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The emancipation of the slaves, which has loomed so large in history, was in reality, merely an incident, a war measure, taken to weaken the enemy and justifiable, perhaps, only on that ground; the preliminary proclamation, indeed, proposed to liberate the slaves only in such states as were in rebellion on the following first of January. Nor did emancipation create any great popular enthusiasm. The congressional elections which followed it showed a great reaction against anti-slavery. The Democrats carried Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Illinois. Fora time the administration was fighting for its life, and won by an alarmingly small margin.
Before the year had elapsed, however, there was a great reversal in public opinion, and at the succeeding election, Lincoln received 212 out of 233 electoral votes. The end of the Confederacy was by this time in sight. A month after his second inauguration, Richmond fell, and five days later, Lee surrendered his army to General Grant. Lincoln at once paid a visit to Richmond and then returned to Washington for the last act of the drama.
The fourteenth of April was Good Friday, and the President arranged to take a small party to Ford's theatre to witness a performance of a farce comedy called "Our American Cousin." The President entered his box about nine o'clock and was given a tumultuous reception. Then the play went forward quietly, until suddenly the audience was startled by a pistol shot, followed by a woman's scream. At the same instant, a man was seen to leap from the President's box to the stage. Pausing only to wave a dagger which he carried in his hand and to shout, "Sic semper tyrannis!" the man disappeared behind the scenes. Amid the confusion, no efficient pursuit was made. The President had been shot through the head, the bullet passing through the brain. Unconsciousness, of course, came instantly, and death followed in a few hours.
Eleven days later, the murderer, an actor by the name of John Wilkes Booth, was surrounded in a barn where he had taken refuge; he refused to comeout, and the barn was set on fire. Soon afterwards, the assassin was brought forth with a bullet at the base of his brain, whether fired by himself or one of the besieging soldiers was never certainly known.
It is startling to contemplate the fearful responsibility which Booth assumed when he fired that shot. So far from benefiting the South, he did it incalculable harm, for the North was thoroughly aroused by the deed. Thousands and thousands flocked to see the dead President as he lay in state at the Capitol, and in the larger cities in which his funeral procession paused on its way to his home in Springfield. The whole country was in mourning, as for its father; business was practically suspended, and the people seemed stunned by the great calamity. That so gentle a man should have been murdered wakened, deep down in the heart of the North, a fierce resentment; the feelings of kindliness for a vanquished foe were, for the moment, swept away in anger; and the North turned upon the South with stern face and shining eyes. The wild and foolish assassin brought down upon the heads of his own people such a wrath as the great conflict had not awakened. We shall see how bitter was the retribution.
Not then so fully as now was Lincoln's greatness understood. He has come to personify for us the triumphs and glories, the sadness and the pathos, of the great struggle which he guided. His final martyrdom seems almost a fitting crown for his achievements. It has, without doubt, done much tosecure him the exalted niche which he occupies in the hearts of the American people, whom, in a way, he died to save. Had he lived through the troubled period of Reconstruction which followed, he might have emerged with a fame less clear and shining; and yet the hand which guided the country through four years of Civil War, was without doubt the one best fitted to save it from the misery and disgrace which lay in store for it. But speculations as to what might have been are vain and idle. What was, we know; and above the clouds of conflict, Lincoln's figure looms, serene and venerable. Two of his own utterances reveal him as the words of no other man can—his address on the battlefield of Gettysburg, and his address at his second inauguration—but two months after he was laid to rest, James Russell Lowell, at the services in commemoration of the three hundredth anniversary of Harvard College, paid him one of the most eloquent tributes ever paid any man, concluding with the words:
"Great captains, with their guns and drums;Disturb our judgment for the hour,But at last silence comes;These all are gone, and, standing like a tower,Our children shall behold his fame,The kindly-earnest, brave, foreseeing man;Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not blame;New birth of our new soil, the first American."
"Great captains, with their guns and drums;Disturb our judgment for the hour,But at last silence comes;These all are gone, and, standing like a tower,Our children shall behold his fame,The kindly-earnest, brave, foreseeing man;Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not blame;New birth of our new soil, the first American."
"Great captains, with their guns and drums;Disturb our judgment for the hour,But at last silence comes;These all are gone, and, standing like a tower,Our children shall behold his fame,The kindly-earnest, brave, foreseeing man;Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not blame;New birth of our new soil, the first American."
