Part 18 (1/2)
Charles Sumner lacked that quality which enables the practical statesman to adjust the mechanism of complicated statutes.
He had no genius for detail. It would not have been safe to trust him with Appropriation Bills, or Bills for raising revenue. But he was competent to deal with questions of the greatest moment to the State. He knew what are its governing forces. He retained his hold on those forces. He directed them. He caused sound principles of action to take effect in the Government of the State in great emergencies. He converted the people to his opinion. He inspired the people with lofty desires. He accomplished wise public ends by wise means.
He maintained his hold on power in an important time. He took a prominent part in great debates and was the acknowledged leader of one side of the question. He believed that the conscience of the people was a better guide than individual ambitions. He always did the thing he could best do. He did the thing that most needed to be done, the thing most effective at the time, the thing that no other man did or could do. He left to others to do what hundreds of others could do well enough. He contributed largely to the Government of his country, in the most trying period of our history, its motive and its direction. That is a pretty practical contribution to the voyage which furnishes to the steams.h.i.+p its engine and its compa.s.s. His figure will abide in history like that of St. Michael in art, an emblem of celestial purity, of celestial zeal, of celestial courage. It will go down to immortality with its foot upon the dragon of Slavery, and with the sword of the spirit in its hand, but with a tender light in its eye, and a human love in its smile. Guido and Raphael conceived their ”inviolable saint,”
Invulnerable, impenetrably armed: Such high advantages his innocence Gave him above his foe; not to have sinned, Not to have disobeyed. In fight he stood Unwearied, un.o.bnoxious to be pained By wounds.
The Michael of the painters, as a critic of genius akin to their own has pointed out, rests upon his prostrate foe light as a morning cloud, no muscle strained, with unhacked sword and unruffled wings, his bright tunic and s.h.i.+ning armor without a rent or stain. Not so with our human champion. He had to bear the bitterness and agony of a long and doubtful struggle, with common weapons and against terrible odds. He came out of it with soiled garments and with a mortal wound, but without a regret and without a memory of hate.
It was fortunate for Sumner and fortunate for the Commonwealth and the country that he had Henry Wilson for his colleague.
Wilson supplied almost everything that Sumner lacked. I cannot undertake to tell the story of his useful life in the s.p.a.ce at my command here. If I were to try I should do great injustice to him and to myself.
He was a very impressive and interesting character, of many virtues, of many faults. His faults he would have been the first to acknowledge himself. Indeed, I do not know of any fault he had that he would not have acknowledged and lamented in a talk with his near friend, or that he would have sought to hide from the people.
The motives which controlled his life from the time when he s.n.a.t.c.hed such moments as he could from this day's work on a shoemaker's bench and studied far into the night to fit himself for citizens.h.i.+p, down to the time when he died in the Vice-President's chamber--the second officer in the Government--and if his life and health had been spared, he very likely would have been called to the highest place in the Government--were public and patriotic, not personal.
He was not without ambitions for himself. But they were always subordinate in him to the love of liberty and the love of country. He espoused the unpopular side when he started in life, and he stuck to it through all its unpopularity.
He was a skilful, adroit, practised and constant political manager. He knew the value of party organization, and did not disdain the arts and diplomacies of a partisan. He carried them sometimes farther, in my judgment, than a scrupulous sense of honor would warrant, or than was consistent with the n.o.ble, frank, lofty behavior which Ma.s.sachusetts and the American people expect of their statesmen. The most conspicuous instance of this was his joining the Know Nothing Party, in whose intolerance he had no belief.
But it was done as an instrument for destroying the existing political parties, which were an obstacle to freedom, and clearing the field for a new one. This object was successfully accomplished, and in its accomplishment Wilson had a large share. But it was, in my judgment, doing evil that good may come. Wilson freely admitted this before he died, and said-- I have no doubt with absolute sincerity--that he would give ten years of his life if he could blot out that one transaction.
He was a very valuable legislator. He was the author of many important measures in the war, during which he was chairman of the Committee on Military Affairs of the Senate, and showed much ability in the way of practical and constructive statesmans.h.i.+p.
I do not believe any man in the Senate in his time, not even Sumner, had more influence over his colleagues than he.
There was not a drop of bigotry, intolerance, or personal hatred in him. As you would expect from a man who raised himself from the humblest to the loftiest place in the republic, he was a believer in pure manhood, without respect of persons or conditions.
He was a powerful stump orator. He never made speeches that were quoted as models of eloquence or wisdom. But he knew what the farmer and the mechanic and the workman at his bench were thinking of, and addressed himself always to their best and highest thought. He was a great vote-making speaker.
When Mechanics Hall, in Worcester, or the City Hall was filled to hear Henry Wilson in a close campaign, many men who entered the hall undecided or against him, went away to take earnest part on his side.
He had a good many angry political strifes. But he never bore malice or seemed to keep angry over night. General Butler once wrote him a letter pouring out on his head the invective of which he was so conspicuous a master. Wilson brought the letter into the office of a dear friend of mine in Boston when I happened to be there, handed it to us to read, and observed: ”That is a cussed mean letter.” I do not think he ever spoke of it or scarcely thought of it again.
