CHAPTER XXIV. RESTORATION OF THE UNION.
The Southern States had again returned to their allegiance, and in the third session of the Forty-first Congress every State in the Union was represented. Vice-President Colfax presided over sixty- one Republican and thirteen Democratic Senators, and Speaker Blaine over one hundred and seventy-two Republican and seventy-one Democratic Representatives. The Republican party had preserved the Union, conquered peace, and was at the height of its power. The "carpet- baggers" from the South were gradually being replaced by ante-bellum politicians and "Southern brigadiers." Many Northern men regretted that the North had not sent more of its heroes to Congress, feeling that men who had honorably faced each other on hard-fought battle- fields would have a mutual respect and a mutual desire to co-operate together for the national welfare.
It soon became evident, however, that the Southern Democrats were about to exercise an important influence in national politics, that they possessed in common some very clearly defined purposes, and that they were not likely to permit their allegiance to their party to interfere with their efforts to obtain what they called "justice for the South." They went in without reserve for the old flag, but they also went in for an appropriation—in fact, several appropriations. They honestly thought that they were only asking simple justice in demanding that the Government should spend nearly as much for the development of their material resources as it did for the suppression of the Rebellion. All their cherished ideas of State Rights vanished when money was to be expended at the South, and the honesty of their intentions made their influence far more to be dreaded than that of adepts in legislative corruption, who are always distrusted.
The number of Southern Representatives was greatly increased by that change in the Constitution which abolished the fractional representation of colored people and made all men equal. It soon became evident, too, that the whites were determined, by a well- disciplined legion, known as the Ku-Klux Klan, whose members pretended to be the ghosts of the Confederate dead, to intimidate the colored voters, and intimidation was often supplemented by violence and murder. The grossest outrages by this secret body went unpunished and Congress finally passed a law which enabled the President to eradicate the evil.
The "Joint High Commission," for the adjustment of all causes of difference between the United States and Great Britain, including the depredations of Rebel cruisers fitted out in British ports and the disputed fisheries in North American waters, assembled in Washington in the spring of 1871. The "High Joints," as they were familiarly termed, took the furnished house of Mr. Philp, on Franklin Square, where they gave a series of dinner-parties, with several evening entertainments. In return numerous entertainments were given to them, including a banquet by the leading Freemasons in Washington, some of them members of Congress, to the Earl De Gray (then Grand Master of Masons in England), and Lord Tenterden, who was also a prominent member of the fraternity.
There are good reasons for believing that the British were induced to gracefully make the concessions involved in the Alabama treaty by the knowledge that General Grant had taken into consideration the expediency of seizing Canada as a compensation for damages inflicted upon the United States ships by Confederate cruisers fitted out in English ports. This was a favorite idea of General John A. Rawlins, who was the brain of General Grant's staff and his Secretary of War until death removed him. General Rawlins was in full accord with the hope that Stephen A. Douglas's aspirations for an ocean-bound Republic might be realized, and it was understood that he was warmly seconded by General Pryor, of Virginia, ex- Lieutenant Governor Reynolds, of Missouri, and others.
The treaty was indirectly opposed by Monsieur de Catacazy, the Minister Plenipotentiary of the Emperor of Russia to the United States, who endeavored to prejudice Senators against its ratification, and inspired the correspondent of a New York paper to write against it. This prompted Secretary Fish to request the Minister's recall, and there was also much scandal circulated by Madame de Catacazy, a beautiful woman, who had been at Washington—so the gossips say —fifteen years before, when she had eloped from her husband under the protection of Monsieur de Catacazy, then Secretary of the Russian Legation. The Emperor of Russia, on receiving complaint against his Envoy, directed the Minister of Foreign Affairs to ask in his name that the President "would tolerate Monsieur de Catacazy until the coming visit of his third son, the Grand Duke Alexis, was concluded." To this personal appeal General Grant assented.
The Grand Duke soon afterward arrived at Washington, and was welcomed at the Russian Legation by Madame de Catacazy, who wore a dress of gold-colored silk, with a flowing train, elaborately trimmed with gold-colored satin. On her right arm she wore a double bracelet, one band being on the wrist and the other above the elbow, the two joined together by elaborately wrought chains. Her other ornaments were of plain gold, and above them was a wealth of golden hair. As the Grand Duke entered the Legation, Madame de Catacazy carried a silver salver, on which was placed a round loaf of plain black bread, on the top of which was imbedded a golden salt-cellar. The Prince took the uninviting loaf, broke and tasted of it, in accordance with the old Russian custom.
The Grand Duke was cordially welcomed at the White House, but Monsieur de Catacazy was treated with studied coolness. It was openly intimated that there was a little Frenchwoman at Washington, young, sprightly, and accomplished, who had won the way into the Catacazy's household through the sympathies of its handsome mistress. She was made a companion of, advised with, and intrusted with whatever the house or Legation contained, confidential and otherwise. All the public or private letters, papers, and despatches passed under they eyes of this bright little woman, all that was said went into her sharp ears, and every day she made a written report of what she had heard and seen, which was privately sent to the Department of State, and for which she was handsomely remunerated from the Secret Service Fund.
