A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P R S T U V W X Z

Marse Henry (Vol. 1)

H >> Henry Watterson >> Marse Henry (Vol. 1)




Though many of those proposing the new movement were familiar
acquaintances--some of them personal friends--the scheme was in the air, as
it were. Its three newspaper bellwethers--Samuel Bowles, Horace White and
Murat Halstead--were especially well known to me; so were Horace Greeley,
Carl Schurz and Charles Sumner, Stanley Matthews being my kinsman, George
Hoadley and Cassius M. Clay next-door neighbors. But they were not the men
I had trained with--not my "crowd"--and it was a question how far I might
be able to reconcile myself, not to mention my political associates, to
such company, even conceding that they proceeded under good fortune with a
good plan, offering the South extrication from its woes and the Democratic
Party an entering wedge into a solid and hitherto irresistible North.

Nevertheless, I resolved to go a little in advance to Cincinnati, to have a
look at the stalking horse there to be displayed, free to take it or leave
it as I liked, my bridges and lines of communication quite open and intact.



III


A livelier and more variegated omnium-gatherum was never assembled. They
had already begun to straggle in when I arrived. There were long-haired
and spectacled doctrinaires from New England, spliced by short-haired and
stumpy emissaries from New York--mostly friends of Horace Greeley, as it
turned out. There were brisk Westerners from Chicago and St. Louis. If
Whitelaw Reid, who had come as Greeley's personal representative, had his
retinue, so had Horace White and Carl Schurz. There were a few rather
overdressed persons from New Orleans brought up by Governor Warmouth, and a
motely array of Southerners of every sort, who were ready to clutch at any
straw that promised relief to intolerable conditions. The full contingent
of Washington correspondents was there, of course, with sharpened eyes and
pens to make the most of what they had already begun to christen a conclave
of cranks.

Bowles and Halstead met me at the station, and we drove to the St. Nicholas
Hotel, where Schurz and White were awaiting us. Then and there was
organized a fellowship which in the succeeding campaign cut a considerable
figure and went by the name of the Quadrilateral. We resolved to limit
the Presidential nominations of the convention to Charles Francis Adams,
Bowles' candidate, and Lyman Trumbull, White's candidate, omitting
altogether, because of specific reasons urged by White, the candidacy of B.
Gratz Brown, who because of his Kentucky connections had better suited my
purpose.

The very next day the secret was abroad, and Whitelaw Reid came to me to
ask why in a newspaper combine of this sort the New York Tribune had been
left out.

To my mind it seemed preposterous that it had been or should be, and I
stated as much to my new colleagues. They offered objection which to me
appeared perverse if not childish. They did not like Reid, to begin with.
He was not a principal like the rest of us, but a subordinate. Greeley was
this, that and the other. He could never be relied upon in any coherent
practical plan of campaign. To talk about him as a candidate was
ridiculous.

I listened rather impatiently and finally I said: "Now, gentlemen, in this
movement we shall need the New York Tribune. If we admit Reid we clinch it.
You will all agree that Greeley has no chance of a nomination, and so by
taking him in we both eat our cake and have it."

On this view of the case Reid was invited to join us, and that very night
he sat with us at the St. Nicholas, where from night to night until the end
we convened and went over the performances and developments of the day and
concerted plans for the morrow.

As I recall these symposiums some amusing and some plaintive memories rise
before me.

The first serious business that engaged us was the killing of the boom for
Judge David Davis, of the Supreme Court, which was assuming definite and
formidable proportions. The preceding winter it had been incubating at
Washington under the ministration of some of the most astute politicians of
the time, mainly, however, Democratic members of Congress.

A party of these had brought it to Cincinnati, opening headquarters well
provided with the requisite commissaries. Every delegate who came in that
could be reached was laid hold of and conducted to Davis' headquarters.

We considered it flat burglary. It was a gross infringement upon our
copyrights. What business had the professional politicians with a great
reform movement? The influence and dignity of journalism were at stake. The
press was imperilled. We, its custodians, could brook no such deflection,
not to say defiance, from intermeddling office seekers, especially from
broken-down Democratic office seekers.

