Horatio Seymour made two speeches. With charming candor he admitted that "signal victories have been won by generals who have made the history of our country glorious." But to him the great debt, the untaxed bonds, the inflation of the currency, the increased prices, and the absence of congressmen from the States lately in rebellion, seemed as full of peril as war itself. In his address atSeneca Falls his field of view, confined to war-burdens and rights withheld from "subjugated" States, did not include the vision that thrilled others, who saw the flag floating over every inch of American territory, now forever freed from slavery. "When we were free from debt," he said, "a man could support himself with six hours of daily toil. To-day he must work two hours longer to pay his share of the national debt.... This question of debt means less to give your families.... It reaches every boy and girl, every wife and mother.... It affects the character of our people." Prosperity also troubled him. "We see upon every hand its embarrassing effect. The merchant does not know whether he will be a loser or gainer. We see men who have been ruined without fault, and men who have made great fortunes without industry. Inquire of the person engaged in mechanical operations and he will say that labour has lost its former certain reward." He disapproved the national banking act because the new banks "have converted the debt of the country into currency and inflated prices;" he disputed the correctness of the Treasury debt statement because "it is the experience of all wars that long after their close new claims spring up, which render the expense at least fifty per cent. more than appeared by the figures;" and he condemned the national system of taxation because it "disables us to produce as cheaply at home as we can buy in the markets of the world."[281]
The brief campaign promised to be spiritless and without incident until John Van Buren, in his extended canvass for attorney-general, freely expressed his opinion of Horatio Seymour. Van Buren was not an admirer of that statesman. He had supported him with warmth in 1862, but after the development of the Governor's "passion for peace" he had little sympathy with and less respect for his administration. In the campaign of 1864 he practically ignored him, and the subsequent announcement of his defeat liberated Van Buren's tongue. "Seymour is a damned fool," he said. "Hespoiled everything at Chicago, and has been the cause of most of the disasters of the Democratic party."[282]At Troy he declared that "the Democracy were suffering now from the infernal blunder at Chicago last year," and that "if Seymour and Vallandigham had been kicked out of the national convention it would have been a good thing for the party."[283]
This opinion scarcely expressed the sentiment of a majority of Democrats, but those who had preferred John A. Dix as the man of destiny held Seymour and his school of statesmen responsible for the party's deplorable condition. It had emerged from the war defeated in every distinctive principle it had promulgated, and in the absence of an available issue it now sought to atone for the past and to gain the confidence of the people by nominating candidates who were either active in the field or recognised as sincerely devoted to a vigorous prosecution of the war. To aid in this new departure Van Buren threw his old-time fire into the campaign, speaking daily and to the delight of his audiences; but he soon discovered that things were looking serious, and when the Union Republican ticket was elected by majorities ranging from 28,000 to 31,000, with two-thirds of the Assembly and all the senators save one, he recognised that the glory of Lee's surrender and the collapse of the Confederacy did not strengthen the Democratic party, although one of its candidates had led an army corps, and another, with eloquence and irresistible argument, had stirred the hearts of patriotic Americans in the darkest hours of the rebellion.[284]
WhenCongress convened in December, 1865, President Johnson, in a calm and carefully prepared message, advocated the admission of Southern congressmen whenever their States ratified the Thirteenth Amendment. He also recommended that negro suffrage be left to the States. On the other hand, extreme Radicals, relying upon the report of Carl Schurz, whom the President had sent South on a tour of observation, demanded suffrage and civil rights for the negro, and that congressional representation be based upon actual voters instead of population. Schurz had remained three months in South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, and to him "treason, under existing circumstances, does not appear odious in the South. The people are not impressed with any sense of its criminality. And there is yet among the Southern people an utter absence of national feeling.... While accepting the abolition of slavery, they think that some species of serfdom, peonage, or other form of compulsory labour is not slavery, and may be introduced without a violation of their pledge." Schurz, therefore, recommended negro suffrage as "a condition precedent to readmission."[285]
On the contrary, General Grant, who had spent a couple of weeks in the South upon the invitation of the President, reported that the mass of thinking men accepted conditions in good faith; that they regarded slavery and the right tosecede as settled forever, and were anxious to return to self-government within the Union as soon as possible; that "while reconstructing they want and require protection from the government. They are in earnest in wishing to do what is required by the government, not humiliating to them as citizens, and if such a course was pointed out they would pursue it in good faith."[286]
The North had been too happy over the close of the war and the return of its soldiers to anticipate the next step, but when Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania, the leader of the Radicals, opened the discussion in Congress on December 10 (1865), the people quickly saw the drift of things. Stevens contended that hostilities had severed the original contract between the Southern States and the Union, and that the former, in order to return to the Union, must come in as new States upon terms made by Congress and approved by the President. In like manner he argued that negroes, if denied suffrage, should be excluded from the basis of representation, thus giving the South 46 representatives instead of 83. "But why should slaves be excluded?" demanded Stevens. "This doctrine of a white man's government is as atrocious as the infamous sentiment that damned the late Chief Justice to everlasting fame, and, I fear, to everlasting fire."[287]
Stevens' speech, putting Johnson's policy squarely in issue, was answered by Henry J. Raymond, now the selected and acknowledged leader of the Administration in the House. Raymond had entered Congress with a prestige rarely if ever equalled by a new member. There had been greater orators, abler debaters, and more profound statesmen, but no one had ever preceded him with an environment more influential. He was the favourite of the President; he had been brought into more or less intimate association with all the men of his party worth knowing; he was the close friend of Weed and the recognized ally of Seward; his good willcould make postmasters and collectors, and his displeasure, like that of a frigid and bloodless leader, could carry swift penalty. Indeed, there was nothing in the armory of the best equipped politician, including able speaking and forceful writing, that he did not possess, and out of New York as well as within it he had been regarded the earnest friend and faithful champion of Republican doctrines. On the surface, too, it is doubtful if a member of Congress, whether new or old, ever seemed to have a better chance of winning in a debate. Only three months before the people of the North, with great unanimity, had endorsed the President and approved his policy. Besides, the great body of Republicans in Congress preferred to work with the President. He held the patronage, he had succeeded by the assassin's work to the leadership of the party, and thus far had evinced no more dogmatism than Stevens or Sumner. Moreover, the sentiment of the North at that time was clearly against negro suffrage. All the States save six[288]denied the vote to the negro, and in the recent elections three States had specifically declared against extending it to him.