On the ticket with Lincoln, the Republicans had placed, as a sop to such pro-slavery sentiment as still existed at the North, a southerner and state rightsDemocrat named Andrew Johnson. By one of those singular chances of history, Johnson's origin and early years had been very much like Lincoln's. He, too, was born of a "poor white" family; first seeing the light in North Carolina about six weeks before Abraham Lincoln opened his eyes in that rude log cabin in Kentucky. His condition was, if anything, even more hopeless and degraded than Lincoln's, and if any one had prophesied that these two ignorant and poverty-stricken children would one day rise, side by side, to the greatest position in the Republic, he would have been regarded, and justly, as a hopeless madman. But not even to a madman did any such wild idea occur. "Poor whites" were despised throughout the South, even by the slaves; if there was, in the whole United States, any law of caste, it was against these ignorant and shiftless people; and Andrew Johnson, at the age of fifteen, was little better than a young savage. He had never gone to school, he had never seen a book. But one day, he heard a man reading aloud, and the wonder of it quickened a new purpose within him. He induced a friend to teach him the alphabet, and then, borrowing the book, he laboriously taught himself to read. So there was something more than "poor white" in him, after all.
By the time he was eighteen, he had had enough of his shiftless surroundings, and struck out for himself, journeyed across the mountains to Greenville, Tennessee, met there a girl of sixteen named Eliza McCardle, and, with youth's sublime improvidence,married her! As it happened, he did well, for his wife had a fair education, and night after night taught him patiently, until he could read fairly well and write a little. I like to think of that family group, so different from most, and to admire that girl-wife teaching her husband the rudiments of education.
Already, as a result of his lowly birth and the class prejudice he everywhere encountered, young Johnson had conceived that hatred of the ruling class at the South which was to influence his after life so deeply. He had a certain rude eloquence which appealed to the lower classes of the people, and, in 1835, succeeded in gaining an election to the state legislature. He nursed his political prospects carefully, and eight years later, was sent to Congress. He was afterwards twice governor of Tennessee.
It has been said that secession was, in the beginning, a policy of the ruling class in the South and not of the people. It is not surprising, then, that Johnson should have arrayed himself against it, and fought it with all his might. This position made him so prominent, that on March 4, 1862, Lincoln appointed him military-governor of Tennessee—a position which was exactly to Johnson's taste and which he filled well. In this position, he seemed the embodiment of the Union element of the South, and at their national convention in 1864, the Republicans decided that the President's policy of reconstruction for the South would be greatly aided by the presence of a southern man on the ticket, and Johnson was thereupon chosen for the office of Vice-President.On the same day that Lincoln was inaugurated for the second time, Johnson took the oath of office in the Senate chamber, and delivered a speech which created a sensation. He declared, in effect, that Tennessee had never been out of the Union, that she was electing representatives who would soon mingle with their brothers from the North at Washington, and that she was entitled to every privilege which the northern states enjoyed.
Three hours after the death of the President, Andrew Johnson took the oath of office as his successor, but he was regarded with suspicion at both North and South—at the North, because he was believed to be at heart pro-slavery; at the South because of his well-known animosity toward the aristocratic and ruling class. He was also known to be stubborn, high-tempered and intemperate, and he and Congress were soon at sword's point. Johnson was of the opinion that the question of suffrage for the negroes should be left to the several states; a majority of Congress were determined to exact this for their own protection. This was embodied in the so-called Civil Rights Bill, conferring citizenship upon colored men. It was promptly vetoed by the President, and was passed over his veto; soon afterwards the fourteenth amendment was passed, conferring the suffrage upon all citizens of the United States without regard to color or previous condition of servitude. It also was vetoed, and passed over the veto. Johnson was hailed as a traitor by Republicans, and the campaign against him culminated in his impeachment byCongress early in 1868. The trial which followed was the most bitter in the history of the Senate, but Andrew Johnson was acquitted by the failure of the prosecution to secure the two-thirds vote necessary for conviction by a single vote, thirty-five senators voting for conviction and nineteen for acquittal.
Johnson's friends were jubilant, but his power had vanished. The seceded states one by one came back into the Union in accordance with the Reconstruction act which Johnson had vetoed. He failed of the nomination on the Democratic ticket, and after the inauguration of his successor, at once returned to his old home in Tennessee. There he attempted to secure the nomination for United States senator, but his influence was gone and he was defeated. So ended his public life.
It has been rather the fashion to picture Johnson, as an intemperate and bull-headed ignoramus, but such a characterization is far from fair. But for Lincoln's assassination, some such policy of reconstruction as Johnson advocated would probably have been carried out, instead of the policy of fanatics like Thaddeus Stevens, which left the South a prey to the carpet-bagger and the ignorant negro for over a decade. Johnson himself might have accomplished more if he had been of a less violent disposition; but he was ignorant of diplomacy, incapable of compromise, and so was worsted in the fight. However we may disagree with his policy and dislike his character, let us at least not forget that picture of the "poor white" boy teaching himself to read; and thatother of the girl-wife patiently instructing him in the rudiments of writing.
