Part 17 (1/2)

This came from no ambition of mine. In May, 1868, I sailed for Europe, broken down in health by hard work. During my absence, some of the leading Republicans of the District issued an appeal recommending me as a candidate for Congress. There were five or six other candidates. They were all of them men of great popularity, with hosts of friends and supporters.

Among them was John D. Baldwin, then holding the seat, a veteran in the Anti-Slavery Service, editor of the Worcester _Spy,_ one of the most influential papers in New England. It had been the almost unvarying custom of the people of Ma.s.sachusetts to reelect an old member who had served as faithfully as Mr.

Baldwin. Another candidate was Francis W. Bird, one of the founders of the Anti-Slavery Party, and a man who had been a powerful supporter by speech and pen and wise counsel and large influence of the Republican Party since its foundation.

He was supported by the powerful influence of Charles Sumner, then at the height of his popularity, and by Adin Thayer, the ablest political organizer in Ma.s.sachusetts. Another candidate was Amasa Walker, the eminent writer on political economy, whose name has since been rendered still more ill.u.s.trious by the brilliant public service of his son. Another was Mr.

Mayhew, a successful manufacturer, of large wealth, and a deserved favorite in Milford, the second town in the District, where he resided. Another still was Lucius W. Pond, a generous and warm-hearted man, although he afterward fell from his high place. He was a Methodist. That denomination had always been strong and influential in the Worcester District, and its members have always stood stanchly by the men of their own household when candidates for political office. Mr. Pond was also a member of the Masonic Order and of other secret a.s.sociations. I ought however to say, in justice to the Masonic Fraternity, that I have never been able to see that there was any truth whatever in the charge that the members of that Order deemed it their duty to support each other in politics, or when on juries. Many a client has told me with great alarm that his opponent was a Mason, and that one or more leading Masons were on the jury that were to try the case. I always refused to challenge a juryman on that account, and I never found that the man's being a Mason had the least effect in preventing him from rendering a just verdict. I have many intimate friends both political and personal in that Order, although I never belonged to it and never sympathized with or approved of secret societies in a Republic.

My strength was due to the fact that I had in general the good will of my compet.i.tors. So if any one failed to get a majority it was easy to transfer his strength to me. Perhaps also there was a feeling, growing out of the fact that I had had great experience in public speaking at the Bar and in political meetings, that I might be able to take a prominent part in the debates in the House, a faculty which all my compet.i.tors lacked, except Mr. Bird. But chiefly I had the advantage of the good will of my a.s.sociates in my own profession, a body whose influence is always justly very powerful and who were all, with scarcely an exception, my close and strong friends. I had, beside all that, a great many clients in every town in the District who had been in the habit of trusting me with their most intimate and secret concerns, and with whom I had formed the attachment which in those days used to exist between counsel and client.

I had said before I went to Europe that if nominated I would accept the office. I thought it doubtful whether my strength would permit me to continue my professional work without interruption.

I had no thought of remaining in Congress, if I were elected, more than one term, or perhaps two. Indeed I did not contemplate the probability of a nomination as a very serious one.

But almost before I got out of the sight of land the burden lifted and my health came back. When I got home I was utterly sick of the whole business. But my friends had been committed to my support. They claimed that I could not withdraw honorably after the a.s.surance I had given them before I went away. So, rather to my disgust, I was nominated on the first formal ballot. I had not expected the result. I had gone to take a ride while the Convention was in session. So they were obliged to wait for me. I was found with some difficulty and went in and made a brief speech which I ended by saying: ”If I shall fail to satisfy you, the trust you have so freely conferred you can as freely recall. If I shall fail to satisfy myself, I shall at least have the comfort of reflecting that it is by your free choice that this nomination has been conferred.

It has not been begged for, or bargained for, or intrigued for, or crawled into. If elected I shall at the close of the term lay down the honors of the office with the same cheerfulness with which I now accept the nomination.”

I expected to go back to my home and my profession at the end of one term. My law practice was rapidly increasing.

