Volume III Part 10 (1/2)

Chase had relieved the tension temporarily by inducing Cisco to withdraw his resignation, but after getting the President's second letter, cleverly intimating that Field's appointment might necessitate the removal of Barney, the Secretary promptly tendered his resignation. If the President was surprised, the Secretary, after reading Lincoln's reply, was not less so. ”Your resignation of the office of secretary of the treasury, sent me yesterday, is accepted,”

said the brief note. ”Of all I have said in commendation of your ability and fidelity I have nothing to unsay, and yet you and I have reached a point of mutual embarra.s.sment in our official relation which it seems cannot be overcome or longer sustained consistently with the public service.”[966] Secretary Blaine's hasty resignation in 1892, and President Harrison's quick acceptance of it, were not more dramatic, except that Blaine's was tendered on the eve of a national nominating convention. It is more than doubtful if Chase intended to resign. He meant it to be as in previous years the beginning of a correspondence, expecting to receive from the President a soothing letter with concessions. But Lincoln's stock of patience, if not of sedatives, was exhausted.

[Footnote 966: Nicolay-Hay, _Abraham Lincoln_, Vol. 9, p. 95.]

A few weeks later, after William Pitt Fessenden's appointment to succeed Chase, Simeon Draper became collector of customs. He was one of Weed's oldest friends and in 1858 had been his first choice for governor.[967] But just now Abraham Wakeman was his first choice for collector. Possibly in selecting Draper instead of Wakeman, Lincoln remembered Weed's failure to secure a legislative endors.e.m.e.nt of his renomination, a work specially a.s.signed to him. At all events the anti-Weed faction accepted Draper as a decided triumph.

[Footnote 967: ”Simeon Draper was impulsive and demonstrative. With the advantages of a fine person, good conversational powers, and ready wit, his genial presence and cheerful voice imparted life and spirit to the numerous social circles in which he was ever a welcome guest.”

_Weed's Reminiscences_, T.W. Barnes, _Life of Thurlow Weed_, Vol. 2, p. 483.]

CHAPTER VIII

SEYMOUR'S PRESIDENTIAL FEVER

1864

”I shall not attempt to retract or modify the Emanc.i.p.ation Proclamation,” said the President at the opening of Congress in December, 1863; ”nor shall I return to slavery any person who is free by the terms of that proclamation, or by any of the acts of Congress.”

But in submitting a plan for the restoration of the Confederate States he offered amnesty, with rights of property except as to slaves, to all persons[968] who agreed to obey the Const.i.tution, the laws, and the Executive proclamations, and proposed that whenever such persons numbered one-tenth of the qualified voters of a State they ”shall be recognized as the true government of such State.”[969] A week later the Thirteenth Amendment, forever abolis.h.i.+ng slavery, was introduced into Congress. Thus the purpose of the radical Republicans became plain.

[Footnote 968: Except certain ones specifically exempted.]

[Footnote 969: Lincoln, _Complete Works_, Vol. 2, p. 443.]

In January, 1864, Governor Seymour, then the acknowledged head of his party, made his message to the Legislature a manifesto to the Democrats of the country. With measured rhetoric he traced the usurpations of the President and the acknowledged policy that was in future to guide the Administration. He courageously admitted that a majority of the people and both branches of Congress sustained the policy of the President, but such a policy, he declared, subordinating the laws, the courts, and the people themselves to military power, destroyed the rights of States and abrogated cherished principles of government. The past, however, with its enormous debt, its depreciated currency, its suspension of the writ of _habeas corpus_, and its abolition of free speech and a free press, did not mean such irretrievable ruin as the national bankruptcy which now threatened to overwhelm the nation. ”The problem with which we have to grapple is,”

he said, ”how can we bring this war to a conclusion before such disasters overwhelm us.” Two antagonistic theories, he continued, are now before us--one, consecrating the energies of war and the policy of government to the restoration of the Union as it was and the Const.i.tution as it is; the other, preventing by the creation of a new political system the return of the revolted States, though willing to lay down their arms. This alternative will enable an administration to perpetuate its power. It is a doctrine of national bankruptcy and national ruin; it is a measure for continued military despotism over one-third of our country, which will be the basis for military despotism over the whole land.

Every measure to convert the war against armed rebellion into one against private property and personal rights at the South, he continued, has been accompanied by claims to exercise military power in the North. The proclamation of emanc.i.p.ation at the South, and the suspension of the writ of _habeas corpus_ at the North; the confiscation of private property in the seceding States, and the arbitrary arrests, imprisonment, and banishment of the citizens of loyal States; the claim to destroy political organization at the South, and the armed interference by Government in local elections at the North, have been contemporaneous events. We now find that as the strength of rebellion is broken, new claims to arbitrary power are put forth. More prerogatives are a.s.serted in the hour of triumph than were claimed in days of disaster. The war is not to be brought to an end by the submission of States to the Const.i.tution and their return to the Union, but to be prolonged until the South is subjugated and accepts such terms as may be dictated. This theory designs a sweeping revolution and the creation of a new political system. There is but one course, he concluded, which will now save us from such national ruin--we must use every influence of wise statesmans.h.i.+p to bring back the States which now reject their const.i.tutional obligations. The triumphs won by the soldiers in the field should be followed up by the peacemaking policy of the statesmen in the Cabinet. In no other way can we save our Union.[970]

[Footnote 970: _Public Record of Horatio Seymour_, pp. 198-212.]