A successful war inevitably gives to its commanders a tremendous popular prestige. We have seen how the battle of New Orleans made Andrew Jackson a national hero, how William Henry Harrison loomed large after the battle of Tippecanoe, and how Zachary Taylor was chosen President as a result of his victories in Mexico. The country was now to undergo another period of military domination, longer lived than those others, as the Civil War was greater than them—a period from which it has even yet not fully recovered.
In 1868, the Republican party nominated unanimously for President the general who had pushed the war to a successful finish, and who had received Lee's surrender, Ulysses Simpson Grant, and he was elected by an overwhelming majority. For the first time in the history of the country, a man had been elected President without regard to his qualifications for the office, for even Jackson had had many years' experience in public affairs. Of such qualifications, Grant had very few. He was egotistical, a poor judge of men, without experience in statesmanship, and unwilling to submit to guidance. As a result, his administration was marked by inefficiency and extravagance, and ended in a swirl of scandal.
Born in Ohio in 1822, and graduated at West Point, he had served through the war with Mexico, resigned from the army, remained in obscurity forsix years, during which he made an unsuccessful attempt to support himself in civil life, and entered the army again at the outbreak of the Civil War. From the first he was successful more than any other of the Union generals, not so much because of military genius as from a certain tenacity of purpose with which he fairly wore out the enemy. But a people discouraged by reverses were not disposed to inquire too closely into the reason of his victories, and early in 1864, after a brilliant campaign along the Mississippi, he had been appointed commander-in-chief of the Union army, and began that series of operations against Richmond which cost the North so dear, but which resulted in the fall of the capital of the Confederacy and in Lee's surrender.
A bearded, square-jawed, silent man, he caught the public fancy by two messages, the one of "Unconditional surrender," with which he had answered the demand for terms on the part of the Confederates whom he had entrapped in Fort Donelson; the other, the famous: "I propose to fight it out on this line, if it takes all summer," with which he started his campaign in the Wilderness. Both were characteristic, and if Grant had retired from public life at the close of the Civil War, or had been content to remain commander-in-chief of the army of the United States, his fame would probably have been brighter than it is to-day.
His training, such as it was, had been wholly military and his inaugural address showed his profound ignorance of the work which lay before him—anignorance all the more profound and unreachable because of his serene unconsciousness of it. He fell at once an easy prey to political demagogues, and before the close of his first administration, demoralization was widespread throughout the government. A large portion of the Republican party, realizing his unfitness for the office, opposed his renomination, and when they saw his nomination was inevitable, broke away and named a ticket of their own, but Grant's victory was a sweeping one.
With this stamp of public approval, the boodlers became bolder and great scandals followed, involving many members of Congress and even some members of the cabinet, but not the President himself, of whose personal honesty there was never any doubt, and in 1873, came the worst panic the country had ever experienced. A political reaction followed, and in 1874 the Democrats carried the country, gaining the House of Representatives by a majority of nearly a hundred.
Following his retirement from office in 1877, Grant made a tour of the world, returning in 1879, to be again a candidate for the presidency, and coming very near to getting the nomination. It was characteristic of the man's egotism that, even yet, he did not realize his unfitness for the office, but thought himself great enough to disregard the precedent which Washington had established. He lived five years longer, the last years of his life rendered miserable by cancer of the throat, which finally killed him.
In the summer of 1876, the Republicans nominatedRutherford B. Hayes, at that time Governor of Ohio, as their candidate for President—a nomination which was a surprise to the country, which had confidently expected that of James G. Blaine. Hayes was by no means a national figure, although he had served in the Union army, had been in Congress, and, as has been said, was governor of Ohio at the time of his nomination. Nor was he a man of more than very ordinary ability, upright, honest, and mediocre. The Democratic candidate was Samuel J. Tilden, a political star of the first magnitude, and the contest which followed was unprecedented in American history.
Tilden received a popular majority of half a million votes, and 184 electoral votes, out of the 185 necessary to elect, without counting the votes from Florida, South Carolina and Louisiana, all of which he had carried on the face of the returns. The Republicans disputed the vote in these states, however, and by the inexorable use of party machinery and carpet-bag government, declared Hayes elected. For a time, so manifest was the partisan bias of this decision, the country seemed on the verge of another Civil War, but Tilden led in wiser council, and Hayes was permitted to take his seat. It is the only instance in a national election where the will of the people at the polls has been defied and overridden.
Hayes was a sincere and honest man, and he felt keenly the cloud which the manner of his election cast over his administration. He was never popular with his party, and no doubt he felt that the debthe owed it for getting him his seat was a doubtful one. His administration was noteworthy principally because he destroyed the last vestiges of carpet-bag government in the South, and left the southern states to work out their own destiny unhampered. He was not even considered for a renomination, and spent the remainder of his life quietly in his Ohio home.
