Volume III Part 16 (1/2)
[Footnote 1094: New York _Times_, October 9, 1866.]
After the October elections it became apparent that the North would support Congress rather than the President. One cause of distrust was the latter's replacement of Republican office-holders with men noted for disloyalty during the war. Weed complained that the appointment of an obnoxious postmaster in Brooklyn ”has cost us thousands of votes in that city.”[1095] During the campaign Johnson removed twelve hundred and eighty-three postmasters, and relatively as many custom-house employes and internal revenue officers.[1096] Among the latter was Philip Dorsheimer of Buffalo. Indeed, the sweep equalled the violent action of the Council of Appointment in the days when DeWitt Clinton and Ambrose Spencer, resenting opposition to Morgan Lewis, sent Peter B. Porter to the political guillotine for supporting Aaron Burr. Such wholesale removals, however, did not arrest the progress of the Republican party. After Johnson's ”swing around the circle,”
Conservatives were reduced to a few prominent men who could not consistently retrace their steps, and to hungry office-holders who were known as ”the bread and b.u.t.ter brigade.”[1097] The _Post_, a loyal advocate of the President's policy, thought it a melancholy reflection ”That its most damaging opponent is the President, who makes a judicious course so hateful to the people that no argument is listened to, and no appeals to reason, to the Const.i.tution, to common sense, can gain a hearing.”[1098] Henry Ward Beecher voiced a similar lament. The great divine had suffered severe criticism for casting his large influence on the side of Johnson, and he now saw success melting away because of the President's vicious course. ”Mr. Johnson just now and for some time past,” he wrote, ”has been the greatest obstacle in the way of his own views. The mere fact that he holds them is their condemnation with a public utterly exasperated with his rudeness and violence.”[1099] A few weeks later the Brooklyn minister, tired of the insincerity of the President and of his Philadelphia movement, opened the campaign with a characteristic speech in support of the Republican candidates.[1100]
[Footnote 1095: _Ibid._]
[Footnote 1096: The _Nation_, September 6, p. 191; September 27, p.
241.]
[Footnote 1097: New York _Tribune_, October 1, 1866.]
[Footnote 1098: New York _Evening Post_, September 11, 1866.]
[Footnote 1099: Extract from private letter, September 6, 1866.]
[Footnote 1100: New York _Tribune_, October 16, 1866.]
In animation, frequent meetings, and depth of interest, the campaign resembled a Presidential contest. The issues were largely national. As one of the disastrous results of Johnson's reconstruction policy, Republicans pointed to the New Orleans and Memphis ma.s.sacres, intensified by the charge of the Southern loyalists that ”more than a thousand devoted Union citizens have been murdered in cold blood since the surrender of Lee.”[1101] The horrors of Andersonville, illuminated by eye witnesses, and the delay to try Jefferson Davis, added to the exasperation. On the other hand, Democrats traced Southern conditions to opposition to the President's policy, charging Congress with a base betrayal of the Const.i.tution in requiring the late Confederate States to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment as a condition precedent to the admission of their representatives. The great debate attracted to the rostrum the ablest and best known speakers. For the Republicans, Roscoe Conkling, sounding the accepted keynote, now for the first time made an extended tour of the State, speaking in fourteen towns and cities. On the other hand, true to the traditions of his life, John A. Dix threw his influence on the side of the President.
[Footnote 1101: _Ibid._, September 7.]
Hoffman, also, patiently traversed the State, discussing const.i.tutional and legal principles with the care of an able lawyer.
There was much in Hoffman himself to attract the enthusiasm of popular a.s.semblages. Kind and sympathetic, with a firm dignity that avoided undue familiarity, he was irresistibly fascinating to men as he moved among them. He had an attractive presence, a genial manner, and a good name. He had, too, a peculiar capacity for understanding and pleasing people, being liberal and spontaneous in his expressions of sympathy, and apparently earnest in his attachment to principle. He was not an orator. He lacked dash, brilliant rhetoric, and attractive figures of speech. He rarely stirred the emotions. But he pleased people. They felt themselves in the presence of one whom they could trust as well as admire. The Democratic party wanted a new hero, and the favourite young mayor seemed cut out to supply the want.
