Political Recollections Part 6

"The he is a d----d fool," said the irate secretary.

"Do you mean to say the President is a d----d fool?" asked Lovejoy, in amazement.

"Yes, sir, if he gave you such an order as that."

The bewildered Illinoisan betook himself at once to the President, and related the result of his conference.

"Did Stanton say I was a d----d fool?" asked Lincoln at the close of the recital.

"He did, sir, and repeated it."

After a moment's pause, and looking up, the President said, "If Stanton said I was a d----d fool, then I must be one, for he is nearly always right, and generally says what he means. I will step over and see him."

Whether this anecdote is literally true or not, it ill.u.s.trates the character of the two men.

On Sunday, the thirteenth of April, we were again summoned to meet Secretary Stanton, and he had also invited Thaddeus Stevens, of the House Ways and Means Committee, Mr. Fessenden, of the Senate Finance Committee, and Mr. Wilson and Colonel Blair, of the Senate and House Military Committees. The business of this conference was to consider the necessity of immediate measures for raising thirty million dollars to pay the troops unwisely accepted by the President in excess of the number called for by Congress, and the proper action to be taken relative to the sale of Austrian guns by a house in New York for s.h.i.+pment to the enemy. The Secretary was this time in fine spirits, and I was much interested in the free talk which occurred. Mr. Stevens indulged in his customary bluntness of speech, including a little spice of profanity by way of emphasis and embellishment. He declared that not a man in the Cabinet, the present company excepted, was fit for his business. Mr. Fessenden said he fully endorsed this, while sly glances were made to Colonel Blair, whose brother was thus palpably hit. Mr. Stevens said he was tired of hearing d----d Republican cowards talk about the Const.i.tution; that there _was_ no Const.i.tution any longer so far as the prosecution of the war was concerned; and that we should strip the rebels of all their rights, and given them a reconstruction on such terms as would end treason forever. Secretary Stanton agreed to every word of this, and said it had been his policy from the beginning. Fessenden denounced slave-catching in our army, and referred to a recent case in which fugitives came to our lines with most valuable information as to rebel movements, and were ordered out of camp into the clutches of their hunters. Stanton said that ten days before McClellan marched toward Mana.s.sas, contrabands had come to him with the information that the rebels were preparing to retreat, but that McClellan said he could not trust them. Wade was now roused, and declared that he had heard McClellan say he had uniformly found the statements of these people reliable, and had got valuable information from them. But McClellan was still king, and the country was a long way yet from that vigorous war policy which alone could save it.

In the meantime the strife between the radical and conservative elements in the Republican party found expression in other directions.

Secretary Seward, in his letter to Mr. Dayton, of the 22d of April, declared that "the rights of the States and the condition of every human being in them will remain subject to exactly the same laws and forms of administration, whether the revolution shall succeed of whether it shall fail." Secretary Smith had previously declared, in a public speech, that "this is not a war upon the inst.i.tution of slavery, but a war for the restoration of the Union," and that "there could not be found in South Carolina a man more anxious, religiously and scrupulously, to observe all the features of the Const.i.tution, than Abraham Lincoln." He also opposed the arming of the negroes, declaring that "it would be a disgrace to the people of the free States to call upon four millions of blacks to aid in putting down eight millions of whites." Similar avowals were made by other members of the Cabinet. This persistent purpose of the Administration to save the Union and save slavery with it, naturally provoked criticism, and angered the anti-slavery feeling of the loyal States. The business of slave-catching in the army continued the order of the day, till the pressure of public opinion finally compelled Congress to prohibit it by a new article of war, which was approved by the President on the 13th of March. The repressive power of the Administration, however, was very formidable, and although the House of Representatives, as early as the 20th of December, 1861, had adopted a resolution offered by myself, instructing the Judiciary Committee to report a bill so amending the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 as to forbid the return of fugitives without proof first made of the loyalty of the claimant, yet on the 26th of May, 1862, the House, then overwhelmingly Republican, voted down a bill declaring free the slaves of armed rebels, and making proof of loyalty by the claimant of a fugitive necessary to his recovery. This vote sorely disappointed the anti-slavery sentiment of the country. On this measure I addressed the House in a brief speech, the spirit of which was heartily responded to by my const.i.tuents and the people of the loyal States generally.

They believed in a vigorous prosecution of the war, and were sick of "the never-ending gabble about the sacredness of the Const.i.tution."