Hayes's successor was another so-called "dark horse," that is, a man of minor importance, whose nomination, was due to the fact that the party leaders could not agree upon any of the more prominent candidates. They were Grant, Blaine and John Sherman, and after thirty-five ballots, it was evident that a "dark horse" must be found. The choice fell upon James Abram Garfield, who was not prominent enough to have made any enemies, and who was as astonished as was the country at large when it heard the news.
Garfield was born in Ohio in 1831, in a little log cabin and to a position in the world not greatly different to Lincoln's. While laboring at various rough trades, he succeeded in preparing himself for college, worked his way through, got into politics, served through the Civil War, and later for eighteen years in Congress, where he made a creditable but by no means brilliant record. He was elected President by a small majority, and enraged the many enemies of James G. Blaine by selecting that astute politician as his secretary of state. One of these, a rattle-brained New Yorker named Charles J.Guiteau, approached the President on July 2, 1881, as he was waiting at a railroad station in Washington, about to start on a journey, and shot him through the body. Death followed, after a painful struggle, two months later.
Obscure, in a sense, as Garfield had been, the man who succeeded him was immeasurably more so. Chester Alan Arthur was a successful New York lawyer, who had dabbled in politics and held some minor appointive offices, his selection as Vice-President being due to the desire of the Republican managers to throw a sop to the Empire State. His administration, however, while marked by no great or stirring event, was for the most part wise and conservative, but James G. Blaine had by this time secured complete control of the party, and Arthur had no chance for the nomination for President. He died of apoplexy within two years of his retirement.
The Republican party had been supreme in the national government for a quarter of a century, and there seemed no reason to doubt that Blaine, its candidate in the campaign of 1884, would at last realize his consuming ambition to be elected President. He had an immense personal prestige, he had outlived the taint of corruption attached to him during the administration of Grant, and he had for years been preparing and strengthening himself for this contest. So he entered it confidently.
But a new issue had arisen—that of the protectivetariff, which, originally a war revenue measure, had been formally adopted as a principle of Republicanism, which was hailed by its adherents as a new and brilliant economic device for enriching everybody at nobody's expense, and which had really enriched a few at the expense of the many. The Democrats, with considerable hesitation and ambiguity, pronounced against it, arraigned the Republican party for corruption, and named as their nominee Grover Cleveland, of New York.
Cleveland was born in New Jersey in 1837, the son of a clergyman whose early death threw him upon his own resources. He started west in search of employment, stopped at Buffalo, and afterwards made it his home. He studied law while working as a clerk and copyist, was admitted to the bar in 1859, and in the late seventies was elected mayor of Buffalo on a reform ticket. Almost at once, the country's eyes were fastened upon him. Elected as a reform mayor, he continued to be one after his induction into office. He actually seemed to think that the promises and pledges made by him during his campaign were still binding upon him, and astounded the politicians by proceeding to carry those promises out. So scathing were the veto messages he sent in, one after another, to a corrupt council, that they awakened admiration and respect even among his opponents. The messages, written in the plainest of plain English, aroused the people of the city to the way in which they had been robbed by dishonest officials, they rallied behind him, andhis reputation was made. In 1882, his party wanted a reform candidate for governor, and they naturally turned to Cleveland, and he was elected by a plurality of two hundred thousand.
He found the same condition of things on a larger scale at Albany as at Buffalo—a corrupt machine paying political debts with public money—and here, again, he showed the same astonishing regard for pre-election pledges, the same belief in his famous declaration that "a public office is a public trust," and bill after bill was vetoed, while the people applauded. And with every veto came a message stating its reasons in language which did not mince words and which all could understand. He showed himself not only to be entirely beyond the control of the political machine of his own party, but also to possess remarkable moral courage, and he became naturally and inevitably the Democratic candidate for President, since the Democratic platform was in the main an arraignment of Republican corruption and moral decay. The campaign which followed was a bitter one; but Blaine had estranged a large portion of his party, he made a number of bad blunders, and Cleveland was elected. The old party founded by Jefferson, which, beginning with Jefferson's administration, had ruled the country uninterruptedly for forty years, was returned to power, and on an issue which would have delighted Jefferson's heart.
Much to the dismay and disappointment of the politicians, the new President made no clean sweepof Republican officeholders. He took the unheard-of ground that, in the public service, as in any other, good work merited advancement, no matter what the politics of the individual might be. He made some changes, as a matter of course, but he was from the first sturdily in favor of civil service reform. It is worth remarking that a Democratic President was the first to take a decided stand against the principle of "to the victors belong the spoils," first put into practice by another Democratic President, Andrew Jackson, over fifty years before.