Professional charges in those days were exceedingly moderate as compared with the scale of prices now, and I had inherited the habit of charging low fees from my partner and friend, Emory Washburn. If I had the same cla.s.s of clients now that I had then, I could at the present scale of charges for professional service easily be earning more than fifty thousand dollars a year, and I could earn it without going to my office in the evening, and also take a good vacation every summer.

My life from that time has been devoted altogether to the public service. I have, what is commonly expected of men who represent Ma.s.sachusetts in the Senate, delivered a good many literary and historical addresses, and have taken part in political campaigns, and have occasionally eked out a scanty salary by some professional work in the vacations. But I think I may fairly claim that I have done my share of the work of the Senate and of the House to the best of my ability.

Senator Edmunds when he left the Senate was kind enough to compliment me by saying that the whole work of the Senate was done by six men, of whom I was one. I do not suppose Mr. Edmunds meant the number six to be taken literally. But he is a gentleman certainly never given to flattery or empty compliment. So I think I might call him as a witness that, in his time, so far as hard work is concerned I did my best.

I am not quite so confident that he would testify to the wisdom of my course on all occasions.

I did not, as I have said, expect when I entered to remain in public life more than one term. But I became interested in the bill known as the National Education Bill, and accepted another election with a view to doing what I could to carry that through. At the end of the next term I announced my purpose to withdraw. But there was a very earnest letter to me signed by the princ.i.p.al men in the district, including several gentlemen, any one of whom might very naturally have expected to be my successor, saying it was not for the interest of the people of the district to make a change.

Two years after I made a formal and peremptory refusal to be a candidate again, which was encountered by a like appeal.

It was the year of what was called the Tidal Wave which swept the Republicans from power in the House of Representatives.

It was very doubtful whether they could carry the Worcester District. The Democrats elected a majority of the Ma.s.sachusetts delegation in the National House of Representatives. I was elected by a few hundred only, although I was elected by several thousand on former occasions. I could not very well refuse to accept the nomination at a time of great political peril.

So I continued once more. At the end of that time I wrote another peremptory refusal, and my successor was nominated and elected.

I have been often charged with a blind and zealous attachment to party. The charge is sometimes made by persons who consider that I desire to do right, but think that my understanding and intellectual faculties are guided and blinded by that emotion. Others are not so charitable. One very self-satisfied critic, Mr. William Lloyd Garrison, sometimes in prose and sometimes,

A screechin' out prosaic verse An' like to bust,

says that I differ from my honorable colleague, Mr. Lodge, in that Mr. Lodge has no conscience, while I have a conscience but never obey it. If any man be disposed to accept these estimates, it is not likely that I can convince him to the contrary by my own certificate. But I will say two things:

1. I have never in my life cast a vote or done an act in legislation that I did not at the time believe to be right, and that I am not now willing to avow and to defend and debate with any champion, of sufficient importance, who desires to attack it at any time and in any presence.

2. Whether I am right or wrong in my opinion as to the duty of acting with and adherence to party, it is the result not of emotion or attachment or excitement, but of as cool, calculating, sober and deliberate reflection as I am able to give to any question of conduct or duty. Many of the things I have done in this world which have been approved by other men, or have tended to give me any place in the respect of my countrymen, have been done in opposition, at the time, to the party to which I belonged. But I have made that opposition without leaving the party. In every single instance, unless the question of the Philippine Islands shall prove an exception, and that is not a settled question yet, the party has come round, in the end, to my way of thinking. I have been able by adhering to the Republican Party to accomplish, in my humble judgment, ten-fold the good that has been accomplished by men who have ten times more ability and capacity for such service, who have left the party.

When Governor Boutwell, the President of the Anti-Imperialist League, wrote me that he thought I could do more good for that cause by staying in the Republican Party than by leaving it, and when he declared in a public interview in Boston that of course Mr. h.o.a.r would remain in the Republican Party, he was right. If he had taken the same course himself, he would have been a powerful help in saving his country from what has happened. If the gentlemen who acted with him in that way had remained Republicans, and the gentlemen who agreed with him, who have remained Republicans, who abandoned public life, had kept in it, they would have saved the country from what they and I deemed a grievous mistake and calamity. There was but one vote lacking for the defeat of the Spanish Treaty.

