There were many able men among the Republican Representatives. Dawes, of Massachusetts, had acquired a deserved reputation for honesty, sincerity, and untiring industry. Elihu B. Washburne was an experienced politician and a practical legislator. Sam Hooper was a noble specimen of the Boston merchant, who had always preserved his reputation for exact dealings, and whose liberal charities eclipsed his generous hospitalities. Roscoe Conkling, who had just entered upon the theatre of his future fame, commanded attention by his superb choice of words in debate and by his wonderful felicity of expression and epigrammatic style. Alexander H. Rice reflected honor upon his Boston constituents. John B. Alley was a true representative of the industrial interests and anti-slavery sentiments of old Essex. William D. Kelley was on the threshold of a long career of parliamentary usefulness, and Edward McPherson, a man of facts and figures, blindly devoted to his party, was ever ready to spring some ingenious parliamentary trap for the discomfiture of its opponents.
The Democratic opposition was not strong. Among Kentucky's Representatives were the veteran John J. Crittenden, who had so long been kept under the shadow of the representation of Henry Clay, and Charles A. Wickliffe, portly in figure and florid in features, who clung to the ruffled-bosom shirt of his boyhood. Daniel Voorhees, the "Tall Sycamore of the Wabash," would occasionally launch out in a bold strain of defiance and invective against the measures for the restoration of the Union, in which he would be seconded by Clement L. Vallandingham, of Ohio, and by the facetious S. S. Cox, who then represented an Ohio district.
The Congressional Committee on the Conduct of the War was a mischievous organization, which assumed dictatorial powers. Summoning generals before them, and having a phonographer to record every word uttered, they would propound very comprehensive questions. The first question put by them was generally about identical with that which the militia captain, who fell into the cellar-way after an arduous attempt to drill his company, asked a benevolent Quaker lady who rushed forward to express her sympathy, as he struggled to extricate himself: "What do you know about war?" If the general in hand was a political brigadier or major-general, who had been in the habit before the war of saving his country on the stump, he would proceed to discuss the origin and cure of the Rebellion, greatly to the satisfaction of the Committee, and they would ascertain at once that so far as his principles were concerned, the ought to have commanded the Army of the Potomac. If the general called and questioned happened to be one of the numerous class who had formed the acquaintance of the green-eyed monster, he entertained the Committee with shocking stories of his superior officers. He scolded and carped and criticised and caviled, told half truths and solid lies, and the august and astute Committee listened with open ears, and the phonographer dotted down every word. So the meanest gossip and slang of the camp was raked into a heap and preserved in official form.
[Facsimile]
BenjWade
BENJAMIN F. WADE was born at Feeding Hills Parish, near Springfield,
Massachusetts, October 17th, 1800; removed to Ohio; was United
States Senator, 1851-1869, and died at Jefferson, Ohio, March 2d,
1878.
CHAPTER IX. THE METROPOLIS IN TIME OF WAR.
President Lincoln had a bright, spring-like day for his first New Year's reception, and the dignitaries who in turn paid their respects found such a crowd around the door of the White House that they experienced some little inconvenience in reaching the interior. Lord Lyons, of England, and M. Mercier, of France, were prominent among the diplomats, and General McDowell headed the army officers, General McClellan being ill. At noon the public were admitted, order being maintained by the police, who appeared for the first time in uniform. Passing on to the reception-room, the people met and shook hands with the President, near whom stood Mrs. Lincoln, who was attended by the United States Marshal of the District, Colonel Lamon, Captain Darling, chief of the Capitol police, and the President's secretaries. The visitors thence passed to the great East Room, where it was apparent they were unusually numerous, more strangers being present in Washington at the time, perhaps, than ever before. The crowd, indeed, as looked upon by old residents, appeared to present new faces almost entirely. The general scene was brilliant and animating, and the whole was enlivened, as usual, by strains of the Marine Band, which was stationed in the vestibule. By two o'clock the promenaders generally had departed by means of a platform for egress, constructed through one of the large windows at the front of the mansion.
The Abolitionists were greatly disappointed because there had not been any insurrectionary movements among the slaves at the South, which had been looked for at the Christmas holidays, and they then increased their exertions to make Mr. Lincoln issue a proclamation abolishing slavery. At the twenty-ninth annual meeting of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, held at Boston, in January, 1862, Wendell Phillips, with a sneer, expressed himself thus: "Mr. Seward had predicted that the war would be over in ninety days, but he didn't believe, as things were going, it would be over in ninety years. He believed Lincoln was honest, but as a pint-pot may be full, and yet not be so full as a quart, so there is a vast difference between the honesty of a small man and the honesty of a statesman."
There was an imposing parade through the streets of a new arm of the military service, a battalion or regiment of mounted lancers. The men carried lances about twelve feet long, held upright as they rode, and having black staffs and bright spear heads, something like the sword bayonet, though only about half as long. This corps was under the command of Colonel Rush, of Pennsylvania. Each horseman bore a small red flag on the top of his lance, and the novelty of the display attracted much attention, though the spectators, not greatly impressed with the effectiveness of the weapon with which the corps was armed, gave them the sobriquet "Turkey Drivers," which stuck to them ever afterward.
President Lincoln had a pet scheme during the war for establishing a colony of contrabands at the Chiriqui Lagoon, with a new transit route across the Isthmus to the harbor of Golfito, on the Pacific. The first company of emigrants, composed of freeborn negroes and liberated slaves, was organized, under President Lincoln's personal supervision, by Senator Pomeroy, of Kansas, and would have started, but the diplomatic representative of Costa Rica protested. Negro settlers, he said, would be welcomed in the province of Chiriqui, but such a colony as it was proposed to establish would necessarily be under the protection of the United States, and grave difficulties might ensue. Besides, such a colony would almost invite an attack from the Confederates, then quite powerful, who would seek their slaves, and who would regard a negro colony with especial aversion.
Mr. Lincoln regretted this fiasco, as negro colonization was his favorite panacea for the national troubles. He again and again declared that the continuance of the African race in the United States could but be injurious to both blacks and whites, and that the expatriation and colonization of the negro was a political necessity. Those who had zealously opposed slavery and who had regarded the war as securing the freedom of the negroes, combated the President's scheme. They insisted that the blacks had a right to remain in the land of their birth, and declared that expatriation, as a measure of political economy, would be fatal to the prosperity of the country, for it would drive away a large amount of productive labor. A colony was subsequently taken to one of the West India Islands, but it was a miserable failure, and the colonists, after great suffering, were brought back.