His stand, too, on the pension question was startling in its audacity. The shadow of the Civil War still hung over the country; the soldiers who had served in that war had formed themselves into a great, semi-political organization, known as the Grand Army of the Republic, and worked unceasingly for increased pensions, which Congress had found itself unable to refuse. More than that, the members of Congress were in the habit of passing hundreds of special bills, giving pensions to men whose claims had been rejected by the pension department, as not coming within the law. Cleveland took the stand that, unless the soldier had been disabled by the war, he had no just claim to government support, and he vetoed scores of private pension bills, many of which were shown to be fraudulent.
In other ways, his remarkable strength of personality soon became apparent, and his determination to do what he thought his duty, regardless of consequences. His message of December, 1887,fairly startled the country. It was devoted entirely to a denunciation of the high tariff laws, a subject on which the Democratic leaders had deemed it prudent to maintain a discreet silence since the preceding election, and which many of them hoped would be forgotten by the public. But Cleveland's message brought the question squarely to the front, and made it the one issue of the campaign which followed. Cleveland would have been elected but for the traitorous conduct of the leaders in New York, who had never forgiven him for the way in which, as governor, he had scourged them. New York State was lost to him, and his opponent, Benjamin Harrison, was elected, although his popular vote fell below that of Cleveland by over a hundred thousand.
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But Cleveland had his revenge four years later, when, in spite of the protests of the leaders from his own state of New York, he was again nominated on a platform denouncing the tariff, and defeated Harrison by an overwhelming majority. And now came one of those strange instances of party perfidy and party suicide, of which the country has just witnessed a second example. In accordance with the platform pledges, a bill to lower the tariff was at once framed in the House and adopted; but the Senate, although Democratic in complexion, so altered it that it fell far short of carrying out the party pledges. The leader in the Senate was Arthur P. Gorman, of Maryland, and to him chiefly was due this act of treachery. The President refused to sign the bill, and it became a law without his signature.There can be little question that it was the failure of the Democratic party to fulfil its pledges at that critical time which led to its subsequent disruption and defeat.
Twice more did Cleveland startle the country with his extraordinary decision of character. In the summer of 1894, a great railroad strike, centering at Chicago, occasioned an outbreak of violence, which the governor of Illinois did nothing to quell. The President, therefore, declaring that the rioters had no right to interfere with the United States mails, ordered national troops to the scene to maintain order. A year later, when the British Government, involved in a boundary dispute with Venezuela, declared that it did not accept the Monroe Doctrine and would not submit the dispute to arbitration, the President sent a message to Congress, declaring that the Monroe Doctrine must be upheld at whatever cost. The country was thrilled from end to end, the President's course approved, and Great Britain at last consented to arbitration.
And yet, when Cleveland left the presidential chair for the second time, he had entirely lost control of and sympathy with his own party. He had shown little tact in his dealings with the party leaders. He seemed to forget that, after all, these leaders had certain rights and privileges which should be respected; he sometimes blundered through very anxiety to be right. You have heard some men called so upright that they leaned over backward—well, that, occasionally, was Cleveland's fault. Hewas subjected to such a storm of abuse as no other ex-President ever had to endure. That he felt it keenly there can be no question; but in the years which followed, his sturdy and unassailable character came to be recognized and appreciated, and his death, in the summer of 1908, was the occasion of deep and widespread sorrow.
We have told how, in 1888, Cleveland was defeated for the presidency by Benjamin Harrison. Harrison was a grandson of the old warrior of Tippecanoe, William Henry Harrison, the successful candidate of the Whig party forty-eight years before. He was an able but not brilliant man, had served through the Civil War, and was afterwards elected senator from Indiana, to which state he had removed from Ohio at an early age. The platform on which he was elected pledged the party to the protective tariff principle, and a high tariff measure, known as the McKinley Bill, was passed, raising duties to a point higher than had ever before been known in the history of the United States.
The Dependent Pension Bill, which Cleveland had vetoed, and which gave a pension to every Union soldier who was from any cause unable to earn a living, was also passed. But these policies did not appeal to the public; besides which, Harrison, although a man of integrity and ability, was popular with neither the rank nor file of his party, through a total lack of personal magnetism, and though he received the nomination, Cleveland easily defeatedhim. The remainder of his life was passed quietly at his Indiana home.
We have seen how Cleveland's independence and want of tact estranged him from his party, and the party itself was soon to run upon virtual shipwreck, under the guidance of strange leaders. A word must be said, in this place, of the extraordinary man who led it three times to defeat.
When the Democratic national convention met in Chicago in 1896, one of the delegates from Nebraska was a brilliant and eloquent lawyer named William Jennings Bryan. He had gained some prominence in his state, and had served in Congress for four years, but he was practically unknown when he arose before the convention and made a free-silver speech which fairly carried the delegates off their feet. Good oratory is rare at any time; its power can hardly be overestimated, especially in swaying a crowd; and Bryan was one of the greatest orators that ever addressed a convention.