Thus fortified Raymond did not object to speaking for the Administration. To him Stevens' idea of subjecting the South to the discipline and tutelage of Congress was repulsive, and his ringing voice filled the spacious hall of the House with clear-cut sentences. He denied that the Southern States had ever been out of the Union. "If they were," he asked, "how and when did they become so? By what specific act, at what precise time, did any one of those States take itself out of the American Union? Was it by the ordinance of secession? An ordinance of secession is simply a nullity, because it encounters the Constitution which is the supreme law of the land. Did the resolutions of those States, the declaration of their officials, the speeches of themembers of their Legislatures, or the utterances of their press, accomplish the result desired? Certainly not. All these were declarations of a purpose to secede. Their secession, if it ever took place, certainly could not date from the time when their intention to secede was first announced. They proceeded to sustain their purpose of secession by arms against the force which the United States brought to bear against them. Were their arms victorious? If they were, then their secession was an accomplished fact. If not, it was nothing more than an abortive attempt—a purpose unfulfilled. They failed to maintain their ground by force of arms. In other words, they failed to secede. But if," he concluded, "the Southern States did go out of the Union, it would make those in the South who resisted the Confederacy guilty of treason to an independent government. Do you want to make traitors out of loyal men?"[289]
Raymond received close attention. Several leaders acknowledged their interest by asking questions, and the congratulations that followed evidenced the good will of his colleagues. His speech had shown none of the usual characteristics of a maiden effort. Without advertising his intention to speak, he obtained the floor late in the afternoon, referred with spirit to the sentiments of the preceding speaker, and moved along with the air of an old member, careless of making a rhetorical impression but intensely in earnest in what he had to present. As an argument in favor of the adoption of a liberal policy toward the South, regardless of its strict legal rights, the speech commended itself to his colleagues as an admirable one, but it entirely failed to meet Stevens' logic that the States lately in rebellion could not set up any rights against the conqueror except such as were granted by the laws of war. In his reply the Pennsylvanian taunted Raymond with failing to quote a single authority in support of his contention. "I admit the gravity of the gentleman's opinion," he said, "and withthe slightest corroborating authority should yield the case. But without some such aid I am not willing that the sages of the law—Grotius, Vattel, and a long line of compeers—should be overthrown and demolished by the single arm of the gentleman from New York. I pray the gentleman to quote authority; not to put too heavy a load upon his own judgment; he might sink under the weight. Give us your author."[290]
As the debate continued it became evident the President's friends were losing ground. Aside from the withering blows of Stevens, unseen occurrences which Raymond, in his eagerness to champion Johnson's policy, did not appreciate or willingly ignored, had a most disturbing influence. The Northern people welcomed peace and approved the generosity of the government, but they wanted the South to exhibit its appreciation by corresponding generosity to the government's friends. Its acts did not show this. Enactments in respect to freedmen, passed by the President's reconstructed legislatures, grudgingly bestowed civil rights. A different punishment for the same offence was prescribed for the negroes; apprentice, vagrant, and contract labour laws tended to a system of peonage; and the prohibition of public assemblies, the restriction of freedom of movement, and the deprivation of means of defence illustrated the inequality of their rights. Such laws, for whatever purpose passed, had a powerful effect on Northern sentiment already influenced by reported cruelties, while the Southern people's aversion to Union soldiers settling in their midst intensified the feeling. Moreover, Southern and Democratic support of the President made Republicans distrust his policy. If States can be reconstructed in a summer and congressmen admitted in a winter, it was said, the South, helped by the Democracy of the North, might again be in control of the Government within two years. These considerations were bound to affect the judgment of Republicans, and when Stevens began to talk and the real conditions in the South came to be known, it aroused party indignation to a high pitch in the House.
Raymond, in his brilliant rejoinders, endeavoured to recover lost ground. He had created no enemies. On the contrary his courtesy and tact smoothed the way and made him friends. But after weeks of discussion an effort to adopt a resolution of confidence in the President met with overwhelming defeat. Stevens asked that the resolution be referred to the Committee on Reconstruction—Raymond demanded its adoption at once. On a roll-call the vote stood 32 to 107 in favour of reference, Raymond and William A. Darling of New York City being the only Republicans to vote against it. It was a heavy blow to the leader of the Conservatives. It proved the unpopularity of Johnson's policy and indicated increasing estrangement between the President and his party. Moreover, it was personally humiliating. On a test question, with the whole power of the Administration behind him, Raymond had been able, after weeks of work, to secure the support of only one man and that a colleague bound to him by the ties of personal friendship.
The division in the party spread with the rapidity of a rising thunder cloud. On February 6 Congress passed the Freedman's Bureau Bill, designed to aid helpless negroes, which the President vetoed. A month later his treatment of the Civil Rights Bill, which set in motion the necessary machinery to enforce the Thirteenth Amendment, shattered the confidence of the party. "Surely," declared Senator Trumbull of Illinois, "we have authority to enact a law as efficient in the interest of freedom as we had in the interest of slavery."[291]But the President promptly vetoed it, because, he said, it conferred citizenship on the negro, invaded the rights of the States, had no warrant in the Constitution, and was contrary to all precedent.
