Autobiography of Seventy Years Part 25

"Sir Hugh did not once remove his eye-gla.s.s; he would have put up half a dozen gla.s.ses had he had them.

"'Well,' enquired Montaigne, as the after-cheering subsided.

'A grave, melancholy intellect, with a sprightly temperament; a wonderful man. Who is he?' asked Sir Hugh, dropping his gla.s.s.

"'His name, as you know is Amos Blackstone; he lives some miles away; but he is a household name.'

"'Is he in business?'

"'Yes, a lawyer; a patent lawyer. Have you ever heard of an inst.i.tution called the Political Boss?'

"'Oh, yes. At home we use him to a degree, as a sort of political Black Bogey, to scare naughty children who like to play at Radicalism.'

"'Well, Amos Blackstone is a specimen of the Political Boss.'

"'Indeed? You surprise me,' gasped Sir Hugh. 'Don't mistake me; they are not all like him. He is a lion among jackals; the best political organizer in the State. But he is getting crowded out by younger men. We soon turn our war-horses out to pasture, in this country,' explained Montaigne."

No man among his contemporaries in Ma.s.sachusetts had a larger number of devoted friends than Adin Thayer. Many people who were not counted among his acquaintances were attached to him by sympathy of political opinions and by grat.i.tude for his important service to the Commonwealth. He did a thousand things for the benefit of the city, for the benefit of the State. Many bad men found that somehow their ambitions were nipped in the bud by a process they could hardly understand, and many good men were called into the public service in obedience to a summons from a hand the influence of which they never discovered. But there were four things he largely helped to do which were important and conspicuous in our history; I will not say things that he did, but they were things which would not have been done, in my judgment, if the power and influence of Adin Thayer had been subtracted; things accomplished with difficulty and with doubt. He stood by Charles Sumner when that great and dangerous attempt was made to banish him from public life in the year 1862. It was a time when Charles Sumner, as he told me himself, could not visit the college where he was graduated, and be sure of a respectful reception, when a very important Republican paper, the most important and influential Republican paper in Ma.s.sachusetts, declared that Charles Sumner could not address a popular audience in New York with personal safety; when, under the lead of the United States District Attorney, one of the most successful managers of a political meeting who ever existed in Ma.s.sachusetts, an attempt was made to defeat a resolution of confidence in him, in the Republican State Convention (when the whole of the House of Representatives, or of the Caucus, or of the Convention, was on one side and Richard H. Dana was on the other, it was about an even chance which came out ahead), Thayer stood by Mr. Sumner in that memorable State Convention, and helped save his great career to the country and to liberty.

He was a devoted supporter of John A. Andrew. Andrew had been Governor the traditional three years, and there were men eager to supplant him. When Adin heard of a formidable meeting called for that purpose, he exclaimed--I remember very well the indignation with which he said it--"They shall not lay their hands on the Lord's Anointed." He sent a message to the meeting that he would fight their candidate in every school district in Ma.s.sachusetts. The scheme was abandoned.

He was largely responsible for the defeat of the scheme for subst.i.tuting biennial for annual election, and biennial sessions of the Legislature for yearly sessions in Ma.s.sachusetts, although it did not receive its deathblow at the hands of the people until after his death.

But his chief service, after all, was in keeping the government of Ma.s.sachusetts clean and incorruptible, at the time of the great raid which was made upon the Republican Party in the years between 1871 and 1883. And yet, in all these services and contests he never appealed to a base pa.s.sion or to a low ambition in any man. He summoned the n.o.bility in men, and it answered to his call. He loved with the whole intensity of his nature, his country, his Commonwealth, and the city which was his home. He loved the great cause of human freedom and equality with the pa.s.sionate devotion which a lover feels for his mistress. He was the most disinterested man I ever knew in public life. He was not devoid of ambition. He believed that the holding of public office was the best method of accomplis.h.i.+ng public results. But, as I have already said, when the time came, he always subordinated his own desire to what he deemed the welfare of the public.

He had, I think, one favorite poem. He was fond of all good literature, especially the Bible, and was never without its resources to ill.u.s.trate or make emphatic what he had to say.

But there was one poem which was written to describe his and my intimate friend, George L. Stearns, which I think was his favorite above all the literature with which he was acquainted.

