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Greeley that a cipher had been added to each figure he had given of the number of outrages, the editor demanded an explanation of the 'garbling.' A few days later, Senator Abbott gave his version. He had shown Tourgée's letter to Senator Pool in Holden's presence in Washington, and the latter had requested a copy, which was furnished by a clerk who was 'a most trustworthy and honest man.' And now, said Greeley, 'perhaps the Governor will tell us who garbled it before he gave it to our correspondent.' But the Governor was silent. He merely had followed the common practice of the times, of which Greeley had made full use.

Poor Holden was impeached and went to Washington, where Grant received him sympathetically. Republican Presidents treated him kindly, but he soon passed from politics, to grow old gracefully and in grace; finding pleasure in his church, in acts of charity, and cherishing no resentments. He had wrecked his career on his ambition, but he had been no mercenary, and after all these years he is remembered kindly by the public, and his memory is cherished by the family to which he was tenderly devoted.

Thus the elections of 1870 had given a gleam of light to North Carolina and Georgia, with Democratic legislatures in each. Holden was impeached, and Bullock fled, but only a beginning had been made in the fight for redemption. Even so, the Radical politicians in Washington, ruminating the significance of these victories, determined that something more drastic still had to be done if the presidential election of 1872 was to be assured them. And the plans were instantly on foot.

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CHAPTER XVI

SUMNER'S BACK TO THE WALL

I

EFORE Congress again convened, the country was startled

with the announcement that Secretary Cox had resigned from the Cabinet. Thoroughly honest, highly competent, and warmly devoted to reform, his unpopularity had been constantly deepening among the politicians and corruptionists. Petty explanations were on the tongues of the gossips. It was whispered about that Mrs. Cox had cut from a newspaper a letter attacking the assessment of clerks for party purposes, and sent it anonymously to Mrs. Grant, overlooking the monogram on the envelope, and that it had been returned 'with the compliments of Mrs. Grant.' But the rupture required no such fantastic explanation. Cox had been anathema to the bosses - always in the way. It was common knowledge that he had been painfully in the way in the case of the notorious McGarrahan claim.

This claim on three square leagues of California land, rich in minerals, had been advanced years before by a disreputable party who contended that there had been a Mexican grant more than a quarter of a century before. This dubious pretense was not susceptible of documentary proof - the papers had been burned! More than one Attorney-General had rendered opinions hostile to the claim and there had been a succession of adverse decisions in the Federal courts. With marvelous vitality, the thing survived to reappear under the name of McGarrahan, representing a stock company, and under the aggressive sponsorship of Ben Butler, in Congress and out.

To Cox the claim was a transparent fraud, and he said so emphatically in Cabinet. Grant astounded him with the assertion that Congress had the right to determine. This was the beginning of the open rupture. In an age of corruption, Cox had set his face against it, and his doom was sealed. There was nothing else to do 1 New York Herald, November 5, 1870.

- he resigned; and in his letter he made the reason clear. When the gossips began to make free with his reputation in undertones, he requested Grant to give the letters exchanged in the resignation to the press. Grant refused on the novel ground that they were confidential; and Cox forthwith summoned the press and gave them out. Thus the cat was out of the bag. "There is a strong feeling against Cox among all the Senators with whom I have talked,' wrote Senator Morton. "They say he has treated the President badly, and Chandler and others say very hard things.' 1 It was commonly understood that Chandler and Simon Cameron had been saying hard things to the President a long while. 2 With Cox out of the way, Congress was free to act on the McGarrahan claim, but it had been forced into a blighting light. The majority of the Judiciary Committee of the House reported against it; but Bingham of Ohio brought in a minority report and the business was threshed out openly in bitter debate. Garfield was impressed by the disciplined army of supporters that McGarrahan had upon the floor, and had no doubt 'many... were corrupt,' and observed that 'nearly all the worst class of carpetbaggers' voted with Bingham. The claim went through by a small majority.

If Grant was interested, it was a costly victory. In the debate Beck of Kentucky had savagely charged that Cox had been driven from the Cabinet because of his hostility to the steal. The 'New York World' said the claim had passed because of 'Presidential influence in abetting a notorious fraud.' The resignation of Cox was ascribed by Garfield to the 'surrender on the part of the President to the political vermin which infest the government.' And, commenting on the rupture as due to Grant's refusal to support Cox in the prosecution of reforms, and denouncing 'the corruption and dishonesty of the great body of persons who carry on the government,' 'The Nation' thought the incident ‘a pitiful story.' 'The wreck of General Grant's fame is a national misfortune,' it added. "That fame was a national possession.' '

1 To W. P. Fishback, Foulkes, I, 145, note. New York Herald, November 11, 1870. Garfield to Cox, Life of Garfield, 1, 463–65.

