Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs Volume II Part 1

Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs.

Vol. 2.

by George S. Boutwell.

XXVIII

SERVICE IN CONGRESS

My election to Congress in 1862 was contested by Judge Benjamin F.

Thomas, who was then a Republican member from the Norfolk district.

The re-districting of the State brought Thomas and Train into the same district. I was nominated by the Republican Convention, and Thomas then became the candidate of the "People's Party," and at the election he was supported by the Democrats. His course in the Thirty-seventh Congress on the various projects for compromise had alienated many Republicans, and it had brought to him the support of many Democrats.

My active radicalism had alienated the conservative Republicans. As a consequence, my majority reached only about 1,400 while in the subsequent elections, 1864-'66-'68 the majorities ranged from five to seven thousand.

Among the new members who were elected to the Thirty-eighth Congress and who attained distinction subsequently, were Garfield, Blaine and Allison. Wilson, of Iowa, had been in the Thirty-seventh Congress and Henry Winter Davis had been a member at an earlier period. Mr.

Conkling was a member of the Thirty-seventh Congress, but he was defeated by his townsman Francis Kernan under the influence of the reactionary wave which moved over the North in 1862. At that time Mr.

Lincoln had lost ground with the people. The war had not been prosecuted successfully, the expenses were enormous, taxes were heavy, mult.i.tudes of families were in grief, and the prospects of peace through victory were very dim. The Democrats in the House became confident and aggressive.

Alexander Long, of Ohio, made a speech so tainted with sympathy for the rebels that Speaker Colfax came down from the chair and moved a resolution of censure. Harris, of Maryland, in the debate upon the resolution, made a speech much more offensive than that of Long. As a consequence, the censure was applied to both gentlemen and as a further consequence, the friends of the South became more guarded in expressions of sympathy. It is true also, that there were many Democrats who did not sympathize with Harris, Long, and Pendleton.

Voorhees of Indiana was also an active sympathizer with the South. I recollect that in the Thirty-eighth or Thirty-ninth Congress he made a violent attack upon Mr. Lincoln, and the Republican Party. The House was in committee, and I was in the chair. Consequently I listened attentively to the speech. It was carefully prepared and modeled apparently upon Junius and Burke--a model which time has destroyed.

Of the members of the House during the war period, Henry Winter Davis was the most accomplished speaker. Mr. Davis' head was a study. In front it was not only intellectual, it was cla.s.sical--a model for an artist. The back of his head was that of a prize fighter, and he combined the scholar and gentleman with the pugilist. His courage was const.i.tutional and he was ready to make good his position whether by argument or by blows. His speeches in the delivery were very attractive. His best speech, as I recall his efforts, was a speech in defense of Admiral Dupont. That speech involved an attack upon the Navy Department. Alexander H. Rice, of Ma.s.sachusetts, was the chairman of the Naval Committee. He appeared for the Navy Department in an able defence. Mr. Rice's abilities were not of the highest order, but his style was polished, and he was thoroughly equipped for the defence. He had the Navy Department behind him, and a department usually has a plausible reason or excuse for anything that it does.

An estimate of Mr. Davis' style as a writer and his quality as an orator may be gained from a speech ent.i.tled:--"Reasons for Refusing to Part Company with the South," which he delivered in February, 1861, and in which he set forth the condition of the country as it then appeared to him. These extracts give some support to the opinion entertained by many that Mr. Davis was the leading political orator of the Civil War period:

"We are at the end of the insane revel of partisan license, which, for thirty years, has, in the United States, worn the mask of government.

We are about to close the masquerade by the dance of death. The nations of the world look anxiously to see if the people, ere they tread that measure, will come to themselves.

