CHAPTER III CABINET OF PRESIDENT HAYES
There has hardly been a stronger Cabinet since Washington than that of President Hayes. Its members worked together in great harmony. All of them, I believe, were thoroughly devoted to the success of the Administration.
The Secretary of State was William M. Evarts. He was my near kinsman and intimate friend. His father died in his early youth. My father was Mr. Evarts's executor, and the son, after his mother broke up housekeeping, came to my father's house in his college vacations as to a home. He studied law at the Harvard Law School, and with Daniel Lord, a very eminent lawyer in New York. One of his early triumphs was his opening of the celebrated Monroe-Edwards case. The eminent counsel to whom the duty had been assigned being prevented from attendance by some accident, Evarts was unexpectedly called upon to take his place. He opened the case with so much eloquence that the audience in the crowded court-room gave him three cheers when he got through.
He rose rapidly to a distinguished place in his profession, and before he died was, I suppose, the foremost advocate in the world, whether in his country or Europe. He was counsel for President Johnson on his impeachment, counsel for the Republican side in support of the title of President Hayes before the Electoral Commission; counsel for the United States against Great Britain before the Tribunal at Geneva. He was counsel in the celebrated Lemon case, where the case was settled as to the rights of slave owners to bring their slaves into the free States, and hold them in transitu. In all these he was successful. He was counsel also in another trial of almost equal interest and celebrity, the Tilton divorce suit— in which Henry Ward Beecher was charged with adultery. In this the jury disagreed. But the substantial victory was with Evarts's client.
Mr. Evarts was a man of unfailing equanimity and good nature, never thrown off his balance by any exigency in diplomacy, in political affairs, or in the trial of causes. Any person who has occasion to follow him in his diplomatic discussions will be impressed with the far-sighted wisdom and caution with which he took his positions.
He was always a delightful orator. He rose sometimes to a very lofty eloquence, as witness especially his argument in defence of President Johnson. He had an unfailing wit. You could never challenge him or provoke him to an encounter without making an abundant and sparkling stream gush forth. He never came off second best in an encounter of wits with any man. He was a man of great generosity, full of sympathy, charity, and kindliness. If his biography shall ever be properly written, it will be as delightful as that of Sheridan or Sidney Smith for its wit, and will be valuable for the narrative of the great public transactions in which he took a part. Especially it will preserve to posterity the portraiture of a great lawyer and advocate of the time before the days of specialists, when the leaders of the American Bar were great lawyers and advocates.
I do not think Evarts's capacity as a diplomatist is known. Perhaps it never will be thoroughly understood. The work of a Secretary of State in dealing with foreign countries is performed in the highest confidence and does not ordinary come to light until interest in the transaction to which it relates has grown cold. Evarts conducted some very delicate negotiations, including that in regard to the Fortune's Bay matter, with much skill. He was careful never, for the sake of present success, to commit the country to any doctrine which might be inconvenient in the remote future.
I think Evarts failed to appreciate his own political strength. He was in the early part of his life devoted to Mr. Webster, for whom he had great reverence, and later to Mr. Seward. He sometimes, I think, failed to take wholly serious views of political conditions, so far as they affected him personally. I do not think he ever knew the hold he had upon the respect of the country, or upon the affection of the men with whom he was brought into intimate association in public life, and at the Bar. He was very fond of his friends, classmates and kindred, and of his college.
After the defeat of the Republican Party in 1884 he was chosen Senator from the State of New York. He had been candidate for the Senate in 1861, to succeed Mr. Seward. His competitor was Horace Greeley. Some of Mr. Evarts's friends thought that the old supporters of Mr. Seward, and perhaps Mr. Seward himself, did not stand by him as the unfailing and powerful support of Seward would have led men to expect. But when he came into public life in 1885, and took his seat as a Senator from the great State of New York, men looked to him to be the great leader in restoring the broken ranks of the Republican Party. I think it would have been easy to make him the Republican candidate, and to elect him to the Presidency in 1888, if he had been willing to take that position himself. But he did not in the Senate, or in the counsels of the party, take or attempt to take the leadership for which he was fitted.
He was invited in the spring or early summer of 1885 to address a political club in Boston. The whole country listened eagerly to see what counsel the great Senator and the great Constitutional lawyer, and great orator, had to give to his party associates and to the people in that momentous time. But he contented himself with making a bright and witty speech. The club was known as the Middlesex Club, though it had its meetings in Boston. He gave a humorous description of the feelings of the Middlesex man when he went over to Boston, and those of the Boston man when he went over to Middlesex; and told one or two stories of his early days in Boston, where he was born. That was all. I felt as I listened as though a pail of ice- water had been poured down my spine.
But modesty and disinterestedness are qualities that are so infrequent among public men that we may well pardon this bright and delightful genius for that fault.
