ishment. It required no considerable knowledge of the practical affairs of government to make apparent the utter impossibility of the achievement which he so confidently and emphatically declared to be attainable. When those words were spoken by the great New York editor, William Pitt Fessenden, the successor of Salmon P. Chase, had charge of the Treasury portfolio of the government. He was succeeded in that position by Hugh McCullough, a man of transcendent ability and thoroughly familiar with the subject of national finance. And through all the administration of Andrew Johnson, the eight years of General Grant, and a portion of the administration of R. B. Hayes, from 1865 to 1879, fifteen years in all, the government struggled constantly, under the leadership of our greatest financiers, to reach the goal which Mr. Greeley, with vehemence, declared could be attained in thirty days. The resumption of specie payment was reached during the administration of President Hayes, with that masterful financier and statesman-Hon. John Sherman-as Secretary of the Treasury. And that achievement, fifteen years after the close of the war, caused Mr. Sherman to be regarded as one of the ablest financiers in the world and came very near placing him in the presidential chair. But that magnificent achievement seemed to Mr. Greeley, even when the war was still in progress, as a work to be accomplished in thirty days. He had no patience with those who were engaged in making necessary preparation for resumption. He could not wait for the government to accumulate sufficient gold to make possible the redemption of its paper money. As in 1861, while the country was without an army that could safely advance against the Confederate forces, Mr. Greeley imperatively demanded an immediate forward movement, so in 1865 he insisted that the government should make even exchange of specie for paper money when there was no specie with which to make that exchange. It was not difficult for Mr. Lincoln patiently to bear with Mr. Greeley and give his opinions the consideration which was due; but coupled with the defects in Mr. Greeley's intellect was an imperious dominating spirit that caused the President not only serious embarrassment but excruciating pain. He was unwilling to share with others the privilege of conference with the President, but insisted upon being his only counsellor respecting many important matters relative to which he had but limited information. He was like the boy who, while riding horseback with his brother, with petulance exclaimed: "If one of us would get off there would be more room for me.” Additional light upon the characteristics of Mr. Greeley which caused President Lincoln so much needless embarrassment and suffering is found in the following statement in the autobiography of Dr. Andrew D. White. In writing of Mr. Greeley as a member of the New York Constitutional Convention in 1867, Dr. White says: "Mr. Greeley was at first all-powerful. . . . For a few days he had everything his own way. But he soon proved to be so erratic a leader that his influence was completely lost, and after a few sessions there was hardly any member with less real power to influence the judgments of his colleagues." Dr. White tells of Mr. Greeley's imperious, dictatorial bearing toward other members of the convention, and of his profane denunciations of some who voted contrary to his wishes. Not content with his opportunities to complain and grumble in the convention he filled the columns of the Tribune with his harmful criticisms until, as Dr. White says, "The convention became thoroughly though unjustly discredited throughout the state and indeed throughout the country." Mr. Greeley finally came to approve the work of the convention and sought by strong editorials in the Tribune to secure its adoption by the people, "but it was all in vain. The unfavorable impression had been too widely and too deeply made, and the result was that the new Constitution when submitted to the people was ignominiously voted down and the whole summer's work of the Convention went for nothing." 99 14 The following is Mr. Greeley's own testimony concerning the matters herein referred to: "It is quite probable that, had a popular election been held at any time during the year following the Fourth of July, 1862, on the question of continuing the war or arresting it on the best attainable terms, a majority would have voted for peace; while it is highly probable that a still larger majority would have voted against emancipation. From an early hour of the struggle the public mind slowly and steadily gravitated toward the conclusion that the Rebellion was vulnerable only or mainly through slavery; but that conclusion was scarcely reached by a majority before the occurrence of the New York riots, in July, 1863. The President, though widely reproached with tardiness and reluctance in taking up the gauge plainly thrown down by the Slave Power, was probably ahead of the majority of the people of the loyal states in definitely accepting the issue of Emancipation or Disunion. Having taken a long step in the right direction, he never retracted nor seemed to regret it; though he sometimes observed that the beneficial results of the Emancipation policy were neither so signal nor so promptly realized as its sanguine promoters had anticipated." 15 It is unfortunate that it required the tragic death of the great and good President, the lapse of time, and the lessons of many years to cause Mr. Greeley to realize the marvelous wisdom and statesmanship of the man to whose lips, while living, he so constantly held the cup of bitterness. It seems a poor atonement for Mr. Greeley's sins of caustic criticism thus to place a wreath upon the martyr's brow. But what more at that late day could he do? The great lesson taught by what I have here recorded is to avoid the evils by which the life of one of our greatest men was so seriously marred. It is quite certain that the infelicity with which the life 14 Autobiography of Andrew D. White, Vol. I., pp. 142-146. of President Lincoln was embittered has wrought a great and beneficent reform in our country. When the great heart which those infelicities pierced with poignant pain suddenly ceased to beat, the pages of history became luminous and in that light the great worth of Abraham Lincoln was seen, and the cruelties inflicted upon him sought in vain to hide from the displeasure of humanity. The indignities which marred the pages of the London Punch suddenly became vocal with the wail of sorrow which Tom Taylor, in his anguish, gave to the world in plaintive poetry. And in our own land the hearts which were unrelenting while Mr. Lincoln lived, softened to gentleness when he died, and the harsh and rasping voices of criticism mellowed in eulogy and praise. When "the Lord turned and looked upon Peter," the disciple who had thrice denied his Lord "went out and wept bitterly." And into that same seclusion of sorrowful regret there fled a multitude of the unreasonable and unreasoning fanatics who, prompted by Satanic influences, piled maledictions instead of merited commendation and praise upon the Lord's chosen chieftain of the nation. And from that valley of humiliation, where causeless criticism of the great and good President appeared in all its hideous hatefulness, the nation has ascended to a height of beatific vision of the rights of rulers and the obligations of those who have chosen them to authority. T VII WADE-DAVIS MANIFESTO HE revolt against President Lincoln which was of all such demonstrations the most painful to him and the most dangerous to the Union cause was what is known in history as "The Wade-Davis Manifesto." The leader in that revolt was Hon. Henry Winter Davis, a member of Congress from Maryland from 1855 to 1861, and from 1863 until his death on December 30th, 1865. Mr. Davis was an exceptionally strong personality—a man of great intellectual force, of wide range of scholarship, and intensely and unyieldingly purposeful in all his relations to public matters. High spirited and of violent temper, he was imperious in bearing, and being one of the most gifted and accomplished orators in Congress, and a republican from a slave state, he exerted a very great influence in Congress. His aggressive nature swept him along into extremes in opinion and in speech. It would have been unlike Mr. Davis to characterize any man or measure as unwise. That would have been a term too weak to express his haughty disdain of any matter of which he did not heartily approve. The heroic warfare which he waged against slavery and secession was of that extreme denunciatory character which developed and strengthened the distinctive and dominant characteristics of his nature. Therefore, when he had occasion to differ from the President, his opposition was expressed in severe denunciation which unfortunately was carried to such extremes as greatly to annoy Mr. Lincoln and embarrass the administration. |