But just before the time for the senatorial election in Wisconsin, meeting a very bright and active-minded student of my senior class who came from that State, I asked him, ``What is the feeling among your people regarding the relection of Senator Carpenter?'' My student immediately burst into a torrent of wrath and answered: ``The people of Wisconsin will send Mr. Carpenter back to the Senate by an enormous majority. We will see if a gang of newspaper blackguards can slander one of our senators out of public life.'' The result was as my young friend had foretold: Mr. Carpenter was triumphantly relected.
While I am on this subject I may refer, as a comfort to those who have found themselves unjustly attacked in political matters, to two other notable cases within my remembrance.
Probably no such virulence has ever been known day after day, year after year, as was shown by sundry presses of large circulation in their attacks on William H. Seward.
They represented him as shady and tricky; as the lowest of demagogues; as utterly without conscience or ability;as pretending a hostility to slavery which was simply a craving for popularity; they refused to report his speeches, or, if they did report them, distorted them. He had also incurred the displeasure of very many leaders of his own party, and of some of its most powerful presses, yet he advanced steadily from high position to high position, and won a lasting and most honorable place in the history of his country.
The same may be said of Senator Conkling. The attacks on him in the press were bitter and almost universal;yet the only visible result was that he was relected to the national Senate by an increased majority. To the catastrophe which some years later ended his political career, the onslaught by the newspapers contributed nothing; it resulted directly from the defects of his own great qualities and not at all from attacks made upon him from outside.
Almost from the first moment of my acquaintance with Mr. Conkling, I had endeavored to interest him in the reform of the civil service, and at least, if this was not possible, to prevent his actively opposing it. In this sense I wrote him various letters. For a time they seemed successful;but at last, under these attacks, he broke all bounds and became the bitter opponent of the movement. In his powerful manner and sonorous voice he from time to time expressed his contempt for it. The most striking of his utterances on the subject was in one of the State conventions, which, being given in his deep, sonorous tones, ran much as follows: ``When Doctor-r-r Ja-a-awnson said that patr-r-riotism-m was the l-a-w-s-t r-r-refuge of a scoundr-r-rel, he ignor-r-red the enor-r-rmous possibilities of the word r-refa-awr-r-rm!''
The following spring (June 5, 1872) I attended the Republican National Convention at Philadelphia as a substitute delegate. It was very interesting and, unlike the enormous assemblages since of twelve or fifteen thousand people at Chicago and elsewhere, was a really deliberative body. As it was held in the Academy of Music, there was room for a sufficient audience, while there was not room for a vast mob overpowering completely the members of the convention and preventing any real discussion at some most important junctures, as has been the case in so many conventions of both parties in these latter years.
The most noteworthy features of this convention were the speeches of sundry colored delegates from the South.
Very remarkable they were, and a great revelation as to the ability of some, at least, of their race in the former slave States.
General Grant was renominated for the Presidency, and for the Vice-Presidency Mr. Henry Wilson of Massachusetts in place of Schuyler Colfax, who had held the position during General Grant's first term.
The only speeches I made during the campaign were one from the balcony of the Continental Hotel in Philadelphia and one from the steps of the Delavan House at Albany, but they were perfunctory and formal. There was really no need of speeches, and I was longing to go at my proper university work. Mr. James Anthony Froude, the historian, had arrived from England to deliver his lectures before our students; and, besides this, the university had encountered various difficulties which engrossed all my thoughts.
General Grant's relection was a great victory. Mr.
Greeley had not one Northern electoral vote; worst of all, he had, during the contest, become utterly broken in body and mind, and shortly after the election he died.
His death was a sad ending of a career which, as a whole, had been so beneficent. As to General Grant, I believe now, as I believed then, that his election was a great blessing, and that he was one of the noblest, purest, and most capable men who have ever sat in the Presidency.
The cheap, clap-trap antithesis which has at times been made between Grant the soldier and Grant the statesman is, I am convinced, utterly without foundation. The qualities which made him a great soldier made him an effective statesman. This fact was clearly recognized by the American people at various times during the war, and especially when, at the surrender of Appomattox, he declined to deprive General Lee of his sword, and quietly took the responsibility of allowing the soldiers of the Southern army to return with their horses to their fields to resume peaceful industry. These statesmanlike qualities were developed more and more by the great duties and responsibilities of the Presidency.
