Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White — Volume 1

by Andrew Dickson White

But deeply as both the governor and myself felt on the slavery question, we both avoided it in our conversation. Each knew how earnestly the other felt regarding it, and each, as if by instinct, kept clear of a discussion which could not change our opinions, and might wreck our friendship. The result was, that, so far as I remember, we never even alluded to it during the whole year we were together. Every other subject we discussed freely but this we never touched. The nearest approach to a discussion was when one day in the Legation Chancery at St. Petersburg, Mr. Erving, also a devoted Union pro- slavery Democrat, pointing to a map of the United States hanging on the wall, went into a rhapsody over the extension of the power and wealth of our country. I answered, ``If our country could get rid of slavery in all that beautiful region of the South, such a riddance would be cheap at the cost of fifty thousand lives and a hundred millions of dollars.'' At this Erving burst forth into a torrent of brotherly anger. ``There was no conceivable cause,'' he said, ``worth the sacrifice of fifty thousand lives, and the loss of a hundred millions of dollars would mean the blotting out of the whole prosperity of the nation.'' His deep earnestness showed me the impossibility of converting a man of his opinions, and the danger of wrecking our friendship by attempting it. Little did either of us dream that within ten years from that day slavery was to be abolished in the United States, at the sacrifice not of fifty thousand, but of nearly a million lives, and at the cost not merely of a hundred millions, but, when all is told, of at least ten thousand millions of dollars!

I may mention here that it was in this companionship, at St. Petersburg, that I began to learn why newspaper criticism has, in our country, so little permanent effect on the reputation of eminent men. During four years before coming abroad I had read, in leading Republican journals of New York and New Haven, denunciations of Governor Thomas Hart Seymour as an ignoramus, a pretender, a blatant demagogue, a sot and companion of sots, an associate, and fit associate, for the most worthless of the populace. I had now found him a man of real convictions, thoroughly a gentleman, quiet, conscientious, kindly, studious, thoughtful, modest, abstemious, hardly ever touching a glass of wine, a man esteemed and beloved by all who really knew him. Thus was first revealed to me what, in my opinion, is the worst evil in American public life,—that facility for unlimited slander, of which the first result is to degrade our public men, and the second result is to rob the press of that confidence among thinking people, and that power for good and against evil which it really ought to exercise. Since that time I have seen many other examples strengthening the same conviction.

Leaving St. Petersburg, I followed historical and, to some extent, political studies at the University of Berlin, having previously given attention to them in France; and finally, traveling in Italy, became acquainted with a man who made a strong impression upon me. This was Mr. Robert Dale Owen, then the American minister at Naples, whose pictures of Neapolitan despotism, as it then existed, made me even a stronger Republican than I had been before.

Returning to America I found myself on the eve of the new presidential election. The Republicans had nominated John C. Fr<e'>mont, of whom all I knew was gathered from his books of travel. The Democrats had nominated James Buchanan, whom I, as an attach<e'> of the legation at St. Petersburg, had met while he was minister of the United States at London. He was a most kindly and impressive old gentleman, had welcomed me cordially at his legation, and at a large dinner given by Mr. George Peabody, at that time the American Amphitryon in the British metropolis, discussed current questions in a way that fascinated me. Of that I may speak in another chapter; suffice it here that he was one of the most attractive men in conversation I have ever met, and that is saying much.

I took but slight part in the campaign; in fact, a natural diffidence kept me aloof from active politics. Having given up all hope or desire for political preferment, and chosen a university career, I merely published a few newspaper and magazine articles, in the general interest of anti- slavery ideas, but made no speeches, feeling myself, in fact, unfit to make them.

But I shared more and more the feelings of those who supported Fr<e'>mont.

Mr. Buchanan, though personal acquaintance had taught me to like him as a man, and the reading of his despatches in the archives of our legation at St. Petersburg had forced me to respect him as a statesman, represented to me the encroachments and domination of American slavery, while Fr<e'>mont represented resistance to such encroachments, and the perpetuity of freedom upon the American Continent.

On election day, 1856, I went to the polls at the City Hall of Syracuse to cast my first vote. There I chanced to meet an old schoolmate who had become a brilliant young lawyer, Victor Gardner, with whom, in the old days, I had often discussed political questions, he being a Democrat and I a Republican. But he had now come upon new ground, and, wishing me to do the same, he tendered me what was known as ``The American Ticket,'' bearing at its head the name of Millard Fillmore. He claimed that it represented resistance to the encroachments and dangers which he saw in the enormous foreign immigration of the period, and above all in the increasing despotism of the Roman Catholic hierarchy controlling the Irish vote. Most eloquently did my old friend discourse on the dangers from this source. He insisted that Roman Catholic bishops and priests had wrecked every country in which they had ever gained control; that they had aided in turning the mediaeval republics into despotisms; that they had ruined Spain and the South American republics; that they had rendered Poland and Ireland unable to resist oppression; that they had hopelessly enfeebled Austria and Italy; that by St. Bartholomew massacres and clearing out of Huguenots they had made, first, terrorism, and, finally, despotism necessary in France; that they had rendered every people they had controlled careless of truth and inclined to despotism,—either of monarchs or ``bosses'';—that our prisons were filled with the youth whom they had trained in religion and morals; that they were ready to ravage the world with fire and sword to gain the slightest point for the Papacy; that they were the sworn foes of our public- school system, without which no such thing as republican government could exist among us; that, in fact, their bishops and priests were the enemies of everything we Americans should hold dear, and that their church was not so much a religious organization as a political conspiracy against the best that mankind had achieved.

``Look at the Italians, Spanish, French to-day, ``he said. ``The Church has had them under its complete control fifteen hundred years, and you see the result. Look at the Irish all about us;—always screaming for liberty, yet the most abject slaves of their passions and of their priesthood.''

He spoke with the deepest earnestness and even eloquence; others gathered round, and some took his tickets. I refused them, saying, ``No. The question of all questions to me is whether slavery or freedom is to rule this Republic,'' and, having taken a Republican ticket, I went up-stairs to the polls. On my arrival at the ballot-box came a most exasperating thing. A drunken Irish Democrat standing there challenged my vote. He had, perhaps, not been in the country six months; I had lived in that very ward since my childhood, knew and was known by every other person present; and such was my disgust that it is not at all unlikely that if one of Gardner's tickets had been in my pocket, it would have gone into the ballot-box. But persons standing by,—Democrats as well as Republicans,—having quieted this perfervid patriot, and saved me from the ignominy of swearing in my vote, I carried out my original intention, and cast my first vote for the Republican candidate.