"Yet in the early youth of our national life we are already exhausted by premature excesses. The corruption of our political maxims has relaxed the tone of public morals and degraded the public authorities from terror to the accomplices of evil-doers. Platforms for fools-- plunder for thieves--offices for service--power for ambition--unity in these essentials--diversity in the immaterial matters of policy and legislation--charity for every frailty--the voice of the people is the voice of G.o.d--these maxims have sunk into the public mind; have presided at the administration of public affairs, have almost effaced the very idea of public duty. The Government under their disastrous influence has gradually ceased to fertilize the fields of domestic and useful legislation, and pours itself, like an impetuous torrent, along the barren ravine of party and sectional strife. It has been shorn of every prerogative that wore the austere aspect of authority and power.

"The consequence of this demoralization is that States, without regard to the Federal Government, a.s.sume to stand face to face and wage their own quarrels, to adjust their own difficulties, to impute to each other every wrong, to insist that individual States shall remedy every grievance, and they denounce failure to do so as cause of civil war between States; and as if the Const.i.tution were silent and dead and the power of the Union utterly inadequate to keep the peace between them, unconst.i.tutional commissioners flit from State to State, or a.s.semble at the national capital to counsel peace or instigate war.

Sir, these are the causes which lie at the bottom of the present dangers. These causes which have rendered them possible and made them serious, must be removed before they can ever be permanently cured.

They shake the fabric of our National Government. It is to this fearful demoralization of the Government and the people that we must ascribe the disastrous defections which now perplex us with the fear of change in all that const.i.tuted our greatness. The operation of the Government has been withdrawn from the great public interests, in order that competing parties might not be embarra.s.sed in the struggle for power by diversities of opinion upon questions of policy; and the public mind, in that struggle, has been exclusively turned on the slavery question, which no interest required to be touched by any department of this Government. On that subject there are widely marked diversities of opinion and interest in the different portions of the Confederacy, with few mediating influences to soften the collision. In the struggle for party power, the two great regions of the country have been brought face to face upon the most dangerous of all subjects of agitation. The authority of the Government was relaxed just when its power was about to be a.s.sailed; and the people, emanc.i.p.ated from every control and their pa.s.sions inflamed by the fierce struggle for the Presidency, were the easy prey of revolutionary audacity.

"Within two months after a formal, peaceful, regular election of the chief magistrate of the United States, in which the whole body of the people of every State competed with zeal for the prize, without any new event intervening, without any new grievances alleged, without any new measures having been made, we have seen, in the short course of one month, a small proportion of the population of six States transcend the bounds at a single leap at once of the State and the national const.i.tutions; usurp the extraordinary prerogative of repealing the supreme law of the land; exclude the great ma.s.s of their fellow- citizens from the protection of the Const.i.tution; declare themselves emanc.i.p.ated from the obligations which the Const.i.tution p.r.o.nounces to be supreme over them and over their laws; arrogate to themselves all the prerogatives of independent power; rescind the acts of cession of the public property; occupy the public offices; seize the fortresses of the United States confided to the faith of the people among whom they were placed; embezzle the public arms concentrated there for the defence of the United States; array thousands of men in arms against the United States; and actually wage war on the Union by besieging two of their fortresses and firing on a vessel bearing, under the flag of the United States, reinforcements and provisions for one of them.

The very boundaries of right and wrong seem obliterated when we see a Cabinet minister engaged for months in deliberately changing the distribution of public arms to places in the hands of those about to resist our public authority, so as to place within their grasp means of waging war against the United States greater than they ever used against a foreign foe; and another Cabinet minister, still holding his commission under the authority of the United States, still a confidential adviser of the President, and bound by his oath to support the Const.i.tution of the United States, himself a commissioner from his own State to another of the United States for the purpose of organizing and extending another part of the same great scheme of rebellion; and the doom of the Republic seems sealed when the President, surrounded by such ministers, permits, without rebuke, the Government to be betrayed, neglects the solemn warning of the first solider of the age, till almost every fort is a prey to domestic treason, and accepts a.s.surances of peace in his time at the expense of leaving the national honor unguarded. His message gives aid and comfort to the enemies of the Union, by avowing his inability to maintain its integrity; and, paralyzed and stupefied, he stands amid the crash of the falling Republic, still muttering, 'Not in my time, not in my time; after me the deluge!'"