4 November 15, 1870.

• October 20, November 17, 1870.

Garfield to Cox, Life of Garfield, 1, 462.

II

Other events contributed to the uneasiness of the dominant group the elections had gone wrong. New York and Indiana had been swept by the Democrats, and for the first time since reconstruction began, they had elected a Governor in Alabama, and a Lieutenant-Governor in Florida. In Congress the minority had lost the two thirds which had stood them in good stead. And, like an Old Man of the Sea on their backs, the San Domingo Treaty was still with them.

When Congress convened, it was greeted with a Message from Grant urging the annexation as though nothing had occurred before. It was evident that something had to be done to spare him humiliation, and the politicians agreed on a commission of inquiry, though even this met stubborn opposition and evoked plain speaking. The President, forced into lobbying again, had summoned Blaine, among others, to the White House. The Speaker, making clear his hostility to 'final acquisition,' agreed to support the resolution of inquiry. Even so, it passed the House only after a prolonged night session, and when the agony was over, Colfax appeared at the White House door in the bitter cold of a winter morning to convey the news.2 But no one was entirely happy. There were rankling wounds. Policy and not conviction had won the momentary victory. Garfield, like Blaine, found his 'sympathies... very strong with Sumner. Julian was writing in his diary that 'Grant has made a dreadful mistake about San Domingo and it will be hard work to save him in 1872.' Three months later, riding in New York with Greeley, Julian was to hear him 'denounce the San Domingo business and to declare that Grant is done for and the Republican Party probably ditto.'' It would have been much easier to have ignored the President's unconventional diplomacy and to have taken the island and forgotten it. It was all Sumner's work, and the skies were darkening above him. During the preceding summer, when he was strolling with Hendricks through the historic parts of Boston, chatting with Longfellow on the piazza at Nahant, or lecturing, his enemies

1 Gail Hamilton, 248.
'Life of Garfield, 1, 462.
$ Ibid., April 2, 1871.

2 New York World, December 23, 1870
'MS. Diary, January 8, 1871.

had been busy with Grant. The President had been told that Sumner had attacked him in his lectures, and the man of Appomattox had wrathfully declared that but for his office he would call his traducer to account. In truth, no such attack had been made, but Grant believed it.

Then came the San Domingo matter again; and, rising to oppose the San Domingo Commission Bill, Sumner had startled the Senate with his opening sentence- "The resolution before the Senate commits Congress to a dance of blood.' Thence he plunged into one of the most bitter and eloquent philippics on the proceedings in San Domingo. Though he was said to have told LieutenantGovernor Dunn of Louisiana that he feared personal violence from Babcock, Sumner never shone brighter in the vividness of a denunciation. General Babcock, ‘aide-de-camp' to the President - he rolled the words like a sweet morsel on his tongue. Scoring and ridiculing the agreements between the ‘aide-de-camp' and Baez, 'a political jockey,' he painted no flattering picture of Grant. He openly charged that Grant had planned the reframing of the Committee on Foreign Relations for the exclusion of Sumner from the chairmanship. 'Somebody told him this would not be convenient.' Then he proposed the dismissal of Schurz, 'and he was told that this could not be done without affecting the German vote.' Then the dismissal of Patterson, 'who unhappily was not German' - and thus he went on.

The Senators sat transfixed with wonder. 'I protest against this resolution as another stage in a drama of blood,' he said, in conclusion. 'I protest against it in the name of Justice, outraged by violence; in the name of humanity, insulted; in the name of the weak, trodden down; in the name of peace, imperiled; and in the name of the African race, whose first effort at independence is rudely assailed.' 1

The champions of Grant withheld their fire until the night session, when all appeared for a concerted assault. Morton led off, amazed that any one dare assail one so unassailable as Grant. "The general results of the Administration are grand, grand almost beyond precedent.' A dance of blood, indeed! Could blood dance? And who had told Sumner that Grant had attempted an interfer1 Congressional Globe, December 21, 1870.

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