Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2)

J >> James Gillespie Blaine >> Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2)

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The Democratic Convention met at Cincinnati on the 22d of June (1880).
The preliminary canvass and discussion had not indicated a prevailing
choice. The only definite policy anywhere suggested was that the
position of the Democratic party demanded the renomination of Mr.
Tilden for the Presidency, and that a failure to present him as a
candidate would be equivalent to withdrawing the allegation and
argument of the Electoral fraud. But to this plan the forcible answer
was made that the discreditable attempts of Mr. Tilden's immediate
circle upon the returning boards of the disputed States had compromised
his candidacy and injured his party; and on this ground a strong
opposition was made to his nomination. Mr. Tilden himself settled
the question by writing and extended and ingenious letter a few days
before the Convention, declining to be a candidate. Their immediate
choice being unavailable, his New-York followers made a strenuous
effort to control the nomination, first for Henry B. Payne of Ohio,
and next for Samuel J. Randall of Pennsylvania. The candidates were
numerous, but the leading places were held by General Hancock and
Senator Bayard.

The Convention was promptly organized with Judge Hoadly of Ohio as
temporary chairman, and Senator Stevenson of Kentucky as permanent
President. A ballot was reached on the second day. The South was
almost evenly divided between Bayard and Hancock. New England
preferred Hancock to Bayard. The West showed no preponderance for
either, and was broken among many candidates. New York was solidly
for Payne, but made little impression because Payne's own State of
Ohio stood for Senator Thurman. Judge Field of California and
William R. Morrison of Illinois had the support of their own States,
with a few scattering votes. The multiplicity of candidates indicated
the lack of a definite sentiment and a clear policy. The first ballot
gave Hancock 171, Bayard 153-1/2, Payne 81, Thurman 68-1/2, Field 65,
Morrison 62, Hendricks 49-1/2, Tilden 38, with a few votes to minor
candidates. On this test the Convention adjourned for the day, and
during the night combinations already inaugurated were fully completed,
by which Hancock's nomination was made certain. The next day opened
with the announcement that New York had withdrawn Payne and fixed
upon Randall as its choice, but it was too late. The second roll-call
ended without a decision, but before the result was declared Wisconsin
changed to Hancock. This was followed by a similar move from New
Jersey, and immediately State after State joined in his support until
he had 705 votes,--leaving of the whole Convention but 30 for Hendricks
and 2 for Bayard. William H. English of Indiana, who had served in
Congress during Mr. Buchanan's administration, was nominated for
Vice-President. The platform, in marked contrast with the elaborate
document of the preceding campaign, was a compact and energetic
statement of the Democratic creed. It embodied a fatal declaration in
favor _of a tariff for revenue only_, made vehement utterance on the
alleged election fraud of 1876, demanded honest money of coin or paper
convertible into coin, and gave a strong pledge against permitting
Chinese immigration.

General Hancock's nomination was greeted with heartiness amounting to
enthusiasm. He had received a military education at West Point; he had
been brevetted in the Mexican war for gallant conduct at Contreras
and Cherubusco. In the war for the Union he had acquired high rank as
a commander. He distinguished himself throughout the Peninsular
campaign and at Antietam. He added to his fame on the decisive field
of Gettysburg. He was with Grant during most of the campaign which was
crowned with final triumph at Appomattox, and bore a conspicuous part
on its bloody fields. Brave, gallant, and patriotic, a true soldier
and a chivalrous gentleman, he was a worthy representative of that
faithful and honorable class of "War Democrats," who in the time of the
Nation's peril stood for the flag and for the integrity of their
country. There were many of that type, who allowed no political
differences to restrain them from doing their full share towards the
preservation of the Union; and no duty is more grateful than that of
recognizing their loyal services. General Hancock was at their head,
and no partisan distinctions or subsequent political differences can
diminish the respect in which he is deservedly held by every loyal
lover of the Union of the States.