I have often heard him quote its verses. They set forth the character and quality and life of Adin Thayer himself. If Thayer had died before Stearns, I believe Whittier would have written the same thing about him. They are familiar to my readers, I am sure, but I will close this brief and imperfect tribute by citing them once more:

He has done the work of a true man,-- Crown him, honor him, love him.

Weep over him, tears of women, Stoop, manliest brows, above him!

For the warmest of hearts is frozen, The freest of hands is still; And the gap in our picked and chosen The long years may not fill.

No duty could overtask him, No need his will outrun; Or ever our lips could ask him, His hands the work had done.

He forgot his own soul for others, Himself to his neighbor lending; He found the Lord in his suffering brothers, And not in the clouds descending.

Ah, well!--The world is discreet; There are plenty to pause and wait; But here was a man who set his feet Sometimes in advance of fate,--

Plucked off the old bark when the inner Was slow to renew it, And put to the Lord's work the sinner When saints failed to do it.

Never rode to the wrong's redressing A worthier paladin.

Shall we not hear the blessing, "Good and faithful, enter in!"

CHAPTER XXI POLITICAL CORRUPTION

John Jay said that the greatest achievements of diplomacy were often little noted by history and that their authors got, in general, little credit. He compared it to the work of levelling uneven ground of which the face of the earth will show no trace when it is done. The same thing is true of successful battles with political corruption in high places, the most formidable peril to any Government and, if it be not encountered and overcome, fatal to a Republic. A nation will survive a corrupt minister or monarch, but a corrupt people must surely and speedily perish. We have had sporadic examples of corruption in high office at several periods in our history. The first sixteen years after the inauguration of the Const.i.tution, including the Administrations of Was.h.i.+ngton, John Adams, and the first four years of Jefferson, were by no means free from it. But it never got so dangerous a hold upon the forces of the Government, or upon a great political party, as in the Administration of General Grant.

General Grant was an honest and wise man. History has a.s.signed him a place among our great Presidents. He showed almost unerring judgment in military matters. He rarely, I suppose, if ever, made a mistake in his estimate of the military quality of a subordinate, or in a subordinate's t.i.tle to confidence.

But he was very easily imposed upon by self-seeking and ambitious men in civil life. Such men studied his humors and imposed upon him, if not by flattery, yet by the pretence of personal devotion. He had been himself bitterly and most unjustly a.s.sailed by partisan and sectional hostility. When any person to whom he had once given his confidence was detected in any low or corrupt action Grant was very unwilling to believe or even to listen to the charge. He seemed to set his teeth and to say to himself: "They attack this man as they attack me. They attack him because he is my friend. I will stand by him." So it happened that attempts to secure pure and unselfish administration got little help from him, and that designing and crafty men whose political aims were wholly personal and selfish got his ear and largely influenced his appointments to office.

Hamilton Fish, the Secretary of State, always retained his influence with President Grant. He was a wise, able and thoroughly honest man. But as was fit, and indeed necessary, he kept himself to the great interests which belonged to his Department, and took little share, so far as the public knew, in other questions.

General c.o.x, of Ohio, was an able, brave and upright man.

He resigned from President Grant's Cabinet, alleging as his reason that he was not supported in the fight with corruption.

Judge h.o.a.r strenuously insisted that the Judges of the newly created Circuit Courts of the United States should be made up of the best lawyers, without Senatorial dictation. President Grant acted in accordance with his advice. The const.i.tution of the Circuit Courts gave great satisfaction to the public.

But leading and influential Senators, whose advice had been rejected, and who were compelled by the high character of the persons nominated to submit, and did not venture upon a controversy with the President, were intensely angry with the Attorney-General. The result was that when he was nominated by the President for the office of a.s.sociate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, he was rejected by the Senate. A few Senators avowed as a pretext for their action that there was no Judge on that Bench from the South, and that the new appointee ought to reside in the Southern Circuit.

But these gentlemen all voted for the confirmation of Mr.

