Autobiography of Seventy Years Part 46

Almost immediately after I entered the Senate the case came up of the t.i.tle of William Pitt Kellogg to a seat in the Senate from Louisiana.

In January, 1877, a Republican Legislature was organized in Louisiana, which recognized Mr. Packard as the lawful Governor of the State. Packard had been elected, according to the claim of the Republicans, at the same election at which the Republican electors, who cast their votes for President Hayes, had been chosen. That Legislature elected Kellogg. When President Hayes refused to continue his support of the Republican government in Louisiana by military force, the Democrats organized the Legislature, a Democratic Governor took possession of power, and the Republican State Legislature melted away. It had done little or nothing, except to elect Mr. Kellogg.

Under these circ.u.mstances, the Democrats on the Committee on Privileges and Elections, and in the Senate, claimed that the recognition of the Democratic Governor had an ex post facto operation which determined the t.i.tle and right of the Legislature who undertook to elect Mr. Spofford, Mr. Kellogg's compet.i.tor. The Republicans, on the other hand, claimed that nothing which occurred afterward could operate to determine the question of the lawfulness of the Kellogg Legislature, or its power to elect a Senator. That must be settled by the law and the fact. Upon these we thought Kellogg's t.i.tle to be clear. Kellogg was seated. But when the Democrats got a majority, two years later, the Committee on Privileges and Elections, under the lead of Benjamin H. Hill of Georgia, undertook to set aside this judgment, and to seat Mr. Spofford.

Mr. Hill made a long and, it is unnecessary to say, an able report, setting forth the view taken by himself and by the majority of the Committee, and recommended the admission of Mr. Spofford. I advised the Republican minority to decline to follow the Democrats into the discussion of the evidence, and to put the case alone and squarely on the authority of the previous judgment of the Senate. This I did in the following report:

The undersigned, a minority of the Committee on Privileges and Elections, to whom was referred the memorial of Henry M. Spofford, claiming the seat now occupied by William Pitt Kellogg, submit the following as their views:

On the 30th day of November, 1877, the Senate pa.s.sed the following resolutions.

_"Resolved,_ That William Pitt Kellogg is, upon the merits of the case, ent.i.tled to a seat in the Senate of the United States from the State of Louisiana for the term of six years, commencing on the 4th of March, 1877, and that he be admitted thereto on taking the proper oath.

_"Resolved,_ That Henry M. Spofford is not ent.i.tled to a seat in the Senate of the United States."

The party majority in the Senate has changed since Mr. Kellogg took the oath of office in pursuance of the above resolution.

Nothing else has changed. The facts which the Senate considered and determined were in existence then, as now. It is sought, by a mere superiority of numbers, for the first time, to thrust a Senator from the seat which he holds by virtue of the express and deliberate final judgment of the Senate.

The act which is demanded of this party majority would be, in our judgment, a great public crime. It will be, if consummated, one of the great political crimes in American history, to be cla.s.sed with the Rebellion, with the attempt to take possession by fraud of the State Government of Maine, and with the overthrow of State Governments in the South, of which it is the fitting sequence. Political parties have too often been led by partisan zeal into measures which a sober judgment might disapprove; but they have ever respected the const.i.tution of the Senate.

The men whose professions of returning loyalty to the Const.i.tution have been trusted by the generous confidence of the American people are now to give evidence of the sincerity of their vows. The people will thoroughly understand this matter, and will not likely to be deceived again.

We do not think proper to enter here upon a discussion of the evidence by which the claimant of Mr. Kellogg's seat seeks to establish charges affecting the integrity of that Senator. Such evidence can be found in abundance in the slums of great cities. It is not fit to be trusted in cases affecting the smallest amount of property, much less the honor of an eminent citizen, or the t.i.tle to an object of so much desire as a seat in the Senate. This evidence is not only unworthy of respect or credit, but it is in many instances wholly irreconcilable with undisputed facts, and Mr. Kellogg has met and overthrown it at every point.

GEORGE F. h.o.a.r, ANGUS CAMERON, JOHN A. LOGAN.

The Democratic majority presented their report, without asking to have it read. Then we of the minority presented ours, and had it read. It attracted the attention of the Senate and of the country. My report contains but a few sentences.

