Of the speeches made in the Senate on the occasion, mine being the only one which was not read or given from memory, attracted some attention, and I was asked especially for the source of a quotation which occurred in it, and which was afterward dwelt upon by some of my hearers. It was the result of a sudden remembrance of the lines in Milton's ``Samson Agonistes,'' beginning:
``Oh, how comely it is, and how reviving To the spirits of just men long oppressed, When God into the hands of their deliverer Puts invincible might To quell the mighty of the earth, the oppressor, The brute and boisterous force of violent men,'' etc.[2]
[2] Milton's ``Samson Agonistes,'' lines 1268-1280.
The funeral was conducted with dignity and solemnity.
When the coffin was opened and we were allowed to take one last look at Lincoln's face, it impressed me as having the same melancholy expression which I had seen upon it when he entered the East Room at the White House. In its quiet sadness there seemed to have been no change.
There was no pomp in the surroundings; all, though dignified, was simple. Very different was it from the show and ceremonial at the funeral of the Emperor Nicholas which I had attended ten years before;--but it was even more impressive. At the head of the coffin stood General Dix, who had served so honorably in the War of 1812, in the Senate of the United States, in the Civil War, and who was afterward to serve with no less fidelity as governor of the State. Nothing could be more fitting than such a chieftaincy in the guard of honor.
In the following autumn the question of my renomination came.
It had been my fortune to gain, first of all, the ill will of Tammany Hall, and the arms of Tammany were long.
Its power was exercised strongly through its henchmen not only in the Democratic party throughout the State, but especially in the Republican party, and, above all, among sundry contractors of the Erie Canal, many of whose bills I had opposed, and it was understood that they and their friends were determined to defeat me.
Moreover, it was thought by some that I had mortally offended sundry Catholic priests by opposing their plan for acquiring Ward's Island, and that I had offended various Protestant bodies, especially the Methodists, by defeating their efforts to divide up the Land Grant Fund between some twenty petty sectarian colleges, and by exerting myself to secure it for Cornell University, which, because it was unsectarian, many called ``godless.''
Though I made speeches through the district as formerly, I asked no pledges of any person, but when the nominating convention assembled I was renominated in spite of all opposition, and triumphantly:--a gifted and honorable man, the late David J. Mitchell, throwing himself heartily into the matter, and in an eloquent speech absolutely silencing the whole Tammany and canal combination. He was the most successful lawyer in the district before juries, and never did his best qualities show themselves more fully than on this occasion.
My majority on the first ballot was overwhelming, the nomination was immediately made unanimous, and at the election I had the full vote.
Arriving in Albany at the beginning of my third year of service--1866--I found myself the only member of the committee appointed to investigate matters in the city of New York who had been relected. Under these circumstances no report from the committee was possible; but the committee on municipal affairs, having brought in a bill to legislate out of office the city inspector and all his associates, and to put in a new and thoroughly qualified health board, I made a carefully prepared speech, which took the character of a report. The facts which Ibrought out were sufficient to condemn the whole existing system twenty times over. By testimony taken under oath the monstrosities of the existing system were fully revealed, as well as the wretched character of the ``health officers,'' ``inspectors,'' and the whole army of underlings, and I exhibited statistics carefully ascertained and tabulated, showing the absurd disproportion of various classes of officials to each other, their appointment being made, not to preserve the public health, but to carry the ward caucuses and elections. During this exposure Boole, the head of the whole system, stood not far from me on the floor, his eyes fastened upon me, with an expression in which there seemed to mingle fear, hatred, and something else which I could hardly divine. His face seemed to me, even then, the face of a madman. So it turned out. The new bill drove him out of office, and, in a short time, into a madhouse.
I have always thought upon the fate of this man with a sort of sadness. Doubtless in his private relations he had good qualities, but to no public service that I have ever been able to render can I look back with a stronger feeling that my work was good. It unquestionably resulted in saving the lives of hundreds, nay thousands, of men, women, and children; and yet it is a simple fact that had I, at any time within a year or two afterward, visited those parts of the city of New York which I had thus benefited, and been recognized by the dwellers in the tenement houses as the man who had opposed their dramshop-keepers and brought in a new health board, those very people whose lives and the lives of whose children I had thus saved would have mobbed me, and, if possible, would have murdered me.