Justice Bradley, a most admirable appointment, to whom the same objection applied. Judge h.o.a.r never doubted that the service of a clean, able, upright Circuit Court, appointed without political influence, and entirely acceptable to the public, was well worth the sacrifice. Indeed the expression of public regard which came to him abundantly in his lifetime, and which was manifested in the proceedings of the Bar of Ma.s.sachusetts, and the Ma.s.sachusetts Historical Society, and in the press of the country after his death, was more valued by those to whom his memory is dear, than a thousand offices.

When I entered Congress in 1869 the corridors of the Capitol and the Committee rooms were crowded with lobbyists. The custom of the two Houses permitted their members to introduce strangers on the floor. It would not be profitable to revive all the scandals of that time. In general the men elected to the Senate and the House were honest and incorruptible.

There were some exceptions. Adroit and self-seeking men were often able in the mult.i.tude of claims which must necessarily be disposed of by a rapid examination, to impose on Committees of the two Houses.

As one of the managers of the Belknap trial, I alluded to some of the more prominent and undisputed examples of corruption, in the following words:

"I said a little while ago that the Const.i.tution had no safeguards to throw away. You will judge whether the public events of to-day admonish us to look well to all our securities to prevent or power to punish the great guilt of corruption in office.

We must not confound idle clamor with public opinion, or accept the accusations of scandal and malice instead of proof. But we shall make a worse mistake if, because of the mult.i.tude of false and groundless charges against men in high office, we fail to redress substantial grievances or to deal with cases of actual guilt. The worst evil resulting from the indiscriminate attack of an unscrupulous press upon men in public station is not that innocence suffers, but that crime escapes. Let scandal and malice be encountered by pure and stainless lives. Let corruption and bribery meet their lawful punishment.

"My own public life has been a very brief and insignificant one, extending little beyond the duration of a single term of Senatorial office; but in that brief period I have seen five judges of a high court of the United States driven from office by threats of impeachment for corruption or maladministration.

I have heard the taunt, from friendliest lips, that when the United States presented herself in the East to take part with the civilized world in generous compet.i.tion in the arts of life, the only product of her inst.i.tutions in which she surpa.s.sed all others beyond question was her corruption. I have seen in the State in the Union foremost in power and wealth four judges of her courts impeached for corruption, and the political administration of her chief city become a disgrace and a by- word throughout the world. I have seen the chairman of the Committee on Military Affairs in the House, now a distinguished member of this court, rise in his place and demand the expulsion of four of his a.s.sociates for making sale of their official privilege of selecting the youths to be educated at our great military school. When the greatest railroad of the world, binding together the continent and uniting the two great seas which wash our sh.o.r.es, was finished, I have seen our national triumph and exultation turned to bitterness and shame by the unanimous reports of three committees of Congress--two of the House and one here--that every step of that mighty enterprise had been taken in fraud. I have heard in highest places the shameless doctrine avowed by men grown old in public office that the true way by which power should be gained in the Republic is to bribe the people with the offices created for their service, and the true end for which it should be used when gained is the promotion of selfish ambition and the gratification of personal revenge. I have heard that suspicion haunts the footsteps of the trusted companions of the President.

"These things have pa.s.sed into history. The Hallam or the Tacitus or the Sismondi or the Macaulay who writes the annals of our time will record them with his inexorable pen. And now when a high Cabinet officer, the Const.i.tutional adviser of the Executive, flees from office before charges of corruption, shall the historian add that the Senate treated the demand of the people for its judgment of condemnation as a farce, and laid down its high functions before the sophistries and jeers of the criminal lawyer? Shall he speculate about the petty political calculations as to the effect on one party or the other which induced his judges to connive at the escape of the great public criminal? Or, on the other had, shall he close the chapter by narrating how these things were detected, reformed and punished by Const.i.tutional processes which the wisdom of our fathers devised for us, and the virtue and purity of the people found their vindication in the justice of the Senate?"

This pa.s.sage was quoted very extensively by the Democratic speakers all over the country, and was circulated as a campaign doc.u.ment. I was reproached by some of my Republican a.s.sociates for furnis.h.i.+ng ammunition for the enemy. But I was satisfied, and I am now, that in saying what I did I rendered a great service to the Republican Party. What was said helped to arouse public attention, and the ma.s.ses of the people--always pure and incorruptible--set themselves earnestly and successfully to reform the abuses.

