Much as I am pained in making this statement with regard to the President, infinitely more painful to me is what I must present with regard to the Secretary of State. Here again I remark that I am driven to this explanation. His strange and unnatural conduct toward me, and his prompting of Senators, who, one after another, have set up my alleged relations with him as ground of complaint, make it necessary for me to proceed.
We were sworn as Senators on the same day, as far back as 1851, and from that distant time were friends until the San Domingo business intervened. Nothing could exceed our kindly relations in the past. On the evening of the inauguration of General Grant as President, he was at my house with Mr. Motley in friendly communion, and all uniting in aspirations for the new Administration. Little did Mr. Motley or myself imagine in that social hour that one of our little circle was so soon to turn upon us both.
Shortly afterward Mr. Fish became Secretary of State, and began his responsible duties by appealing to me for help. I need not say that I had pleasure in responding to his call, and that I did what I could most sincerely and conscientiously to aid him. Of much, from his arrival down to his alienation on the San Domingo business, I possess the written record. For some time he showed a sympathy with the scheme almost as little as my own. But as the President grew in earnestness the Secretary yielded, until tardily he became its attorney. Repeatedly he came to my house, pleading for the scheme. Again and again he urged it, sometimes at my house and sometimes at his own. I was astonished that he could do so, and expressed my astonishment with the frankness of old friendship. For apology he announced that he was the President’s friend, and took office as such. “But,” said I, “you should resign rather than do this thing.” This I could not refrain from remarking, on discovery, from dispatches in the State Department, that the usurper Baez was maintained in power by our Navy. This plain act of wrong required instant redress; but the Secretary astonished me again by his insensibility to my appeal for justice. He maintained the President, as the President maintained Baez. I confess that I was troubled.
At last, some time in June, 1870, a few weeks before the San Domingo treaty was finally rejected by the Senate, the Secretary came to my house about nine o’clock in the evening and remained till after the clock struck midnight, the whole protracted visit being occupied in earnest and reiterated appeal that I should cease my opposition to the Presidential scheme; and here he urged that the election which made General Grant President had been carried by him, and not by the Republican party, so that his desires were entitled to especial attention. In his pressure on me he complained that I had opposed other projects of the President. In reply to my inquiry, he named the repeal of the Tenure-of-Office Act, and the nomination of Mr. Jones as Minister to Brussels, both of which the President had much at heart, and he concluded with the San Domingo treaty. I assured the Secretary firmly and simply, that, seeing the latter as I did with all its surroundings, my duty was plain, and that I must continue to oppose it so long as it appeared to me wrong. He was not satisfied, and renewed his pressure in various forms, returning to the point again and again with persevering assiduity that would not be arrested, when at last, finding me inflexible, he changed his appeal, saying, “Why not go to London? I offer you the English mission. It is yours.” Of his authority from the President I know nothing. I speak only of what he said. My astonishment was heightened by indignation at this too palpable attempt to take me from my post of duty; but I suppressed the feeling which rose to the lips, and, reflecting that he was an old friend and in my own house, answered gently, “We have a Minister there who cannot be bettered.” Thus already did the mission to London begin to pivot on San Domingo.
I make this revelation only because it is important to a correct understanding of the case, and because the conversation from beginning to end was official in character, relating exclusively to public business, without suggestion or allusion of a personal nature, and absolutely without the slightest word on my part leading in the most remote degree to any such overture, which was unexpected as undesired. The offer of the Secretary was in no respect a compliment or kindness, but in the strict line of his endeavor to silence my opposition to the San Domingo scheme, as is too apparent from the facts, while it was plain, positive, and unequivocal, making its object and import beyond question. Had it been merely an inquiry, it were bad enough, under the circumstances; but it was direct and complete, as by a plenipotentiary.
Shortly afterward, being the day immediately following the rejection of the San Domingo treaty, Mr. Motley was summarily removed,—according to present pretence, for an offending not only trivial and formal, but condoned by time, being a year old: very much as Sir Walter Raleigh, after being released from the Tower to conduct a distant expedition as admiral of the fleet, was at his return beheaded on a judgment of fifteen years’ standing. The Secretary, in conversation and in correspondence with me, undertook to explain the removal, insisting for a long time that he was “the friend of Mr. Motley”; but he always made the matter worse, while the heats of San Domingo entered into the discussion.
At last, in January, 1871, a formal paper justifying the removal and signed by the Secretary was laid before the Senate.[96] Glancing at this document, I found, to my surprise, that its most salient characteristic was constant vindictiveness toward Mr. Motley, with effort to wound his feelings; and this was signed by one who had sat with him at my house in friendly communion and common aspiration on the evening of the inauguration of General Grant, and had so often insisted that he was “the friend of Mr. Motley,”—while, as if it was not enough to insult one Massachusetts citizen in the public service, the same document, after a succession of flings and sneers, makes a kindred assault on me; and this is signed by one who so constantly called me “friend,” and asked me for help. The Senator from Missouri [Mr. Schurz] has already directed attention to this assault, and has expressed his judgment upon it,—confessing that he “should not have failed to feel the insult,” and then exclaiming, with just indignation, “When such things are launched against any member of this body, it becomes the American Senate to stand by him, and not to attempt to disgrace and to degrade him because he shows the sensitiveness of a gentleman.”[97] It is easy to see how this Senator regarded the conduct of the Secretary. Nor is its true character open to doubt, especially when we consider the context, and how this full-blown personality naturally flowered out of the whole document.
Mr. Motley, in his valedictory to the State Department, had alluded to the rumor that he was removed on account of my opposition to the San Domingo treaty. The document signed by the Secretary, while mingling most offensive terms with regard to his “friend” in London, thus turns upon his “friend” in Washington:—
“It remains only to notice Mr. Motley’s adoption of a rumor which had its origin in this city in a source bitterly, personally, and vindictively hostile to the President.