The President had developed several undesirable characteristics, being essentially obstinate and conceited, the possessor of a bad temper, and of a coarse and vulgar personality. His speech on February 22, in which he had invoked the wild passions of a mob, modified the opinions even of conservative men. "It is impossible to conceive of a more humiliating spectacle," said Sherman.[292]"During the progress of events," wrote Weed, "the President was bereft of judgment and reason, and became the victim of passion and unreason."[293]But up to this time the party had hoped to avoid a complete break with the Executive. Now, however, the question of passing the Civil Rights Bill over his veto presented itself. Not since the beginning of the government had Congress carried an important measure over a veto. Besides, it meant a complete and final separation between the President and his party. Edwin D. Morgan so understood it, and although he had heretofore sustained the President, he now stood with the Radicals. Raymond also knew the gravity of the situation. But Raymond, who often wavered and sometimes exhibited an astonishing fickleness,[294]saw only one side to the question, and on April 9 when the House, by a vote of 122 to 41, overrode the veto, he was one of only seven Unionists to support the President.[295]
After the passage of the Civil Rights Bill the President's friends proposed to invoke, through a National Union convention to be held at Philadelphia on August 14, the support of conservative Republicans and Democrats. Weed told Raymond of the project and Seward urged it upon him. Raymond expressed a disinclination to go to the convention because it seemed likely to fall into the hands of former Confederates and their Northern associates, and to be used for purposes hostile to the Union party, of which, he said, he was not only a member, but the chairman of its national committee. Seward did not concur in this view. He said it was not a party convention and need not affect the party standing of those who attended it. He was a Union man, he declared, and he did not admit the right of anybody to turn him out of the Union party. Moreover, he wanted Raymond to attend the convention to prevent its control by the enemies of the Union party.
Raymond, still undecided, called with Seward upon the President, who favoured neither a new party nor the restoration to power of the Democratic party, although the movement, he said, ought not to repel Democrats willing to act with it. He wanted the matter settled within the Union party, and thought the proposed convention, in which delegates from all the States could again meet in harmony, would exert a wholesome influence on local conventions and nominations to Congress.[296]Raymond, however, was still apprehensive. He deemed the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments "reasonable, wise, and popular;" thought the President had "made a great mistake in taking grounds against them;" and declared that notwithstanding the peppery method of their passage "the people will not be stopped by trifles." The outcome of the convention also worried him. "If it should happen to lay down a platform," he continued, "which shall command the respect of the country, it would be such a miracle as we have no right to expect in these days. However," he concluded, "I shall be governed in my course toward it by developments. I do not see thenecessity of denouncing it from the start, nor until more is known of its composition, purposes, and actions."[297]
Raymond did not attend the preliminary State convention held at Saratoga on August 9. He left this work to Weed, who, with the help of Dean Richmond, made an excellent showing in numbers and enthusiasm. The support of the Democrats was assured because they would benefit, and the presence of Tilden, Kernan, William H. Ludlow, and Sanford E. Church created no surprise; but the interest manifested by John A. Dix, Hamilton Fish, Moses Taylor, Marshall O. Roberts, Francis B. Cutting, and Richard M. Blatchford amazed the Republicans. Henry J. Raymond was made a delegate-at-large, with Samuel J. Tilden, John A. Dix, and Sanford E. Church.
At Philadelphia the convention derived a manifest advantage from having all the States, South as well as North, fully represented, making it the first real "National" convention to assemble, it was said, since 1860. Besides, it was a picturesque convention, full of striking contrasts and unique spectacles. In the hotel lobbies Weed and Richmond, walking together, seemed ubiquitous as they dominated the management and arranged the details. Raymond and Church sat side by side in the committee on resolutions, while the delegates from Massachusetts and South Carolina, for spectacular effect, entered the great wigwam arm in arm. This picture of apparent reconciliation evoked the most enthusiastic cheers, and became the boast of the Johnsonians until the wits likened the wigwam to Noah's Ark, into which there went, "two and two, of clean beasts, and of beasts that are not clean, and of fowls, and of everything that creepeth upon the earth."
John A. Dix became temporary chairman, and the resolutions, reciting the issue between the President and the Republicans, laid great emphasis upon the right of every State, without condition, to representation in Congress as soon asthe war had ended. But Raymond, presumably to please Southern delegates,[298]pressed the argument far beyond the scope of the resolutions, maintaining that even if the condition of the Southern States rendered their admission unsafe because still disloyal in sentiment and purpose, Congress had no power to deny them rights conferred by the Constitution. This reckless claim amazed his friends as much as it aroused his enemies, and he at once became the object of most cutting reproaches. "Had he been elected as a Copperhead," said theTribune, "no one could have complained that he acted as a Copperhead, and had Judas been one of the Pharisees instead of one of the Disciples, he would not be the worst example that Presidents and Congressmen can follow."[299]Ten days later the Republican National committee removed him from the chairmanship, a punishment promptly followed by his removal from the committee.[300]Raymond, in his talk with Seward, had anticipated trouble of this character, but the humiliation was now doubly deep because it separated him from friends whose staunch support had contributed to his strength. Moreover, in a few weeks he was compelled to abandon the President for reasons that had long existed. "We have tried hard," he wrote, "to hold our original faith in his personal honesty, and to attribute his disastrous action to errors of judgment and infirmities of temper. The struggle has often been difficult, and we can maintain it no longer."[301]But the change came too late. He had followed too far. It added to the sadness, also, because his popularity was never to return to any considerable extent during the remaining three years of his brilliant life.
Raymond's congressional experience, confined to a single term, added nothing to his fame. He delivered clever speeches, his wide intelligence and courteous manner won him popularity, and to some extent he probably influencedpublic opinion; but his brief career left no opportunity to live down his fatal alliance with Johnson. Indeed, it may well be doubted if longer service or more favourable conditions would have given him high standing as a legislator. Prominence gained in one vocation is rarely transferred to another. Legislation is a profession as much as medicine or law or journalism, the practice of which, to gain leadership, must be long and continuous, until proposed public measures and their treatment worked out in the drudgery of the committee room, become as familiar as the variety of questions submitted to lawyers and physicians. The prolonged and exacting labour as a journalist which had given Raymond his great reputation, must, in a measure, have been repeated as a legislator to give him similar leadership in Congress. At forty-five he was not too old to accomplish it. Samuel Shellabarger of Ohio, who made his greatest speech in reply to Raymond, began his congressional life at forty-nine, and Thaddeus Stevens, the leader of the House, at fifty-seven. But the mental weariness, already apparent in Raymond's face, indicated that the enthusiasm necessary for such preparation had departed. Besides, he lacked the most important qualification for a legislative leader—the rare political sagacity to know the thoughts of people and to catch the tiniest shadow of a coming event.