In the last years of his service in the Senate he had a very serious affliction of the eyes, which rendered it impossible for him to use them for reading or study, or to recognize by sight any but the most familiar human figures. He bore the calamity with unfailing cheerfulness. I believe it was caused by overwork in the preparation of a case. The first I knew of it, he asked me to meet him at Concord, where he was about to make a visit. He told me what had happened, and that his physicians in Washington and New York thought there was a possibility that they congestion of the veins surrounding the optic nerve might be absorbed. But they thought the case very doubtful, and advised him to go to Europe for the benefit of the journey, and for the possible advantage of advice there. He wanted me to undertake the duties devolving on him in the Committee of which he was Chairman, and to attend to some other public matters in his absence. His physician in Paris told him there was not the slightest hope. He thought that the darkness would certainly, though gradually, shut down upon him. He received this sentence with composure. But he said that he had long wished to see Raphael's famous Virgin at Dresden, and that he would go to Dresden to see it before the night set in. This he did. So the faces of the beautiful Virgin and the awful children were, I have no doubt, a great consolation to him in his darkened hours.
John Sherman was Secretary of the Treasury. I sat next to him in the Senate for several years. I came to know him quite intimately. I suppose few men knew him more intimately, although I fancy he did not give his inmost confidence to anybody, unless to his brother the General, or to a few persons of his own family or household. I paid the following tribute to him the day after his death:
"It is rarely more than once or twice in a generation that a great figure passes from the earth who seems the very embodiment of the character and temper of his time. Such men are not always those who have held the highest places or been famous for great genius or even enjoyed great popularity. They rather are men who represent the limitations as well as the accomplishments of the people around them. They know what the people will bear. They utter the best thought which their countrymen in their time are able to reach. They are by no means mere thermometers. They do not rise and fall with the temperature about them. But they are powerful and prevailing forces, with a sound judgment and practical common sense that understands just how high the people can be lifted, and where the man who is looking not chiefly at the future but largely to see what is the best thing that can be done in the present should desist from unavailing effort. Such a man was John Sherman, for whom the open grave is now waiting at Mansfield. For nearly fifty years he has been a conspicuous figure and a great leader in the party which has controlled the Government. Of course, in a republic it can be claimed for no man that he controlled the course of history. And also, of course, it is not possible while the events are fresh to assign to any one man accurately his due share in the credit for what is done, especially in legislative bodies, where matters are settled in secret council often before the debate begins and almost always before the vote is taken.
"But there are some things we can say of Mr. Sherman without fear of challenge now and without fear of any record that may hereafter leap to light.
"He filled always the highest places. He sat at the seat of power. His countrymen always listened for his voice and frequently listened for his voice more eagerly than for that of any other man. He became a Republican leader almost immediately after he took his seat in the House of Representatives in 1855. He was candidate for Speaker before the war, at the time when the Republican Party achieved its first distinct and unequivocal national success, unless we except the election of General Banks, who had himself been elected partly by Know- Nothing votes. Mr. Sherman failed of an election. But the contest left him the single preeminent figure in the House of Representatives—a preeminence which he maintained in his long service in the Senate, in the Treasury, and down to within a few years of his death.
"He was a man of inflexible honesty, inflexible courage, inflexible love of country. He was never a man of great eloquence, or greatly marked by that indefinable quality called genius. But in him sound judgment and common sense, better than genius, better than eloquence, always prevailed, and sometimes seemed to rise to sublimity which genius never attains. His inflexible courage and his clear vision manifested themselves in the very darkest period of our history, when hope seemed at times to have gone out in every other heart. There is a letter in his Memoirs, written April 12, 1861, which, as I remember the gloom and blackness of that time, seems to me one of the sublimest utterances in our history. The letter was written to his brother William, afterward the General, who had been offered a place in the War Department, which Mr. Chase urged him to accept, saying that he would be virtually Secretary of War. The offer must have been a dazzling temptation to the young soldier who had left his profession and was engaged in civil duties as an instructor, I think, in a college somewhere. But John earnestly dissuades his brother from accepting it, urges him to take a position in the field, and foretells his great military success. He then adds the following prediction as to the future of the country. It was written at midnight at the darkest single hour of our history:
"'Let me now record a prediction. Whatever you may think of the signs of the times, the Government will rise from the strife greater, stronger and more prosperous than ever. It will display every energy and military power. The men who have confidence in it, and do their full duty by it, may reap whatever there is of honor and profit in public life, while those who look on merely as spectators in the storm will fail to discharge the highest duty of a citizen, and suffer accordingly in public estimation.'
"Mr. Sherman's great fame and the title to his countrymen's remembrance which will most distinguish him from other men of his time, will rest upon his service as a financier. He bowed a little to the popular storm in the time of fiat money. Perhaps if he had not bowed a little he would have been uprooted, and the party which would have paid our national debt in fiat money would have succeeded. But ever since that time he has been an oak and not a willow. The resumption of specie payments and the establishment of the gold standard, the two great financial achievements of our time, are largely due to his powerful, persistent and most effective advocacy.
"It is a little singular that two great measures that are called by his name are measures, one of which he disapproved, and with the other of which he had nothing to do. I mean the bill for the purchase of silver, known as the Sherman Law, and the bill in regard to trusts, known as the Sherman Anti-Trust Law. The former was adopted against his protest, by a committee of conference, although he gave it a reluctant and disgusted support at the end. It was, in my judgment, necessary to save the credit of the country at the time, and a great improvement on the law it supplanted.
