Part 11 (2/2)

He was one of its most prominent divines, and in sympathy with that branch which remained loyal to the Union. Naturally he was a great admirer of Mr. Lincoln--in fact, so close was he to the President that it was his influence that secured the appointment of Senator Harlan of Iowa as Secretary of the Interior. What follows will demonstrate that this statement is not made on hearsay.

Several prominent men of Illinois, and other parts of the country, were in Was.h.i.+ngton trying to secure the appointment of Uncle Jesse K. Dubois (the father of Senator Dubois of Idaho who served in the United States Senate two terms with great credit to himself and State), as Secretary of the Interior. Uncle Jesse Dubois was there himself, and we all met one evening at the National Hotel, at which meeting I was designated to go to the White House and use my influence with President Lincoln in Uncle Jesse's behalf. Uncle Jesse had no business coming to Was.h.i.+ngton when he was being pushed for a cabinet office; but he did, nevertheless, and he was not in good health. About ten o'clock at night I saw the President, and laid before him Uncle Jesse's claims. His reply was:

”I cannot appoint him. I must appoint Senator Harlan. I promised Bishop Simpson to do so. The Methodist Church has been standing by me very generally; I agreed with Bishop Simpson to give Senator Harlan this place, and I must keep my agreement. I would like to take care of Uncle Jesse, but I do not see that I can as a member of my cabinet.”

I replied: ”If you have determined it, that is the end of the matter, and I shall so report to the friends who are gathered at the National, so that Uncle Jesse may go on home.”

President Lincoln seemed much affected. He followed me to the door, repeating that he would like to take care of Uncle Jesse, but could not do so.

Jesse Dubois went home to Springfield, but he remained as stanch a friend to Lincoln as ever, and was one of the committee sent from Springfield to accompany the remains of the immortal President to their last resting-place.

George S. Boutwell was another member of the Thirty-ninth Congress who merits some attention. He afterward became very influential among the radical element, and was one of the managers on the part of the House in the impeachment of President Johnson. It is hard to understand in a man of his sober, sound sense; but I am convinced that he firmly believed President Johnson to have been a conspirator in securing the a.s.sa.s.sination of Mr. Lincoln. He was Secretary of the Treasury under President Grant, who had for him the greatest respect and confidence. I never was very intimate with him, but I knew him fairly well, and considered him one of the leading public men of Ma.s.sachusetts of his day.

One of the leading members of the Pennsylvania delegation in the Thirty-ninth Congress was William D. Kelley. He was a prominent member of the House, a good speaker, although he always prepared his addresses at great length, princ.i.p.ally on the tariff; but he did not confine himself to his ma.n.u.scripts entirely. His specialty in Congress was the tariff. He was called ”Pig-iron Kelley” because he was for high duties on pig-iron and, in fact, everything manufactured in Pennsylvania. That State, as everybody knows, is the great iron and steel manufacturing State of the Union, and its representatives in Congress were in that day, as they are in this, the highest of high protective tariff advocates.

Before entering Congress, William D. Kelley for a number of years had been a judge of one of the more important courts of Philadelphia.

He was elected to and kept in the House, without any particular effort on his own part, because he was considered one of the most valuable men in Congress in matters pertaining to the tariff. When I was a candidate for re-election to the House he visited my district and made several very able speeches for me at my request, and, with his wife, was my guest in Springfield for several days. At that time Republicans were for a high protective tariff, and it was not considered then, as it seems to be in these days of so-called insurgency, a crime for a Republican to stand up and say that he was in favor of high tariff duties. In any event, Judge Kelley did me much good in the speeches he made in my district.

We occupied apartments in the same house in Was.h.i.+ngton--on F Street near the Ebbitt House, at which hotel we took our meals. F Street is now the heart of the business centre, but it was then one of the princ.i.p.al residence streets, and many Representatives and Senators lived in that vicinity. The only objection I had to living in the same house with Judge Kelley was that he was always preparing speeches, and when he got ready to deliver a speech he would insist on reading it all over to me; and as his speeches were generally two or three hours long, and always on the tariff, in which I did not take an extraordinary amount of interest, I became pretty tired of hearing them.