It never occurred to me that these abuses furnished any reason for placing the powers of the Government in the hands of the Southern Democracy, or their ally, Tammany Hall. If the men who saved the Union were not to be trusted to keep it pure; if the men who abolished slavery could not carry on a Government in freedom and in honor, certainly it was not likely that the men of Tammany Hall, or the men who had so lately attempted to overthrow the Government, would do it any better.

I happened to be at lunch with General Garfield just after the Belknap trial. He spoke of my argument, and expressed his strong sympathy and approval. I told him that I had been looking into the history of the first sixteen years of the Government, which included the Administrations of Was.h.i.+ngton and John Adams and the first term of Jefferson, and that in my opinion there was not only more corruption in proportion then than there had been under Grant, but there had been more in amount, notwithstanding the difference in population. I stated to him a good many instances. He urged me to make a speech in which I should say publicly what I had said to him. I acted on his advice, and in the course of a speech, in reply to Mr. Lamar, of Mississippi, I spoke as follows:

"The Republican Party, as I have said, has controlled the Government for sixteen years, a term equal to that which covers the whole Administration of Was.h.i.+ngton, the whole Administration of John Adams, and the first term of Jefferson. It has been one of those periods in which all experience teaches us to expect an unusual manifestation of public corruption, of public disorder, and of evils and errors of administration. A great war; the time which follows a great war; great public debts; currency and values inflated; the exertion of new and extraordinary powers for the safety of the State; the sudden call of millions of slaves to a share in the Government--any one of these things would be expected to create great disturbances, and give rise to great temptations and great corruptions. Our term of office has seen them all combined. And yet I do not scruple to affirm that not only has there been less dishonesty and maladministration in the sixteen years of Republican rule proportionally to the numbers and wealth of the people than in the first sixteen years after the inauguration of Was.h.i.+ngton, but there has been less absolutely of those things.

"Now, Mr. Speaker, I do not wish to be misunderstood. I do not wish to be misrepresented in this matter. Let no man a.s.sert that I refer to the evils of those days as either excuse or palliation for the evils of ours. That generation was a frugal and honest generation in the main, and they would have visited with the swiftest condemnation and punishment, every breach of public trust, whether through dishonesty or usurpation. But they did not send to England for Benedict Arnold. They did not restore the Tories to power. They did not go down on their knees to George III. and ask him to take them back into favor. They believed that if the Const.i.tution could not be administered honestly by a majority of the friends of the Const.i.tution, it could not be administered honestly by a majority of its enemies; that if liberty were not safe and pure in the hands of those who loved her, then liberty was a failure upon the earth, and they did not think of intrusting her to the hands of those who hated her. So in this generation, had they lived to-day, they would have done simply what a distinguished president of the convention in my own State, whom the gentleman quotes, recommended; they would have taken the Government from the hands of the lovers of liberty who are dishonest and put it into the hands of men who entertain the same sentiments but who are honest. It never would have occurred to them that because among one hundred thousand men there are found some few who will not keep the eighth commandment, 'Thou shalt not steal,' which is a mandate for all the public service, they should put in power men who have no regard for the sixth, 'Thou shalt not kill.'"

There were several conspicuous instances of corruption with which I had personally to deal.

1. One was the Credit Mobilier.

Two Committees were appointed to investigate the affairs of the Union Pacific Railroad Company, and the Credit Mobilier of America. One Committee investigated the conduct of some members of the two Houses of Congress against whom some charges had been made. Of that Committee Judge Poland of Vermont was the Chairman. The other Committee investigated the history of the Union Pacific Railroad Company to report whether its charter had been forfeited. Of that Committee Jeremiah M.

Wilson of Indiana, a very able lawyer and accomplished gentleman, was Chairman. The next member to him on the Committee was Judge Sh.e.l.labarger of Ohio. Owing to reasons, stated later, it fell to me as the next in rank to conduct the greater part of the examination, and to make the report.

2. Another was the impeachment and trial of General William W. Belknap, Secretary of War, for receiving a bribe for the appointment of a Post Trader.

3. A third example of the prevalent laxity of morals that occurred was the case of the Sanborn contracts. I was a member of the House when they were investigated, but took no special part in the proceedings.