Soon after Mr. Colfax's election as speaker of the Thirty-eighth Congress, I met him in a restaurant. He expressed surprise that he had not heard from me in regard to a place upon a committee. I said that the subject did not occupy my thoughts--that I had work enough whether I was upon a committee or not. He expressed himself as disturbed by the fact that he could not give me as good a place as he wished to give me. I tried to relieve his mind upon that point. In all my legislative experience I never made any suggestion as to committee work. Mr. Colfax placed me upon the Judiciary Committee, which, in the end, was the best place to which I could have been a.s.signed.

Mr. Colfax was made of consequence in the country by the newspapers, and he was ruined by his timidity. If he had admitted that he was an owner of stock in the Credit Mobilier Company, not much could have been made against him. His denials and explanations, which were either false or disingenuous, and his final admission of a fact which implied that he had been in the receipt of a quarterly payment from a post- office contractor, completed his ruin. There was a time when the country over-estimated his ability. He was a genial, kindly man, with social qualities and an abundance of information in reference to men in the United States and to recent and pa.s.sing politics. He had newspaper knowledge and apt.i.tude for gathering what may be called information as distinguished from learning. He was a victim to two pa.s.sions or purposes in life, that are in a degree inconsistent--public life and money-making. Instances there have been of success, but I have never known a case where a public man has not suffered in reputation by the knowledge that he had acc.u.mulated a fortune while he was engaged in the public service. As a speaker of the House, Colfax was agreeable and popular, but he lacked in discipline. His rule was lax, and there can be no doubt that from the commencement of his administration there had been a decline in what may be termed the morale of the House. Something of its reputation for dignity and decorum had been lost.

A young man from New York, Mr. Chanler, made a speech in the Thirty- eighth or Thirty-ninth Congress, which seemed to favor the Confederacy. This phase of his speech was due to the fact that he was a transcendental State Rights advocate. He did not believe in secession, as a wise and proper policy, but he did believe in the right of a State to consult itself as to its continuance in the Union.

Chanler was not a strong man and he owed his election, probably, to his connection with the Astor family. He failed to make the political distinction clear to the mind of the House and he was followed by General Schenck in a severe speech. Chanler explained and a.s.serted that he was not secessionist--that he was for the Union--that he had served with the New York Seventh--and that he had made a tender to General Dix of service on his staff, but that he had not received a reply from General Dix.

Thereupon S. S. c.o.x, who then represented a district in Ohio, made a jocose reply to Schenck and a like defence of Chanler and ended with the remark that he hoped his "colleague regretted having been guilty of a groundless attack upon a solider of the Republic." I went over to c.o.x to congratulate him upon his defence of Chanler, and in reply c.o.x said: "The funniest part of it is that Chanler took it all in earnest and came to my seat and thanked me for my speech."

c.o.x had no malice in his nature and there was always a doubt whether he had any sincerity in his politics. He had no sympathy with the rebellion, and, generally, he voted appropriations for the army and the navy. He was sincere in his personal friends.h.i.+ps, and his friends.h.i.+ps were not upon party lines. In his political action he seemed more anxious to annoy his opponents than to extinguish them.

His speeches were short, pointed, and entertaining. He was a favorite with the House, but his influence upon its action was very slight.

Those who acquire and retain power are the earnest and persistent men.

When c.o.x had made his speech and expended his jokes he was content.

The fate of a measure did not much disturb or even concern him.

c.o.x was party to an affair in the House which ill.u.s.trated the characteristics of Thaddeus Stevens, or "Old Thad," as he was called.

Late in the war, or soon after its close, Mr. Stevens introduced a bill to appropriate $800,000 to reimburse the State of Pennsylvania for expenses incurred in repelling invasions and suppressing insurrections.