There was but one vote lacking for the pa.s.sage of the Teller resolution. If Mr. Speaker Reed, the most powerful Republican in the country, next to President McKinley, had stayed in the House; if Mr. Harrison, as I earnestly desired, had come back to the Senate; if Governor Boutwell and Mr. Adams had uttered their counsel as Republicans, the Republicans would have done with the Philippine Islands what we did with Cuba and j.a.pan. I could cite a hundred ill.u.s.trations, were they needed, to prove what I say to be true. There was undoubtedly great corruption and mal-administration in the country in the time of President Grant. Selfish men and ambitious men got the ear of that simple and confiding President. They studied Grant, some of them, as the shoemaker measures the foot of his customer. Mr. Sumner and Mr. Schurz and Mr.

Trumbull and Mr. Greeley and the New York _Tribune,_ and the Springfield _Republican,_ and the Chicago _Tribune,_ and the St. Louis _Republican,_ and scores of other men and other papers left the party. They were, so long as they maintained that att.i.tude, absolutely without political influence from that moment. When the great reforms which were attempted were accomplished, they were not there. The reforms were accomplished. But their names were wanting from the honorable roll of the men who accomplished them. President Grant himself and President Hayes and Judge h.o.a.r and Mr. c.o.x and General Garfield, and others, if there are other names honorable enough to be mentioned along with these, stayed in the Republican Party. They purified the administration. They accomplished civil service reform. They helped to achieve the independence of American manufacture. They kept the faith. They paid the debt. They resumed specie payment. They maintained a sound currency, amid great temptation and against great odds.

To this result our friends who were independent of party contributed no jot or t.i.ttle.

Our system differs from that which prevails in England in that it is hard to change the political power from one party to another and hard to restore it when it is once lost. We elect our President for four years. We elect our Senators for six years. Therefore in determining whether it is your duty to forsake a party which is wrong on some single question you are to decide, first, whether that question is important enough to warrant sacrificing every other measure in which you agree with your party, and having every measure espoused by the other which you think bad enacted if it get control.

Second, you have not only in such cases to sacrifice every other thing you think desirable to prevent the one thing you think undesirable, but you must decide whether, in regard to that particular matter, the party you are asked to subst.i.tute in power for your own will accomplish what you desire if it get power. For example, there are some worthy Republicans who are free-traders. But they agree with the Republican Party in everything else. If you ask them to put a Democratic President and Congress into power in order to get free trade they must consider whether if they get power they will give them free trade. Otherwise they sacrifice everything else for that chance and get no benefit in that respect. The Republican free-trader who voted for Mr. Cleveland in 1892 did not get free trade. He got only what Mr. Cleveland denounced as a measure of infamy. In the third place you have under our Const.i.tutional system to determine whether the chance to accomplish what you want in regard to one measure warrants placing the political power in hands you deem unfit, so that the party, in your judgment right on one thing, but wrong in every other, will have the fate of the country in its hands for a four years' term, and deal with every new and unexpected question as it shall think fit. I was bitterly reproached for supporting Mr. McKinley, and refusing to support Mr. Bryan, when I differed from Mr. McKinley on the great predominant question how we should deal with the people of the Philippine Islands. But the men who criticised me most bitterly were some of them the men who applauded my purpose to do so when it was first declared. One of them, the President of the Anti-Imperialist League, wrote me a letter saying that I could be more useful to that cause by remaining a Republican than in any other way, and declared in a public interview that of course Mr.

h.o.a.r would remain a Republican. The Secretary of the same organization, after I had made a speech in which I had declared my purpose to continue to support Mr. McKinley, in spite of his grievous error in this respect, wrote me a letter crowded with the most fulsome adulation, and declared that my position was as lofty as that of Chatham or Burke. I could cite many other instances to the same effect. But what other men think, however respectable they may be, is of course of no importance. Every man must settle for himself the question of his individual duty. I could not find that the chance that Mr. Bryan, who had urged the adoption of the Spanish Treaty and had committed himself to the opinion that it was right to do everything we promised to do in that Treaty, would act wisely or righteously if he were trusted with power, or that he could get his party to support him if he were disposed to do so, warranted my running the risk of the mischief he was pledged to accomplish; still less running the risk of giving the government of this country to his supporters for the next four years. There are many good men in the Democratic Party. But the strength of that organization in 1900, as it is to-day, was in Tammany Hall, in the old Southern leaders committed to a policy of violence and fraud in dealing with ten million of our American citizens at home, aided by a few impracticable dreamers who were even less fitted than the Democratic leaders to be trusted with political power.