The campaign did not open altogether auspiciously for the Republicans.
The September election for Governor and members of the Legislature in
Maine had resulted adversely. The Republican party in that State,
owing to a large defection on the greenback issue and a coalition of
all its opponents, had been defeated in 1878 by more than 13,000
majority. In 1879 the lost ground was in large part regained, but the
party, while electing the Legislature, was again outnumbered on the
popular vote. In 1880 the re-action in favor of the Republicans had
not begun in any State as early as September. The issue on the
Protective tariff had not yet been debated, and Maine, though giving
a majority of 6,000 in the Presidential election, lost the Governorship
in September by 164 votes. As a victory had been confidently expected
by the country at large, the failure to secure it had a depressing
effect upon the Republican party.

The discouragement however was but for a day. Re-action speedily came,
and the party was spurred to greater efforts. There was also a change
in the issues presented, and from that time the industrial question
monopolized public attention. The necessity of special exertion in
the October States led to a very earnest and spirited canvass in Ohio
and Indiana. The Democratic declaration in favor of a tariff for
revenue only was turned with tremendous force against that party. A
marked feature of what may be termed the October campaign was the visit
of General Grant to Ohio and Indiana, accompanied by Senator Conkling.
The speeches of the two undoubtedly exerted a strong influence, and
aided in large part to carry those States for the Republicans.

From this day forward the contest was regarded as very close, but with
the chances inclining in favor of the Republicans. In the hope of
counteracting the effect of the argument for a Protective Tariff in
winning the industrial element of the country to Republican support,
the Democratic managers concocted one of the most detestable and
wicked devices ever conceived in political warfare. A letter,
purporting to have been written by General Garfield, and designed to
represent him as approving Chinese immigration to compete with home
labor, was cunningly forged. This so-called "Morey letter," in which
the handwriting and signature of the Republican candidate were imitated
with some skill, was lithographed and spread broadcast about two weeks
before the election.

General Garfield promptly branded the letter as a forgery and the
evidences of its character were speedily made clear. Nevertheless
active Democratic leaders continued to assert its genuineness, and
Mr. Abram S. Hewitt was conspicuous in giving the weight of his name to
this calumny, until the force of the accumulating proof constrained
him to admit in a public speech, that the text of the letter was
spurious, while still maintaining, against General Garfield's solemn
denial, that the signature was genuine. The prompt action of General
Garfield and his friends did much to render this crafty and dangerous
trick abortive, but there was not sufficient time to destroy altogether
the effect of its instant and wide dissemination. The forgery cost
General Garfield the electoral votes of New Jersey and Nevada and five
of the six votes of California. He carried every other Northern State,
while General Hancock carried every Southern State. The final result
gave to Garfield 214 electoral votes against 155 for Hancock.

The salient and most serious fact of the Presidential election was the
absolute consolidation of the Electoral vote of the South; not merely
of the eleven States that composed the Confederacy, but of the five
others in which slaves were held at the beginning of the civil
struggle. The leading Democrats of the South had been steadily
aiming at this result from the moment that they found themselves
compelled by the fortunes of war to remain citizens of the United
States. The Reconstruction laws had held them in check in 1868; the
re-action against Mr. Greeley had destroyed Southern unity in 1872;
it had been assumed with boastful confidence, but at the last
miscarried, in 1876; and now, in 1880, it was finally and fully
accomplished. The result betokened thenceforth a struggle within the
Union far more radical than that which had been carried on from the
formation of the Constitution until the secession of the South.

During the first half of this century Southern statesmen had demanded
and secured equality of representation in the Senate. Its loss in
1850 was among the causes which led them to revolt against National
authority. But even the equality of representation was for a section
and not for a party, and its existence did not prevent the free play
of contests on other issues. Partisan divisions in the South upon
tariff, upon bank, upon internal improvement, between Whig on the one
side and Democrat on the other, were as marked as in the North.
Southern men of all parties would unite against the admission of a
Northern State until a Southern State was ready to offset its vote in
the Senate, but they never sought to compel unity of opinion
throughout all Southern States upon partisan candidates or upon public
measures. The evident policy in the South since the close of the civil
war has been, therefore, of a more engrossing and more serious
character. It comprehends nothing less than the absolute consolidation
of sixteen States,--not by liberty of speech, or public discussion,
or freedom of suffrage, but by a tyranny of opinion which threatens
timid dissentients with social ostracism and suppresses the bolder
form of opposition by force.