His nomination for the Presidency followed, and the result was the practical dismemberment of the Democratic party. For Bryan was a Populist, as far as possible removed from the fundamental principles of Democracy, advocating strange socialistic measures; and the conservative element of the party regarded him and his theories with such distrust that it put another ticket in the field, and he was badly beaten. Twice more he led the party in presidentialcampaigns, each time being defeated more decisively than the last. His engaging personality, his ready oratory, and his supreme gifts as a politician won for him a vast number of devoted friends, who believed, and who still believe, in him absolutely; but the country at large, apparently, will have none of him.
The Republican nominee in 1896 was William McKinley, of Ohio, best known as the framer of the McKinley tariff bill. Born in Ohio in 1843, he had served through the Civil War, had been a member of Congress and twice governor of Ohio. He was a thorough party man, and modified his former views on the silver question to conform with the platform on which he was nominated; his campaign manager, Mark Hanna, was one of the most astute politicians the country had ever produced, and raised a campaign fund of unprecedented magnitude; all of which, combined with the disintegration of the Democratic party, gave McKinley a notable victory.
The great event of his first administration was the war with Spain, undertaken to free Cuba, into which McKinley, be it said to his credit, was driven unwillingly by public clamor, cunningly fostered by a portion of the press. Its close saw the purchase of the Philippines, and the entrance of the United States upon a colonial policy believed by many to be wholly contrary to the spirit of its founders.
There was never any question of McKinley's renomination, for his prestige and personal popularitywere immense, and his victory was again decisive. He had broadened rapidly, had gained in statesmanship, had acquired a truer insight into the country's needs, and was now freed, to a great extent, from party obligations. Great hopes were built upon his second administration, and they would no doubt have been fulfilled, in part at least; but a few months after his inauguration, he was shot through the body by an irresponsible anarchist while holding a public reception at Buffalo, and died within the week. The years which have elapsed since his death enable us to view him more calmly than was possible while he lived, and the country has come to recognize in him an honest and well-meaning man, of more than ordinary ability, who might have risen to true statesmanship and won for himself a high place in the country's history had he been spared.
On the ticket with McKinley, a young New Yorker named Theodore Roosevelt had been elected Vice-President. Roosevelt had long been prominent in his native state as an enthusiastic reformer, had made a sensational record in the war with Spain, and, on his return home, had been elected governor by popular clamor, rather than by the will of the politicians, to whom his rough-and-ready methods were extremely repugnant. So when the national convention was about to be held, they conceived the great idea of removing him from state politics and putting him on the shelf, so to speak, by electing him Vice-President, and the plan was carried out in spite of Roosevelt'sprotests. Alas for the politicians! It was with a sort of poetic justice that he took the oath as President on the day of McKinley's death, September 14, 1901, while they were still rubbing their eyes and wondering what had happened.
His evident honesty of purpose, combined with an impulsive and energetic temperament, which led him into various indiscretions, soon made him a popular hero. He was a sort of Andrew Jackson over again, and in 1904, he was sent back to the presidency by an overwhelming majority. For a time he was, indeed, the central figure of the republic. His energy was remarkable; he had a hand in everything; but many people, after a time, grew weary of so tumultuous and strenuous a life, and drew away from him, while still more were estranged by the undignified and violent controversies in which he became entangled. It is too soon, however, to attempt to give a true estimate of him. Indeed, he is as yet only in mid-career; and what his years to come will accomplish cannot be even guessed.
Despite his controversies with the leaders of his party, he retained sufficient power to dictate the nomination of his successor, William Howard Taft, an experienced jurist and administrator, who is but just entering upon his work as these lines are written, but to whom the American people are looking hopefully for a wise and moderate administration.
So stands the history of the rulers of the nation. As one looks back at them, one perceives a certainrhythmical rise and fall of merit and attainment, which may roughly be represented thus:
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Washington freed us from the power of England; Lincoln freed us from the power of slavery; the third man in this great trio will be he who will solve the vast economic problems which are the overshadowing issues of our day. Will he be a Democrat or Republican—or of some new party yet to be born? In any event, let us hope that Fate will not long withhold him!
LINCOLN, ABRAHAM. Born in Hardin County, Kentucky, February 12, 1809; served in Black Hawk war, 1832; admitted to the bar, 1836; began practice of law at Springfield, Illinois, 1837; Whig member Illinois legislature, 1834-42; member of Congress, 1847-49; Republican candidate for United States senator and held series of debates with Stephen A. Douglas, 1858; elected President, 1860; inaugurated, March 4, 1861; re-elected President, 1864; began second term, March 4, 1865; entered Richmond with Federal army, April 4, 1865; shot by John Wilkes Booth, at Ford'sTheatre, Washington, April 14, 1865, and died the following day.
