CHAPTER XXI POLITICAL CORRUPTION
John Jay said that the greatest achievements of diplomacy were often little noted by history and that their authors got, in general, little credit. He compared it to the work of levelling uneven ground of which the face of the earth will show no trace when it is done. The same thing is true of successful battles with political corruption in high places, the most formidable peril to any Government and, if it be not encountered and overcome, fatal to a Republic. A nation will survive a corrupt minister or monarch, but a corrupt people must surely and speedily perish. We have had sporadic examples of corruption in high office at several periods in our history. The first sixteen years after the inauguration of the Constitution, including the Administrations of Washington, John Adams, and the first four years of Jefferson, were by no means free from it. But it never got so dangerous a hold upon the forces of the Government, or upon a great political party, as in the Administration of General Grant.
General Grant was an honest and wise man. History has assigned him a place among our great Presidents. He showed almost unerring judgment in military matters. He rarely, I suppose, if ever, made a mistake in his estimate of the military quality of a subordinate, or in a subordinate's title to confidence. But he was very easily imposed upon by self-seeking and ambitious men in civil life. Such men studied his humors and imposed upon him, if not by flattery, yet by the pretence of personal devotion. He had been himself bitterly and most unjustly assailed by partisan and sectional hostility. When any person to whom he had once given his confidence was detected in any low or corrupt action Grant was very unwilling to believe or even to listen to the charge. He seemed to set his teeth and to say to himself: "They attack this man as they attack me. They attack him because he is my friend. I will stand by him." So it happened that attempts to secure pure and unselfish administration got little help from him, and that designing and crafty men whose political aims were wholly personal and selfish got his ear and largely influenced his appointments to office.
Hamilton Fish, the Secretary of State, always retained his influence with President Grant. He was a wise, able and thoroughly honest man. But as was fit, and indeed necessary, he kept himself to the great interests which belonged to his Department, and took little share, so far as the public knew, in other questions.
General Cox, of Ohio, was an able, brave and upright man. He resigned from President Grant's Cabinet, alleging as his reason that he was not supported in the fight with corruption. Judge Hoar strenuously insisted that the Judges of the newly created Circuit Courts of the United States should be made up of the best lawyers, without Senatorial dictation. President Grant acted in accordance with his advice. The constitution of the Circuit Courts gave great satisfaction to the public. But leading and influential Senators, whose advice had been rejected, and who were compelled by the high character of the persons nominated to submit, and did not venture upon a controversy with the President, were intensely angry with the Attorney-General. The result was that when he was nominated by the President for the office of Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, he was rejected by the Senate. A few Senators avowed as a pretext for their action that there was no Judge on that Bench from the South, and that the new appointee ought to reside in the Southern Circuit. But these gentlemen all voted for the confirmation of Mr. Justice Bradley, a most admirable appointment, to whom the same objection applied. Judge Hoar never doubted that the service of a clean, able, upright Circuit Court, appointed without political influence, and entirely acceptable to the public, was well worth the sacrifice. Indeed the expression of public regard which came to him abundantly in his lifetime, and which was manifested in the proceedings of the Bar of Massachusetts, and the Massachusetts Historical Society, and in the press of the country after his death, was more valued by those to whom his memory is dear, than a thousand offices.
When I entered Congress in 1869 the corridors of the Capitol and the Committee rooms were crowded with lobbyists. The custom of the two Houses permitted their members to introduce strangers on the floor. It would not be profitable to revive all the scandals of that time. In general the men elected to the Senate and the House were honest and incorruptible. There were some exceptions. Adroit and self-seeking men were often able in the multitude of claims which must necessarily be disposed of by a rapid examination, to impose on Committees of the two Houses.
As one of the managers of the Belknap trial, I alluded to some of the more prominent and undisputed examples of corruption, in the following words:
"I said a little while ago that the Constitution had no safeguards to throw away. You will judge whether the public events of to-day admonish us to look well to all our securities to prevent or power to punish the great guilt of corruption in office. We must not confound idle clamor with public opinion, or accept the accusations of scandal and malice instead of proof. But we shall make a worse mistake if, because of the multitude of false and groundless charges against men in high office, we fail to redress substantial grievances or to deal with cases of actual guilt. The worst evil resulting from the indiscriminate attack of an unscrupulous press upon men in public station is not that innocence suffers, but that crime escapes. Let scandal and malice be encountered by pure and stainless lives. Let corruption and bribery meet their lawful punishment.