The inner sanctuary of our proceedings was a common drawing-room between
two bedchambers, occupied by Schurz and myself. Here we repaired after
supper to smoke the pipe of fraternity and reform, and to save the country.
What might be done to kill off "D. Davis," as we irreverently called the
eminent and learned jurist, the friend of Lincoln and the only aspirant
having a "bar'l"? That was the question. We addressed ourselves to the task
with earnest purpose, but characteristically. The power of the press must
be invoked. It was our chief if not our only weapon. Seated at the same
table each of us indited a leading editorial for his paper, to be wired
to its destination and printed next morning, striking D. Davis at a
prearranged and varying angle. Copies of these were made for Halstead, who
having with the rest of us read and compared the different scrolls
indited one of his own in general commentation and review for Cincinnati
consumption. In next day's Commercial, blazing under vivid headlines, these
leading editorials, dated "Chicago" and "New York," "Springfield, Mass.,"
and "Louisville, Ky.," appeared with the explaining line "The Tribune
of to-morrow morning will say--" "The Courier-Journal--and the
Republican--will say to-morrow morning--"

Wondrous consensus of public opinion! The Davis boom went down before it.
The Davis boomers were paralyzed. The earth seemed to have risen and hit
them midships. The incoming delegates were arrested and forewarned. Six
months of adroit scheming was set at naught, and little more was heard of
"D. Davis."

We were, like the Mousquetaires, equally in for fighting and foot-racing,
the point with us being to get there, no matter how; the end--the defeat
of the rascally machine politicians and the reform of the public
service--justifying the means. I am writing this nearly fifty years after
the event and must be forgiven the fling of my wisdom at my own expense and
that of my associates in harmless crime.

Some ten years ago I wrote: "Reid and White and I the sole survivors; Reid
a great Ambassador, White and I the virtuous ones, still able to sit up and
take notice, with three meals a day for which we are thankful and able to
pay; no one of us recalcitrant. We were wholly serious--maybe a trifle
visionary, but as upright and patriotic in our intentions and as loyal to
our engagements as it was possible for older and maybe better men to be.
For my part I must say that if I have never anything on my conscience worse
than the massacre of that not very edifying yet promising combine I shall
be troubled by no remorse, but to the end shall sleep soundly and well."

Alas, I am not the sole survivor. In this connection an amusing incident
throwing some light upon the period thrusts itself upon my memory. The
Quadrilateral, including Reid, had just finished its consolidation of
public opinion before related, when the cards of Judge Craddock, chairman
of the Kentucky Democratic Committee, and of Col. Stoddard Johnston, editor
of the Frankfort Yeoman, the organ of the Kentucky Democracy, were brought
from below. They had come to look after me--that was evident. By no chance
could they find me in more equivocal company. In addition to ourselves--bad
enough, from the Kentucky point of view--Theodore Tilton, Donn Piatt and
David A. Wells were in the room.

When the Kentuckians crossed the threshold and were presented seriatim the
face of each was a study. Even a proper and immediate application of whisky
and water did not suffice to restore their lost equilibrium and bring them
to their usual state of convivial self-possession. Colonel Johnston told me
years after that when they went away they walked in silence a block or two,
when the old judge, a model of the learned and sedate school of Kentucky
politicians and jurists, turned to him and said: "It is no use, Stoddart,
we cannot keep up with that young man or with these times. 'Lord, now
lettest thou thy servant depart in peace!'"



IV


The Jupiter Tonans of reform in attendance upon the convention was Col.
Alexander K. McClure. He was one of the handsomest and most imposing of
men; Halstead himself scarcely more so. McClure was personally unknown to
the Quadrilateral. But this did not stand in the way of our asking him
to dine with us as soon as his claims to fellowship in the good cause of
reform began to make themselves apparent through the need of bringing the
Pennsylvania delegation to a realizing sense.

He looked like a god as he entered the room; nay, he acted like one. Schurz
first took him in hand. With a lofty courtesy I have never seen equalled he
tossed his inquisitor into the air. Halstead came next, and tried him upon
another tack. He fared no better than Schurz. And hurrying to the rescue
of my friends, McClure, looking now a bit bored and resentful, landed me
somewhere near the ceiling.

It would have been laughable if it had not been ignominious. I took my
discomfiture with the bad grace of silence throughout the stiff, formal and
brief meal which was then announced. But when it was over and the party,
risen from table, was about to disperse I collected my energies and
resources for a final stroke. I was not willing to remain so crushed nor to
confess myself so beaten, though I could not disguise from myself a feeling
that all of us had been overmatched.

"McClure," said I with the cool and quiet resolution of despair, drawing
him aside, "what in the ---- do you want anyhow?"

He looked at me with swift intelligence and a sudden show of sympathy, and
then over at the others with a withering glance.

"What? With those cranks? Nothing."