"The other, known as the Sherman Anti-Trust Bill, I suppose he introduced by request. I doubt very much whether he read it. If he did, I do not think he ever understood it. It was totally reconstructed in the Judiciary Committee."
Mr. Sherman was delightful company. He had a fund of pleasant anecdote always coming up fresh and full of interest from the stores of long experience.
He was wise, brave, strong, patriotic, honest, faithful, simple-hearted, sincere. He had little fondness for trifling and little sense of humor. Many good stories are told of his serious expostulation with persons who had made some jesting statement in his hearing which he received with immense gravity. I am ashamed to confess that I used to play upon this trait of his after a fashion which I think annoyed him a little, and which he must have regarded as exceedingly frivolous.
He used occasionally to ask me to go to ride with him. One hot summer afternoon Mr. Sherman said: "Let us go over and see the new electric railroad," to which I agreed. That was then a great curiosity. It was perhaps the first street railroad, certainly the first one in Washington which had electricity for motive power. Mr. Sherman told his driver to be careful. He said the horses were very much terrified by the electric cars. I said: "I suppose they are like the labor reformers. They see contrivances for doing without their labor, and they get very angry and manifest displeasure." Mr. Sherman pondered for a moment or two, and then said with great seriousness: "Mr. Hoar, the horse is a very intelligent animal, but it really does not seem to me that he can reason as far as that." I told the General of it afterward, who was full of fun, and asked him if he really believed his brother thought I made the remark seriously; to which he replied that he had no doubt of it; that John never had the slightest conception of a jest.
At another time, one very hot summer day, Mr. Sherman said: "Hoar, I think I shall go take a ride; I am rather tired. When a vote comes up, will you announce that I am paired with my colleague?" I called out to Senator Rollins of New Hampshire, who sat a little way off, and who kept the record of pairs for the Republican side: "Rollins, there will be no vote this afternoon, except one on a funeral resolution in honor of Mr. Allen of Missouri. Will you kindly announce that Mr. Sherman is paired with his colleague?" Mr. Sherman got up in great haste and went over to Mr. Rollins, and said: "Mr. Rollins, Mr. Hoar entirely misunderstood me. I never should think of announcing a pair on a funeral resolution."
Mr. Sherman was not an eloquent man, except on some few occasions, when his simple statement without ornament or passion rose to the highest eloquence by reason of the impressiveness of his fact or of his reasoning. His memory failed in his last years, and the effect of age on his other faculties became apparent when he undertook to deal with new and complicated subjects. But he was clear to the last when his great subject of finance was under consideration. One of the most admirable examples of his power, also one of the most admirable examples of American campaign speaking, is his statement of the financial issue between the two parties at the beginning of the campaign of 1896. It struck the key-note. The other Republican speakers only followed it.
He took great satisfaction in his New England ancestry. He frequently spoke with great pleasure of a visit made by him and the General, some twelve or fifteen years ago, I think, to Woodbury, Connecticut, where his ancestors dwelt. He took a special pride in the character of his father, one of the Ohio pioneers, from whom, I judge from his account, both his illustrious sons derived in large measure their sterling quality. He was a far-away kinsman of my own, a relationship of which it may well be believed I am highly proud, and of which both General Sherman and Senator Sherman were kind enough frequently to speak.
For me his death ended an intimate friendship of nearly twenty- five years, during many of which we sat side by side in the Senate Chamber and enjoyed much unreserved social intercourse in long rides and walks. Among the great characters which American has given to mankind these two famous brothers, so different, yet so like in their earnest love of country, their independence and courage, their devotion to duty, will ever hold a high place.
George W. McCrary had been an eminent member of the House of Representatives, where he had the confidence of both parties. He was a protege of Judge Miller, with whom he studied law. His chief ambition, however, was for judicial service. He was much disappointed when it was found desirable that he should take the Department of War instead of the Department of Justice to which President Hayes originally intended to invite him. He very gladly accepted the offer of a seat on the Bench of the United States Circuit Court. He filled that office with great credit, and it is highly probable would have been promoted to the Supreme Court of the United States, but for his untimely death.
He was the originator of the method of solution of the dispute as to the title to the Presidency in 1876. It ought to be said, however, that it was done in full consultation with Mr. Blaine. I was then quite intimate with both of them, and a member of the Committee in the House who reported the plan. On the seventh day of December, 1876, at the beginning of the winter session, after the election, Mr. McCrary offered the following resolution. It was adopted.
"Whereas there are differences of opinion as to the proper mode of counting the electoral votes for President and Vice- President and as to the manner of determining questions that may arise as to the legality and validity of returns made of such votes by the several States;
"And whereas it is of the utmost importance that all differences of opinion and all doubt and uncertainty upon these questions should be removed, to the end that the votes may be counted and the result declared by a tribunal whose authority none can question and whose decision all will accept as final: Therefore,
"Resolved, That a committee of five members of this House be appointed by the Speaker, to act in conjunction with any similar committee that may be appointed by the Senate, to prepare and report without delay such a measure, either legislative or constitutional, as may in their judgment be best calculated to accomplish the desired end, and that said committee have leave to report at any time."