The bill was referred to the Committee on Appropriations, of which Stevens was chairman. Without much delay and before the holidays, Stevens reported the bill. There was some debate, in which my colleague, Mr. Dawes, took part against the bill. Finally the House postponed the bill till after the holidays. During the recess I examined the question by making inquiries at the War and Treasury departments, where I found that authority existed for reimbursing States for all expenditures actually made and for the payment of all troops that had been mustered into the service. Thus the real purpose of the bill was apparent. During the Antietam and Gettysburg campaigns bodies of troops had been organized for defence and expenses had been incurred by towns and counties, but no actual service had been performed. It was intended by the appropriation to provide for the payment of these expenses. I prepared a brief and gave it to Mr.

Dawes, who used it in the debate. When it became apparent that the bill would be lost, c.o.x rose and moved to insert after the word Pennsylvania, the words Maryland, West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas and the Territory of New Mexico.

Also to strike out $800,000 and insert ten million dollars. These amendments brought to the support of the measure the members from all those States, and the bill was pa.s.sed. The Senate never acted upon it. I was indignant at the action of the House, and I said to Stevens, whose seat was near to mine: _"This is the most outrageous thing that I have seen on the floor of the House."_ Stevens doubled his fist but not in anger, shook it in my face and said: "You rascal, if you had allowed me to have my rights I should not have been compelled to make a corrupt bargain in order to get them." Thus he admitted his arrangement with c.o.x and the character of it, and laid the responsibility upon me.

Mr. Stevens was a tyrant in his rule as leader of the House. He was at once able, bold and unscrupulous. He was an anti-slavery man, a friend to temperance and an earnest supporter of the public school system, and he would not have hesitated to promote those objects by arrangements with friends or enemies. He was unselfish in personal matters, but his public policy regarded the State of Pennsylvania, and the Republican Party. The more experienced members of the House avoided controversy with Stevens. First and last many a new member was extinguished by his sarcastic thrusts. As for himself no one could terrorize him. I recall an occasion near the close of a session, when, as it was important to get a bill out of the Committee of the Whole, he remained upon his feet or upon his one foot and a.s.sailed every member who proposed an amendment. Sometimes his remarks were personal and sometimes they were aimed at the member's State. In a few minutes he cowed the House, and secured the adoption of his motion for the committee to rise and report the bill to the House.

He must have been a very good lawyer. The impeachment article which received the best support was from his pen. He possessed wit, sarcasm and irony in every form. In public all these weapons were poisoned, but in private he was usually genial. On one occasion Judge Olin of New York was speaking and in his excitement he walked down and up the aisle pa.s.sing Stevens' seat. At length Stevens said: "Olin, do you expect to get mileage for this speech?"

During the controversy with Andrew Johnson, Thayer, of Pennsylvania, became excited upon a matter of no consequence, denounced the report of a committee, and in the course of his remarks said: "They ask us to go it blind." Judge Hale, of New York, with an innocent expression, said he would like to have the gentleman from Pennsylvania inform the House as to the meaning of the phrase "go it blind." Stevens said at once: "It means following Raymond." The pertinency of the hit was in the circ.u.mstance that Raymond was supporting Johnson, and that Hale was following Raymond, not from conviction but for the reason that they had been cla.s.smates in college.

Robert S. Hale was a man of large ability and a successful lawyer.

During his term in Congress he was a prominent candidate for a seat upon the bench of the Court of Appeals of the State of New York. At a critical moment he appeared in the House in the role of a reformer and proceeded to arraign members for their action in regard to the measure known as the "salary grab." The debate showed that Hale was involved in the business to such an extent that he lost his standing in the House and imperiled his chance of obtaining a seat upon the bench of the Court of Appeals.