Jupiter descended to earth. I am afraid we actually took a glass of wine
together. Anyhow, from that moment to the hour of his death we were the
best of friends.

Without the inner circle of the Quadrilateral, which had taken matters into
their own hands, were a number of persons, some of them disinterested and
others simple curiosity and excitement seekers, who might be described as
merely lookers-on in Vienna. The Sunday afternoon before the convention was
to meet we, the self-elect, fell in with a party of these in a garden "over
the Rhine," as the German quarter of Cincinnati is called. There was first
general and rather aimless talk. Then came a great deal of speech making.
Schurz started it with a few pungent observations intended to suggest and
inspire some common ground of opinion and sentiment. Nobody was inclined
to dispute his leadership, but everybody was prone to assert his own. It
turned out that each regarded himself and wished to be regarded as a man
with a mission, having a clear idea how things were not to be done. There
were Civil Service Reform Protectionists and Civil Service Reform Free
Traders. There were a few politicians, who were discovered to be spoilsmen,
the unforgivable sin, and quickly dismissed as such.

Coherence was the missing ingredient. Not a man jack of them was willing
to commit or bind himself to anything. Edward Atkinson pulled one way and
William Dorsheimer exactly the opposite way. David A. Wells sought to
get the two together; it was not possible. Sam Bowles shook his head
in diplomatic warning. Horace White threw in a chunk or so of a rather
agitating newspaper independency, and Halstead was in an inflamed state of
jocosity to the more serious-minded.

It was nuts to the Washington Correspondents--story writers and satirists
who were there to make the most out of an occasion in which the bizarre was
much in excess of the conventional--with George Alfred Townsend and Donn
Piatt to set the pace. Hyde had come from St. Louis to keep especial tab on
Grosvenor. Though rival editors facing our way, they had not been admitted
to the Quadrilateral. McCullagh and Nixon arrived with the earliest from
Chicago. The lesser lights of the guild were innumerable. One might have
mistaken it for an annual meeting of the Associated Press.



V


The convention assembled. It was in Cincinnati's great Music Hall. Schurz
presided. Who that was there will ever forget his opening words: "This is
moving day." He was just turned forty-two; in his physiognomy a scholarly
_Herr Doktor_; in his trim lithe figure a graceful athlete; in the
tones of his voice an orator.

Even the bespectacled doctrinaires of the East, whence, since the days when
the Star of Bethlehem shone over the desert, wisdom and wise men have had
their emanation, were moved to something like enthusiasm. The rest of us
were fervid and aglow. Two days and a night and a half the Quadrilateral
had the world in a sling and things its own way. It had been agreed, as I
have said, to limit the field to Adams, Trumbull and Greeley; Greeley being
out of it, as having no chance, still further abridged it to Adams and
Trumbull; and, Trumbull not developing very strong, Bowles, Halstead and
I, even White, began to be sure of Adams on the first ballot; Adams the
indifferent, who had sailed away for Europe, observing that he was not a
candidate for the nomination and otherwise intimating his disdain of us and
it.

Matters thus apparently cocked and primed, the convention adjourned over
the first night of its session with everybody happy except the D. Davis
contingent, which lingered on the scene, but knew its "cake was dough."
If we had forced a vote that night, as we might have done, we should have
nominated Adams. But inspired by the bravery of youth and inexperience we
let the golden opportunity slip. The throng of delegates and the audience
dispersed.

In those days, it being the business of my life to turn day into night and
night into day, it was not my habit to seek my bed much before the presses
began to thunder below, and this night proving no exception, and being
tempted by a party of Kentuckians, who had come, some to back me and some
to watch me, I did not quit their agreeable society until the "wee short
hours ayont the twal." Before turning in I glanced at the early edition
of the Commercial, to see that something--I was too tired to decipher
precisely what--had happened. It was, in point of fact, the arrival about
midnight of Gen. Frank P. Blair and Governor B. Gratz Brown.

I had in my possession documents that would have induced at least one of
them to pause before making himself too conspicuous. The Quadrilateral,
excepting Reid, knew this. We had separated upon the adjournment of the
convention. I being across the river in Covington, their search was
unavailing. I was not to be found. They were in despair. When having had
a few hours of rest I reached the convention hall toward noon it was too
late.

I got into the thick of it in time to see the close, not without an angry
collision with that one of the newly arrived actors whose coming had
changed the course of events, with whom I had lifelong relations of
affectionate intimacy. Sailing but the other day through Mediterranean
waters with Joseph Pulitzer, who, then a mere youth, was yet the secretary
of the convention, he recalled the scene; the unexpected and not over
attractive appearance of the governor of Missouri; his not very pleasing
yet ingenious speech; the stoical, almost lethargic indifference of Schurz.

