[Speech in the House of Representatives, February 12, 1867.]
I cannot forget that we have learned slowly.... I cannot forget that less than five years ago I received an order from my superior officer commanding me to search my camp for a fugitive slave, and if found, to deliver him up to a Kentucky captain who claimed him as his property; and I had the honor to be perhaps the first officer in the army who peremptorily refused to obey such an order. We were then trying to save the Union without hurting slavery.... It took us two years to reach a point where we were willing to do the most meagre justice to the black man, and to recognize the truth that
"A man's a man for a' that!"
Sir, the hand of God has been visible in this work, leading us by degrees out of the blindness of our prejudices, to see that the fortunes of the Republic and the safety of the party of liberty are inseparably bound up with the rights of the black man. At last our party must see that if it would preserve its political life, or maintain the safety of the Republic, we must do justice to the humblest man in the Nation, whether black or white. I thank God that to-day we have struck the rock; we have planted our feet upon solid earth. Streams of light will gleam out from the luminous truth embodied in the legislation of this day. This is the ne plus ultra of reconstruction, and I hope we shall have the courage to go before our people everywhere with "This or nothing" for our motto.
Now, sir, as a temporary measure, I give my support to this military bill properly restricted. It is severe. It was written with a steel pen made out of a bayonet; and bayonets have done us good service hitherto. All I ask is that Congress shall place civil governments before these people of the rebel States, and a cordon of bayonets behind them.
Now, what does this bill propose? It lays the hands of the Nation upon the rebel State governments, and takes the breath of life out of them. It puts the bayonet at the breast of every rebel murderer in the South to bring him to justice. It commands the army to protect the life and property of citizens whether black or white. It places in the hands of Congress absolutely and irrevocably the whole work of reconstruction.
With this thunderbolt in our hands shall we stagger like idiots under its weight? Have we grasped a weapon which we have neither the courage nor the wisdom to wield?
WILLIAM H. SEWARD.[D]
When in Europe in 1867, my attention was particularly drawn to the significant fact that the pictures of Lincoln and Seward were the only portraits of American statesmen that were notably prominent, and that these were everywhere seen together. I asked a Frenchman of distinction why Seward was held in such high estimation; and his answer most seriously impressed me with the thought that perhaps, after all the slanders of his detractors, Mr. Seward had builded for the future more wisely than we knew. This gentleman said: "Mr. Seward is the American statesman who looms up the most prominently from over the water. His diplomacy in Mexico has placed the imprint of greatness upon his name. Halting for a moment in the midst of the turmoil of the civil war, with his pen he dismembered the coalition organized to place Maximilian upon the Mexican throne, and thus placed the first mine under the throne of the Third Bonaparte. He has undertaken what the combined powers of Europe have not ventured to essay—to break the sceptre of the Second Empire." The views entertained by this distinguished Frenchman seem also to have been held in Mexico, for upon the occasion of the death of Mr. Seward, the press of that country all made the most grateful mention of his services in that regard.