That of the Democratic minority occupies eight columns of very fine print in the Congressional Record. The result was that some of the Southern Democrats, including Mr. Bayard of Delaware, General Gordon of Georgia, General Wade Hampton of South Carolina, and Mr. Pendleton, of Ohio, refused to support their a.s.sociates in the extreme measure of unseating a Senator when nothing had happened to affect the judgment which seated him, except that the majority of the Senate had changed. Some of the Democratic gentlemen, however, while resting upon the old judgment of the Senate, and while refusing to set that aside, thought the Democratic charges made out on the evidence, and that Mr. Kellogg's conduct and character deserved the severest denunciation. Senator Pendleton, of Ohio, however, with a courage and manliness that did him infinite credit, after stating what his Democratic brethren said: "I am bound to say that I have read the evidence carefully, and there is nothing in it that in the least warrants any imputation upon the integrity of that Senator."

In speaking of my Committee service, perhaps I ought to say that I was appointed one of the Regents of the Smithsonian Inst.i.tution in the year 1881. I liked the position exceedingly.

I was very much interested in the work of the Inst.i.tution, and enjoyed meeting the eminent scholars and men of science who were its members. After I had been a member a year or two a very eminent Republican Senator complained that I was getting more than my share of the prominent places in the gift of the Senate, and specified the Regency of the Smithsonian Inst.i.tution as an instance. I thought there was great justice in the complaint, and accordingly I resigned and Justin S.

Morrill was put in my place. It was a very fortunate thing.

Mr. Morrill's influence secured the construction of the National Museum building, which I do not think it likely that I could have accomplished. That Museum was then in charge of the Secretary of the Smithsonian Inst.i.tution.

A somewhat similar thing happened to me later. In the year 1885 the Nominating Committee of the Senate, of which Senator Allison was then Chairman, proposed my name for the Committee on Foreign Relations. I should have liked that service very much. I should have liked to study the history of our diplomacy, and the National interests specially in charge of that Committee, better than anything else I can think of. But I was then a member of the Committees on the Judiciary, Privileges and Elections, Library, Patents and the Select Committee to Inquire into the Claims of Citizens of the United States against Nicaragua, no one of which I desired to give up. On the other hand, Senator Frye of Maine, a very able Senator to whom the Republicans of Ma.s.sachusetts were under special obligations for his services in their campaigns, was not at that time placed in positions on Committee service such as his ability and merit ent.i.tled him to. Accordingly I told the Committee I thought they had better amend their report and put Mr. Frye on the Committee on Foreign Relations instead of myself. That was done.

I incline to think that if that had not been done, and I had remained on the Committee for Foreign Relations, that I could have defeated the Spanish Treaty, prevented the destruction of the Republic in the Philippine Islands, and the commitment of this country to the doctrine that we can govern dependencies under our Const.i.tution, in which the people have no political or Const.i.tutional rights but such as Congress choose to recognize.

I am not sure that modesty or disinterestedness has much place in the matter of the acceptance of high political office.

We often hear a gentleman say: "I am not fit to be Judge; I am not fit to be Governor, or Senator, or member of Congress.

I think other men are better qualified, and I will not consent to stand in their way." This is often said with the utmost sincerity. But anybody who acts on such a feeling ought to remember that if he accept the office, it will not be filled by a worse man than he; if he accept the office, it being a political office, he is sure that the office will be filled by a man who will desire to accomplish, and will do his best to accomplish, the things he thinks for the public good. He should also remember, so far as the matter of ability is concerned, that other men are likely to be much better judges of his capacity than he is himself. If men are likely often to overrate their own capacity, they are also very often likely to underrate it.

Let me not be understood as commending the miserable self- seeking which too often leads men to urge their own claims without regard to the public interests. A man who is his own candidate is commonly a very bad candidate for his party.

One vote, more than once, would have saved the country from what I think its wretched policy in regard to the Philippine Islands. There was just one vote to spare when the Spanish Treaty was ratified. One Senator waited before voting until the roll-call was over and the list of the votes read by the clerk, before the finally voted for the treaty. He said he did not wish to b.u.t.t his head against the sentiment of his State if he could do no good; but if his vote would defeat it, he should vote against it. If there had been one less vote, his vote would have defeated it. The Treaty would have been lost, in my opinion, if Senator Gray, one of the Commissioners who made it, who earnestly protested against it, but afterward supported it, had not been a member of the Commission. The resolution of Mr. Bacon, declaring our purpose to recognize the independence of the Philippine people, if they desired it, was lost also by a single vote. The Philippine Treaty would have been lost but for Mr. Bryan's personal interposition in its behalf. It would have been defeated, in my judgment, if Speaker Reed, a man second in influence and in power in this country to President McKinley alone, had seen it to be his duty to remain in public life, and lead the fight against it.