"Carl Schurz," said Pulitzer, "was the most industrious and the least
energetic man I have ever worked with. A word from him at that crisis would
have completely routed Blair and squelched Brown. It was simply not in him
to speak it."

Greeley was nominated amid a whirl of enthusiasm, his workers, with
Whitelaw Reid at their head, having maintained an admirable and effective
organization and being thoroughly prepared to take advantage of the
opportune moment. It was the logic of the event that B. Gratz Brown should
be placed on the ticket with him.

The Quadrilateral was nowhere. It was done for. The impossible had come to
pass. There rose thereafter a friendly issue of veracity between Schurz and
myself, which illustrates our state of mind. My version is that we left the
convention hall together with an immaterial train of after incidents, his
that we had not met after the adjournment--he quite sure of this because he
had looked for me in vain.

"Schurz was right," said Joseph Pulitzer upon the occasion of our yachting
cruise just mentioned, "I know, for he and I went directly from the hall
with Judge Stallo to his home on Walnut Hills, where we dined and passed
the afternoon."

[Illustration: Mrs. Lincoln in 1861 _From a Photograph by M. B.
Brady_]

The Quadrilateral had been knocked into a cocked hat. Whitelaw Reid was the
only one of us who clearly understood the situation and thoroughly knew
what he was about. He came to me and said: "I have won, and you people have
lost. I shall expect that you stand by the agreement and meet me as my
guests at dinner to-night. But if you do not personally look after this the
others will not be there."

I was as badly hurt as any, but a bond is a bond and I did as he desired,
succeeding partly by coaxing and partly by insisting, though it was devious
work.

Frostier conviviality I have never sat down to than Reid's dinner. Horace
White looked more than ever like an iceberg, Sam Bowles was diplomatic
but ineffusive, Schurz was as a death's head at the board; Halstead and I
through sheer bravado tried to enliven the feast. But they would none of
us, nor it, and we separated early and sadly, reformers hoist by their own
petard.



VI


The reception by the country of the nomination of Horace Greeley was as
inexplicable to the politicians as the nomination itself had been
unexpected by the Quadrilateral. The people rose to it. The sentimental,
the fantastic and the paradoxical in human nature had to do with this. At
the South an ebullition of pleased surprise grew into positive enthusiasm.
Peace was the need if not the longing of the Southern heart, and Greeley's
had been the first hand stretched out to the South from the enemy's
camp--very bravely, too, for he had signed the bail bond of Jefferson
Davis--and quick upon the news flashed the response from generous men eager
for the chance to pay something upon a recognized debt of gratitude.

Except for this spontaneous uprising, which continued unabated in July, the
Democratic Party could not have been induced at Baltimore to ratify the
proceedings at Cincinnati and formally to make Greeley its candidate. The
leaders dared not resist it. Some of them halted, a few held out, but by
midsummer the great body of them came to the front to head the procession.

He was a queer old man; a very medley of contradictions; shrewd and simple;
credulous and penetrating; a master penman of the school of Swift and
Cobbett; even in his odd picturesque personality whimsically attractive; a
man to be reckoned with where he chose to put his powers forth, as Seward
learned to his cost.

What he would have done with the Presidency had he reached it is not easy
to say or surmise. He was altogether unsuited for official life, for which
nevertheless he had a passion. But he was not so readily deceived in men or
misled in measures as he seemed and as most people thought him.

His convictions were emotional, his philosophy was experimental; but there
was a certain method in their application to public affairs. He gave
bountifully of his affection and his confidence to the few who enjoyed his
familiar friendship--accessible and sympathetic though not indiscriminating
to those who appealed to his impressionable sensibilities and sought his
help. He had been a good party man and was by nature and temperament a
partisan.

To him place was not a badge of servitude; it was a decoration--preferment,
promotion, popular recognition. He had always yearned for office as the
legitimate destination of public life and the honorable award of party
service. During the greater part of his career the conditions of journalism
had been rather squalid and servile. He was really great as a journalist.
He was truly and highly fit for nothing else, but seeing less deserving and
less capable men about him advanced from one post of distinction to another
he wondered why his turn proved so tardy in coming, and when it would come.
It did come with a rush. What more natural than that he should believe it
real instead of the empty pageant of a vision?