However, Hoffman did not escape the barbed criticism of the Republican press. Raymond had spoken of his ability and purity, and of his course during the war as patriotic.[1102] Weed, also, had said that ”during the rebellion he was loyal to the government and Union.”[1103] To overcome these certificates of character, the _Tribune_ declared that ”Saturn is not more hopelessly bound with rings than he. Rings of councilmen, rings of aldermen, rings of railroad corporations, hold him in their charmed circles, and would, if he were elected, use his influence to plunder the treasury and the people.”[1104] It also charged him with being disloyal. In 1866 and for several years later the standing of p.r.o.nounced Copperheads was similar to that of Tories after the Revolution, and it seriously crippled a candidate for office to be cla.s.sed among them. Moreover, it was easy to discredit a Democrat's loyalty. To most members of the Union party the name itself clothed a man with suspicion, and the slightest specification, like the outcropping of a ledge of rocks, indicated that much more was concealed than had been shown. On this theory, the Republican press, deeming it desirable, if not absolutely essential, to put Hoffman into the disloyal cla.s.s, accepted the memory of men who heard him speak at Sing Sing, his native town, in 1864. As they remembered, he had declared that ”Democrats only had gone to war;” that ”volunteering stopped when Lincoln declared for an abolition policy;” and that he ”would advise revolution and resistance to the government” if Lincoln was elected without Tennessee being represented in the electoral college.[1105] Other men told how ”at one of the darkest periods of the war, Hoffman urged an immediate sale of United States securities, then under his control and held by the sinking fund of the city.”[1106] In the _Tribune's_ opinion such convenient recollections of unnamed and unknown men made him a ”Copperhead.”[1107]
[Footnote 1102: New York _Times_, September 13, 1866.]
[Footnote 1103: _Ibid._, September 9.]
[Footnote 1104: New York _Tribune_, November 1, 1866.]
[Footnote 1105: New York _Tribune_, Oct. 5, 1866.]
[Footnote 1106: _Ibid._, Oct. 10.]
[Footnote 1107: _Ibid._]
Although New York indicated the same direction of the popular will that had manifested itself in Pennsylvania and other October States, the heavy and fraudulent registration in New York City encouraged the belief that Tammany would overcome the up-State vote.[1108] However, the p.r.o.nounced antagonism to the President proved too serious a handicap, and the Radicals, electing Fenton by 13,000 majority,[1109]
carried both branches of the Legislature, and twenty out of thirty-one congressmen. It was regarded a great victory for Fenton, who was really opposed by one of the most formidable combinations known to the politics of the State. Besides the full strength of the Democratic party, the combined liquor interest antagonised him, while the Weed forces, backed by the Johnsonised federal officials, were not less potent. Indeed, Seward publicly predicted Republican defeat by 40,000 majority.[1110]
[Footnote 1108: Gustavus Myers, _History of Tammany Hall_, p. 250.]
[Footnote 1109: Fenton, 366,315; Hoffman, 352,526.--_Civil List, State of New York_, 1887, p. 166.]
[Footnote 1110: New York _Tribune_, January 18, 1869.]
The result also insured the election of a Republican to the United States Senate to succeed Ira Harris on March 4, 1867. Candidates for the high honour were numerous. Before the end of November Horace Greeley, having suffered defeat for Congress in the Fourth District, served notice of his desire.[1111] George William Curtis had a like ambition. Lyman Tremaine, too, was willing. Charles J. Folger, the strong man of the State Senate, belonged in the same cla.s.s, and Ransom Balcom of Binghamton, who had achieved an enviable reputation as a Supreme Court judge, also had his friends. But the three men seriously talked of were Ira Harris, Noah Davis, and Roscoe Conkling.
[Footnote 1111: _Ibid._, November 9, 1866.]