Part 19 (1/2)
He is a very independent character, and was just the man for chairman of the great Committee on Appropriations. Senator Hale was more than ordinarily independent, even to the extent of voting against his party at times, and was very little influenced by what a President or an Administration might desire. I regretted exceedingly to see him leave the Senate, where for many years he served his country so well.
Charles F. Manderson, of Nebraska, was twice elected to the United States Senate, and was an influential member. I have regarded him as one of the most amiable men with whom I have served. He was a splendid soldier, a splendid legislator, and a splendid man generally.
He was the presiding officer of the Senate, and a good one. I have always thought that he ought to have been the Republican nominee for Vice-President of the United States; but for some reason or other he never seemed to seek the place, and finally became one of the attorneys for the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy Railroad, since when he seems to have lost interest in political affairs.
He visit old friends in Was.h.i.+ngton once each year, and it is always a great pleasure for me to greet Mr. and Mrs. Manderson.
Another Senator who first served many years in the House, was Philetus Sawyer, of Wisconsin. It was in the Senate that I served with him, and came to have for him a very great respect. He was not very well educated, not a lawyer nor an orator, and excepting in a conversational way, not regarded as a talker; yet he was an uncommonly effective man in business as well as in politics, and was once or twice invited to become chairman of the National Republican Committee.
I cannot resist the temptation to tell a little story in connection with Senator Sawyer. One day he was undertaking to pa.s.s an unimportant bill in the Senate concerning some railroad in his own State, and as was the custom when he had anything to say or do in the Senate, he took his place in the centre aisle close to the clerk's desk, so that he could be heard. Senator Van Wyck offered an amendment to the bill, and was talking in favor of the amendment, when Sawyer became a little alarmed lest the bill was going to be beaten. He turned his back to the clerk, and said in a tone of voice that could be distinctly heard:
”If you will stop your d.a.m.ned yawp I will accept your amendment.”
Van Wyck merely said, ”All right.” The amendment was adopted, and the bill pa.s.sed.
As is quite the custom in the disposal of new members, I was appointed a member of the Committee on Pensions--really the only important committee appointment I received during my first service in the Senate. I naturally felt very liberal toward the old soldiers, and it seemed that every case that was referred to me was a worthy one, and that a liberal pension should be allowed.
I became a little uneasy lest I might be too liberal, and I went to Sawyer, knowing that he was a man of large wealth, seeking his advice about it.
He said, and I have been guided by that advice largely ever since: ”You need not worry; you cannot very well make a mistake in allowing liberal pensions to the soldier boys. The money will get into circulation and come back into the treasury very soon; so go ahead and do what you think is right in the premises; and there will be no trouble.”
Senator Sawyer retired from the Senate voluntarily at a ripe old age. He was largely instrumental in selecting as his successor, one of the greatest lawyers and ablest statesmen who has ever served in that body, of whom I shall speak later, my distinguished friend, the Hon. John C. Spooner.
In the Forty-eighth Congress the Democrats had a majority in the House and the Republicans a majority in the Senate, and as is always the case when such a situation prevails, little or no important legislation was enacted.
I entered the Senate having three objects in view: First, the control of Interstate Commerce; second, the stamping out of polygamy; third, the construction of the Hennepin Ca.n.a.l.
I was not quite as modest as I have since advised younger Senators to be, because I see by the _Record_ that on January 11, 1884, a little more than a month after I had entered the Senate, I made an extended address on the subject of Territorial Government for Utah, particularly referring to polygamy. I was especially bitter in what I said against the Mormons and the Mormon Church. I used such expressions as these:
”There is scarcely a page of their history that is not marred by a recital of some foul deed. The whole history of the Mormon Church abounds in ill.u.s.trations of the selfishness, deceit, and lawlessness of its leaders and members. Founded in fraud, built up by the most audacious deception, this organization has been so notoriously corrupt and immoral in its practices, teachings, and tendencies as to justify the Government in a.s.suming absolute control of the Territory and in giving the Church or its followers no voice in the administration of public affairs. The progress of Mormonism to its present strength and power has been attended by a continual series of murders, robberies, and outrages of every description; but there is one dark spot in its disgraceful record that can never be effaced, one crime so heinous that the blood of the betrayed victims still calls aloud for vengeance.”
I introduced a bill on the subject, in which I provided for the appointment of a legislative council by the President, this council to have the same legislative power as the legislative a.s.sembly of a Territory. I distrusted the local Legislature because it was dominated by men high up in the Mormon Church.
During this Congress I pushed the bill as best I could, but was never able to secure its pa.s.sage. Laws were pa.s.sed on the subject, and the Mormon question is practically now a thing of the past.
Since that time conditions in Utah and in the Mormon Church have changed greatly. The Prophets received a new revelation declaring polygamy unlawful, and I believe that the practice has ceased. As a matter of fact, Judge Zane, the Territorial Judge of Utah, did more to stamp it out than any other one man. He sentenced those guilty of the practice to terms in the penitentiary, and announced that he would continue to do so until they reformed. I do not think that the Church or the Mormon people deserve to-day the severe criticism they merited twenty-five years ago.
CHAPTER XVI CLEVELAND'S FIRST TERM 1884 to 1887
The Republican Convention of 1884 was held at Chicago. The names of Joseph R. Hawley, John A. Logan, Chester A. Arthur, John Sherman, George F. Edmunds, and James G. Blaine were presented as candidates for the Republican nomination for President of the United States.
Blaine and Logan finally were the nominees, neither of them having much of a contest to secure the nomination for President and Vice- President respectively.
The Democratic Convention met later, and nominated Grover Cleveland and Thomas A. Hendricks.
The Presidential campaign of 1884 was unique in the extreme. It was the most bitter personal contest in our history. The private lives of both candidates, Cleveland and Blaine, were searched, and the most scandalous stories circulated, most of which were false.
The tide was in favor of Blaine only a short time before the election. I do not intend to go into the cause of his defeat. It was accomplished by a margin so narrow that any one of a dozen reasons may be given as the particular one. The Burchard incident, the dinner given by the plutocrats at Delmonico's, certainly changed several hundred votes--important when we remember that a change of less than six hundred votes in the State of New York would have elected him. Conkling, too, was accused of playing him false, and it was alleged that there were hundreds of fraudulent votes cast in the city of New York and on Long Island. Colonel A. K. McClure, in ”Our Presidents and How We Make Them,” says, with reference to this contest:
”Blaine would have been matchless in the skilful management of a Presidential campaign for another, but he was dwarfed by the overwhelming responsibilities of conducting a campaign for himself, and yet he a.s.sumed the supreme control of the struggle and directed it absolutely from start to finish. He was of the heroic mould, and he wisely planned his campaign tours to accomplish the best result. In point of fact, he had won his fight after stumping the country, and lost it by his stay in New York on his way home. He knew how to sway mult.i.tudes, and none could approach him in that important feature of a conflict; but he was not trained to consider the thousand intricacies that fell upon the management of every Presidential contest.”
Grover Cleveland was inaugurated on the fourth of March, 1885, being the first Democratic President since James Buchanan, who was elected in 1856, and marking the first defeat of the Republican party since the election of Lincoln.
There was a wild scramble for offices on the part of the Democrats as soon as Cleveland was inaugurated. He proceeded to satisfy them as rapidly as he could, and out of 56,134 Presidential positions he appointed 42,992 Democrats.