Charles Sumner purchased (before it was completed) an elegant dwelling-house between the Arlington Hotel and Lafayette Square, but when he occupied it at the commencement of the next session, he was alone. The energetic reporters at once began to intimate that the Senator's marriage had not been a happy one, and from that time until the great Senator passed over the dark river this painful subject was, as it were, a base of supplies from which a great variety of theories were drawn and sustained. One was sure that the attentions of a diplomat had troubled the Senator, another declared that he was too arrogant, another that he was too exacting —in short, there was not an editorial paragraphist who did not sooner or later give a conjectural solution of Mr. Sumner's domestic infelicity. They were divorced, and he lived alone for several years in his sumptuous house, which he adorned with superb works of art. Here he hospitably entertained personal friends and distinguished strangers. Unforgiving and implacable, his smile grew sadder, the furrows on his face deepened, and he lost his former bonhomie. He was a Prometheus Vinctus, bound to the desolate rock of a wrecked life, but heroically refraining from revenging his great wrong by attacking a woman.
General Grant's difficulty with Mr. Sumner began when the President did not consult the Senator about the formation of his Cabinet. The breach was gradually widened, and thorough it the Senator finally became completely estranged from his old friend and associate in the Senate, Secretary Fish. When Mr. Motley was removed from the English mission, Mr. Sumner insisted upon regarding it as a personal insult, which he sought to repay by opposition to the acquisition of San Domingo. General Grant endeavored to appease the offended Senator, and on the evening of the day on which the San Domingo treaty was to be sent to the Senate he called at Mr. Sumner's house. General Grant found the Senator at his dinner- table with Colonel Forney and the writer, and was invited to take a seat with them. After some preliminary conversation, General Grant began to talk about San Domingo, but he did not have the treaty or any memorandum of it with him. He dwelt especially upon the expenditures of General Babcock at San Domingo of a large sum taken from the secret service fund for promoting intercourse with the West India Islands, which Mr. Seward, when Secretary of State, had prevailed on Representative Thad Stevens to have inserted in an appropriation bill during the war. The President impressed Mr. Sumner with the idea that he looked for an attack in Congress on the manner in which much of that money had been spent. Mr. Sumner unquestionably thought that General Grant had come to enlist his services in defending the expenditure by General Babcock of one hundred thousand dollars in cash, and fifty thousand dollars for a light battery purchased at New York. The President meant, as Colonel Forney and the writer thought, the treaty for the acquisition of the Dominican Republic. The President and the Senator misunderstood each other. After awhile General Grant promised to send General Babcock to the Senator the next day with copies of the papers, and then left. While escorting the President to the door, Mr. Sumner assured him that he was a Republican and a supporter of the Republican Administration, and that he should sustain the Administration in this case if he possibly could, after he had examined the papers. He meant the expenditure of General Babcock, but the President meant the treaty.
The next morning General Babcock called on Senator Sumner with a copy of the treaty, which he began to read, but he had not gotten beyond the preamble, in which Babcock was styled "aid-de-camp of His Excellency General Ulysses S. Grant," before Mr. Sumner showed signs of disapprobation. When General Babcock proceeded and read the stipulation that "His Excellency General Grant, President of the United States, promises perfectly to use all his influence in order that the idea of annexing the Dominican Republic to the United States may acquire such a degree of popularity among the members of Congress as will be necessary for its accomplishment," Senator Sumner became the enemy of the whole scheme. He did not believe that the President of the United States should be made a lobbyist to bring about annexation by Congress. Some of Mr. Sumner's friends used to tell him that he should have gone at once to General Grant and have told him of his purpose to oppose the treaty, and that he had declared his hostility to it to General Babcock in unmistakable terms.
This was the time when well-meaning friends of both of these great men might have secured satisfactory mutual explanation, although no living power could have made Senator Sumner a supporter of the acquisition of the port of Samana in San Domingo. In the Senate sycophants who "carried water on both shoulders," and men who always delight in fomenting quarrels, embittered Mr. Sumner against the President. One had served his country well in the camp, while the other had performed equally valuable services in the Senate; one was a statesman, the other was a soldier. What did not appear to be wrong to the General, the Senator regarded as criminal. Conscious of the value of his services in saving the Union, General Grant accepted with gratitude the voluntary offerings of grateful citizens; but Senator Sumner, who had seen so much of political life and of politicians, knew too well that those who make gifts to public men expect favors in return, and that every public man should be inflexibly opposed to the reception of presents. Remarks by him about the President, and remarks by the President about him were carried to and fro by mischief-makers, like the shuttle of a loom, and Mr. Sumner directly found himself placed at the head of a clique of disappointed Republicans, who were determined to prevent, if possible, the re-election of General Grant to the Presidency.
Henry Wilson, when Vice-President of the United States, endeavored to restore harmony, and said, in a letter to General Grant: "Your Administration is menaced by great opposition, and it must needs possess a unity among the people and in Congress. The head of a great party, the President of the United States has much to forget and forgive, but he can afford to be magnanimous and forgiving. I want to see the President and Congress in harmony and the Republican party united and victorious. To accomplish this, we must all be just, charitable, and forgiving."
[Facsimile] SchuylerColfax SCHUYLER COLFAX was born at New York City March 23d, 1823; was a Representative from Indiana, 1855-1869, serving as Speaker of the House of Representatives six years; was elected Vice-President of the United States on the ticket with General Grant, serving 1869- 1873, and died at Mankato, Minnesota, January 13th, 1885.