"My own public life has been a very brief and insignificant one, extending little beyond the duration of a single term of Senatorial office; but in that brief period I have seen five judges of a high court of the United States driven from office by threats of impeachment for corruption or maladministration. I have heard the taunt, from friendliest lips, that when the United States presented herself in the East to take part with the civilized world in generous competition in the arts of life, the only product of her institutions in which she surpassed all others beyond question was her corruption. I have seen in the State in the Union foremost in power and wealth four judges of her courts impeached for corruption, and the political administration of her chief city become a disgrace and a by- word throughout the world. I have seen the chairman of the Committee on Military Affairs in the House, now a distinguished member of this court, rise in his place and demand the expulsion of four of his associates for making sale of their official privilege of selecting the youths to be educated at our great military school. When the greatest railroad of the world, binding together the continent and uniting the two great seas which wash our shores, was finished, I have seen our national triumph and exultation turned to bitterness and shame by the unanimous reports of three committees of Congress—two of the House and one here—that every step of that mighty enterprise had been taken in fraud. I have heard in highest places the shameless doctrine avowed by men grown old in public office that the true way by which power should be gained in the Republic is to bribe the people with the offices created for their service, and the true end for which it should be used when gained is the promotion of selfish ambition and the gratification of personal revenge. I have heard that suspicion haunts the footsteps of the trusted companions of the President.
"These things have passed into history. The Hallam or the Tacitus or the Sismondi or the Macaulay who writes the annals of our time will record them with his inexorable pen. And now when a high Cabinet officer, the Constitutional adviser of the Executive, flees from office before charges of corruption, shall the historian add that the Senate treated the demand of the people for its judgment of condemnation as a farce, and laid down its high functions before the sophistries and jeers of the criminal lawyer? Shall he speculate about the petty political calculations as to the effect on one party or the other which induced his judges to connive at the escape of the great public criminal? Or, on the other had, shall he close the chapter by narrating how these things were detected, reformed and punished by Constitutional processes which the wisdom of our fathers devised for us, and the virtue and purity of the people found their vindication in the justice of the Senate?"
This passage was quoted very extensively by the Democratic speakers all over the country, and was circulated as a campaign document. I was reproached by some of my Republican associates for furnishing ammunition for the enemy. But I was satisfied, and I am now, that in saying what I did I rendered a great service to the Republican Party. What was said helped to arouse public attention, and the masses of the people—always pure and incorruptible—set themselves earnestly and successfully to reform the abuses.
It never occurred to me that these abuses furnished any reason for placing the powers of the Government in the hands of the Southern Democracy, or their ally, Tammany Hall. If the men who saved the Union were not to be trusted to keep it pure; if the men who abolished slavery could not carry on a Government in freedom and in honor, certainly it was not likely that the men of Tammany Hall, or the men who had so lately attempted to overthrow the Government, would do it any better.
I happened to be at lunch with General Garfield just after the Belknap trial. He spoke of my argument, and expressed his strong sympathy and approval. I told him that I had been looking into the history of the first sixteen years of the Government, which included the Administrations of Washington and John Adams and the first term of Jefferson, and that in my opinion there was not only more corruption in proportion then than there had been under Grant, but there had been more in amount, notwithstanding the difference in population. I stated to him a good many instances. He urged me to make a speech in which I should say publicly what I had said to him. I acted on his advice, and in the course of a speech, in reply to Mr. Lamar, of Mississippi, I spoke as follows:
"The Republican Party, as I have said, has controlled the Government for sixteen years, a term equal to that which covers the whole Administration of Washington, the whole Administration of John Adams, and the first term of Jefferson. It has been one of those periods in which all experience teaches us to expect an unusual manifestation of public corruption, of public disorder, and of evils and errors of administration. A great war; the time which follows a great war; great public debts; currency and values inflated; the exertion of new and extraordinary powers for the safety of the State; the sudden call of millions of slaves to a share in the Government—any one of these things would be expected to create great disturbances, and give rise to great temptations and great corruptions. Our term of office has seen them all combined. And yet I do not scruple to affirm that not only has there been less dishonesty and maladministration in the sixteen years of Republican rule proportionally to the numbers and wealth of the people than in the first sixteen years after the inauguration of Washington, but there has been less absolutely of those things.
"Now, Mr. Speaker, I do not wish to be misunderstood. I do not wish to be misrepresented in this matter. Let no man assert that I refer to the evils of those days as either excuse or palliation for the evils of ours. That generation was a frugal and honest generation in the main, and they would have visited with the swiftest condemnation and punishment, every breach of public trust, whether through dishonesty or usurpation. But they did not send to England for Benedict Arnold. They did not restore the Tories to power. They did not go down on their knees to George III. and ask him to take them back into favor. They believed that if the Constitution could not be administered honestly by a majority of the friends of the Constitution, it could not be administered honestly by a majority of its enemies; that if liberty were not safe and pure in the hands of those who loved her, then liberty was a failure upon the earth, and they did not think of intrusting her to the hands of those who hated her. So in this generation, had they lived to-day, they would have done simply what a distinguished president of the convention in my own State, whom the gentleman quotes, recommended; they would have taken the Government from the hands of the lovers of liberty who are dishonest and put it into the hands of men who entertain the same sentiments but who are honest. It never would have occurred to them that because among one hundred thousand men there are found some few who will not keep the eighth commandment, 'Thou shalt not steal,' which is a mandate for all the public service, they should put in power men who have no regard for the sixth, 'Thou shalt not kill.'"
