pressive and effective. The critical sneered at his grammatical errors and jeered at his stinging sentences, but there never was a time that his enemies did not fear their effect upon a crowd. That is the reason, as we shall see, that they organized mobs to howl him down on his memorable journey to Douglas's tomb. X He was unfashionable among public men of the period of his Presidency because of his meticulous honesty. His declination of a fine equipage with a span of horses proffered by a New York City group, on the ground that he had always made it a practice to refuse gifts while in public station,' was criticized as not without vulgarity. Handling millions as Military Governor of Tennessee, he was poorer on leaving than on taking office, and this was intolerable stupidity to not a few patriots of the time. His absolute integrity made an impression on Benjamin R. Curtis, who came to know him intimately in the days of the impeachment.3 A member of the Cabinet, of notable personal integrity, found that 'in appointments money was not potent, offices were not merchandise,' and that he 'never permitted himself to be placed under personal obligations.' His enemies were to subject his character and career to a microscopic examination for three years, without finding a single incident on which so much as to hang an insinuation. Scarcely one among his traducers could have stood the test, and this itself made him impossible. Nothing depressed and alarmed him more than the moral laxity in public life; and he foresaw that the railroad grants would mean 'nothing but a series of endless corrupting legislation.' Thus he was thought vulgar in the house of Cooke. It were bad enough to be a plebeian and champion of labor; it were intolerable that he should be an enemy of favor-seeking capital. By instinct he was the soul of candor, but, surrounded all his life with enemies, he had acquired a touch of craftiness. One of his most trusted friends found that 'he gave his confidence reluctantly,' ' Dickens thought his manner 'suppressed, guarded, 5 1 New York Herald, May 25, 1865. 'Quoted by Woodburn, 330. Ibid., 405. 2 Winston, 239. Men and Measures, 877. anxious,' and a famous journalist found him 'crafty to a degree.' 2 Thus, while assuming a haughty indifference to personal criticism, he was, at heart, supersensitive to abuse or snubs. At times in utter depression he wished that 'we [himself and family] were all blotted out of existence and even the remembrance of things that were.' Then he could unbosom himself to an intimate with appalling bitterness and strike back at his enemies in Greeneville as 'the God-forsaken and hell-deserving, money-loving, hypocritical, backbiting, Sunday-praying scoundrels of the town.' And yet he seldom whined; he was too combative for that, and he fought with a ferocity and zest which never failed to inflict wounds. He gave no love-taps in battle, but used the battle-axe. One of his most inveterate foes conceded that 'his courage passed far beyond the line of obstinacy.' He would side-step neither man nor devil; and yet he nursed no resentments and could grasp the proffered hand of Ben Butler after the impeachment fiasco, offer his hand to Morton, who had deserted his standard to become one of the most ferocious of his foes, and speak kindly of Parson Brownlow, who had called him 'the dead dog in the White House.' He flared in a fight, but his momentary bitterness died with the occasion; and this was to be denounced as a vice by his enemies when his bitterness toward the men of the Confederacy turned to sympathy when they fell. 4 Nor was he merely a creature of prejudices and emotions. We have seen his method of preparing speeches. One of the soundest historical scholars of the period found that, 'in the formation of his opinions on great questions of public policy,' he was 'as diligent as any man in seeking and weighing the views of all who were competent to aid him.' A tireless worker all his life, the attachés of the White House were to be amazed at the industry of a man who kept six secretaries busy, and 'except for an hour or so in the afternoon and at meal times rarely left his desk until midnight.' On his tremendous tasks he brought to bear an intellect far beyond the average. His worst enemies reluctantly conceded that 'he was not deficient in intellectual ability,' and, as an old man, 8 Boutwell, I, 106. 7 Crook, 84, 85. 8 Boutwell, 11, 104. 97 2 Henry Adams, who was a super-intellectual with a background of intellectual snobbery, recalling his youthful prejudices, was 'surprised to realize how strong the Executive was in 1868perhaps the strongest he was ever to see.' One of the financiers of the war, a member of the Cabinet in position to judge, was convinced that 'in intellectual force he had few superiors.' It was not lack of ability, but an incurable deficiency in tact that was to curse him through life; and on this there is a general agreement. Secretary McCulloch found him utterly tactless, and one of the great lawyers and jurists who defended him in the impeachment was impressed with the fact that ‘he has no tact and even lacks discretion and forecast.' Tactless with men, he was the heart of tenderness with his family and toward women and dependents. His daughter, recalling his relations with a slave, his bodyguard in Greeneville, thought her father more the slave than the master of the negro. Toward the invalid wife he was ineffably tender, and in his moments of excitement a soft 'Andrew, Andrew,' from her calmed him instantly. With