"It will not be forgotten," I said, "that the red-handed murderers and thieves who set this rebellion on foot went out of the Union yelping for the Const.i.tution which they had conspired to overthrow by the blackest perjury and treason that ever confronted the Almighty." This speech was the key-note of my approaching Congressional canva.s.s, and I was one of the very few men of decided anti-slavery convictions who were able to stem the conservative tide which swept over the Northern States during this dark and dismal year. I had against me the general drift of events; the intense hostility of Governor Morton and his friends throughout the State; nearly all the politicians in the District, and nine of its twelve Republican newspapers, and the desperate energy and cunning of trained leaders in both political parties, who had pursued me like vultures for a dozen years. My triumph had no taint of compromise in it, and nothing saved me but perfect courage and absolute defiance of my foes.

One of the great compensations of the war was the pa.s.sage of the Homestead Act of the 20th of May. It finally pa.s.sed the House and Senate by overwhelming majorities. Among the last acts of Mr.

Buchanan's administration was the veto of a similar measure, at the bidding of his Southern masters; and the friends of the policy had learned in the struggle of a dozen years that its success was not possible while slavery ruled the government. The beneficent operation of this great and far-reaching measure, however, was seriously crippled by some unfortunate facts. In the first place, it provided no safeguards against speculation in the public domain, which had so long scourged the Western States and Territories, and was still extending its ravages. Our pioneer settlers were offered homes of one hundred and sixty acres each on condition of occupancy and improvement, but the speculator could throw himself across their track by buying up large bodies of choice land to be held back from settlement and tillage for a rise in price, and thus force them further into the frontier, and on to less desirable lands.

In the next place, under the new and unguarded land-grant policy, which was simultaneously inaugurated, millions of acres fell into the clutches of monopolists, and are held by them to-day, which would have gone to actual settlers under the Homestead law, and the moderate land grant policy originated by Senator Douglas in 1850. This was not foreseen or intended. The nation was then engaged in a struggle for its existence, and thus exposed to the evils of hasty legislation. The value of the lands given away was not then understood as it has been since, while the belief was universal that the lands granted would be restored to the public domain on failure to comply with the conditions of the grants.

The need of great highways to the Pacific was then regarded as imperative, and unattainable without large grants of the public lands. These are extenuating facts; but the mischiefs of this ill- starred legislation are none the less to be deplored.

In the third place, under our new Indian treaty policy, invented about the same time, large bodies of land, when released by our Indian tribes, were sold at low rates to individual speculators and monopolists, or to railway corporations, instead of being conveyed, as before, to the United States, and thus subjected to general disposition, as other public land. These evils are now remedied, but for nearly ten years they were unchecked. The t.i.tle to Indian lands was secured through treaties concocted by a ring of speculators and monopolists outside of the Senate, and frequently ratified by that body near the close of a long session, when less than half a dozen members were in their seats, and the entire business was supervised by a single Western senator acting as the agent of his employers and the sharer in their plunder. These fatal mistakes in our legislation have made the Homestead law a half-way measure, instead of that complete reform in our land policy which was demanded, and they furnish a remarkable commentary upon the boasted friends.h.i.+p of the Republican party for the landless poor.

The conservative war-policy of the Administration continued to a.s.sert itself. The action of the President in promptly revoking the order of General Hunter, of the ninth of May, declaring free the slaves of the States of Georgia, Florida, and South Carolina, aggravated the growing impatience of the people. On the ninth day of June I submitted a resolution instructing the judiciary committee to report a bill repealing the Fugitive Slave Act, which was laid on the table by a vote of sixty-six to fifty-one, sixteen Republicans voting in the affirmative. On the second of July I called to see the President, and had a familiar talk about the war. He looked thin and haggard, but seemed cheerful. Although our forces were then engaged in a terrific conflict with the enemy near Richmond, and everybody was anxious as to the result, he was quite as placid as usual, and could not resist his "ruling pa.s.sion" for anecdotes.

If I had judged him by appearances I should have p.r.o.nounced him incapable of any deep earnestness of feeling; but his manner was so kindly, and so free from the ordinary crookedness of the politician and the vanity and self-importance of official position, that nothing but good-will was inspired by his presence. He was still holding fast his faith in General McClellan, and this was steadily widening the breach between him and Congress, and periling the success of the war. The general gloom in Was.h.i.+ngton increased till the adjournment, but Mr. Sumner still had faith in the President, and prophesied good things as to his final action.

The Confiscation Act of this session, which was approved by the President on the seventeenth day of July, providing that slaves of rebels coming into our lines should be made free, and that the property of their owners, both real and personal, should be confiscated, would have given great and wide-spread satisfaction; but the President refused to sign the bill without a modification first made exempting the fee of rebel land-owners from its operation, thus powerfully aiding them in their deadly struggle against us.