I do not know that a sketch of Richard W. Thompson, or Dick Thompson, as he was familiarly and affectionately called, properly finds a place in my autobiography. I knew him very slightly. I dare say I visited the Navy Department in his time. But I have now no recollection of it. I had a great respect for him. He lived in the lifetime of every President of the United States, except Washington, and I believe he saw every one of them, except Washington, unless it may be that he never saw Theodore Roosevelt. He was a very interesting character, a man of great common sense, public spirit, with a wonderful memory, and a rare fund of knowledge of the political history of the Northwest. Indeed he was an embodiment of the best quality of the people of the Ohio Territory, although born in Virginia. His great capacity was that of a politician. He made excellent stump speeches, managed political conventions with great shrewdness, and also with great integrity, and had great skill in constructing platforms. Colonel Thompson was a very valuable political adviser. It has never been the custom to select Secretaries of the Navy on account of any previously acquired knowledge of naval affairs, although the two heads of that Department appointed by Presidents McKinley and Roosevelt have conducted it with wonderful success in a very difficult time. A day or two after the Inauguration, John Sherman, the new Secretary of the Treasury, gave a very brilliant dinner party to the Cabinet, at which I was a guest. The table was ornamented by a beautiful man-of-war made out of flowers. Just before the guests sat down to dinner a little adopted daughter of Secretary Sherman's attached a pretty American flag to one of the masts. Somebody called attention to the beauty of the little ornament. I asked Secretary Thompson across the table to which mast of a man-of-war the American flag should be attached. Thompson coughed and stammered a little, and said: "I think I shall refer that question to the Attorney-General."
David M. Key was appointed Postmaster-General in furtherance of President Hayes's desire, in the accomplishment of which he was eminently successful, to promote harmony between the sections, and to diminish, so far as possible, the heat of party feeling which had blazed so intensely at the time of his election. Mr. Key was a Democrat, and never, I believe, certainly not during President Hayes's Administration, abandoned his allegiance to the Democratic Party. He had been a member of the Senate from Tennessee, and Lieutenant-Colonel in the Confederate Army. His appointment was a popular one. Mr. Key administered the affairs of the Department very satisfactorily, in which he was aided very much by his Assistant Postmaster- General, Mr. Tyner, who had been an eminent member of the House, to whom, I suppose, he left the matter of appointments to office.
Carl Schurz was a very interesting character. When I entered the House he was a member of the Senate from the State of Missouri. He was admirably equipped for public service. Although a native of Germany, he had a most excellent, copious and clear English style. No man in either House of Congress equalled him in that respect. He was a clear reasoner, and not lacking on fit occasion in a stirring eloquence. He had rendered great service to the country. The value to the Union cause of the stanch support of the Germans in the Northwest, including Missouri, whose principal city, St. Louis, contained a large German population, can hardly be over-estimated. Without it Missouri would have passed an ordinance of secession, and the city would have been held by the Confederates from the beginning of the war. To prevent this the patriotism and influence of Carl Schurz, then very powerful with his German fellow-citizens, largely contributed. He also combated with great power the dangerous heresy of fiat money and an irredeemable currency. He was a stanch advocate of civil service reform, although he left Congress before the legislation which accomplished that was adopted. So he will be entitled to a high place in the history of the very stormy time in which he has lived, and to the gratitude of his countrymen.
But he seems to me to have erred in underrating the value of party instrumentalities and of official power in accomplishing what is best for the good of the people. When his Republican associates committed what he thought some grave errors, he helped turn Missouri over to the Democrats, who have held it ever since. So the political power of the State since Mr. Schurz abandoned the Republican Party because of his personal objection to President Grant, has been exerted against everything Mr. Schurz valued—honest elections, sound money, security to the enfranchised Southern men, and the Constitutional rights which Mr. Schurz helped gain for them. He has never seemed to care for organization, still less to be influenced by that attachment to organization which, while sometimes leading to great evil, has been the source of inspiration of nearly everything that has been accomplished for good in this world.
Mr. Blaine says of him, with some exaggeration, but with some truth, that he has not become rooted and grounded anywhere, has never established a home, and is not identified with any community.
So the influence of Mr. Schurz has only been to contribute some powerful arguments to the cause which he espoused and never, certainly for a great many years, that of a leader. Mr. Schurz's arguments for the last thirty years would have been as effective if published anonymously, and I dare say more effective than they have been when given to the world under his name.
Mr. Blaine says of him that he has not the power of speaking extempore; that he requires careful and studious preparation, and is never ready, off-hand, to shoot on the wing. I do not agree with Mr. Blaine's estimate of Mr. Schurz in that particular. I have heard him make very effective speeches in the Senate, and elsewhere, that were undoubtedly extemporary. Mr. Blaine says that Mr. Schurz is so deficient in this respect that he has been known to use manuscript for an after-dinner response. But that has been done, not infrequently, by persons who have first-rate capacity for extemporary speaking, but who desire to say something to a number of persons much greater than those who sit around the tables, who are eager to read what they say. That should be carefully matured both in thought and phrase, and should convey their meaning with more precision than off-hand speaking is likely to attain, and be reported with more accuracy than off-hand speaking is likely to get.