The Republican Party, whatever its faults, since it came into power in 1860 has been composed in general of what is best in our national life. States like Ma.s.sachusetts and Vermont, the men of the rural districts in New York, the survivors and children of the men who put down the Rebellion and abolished slavery, saved the Union, and paid the debt and kept the faith, and achieved the manufacturing independence of the country, and pa.s.sed the homestead laws, are on that side, and in general they give and will hereafter give direction to its counsels. On the other hand their antagonist has been, is, and for an indefinite time to come will be, controlled by the foreign population and the criminal cla.s.ses of our great cities, by Tammany Hall, and by the leaders of the solid South.

I entered the House of Representatives of the United States at the spring session which began March 4, 1869, at the beginning of Grant's Administration. It then contained a very interesting and important group of men, the most brilliant and conspicuous of whom was, undoubtedly, Mr. James G. Blaine. The public, friends and foes, judged of him by a few striking and picturesque qualities. There has probably never been a man in our history upon whom so few people looked with indifference. He was born to be loved or hated. n.o.body occupied a middle ground as to him. In addition to the striking qualities which caught the public eye, he was a man of profound knowledge of our political history, of a sure literary taste, and of great capacity as an orator. He studied and worked out for himself very abstruse questions, on which he formed his own opinions, usually with great sagacity. How far he was affected in his position by the desire for public favor I will not undertake to say. I think the const.i.tution of his mind was such that matters were apt to strike him in much the same way as they were apt to strike the majority of the people of the North, especially of the Northwest, where he was always exceedingly popular. He maintained very friendly personal relations with some of the more intelligent Southerners, especially with Lamar. One incident in his relations with Butler was intensely amusing. They were never on very friendly terms, though each of them found it wise not to break with the other. When Blaine was a candidate for Speaker, to which office he was chosen in the spring session of 1869, his princ.i.p.al compet.i.tor was Henry L. Dawes. Dawes's chances were considered excellent until Butler, who had great influence with the Southern Republican members of the House, declared himself for Blaine. Butler was exceedingly anxious to be Chairman of the Committee of Appropriations. This would have been an offence in the nostrils of a large portion of the Republican Party. Mr. Dawes, learning Butler's proposed defection, was beforehand with him by rising in the caucus and himself nominating Mr. Blaine. This secured Blaine's unanimous nomination. Butler, however, still pressed eagerly his own claim for the Chairmans.h.i.+p of the Appropriations.

Blaine was altogether too shrewd to yield to that. The committees were not appointed until the following December. Butler suspected somehow that there was doubt about his getting the coveted prize. He accordingly went to the door of the Speaker's room, which was then opposite the door of the House of Representatives, by the side of the Speaker's chair. He found Blaine's messenger keeping the door, who told him that Mr. Blaine was engaged and could not see anybody. ”Very well,” said General Butler, ”I will wait.” Accordingly, he took a chair and seated himself at the door, so that he might intercept Blaine as he came out. Blaine, learning that Butler was there, went out the window, round by the portico, and entered the House by another entrance. Somebody came along and, seeing Butler seated in the corridor, said: ”What are you about here, General?” ”Waiting for Blaine,” was the reply. ”Blaine is in the chair in the House,” was the answer. ”It isn't possible,” said Butler.

”Yes, he is just announcing the committees.” Butler rushed into the House in time to hear Mr. Dawes's name read by the Clerk as the Chairman of Appropriations. He was very angry, and bided his time. They had an altercation over the bill to protect the rights of the freedmen in the South, the story of which I tell in speaking of Grant. But as the end of the Congress approached, Butler endeavored to get up an alliance between the Democrats and what were called the ”Revenue Reformers.”