his daughters he was ever indulgent, proud of them and their attainments. He loved children, and these understood him intuitively. An attaché at the White House found his grandchildren ‘an important interest in the President's life.' 4 There was to come a time when the immeasurable meanness of his enemies was to charge him with unfaithfulness to his wife, but this slander failed to convince. He appears to have inspired confidence in women, even in the highest circles of society prone to feel that nothing but vulgarity could emanate from a man of the people. The wives and daughters of the stricken South were to make their innumerable appeals to him and to be received with the deepest sympathy. Most of these had worthy causes; some women sought him on less meritorious missions, and observers felt that 'he found it hard to believe that anything but merit and need could lurk behind a pair of beseeching woman's eyes.' Indeed, he had 'an amiable weakness for women, particularly for pretty women.'5 When the fashionable Mrs. Clay sought him in behalf of her imprisoned and threatened husband, and met the charming widow of Stephen A. Douglas in the corridor, the latter 1 Henry Adams, 24-25. 2 Men and Measures, 406. * Woodburn, 330. • Crook, 87. 5 Ibid., 92. volunteered to accompany her to see 'the good President.' The haughty Southern belle at first was doubtful of his goodness, for he was coldly composed in his civility, but she was quick to note him 'softening under the ardent appeals of Mrs. Douglas.' Beset with enemies seeking an opening against him, he was forced to move with circumspection in granting favors to Confederate leaders, and Mrs. Clay was clearly unable to understand. But when, weeping, she begged him to promise not to turn Jefferson Davis and Clay over to a military commission, he earnestly replied, 'I promise you, Mrs. Clay; trust me.' And when, thoughtless of the implied reflection upon his word, she asked him to take an oath, he solemnly raised his hand and repeated the promise. He kept his word.2 One day a woman, daughter of a former member of the Senate and of Jackson's Cabinet, entered to beg him for the restoration of her home, in possession of military officers. He told her with some emotion that as a boy in Raleigh he had often held her father's horse and been kindly treated, and that he had not forgotten. Her property was ordered restored. Where suffering and sorrow were concerned, he was as tender as Lincoln. This delicacy of the man who had emerged from the depths was manifest in his conversation. A courtly gentleman was impressed by the care and exactitude of his diction in familiar talk, and by the fact that he never used an oath nor told a risqué story. He was clean-minded. He was not a polished conversationalist, and his range of interest was deep rather than wide, but on subjects that interested him, he talked with fluency and force. He has been described as 'a man of few ideas,' which were 'right and true,' for which 'he would suffer death sooner than yield up or violate one of them.'4 Such was the vivid character and personality of the man who was to fight a memorable battle for constitutional rights and liberties and to suffer contumely for generations because of the slanders of his enemies. Honest, inflexible, tender, able, forceful, and tactless, his was a complex nature. But it was fortunate for the Republic that he had two passions - the Constitution and the Union. 1 Mrs. Clay, 311. 3 Marse Henry, 1, 154–55. 2 Ibid., 328-29. 'B. R. Curtis, Woodburn, 330. T CHAPTER III WITH CHASE AMONG THE RUINS I HE smoke had scarcely ceased to curl above the smouldering ruins of the South, and Lincoln had not yet been buried, when Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase set forth into the stricken region, accompanied by journalists, on a political mission. Before following him on his journey, let us take a hasty survey of the country through which he will pass. For some time now a straggling procession of emaciated, crippled men in ragged gray had been sadly making their way through the wreckage to homes that in too many instances were found to be but piles of ashes. These men had fought to exhaustion. For weeks they would be found passing wearily over the country roads and into the towns, on foot and on horseback. It was observed that 'they are so worn out that they fall down on the sidewalks and sleep.' The countryside through which they passed presented the appearance of an utter waste, the fences gone, the fields neglected, the animals and herds driven away, and only lone chimneys marking spots where once had stood merry homes. A proud patrician lady riding between Chester and Camden in South Carolina scarcely saw a living thing, and 'nothing but tall blackened chimneys to show that any man had ever trod this road before'; and she was moved to tears at the funereal aspect of the gardens where roses were already hiding the ruins.2 The long thin line of gray-garbed men, staggering from weakness into towns, found them often gutted with the flames of incendiaries or soldiers. Penniless, sick at heart and in body, and humiliated by defeat, they found their families in poverty and despair. 'A degree of destitution that would draw pity from a stone,' wrote a Northern correspondent.3 Entering the homes for a crust or cup of water, they found the furniture marred and broken, dishes cemented 'in various styles' and with 'corn cobs substituting for spindles in 'Mrs. Brooks, MS. Diary. 2 Diary from Dixie, 384. 'Annual Encylcopædia, 1865, 392. |