Seward shared Raymond's unpopularity. Soon after assuming office President Johnson outlined a severe policy toward the South, violently denouncing traitors, who, he declared, must be punished and impoverished. "The time has arrived," he said, "when the American people should be educated that treason is the highest crime and those engaged in it should suffer all its penalties."[302]These sentiments, reiterated again and again, extorted from Benjamin F. Wade, the chief of Radicals, an entreaty that he would limit the number to be hung to a good round dozen and no more.[303]Suddenly the President changed his tone toone of amnesty and reconciliation, and in answering the question, "who has influenced him?" Sumner declared that "Seward is the marplot. He openly confesses that he counselled the present fatal policy."[304]Blaine also expressed the belief that the Secretary of State changed the President's policy,[305]a suggestion that Seward himself corroborated in an after-dinner speech at New York in September, 1866. "When Mr. Johnson came into the Presidency," said the Secretary, "he did nothing until I got well, and then he sent for me and we fixed things."[306]
But Seward did more to exasperate Republicans than change a harsh policy to one of reconciliation. He believed in the soundness of the President's constitutional views and the correctness of his vetoes, deeming the course of Congress unwise.[307]It is difficult, therefore, to credit Blaine's unsupported statement that Seward "worked most earnestly to bring about an accommodation between the Administration and Congress."[308]The split grew out of the President's veto messages which Seward approved and probably wrote.
Until the spring of 1866 Seward's old friends believed he had remained in the Cabinet to dispose of diplomatic questions which the war left unsettled, but after his speech at Auburn on May 22 the men who once regarded him as a champion of liberty and equality dropped him from their list of saints. He argued that the country wanted reconciliation instead of reconstruction, and denied that the President was unfaithful to the party and its cardinal principles of public policy, since his disagreements with Congress on the Freedman's Bureau and Civil Rights Bills "have no real bearing upon the question of reconciliation." Nor was thereany "soundness in our political system, if the personal or civil rights of white or black, free born or emancipated, are not more secure under the administration of a State government than they could be under the administration of the National government."[309]This sentiment brought severe criticism. "Mr. Seward once earned honour by remembering the negro at a time when others forgot him," said theIndependent; "he now earns dishonour by forgetting the negro when the nation demands that the negro should be remembered."[310]
Seward's participation in the President's tour of the country contributed to destroy his popularity. This Quixotic junketing journey quickly passed into history as the "swinging-around-the-circle" trip, which Lowell described as an "advertising tour of a policy in want of a party."[311]Seward had many misgivings. The memory of the President's condition on inauguration day and of his unfortunate speech on February 22 did not augur well for its success. "But it is a duty to the President and to the country," he wrote, "and I shall go on with right good heart."[312]In the East the party got on very well, but at Cleveland and other Western cities the President acted like a man both mad and drunk, while people railed at him as if he were the clown of a circus. "He sunk the Presidential office to the level of a grog-house," wrote John Sherman.[313]
Seward's position throughout was pathetic. His apologies and commonplace appeals for his Chief contrasted strangely with the courageous, powerful, and steady fight against the domination of slavery which characterised his former visits to Cleveland, and the men who had accepted him as their ardent champion deprecated both his acts andhis words. It called to mind Fillmore's desertion of his anti-slavery professions, and Van Buren's revengeful action in 1848. "Distrusted by his old friends," said theNation, "he will never be taken to the bosom of his old enemies. His trouble is not that the party to which he once belonged is without a leader, but that he wanders about like a ghost—a leader without a party."[314]
Theknowledge that Republicans, to overcome the President's vetoes, must have a two-thirds majority in Congress, precipitated a State campaign of unusual energy. The contest which began on April 9, when Johnson disapproved the Civil Rights Bill, was intensified by the Philadelphia convention and the President's "swing-around-the-circle;" but the events that made men bitter and deeply in earnest were the Memphis and New Orleans riots, in which one hundred and eighty negroes were killed and only eleven of their assailants injured. To the North this became an object-lesson, illustrating the insincerity of the South's desire, expressed at Philadelphia, for reconciliation and peace.
The Republican State convention, meeting at Syracuse on September 5, echoed this sentiment. In the centre of the stage the Stars and Stripes, gracefully festooned, formed a halo over the portrait of Abraham Lincoln, while a Nast caricature of President Johnson betrayed the contempt of the enthusiastic gathering. Weed and Raymond were conspicuous by their absence. The Radicals made Charles H. Van Wyck chairman, Lyman Tremaine president, George William Curtis chairman of the committee on resolutions, and Horace Greeley the lion of the convention. At the latter's appearance delegates leaped to their feet and gave three rounds of vociferous cheers. The day's greatest demonstration, however, occurred when the chairman, in his opening speech, stigmatised the New York friends of the President.[315]Van Wyck prudently censored his bitternessfrom the press copy, but the episode reflected the intense unpopularity of Seward, Weed, and Raymond.
In the privacy of the club Seward's old-time champions had spoken of "the decline of his abilities," "the loss of his wits," and "that dry-rot of the mind's noble temper;" but now, in a crowded public hall, they cheered any sentiment that charged a betrayal of trust and the loss of principles. Of course Seward had not lost his principles, nor betrayed his trust. He held the opinions then that he entertained before the removal of the splints and bandages from the wounds inflicted by the bowie-knife of the would-be assassin. He had been in thorough accord with Lincoln's amnesty proclamation, issued in December, 1863, as well as with his "Louisiana plan" of reconstruction, and Johnson's proclamation and plan of reconstruction, written under Seward's influence, did not differ materially. But Seward's principles which rarely harmonised with those of the Radicals, now became more conspicuous and sharply defined because of the tactlessness and uncompromising spirit of Lincoln's successor. Besides, he was held responsible for the President's follies. To a convention filled with crutches, scarred faces, armless sleeves, and representatives of Andersonville and Libby Prisons, such an attitude seemed like a betrayal of his trust, and the resentment of the delegates, perhaps, was not unnatural.