JOHNSON, ANDREW. Born at Raleigh, North Carolina, December 29, 1808; member of Congress from Tennessee, 1843-53; governor of Tennessee, 1853-57; United States senator, 1857-62; military governor of Tennessee, 1862-64; inaugurated Vice-President, March 4, 1865; succeeded Lincoln as President, April 15, 1865; impeached by Congress for high crimes and misdemeanors, but acquitted after a trial lasting from March 23 to May 26, 1868; United States senator from Tennessee, 1875; died in Carter County, Tennessee, July 31, 1875.
GRANT, ULYSSES SIMPSON. Born at Point Pleasant, Clermont County, Ohio, April 27, 1822; graduated at West Point, 1843; served through Mexican war, 1846-48; left the army in 1854, and settled in St. Louis; removed to Galena, Illinois, 1860; appointed colonel, June 17, 1861; brigadier-general, August 7, 1861; captured Fort Donelson, February 16, 1862; promoted to major-general of volunteers and made commander of the Army of the District of West Tennessee, March, 1862; gained battle of Shiloh, April 6-7, 1862; captured Vicksburg, July 4, 1863, and made major-general in the regular army; won battle of Chattanooga, November 23-25, 1863; made lieutenant-general and commander-in-chief of American armies, March, 1864; took up his headquarters with the Army of the Potomac, fought battles of Wilderness, and received Lee's surrender at Appomattox Court House, April 9, 1865; made general, July 25, 1866; elected President, 1868, and re-elected, 1872; made tour of the world, 1877-79;unsuccessful candidate for nomination for presidency, 1880; made general on the retired list, March 4, 1885; died at Mount McGregor, New York, July 23, 1885.
HAYES, RUTHERFORD BIRCHARD. Born at Delaware, Ohio, October 4, 1822; served in the Union army during the Civil War, being brevetted major-general of volunteers in 1864; member of Congress from Ohio, 1865-67; governor of Ohio, 1868-72 and 1876; Republican candidate for President, 1876; declared elected by the Electoral Commission, March 2, 1877, and served, 1877-81; died at Fremont, Ohio, January 17, 1893.
GARFIELD, JAMES ABRAM. Born at Orange, Cuyahoga County, Ohio, November 19, 1831; instructor in and later president of Hiram College, Ohio, 1856-61; joined the Union army as lieutenant-colonel of volunteers, 1861; defeated General Humphrey Marshall at the battle of Middle Creek, January 10, 1862; promoted brigadier-general, 1862; promoted major-general, 1863; member of Congress, 1863-80; elected United States senator, 1880; elected President, 1880; inaugurated, March 4, 1881; shot in Washington by Guiteau, July 2, 1881; died at Elberon, New Jersey, September 19, 1881.
ARTHUR, CHESTER ALAN. Born at Fairfield, Vermont, October 5, 1830; graduated at Union College, 1848; taught school and practiced law in New York City; inspector-general of New York troops, 1862; collector of the port of New York, 1871-78; elected Vice-President, 1880; succeeded Garfield as President, September 20, 1881, serving to March 4, 1885; defeated forRepublican nomination, 1884; died at New York, November 18, 1886.
CLEVELAND, GROVER. Born at Caldwell, Essex County, New Jersey, March 18, 1837; studied law at Buffalo, New York, and admitted to the bar, 1859; assistant district attorney of Erie County, 1863-66; sheriff of Erie County, 1871-74; Democratic mayor of Buffalo, 1882; governor of New York, 1883-84; elected President, 1884; served as President, 1885-89; advocated a reduction of the tariff in his message to Congress in December, 1887; defeated for re-election, 1888; re-elected President, 1892; served, 1893-97; died at Princeton, New Jersey, June 24, 1908.
HARRISON, BENJAMIN. Born at North Bend, Ohio, August 20, 1833; graduated at Miami University, 1852; studied law and practiced at Indianapolis; served in Civil War and was brevetted brigadier-general; United States senator, 1881-87; elected President, 1888; defeated for re-election, 1892; died at Indianapolis, March 13, 1901.
MCKINLEY, WILLIAM. Born at Niles, Trumbull County, Ohio, January 29, 1844; served in the Civil War, attaining the rank of major; member of Congress, 1877-91; elected governor of Ohio, 1891; re-elected, 1893; elected President, 1896; re-elected, 1900; shot by an assassin at Buffalo, New York, and died there, September 14, 1901.
ROOSEVELT, THEODORE. Born at New York City, October 27, 1858; graduated at Harvard, 1880; New York state assemblyman, 1882-84; resided on North Dakota ranch, 1884-86; national Civil Service Commissioner, 1889-95; president New York Police Board,1895-97; assistant secretary of the navy, 1897-98; resigned to organize regiment of Rough Riders and served through war with Spain; governor of New York, 1899-1900; elected Vice-President, 1900; succeeded to presidency on death of McKinley, September 14, 1901; elected President, 1904; retired from presidency, March 4, 1909.