The struggle which this policy invites, nay which it enforces, is as
much a moral as a political struggle. It is not a contention over
measures. It is a contest for equal rights under the Constitution, for
simple justice between citizens of the same Republic. Nor is the
struggle hopeless. Re-action will come in the South itself. The
passion and prejudice which influence men who were defeated in the
war cannot be transmitted to succeeding generations. Principle will
re-assert itself; local and state interest will command a change.
The signs even now are hopeful. The personal relations between men of
the South and men of the North are more amicable than they have been
for sixty years. Diversity of employment, the spirit of industrial
enterprise, the unification of financial interests, will tend more and
more to assimilate the populations, more and more to enforce an
agreement, if not as to measures, yet assuredly as to methods. No man
in the North, valuing the freedom for which a great war was waged,
desires to control the vote of a single individual in the South. He
only desires that every individual in the South, as in the North, shall
control his own vote, and when that is done the result, whatever it may
be, will always be cheerfully accepted. Contention between sections,
divided by a fixed line, is the most undesirable form of political
controversy. It is also the most illogical. But consolidation on one
side leads naturally and always to consolidation on the other side.
The growth of the country will ultimately effect an adjustment, but
the reason of men should not wait for the mere power of numbers to
settle questions which properly belong in the domain of reason alone.

Nor do the Southern leaders seem ever to have correctly estimated the
political force that is to come from the predestined increase of
numbers. Aside from the vast growth of population in the new States
and Territories of the North-West, the increase of the colored race in
the South must arrest attention. In the lifetime of those now living,
that class of the population will reach the enormous aggregate of five
and twenty millions. As this increase continues, no policy could
possibly be devised so fatal to Southern prosperity as that which
Southern leaders have pursued since the close of the war. Ceasing to
be a slave the colored man must be a citizen. He cannot be permanently
held in a condition between the two. He cannot be remanded to slavery.
His numbers will ultimately command what should now be yielded on the
ground of simple justice and wise policy.

The twenty years between 1861 and 1881 are memorable in the history of
the Congress of the United States. Senators and Representatives were
called upon to deal with new problems from the hour in which they were
summoned by President Lincoln to provide for the exigencies of a great
war. They confronted enormous difficulties at every step; and if they
had failed in their duty, if they had not comprehended the gravity and
peril of the situation, if they had faltered in courage, or had been
obscured in vision, the Union of the States might have been lost, the
progress of civilization on the American Continent checked for
generations. With the National arms triumphant, with the Union of the
States made strong, the American people, in the quiet of domestic
peace, in the enjoyment of wide-spread prosperity, should not forget
the dangers and sacrifices which secured to them their great blessings.

--The first demand of war is money. So great was the amount required
that Congress provided and the Executive expended a larger sum in each
year of the civil struggle than the total revenues of the Government
had been for the seventy-two years elapsing between the inauguration
of Washington and the inauguration of Lincoln.

--When the power of the Nation was challenged, the Army was so small
as scarcely to provide an efficient guard for the residence of the
Chief Magistrate against a hostile movement of the disloyal population
that surrounded him. Congress provided for the assembling of a host
that grew in magnitude until it surpassed in numbers the largest
military force ever put in the field by a European power.

--A domestic institution whose existence had menaced the peace of the
country for forty years, and now threatened the National life, was
either to receive renewed strength by another compromise, or was to
be utterly overthrown and destroyed. Congress had the foresight, the
philanthropy, the courage to choose the latter course, and to
transform four millions of slaves into four millions of citizens.

--Triumphant in the struggle of arms, Congress had the statesmanship
and persistence to bind up in the Organic Law of the Republic the
rights which victory had secured, and to provide against the recurrence
of a rebellion which imperiled the existence of free institutions.

