Part 10 (1/2)

He was a leading candidate at the Cincinnati Convention, when Hayes was nominated. I was there and heard Ingersoll's great speech placing him in nomination. I have always felt that Blaine would have been nominated by that convention if a strong, courageous presiding officer had been in the chair. As I sat behind Mr.

McPherson, the presiding officer, and watched the proceedings, I thought that if I had had that gavel in my hands there would have been no adjournment and James G. Blaine would have been nominated.

An adjournment was secured, however; the lights were extinguished, and the enemies of Blaine united, and Hayes became the nominee.

But at the convention held in Chicago, in 1884, no other candidate was seriously considered, and Blaine was nominated for President and Logan for Vice-President.

I had to do much in connection with Blaine in the campaign of 1884.

He was a very agreeable man so long as things went to suit him; but he did not attempt to control himself when things went at all against him. He was campaigning through Indiana, Ohio, and Illinois, in 1884; I had been on the platform with him at Ma.s.sillon, Ohio, when the people would scarcely listen to any one except Mr. McKinley.

It was arranged that Blaine should come from La Fayette, Indiana, to Springfield, Illinois. I was chairman of the delegation consisting of one hundred of the most prominent men of the State, selected to accompany him to Springfield. The delegation went to La Fayette, and the Adjutant-General of the State and I waited on Mr. Blaine at the residence of Mr. George Williams, who is still living and whom I have always known intimately. Mr. Blaine's son came down in response to our call, announcing that his father had retired, ill, and would not be disturbed until eight o'clock in the morning.

At the hour appointed we still had difficulty in seeing him, and finally I enlisted the a.s.sistance of Mr. McKinley, who was there, and the Hon. Joseph Medill of _The Chicago Tribune_, to help me to prevail upon Blaine to keep his engagement. He had come to the conclusion that he ought to go back East; that he was needed there more than he was in the West. The truth was that he was trying to evade the Springfield engagement. I told him that there would be no less than a hundred thousand people from all parts of the State gathered at Springfield to see him, and it would not do to disappoint so vast a crowd. He finally consented to go, but was very ungracious about it, telling us not to disturb him during the trip from La Fayette to Springfield, and at once retired to his drawing-room.

We soon came to a city in Indiana where there was a large crowd to greet him, and following his orders, the train did not stop. He emerged from his drawing-room very angry because the train had not been stopped when a crowd was waiting to hear him. Afterwards we halted at almost every station on the line to Springfield, where we did not arrive until almost dusk. Probably a hundred thousand people had been gathered there during the day, and at least fifty thousand waited until we arrived; but it was so dark that the audience could scarcely see the speaker. He left for Chicago that night, hurrying through that city; hence to Wisconsin, I believe, making enemies rather than friends. He had gained the election by his Western tour, but lost it during his stay in New York City.

”Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion,” the Delmonico dinner, the old row with Conkling beginning in the Thirty-ninth Congress, caused his defeat. I told him afterwards that if he had broken his leg in Springfield and been compelled to remain as my guest there, he would have been elected. He agreed with me that he would.

Notwithstanding his defeat, however, he continued as one of the foremost leaders of the Republican party up to the time of his death. He might have been nominated at the Chicago Convention, when Mr. Harrison received the nomination the first time had he not retired to Europe, apparently so disgusted at his own defeat four years before that he had not the heart to make the race again.

I do not think Harrison ever did like Blaine, but he invited him to become the Premier of his cabinet, a position which Mr. Blaine had held for a few months under General Garfield. Harrison and Blaine never got along. As I say elsewhere in these recollections, Harrison seemed jealous of Blaine, and Blaine was not true to his chief. Mr. Blaine sent for me one evening, and I called at his house. He related to me with considerable feeling how the President had treated both his family and himself. He urged me to become a candidate for President, but I told him that I would not think of doing so. I afterwards supported Mr. Harrison for reasons personal to myself, and not because I was particularly fond of Mr. Harrison.

James G. Blaine retired to private life and died soon afterwards, a broken, disappointed man. He was one of the greatest men of his day, and was the most brilliant and probably the most popular man with the ma.s.ses in the history of the Republican party.

Rutherford B. Hayes was the nineteenth President of the United States, and preceded General Garfield in that office. He was neither as great a man nor as great an orator as General Garfield, although he was a much better executive officer, and in my opinion gave a better administration than General Garfield would have given had he served the term for which he was elected. Rutherford B.