This action was inexpressibly provoking; but Congress was obliged to make the modification required, as the only means of securing the important advantages of other features of the measure. This anti-republican discrimination between real and personal property when the nation was struggling for its life against a rebellious aristocracy founded on the monopoly of land and the owners.h.i.+p of negroes, roused a popular opposition which thus far was altogether unprecedented. The feeling in Congress, however, was far more intense than throughout the country. No one at a distance could have formed any adequate conception of the hostility of Republican members toward Mr. Lincoln at the final adjournment, while it was the belief of many that our last session of Congress had been held in Was.h.i.+ngton. Mr. Wade said the country was going to h.e.l.l, and that the scenes witnessed in the French Revolution were nothing in comparison with what we should see here.

Just before leaving Was.h.i.+ngton I called on the President again, and told him I was going to take the stump, and to tell the people that he would co-operate with Congress in vigorously carrying out the measures we had inaugurated for the purpose of crus.h.i.+ng the rebellion, and that now the quickest and hardest blows were to be dealt. He told me I was authorized to say so, but said that more than half the popular clamor against the management of the war was unwarranted; and when I referred to the movements of General McClellan he made no committal in any way.

On the nineteenth of August Horace Greeley wrote his famous anti- slavery letter to the President, ent.i.tled "The Prayer of Twenty Millions." It was one of the most powerful appeals ever made in behalf of justice and the rights of man. In his reply Mr. Lincoln said: "If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would do that." These words served as fresh fuel to the fires of popular discontent, and they were responded to by Mr.

Greeley with admirable vigor and earnestness. The anti-slavery critics of the President insisted that in thus dealing with slavery as a matter of total indifference he likened himself to Douglas, who had declared that he didn't care whether slavery was voted up or voted down in the Territories. They argued that as slavery was the cause of the war and the obstacle to peace, it was the duty of the Government to lay hold of the conscience of the quarrel, and strike at slavery as the grand rebel. Not to do so, they contended, now that the opportunity was offered, was to make the contest a mere struggle for power, and thus to degrade it to the level of the wars of the Old World, which bring with them nothing for freedom or the race. They insisted that the failure of the Government to give freedom to our millions in bondage would be a crime only to be measured by that of putting them in chains if they were free.

They reminded the President of his declaration that a house divided against itself can not stand, and that the Republic can not permanently exist half slave and half free; and they urged that this baptism of fire and blood would be impious if the cause which produced it should be spared to canker the heart of the nation anew, and repeat its diabolical deeds. A Union with slavery spared and reinstated would not be worth the cost of saving it. To argue that we were fighting for a political abstraction called the Union, and not for the destruction of slavery, was to affront common sense, since nothing but slavery had brought the Union into peril, and nothing could make sure the fruits of the war but the removal of its cause. It was to delude ourselves with mere phrases, and conduct the war on false pretenses. It was to rival the folly of the rebels, who always a.s.servated that they were not fighting for slavery, but only for the right of local self government, when the whole world knew the contrary. These ideas, variously presented and ill.u.s.trated, found manifold expression in innumerable Congressional speeches and in the newspapers of the Northern States, and a month later brought forth the President's proclamation of the twenty- second of September, giving the insurgents notice that on the first day of January following he would issue his proclamation of general emanc.i.p.ation, if they did not in the meantime lay down their arms.

The course of events and the pressure of opinion were at last forcing him to see that the nation was wrestling with slavery in arms; that its destruction was not a debatable and distant alternative, but a pressing and absolute necessity; and that his Border State policy, through which he had so long tried to pet and please the power that held the nation by the throat, was a cruel and fatal mistake. This power, however, had so completely woven itself into the whole fabric of American society and inst.i.tutions, and had so long fed upon the virtue of our public men, that the Administration was not yet prepared to divorce itself entirely from the madness that still enthralled the conservative element of the Republican party.

It was during this year that a formidable effort was made by the old Whig element in the Republican party to disband the organization and form a new one, called the "Union party." They were disposed to blame the Abolitionists for the halting march of events, and to run away from the real issues of the conflict. They were believers in the Border State policy, and favored the colonization of the negroes, while deprecating "radical and extreme measures." They forgot that the Republican principle was as true in the midst of war as in seasons of peace, and that instead of putting it in abeyance when the storm came, we should cling to it with redoubled energy and purpose. They forgot that the contest of 1860 was not only a struggle between slavery and freedom, but a struggle of life and death, inasmuch as the exclusion of slavery from all federal territory would not only put the nation's brand upon it in the States of the South, and condemn it as a public enemy, but virtually sentence it to death. They forgot that the charge of "abolitionism,"

which was incessantly hurled at the Republican party, was thus by no means wanting in essential truth, and that when the slaveholders were vanquished in the election of Mr. Lincoln, their appeal from the ballot to the bullet was the logical result of their insane devotion to slavery, and their conviction that nothing could save it but the dismemberment of the Republic. They forgot that the Rebellion was simply an advanced stage of slaveholding rapacity, and that instead of tempting us to cower before it and surrender our principles, it furnished an overwhelming argument for standing by them to the death. This movement was fruitful of great mischief throughout the loyal States, and on my return to Was.h.i.+ngton in the fall of this year I was glad to find this fact generally admitted, and my earnest opposition to it fully justified by the judgment of Republican members of Congress.