The enthusiasm of this Frenchman, continued General Garfield, had not perished from my memory later when public duties called me to the State Department. The Alaska treaty had just been signed. I found the Sage of Auburn alone, in the thoughtful mood so common to him when meditating upon great subjects. Our conversation fell upon himself, and I found that he had been meditating upon his withdrawal from public life. He had been eight years in the second highest place in this Nation. He had almost had the Presidency within his grasp; but the displeasure of his party had fallen upon him, and he was about to retire from the political arena. He told me that power was sweet to him; that he clung even then fondly to its shadow; and that he relinquished his sceptre with regret. His exact language, in speaking of his past career was: "It is unpleasant to yield up power." The conversation turned upon Alaska. The Secretary fell into the dream-like attitude that was never seen except by those who were familiar with him, and commenced to explain his theory of the Alaska purchase in forcible, prophetic, almost pathetic words which I never shall forget. I left the room then with grander ideas of the man than I had ever entertained before. His conversation indicated that he had been following a particular course of study, for he remarked that, to his notion, the two greatest books of the century were Marsh's "Man in Nature," and the Duke of Argyll's "Reign of Law." The application of Argyll's theory of law as applied to political development, Mr. Seward had evidently studied with much care. He had been reasoning upon natural laws as they affect a nation. He had been speculating upon the elementary forces of a nation's grandeur, and upon the contrivance in combining them to make them operate in a direction desired. This theory was founded upon the possibility of tracing these forces in history, and of discovering the operation of these laws under conditions which had actually determined the course of mankind and nations in definite directions. The text of his theory was the history of the world's seas. History had taught him that the grandest achievements of man had been associated with the shores of the world's seas. To go back no further than the beginning of the Christian era, the most sacred, solemn story of the hopes of man had been written in wanderings on the banks of the Sea of Galilee. With the progress of Christian civilization, thus sea-born, the advancing tide of human progress was staid by the banks of the Mediterranean. It was along the borders of this sea that the Byzantine Empire flourished and was destroyed; that Rome attained her supremacy, and fell. With the progress of time, and the advance of civilization westward, the Atlantic took the place of the Galilean Sea and of the Mediterranean. It is the sea of the present. But unless the laws of political geography are false, the contests of the future are to be around the shores of the "still sea," now our own Pacific. The nation of the future is the nation that holds the key of those waters. The purchase of Alaska has given our Republic a foothold on both sides of that sea. It is a geographical impossibility that any other nation can occupy a position in its own territory upon both sides of the Pacific. This is the theory of the purchase. It secures the control of the Pacific to the young Republic. It assures the future of the world's dominion to Yankee civilization. This was the theory.
And his outlook, said General Garfield, with enthusiasm, was grand. In his political horoscope, he saw the Republic enjoying a prosperity of which the annals of human affairs had furnished no example; he saw our country rising to the place of umpire among the world's powers; he saw how, by wise statesmanship, our material prosperity and peaceful conquests grew together; how our increasing commerce made us mistress of the seas; how Western civilization and Oriental decrepitude were staid upon the borders of that Pacific sea, and compelled to render homage to Young America, who had become the keeper of the world's keys.
These were the grand thoughts of Mr. Seward as he was about to relinquish the mantle of his power, and, continued General Garfield, his views have left a lasting impression upon me. Mr. Seward could not have died more successfully than he did. He passed away in the lull between two elections, and received the merited eulogiums of both parties. He bore success followed by failure better than any American I know. He was for nearly a decade next to the source of power, and missed the place which was the goal of his later years, retiring from public life suffering the displeasure of his party. But he quietly retired to private life, and never lost his genial spirit or his noble ways.
[This report of the conversation is indorsed by General Garfield as "in the main correct."
J. C]
[Speech on the Currency Question, 1868.]
As a medium of exchange, money is to all business transactions what ships are to the transportation of merchandise. If a hundred vessels, of a given tonnage, are just sufficient to carry all the commodities between two ports, any increase of the number of vessels will correspondingly decrease the value of each as an instrument of commerce; any decrease below one hundred will correspondingly increase the value of each. If the number be doubled, each will carry but half its usual freight, will be worth but half its former value for that trade. There is so much work to be done, and no more. A hundred vessels can do it all. A thousand can do no more than all.
When the money of the country is gold and silver, it adapts itself to the fluctuations of business without the aid of legislation. If at any time we have more than is needed, the surplus flows off to other countries through the channels of international commerce. If less, the deficiency is supplied through the same channels. Thus the monetary equilibrium is maintained. So immense is the trade of the world, that the golden streams pouring from California and Australia into the specie circulation are soon absorbed in the great mass, and equalized throughout the world, as the waters of all the rivers are spread upon the surface of all the seas.
Not so, however, with an inconvertible paper currency. Excepting the specie used in payment of customs and the interest on our public debt, we are cut off from the money currents of the world. Our currency resembles rather the waters of an artificial lake, which lie in stagnation or rise to full banks at the caprice of the gate-keeper.