There were several conspicuous instances of corruption with which I had personally to deal.
1. One was the Credit Mobilier.
Two Committees were appointed to investigate the affairs of the Union Pacific Railroad Company, and the Credit Mobilier of America. One Committee investigated the conduct of some members of the two Houses of Congress against whom some charges had been made. Of that Committee Judge Poland of Vermont was the Chairman. The other Committee investigated the history of the Union Pacific Railroad Company to report whether its charter had been forfeited. Of that Committee Jeremiah M. Wilson of Indiana, a very able lawyer and accomplished gentleman, was Chairman. The next member to him on the Committee was Judge Shellabarger of Ohio. Owing to reasons, stated later, it fell to me as the next in rank to conduct the greater part of the examination, and to make the report.
2. Another was the impeachment and trial of General William W. Belknap, Secretary of War, for receiving a bribe for the appointment of a Post Trader.
3. A third example of the prevalent laxity of morals that occurred was the case of the Sanborn contracts. I was a member of the House when they were investigated, but took no special part in the proceedings.
4. A fourth example was the claim of Senators and Representatives which had been asserted in Andrew Johnson's Administration, and to which General Grant had partly yielded, to dictate the appointment of executive officers. In that way a vast army of public servants, amounting to more than one hundred thousand in number, who were appointed and removed at the pleasure of the Executive, became first the instrument of keeping the dominant party in power, and afterward became not so much the instruments and servants of party as the political followers of ambitious men to whom they owed their office, and on whose pleasure they depended for maintaining them. I made, in a speech at West Newton in 1876, an earnest attack on this system, and afterward in the Senate had a good deal to do with framing the Civil Service Law, as it was called, which put an end to it.
5. Perhaps the most dangerous attack upon the purity of the Government was the attempt of General Butler to get possession of the political power in Massachusetts, and ultimately that of the country. What I was able to do to resist and baffle that attempt is the most considerable part of the public service of my life, if it has been of any public service.
I shall speak of each of these a little more fully.
The responsibility for three of these, I regret to say, rested upon Massachusetts men, members of the Republican Party. The Union Pacific Railroad Company and the Credit Mobilier were made up largely of prominent Massachusetts men for whom General Butler acted as counsel. When Mr. Ames was on trial before the House of Representatives General Butler, then a member of the House, appeared as a member and took part and made the extraordinary statement to the House that he was there as counsel for Mr. Ames.
Sanborn, who made the contracts, was a Massachusetts man. His profits were used largely in affecting elections in Massachusetts. The Treasury officials who were in fault, whether through carelessness or corruption, were Massachusetts men, and the arch contriver of the scheme was a Massachusetts man.
Yet the lesson which these things have taught me is that the American statesman who believes that the doctrines of his party are sound should never abandon his principles or quit political life because of its corruption. Let him never for any political advantage support or tolerate a corrupt man, or vote for a corrupt candidate. If a man whose principles are good will yield to an evil motive, it is not likely that the man whose principles are bad will resist it. The American people are upright and honest. They will vindicate and stand by any man in the contest for honesty and uprightness, be he Democrat or Republican, so long as they believe that the ends for which he is striving are for the public good. They will not sustain a man whose counsel they think bad, however honest he may be in his own conduct, or however much he may desire to secure honesty in the conduct of others. No man ever yet accomplished much good by abandoning his party while he continued to hold its principles. Many men have accomplished a great deal of good by striving to purify it.
Every account of political history from the inside will exhibit abundant evidence of wickedness, wrongdoing, and petty personal motives, of low ambitions, of bargains and sales, of timidity, of treachery. The reverse of the most costly tapestry looks mean and cheap. It is said that no man is a hero to his valet. The reason is not that the hero is mean or base, but that the valet cannot see anything that is great and noble, but only what is mean and base. The history of no people is heroical to its Mugwumps. But, thank God, what is petty and personal is also temporary and perishable. The voice of all history, especially the voice of the history of our Republic, speaks to us the lesson which our great philosopher taught and so implicitly believed,
Saying, What is excellent,
As God lives, is permanent.