I have never been intimate with Mr. Schurz. I deeply lamented his action in supporting Mr. Cleveland, and contributing what was in his power to the defeat of the Republican Party on two occasions—a defeat which brought so much calamity to the Republic. I have thought that in his dislikes and severe judgment of individuals he lost sight of great principles. His independence of his own party led him to support a very much worse party domination, and to help to accomplish measures and establish principles to which he had been all his life utterly opposed. But the services to which I have alluded should not be forgotten. They entitle him to the highest respect, and should far outweigh his faults and mistakes.
Mr. Schurz made one very unfortunate mistake quite early in the course of his administration of the Interior Department. He had formed the opinion, I suppose without much practical experience in such matters, that it would be a good plan to get the civilized Indians of the country into the Indian Territory. Accordingly he had issued an order for the removal of the Ponca Indians, of Nebraska, to the Indian Territory. The Poncas were a small tribe, living on excellent lands, to which they were exceedingly attached. They were a peaceful people. It was their boast that no Ponca had ever injured a white man. Mr. Schurz had been informed that the Poncas were willing to go. But when they heard of the scheme, they strenuously objected. They sold their ponies to enable an agent to go to Washington to make their protest known. But Mr. Schurz was immovable. The Nebraska Senators waited upon him, but their expostulations were received with disdain, as the counsel of politicians who were not entitled to much respect. The removal was effected. The Indian Territory proved unhealthy for them. A part of the tribe made their escape, took the coffins of those who had died with them, and made their way back to the original home of their ancestors.
The public feeling was deeply aroused. I happened to be at home in Worcester when a meeting was called by clergymen and other philanthropic gentlemen. It was addressed by a young Indian woman, named Bright Eyes, who belonged, I think, to a tribe closely allied to the Poncas. I attended the meeting, but was careful not to commit myself to any distinct opinion without knowing more of the facts. When I got back to Washington, President Hayes called on my at my room. It was the only time I have ever known a President of the United States to call upon a member of either House of Congress on public business, although I believe President Lincoln sometimes did it; and it may possibly have happened on other occasions. President Hayes was very much excited. He seemed at the time to think that a great wrong had been done by the Secretary. He brought his fist down upon the table with great emphasis, and said: "Mr. Hoar, I will turn Mr. Schurz out, if you say so." I said: "O no, Mr. President, I hope nothing of that kind will be done. Mr. Schurz is an able man. He has done his best. His mistake, if he has made one, is only that he has adhered obstinately to a preconceived opinion, and has been unwilling to take advice or receive suggestions after he had determined on his course. It would be a great calamity to have one of your Cabinet discredited by you." President Hayes took that view of it. Indeed, I believe on further and fuller inquiry, he came to the conclusion that it was his duty to sustain the Secretary, so far as to keep in the Indian Territory the fragment of the Ponca Tribe who were still there.
I took no public part in the matter. My colleague, Mr. Dawes, who was a very earnest champion and friend of the Indians, commented on the course of the Secretary in the Senate with great severity; and he and the Secretary had an earnest controversy.
Mr. Schurz was a great favorite with our Independents and Mugwumps, many of whom had, like him, left the Republican Party in 1872, and some of whom had not returned to their old allegiance. Mr. Schurz was invited to a public dinner in Boston, at which President Eliot, Dr. James Freeman Clarke and several eminent men of their way of thinking, took part. They did not discuss the merits of the principal question much, but the burden of their speech was eulogy of Mr. Schurz as a great and good man, and severe condemnation of the character of the miserable politicians who were supposed to be his critics and opponents. There was a proposition for a call for a public meeting on the other side to condemn the Secretary, and stand by the Indians. In this call several very able and influential men joined, including Governor Long. I advised very strongly against holding the meeting. I was quite sure that, on the one hand, neither Mr. Schurz nor the Administration was likely to treat the Indians cruelly or unjustly again; and on the other hand I was equally sure of the absolute sincerity and humanity of the people who had found fault with his action. A day or two, however, after the Schurz dinner, a reporter of a prominent newspaper in Boston asked me for an interview about the matter, to which I assented. He said: "Have you seen the speeches of President Eliot and Dr. Clarke and Mr. Codman at the Schurz banquet?" I said, "Yes." He asked me: "What do you think of them?" I said: "Well, it is very natural that these gentlemen should stand by Mr. Schurz, who has been their leader and political associate. President Eliot's speech reminds me of Baillie Nichol Jarvie when he stood up for his kinsman, Rob Roy, in the Town Council of Glasgow when some of the Baillie's enemies had cast in his teeth his kinship with the famous outlaw. 'I tauld them,' said the Baillie, 'that barring what Rob had dune again the law, and that some three or four men had come to their deaths by him, he was an honester man than stude on ony of their shanks.'" This ended the incident, so far as I was concerned.