The bill for the increase of the salaries of public officers was a proper bill with the single exception that it should have been prospective as to the members of Congress. It added $2,500 to the annual salary of the Congressman or $5,000 for a term. The temptation to give the benefit of the increase to the members of the then existing House was too strong for their judgment and virtue. When, however, the indignation of the people was manifested, more than a majority of the members of each House sought refuge in a variety of subterfuges. Some neglected to collect the increase, others who had received the added sum, returned it to the Treasury upon a variety of pretexts. Some endowed schools or libraries, and a minority received what the laws allowed them and upon an a.s.sertion of their right to receive it. Outside of the criminal cla.s.ses there has but seldom been a more melancholy exhibition of the weakness of human nature. The members seemed not to realize that the wrong was in the votes for which those members were alone responsible who had sustained the bill, and that the acceptance of the salary which the law allowed was not only a right but a duty. At the end those members who took the salary and defended their acts enjoyed the larger share of public respect. Indeed, not one of the shufflers gained anything by the course that he had pursued. The public reasoned, and reasoned justly, that they would have kept the money if they had dared to do so.

Similar conduct ruined many of the members of Congress who were beneficiaries of the Credit Mobilier scheme. Mr. Samuel Hooper was a large holder of the stock, but being a man of fortune the public accepted that fact as a defence against the suggestion that the stock had been placed in his hands for the purpose of influencing his action as a member of Congress. With others the case was different.

Many were poor men. They had paid no money for the stock. Mr. Ames made the subscriptions, carried the stocks, and turned over the profits to those who had paid nothing and risked nothing. When the investigation was threatened, many of those who were involved ran to shelter under a variety of excuses and some of them hoped to escape by the aid of falsehood which ripened into perjury when the investigation was made. A few admitted owners.h.i.+p and a.s.serted their right to owners.h.i.+p. Those men escaped with but little loss of prestige. Of the others, some retained their hold upon public office and some were advanced to higher places, but they carried always the smell of the smoke of corruption upon their garments.

Judge Hale defended Mr. Colfax, but at the end his condition was worse than at the beginning.

There is something of error in our public policy. With a few exceptions, the salaries of public officers are too low--in many cases they are meager. This fact furnishes a pretext for efforts to make money while in the public service. All these efforts are adverse to the public interests and often the proceedings are tainted with corruption. A member of Congress ought to receive $7,500 and a Cabinet officer cannot live in a manner corresponding to his station upon less than $15,000. Adequate salaries would not prevent speculation on the part of public officers, but they could not offer as an excuse for their acts the meager salaries allowed by the government. From the "salary grab" bill there were two good results.

The President's salary was increased to $50,000 and the justices of the Supreme Court received $10,000 instead of $6,000 per annum. It has not been any part of my purpose in what I have said in favor of an increase of salaries to furnish means for campaign expenses by candidates either before or after nominations have been made.

If the statements are trustworthy that have been made publicly in recent years the conclusion cannot be avoided that money is used in elections for corrupt purposes--sometimes to secure nominations and sometimes to secure elections, when nominations have been made.

There are proper uses for money in political contests, but candidates should not be required to make contributions in return for support.

If the statements now made frequently and boldly, are truthful statements, then we are moving towards a condition of affairs when the offices of government will be divided between rich men and men who seek office for the purpose of becoming rich. A general condition cannot be proved by the experiences of individuals, but the experiences of individuals may indicate a general condition. I cannot doubt that an unwholesome change in the use of money in elections has taken place in the last fifty years. A gentleman now living (1901), who was a member of the National Committee of the Democratic Party in the year 1856 is my authority for the statement that the total sum of money at the command of the committee in the campaign for Mr.

Buchanan was less than twenty-five thousand dollars.

I mention my own experience and in the belief that it was not exceptional. From 1840 to 1850 I was the candidate of the Democratic Party of Groton for representative of the town in the general court.

The party in the town met its moderate expenses by voluntary contributions. I contributed with others, but never upon the ground that I was a candidate. We paid our local expenses. We paid nothing for expenses elsewhere, and we did not receive anything from outside sources. In 1844-'46 and 1848 I was the candidate of the Democratic Party for the National House of Representatives. I canva.s.sed the district at my own charge. I did not make any contribution to any one for any purpose, and I did not receive financial aid from any source.