On one occasion when he was making quite an eloquent speech in the House, he was interrupted by a member from Kentucky, whose name I do not remember. He had already answered him once or twice and then gone on. He was interrupted again, and this time he answered: ”Oh, don't interrupt me when the glow is on.” The ”glow” did happen to be on at that time, and naturally he did not desire to be interrupted.

In the same Pennsylvania delegation there were two members named Charles O'Neill and Leonard Myers, who were very short in stature.

For some reason or other, some wag dubbed them ”Kelley's ponies.”

They heard of it and became very angry, and on every occasion, when there was half a chance, they watched to see how Judge Kelley voted and would then vote the opposite.

They were both good men and good Republicans, and O'Neill served the same number of terms as Judge Kelley--fifteen--but O'Neill remained his full fifteen terms and retired from Congress. Judge Kelley was serving his fifteenth term when he died in Was.h.i.+ngton, in 1890.

Samuel J. Randall was one of the prominent Democrats of his day; but strange to say he favored a protective tariff. He also served about fifteen terms, two of them in the Speaker's chair. He had an anxious solicitude for the success of his party, and made many political speeches. He was a young member when I first knew him, away back in the sixties, but even then he occupied an influential position.

I remember meeting him in Mr. Blaine's office one day, when the latter was Secretary of State, and Mr. Blaine not being in, we sat on the settee and had a talk. He was in poor health, but curious respecting the relations between President Harrison and his party.

I told him they were not getting along very well; that he satisfied his party about as well as Mr. Cleveland satisfied his when he was in the White House.

”I think,” he observed, ”he is better than our President. We never could do much with Cleveland.” Then he added this characteristic remark: ”If you want an army to fight, you must feed it. It is the same with a political party: if a party is to take care of itself, its workers must be recognized in the distribution of its patronage.”

I never saw Samuel J. Randall afterwards.

Judge G.o.dlove S. Orth was one of my most intimate friends in the House of Representatives. He was a splendid man, and was regarded as an honorable and able member. He and I saw much of each other every day, as we roomed in the same neighborhood and generally visited the departments together. We were seen with each other so often on the streets, in fact, that when we were separated, friends would ask either one or the other of us: ”What has become of your partner?” At one time I canva.s.sed his district for him and he was re-elected.

He had a peculiar name, ”G.o.dlove.” I never heard of a man named G.o.dlove, either before or since. The story was told of a lady sitting in the gallery, listening to the proceedings of the House.

She could not hear very well. When the roll was being called, and she heard the name ”G.o.dlove” called by the clerk, she did not understand it; she wend down stairs and told her friends that the House of Representatives was a most pious body; that every time they called the roll, and the clerk got about half way through, he would stop and exclaim: ”G.o.d love us all!”

Judge Orth has been dead for many years, but I have always remembered with great pleasure our friends.h.i.+p when we served as colleagues in the House, nearly half a century ago.

Oakes Ames of Boston was a prominent member of the House. He had charge of the Union Pacific Railroad construction, and it was charged--and proven, I believe, afterwards--that he secured the concessions for the railroad by undue influence,--the use of money, gifts of stock, etc.,--and the whole thing finally culminated in what is known as the _Credit Mobilier_ scandal, the exposure of which came after I retired from the House.

Ames was a member of the Thirty-eighth, Thirty-ninth, Fortieth, Forty-first, and Forty-second Congresses, and I knew him very well during my six years' service. I was made chairman of the Committee on Territories in the Forty-first Congress, by Mr. Blaine, who was then Speaker. Ames annoyed me very much by coming to me almost every day in the interest of legislation in the Territories affecting the Union Pacific, and I asked him one day, being a little out of temper, whether he was so absorbed in the Pacific Railroad that he had not time to devote to anything else. He made some light rejoinder; sometime later the exposure came, and I found that he was engaged in most unfortunate and unlawful practices in securing legislation in the interest of his road.

I never believed that Oakes Ames was naturally a dishonest man, but the proof was against him, and the scandal resulted in his death, as it also did in the death of James Brooks, of New York, and the ruination of other public men.

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