The action of Congress and the spirit that inspired it were but the
action and spirit of the loyal people. A common danger awakened them
to a sense of their aggregate strength, and that awakening proved to be
the beginning of a new progress. Prolonged peace and quiet in a
country, even of our large resources, had engendered the habit of
caution, of economy, of extreme conservatism. The dominance of the
State-rights' school had created in the minds of the people a distrust
of the power of the General Government,--a fact which no doubt was
taken into the calculations of those who revolted against its
authority. As an illustration of the weakness of administration under
their lead, it may be recalled that during the years of Mr. Buchanan's
Presidency,--and indeed during a part of the Presidency of Franklin
Pierce,--the project of a Pacific Railroad had been considered, and
year after year abandoned, because of the argument, first, that the
National Government had no power to contribute to its construction;
and, second, that the hundred millions of dollars required to complete
it was a sum beyond the power of the Government to expend. In contrast
with the chronic irresolution and timidity which delayed an enterprise
that would strengthen the bonds of the Union, the administration of Mr.
Lincoln, in the midst of gigantic outlays for the war, authorized the
building of the Pacific Railroad, and successfully used the Government
credit to complete it in less time than the State-rights' leaders had
been abortively debating the question in Congress.

--It is difficult to estimate the progress of the people of the United
States in intelligence and in wealth since the close of the civil
struggle. When evidence is so voluminous it is not easy to select a
unit of comparison that shall succinctly present the truth. Perhaps
the extension of postal facilities is the most significant measure of
the intellectual activity of a people. From the formation of the
National Government in 1879 to the beginning of the war in 1861, the
total receipts from postages amounted to $182,000,000. From 1861 to
1881 the total receipts from postages amounted to $433,000,000. But
even these figures do not exhibit the full contrast of the popular
use of the post-office for transmission of papers and letters,--because
the larger part of the former period was on the basis of high postage.

--Comparison in industrial development are so numerous as not to be
readily and compactly stated. Economists consider that the material
advance of a people is measured more accurately by the consumption of
iron than by any other single article. Assuming this to be a test, the
progress of the American people in wealth is beyond precedent. The
production and use of iron between the years 1861 and 1881 were many
fold greater than during the entire preceding century.

--The increased ratio in the construction of railroads gives some
conception of the progress of wealth. The miles of rail in 1861 within
the United States were 31,286, while in 1881 they were 103,334. It is
no exaggeration to say that the construction and repair of railway
lines in the twenty years preceding 1881 involved an expenditure of
money larger than the total National debt at the close of the war.

--Nor have these twenty years been distinguished only by the
acquisition of wealth. No period of history had been more marked by
generous expenditure for worthy ends. The provision made for those
who suffered in the civil war has perhaps no parallel at home or
abroad. The comparative poverty of the country after the close of
the Revolutionary war may account for the inadequate assistance to
those who had suffered in the struggle for independence. The same
cause, though in less degree, existed after the war of 1812. The
pensions paid to the sufferers in both wars, including those of the
Mexican war (when the country had made great advance in wealth),
amounted in all, from 1789 to 1861, to the sum of $80,000,000; whereas
from 1861 to 1881 the sum of $516,000,000 was paid to those who had
claim upon the bounty, rather upon the justice, of the Government.

--The twenty years form indeed an incomparable era in the history of
the United States. Despite the loss of life on the part of both North
and South the Republic steadily gained in population for the entire
period, at the rate of nearly a million each year; and each year there
was added to the permanent wealth of the people $1,500,000,000;--a fact
made all the more surprising when it is remembered that they were at
the same time burdened with the interest on the National debt, of which
they discharged more than eleven hundred millions of dollars of the
principal within the period named.