Hayes was an inconspicuous member of the House, as I recollect him now. He was what I would term a very good, conscientious man, who never made any enemies; but I do not think that any one would say that he was a great man. He did not talk very much in the House, nor accomplish very much. I became quite friendly with him there.

Subsequently he was nominated for Governor of Ohio, and he invited me to come to the State and campaign for him, which I did.

Thurman was his opponent, a very strong and able man, who subsequently became a Senator from Ohio, and was a nominee of the Democratic party for Vice-President. But Hayes defeated him for the Governors.h.i.+p, and was once re-elected. He was nominated for President at the Cincinnati Convention of 1876, when Blaine really should have been the nominee, and would have been had the permanent chairman of the convention, Edward McPherson, grasped the situation and held it with a firm hand.

McPherson, while a man of good intentions, earnest and sincere, was Clerk of the House for many years and had occupied what might be termed a subordinate position. The fact of the matter is that he permitted the convention to get away from him; an adjournment was secured, and the same night it was framed up to beat Blaine by nominating Hayes.

Hayes was just the kind of man for a compromise candidate. He was seriously handicapped all through his administration owing to the manner in which he secured the office. The Electoral Commission, an unheard-of thing, created by act of Congress, by eight to seven declared that Hayes was elected over Tilden. Very many people were of the opinion that Tilden was ent.i.tled to the office. The Electoral Commission never would have been agreed to by the Democrats had they known that Judge David Davis, of our own State, would retire from the Bench to take a place in the Senate; and it is almost certain that had Judge Davis remained on the bench he would have been a member of the Electoral Commission, and would have surely voted in favor of Tilden, which would have made him President.

While Hayes was President the ”green-back craze” seemed to almost take possession of the country. I delivered an address at Rockford, Illinois, before an agricultural society, taking issue to some extent with the public sentiment of the country, and favoring sound money. The President was going through the country at that time on a speaking tour, and in the course of some of his addresses he commended what I had said. He, accompanied by General Sherman, visited Springfield, and I entertained them at the Executive Mansion.

President Hayes, himself realizing the embarra.s.sment under which he entered the office of President, was not a candidate for renomination, and very wisely so. But as I have said, President Hayes was a good man; he made a very commendable record as President of the United States, and he was specially fortunate in the selection of his cabinet, showing rare discrimination in selecting some of the ablest men in the country as his advisers. Evarts was his Secretary of State, and John Sherman Secretary of the Treasury.

It is a rather peculiar coincidence that both James A. Garfield and R. B. Hayes were members of the Ohio delegation in the Thirty- ninth Congress, and both afterwards arrived at the Presidency.

James A. Garfield was a man of extraordinary ability. I was very intimate with him during our service in the House. He was an extremely likable man; I became very fond of him, and I believe the feeling was reciprocated. Also he was distinguished for his eloquence, and I have heard him make some of the most wonderfully stirring and impressive speeches in the House. He was probably not the orator that Robert G. Ingersoll was, but I should say that he was one of the most effective public speakers of his period; his speeches were deeper and more serious, uttered in a graver style than the beautiful poetic imagery of the great agnostic.

President Lincoln liked Garfield, and he was one of the younger men in the House who always supported the President, and on whom the President relied. He entered the Thirty-eighth Congress and served many terms. He enjoyed the peculiar distinction of being a member of Congress from Ohio, Senator-elect from Ohio, and President-elect of the United States, all at the same time.

I attended the National Republican Convention of 1880, in which Grant and Blaine were the leading candidates. I was at the time Governor of Illinois and a candidate for re-election myself; consequently I could not take any active part in the contest between Blaine and Grant, but of course, naturally, my sympathies were with General Grant.

I was not a delegate to the National Convention, but I attended it, and it so happened that I occupied a room directly opposite that occupied by General Garfield.

One evening, leaving my room, I met General Garfield just as he was leaving his, and we dropped into general conversation and walked along together.

I have always been considered a pretty fair judge of a political situation in State and National conventions, and it struck me as soon as Garfield had completed one of the most eloquent of all his eloquent addresses, placing in nomination Mr. Sherman, that he was the logical candidate before that convention.

To digress for a moment, it is a peculiar coincidence that McKinley made his great reputation, in part, by nominating Mr. Sherman as a candidate for the Presidency in the Minneapolis convention of 1892. Like General Garfield in 1880, Mr. McKinley was perfectly willing to receive the nomination himself, although he was then, as Garfield was in 1880, the leader of the Sherman forces.