as a member of a family which had been for a considerable period prominent in the political affairs of Delaware. His service in the Senate has been remarkable for one leading characteristic,—the power, or the accidental fortune, to create a public impression as to his career precisely the reverse of its actual history. The illustrations are many:—

In financial circles Mr. Bayard has been held as a fair and conservative exponent of sound views, a jealous guardian of the public credit. As matter of fact, he joined in a political crusade to enforce the payment of the National debt in depreciated paper money, and almost the first vote he ever gave in the Senate was against the bill declaring the National debt to be payable in coin. He voted to except specifically the fifteen hundred millions of 5-20 bonds from coin payment, argued earnestly in favor of taxing the bonds of the Government, refused to support the bill for the resumption of specie payments, and united with others in a National movement to repeal the Act after it had been for a considerable period in operation.