So I think it is rarely safe for a man who is in political life for public, and not for personal ends, and who values the political principles which he professes, to decline any position of power, either from modesty, doubt of his own ability, or from a desire to be generous to other men.

My twenty years' service on the Committee on the Judiciary, so far as it is worth narrating, will appear in the account of the various legal and Const.i.tutional questions which it affected.

CHAPTER VIII THE RIVER AND HARBOR BILL

I have throughout my whole public political life acted upon my own judgment. I have done what I thought for the public interest without much troubling myself about public opinion.

I always took a good deal of pride in a saying of Roger Sherman's.

He was asked if he did not think some vote of his would be very much disapproved in Connecticut, to which he replied that he knew but one way to ascertain the public opinion of Connecticut; that was to ascertain what was right. When he had found that out, he was quite sure that it would meet the approval of Connecticut. That in general has been in my judgment absolutely and literally true of Ma.s.sachusetts. It has required no courage for any representative of hers to do what he thought was right. She is apt to select to speak for her, certainly those she sends to the United States Senate, in whose choice the whole Commonwealth has a part, men who are in general of the same way of thinking, and governed by the same principles as are the majority of her people. When she has chosen them she expects them to act according to their best judgement, and not to be thinking about popularity. She likes independence better than obsequiousness. The one thing the people of Ma.s.sachusetts will not forgive in a public servant is that he should act against his own honest judgment to please them. I am speaking of her sober, second thought. Her people, like the rest of mankind, are liable to waves of emotion and of prejudice.

This is true the world over. It is as true of good men as of bad men, of educated as of ignorant men, whenever they are to act in large ma.s.ses. Alexander Hamilton said that if every Athenian citizen had been a Socrates, still every Athenian a.s.sembly would have been a mob. So I claim no credit that I have voted and spoken as I thought, always without stopping to consider whether public opinion would support me.

The only serious temptation I have ever had in my public life came to me in the summer of 1882, when the measure known as the River and Harbor Bill was pending. The bill provided for an expenditure of about eighteen million dollars. Of this a little more than four million was for the execution of a scheme for the improvement of the Mississippi River and its tributaries, which had been recommended by President Arthur in a special message. All the other appropriations put together were a little less than fourteen million dollars. The bill pa.s.sed both Houses. President Arthur vetoed it, alleging as a reason that the measure was extravagant; that the public works provided for in it were of local interest, not for the advantage of international or interstate commerce; and that it had got through by a system of log-rolling, the friends of bad schemes in one State joining with the friends of bad schemes in another, making common cause to support the bill.

He added that in that way, the more objectionable the measure, the more support it would get. The press of the country, almost without exception, supported the President. The reasons which applied to each improvement were not well understood by the public. So the conductors of the newspapers naturally supposed the President to be in the right in his facts. The Democratic newspapers were eager to attack Republican measures.

Where there were factions in the Republican Party, the Republican papers of one faction were ready to attack the men who belonged to the other. The independent newspapers welcomed any opportunity to support their theory that American public life was rotten and corrupt. So when the question came up whether the bill should pa.s.s notwithstanding the objections of the President, there was a storm of indignation throughout the country against the men who supported it.

But the committees who had supported it and who had reported it, and who knew its merits, and the men who had voted for it in either House of Congress, could not well stultify themselves by changing their votes, although some of them did. I was situated very fortunately in that respect. I had been absent on a visit to Ma.s.sachusetts when the bill pa.s.sed. So I was not on record for it. I had given it no great attention.

The special duties which had been a.s.signed to me related to other subjects. So when the measure came up in the Senate I had only an opinion founded on my general knowledge of the needs of the country and the public policy, that it was all right. My reelection was coming on. I was to have a serious contest, if I were a candidate, with the supporters of General Butler, then very powerful in the State. He, in fact, was elected Governor in the election then approaching. My first thoughts were that I was fortunate to have escaped this rock.

