Part 21 (1/2)
A minute afterwards he was crawling up the bank the wettest, the sickest, the nastiest, the most muttonless dog that ever swam ash.o.r.e.”
Thomas B. Reed was one whom I unquestionably would term a great man. He was conspicuous among the most brilliant presiding officers that ever occupied the chair of the Speaker. He ruled the House with a rod of iron, thus earning for himself the nickname of ”Czar.”
And this was more or less warranted. He was the first Speaker to inaugurate the new rules. He found a demoralized House in which it was difficult to enact legislation, and in which the right of the majority to rule was questioned and hampered. He turned the Lower House into an orderly legislative body in which legislation was enacted expeditiously by the majority. He had more perfect control over the House than any former Speaker, and his authority remained unquestioned until he retired. He ruled alone; after he became Speaker he had no favorites; he had no little coterie of men around him to excite the jealousy of the members of the House, and it has even been said that so careful was he in this respect that he would scarcely venture to walk in public with a member of the House. He was a powerful man intellectually and physically, and he looked the giant he was among the members of the House. He wanted to be President; and it seems rather a queer coincidence that his election as Speaker paved the way for his rival, Mr.
McKinley, as by his acceptance of the chair Mr. McKinley became the leader of the majority, chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means, the author of the McKinley Bill, which finally resulted in its author's defeat for Congress, but in his election as President of the United States in 1896.
But to return to the Mills Bill. It pa.s.sed the House by a substantial majority and came to the Senate, where a subst.i.tute was prepared by the Finance Committee and reported by Senator Allison early in October. I remember the discussion on it in the Senate very well.
We all thought it inc.u.mbent upon us to make speeches for home consumption, for campaign use, showing the iniquities of the Mills Bill, and of the Democratic tariff generally, although we knew it was impossible for either bill to become law.
The Congressional session continued until about the middle of October with nothing done in the way of practical legislation.
This was the situation when the National Republican Convention a.s.sembled in 1888.
CHAPTER XVII CLEVELAND'S DEFEAT AND HARRISON'S FIRST TERM 1888 to 1891
At the time the delegates gathered, Cleveland's Free Trade message of 1887 was before the country, interest in it having been augmented and enlivened by the pa.s.sage of the Mills Bill and the renowned tariff debate of that year. The issue was clear. It was Protective Tariff _versus_ Free Trade. After a rather strenuous contest in the convention in which nineteen candidates were voted for, for the nomination for President, including the leading candidates, John Sherman, of Ohio, Walter Q. Gresham, of Indiana, Harrison, of Indiana, and Allison, of Iowa, Benjamin Harrison finally was chosen on the eighth ballot.
In his autobiography Senator h.o.a.r affirms that William B. Allison came nearer being the nominee of the party than any other man in its history who was a candidate and failed to secure the endors.e.m.e.nt.
According to Senator h.o.a.r, it was the opposition of Senator Depew, angered by the agrarian hostility toward himself, that prevented Senator Allison's nomination. I have no personal knowledge that might refute this statement, but I have been disposed to question its correctness.
President Cleveland was of course renominated. The campaign came on, and he was defeated squarely on the Tariff issue, and the Republicans were again in the ascendancy in both branches of the Government, the Senate being composed of forty-seven Republicans and thirty-seven Democrats, while the House contained one hundred and seventy Republicans and one hundred and sixty Democrats, Mr.
Reed being elected Speaker.
President Harrison was inaugurated with a great civic and military display, equalling, if not surpa.s.sing, that of any other President.
There was great rejoicing among Republicans on account of the return of the party to power. The Cabinet was duly appointed, with Mr.
Blaine, the foremost Republican and statesman of his day, as Secretary of State--which, by the way, was an unfortunate appointment both for Mr. Harrison and Mr. Blaine. There was the usual scramble for offices, the usual changes in the foreign service, in the executive departments in Was.h.i.+ngton and in the federal offices generally throughout the country. Robert T. Lincoln, of whom I have already written, was appointed Minister to the Court of St.
James.
Colonel Clark E. Carr, of Illinois, was appointed Minister to Denmark, and made a splendid record in that position. He was very popular with the royal family. I had the pleasure of visiting Copenhagen while he was Minister there, and was the guest of Colonel and Mrs. Carr, who entertained me very handsomely. They gave a dinner in my honor, which was attended by the whole diplomatic corps at Copenhagen. The Colonel also arranged for a private audience with the King, and he presented me to him, as he also did my friend, Colonel Bluford Wilson, who accompanied me on my visit to Copenhagen. Altogether, through the courtesy of Colonel Carr, I enjoyed my stay in Copenhagen exceedingly.
He retired from office after Mr. Cleveland was elected, and has since achieved distinction as an author. He has written several very interesting books which have had a wide circulation. For many years Colonel Carr has taken an active part in our State and National campaigns. He is a forceful speaker, so naturally his services have been in constant requisition by the State and National Republican Committees. He has rendered very valuable service to the Republican party both in the State and in the Nation.
I had known President Harrison for many years. He represented a neighboring State in the Senate, of which body he was a leader when I entered it in 1883. I probably knew him as well as any of my Republican colleagues; but his was a very cold, distant temperament, even in the Senate, hardly capable of forming a very close friends.h.i.+p for any one, and he had no particular friends.
In justice to Mr. Harrison, however, it must be said that he was a masterly lawyer, and his appointments generally were first-cla.s.s.
Especially was he fortunate in his selection of Federal judges.
He selected them himself, and would tolerate no interference from any one. He did select the very best men he could find. For instance, he appointed such men as Justice Brewer, of Kansas; Justice Brown, of Michigan; Judge Woods, of Indiana; and it was Harrison who appointed President Taft as a Federal Judge. He was an exceptionally able President, and gave the country an excellent administration.
But at the same time he was probably the most unsatisfactory President we ever had in the White House to those who must necessarily come into personal contact with him. He was quite a public speaker, and the story has often been told of him that if he should address ten thousand men from a public platform, he would make every one his friend; but that if he should meet each of those ten thousand men personally, each man would go away his enemy. He lacked the faculty of treating people in a manner to retain their friends.h.i.+p.
Even Senators and Representatives calling on official business he would treat with scant courtesy. He scarcely ever invited any one to have a chair.
Senator Platt, of Connecticut, asked me one day if I was going to the White House to dine that evening, stating that he had an invitation. I told him no, that I had not yet been invited, that I had never yet during the Harrison administration even been invited to take a seat in the White House. Some one overheard the remark and it was published in the newspapers. I visited the White House shortly afterwards, and I a.s.sume that Harrison had seen it because as soon as he saw me, without a smile on his face or a gleam in his eye, he hastened to get me a chair, inviting me to be seated.
I declined to sit down, explaining that I was in a hurry, and closed the business I had come for, and left. Afterwards he invited me to dinner and treated me with marked consideration.
I have sometimes wondered whether President Harrison's apparent coldness may not be ascribed to an absorption in his duties that made him unintentionally neglectful of the little amenities of polite usage, they never even having occurred to him. Despite his cold exterior and frigid manner, it may have been he was sympathetic at heart. When the Tracey homestead was destroyed by fire, which resulted in the death of several persons, including the daughter, and finally resulted in the death of Mrs. Tracey, President Harrison took the family into the White House and did everything a man could do to relieve their sufferings.
I suppose he treated me about as well in the way of patronage as he did any other Senator; but whenever he did anything for me it was done so ungraciously that the concession tended to anger rather than please.