To draw an adequate portraiture of Charles Devens would require the noble touch of the old masters of painting or the lofty stroke of the dramatists of Queen Elizabeth's day. He filled many great places in the public service with so much modesty and with a gracious charm of manner and behavior which so attracted and engrossed our admiration that we failed at first to discern the full strength of the man. It is not until after his death, when we sum up what he has done for purposes of biography or of eulogy, that we see how important and varied has been the work of his life.
Charles Devens was born in Charlestown, Massachusetts, April 4, 1820. His family connections led him to take early in life a deep interest in the military and naval history of the country, especially in that of the War of 1812; while the place of his birth and the fact that he was the grandson of Richard Devens gave to him the interest in the opening of the Revolution which belongs to every son of Middlesex. He was a pupil at the Boston Latin School; was graduated at Harvard in 1838; was admitted to the bar in 1840; practised law in Northfield and afterward in Greenfield; was Senator from Franklin County in 1848 and 1849; was Brigadier-General of the militia; was appointed United States Marshal by President Taylor in 1849, holding that office until 1853; removed to Worcester in 1854; formed a partnership with George F. Hoar and J. Henry Hill in December, 1856; was City Solicitor in the years 1856, 1857 and 1858. The news of the surrender of Fort Sumter was received in Worcester Sunday, April 14. Monday forenoon came the confirmation of the news and President Lincoln's call for 75,000 volunteers. General Devens was engaged in the trial of a cause before the Supreme Court, when the news was told him. He instantly requested another member of the Bar to take his place in the trial, went immediately up street, offered his services to the Government, was unanimously chosen the same day Major of the Third Battalion of Massachusetts Rifles, commissioned the next day, April 16, departed for the seat of war April 20. The battalion under his command was stationed at Fort McHenry. On the 24th of July following he was appointed Colonel of the Fifteenth Massachusetts Regiment.
Gen. Devens was in command of the Fifteenth Regiment at the disastrous battle of Ball's Bluff, where he was struck by a musket ball, which was intercepted by a metallic button which saved his life. His conduct on that day received high encomium from General McClellan. He was soon after appointed a Brigadier-General of Volunteers, and assigned to a brigade in Couch's Division of the Fourth Corps. His division was engaged in the battle in front of Fort Magruder on the 5th of May, 1862. On the 31st of the same month he was engaged in the most critical portion of the desperate fight at Fair Oaks, where his command was conspicuous for valor and devotion. This was one of the most stubbornly contested fields of the war. Gen. Devens was severely wounded toward the close of the day, but with a few other officers he succeeded in reforming the repeatedly broken lines and in holding the field until reinforcements arrived and stayed the tide of Confederate triumph. He returned to his command as soon as his wound would permit, and took part in the battle of Fredericksburg in December, 1862. In his official report General Newton says: "My acknowledgments are due to all according to their opportunities, but especially to Brigadier-General Charles Devens, who commanded the advance and the rear guard, in the crossing and recrossing of the river." In the following spring General Devens was promoted to the command of a division of the Eleventh Corps. He was posted with his division of 4,000 men on the extreme right of the flank of Hooker's army, which was attacked by 26,000 men under the great rebel leader, Stonewall Jackson. General Devens was wounded by a musket ball in the foot early in the day; but he kept the field, making the most strenuous efforts to hold his men together and stay the advance of the Confederates until his Corps was almost completely enveloped by Jackson's force and, in the language of General Walker, "was scattered like the stones and timbers of a broken dam." He recovered from his wound in time to take part in the campaign of 1864. His troops were engaged on the first of June in the battle of Cold Harbor, and carried the enemy's entrenched line with severe loss. On the third of June, in an attack which General Walker characterizes as one "which is never spoke of without awe and bated breath by any one who participated in it," General Devens was carried along the line on a stretcher, being so crippled by inflammatory rheumatism that he could neither mount his horse nor stand in his place. This was the last action in which he took an active part. On the third of April, 1865, he led the advance into Richmond, where the position of Military Governor was assigned to him after the surrender. He afterwards was second in command to General Sickles, in the Southeastern Department, and exercised practically all the powers of government for a year or two. This command was of very great importance to him as a part of his legal training. Upon him practically devolved the duty of deciding summarily, but without appeal, all important questions of military law as well as those affecting the civil rights of citizens during his administration.
He was offered a commission in the regular army, which he declined. He came back to Worcester in 1866; renewed his partnership with me for a short time; was appointed Justice of the Superior Court April, 1867; was appointed Justice of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts in 1873; was offered the appointment of Secretary of War in the Cabinet of President Hayes March 5, 1877; a day or two later was tendered the office of Attorney-General by the President, which he accepted and held until the expiration of President Hayes's Administration. He was offered the office of Judge of the Circuit Court of the First Circuit at the death of Judge Shepley, which he very much desired to accept. But the President, although placing this office at his disposal, was exceedingly unwilling to lose his service in the Cabinet; and General Devens, with his customary self-denial, yielded to the desire of his chief. He was again appointed Justice of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts in 1881, and held that office until his death.