Immediately after the battle of Fredericksburg, on the 13th of December, the Committee on the Conduct of the War visited that place for the purpose of inquiring into the facts respecting that fearful disaster. The country was greatly shocked and excited, and eager to know who was to blame. We examined Burnside, Hooker, Sumner, and Woodbury; but prior to this, in a personal interview with General Burnside, he frankly told me that _he_ was responsible for the attack. He seemed to be loaded down with a mountain of trouble and anxiety, and I could see that he felt just as a patriotic man naturally would, after sacrificing thousands of men by a mistaken movement. He said he had no military ambition, and frankly confessed his incapacity to command a large army, as he had done to the President and Secretary of War, when they urged him to a.s.sume this great responsibility; and that he was very sorry he had ever consented to accept it. His conversation disarmed all criticism, while his evident honesty decidedly pleased me. It was a sad thought, while standing on the banks of the Rappahannock, that here were more than a hundred thousand men on either side of a narrow river, brethren and kindred, and naturally owing each other nothing but good will, who were driven by negro slavery into the wholesale slaughter of each other. But General Burnside told me our men did not feel toward the rebels as they felt toward us, and he a.s.sured me that this was the grand obstacle to our success. Our soldiers, he said, were not sufficiently fired by resentment, and he exhorted me, if I could, to breathe into our people at home the same spirit toward our enemies which inspired them toward us. As I approached one of the princ.i.p.al hospitals here, I was startled by a pile of arms and legs of wounded soldiers, and on entering the building I found scores of men in the last stages of life, stretched on the floor with nothing under them but a thin covering of hay, and nothing over them but a coa.r.s.e blanket or quilt, and without a spark of fire to warm them, though the weather was extremely cold and they were literally freezing to death. Some of them were too far gone to speak, and looked at me so pleadingly that I can never forget the impression it made. Arrangements were made for their comfort as soon as it was possible.

On New Year's day I joined the immense throng of callers at the White House, but did not enjoy the delay of the President in issuing his Proclamation of Emanc.i.p.ation. It came late in the day, and brought relief to mult.i.tudes of anxious people. Perhaps no subject has ever been more widely misunderstood than the legal effect of this famous doc.u.ment, and the circ.u.mstances under which it was issued. Mr. Lincoln was himself opposed to the measure, and when he very reluctantly issued his preliminary proclamation in September, he wished it distinctly understood that the deportation of the slaves was, in his mind, inseparably connected with the policy.

Like Mr. Clay and other prominent leaders of the old Whig party, he believed in colonization, and that the separation of the two races was necessary to the welfare of both. He was at that time pressing upon the attention of Congress a scheme of colonization in Chiriqui in Central America, which Senator Pomeroy espoused with great zeal, and in which he had the favor of a majority of the Cabinet, including Secretary Smith, who warmly endorsed the project.

Subsequent development, however, proved that it was simply an organization for land-stealing and plunder, and it was abandoned; but it is by no means certain that if the President had foreseen this fact, his preliminary notice to the rebels would have been given. There are strong reasons for saying that he doubted his right to emanc.i.p.ate under the war power, and that he meant what he said when he compared an executive order to that effect to the "Pope's Bull against the Comet."

But he saw no way of escape. The demand for such an edict was wide- spread and rapidly extending in the Republican party. The power to issue it was taken for granted. All doubts on the subject were consumed in the burning desire of the people, or forgotten in the travail of war. The anti-slavery element was becoming more and more impatient and impetuous. Opposition to that element now involved more serious consequences than offending the Border States.

Mr. Lincoln feared that enlistments would cease, and that Congress would even refuse the necessary supplies to carry on the war, if he declined any longer to place it on a clearly defined anti-slavery basis. It was in yielding to this pressure that he finally became the liberator of the slaves through the triumph of our arms which it ensured.

The authority to emanc.i.p.ate under the war power is well settled, but it could only be a.s.serted over territory occupied by our armies.

Each Commanding General, as fast as our flag advanced, could have offered freedom to the slaves, as could the President himself.