It had taken me but a day and a night to pull myself together after the
first shock and surprise and to plunge into the swim to help fetch the
waterlogged factions ashore. This was clearly indispensable to forcing
the Democratic organization to come to the rescue of what would have been
otherwise but a derelict upon a stormy sea. Schurz was deeply disgruntled.
Before he could be appeased a bridge, found in what was called the Fifth
Avenue Hotel Conference, had to be constructed in order to carry him across
the stream which flowed between his disappointed hopes and aims and what
appeared to him an illogical and repulsive alternative. He had taken to his
tent and sulked like another Achilles. He was harder to deal with than any
of the Democratic file leaders, but he finally yielded and did splendid
work in the campaign.

His was a stubborn spirit not readily adjustable. He was a nobly gifted
man, but from first to last an alien in an alien land. He once said to me,
"If I should live a thousand years they would still call me a Dutchman." No
man of his time spoke so well or wrote to better purpose. He was equally
skillful in debate, an overmatch for Conkling and Morton, whom--especially
in the French arms matter--he completely dominated and outshone. As sincere
and unselfish, as patriotic and as courageous as any of his contemporaries,
he could never attain the full measure of the popular heart and confidence,
albeit reaching its understanding directly and surely; within himself a man
of sentiment who was not the cause of sentiment in others. He knew this and
felt it.

The Nast cartoons, which as to Greeley and Sumner were unsparing in the
last degree, whilst treating Schurz with a kind of considerate qualifying
humor, nevertheless greatly offended him. I do not think Greeley minded
them much if at all. They were very effective; notably the "Pirate Ship,"
which represented Greeley leaning over the taffrail of a vessel carrying
the Stars and Stripes and waving his handkerchief at the man-of-war Uncle
Sam in the distance, the political leaders of the Confederacy dressed in
true corsair costume crouched below ready to spring. Nothing did more to
sectionalize Northern opinion and fire the Northern heart, and to lash the
fury of the rank and file of those who were urged to vote as they had shot
and who had hoisted above them the Bloody Shirt for a banner. The first
half of the canvass the bulge was with Greeley; the second half began in
eclipse, to end in something very like collapse.

The old man seized his flag and set out upon his own account for a tour of
the country. Right well he bore himself. If speech-making ever does any
good toward the shaping of results Greeley's speeches surely should have
elected him. They were marvels of impromptu oratory, mostly homely and
touching appeals to the better sense and the magnanimity of a people not
ripe or ready for generous impressions; convincing in their simplicity and
integrity; unanswerable from any standpoint of sagacious statesmanship or
true patriotism if the North had been in any mood to listen and to reason.

I met him at Cincinnati and acted as his escort to Louisville and thence to
Indianapolis, where others were waiting to take him in charge. He was in a
state of querulous excitement. Before the vast and noisy audiences which we
faced he stood apparently pleased and composed, delivering his words as he
might have dictated them to a stenographer. As soon as we were alone he
would break out into a kind of lamentation, punctuated by occasional bursts
of objurgation. He especially distrusted the Quadrilateral, making an
exception in my case, as well he might, because however his nomination had
jarred my judgment I had a real affection for him, dating back to the years
immediately preceding the war when I was wont to encounter him in the
reporters' galleries at Washington, which he preferred to using his floor
privilege as an ex-member of Congress.

It was mid-October. We had heard from Maine; Indiana and Ohio had voted. He
was for the first time realizing the hopeless nature of the contest. The
South in irons and under military rule and martial law sure for Grant,
there had never been any real chance. Now it was obvious that there was to
be no compensating ground swell at the North. That he should pour forth his
chagrin to one whom he knew so well and even regarded as one of his boys
was inevitable. Much of what he said was founded on a basis of fact, some
of it was mere suspicion and surmise, all of it came back to the main point
that defeat stared us in the face. I was glad and yet loath to part with
him. If ever a man needed a strong friendly hand and heart to lean upon he
did during those dark days--the end in darkest night nearer than anyone
could divine. He showed stronger mettle than had been allowed him: bore
a manlier part than was commonly ascribed to the slovenly slipshod
habiliments and the aspects in which benignancy and vacillation seemed to
struggle for the ascendancy. Abroad the elements conspired against him.
At home his wife lay ill, as it proved, unto death. The good gray head he
still carried like a hero, but the worn and tender heart was beginning to
break. Overwhelming defeat was followed by overwhelming affliction. He
never quitted his dear one's beside until the last pulsebeat, and then he
sank beneath the load of grief.

Copyright (c) 2007. famouswriterz.com. All rights reserved.