He was elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society October 21, 1878. He was a member of the Massachusetts Historical Society. He received the degree of LL.D. from Harvard University in the year 1877. He was chosen President of the Harvard Alumni Association, and again elected President of that Association in 1886, in order that he might preside at the great celebration of the 250th anniversary of the foundation of the college, which he did with a dignity and grace which commanded the admiration of all persons who were present on that interesting occasion. He died January 7, 1891.
General Devens gained very soon after establishing himself in Worcester the reputation of one of the foremost advocates at the bar of Massachusetts. He was a model of the professional character, of great courtesy to his opponent, great deference to the court, fidelity to his client, giving to every case all the labor which could profitably be spent upon it. The certainty of the absolute fidelity, thoroughness, and skill with which his part of the duty of an important trial would be performed, made it a delight to try cases as his associate. He was especially powerful with juries in cases involving the domestic relations, or which had in them anything of the pathos of which the court-house so often furnishes examples. He did not care in those days for the preparation or argument of questions of law, although he possessed legal learning fully adequate to the exigencies of his profession, and never neglected any duty.
His fine powers continued to grow as he grew older. I think he was unsurpassed in this country in the generation to which he belonged in native gifts of oratory. He had a fine voice, of great compass and power, a graceful and dignified presence. He was familiar with the best English literature. He had a pure and admirable style, an imagination which was quickened and excited under the stimulus of extempore speech, and was himself moved and stirred by the emotions which are most likely to move and stir an American audience. Some of his addresses to juries in Worcester are now remembered, under whose spell jury and audience were in tears, and where it was somewhat difficult even for the bench or the opposing counsel to resist the contagion. He never, however, undertook to prepare and train himself for public speaking, as was done by Mr. Choate or Mr. Everett, or had the constant and varied practice under which the fine powers of Wendell Phillips came to such perfection. But his fame as an orator constantly increased, so that before his death no other man in Massachusetts was so much in demand, especially on those occasions where the veterans of the war were gathered to commemorate its sacrifices and triumphs.
Among the most successful examples of his oratoric power is his address at Bunker Hill at the Centennial in 1875, where the forming the procession and the other exercises occupied the day until nearly sundown, and General Devens, the orator of the day, laid aside his carefully prepared oration and addressed the audience in a brief speech, wholly unpremeditated, which was the delight of everybody who heard it.*
[Footnote] * "The oration by Judge Devens was magnificent. He spoke wholly without notes and his effort was largely extemporaneous. He began by saying that the lateness of the hour ('twas nearly six o'clock) would prevent his following the train of any previously prepared effort and he would briefly review the history of the battle and its results upon the world's history. He spoke for nearly and hour and a quarter, holding his fine audience in rapt attention by his eloquence, the elegance of his diction and his superb enunciation. It was, indeed, a wonderful effort, and will compare favorably with Webster's great orations in '25 and '43."—From the diary of Henry H. Edes. [End of Footnote]
At New Haven he delivered the address before the Army of the Potomac in commemoration of General Meade and the battle of Gettysburg, which is a fine specimen of historic narrative mingled and adorned with stately eloquence. At the banquet in the evening of the same day the gentleman who had been expected to respond to the toast, "The private soldier," was unexpectedly called away, and General Devens was asked at a moment's notice and without preparation to take his place. I heard President Grant—no mean judge—who had himself listened to so much of the best public speaking in all parts of the country, say that General Devens's response to this toast was the finest speech he ever heard in his life. The eulogy upon Grant delivered at Worcester, especially the wonderful passage where he contrasts the greeting which Napoleon might expect from his soldiers and companions in arms at a meeting beyond the grave with that which Grant might expect from his brethren, is also one of the best specimens of eloquence in modern times. Surpassing even these are the few sentences he addressed to his regiment after the battle of Ball's Bluff.
General Devens had a modest estimate of his own best powers. While he was an admirable judge, bringing to the court the weight of his great experience, his admirable sense, his stainless integrity, his prefect impartiality, his great discernment, his abundant learning, it has always seemed to me that he erred after the war in not preferring political life to his place upon the bench. He could easily have been Governor or Senator, in which places the affection of the people of Massachusetts would have kept him for a period limited only by his own desire, and might well have been expected to pass from the Cabinet to an even higher place in the service of his country. But he disliked political strife, and preferred those places of service which did not compel him to encounter bitter antagonism.
He filled the place of Attorney-General with a dignity and an ability which has been rarely if ever surpassed by any of the illustrious men who have filled that great office. The judges of the Supreme Court long after he had left Washington were accustomed to speak of the admirable manner in which he had discharged his duties. I once at a dinner heard Mr. Justice Bradley, who was without a superior, if not without a peer in his day, among jurists on either side of the Atlantic, speak enthusiastically of his recollection of General Devens in the office of Attorney-General. Judge Bradley kindly acceded to my request to put in writing what he had said. His letter is here inserted:
WASHINGTON, January 20th, 1891.
HON. GEO. F. HOAR.