The subject was never mentioned to me or by me in conversation or correspondence with any one. Again, I may say the subject was not mentioned in my canva.s.s for the office of Governor in the years 1849- 1850 and 1851.

In 1862 I became the candidate of the Republican Party for a seat in Congress. After my nomination the District Committee asked me for a contribution of one hundred dollars. I met their request. The request was repeated and answered in 1864, 1866 and 1868. On one occasion I received a return of forty-two dollars with a statement that the full amount of my contribution had not been expended.

While General Butler was in the army, Mr. James Brooks, a member from the city of New York, charged him, in an elaborate speech, with having taken about fifty thousand dollars from a bank in New Orleans, and appropriated the same to his own use. General Butler was then at Willard's Hotel. That evening I called upon Butler, and said to him that if he had any answer to the charge, I would reply the next day.

I had secured the floor through Mr. Stevens, who moved the adjournment upon a private understanding that he would yield to me in case I wished to reply. As Butler lived in my district and as I was ignorant of the facts, I avoided taking the floor lest an expectation should be created which I could not meet. However, I found Butler entirely prepared for the contest. From his letter books he read to me the correspondence with the Treasury Department, from which it appeared that the money had been turned over to the department, for which Butler had the proper receipts. The money had been seized upon the ground that it was the property of the Confederacy and was in the bank awaiting an opportunity to be transferred. The morning following, I called upon Butler and obtained copies of the correspondence that had been prepared the preceding night. I rode to the Capitol with Butler and on the way we prepared the letters in chronological order. Having obtained the floor through Mr. Stevens I made the answer which consisted chiefly of the letters. It was so conclusive that the subject was never again mentioned in the House of Representatives. On that occasion Butler's habit of making and keeping a full record of his doings served to release him from very serious charges, and so speedily that the charges did not obtain a lodgment in the public mind.

Upon another occasion Brooks made an attack upon Secretary Chase and charged various offences upon S. M. Clark, then the chief of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. Some of the charges were personal, and some of them official. I called upon the Secretary at his house, as I was on my way home from the Capitol, and gave him a statement of the charges made by Brooks. He seemed ignorant of the whole matter, and upon my suggestion that he should ask Clark for his explanation or defence he hesitated, and then asked me to call upon Clark for his answer. This I declined and there the matter ended. There never was any reply to Brooks. In the end it may have been as well, for the charges are forgotten, and they are not likely to be brought out of the musty volumes of debates. Mr. Chase's lack of resolution gave me an unfavorable impression of his ability for administrative affairs.

Samuel J. Randall first entered Congress in 1862. Mr. Randall's resources were limited. He was not bred to any profession, and he was not a man of learning in any direction. I cannot imagine that he had a taste for study at any kind of investigation aside from politics.

By long experience he became familiar with parliamentary proceedings, and from the same source he acquired a knowledge of the business of the Government. He had one essential quality of leaders.h.i.+p--a strong will. Moreover, he was dest.i.tute, apparently, of moral perceptions in public affairs. Not that he was corrupt, but as between the Government and its citizens the demands of what is called justice seemed to have no effect upon him. He did not hesitate to delay the payment of a just claim in order that the appropriation might be kept within the limits that he had fixed. This, not on the ground that the claim ought not be paid, but for the reason that the payment at the time would disarrange the balance sheet. A striking instance of his policy was exhibited in his treatment of the land-owners whose lands were condemned and taken for the reservoir at the end of Seventh Street, Was.h.i.+ngton, D. C. The values were fixed by a commission and by juries under the law, and when the time for an appropriation came, Mr. Randall provided for fifty per cent. and carried the remainder over to the next year. The claimants were ent.i.tled to full payment, but one half was withheld for twelve months without interest and that while dead funds were lying in the Treasury.

XXIX INCIDENTS IN THE CIVIL WAR