Seymour's claims and portents were in amazing contrast to his proposed measures of safety. Nevertheless he did his work well. It was his intention clearly to develop the ultimate tendencies of the war, and, in a paper of great power and interest, without invective or acerbity, he did not hesitate to alarm the people respecting the jeopardy of their own liberties. Indeed, his message had the twofold purpose of drawing the line distinctly between Administration and anti-Administration forces, and of concentrating public attention upon himself as a suitable candidate for President.[971] Seymour was never without ambition, for he loved politics and public affairs, and the Presidency captivated him. With deepest interest he watched the play at Charleston and at Baltimore in 1860, and had the nomination come to him, Lincoln's election, depending as it did upon New York, must have given Republicans increased solicitude. Developments during the war had stimulated this ambition. The cost of blood and treasure, blended with arbitrary measures deemed necessary by the Government, pained and finally exasperated him until he longed to possess the power of an Executive to make peace. He believed that a compromise, presented in a spirit of patriotic clemency, with slavery undisturbed, would quickly terminate hostilities, and although he made the mistake of surrounding himself with men whose influence sometimes betrayed him into weak and extreme positions, his ability to present his views in a scholarly and patriotic manner, backed by a graceful and gracious bearing, kept him in close touch with a party that resented methods which made peace dependent upon the abolition of slavery. He never provoked the criticism of those whom he led, nor indulged in levity and flippancy.

But he was unsparing in his lectures to the Administration, admonis.h.i.+ng it to adopt the principles of government which prevailed when happiness and peace characterised the country's condition, and prophesying the ruin of the Union unless it took his advice. While, therefore, his eulogy of the flag, the soldiers, the Union, and the sacrifices of the people won him reputation for patriotic conservatism, his condemnation of the Government brought him credit for supporting and promoting all manner of disturbing factions and revolutionary movements.

[Footnote 971: Horace Greeley, _History of the Rebellion_, Vol. 2, p.

667.]

The Regency understood the Governor's ambition, and the Democratic State convention, a.s.sembling at Albany on February 24 to designate delegates to Chicago, opened the way for him as widely as possible. It promulgated no issues; it mentioned no candidate; it refused to accept Fernando Wood and his brother as delegates because of their p.r.o.nounced advocacy of a dishonourable peace; and it placed Seymour at the head of a strong delegation, backed by Dean Richmond and August Belmont, and controlled by the unit rule. It was a remarkable coincidence, too, that the New York _Herald_, which had pursued the Governor for more than a year with bitter criticism, suddenly lapsed into silence.

Indeed, the only shadow falling upon his pathway in the Empire State reflected the temporary anger of Tammany, which seceded from the convention because the McKeon delegation, an insignificant coterie of advocates of peace-on-any-conditions, had been admitted on terms of equality.

As the summer advanced political conditions seemed to favour Seymour.

During the gloomy days of July and August the people prayed for a cessation of hostilities. ”The mercantile cla.s.ses are longing for peace,” wrote James Russell Lowell,[972] and Horace Greeley, in a letter of perfervid vehemence, pictured to the President the unhappy condition. ”Our bleeding, bankrupt, almost dying country,” he said, ”longs for peace, shudders at the prospect of fresh conscriptions, or further wholesale devastations, and of new rivers of human blood.”[973] The President, also yearning for peace and willing to accept almost any proposition if it included the abolition of slavery, waited for a communication from some agent of the Confederacy authorised to treat with him; but such an one had not appeared, although several persons, safely sheltered in Canada, claimed authority. One of these, calling himself William C. Jewett of Colorado, finally convinced Horace Greeley that Clement C. Clay of Alabama and Jacob Thompson of Mississippi, two amba.s.sadors of Jefferson Davis, were ready at Niagara Falls to meet the President whenever protection was afforded them. Upon being informed by Greeley of their presence, Lincoln replied (July 9): ”If you can find any person, anywhere, professing to have any proposition of Jefferson Davis in writing for peace, embracing the restoration of the Union and abandonment of slavery, whatever else it embraces, say to him he may come to me with you.”[974]

[Footnote 972: Motley's _Letters_, Vol. 2, p. 168.]

[Footnote 973: Nicolay-Hay, _Abraham Lincoln_, Vol. 9, p. 186.]

[Footnote 974: _Ibid._, pp. 187-188.]