My Dear Sir: You ask for my estimate of the services and character of General Devens as Attorney-General of the United States. In general terms I unhesitatingly answer, that he left upon my mind the impression of a sterling, noble, generous character, loyal to duty, strong, able, and courteous in the fulfillment of it, with such accumulation of legal acquirement and general culture as to render his counsels highly valuable in the Cabinet, and his public efforts exceedingly graceful and effective. His professional exhibitions in the Supreme Court during the four years that he represented the Government, were characterized by sound learning, chastely and accurately expressed, great breadth of view, the seizing of strong points and disregard of minute ones, marked deference for the court and courtesy to his opponents. He was a model to the younger members of the bar of a courtly and polished advocate. He appeared in the court only in cases of special importance; but of these there was quite a large number during his term. As examples, I may refer to the cases of Young v. United States (97 U. S. 39), which involved the rights of neutrals in our Civil War, and particularly the alleged right of a British subject, who had been engaged in running the blockade, to demand compensation for a large quantity of cotton purchased in the Confederacy and seized by the military forces of the United States;—Reynolds v. United States (98 U. S. 145), which declared the futility of the plea, in cases of bigamy among the Mormons, of religious belief, claimed under the first amendment of the Constitution; and established the principle that pretended religious belief cannot be accepted as a justification of overt acts made criminal by the law of the land;—The Sinking Fund Cases (99 U. S. 700), which involved the validity of the act of Congress known as the Thurman Act, requiring the Pacific Railroad Companies to make annual payments for a sinking fund to meet the bonds loaned to them by the Government;— Tennessee v. Davis (100 U. S. 257), as to the right of a United States officer to be tried in the Federal courts for killing a person in self-defence whilst in the discharge of his official duties;—The Civil Rights case of Strander v. W. Virginia and others (100 U. S. 303-422), in which were settled the rights of all classes of citizens, irrespective of color, to suffrage and to representation in the jury box, and the right of the Government of the United States to interpose its power for their protection;—Neal v. Delaware (103 U. S. 370), by which it was decided that the right of suffrage and (in that case) the consequent right of jury service of people of African descent were secured by the 15th Amendment to the Constitution, notwithstanding unrepealed state laws or constitutions to the contrary.
In all these cases and many others the arguments of the Attorney- General were presented with distinguished ability and dignity, and with his habitual courtesy and amenity of manner; whilst his broad and comprehensive views greatly aided the court in arriving at just conclusions. In all of them he was successful; and it may be said that he rarely assumed a position on behalf of the Government, in any important case, in which he was not sustained by the judgment of the court. His advocacy was conscientious and judicial rather than experimental— as is eminently fitting in the official representative of the Government. It best subserves the ends of justice, the suppression of useless litigation, and the prompt administration of the law.
I can only add that the members of the Supreme Court parted with Attorney-General Devens with regret. Of him, as of so many other eminent lawyers, the reflection is just, that the highest efforts of advocacy have no adequate memorial. Written compositions remain; but the noblest displays of human genius at the bar—often, perhaps, the successful assaults of Freedom against the fortresses of Despotism—are lost to history and memory for want of needful recordation. Vixere fortes ante Agamemnona; or, as Tacitus says of the eloquent Haterius, "Whist the plodding industry of scribblers goes down to posterity, the sweet voice and fluent eloquence of Haterius died with himself."
Very truly yours.
JOSEPH P. BRADLEY.
He was an admirable historical investigator and narrator. He carefully investigated the facts. He told the story of the heroic days of the Revolution and of the heroic days of the War for the Union with a graphic power which will give his addresses on such subjects a permanent place in our best historical literature.
But it is as a soldier that his countrymen will remember him, and it is as a soldier that he would wish to be remembered. Whatever may be said by the philosopher, the moralist, or the preacher, the instincts of the greater portion of mankind will lead them to award the highest meed of admiration to the military character. Even when the most selfish of human passions, the love of power or the love of fame, is the stimulant of the soldier's career, he must at least be ready for the supreme sacrifice—the willingness to give his life, if need be, for the object he is pursuing. But when his end is purely unselfish, when the love of country or the desire to save her life by giving his own has entire mastery of the soul, all mankind are agreed to award the good soldier a glory which it bestows nowhere else.
There was nothing lacking in General Devens to the complete soldierly character. He had a passionate love of his country; he was absolutely fearless; he never flinched before danger, sickness, suffering or death. He was prompt, resolute and cool in the face of danger. He had a warm and affectionate heart. He loved his comrades, especially the youth who were under his command. He had that gentle and placable nature which so often accompanies great courage. He was incapable of a permanent anger. He was still less capable of revenge or of willingness to inflict injury or pain.
As Clarendon says of Falkland: "He had a full appetite of fame by just and generous actions, so he had an equal contempt for it by base and servile expedients." He never for an instant tolerated that most pernicious and pestilent heresy, that so long as each side believed itself to be in the right there was no difference between the just and the unjust cause. He knew that he was contending for the life of his country, for the fate of human liberty on this continent. No other cause would have led him to draw his sword; and he cared for no other earthly reward for his service.
Oh just and faithful knight of God,
Ride on, the prize is near.