If Seward was discredited, Reuben E. Fenton was conspicuously trusted. According to Andrew D. White, a prominent State senator of that day, the Governor was not a star of the magnitude of his Republican predecessors.[316]Others probably held the same opinion. Fenton's party, however, renominated him by acclamation, and then showed its inconsistency by refusing a like honour to Thomas G. Alvord, the lieutenant-governor. The service of the Onondaga Chief, as his friends delighted to call him, had been as creditable ifnot as important as the Governor's, but the brilliant gifts of Stewart L. Woodford, a young soldier of patriotic impulses, attracted a large majority of the convention.[317]Up to that time, Woodford, then thirty years of age, was the youngest man nominated for lieutenant-governor. He had made a conspicuous sacrifice to become a soldier. In 1861 Lincoln appointed him an assistant United States attorney, but the silenced guns of Sumter inspired him to raise a company, and he marched away at its head, leaving the civil office to another. Later he became commandant of the city that sheltered the guns first trained upon the American flag, and after his return, disciplined and saddened by scenes of courage and sacrifice, the clarion notes of the young orator easily commanded the emotions of his hearers. No one ever wearied when he spoke. His lightest word, sent thrilling to the rim of a vast audience, swayed it with the magic of control. He was not then at the fulness of his power or reputation, but delegates had heard enough to desire his presence in the important campaign of 1866, and to stimulate his activity they made him a candidate.
The platform declared that while the constitutional authority of the Federal government cannot be impaired by the act of a State or its people, a State may, by rebellion, so far rupture its relations to the Union as to suspend its power to exercise the rights which it possessed under the Constitution; that it belonged to the legislative power of the government to determine at what time a State may safely resume the exercise of its rights; and that the doctrine that such State is itself to judge when it is in proper condition to resume its place in the Union is false, as well as the other doctrine that the President was alone sole judge of the period when such suspension shall be at an end.
If these propositions created no surprise, the refusal squarely to meet the suffrage issue created much adverse comment. One resolution expressed a hope that the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment would tend to the equalisation of all political rights among citizens of the Union, but although Greeley submitted a suffrage plank, as he did in the preceding year, Curtis carefully avoided an expression favourable even to the colored troops.
"Extreme opinions usually derive a certain amount of strength from logical consistency," wrote Raymond. "Between the antecedent proposition of an argument and its practical conclusion there is ordinarily a connection which commends itself to the advocates of principle. But the radicalism which proposes to reconstruct the Union has not this recommendation. Its principles and its policy are not more alike than fire and water. What it contends for theoretically it surrenders practically."[318]Although this was clearly a just criticism, the radicalism of Congress showed more leniency in practice than in theory. The Northern people themselves were not yet ready for negro suffrage, and had the South promptly accepted the Fourteenth Amendment and the congressional plan of reconstruction, it is doubtful if the Fifteenth Amendment would have been heard of.
Conservative Republicans, however, were too well satisfied with their work at Philadelphia to appreciate this tendency of Congress. The evidence of reconciliation had been spectacular, if not sincere, and they believed public opinion was with them. The country, it was argued, required peace; the people have made up their minds to have peace; and to insure peace the Southern States must enjoy their constitutional right to seats in Congress. "This is the one question now before the country," said thePost; "and all men of every party who desire the good of the country and can see what is immediately necessary to produce this good, will unite to send to Congress only men who will vote for the immediate admission of Southern representatives."[319]In the opinion of such journals the situation presented a rare opportunity to the Democratic party. By becoming the vehicle to bring real peace and good will to the country, it would not only efface its questionable war record, but it could "spike the guns" of the Radicals, control Congress, sustain the President, and carry the Empire State. This was the hope of Raymond and of Weed, back of whom, it was said, stood tens of thousands of Republicans.
To aid in the accomplishment of this work, great reliance had been placed upon the tour of the President. Raymond reluctantly admitted that these anticipations were far from realised,[320]although the managers thought the tour through New York, where the President had been fairly discreet, was of value in marshalling the sentiment of Republicans. Besides, it seemed to them to show, in rural districts and towns as well as in the commercial centres, a decided preference for a policy aimed to effect the union of all the States according to the Constitution.
To encourage the coöperation of Republicans, the Democrats, led by Dean Richmond, agreed, temporarily at least, to merge their name and organisation in that of the National Union party. This arrangement was not easily accomplished. TheWorldhesitated and theLeaderridiculed, but when the Democracy of the State approved, these journals acquiesced.[321]In obedience to this understanding the Democratic State committee called a National Union State convention, and invited all to participate who favoured the principles enunciated by the Philadelphia convention. The obscuration of State policies and partisan prejudices made this broad and patriotic overture, devoted exclusively to a more perfect peace, sound as soft and winning as the spider's invitation to the fly. "If the action of the convention is in harmony with the spirit of the call," wrote Raymond, "it cannot fail to command a large degree of popular support."[322]As county delegations equally divided between Republicans and Democrats arrived at Albany on September 11, it was apparent that the invitation had been accepted at its face value. Although no Republican of prominence appeared save Thurlow Weed, many Republicans of repute in their respective localities answered to the roll call. These men favoured John A. Dix for governor. To them he stood distinctly for the specific policy announced at Philadelphia. In his opening address at that convention he had sounded the key-note, declaring a speedy restoration of the Union by the admission of Southern representatives to Congress a necessary condition of safe political and party action. Besides, Dix had been a Democrat all his life, a devoted supporter of the government during the war, and it was believed his career would command the largest measure of public confidence in the present emergency.
This had been the opinion of Dean Richmond, whose death on August 27 deprived the convention of his distinguished leadership. This was also the view of Edwards Pierrepont, then as afterward a powerful factor in whatever circle he entered. Although a staunch Democrat, Pierrepont had announced, at the historic meeting in Union Square on April 20, 1861, an unqualified devotion to the government, and had accepted, with James T. Brady and Hamilton Fish, a place on the union defence committee. Later, he served on a commission with Dix to try prisoners of state, and in 1864 advocated the election of Lincoln. There was no dough about Pierrepont. He had shown himself an embodied influence, speaking with force, and usually with success. He possessed the grit and the breadth of his ancestors, one of whom was a chief founder of Yale College, and his presence in the State convention, although he had not been at Philadelphia, encouraged the hope that it would concentrate the conservative sentiment and strength of New York, and restore Democracy to popular confidence. Stimulated by hisearnestness, the up-State delegates, when the convention opened, had practically settled Dix's nomination.
