Our Presidents and how we make them

by Alexander K. McClure

No one could know Lincoln well without seeing some features of his home life. I have seen him in grave conversation with public men on the most momentous subjects, when “Tad” Lincoln, his favorite boy, would rush into the room, bounce on to his father’s lap, throw his arms around his neck, and play hobby-horse on his foot regardless of all the sacred affairs of State. There never was a frown from the father, and the fretting questions of even a great war seemed to perish until “Tad” had completed his romp. The greatest sorrow of Lincoln’s life shadowed the altar of his own home, and it was one he had to suffer in silence. The calamity that befell Mrs. Lincoln after his death was visible to those who had opportunity to see for themselves at an early period of his administration. Mrs. Lincoln was mentally unbalanced, but not sufficiently so to prevent the performance of her social functions, and her vagaries often led to severe reflections upon the President, at times even to the extent of charging her with sympathy for the South, as her brothers were prominent in the Southern army.

I first saw Mrs. Lincoln at Harrisburg on the night that Lincoln made his midnight journey to Washington, and the greatest difficulty we had on that occasion was to prevent her from creating a scene that would have given publicity to the movement. I thought her a fool, and was so disgusted with her that I never spoke to her afterward, although I had frequently gone with ladies to her receptions. I wronged her, for she was then not wholly responsible, and soon after Lincoln’s death the climax came, leaving her to grope out the remainder of her life in the starless midnight of insanity. With Lincoln’s many other sorrows, considering his love of home and family, it may be understood how keenly he suffered, and how he was clouded by shadows for which the world could give no relief.

No man ever came in contact with Abraham Lincoln who did not learn to love, honor, and even reverence him. His ablest political enemies ever paid the highest tributes, not only to his personal attributes, but to his masterly ability, and none surpassed Stephen A. Douglas, the ablest foeman Lincoln ever met, in his appreciation of Lincoln’s qualities. He had to accept vastly the gravest responsibilities ever put upon any President of the United States, and I am quite sure that no other man could have filled Lincoln’s place during the Civil War with equal safety to the Republic. Had he been vindictive and resentful his fame would not be without blemish to-day.

What was to me the most beautiful tribute I have ever heard paid to him came from the lips of Jefferson Davis, when I visited him at his home in Mississippi some ten years after the war. He never tired of discussing the character and the actions of Lincoln, and asked me many questions about his personal qualities. After he had heard all that could be given in the brief time that I had, he said with a degree of mingled earnestness and pathos that few could have equalled:

“Next to the destruction of the Confederacy, the death of Abraham Lincoln was the darkest day the South has ever known.”

THE GRANT-SEYMOUR CONTEST

1868

To the casual reader of our political history, the election and re-election of Grant to the Presidency immediately after the close of the war would seem to be a result at once logical and inevitable; but there are few of the present day who have any knowledge of the many obstacles which confronted Grant in his transfer from the highest military to the highest civil duties of the nation.

It is noted that Grant, the Great Captain of the Age, was elected and re-elected by large majorities; that General Hayes, another soldier of national fame, succeeded him; that General Garfield, a soldier-statesman, succeeded Hayes, defeating Hancock, the most brilliant Democratic soldier of the war, by only a few thousands on the popular vote; that Blaine, the first civilian candidate of the party, was the first Republican to suffer defeat after the political revolution of 1860; that General Harrison, another honored soldier, was successful as the Republican candidate in 1888, and that Major McKinley, now Chief Magistrate of the Republic, carried his musket as a private in the flame of battle, and came out of the war an officer promoted for gallantry. With such a line of military Presidents, the natural assumption of the student of our political history would be that General Grant’s election came about because none could question its fitness.

There were very serious obstacles to Grant’s nomination for the Presidency by the Republicans in 1868. First, he was not a Republican and never had been. He had never voted a Republican ticket, and he never cast a Republican ballot until after he had been eight years a Republican President. His last vote before he re-entered the army was cast for a radical pro-slavery Democrat, and he did not even sympathize with Stephen A. Douglas in 1860, although he lived in Illinois, the home of the great Democratic leader of that day. Second, he was resolutely averse to being a candidate for the Presidency. He was General of the Army, with freedom to retire without diminution of pay; he had no political training, and felt himself unfitted for a political career. He was honest and apparently fixed in his purpose not to become a candidate. These objections at first appeared to be insuperable obstacles to Grant’s nomination, but he was human, and had he declined the Presidency when it was apparently within his reach, he would have stood as the only man in the history of the Republic who had refused its crown.