But when the vote came on I said to myself: "This measure is right. Is my father's son to sneak home to Ma.s.sachusetts, having voted against a bill that is clearly righteous and just, because he is afraid of public sentiment?" Senator McMillan, the Chairman of the Committee who had charge of the bill, just before my name was called, asked me how I meant to vote.

I told him I should vote for the bill, because I believed it to be right, but that it would lose me the support of every newspaper in Ma.s.sachusetts that had been friendly to me before.

I voted accordingly. The vote was met by a storm of indignation from one end of Ma.s.sachusetts to the other, in which every Republican newspaper in the State, so far as I know, united.

The Springfield _Republican_ and the Boston _Herald,_ as will well be believed, were in glory. The conduct of no pick- pocket or bank robber could have been held up to public indignation and contempt in severer language than the supporters of that bill. A cla.s.smate of mine, an eminent man of letters, a gentleman of great personal worth, addressed a young ladies' school, or some similar body in Western Ma.s.sachusetts, on the subject of the decay of public virtue as exemplified by me. He declared that I had separated myself from the best elements in the State.

The measure was pa.s.sed over the President's veto. But it cost the Republican Party its majority in the House of Representatives.

A large number of the member of the House who had voted for it lost their seats. If the question of my reelection had come on within a few weeks thereafter, I doubt whether I should have got forty votes in the whole Legislature. If I had flinched or apologized, I should have been destroyed. But I stood to my guns. I wrote a letter to the people of Ma.s.sachusetts in which I took up case by case each provision of the bill, and showed how important it was for the interest of commerce between the States, or with foreign countries, and how well it justified the moderate expenditure. I pointed out that the bill had been, in proportion to the resources of the Government, less in amount than those John Quincy Adams and Daniel Webster had formerly advocated; that Mr. Webster, with the single exception of his service for preserving the Union, prided himself on his support of this policy of public improvement more than on anything else in his life, and had made more speeches on that subject than on any other. Mr. Adams claimed to be the author of the policy of internal improvements. So that it was a Ma.s.sachusetts policy, and a Ma.s.sachusetts doctrine.

I asked the people of Ma.s.sachusetts to consider whether they could reasonably expect to get their living by manufacture, to which nearly the whole State was devoted, bringing their raw material and their fuel and their iron and coal and cotton and wool from across the continent, and then carrying the manufactured article back again to be sold at the very places where the material came from, in compet.i.tion with States like Pennsylvania and New York and Ohio and Indiana, unless the cost of transportation was, so far as possible, annihilated.

I concluded by saying that I knew they would not come to my way of thinking that afternoon or that week, but that they were sure to come to it in the end. With very few exceptions the letter did not change the course of the newspapers, or of the leading men who had zealously committed themselves to another doctrine. But it convinced the people, and I believe it had a very great effect throughout the country, and was the means of saving the policy of internal improvements from destruction.

Mr. Clapp, of the Boston _Journal,_ with a manliness that did him infinite credit, declared publicly in its columns that he had been all wrong, and that I was right. The Worcester _Spy,_ edited by my dear friend and near kinsman, Evarts Greene, had with the rest of the press attacked my vote.

Mr. Greene himself was absent at the time, so the paper was then in charge of an a.s.sociate. When Mr. Greene returned I asked him to spend an afternoon at my house. That was before my letter came out. I had sent to Was.h.i.+ngton for all the engineers' reports and other doc.u.ments showing the necessity of every item of the bill. Mr. Greene made a careful study of the bill and agreed with me.

The Boston _Herald_ also obtained all the material from Was.h.i.+ngton and sent it to a very able gentleman who, though not taking any part in the ordinary conduct of the _Herald,_ was called upon for services requiring special ability and investigation.

They asked him to answer my letter. He spent five days in studying the matter, and then wrote to the managing editor of the paper than Mr. h.o.a.r was entirely right, and that he should not write the article desired. The _Herald,_ however, did not abandon its position. It kept up the war. But I ought to say it so far modified its action that it supported me for reelection the next winter.

The Springfield _Republican_ saw and seized its opportunity.

It attacked the River and Harbor Bill savagely. It said: "Mr. h.o.a.r is a candidate for reelection and has dealt himself a very severe blow. The Commonwealth was prepared to honor Messrs. c.r.a.po and h.o.a.r anew. To-day it pauses, frowns and reflects." So it kept up the attack. It had previously advocated the selection of Mr. c.r.a.po as candidate for Governor. It bitterly denounced me. Mr. c.r.a.po had himself voted for the River and Harbor Bill. It could not consistently maintain its bitter opposition to me, because of my vote, while supporting Mr. c.r.a.po. So it declared it could no longer support him.