Such progress is not only unprecedented but phenomenal. It could not
have been made except under wise laws, honestly and impartially
administered. It could not have been made except under an industrial
system which stimulated enterprise, quickened capital, assured to labor
its just reward. It could not have been made under the narrowing
policy which assumes the sovereignty of the _State_. It required the
broad measures, the expanding functions, which belong to a free
_Nation_. Not simply to the leading statesmen of the Senate and the
House, but to Congress as a whole, in its aggregate wisdom,--always
greater than the wisdom of any one man,--credit and honor are due; due
for intelligence, for courage, for zeal in the service of an endangered
but now triumphant and prosperous Republic.

During the twenty years, the representatives serving in the House
exceeded fifteen hundred in number. As an illustration of the rapidity
of changes in elective officers where suffrage is absolutely free, each
succeeding House in the ten Congresses, with a single exception,
contained a majority of new members. Only one representative in all
this number served continuously from 1861 to 1881,--the Honorable
William D. Kelley, eminent in his advocacy of the Protective system,
steadily growing throughout the entire period in the respect of his
associates and in the confidence of the constituency that has so
frequently honored him. In the Senate the ratio of change, owing to
the longer term of office, has been less; but, even in that more
conservative body, rotation in membership has been rapid. In the
twenty years nearly two hundred and fifty senators occupied seats in
the chamber. Of the whole number, Henry B. Anthony of Rhode Island,
warmly remembered by both political parties, was the only senator whose
service was unbroken from the opening to the close of the period. Two
others were in Congress for the whole time, but not continuously in
either House. Justin S. Morrill served six years in the House and
fourteen in the Senate; Henry L. Dawes served fourteen years in the
House and six in the Senate. For the entire period both were
consistent upholders of Republican ideas and Republican politics.--James
A. Garfield who was a member of the House for eighteen of the twenty
years was, in November, 1880, by a singular concurrence of circumstances
placed in an official position altogether without precedent. He was at
the same time Representative in Congress, Senator-elect from the State
of Ohio, President-elect of the United States.

The National Government has in these twenty years proved its
strength in war, its conservatism in peace. The self-restraint which
the citizens of the Republic exhibited in the hour of need, the great
burdens which they bore under the inspiration of patriotic duty, the
public order which they maintained by their instinctive obedience to
the command of law, all attest the good government of a self-governing
people. Full liberty to criticise the acts of persons in official
station, free agitation of all political questions, frequent elections
that give opportunity for prompt settlement of all issues, tend to
insure popular content and public safety. No Government of modern
times has encountered the dangers that beset the United States, or
achieved the triumphs wherewith the Nation is crowned.

The assassination of two Presidents, one inaugurated at the beginning,
the other at the close of this period, while a cause of profound
National grief, reflects no dishonor upon popular government. The
murder of Lincoln was the maddened and aimless blow of an expiring
rebellion. The murder of Garfield was the fatuous impulse of a
debauched conscience if not a disordered brain. Neither crime had its
origin in the political institutions or its growth in the social
organization of the country. Both crimes received the execration of
all parties and all sections. In the universal horror which they
inspired, in the majestic supremacy of law, which they failed to
disturb, may be read the strongest proof of the stability of a
Government which is founded upon the rights, fortified by the
intelligence, inwrought with the virtues of the people. For as it was
said of old, wisdom and knowledge shall be stability, and the work of
righteousness shall be peace!

ADDENDUM.

Hon. Galusha A. Grow, who filled the important post of Chairman of the
Committee on Territories in the Thirty-sixth Congress, criticises the
statements made on pages 269-272 of Volume I. The anomaly was there
pointed out that the men who had been most active in condemning Mr.
Webster for consenting to the organization of the Territories of New
Mexico and Utah in 1850 without a prohibition of slavery, consented in
1861 to the organization of the Territories of Colorado, Dakota, and
Nevada without a prohibition. Mr. Grow as a zealous anti-slavery man
writes in defense of the course adopted in 1861. The wisdom of the
course was not criticised. Its consistency only was challenged. After
giving a history of the various steps in organizing the three
Territories in 1861, and of the great need, by reason of the pressure
of thousands of emigrants, of providing a government therefor, and
the impracticability of passing a Territorial bill with an anti-slavery
proviso, Mr. Grow, in a letter to the author, says,--