TAFT, WILLIAM HOWARD. Born at Cincinnati, Ohio, September 15, 1857; graduated at Yale, 1878; admitted to bar, 1880; judge Superior Court, 1887-90; solicitor-general of the United States, 1890-92; United States circuit judge, 1892-1900; President Philippine Commission, 1900-04; secretary of war, 1904-08; elected President, 1908; inaugurated, March 4, 1909.
If one were asked to name the most remarkable all-around genius this country has produced, the answer would be Benjamin Franklin—whose life was perhaps the fullest, happiest and most useful ever lived in America. There are half a dozen chapters of this series in which he might rightfully find a place, and in which, indeed, it will be necessary to refer to him, for he was an inventor, a scientist, a man of letters, a philanthropist, a man of affairs, a reformer, and a great many other things besides. But first and greatest of all, he was a benign, humorous, kind-hearted philosopher, who devoted the greater portion of his life to the service of his country and of humanity.
Benjamin Franklin was born at Boston in 1706, the fifteenth of a family of seventeen children. His father was a soap-boiler, and was kept pretty busy providing for his family, none of whom, with the exception of Benjamin, ever attained any especial distinction; this being one of those mysteries of nature, which no one has ever been able to explain, and yet which happens so often—the production of an eagle in a brood of common barnyard fowls—amiracle, however, which never happens except when the barnyard fowls are of the human species. Benjamin himself, at first, was only an ugly duckling in no way remarkable.
At the age of ten, he was apprenticed to his brother, who was a printer, and needed a boy to do the dirty work around the office, and thought there was no need of paying good money to an outsider, when it might just as well be kept in the family. So Benjamin went to work sweeping out, and washing up the dirty presses, and making himself generally useful during the day; but—and here is the first gleam of the eagle's feather—instead of going to bed with the sun as most boys did, he sat up most of the night reading such books and papers as he was able to get hold of at the office, or himself writing short articles for the paper which his brother published. These he slipped unsigned under the front door of the office, so that his brother would not suspect they came from him; for no man is a prophet to his own family, and these contributions would have promptly gone into the waste basket had his brother suspected their source. As it was, however, they were printed, and not until Benjamin revealed their authorship did his brother discover how bad they were.
After he had served in the printing office for seven years, Benjamin came to the conclusion that his family would never appreciate him at his real worth. He was like most boys in this, differing from them only in being right. So he sold some of his books,and without saying anything to his father or brother, who would probably have reasoned him out of his purpose with a cowhide whip, he hid himself on board a boat bound for New York. Arrived there, he soon discovered that printers and budding geniuses were in no great demand, and so proceeded on to Philadelphia, partly on foot and partly by water.
Everyone knows the story of how he landed there, with only a few pennies in his pocket, but with a sublime confidence in his ability to make more; how he proceeded to the nearest bakeshop, asked for three pennies' worth of bread, and when he was given three loaves, took them rather than reveal his ignorance by confessing that he really wanted only one loaf, and walked up Market street, with a loaf under each arm, and eating the third. He has told the story in his inimitable way in his autobiography, a work which gives him high place among American men of letters. Small wonder that red-cheeked Deborah Reed smiled at him from the door of her father's house—but Franklin saw the smile and remembered it, and though it brought them both distress enough at first, he asked Deborah to be his wife, six years later, and she consented, and a good wife she made him. Years afterward, when he was Ambassador to France and the pet of the French court, the centre of perhaps the most brilliant and witty circle in Europe, the talk, one day, chanced to turn upon tailors, of whom the company expressed the utmost detestation. Franklin listened with a quiet smile, which some one at last observed.
"Don't you agree," he was asked, "that tailors are a conscienceless and extortionate class?"
"No," he answered, still smiling; "how could I? You see, I'm in love with mine."
And he told proudly and with shining eyes how the clothes he wore had been spun into thread and woven into cloth and cut out and fitted and sewed together by his wife's own hands; and it was no doubt Deborah he had in mind when he said: "God bless all good women who help men to do their work."
The young adventurer had no difficulty in finding employment as a printer, for printers were in demand in that Quaker city. He prospered from the first, and at the age of twenty-four, had a little business of his own, and was editing thePennsylvania Gazette. Two years later, he began the publication of an almanac purporting to be written by one Richard Saunders, and which soon won an immense reputation as "Poor Richard's Almanac." As an almanac, it did not differ much from others, but, in addition to the usual information about the tides and changes of the moon and seasons of the year, it contained a wealth of wise and witty sayings, many of which have passed into proverbs and are in common use to-day. Here are a few of them: