Volume II Part 11 (1/2)
He had retired in usual health, but died during the night. His distinguished career, covering nearly two-score years, was characterised by strong prejudices, violent temper, and implacable resentments, which, kept him behind men of less apt.i.tude for public service; but he was always a central figure in any a.s.semblage favoured with his presence. He had a marvellous force of oratory. His, voice, his gestures, his solemn pauses, followed by lofty and sustained declamation, proved irresistible and sometimes overwhelming in their effect. But it was his misfortune to be an orator with jaundiced vision, who seemed not always to see that principles controlled oftener than rhetoric. Yet, he willingly walked on in his own wild, stormy way, apparently enjoying the excitement with no fear of danger.
”In his heart there was no guile,” said Horace Greeley; ”in his face no dough.”
It was several weeks after the election, before it was ascertained whether Seymour or Hunt had been chosen. Both were popular, and of about the same age. Was.h.i.+ngton Hunt seems to have devoted his life to an earnest endeavour to win everybody's good will. At this time Greeley thought him ”capable without pretension,” and ”animated by an anxious desire to win golden opinions by deserving them.” He had been six years in Congress, and, in 1849, ran far ahead of his ticket as comptroller. Horatio Seymour was no less successful in winning approbation. He had become involved in the ca.n.a.l controversy, but carefully avoided the slavery question. Greeley found it in his heart to speak of him as ”an able and agreeable lawyer of good fortune and competent speaking talent, who would make a highly respectable governor.” But 1850 was not Seymour's year. His a.s.sociates upon the ticket were elected by several thousand majority, and day after day his own success seemed probable. The New York City combine gave him a satisfactory majority; in two or three Hudson river counties he made large gains; but the official count gave Hunt two hundred and sixty-two plurality,[400] with a safe Whig majority in the Legislature. The Whigs also elected a majority of the congressmen.
”These results,” wrote Thurlow Weed, ”will encourage the friends of freedom to persevere by all const.i.tutional means and through all rightful channels in their efforts to restrain the extension of slavery, and to wipe out that black spot wherever it can be done without injury to the rights and interests of others.”[401]
[Footnote 400: Was.h.i.+ngton Hunt, 214,614; Horatio Seymour, 214,352.--_Civil List, State of New York_ (1887), p. 166.]
[Footnote 401: F.W. Seward, _Life of W.H. Seward_, Vol. 2, p. 189.]
CHAPTER XIII
THE WHIGS' WATERLOO
1850-1852
The a.s.sembly of 1851 has a peculiar, almost romantic interest for New Yorkers. A very young man, full of promise and full of performance, the brilliant editor of a later day, the precocious politician of that day, became its speaker. Henry Jarvis Raymond was then in his thirty-first year. New York City had sent him to the a.s.sembly in 1850, and he leaped into prominence the week he took his seat. He was ready in debate, temperate in language, quick in the apprehension of parliamentary rules, and of phenomenal tact. The unexcelled courtesy and grace of manner with which he dropped the measured and beautiful sentences that made him an orator, undoubtedly aided in obtaining the position to which his genius ent.i.tled him. But his political instincts, also, were admirable, and his aptness as an unerring counsellor in the conduct of complicated affairs always turned to the advantage of his party. There came a time, after the a.s.sa.s.sination of President Lincoln, when he made a mistake so grievous that he was never able to regain his former standing; when he was dropped from the list of party leaders; when his cordial affiliation with members of the Republican organisation ceased; when his removal from the chairmans.h.i.+p of the National Committee was ratified by the action of a state convention; but the sagacity with which he now commented upon what he saw and heard made the oldest members of the a.s.sembly lean upon him. And when he came back to the Legislature in January, 1851, they put him in the speaker's chair.
Raymond seems never to have wearied of study, or to have found it difficult easily to acquire knowledge. He could read at three years of age; at five he was a speaker. In his sixteenth year he taught school in Genesee County, where he was born, wrote a Fourth of July ode creditable to one of double his years, and entered the University of Vermont. As soon as he reached an age to appreciate his tastes and to form a purpose, he began equipping himself for the career of a political journalist. He was not yet twenty-one when he made Whig speeches in the campaign of 1840 and gained employment with Horace Greeley on the _New Yorker_ and a little later on the _Tribune_. ”I never found another person, barely of age and just from his studies, who evinced so much and so versatile ability in journalism as he did,”
wrote Greeley. ”Abler and stronger men I may have met; a cleverer, readier, more generally efficient journalist I never saw. He is the only a.s.sistant with whom I ever felt required to remonstrate for doing more work than any human brain and frame could be expected long to endure. His services were more valuable in proportion to their cost than those of any one who ever worked on the _Tribune_.”[402] In 1843, when Raymond left the _Tribune_, James Watson Webb, already acquainted with the ripe intelligence and eager genius of the young man of twenty-three, thought him competent to manage the _Courier and Enquirer_, and in his celebrated discussion with Greeley on the subject of socialism he gave that paper something of the glory which twelve years later crowned his labours upon the New York _Times_.
[Footnote 402: Horace Greeley, _Recollections of a Busy Life_, pp.
138, 139.]
It was inevitable that Raymond should hold office. The readiness with which he formulated answers to arguments in the Polk campaign, his sympathy with the Free-soil movement, the ca.n.a.l policy, and the common school system, produced a marked impression upon the dawning wisdom of his readers. But it was near the end of his connection with the _Courier_ before he yielded his own desires to the urgent solicitation of the Whigs of the ninth ward and went to the a.s.sembly. He had not yet quarrelled with James Watson Webb. That came in the spring of 1851 when he refused to use his political influence as speaker against Hamilton Fish for United States senator and in favour of the owner of the _Courier and Enquirer_. His anti-slavery convictions and strong prejudices against the compromise measures of 1850 also rapidly widened the gulf between him and his superior; and when the break finally came he stepped from the speaker's chair into the editorial management of the New York _Times_, his own paper, pure in tone and reasonable in price, which was destined to weaken the _Courier_ as a political organ, to rival the _Tribune_ as a family and party journal, and to challenge the _Herald_ as a collector of news.
The stormy sessions of the Legislature of 1851 needed such a speaker as Raymond. At the outset, the scenes and tactics witnessed at Seward's election to the Senate in 1849 were repeated in the selection of a successor to Daniel S. d.i.c.kinson, whose term expired on the 4th of March. Webb's candidacy was prosecuted with characteristic zeal.
For a quarter of a century he had been a picturesque, aggressive journalist, with a record adorned with libel suits and duels--the result of pungent paragraphs and bitter personalities--making him an object of terror to the timid and a pistol target for the fearless. On one occasion, through the clemency of Governor Seward, he escaped a two years' term in state's prison for fighting the brilliant ”Tom”
Marshall of Kentucky, who wounded him in the leg, and it is not impossible that Jonathan Cilley might have wounded him in the other had not the distinguished Maine congressman refused his challenge because he was ”not a gentleman.” This reply led to the foolish and fatal fray between Cilley and William J. Graves, who took up Webb's quarrel.
Webb was known as the Apollo of the press, his huge form, erect and ma.s.sive, towering above the heads of other men, while his great physical strength made him noted for feats of endurance and activity.
As a young man he held a minor commission in the army, but in 1827, at the age of twenty-five, he resigned to become the editor of the _Courier_, which, in 1829, he combined with the _Enquirer_. For twenty years, under his management, this paper, first as a supporter of Jackson and later as an advocate of Whig policies, ranked among the influential journals of New York. After Raymond withdrew, however, it became the organ of the Silver-Grays, and began to wane, until, in 1860, it lapsed into the _World_.
Webb's chief t.i.tle to distinction in political life was allegiance to his own principles regardless of the party with which he happened to be affiliated, and his fidelity to men who had shown him kindness. He followed President Jackson until the latter turned against the United States Bank, and he supported the radical Whigs until Clay, in 1849, defeated his confirmation for minister to Austria; but, to the last, he seems to have remained true to Seward, possibly because Seward kept him out of state's prison, although, in the contest for United States senator in 1851, Hamilton Fish was the candidate of the Seward Whigs.
Fish had grown rapidly as governor. People formerly recognised him as an accomplished gentleman, modest in manners and moderate in speech, but his conduct and messages as an executive revealed those higher qualities of statesmans.h.i.+p that ranked him among the wisest public men of the State. Thurlow Weed had accepted rather than selected him for governor in 1848. ”I came here without claims upon your kindness,”
Fish wrote on December 31, 1850, the last day of his term. ”I shall leave here full of the most grateful recollections of your favours and good will.”[403] This admission was sufficient to dishonour him with the Fillmore Whigs, and, although he became the caucus nominee for senator on the 30th of January, his opponents, marshalled by Fillmore office-holders in support of James Watson Webb, succeeded in deadlocking his election for nearly two months.[404]
[Footnote 403: Thurlow Weed Barnes, _Life of Thurlow Weed_, Vol. 2, p.
190.]
[Footnote 404: ”The Whigs held the Senate by only two majority, and when the day for electing a United States senator arrived, sixteen Whigs voted for Fish, and fifteen Democrats voted for as many different candidates, so that the Fish Whigs could not double over upon them. James W. Beekman, a Whig senator of New York City, who claimed that Fish had fallen too much under the control of Weed, voted for Francis Granger. Upon a motion to adjourn, Beekman voted 'yes'
with the Democrats, creating a tie, which the lieutenant-governor broke by also voting in the affirmative. The Whigs then waited for a few weeks, but one morning, when two Democrats were in New York City, they sprung a resolution to go into an election, and, after an unbroken struggle of fourteen hours, Fish was elected. The exultant cannon of the victors startled the city from its slumbers, and convinced the Silver-Grays that the Woolly Heads still held the capitol.”--H.B. Stanton, _Random Recollections_, p. 172.]
In the meantime, other serious troubles confronted the young speaker.
The a.s.sembly, pursuant to the recommendation of Governor Hunt, pa.s.sed an act authorising a loan of nine million dollars for the immediate enlargement of the Erie ca.n.a.l. Its const.i.tutionality, seriously doubted, was approved by Daniel Webster and Rufus Choate, and the Whigs, needing an issue for the campaign, forced the bill ahead until eleven Democratic senators broke a quorum by resigning their seats.
The Whigs were scarcely less excited than the Democrats. Such a secession had never occurred before. Former legislators held the opinion that they were elected to represent and maintain the interests of their const.i.tuents--not to withdraw for the sake of indulging some petulant or romantic impulse because they could not have their own way. Two opposition senators had the good sense to take this view and remain at their post. Governor Hunt immediately called an extra session, and, in the campaign to fill the vacancies, six of the eleven seceders were beaten. Thus reinforced in the Senate, the Whig policy became the law; and, although, the Court of Appeals, in the following May, held the act unconst.i.tutional, both parties got the benefit of the issue in the campaign of 1851.