When the State Convention came the feeling was still strong, though somewhat abated. I had been asked by the Committee, a good while before, to preside at the Convention. This I did. I was received rather coldly when I went forward. But I made no apologies. I began my speech by saying: "It gives me great pleasure to meet this a.s.sembly of the representatives of the Republicans of Ma.s.sachusetts. I have seen these faces before. They are faces into which I am neither afraid nor ashamed to look." The a.s.sembly hesitated a little between indignation at the tone of defiance, and approval of a man's standing by his convictions. The latter feeling predominated, and they broke out into applause. But the resolutions which the Committee reported contained a mild but veiled reproof of my action.

Mr. c.r.a.po was defeated in the Convention. I have no doubt he would have been nominated for Governor, but for his vote for the River and Harbor Bill. His successful compet.i.tor, Mr. Bishop, was a gentleman of great personal worth, highly esteemed throughout the Commonwealth, and of experience in State administration. But it was thought that his nomination had been secured by very active political management, concerted at the State House, and that the nomination did not fairly represent the desire of the people of the Commonwealth. Whatever truth there may have been in this, I am very sure that Mr.

c.r.a.po's defeat could not have been compa.s.sed but for his vote for the River and Harbor Bill. The result of the above feeling, however, was that the Republican campaign was conducted without much heart, and General Butler was elected Governor.

When the election of Senator came in the following winter, I was opposed by what remained of the feeling against the River and Harbor Bill. My princ.i.p.al Republican compet.i.tors were Mr. c.r.a.po, whose friends rightly thought he had been treated with great injustice; and Governor Long, a great public favorite, who had just ended a brilliant and most acceptable term of service as Governor. Governor Long had presided at a public meeting where President Arthur had been received during the summer, and had a.s.sured him that his action had the hearty approval and support of the people of the Commonwealth.

I had, of course, no right to find the least fault with the supporters of Governor Long. He would have been in every way a most acceptable and useful Senator. I ought to say that, as I understood it, he hardly a.s.sumed the att.i.tude of a candidate for the place, and declared in a public letter or speech that he thought I ought to be reelected. So, after a somewhat earnest struggle I was again chosen.

One curious incident happened during the election. The morning after the result was declared, a story appeared in the papers that Mr. c.r.a.po's supporters had been led to come over to me by the statement that one of them had received a telegram from him withdrawing his name, and advising that course. The correspondent of one of the papers called upon Mr. c.r.a.po, who answered him that he had never sent any such telegram to Boston. So it was alleged that somebody who favored me had brought about the result by this false statement. A newspaper correspondent called on me in Was.h.i.+ngton, and asked me about the story. I told him that I had not heard of the story, but that if it turned out to be true I, of course, would instantly decline the office. A full investigation was made of the matter, and it turned out that Mr. c.r.a.po had sent such a telegram to a member of the Legislature in New Bedford, who had taken it to Boston and made it known.

The next winter, at my suggestion, a resolution was pa.s.sed calling upon the Secretary of War, Mr. Lincoln, to specify which items in the River and Harbor Bill of the previous winter were not, in his opinion, advisable, or did not tend to promote international or interstate commerce. He replied specifying a very few items only, amounting altogether to a very few thousand dollars. This reply was made by the Secretary of War, as he told me in private afterward, by the express direction of the President, and after consultation with him. That ended the foolish outcry against the great policy of internal improvement, which has helped to make possible the marvels of our domestic commerce, one of the most wonderful creations of human history.

The statistics of its vast extent, greater now, I think, than all the foreign commerce of the world put together, from the nature of the case, never can be precisely ascertained. It is not only wonderful in its amount, but in its origin, its resources, and in its whole conduct. All its instrumentalities are American. It is American at both ends, and throughout all the way. This last year a bill providing for an expenditure of sixty millions, nearly four times the amount of that which President Arthur, and the newspapers that supported him, thought so extravagant, pa.s.sed Congress without a murmur of objection, and if I mistake not, without a dissenting vote.

I should like to put on record one instance of the generosity and affection of Mr. Dawes. He had not voted when his name was called, expecting to vote at the end of the roll-call.