This was the view of Secretary Chase. A paper proclamation of freedom, as to States in the power of the enemy, could have no more validity than a paper blockade of their coast. Mr. Lincoln's proclamation did not apply to the Border States, which were loyal, and in which slavery was of course untouched. It did not pretend to operate upon the slaves in other large districts, in which it would have been effective at once, but studiously excluded them, while it applied mainly to States and parts of States within the military occupation of the enemy, where it was necessarily void.

But even if the proclamation could have given freedom to the slaves according to its scope, their permanent enfranchis.e.m.e.nt would not have been secured, because the _status_ of slavery, as it existed under the local laws of the States prior to the war, would have remained after the re-establishment of peace. All emanc.i.p.ated slaves found in those States, or returning to them, would have been subject to slavery as before, for the simple reason that no military proclamation could operate to abolish their munic.i.p.al laws. Nothing short of a Const.i.tutional amendment could at once give freedom to our black millions and make their re-enslavement impossible; and "this," as Mr. Lincoln declared in earnestly urging its adoption, "is a king's cure for all evils. It winds the whole thing up."

All this is now attested by high authorities on International and Const.i.tutional law, and while it takes nothing from the honor so universally accorded to Mr. Lincoln as the great Emanc.i.p.ator, it shows how wisely he employed a grand popular delusion in the salvation of his country. His proclamation had no present legal effect within territory not under the control of our arms; but as an expression of the spirit of the people and the policy of the Administration, it had become both a moral and a military necessity.

During this month I called with the Indiana delegation to see the President respecting the appointment of Judge Otto, of Indiana, as a.s.sistant Secretary of the Interior. He was afterward appointed, but Mr. Lincoln then only responded to our application by treating us to four anecdotes. Senator Lane told me that when the President heard a story that pleased him he took a memorandum of it and filed it away among his papers. This was probably true. At any rate, by some method or other, his supply seemed inexhaustible, and always aptly available. Early in February General Burnside came before the War Committee, and gave the most startling testimony as to the demoralization of the Army of the Potomac, the bickerings and jealousies of the commanding generals, and the vexations of the President in dealing with the situation. On the 18th of March I called on Mr. Lincoln respecting the appointments I had recommended under the conscription law, and took occasion to refer to the failure of General Fremont to obtain a command. He said he did not know where to place him, and that it reminded him of the old man who advised his son to take a wife, to which the young man responded, "Whose wife should I take?" The President proceeded to point out the practical difficulties in the way by referring to a number of important commands which might suit Fremont, but which could only be reached by removals he did not wish to make. I remarked that I was very sorry if this was true, and that it was unfortunate for our cause, as I believed his restoration to duty would stir the country as no other appointment could. He said, "it would stir the country on one side, and stir it the other way on the other. It would please Fremont's friends, and displease the conservatives; and that is all I can see in the _stirring_ argument." "My proclamation," he added, "was to stir the country; but it has done about as much harm as good." These observations were characteristic, and showed how reluctant he was to turn away from the conservative counsels he had so long heeded.

On the 3d day of April the final report of the Committee on the Conduct of the War was completed, and the portion of it relating to the Army of the Potomac was in the hands of the a.s.sociated Press, and awaited by the public with a curiosity which it is not easy now to realize. The formation of the committee, as already stated, grew out of the popular demand for a more vigorous war policy, and its action was thus exposed to the danger of hasty conclusions; but the press and public opinion of the loyal States, with remarkable unanimity, credited it with great usefulness to the country, through its labors to rescue the control of the war from incompetent and unworthy hands.

I returned home by way of Philadelphia and New York, and had a delightful visit in the former place with James and Lucretia Mott, whom I had not seen since 1850. In New York I attended the great "Sumter meeting" of the 13th, and spoke at one of the stands with General Fremont and Roscoe Conkling. While in the city I met Mr.

Bryant, Phebe Carey, Mr. Beecher and other notables, and on my way home tarried two days with Gerrit Smith, at his hospitable home in Peterboro. According to his custom he invited a number of his neighbors and friends to breakfast, and by special invitation I addressed the people in the evening, at the "free church" of the town, on topics connected with the war. I could see that Mr. Smith did not approve the severity of my language, and that this was a source of amus.e.m.e.nt to some of his neighbors, but the course of events afterward radically changed his views, and he admitted that in his public addresses he was greatly aided by the imprecatory psalms. I had several delightful rambles with him, our conversation turning chiefly upon reformatory and theological topics, and I found myself more than ever in love with this venerable philanthropist whom I had only met once before, on his visit to Was.h.i.+ngton the previous year.