There were other candidates. A few preferred Robert H. Pruyn of Albany, a Republican of practical energy and large political experience, and until lately minister to Italy, while others thought well of Henry C. Murphy of Brooklyn, a Democrat and State senator of recognised ability. But next to Dix the favourite was John T. Hoffman, then mayor of New York. It had been many years since the Democrats of the metropolis had had a State executive. Edwards Pierrepont said that "no man in the convention was born when the last Democratic governor was elected from New York or Brooklyn."[323]This, of course, was hyperbole, since Pierrepont himself could remember when, at the opening of the Erie Canal, Governor DeWitt Clinton, amidst the roar of artillery and the eloquence of many orators, passed through the locks at Albany, uniting the waters of Lake Erie with those of the Hudson. Perhaps the thought of Clinton, climbing from the mayoralty to the more distinguished office of governor, added to the desire of Hoffman, for although the latter's capacity was limited in comparison with the astonishing versatility and mental activity of Clinton, he was not without marked ability.
Hoffman's life had been full of sunshine and success. He was a distinguished student at Union College, an excellent lawyer, an effective speaker, and a superb gentleman. Slenderly but strongly built, his square, firm chin and prominent features, relieved by large brown eyes, quickly attracted attention as he appeared in public. "In the winter of 1866," wrote Rhodes, "I used frequently to see him at an early morning hour walking down Broadway on his way to the City Hall. Tall and erect, under forty and in full mental and physical vigor, he presented a distinguished appearance and was looked at with interest as he passed with long elastic strides. He was regarded as one of the coming men of the nation. He had the air of a very successful man whois well satisfied with himself and confident that affairs in general are working for his advantage."[324]
Not always overstocked with eligibles whom it could admire and trust, Tammany, proud of the young man's accomplishments, elected him in 1860, at the age of thirty-two, recorder of the city, the presiding officer of what was then the principal criminal court. Here he acquitted himself, especially in the draft riot of 1863, with such credit that Republicans and Democrats united in re-electing him, and in 1865, before the expiration of his second term as recorder, Tammany made him mayor. It was a hard, close contest. Indeed, success could not have come to Tammany without the aid of Hoffman's increasing popularity. This office, however, plunged him at once into partisan politics, and gave to his career an uncertain character, as if a turn of chance would decide what path of political life he was next to follow. Now, at the age of thirty-eight, Tammany proposed making him governor.
But Hoffman represented neither the principles nor the purposes of the Philadelphia convention. The success of that movement depended largely upon the pre-eminent fitness of the men who led it. The question was, would the State be safer in the hands of a well-known Democratic statesman like Dix than in the control of Fenton and the Radicals? Dix stood for everything honest and conservative. For more than three decades his prudence had been indissolubly associated with the wise discretion of William L. Marcy and Silas Wright, while Hoffman, the exponent of unpurged Democracy, charged with promoting its welfare and success, was the one man whom conservative Republicans wished to avoid, and whom, in their forcible presentation of Dix, they were driving out of the race.
Democratic leaders saw the situation with alarm. They had endorsed the Philadelphia movement to get into power,—not to give it to Dix and the Conservatives. The President's reconstruction policy, benefiting their party in the South and thus strengthening it in national elections, had been adopted with sincerity, but they did not seriously propose to merge their organisation in the State with another, giving it the reins and the whip. "The New York delegation to Philadelphia," said theWorld, "was appointed by a gathering of politicians at Saratoga, who neither represented, had any authority to bind, nor made any pretence of binding the Democratic organisation of the State."[325]Indeed, it was treated as a surprising revelation that conservative Republicans and Dix Democrats should come to Albany with such a notion. However, the Dix appeal, developing wonderful strength, could not be reasoned with, and in their desperation the Democrats sought an adjournment until the morrow. This the convention refused, granting only a recess until four o'clock. In the meantime Dix's chances strengthened. It was plain that his nomination, on lines approved by Seward, meant a split in Republican ranks, and the up-State delegates, fearing delay, stood for early action. Then came the inevitable trick. On reassembling a motion to adjourn was voted down three to one, but Sanford E. Church, the chairman, declaring it carried, put on his hat and quickly left the hall. It was an audacious proceeding. Two-thirds of the convention stood aghast, and Church, the next morning, found it necessary to make an abject apology. Nevertheless, his purpose had been accomplished. Adjournment gave Tammany the time fiercely to assail Dix, who was now charged with consigning Democrats to Fort Lafayette, suppressing Democratic legislatures, and opposing Seymour in 1864. John Morrissey, the pugilist and congressman, declared that Dix could not poll twenty thousand votes in New York City. Meanwhile Democratic leaders, closing the door against Weed and the Conservatives, quietly agreed upon Hoffman. Had Dean Richmond lived a month longer thiscoup d'étatwould probably not have occurred. In vigour of intellect, in terseness of expression, and in grasp of questions presented for consideration, Richmond was recognised as the first unofficial man in America, and he had long thought it time for the Democratic party to get into step with the progress of events.