But his chief gift and faculty is one which I can hardly think of words to describe fitly. The few of his old friends who are left will understand what I mean. But I can hardly make those who did not know him, or live in his time, comprehend it. That was his rare and unequalled gift of gathering and uttering the sentiment of the people. When new and doubtful matters of pith and moment were to be dealt with, and after a long apparent hesitation, and backing and filling, and what people who did not know him thought trembling in the balance, he would at last make up his mind, determine on his action, and strike a blow which had in it not only the vigor of his own arm, but the whole vigor and strength of the public sentiment which he had gathered and which he represented. He was an ubiquitous person. He would travel all over the State, spending the day, perhaps, in visiting forty shops and factories in the neighborhood of Boston; then take a nine or ten o'clock train at night and go up to Springfield, get in there at two or three o'clock in the morning, call up out of bed some active politician and tell him he had come to sleep with him; spend the night in talking over the matter about which he was anxious until six or seven o'clock in the morning (I do not believe he ever slept much, either with anybody or alone), and then, perhaps, up to Northampton or Greenfield to see some person whom he called Tom, d.i.c.k, or Harry, but who knew the local feeling there; and after a week or two spent in that way, never giving his own opinion, talking as if he were all things to all men, seeming to hesitate and hesitate and falter and be frightened, so if you had met him and talked with him you would have said, if you did not know him well, that there was no more thought, nor more steadiness of purpose, or backbone in him than in an easterly cloud; but at length, when the time came, and he had got ready, the easterly cloud seemed suddenly to have been charged with an electric fire and a swift and resistless bolt flashed out, and the righteous judgment of Ma.s.sachusetts came from his lips.
With all his faults, Peace be to the ashes of Henry Wilson.
He was a leader and a tribune of the people. We do not seem to have such leaders now-a-days. I liked Charles Sumner better.
But it was a great thing for Ma.s.sachusetts, a great thing for human liberty, and a great thing for Charles Sumner himself that he had Henry Wilson as a friend and ally, a disciple and a co-worker.
If Wilson had lived, in my opinion, it is quite likely that he would have been the Republican candidate for the Presidency in 1876, and would have been triumphantly elected. There was a very powerful movement going on all over the country to bring that about. Wilson's hold upon the affection of the people everywhere was very strong indeed.
Wilson became Vice-President of the United States, March 4, 1873. He died two years afterward. I was asked to write the inscription for a tablet placed in the Vice-President's Room in the Capitol by order of the Senate in 1902. It follows here.
IN THIS ROOM HENRY WILSON VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES DIED NOVEMBER 22 1875.
THE SON OF A FARM LABORER, NEVER AT SCHOOL MORE THAN TWELVE MONTHS, IN YOUTH A JOURNEYMAN SHOEMAKER, HE RAISED HIMSELF TO THE HIGH PLACES OF FAME, HONOR AND POWER, AND BY UNWEARIED STUDY MADE HIMSELF AN AUTHORITY IN THE HISTORY OF HIS COUNTRY AND OF LIBERTY, AND AN ELOQUENT PUBLIC SPEAKER TO WHOM SENATE AND PEOPLE EAGERLY LISTENED. HE DEALT WITH AND CONTROLLED VAST PUBLIC EXPENDITURE DURING A GREAT CIVIL WAR, YET LIVED AND DIED POOR, AND LEFT TO HIS GRATEFUL COUNTRYMEN THE MEMORY OF AN HONORABLE PUBLIC SERVICE, AND A GOOD NAME FAR BETTER THAN RICHES.
CHAPTER XIV PERSONALITIES IN DEBATE
I have been, in general, enabled to avoid angry conflicts in debate or the exchange of rough personalities. My few experiences of that kind came from attacks on Ma.s.sachusetts, which I could not well avoid resenting. The only two I now think of happened in my first term. In one case, Mr. S.
S. c.o.x of New York, who was one of the princ.i.p.al champions on the Democratic side of the House, a man noted for his wit, undertook to make an attack on the Ma.s.sachusetts Puritans, and to revive the old slander that they had burned witches.
I made some slight correction of what Mr. c.o.x had said but he renewed the attack. I was then comparatively unknown in the House. Mr. c.o.x treated me with considerable contempt, and pointing to Mr. Dawes, who had charge of the bill then under discussion, but who had not given any reply to c.o.x's attack, said, with a contemptuous look at me: ”Ma.s.sachusetts does not send her Hector to the field,” to which I answered that it was not necessary to send Hector to the field when the attack was led by Thersites. The retort seemed to strike the House favorably, and was printed in the papers throughout the country, and c.o.x let me and Ma.s.sachusetts alone thereafter.
I had a like encounter with Daniel W. Voorhees of Indiana, who was a more formidable compet.i.tor. Mr. Voorhees made the same charge against the people of Ma.s.sachusetts of having burned witches at the stake in the old Puritan time. It was in a debate under the five-minute rule. After reiterating the old familiar slander that the State of Ma.s.sachusetts in her early history had burned witches at the stake, Mr. Voorhees added that in 1854 or 1855 the Know Nothings broke up convents, burned Catholic churches, and would have burned Catholics and Sisters of Charity themselves at the stake within her borders, if they had dared to do so.