On the night of the 8th of July the fire-bells of the town of Centreville, in which I resided, roused the people, who rushed into the streets to learn that General John Morgan, with six thousand cavalry and four pieces of artillery, had crossed the Ohio, and was moving upon the town of Corydon. The Governor had issued a call for minute men for the defense of the State, and within forty- eight hours sixty five thousand men tendered their services.

Messengers were at once dispatched to all parts of Wayne County conveying the news of the invasion, and the next morning the people came pouring in from all directions, while the greatest excitement prevailed. The town had eighty muskets, belonging to its Home Guard, and I took one of them, which I afterward exchanged for a good French rifle; and having put on the military equipments, and supplied myself with a blanket and canteen, I was ready for marching orders. The volunteers who rallied at Centreville were s.h.i.+pped to Indianapolis, and were about seven hours on the way. I was a member of Company C, and the regiment to which I belonged was the One Hundred and Sixth, and was commanded by Colonel Isaac P. Gray. Of the force which responded to the call of the Governor, thirteen regiments and one battalion were organized specially for the emergency, and sent into the field in different directions, except the One Hundred and Tenth and the One Hundred and Eleventh, which remained at Indianapolis. The One Hundred and Sixth was s.h.i.+pped by rail to Cincinnati, and but for a detention of several hours at Indianapolis, caused by the drunkenness of an officer high in command, it might possibly have encountered Morgan near Hamilton, the next morning, on the way South. Our reception in Cincinnati was not very flattering. The people there seemed to feel that Ohio was able to take care of herself; and, in fact, nothing could have been more unreasonable than sending a body of infantry one hundred miles in pursuit of a cavalry force in that vicinity, where an ample body of cavalry was in readiness, and the river well guarded by gun-boats.

We were re-s.h.i.+pped to Indianapolis by rail, where we were mustered out of service and returned to our homes after a campaign of eight days. This was the sum of my military experience, but it afforded me some glimpses of the life of a soldier, and supplied me with some startling facts respecting the curse of intemperance in our armies.

CHAPTER XI.

INCIDENTS AND END OF THE WAR.

Campaigning in Ohio--Attempted repeal of the Fugitive Slave Law-- Organized movement in favor of Chase for the Presidency--Confiscation of rebel lands--Fort Pillow and the treatment of Union soldiers at Richmond--Mr. Lincoln's letter to Hodges--Southern Homestead Bill and controversy with Mr. Mallory--Nomination of Andrew Johnson-- Enforcement of party discipline--Mr. Lincoln's change of opinion as to confiscation of rebel lands--Opposition to him in Congress-- General Fremont and Montgomery Blair--Visit to City Point--Adoption of the XIII Const.i.tutional Amendment--Trip to Richmond and incidents --a.s.sa.s.sination of the President--Inauguration of Johnson and announcement of his policy--Feeling toward Mr. Lincoln--Capitulation with Gen. Johnston.

In the latter part of July of this year I addressed several meetings in Ohio, in company with Gov. Brough, beginning at Toledo. His speeches were too conservative for the times, as he soon discovered by their effect upon the people; but I found him singularly genial and companionable, and full of reminiscences of his early intimacy with Jackson, Van Buren and Silas Wright. Early in September I returned to Ohio to join Hon. John A. Bingham in canva.s.sing Mr.

Ashley's district under the employment of the State Republican Committee. Mr. Vallandigham, then temporarily colonized in Canada, was the Democratic candidate for Governor, and the canva.s.s was "red- hot." At no time during the war did the _spirit_ of war more completely sway the loyal ma.s.ses. It was no time to mince the truth, or "nullify d.a.m.nation with a phrase," and I fully entered into the spirit of General Burnside's advice already referred to, to breathe into the hearts of the people a feeling of animosity against the rebels akin to that which inspired their warfare against us. I remember that at one of the ma.s.s-meetings I attended, where Col. Gibson was one of the speakers, a Cincinnati reporter who had prepared himself for his work dropped his pencil soon after the oratorical fireworks began, and listened with open mouth and the most rapt attention till the close of the speech; and he afterward wrote to his employer an account of the meeting, in which he said that reporting was simply impossible, and he could only say the speaking was "beautifully terrible." As a stump-speaker Col. Gibson was then without a rival in the West. His oratory was an irresistible fascination, and no audience could ever grow tired of him. The speeches of Mr. Bingham were always admirable. His rhetoric was singularly charming. He was an artist in his work, but seldom repeated himself, while gathering fresh inspiration, and following some new line of thought at every meeting. After our work was done in the Toledo district I accompanied Mr. Ashley to Jefferson, where he and others were to address a ma.s.s-meeting, which we found a.s.sembled in front of the court house. The day was rainy and dismal, and the meeting had already been in session for hours; but after additional speeches by Ashley and Hutchins I was so loudly called for a little while before sunset, that I responded for about three-quarters of an hour, when I proposed to conclude, the people having been detained already over four hours while standing in a cold drizzling rain; but the cry of "go on" was very emphatic, and seemed to be unanimous. "Go ahead," said a farmer, "we'll hear you; it's past milking time anyhow!" It seemed to me I had never met such listeners. I was afterward informed that the test of effective speaking on the Reserve is the ability to hold an audience from their milking when the time for it comes, and I thought I pa.s.sed this test splendidly. After my return from Ohio I made a brief canva.s.s in Iowa, along with Senator Harlan and Governor Stone, and spent the remainder of the fall on the stump in my own State.