The next morning, as prearranged, Edwards Pierrepont took the floor, and after characterising the assembly as a Democratic convention whose programme had been settled in advance by Democrats, he formally and apparently with the assent of Dix coolly withdrew the latter's name, moving that the nomination of John T. Hoffman be made by acclamation.[326]This was carried with shouts of wild exultation. Many Dix supporters, anticipating the outcome, had silently left the hall, but enough remained to hear, with profound astonishment, the confession of Pierrepont that he had united with Tammany for the nomination of Hoffman before the meeting of the Philadelphia convention. Why, then, it was asked, did he advocate Dix the day before? and upon whose authority did he withdraw Dix's name? After such an exposure it could not be said of Pierrepont that he was without guile. "It was the occasion of especial surprise and regret," wrote Weed, "that even before the National Union State convention had concluded its labours, Judge Pierrepont should have assumed that it was a Democratic convention, and that its programme had been settled in advance by Democrats. This was not less a surprise when I remembered that on the day previous to that announcement, Judge Pierrepont concurred fully with me in the opinion that the nomination of General Dix for governor was expedient and desirable."[327]
But the worst blow to a union of political interests was yet to come. To afford the people safety in their persons, security in their property, and honesty in the administrationof their government, a Republican Legislature had placed the affairs of New York City largely in control of Boards and Commissions. Tammany naturally resented this invasion of home rule, and after reaffirming the principles of the Philadelphia movement, the convention declared that "recent legislation at Albany has usurped a supreme yet fitful control of the local affairs which counties and municipalities are entitled to regulate."[328]To Conservatives nothing could have been more offensive than such a declaration. "There are thousands of Republicans," said Raymond, "who long for a restoration of the Union by the admission to their seats in Congress of loyal men from loyal States, but who will be quite likely to prefer taking their chances of securing this result from the action of the Republican party, modified as it may be by reflection and moderate counsels, rather than seek it in the way marked out for them by the Albany Democratic convention."[329]
Thus the clash began. Conservatives resented the evident intention of the Democrats to strengthen their party at the expense of the Philadelphia movement. "We desire to call special attention," said a Buffalo paper, "to the necessity of carrying out in good faith the understanding which was entered into at the Philadelphia convention that all old party antecedents and future action should be merged in the National Union organisation. It was not contemplated then, or since, to strengthen the Democratic party by that movement, and any effort in that direction now cannot fail to be mischievous."[330]Before the month of September expired Raymond warned theWorldthat he was not pledged to the action of the Albany convention. "No Republican went into it for any such purpose," he said. "No hint of putting it to any such use was given in the call or in any of its preliminary proceedings. The convention was called to give effect to the principles and policy of the Philadelphia convention, and Republicans who approved those principlesconcurred in the call. But how did this give that convention the right to commit them in favour of measures alien from its ostensible purpose, and at war with their entire political action? It is utterly preposterous to suppose that they can coöperate with the Democratic party in the accomplishment of any such design."[331]
Five days later Raymond announced his support of the Republican ticket.[332]It was significant of his sincerity that he declined to run again for Congress. Thomas E. Stewart, a conservative Republican, was easily elected in the Sixth District, and Raymond could have had the same vote, but without "the approval of those who originally gave me their suffrage," he said, "a seat in Congress ceases to have any attraction. With the Democratic party, as it has been organised and directed since the rebellion broke out, I have nothing in common."[333]It is impossible not to feel a high respect for the manner in which Raymond, having come to this determination, at once acted upon it. He resented no criticism; he allowed no gleam of feeling to creep into his editorials. Few men could have avoided the temptation to assume the tone of the wronged one who endures much and will not complain. Instinctively, however, Raymond felt the bad taste and unwisdom of such a style, and he joined heartily and good-naturedly in the effort to elect Reuben E. Fenton.
Thurlow Weed, on the other hand, remained a Conservative. Indeed, he went a step farther in the way of irreconciliation, preferring Hoffman and Tammany, he said, to "the reckless, red-radicalism which rules the present Congress.... The men who now lead the radical crusade against the President," he continued, explanatory of his course, "attempted during the war to divide the North. That calamity was averted by the firmness and patriotism of conservative Republicans. In 1864 the same leaders, as hostile to Mr. Lincoln as they are to President Johnson, attempted to defeat his election by a flank movement at Cleveland. Mr. Greeley wrote private letters to prominent Republicans inviting their coöperation in a scheme to defeat Mr. Lincoln's election. The same leaders went to Washington last December with the deliberate intention to quarrel with the President, who up to that day and hour had followed in the footsteps of his illustrious predecessor. Their denunciations have been systematic and fiendish. If, under a keen sense of injustice, he has since erred in judgment or temper, none will deny the sufficiency of the provocation. That it would have been wiser, though less manly, to forbear, I admit. But no nature, merely human, excepting, perhaps, that of Abraham Lincoln, can patiently endure wanton public indignities and contumely."[334]
After the October elections it became apparent that the North would support Congress rather than the President. One cause of distrust was the latter's replacement of Republican office-holders with men noted for disloyalty during the war. Weed complained that the appointment of an obnoxious postmaster in Brooklyn "has cost us thousands of votes in that city."[335]During the campaign Johnson removed twelve hundred and eighty-three postmasters, and relatively as many custom-house employés and internal revenue officers.[336]Among the latter was Philip Dorsheimer of Buffalo. Indeed, the sweep equalled the violent action of the Council of Appointment in the days when DeWitt Clinton and Ambrose Spencer, resenting opposition to Morgan Lewis, sent Peter B. Porter to the political guillotine for supporting Aaron Burr. Such wholesale removals, however, did not arrest the progress of the Republican party. After Johnson's "swing around the circle," Conservatives were reduced to a few prominent men who could not consistently retrace their steps, and to hungry office-holders who were known as "the bread and butter brigade."[337]ThePost, a loyal advocate of the President's policy, thought it a melancholy reflection "That its most damaging opponent is the President, who makes a judicious course so hateful to the people that no argument is listened to, and no appeals to reason, to the Constitution, to common sense, can gain a hearing."[338]Henry Ward Beecher voiced a similar lament. The great divine had suffered severe criticism for casting his large influence on the side of Johnson, and he now saw success melting away because of the President's vicious course. "Mr. Johnson just now and for some time past," he wrote, "has been the greatest obstacle in the way of his own views. The mere fact that he holds them is their condemnation with a public utterly exasperated with his rudeness and violence."[339]A few weeks later the Brooklyn minister, tired of the insincerity of the President and of his Philadelphia movement, opened the campaign with a characteristic speech in support of the Republican candidates.[340]
In animation, frequent meetings, and depth of interest, the campaign resembled a Presidential contest. The issues were largely national. As one of the disastrous results of Johnson's reconstruction policy, Republicans pointed to the New Orleans and Memphis massacres, intensified by the charge of the Southern loyalists that "more than a thousand devoted Union citizens have been murdered in cold blood since the surrender of Lee."[341]The horrors of Andersonville, illuminated by eye witnesses, and the delay to try Jefferson Davis, added to the exasperation. On the other hand, Democrats traced Southern conditions to opposition to the President's policy, charging Congress with a base betrayal of the Constitution in requiring the late Confederate States to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment as a condition precedent to the admission of their representatives. The great debate attracted to the rostrum the ablest and best known speakers. For the Republicans, Roscoe Conkling, sounding the accepted key-note, now for the first time made an extended tour of the State, speaking in fourteen towns and cities. On the other hand, true to the traditions of his life, John A. Dix threw his influence on the side of the President.
Hoffman, also, patiently traversed the State, discussing constitutional and legal principles with the care of an able lawyer. There was much in Hoffman himself to attract the enthusiasm of popular assemblages. Kind and sympathetic, with a firm dignity that avoided undue familiarity, he was irresistibly fascinating to men as he moved among them. He had an attractive presence, a genial manner, and a good name. He had, too, a peculiar capacity for understanding and pleasing people, being liberal and spontaneous in his expressions of sympathy, and apparently earnest in his attachment to principle. He was not an orator. He lacked dash, brilliant rhetoric, and attractive figures of speech. He rarely stirred the emotions. But he pleased people. They felt themselves in the presence of one whom they could trust as well as admire. The Democratic party wanted a new hero, and the favourite young mayor seemed cut out to supply the want.
However, Hoffman did not escape the barbed criticism of the Republican press. Raymond had spoken of his ability and purity, and of his course during the war as patriotic.[342]Weed, also, had said that "during the rebellion he was loyal to the government and Union."[343]To overcome these certificates of character, theTribunedeclared that "Saturn is not more hopelessly bound with rings than he. Rings of councilmen, rings of aldermen, rings of railroad corporations, hold him in their charmed circles, and would, if he were elected, use his influence to plunder the treasury and the people."[344]It also charged him with being disloyal. In 1866 and for several years later the standing of pronounced Copperheads was similar to that of Tories after the Revolution, and it seriously crippled a candidate for office to beclassed among them. Moreover, it was easy to discredit a Democrat's loyalty. To most members of the Union party the name itself clothed a man with suspicion, and the slightest specification, like the outcropping of a ledge of rocks, indicated that much more was concealed than had been shown. On this theory, the Republican press, deeming it desirable, if not absolutely essential, to put Hoffman into the disloyal class, accepted the memory of men who heard him speak at Sing Sing, his native town, in 1864. As they remembered, he had declared that "Democrats only had gone to war;" that "volunteering stopped when Lincoln declared for an abolition policy;" and that he "would advise revolution and resistance to the government" if Lincoln was elected without Tennessee being represented in the electoral college.[345]Other men told how "at one of the darkest periods of the war, Hoffman urged an immediate sale of United States securities, then under his control and held by the sinking fund of the city."[346]In theTribune'sopinion such convenient recollections of unnamed and unknown men made him a "Copperhead."[347]
Although New York indicated the same direction of the popular will that had manifested itself in Pennsylvania and other October States, the heavy and fraudulent registration in New York City encouraged the belief that Tammany would overcome the up-State vote.[348]However, the pronounced antagonism to the President proved too serious a handicap, and the Radicals, electing Fenton by 13,000 majority,[349]carried both branches of the Legislature, and twenty out of thirty-one congressmen. It was regarded a great victory for Fenton, who was really opposed by one of the most formidable combinations known to the politics of the State. Besides the full strength of the Democratic party, the combined liquor interest antagonised him, while theWeed forces, backed by the Johnsonised federal officials, were not less potent. Indeed, Seward publicly predicted Republican defeat by 40,000 majority.[350]
The result also insured the election of a Republican to the United States Senate to succeed Ira Harris on March 4, 1867. Candidates for the high honour were numerous. Before the end of November Horace Greeley, having suffered defeat for Congress in the Fourth District, served notice of his desire.[351]George William Curtis had a like ambition. Lyman Tremaine, too, was willing. Charles J. Folger, the strong man of the State Senate, belonged in the same class, and Ransom Balcom of Binghamton, who had achieved an enviable reputation as a Supreme Court judge, also had his friends. But the three men seriously talked of were Ira Harris, Noah Davis, and Roscoe Conkling.
Harris had been something of a disappointment. He had performed the duties of judge and legislator with marked ability, but in Washington, instead of exercising an adequate influence on the floor of the Senate, he contented himself with voting, performing committee work, and attending to the personal wants of soldiers and other constituents. President Lincoln, referring to the Senator's persistency in pressing candidates for office, once said: "I never think of going to sleep now without first looking under my bed to see if Judge Harris is not there wanting something for somebody."[352]
Davis had been on the Supreme bench since 1857, and although he had had little opportunity to develop statesmanship, his enthusiastic devotion to the Union had discovered resources of argument and a fearless independence which were destined to win him great fame in the trial of William M. Tweed. People liked his nerve, believed in his honesty, confided in his judgment, and revelled in the retorts that leaped to his lips. There was no question, either, howhe would stand if called to vote upon the impeachment of the President, a proceeding already outlined and practically determined upon by the majority in Congress. This could not be said with confidence of Ira Harris. Although his radicalism had stiffened as the time for a re-election approached, he had not always been terribly in earnest. It was not his nature to jump to the support of a measure that happened to please the fancy of the moment. Yet his votes followed those of Senator Fessenden, and his voice, if not strong in debate, expressed the wisdom and judgment of a safe counsellor.
In the House of Representatives Conkling had displayed real ability. Time had vindicated his reasons for demanding a bankrupt law, and his voice, raised for economy in the public expense, had made him of special service during the war. He voted to reduce the mileage of congressmen, he opposed the creation of wide-open commissions, and he aided in uncovering frauds in the recruiting service. In the darkest hour of rebellion he approved Vallandigham's arrest and refused to join a movement to displace Lincoln for another candidate. On his return to Congress, after his defeat in 1862, he had passed to the Committee on Ways and Means, and to the Joint Committee on Reconstruction. Of the Radicals no one surpassed him in diligence and energy. He voted to confiscate the property of rebels, he stood with Stevens for disfranchising all persons who voluntarily adhered to the late insurrection until July 4, 1870, and he would agree to no plan that operated to disfranchise the coloured population. Indeed, to the system of constructive legislation which represented the plan of reconstruction devised by Congress, he practically devoted his time.