In the 38th Congress, Speaker Colfax made me Chairman of the Committee on Public Lands, which gratified me much. It opened a coveted field of labor on which I entered with zeal. On the 14th of December I introduced a bill for the repeal of the Fugitive Slave Law, and in order to test the sense of the House on the question, I offered a resolution instructing the Judiciary Committee to report such a bill. Greatly to my astonishment it was laid on the table by a vote of yeas eighty-two, nays seventy-four. Many Republicans declined to vote, and we were evidently still under the lingering spell of slavery. Early in January an organized movement was set on foot in the interest of Mr. Chase for the Presidency, and I was made a member of a Central Committee which was appointed for the purpose of aiding the enterprise. I was a decided friend of Mr. Chase, and as decidedly displeased with the hesitating military policy of the Administration; but on reflection I determined to withdraw from the committee and let the presidential matter drift. I had no time to devote to the business, and I found the committee inharmonious, and composed, in part, of men utterly unfit and unworthy to lead in such a movement. It was fearfully mismanaged. A confidential doc.u.ment known as the "Pomeroy circular,"

a.s.sailing Mr. Lincoln and urging the claims of Mr. Chase, was sent to numerous parties, and of course fell into the hands of Mr.

Lincoln's friends. They became greatly excited, and by vigorous counter measures created a strong reaction. A serious estrangement between the President and his Secretary was the result, which lasted for several months. The Chase movement collapsed, and when the Republican members of the Ohio Legislature indorsed the re-nomination of Mr. Lincoln, Mr. Chase withdrew from the contest. The opposition to Mr. Lincoln, however, continued, and was secretly cherished by many of the ablest and most patriotic men in the party. The extent of their opposition in Congress can never be known, and it was greatly aggravated by successive military failures; but it lacked both courage and leaders.h.i.+p, and culminated in the nomination of General Fremont in the latter part of May.

In this Congress a new joint select committee on the "conduct of the war" was organized, armed with new powers, and authorized to sit in vacation; and in common with most of the members of the former committee I was re-appointed. During the latter part of January I reported from the Committee on Public Lands a proposition to extend the Homestead Law of 1862 to the forfeited and confiscated lands of Rebels. It was a very radical proposition, proposing to deal with these lands as _public_ lands, and parcel them out into small homesteads among the poor of the South, black and white.

The subject was a large one, involving many important questions, and I devoted much time and thought to the preparation of a speech in support of the measure. In the month of April a portion of the Committee on the Conduct of the War visited Fort Pillow, for the purpose of taking testimony respecting the rebel atrocities at that place; and this testimony and that taken at Annapolis, early in May, respecting the treatment of our soldiers in the prisons at Richmond was published, as a special instalment of our proceedings, for popular use, accompanied by photographs of a number of prisoners in their wasted and disfigured condition. The report produced a powerful effect on the public mind, and caused unspeakable trouble and vexation to the enemy. I a.s.sisted in the examination of our prisoners at Annapolis, and never before had been so touched by any spectacle of human suffering. They were in the last stages of life, and could only answer our questions in a whisper. They were living skeletons, and it seemed utterly incredible that life could be supported in such wasted and attenuated shadows of themselves.

They looked at us, in attempting to tell their story, with an expression of beseeching tenderness and submission which no words could describe. Not one of them expressed any regret that he had entered into the service of the country, and each declared that he would do so again, if his life should be spared and the opportunity should be offered. In examining one of these men I was perfectly unmanned by my tears; and on retiring from the tent to give them vent I encountered Senator Wade, who had fled from the work, and was sobbing like a child. It was an altogether unprecedented experience, and the impression it produced followed me night and day for weeks.

The conservative policy of the Administration found a new and careful expression in Mr. Lincoln's letter to A. G. Hodges, of the 4th of April. It showed great progress as compared with previous utterances, but his declaration that "I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me," was displeasing to the more anti-slavery Republicans. They insisted that the Administration had no right to become the foot-ball of events. It had no right, they said, at such a time, to make itself a negative expression or an unknown quant.i.ty in the Algebra which was to work out the great problem. It had no right, they insisted, to take shelter beneath a debauched and sickly public sentiment, and plead it in bar of the great duty imposed upon it by the crisis.

It had no right, certainly, to lag behind that sentiment, to magnify its extent and potency, and then to become its virtual ally, instead of endeavoring to control it, and to indoctrinate the country with ideas suited to the emergency. It was the duty of the President, like John Bright and the English Liberals, to lead, not follow public opinion. These criticisms found every variety of utterance through Congressional speeches and the press, and met with a cordial response from the people; and they undoubtedly played their part in preparing the country and the Administration for the more vigorous policy which was to follow.

On the 12th of May the House pa.s.sed my Southern Homestead Bill by the strictly party vote of seventy-five to sixty-four. In my closing speech on the subject I was frequently interrupted by Wood of New York, and Mallory of Kentucky, and the debate ran into very sharp personalities, but the opposition of these members only tended to strengthen the measure. On the 19th I was drawn into an exceedingly angry altercation with Mr. Mallory, who charged me with forging some very personal remarks about himself, and interpolating them into the "Congressional Globe" as a part of my speech of the 12th. He was exceedingly insolent and overbearing in his manner, growing more and more so as he proceeded, and strikingly recalling the old days of slavery. He summoned a number of friends as witnesses, who testified that they did not _hear_ me use the language in question, and several of them, like Kernan of New York, declared that they had occupied positions very near me, had given particular attention to my words, and would certainly have remembered them if they had been uttered. I kept cool, but a.s.serted very positively that I did use the exact words reported, and in proof of my statement I appealed to a number of my friends, who sustained me by their distinct and positive recollections. Here was a conflict of testimony in which every witness recollected the facts according to his politics; but pending the proceedings I was fortunate enough to find the notes of the "Globe" reporter, which perfectly vindicated me from Mr. Mallory's charges, and suddenly put his bl.u.s.ter and billingsgate to flight. He unconditionally retracted his charges, while his swift witnesses were sufficiently rebuked and humiliated by this unexpected catastrophe. I was heartily complimented on my triumph, and my dialogue with Mr. Mallory was put in pamphlet as a campaign doc.u.ment by his opponents and liberally scattered over his district, where it did much service in defeating his re-election to the House.

The pa.s.sage of the Southern Homestead Bill, however, could only prove a very partial measure without an enactment reaching the fee of rebel land owners, and I confidently antic.i.p.ated the endors.e.m.e.nt of such a measure by the Republican National Convention, which was to meet in Baltimore, on the seventh of June. I was much gratified when the National Union League approved it, in its Convention in that city the day before; and a resolution embodying it was also reported favorably by the sub-committee on resolutions of the National Republican Convention the next day. But the General Committee, on the motion of McKee Dunn of Indiana, always an incorrigible conservative, struck it out, much to the disappointment of the Republican ma.s.ses. To me it was particularly vexatious, as the measure was a pet one of mine, having labored for it with much zeal, and in the confidence that the National Convention would approve it. Mr. Dunn was a Kentuckian of the Border State School, and although a friend of mine, and an upright and very gentlemanly man, he had a genius for being on the wrong side of vital questions during the war. Speaker Colfax used to say, laughingly, that in determining his own course he first made it a point to find out where McKee Dunn stood; and then, having ascertained Julian's position, he always took a middle ground, feeling perfectly sure he was right.

But to me the nomination of Andrew Johnson for Vice President was a still greater disappointment. I knew he did not believe in the principles embodied in the platform. I had become intimately acquainted with him while we were fellow-members of the Committee on the Conduct of the War, and he always scouted the idea that slavery was the cause of our trouble, or that emanc.i.p.ation could ever be tolerated without immediate colonization. In my early acquaintance with him I had formed a different opinion; but he was, at heart, as decided a hater of the negro and of everything savoring of abolitionism, as the rebels from whom he had separated. His nomination, however, like that of Mr. Lincoln, seemed to have been preordained by the people, while the intelligent, sober men, in Congress and out of Congress, who lamented the fact, were not prepared to oppose the popular will. Mr. Lincoln's nomination was nearly unanimous, only the State of Missouri opposing him; but of the more earnest and through-going Republicans in both Houses of Congress, probably not one in ten really favored it. It was not only very distasteful to a large majority of Congress but to many of the most prominent men of the party throughout the country.

During the month of June the feeling against Mr. Lincoln became more and more bitter and intense, but its expression never found its way to the people.