Meanwhile this same Presidential usurpation, subordinating all to himself, became palpable in another form. It was said of Gustavus Adolphus, that he drilled his Diet to vote at the word of command. Such at the outset seemed to be the Presidential policy with regard to Congress. We were to vote as he desired. He did not like the Tenure-of-Office Act, and during the first month of his administration his influence was felt in both branches of Congress to secure its repeal; all of which seemed more astonishing when it was considered that he entered upon his high trust with the ostentatious avowal that all laws would be faithfully executed, whether they met his approval or not, and that he should have no policy to enforce against the will of the people.[144] That beneficent statute, which he had upheld in the impeachment of President Johnson, was a limitation on the Presidential power of appointment, and he could not brook it. Here was plain interference with his great perquisite of office, and Congress must be coerced to repeal it. The House acted promptly and passed the desired bill. In the Senate there was delay and a protracted debate, during which the official journal announced: “The President, in conversation with a prominent Senator a few days since, declared that it was his intention not to send in any nominations of importance until definite action was taken by Congress upon the Tenure-of-Office Bill.”[145]
Here I venture to add, that a member of the Cabinet pressed me to withdraw my opposition to the repeal, saying that the President felt strongly upon it. I could not understand how a Republican President could consent to weaken the limitations upon the Executive, and so I said,—adding, that in my judgment he should rather reach forth his hands and ask to have them tied. Better always a government of law than of men.
PRESIDENTIAL INTERFERENCE IN LOCAL POLITICS.
In this tyrannical spirit, and in the assumption of his central imperialism, he has interfered with political questions and party movements in distant States, reaching into Missouri, and then into New York, to dictate how the people should vote, then manipulating Louisiana through a brother-in-law appointed Collector. With him a custom-house seems less a place for the collection of revenue than an engine of political influence, through which his dictatorship may be maintained.
Authentic testimony places this tyrannical abuse beyond question. New York is the scene, and Thomas Murphy, Collector, the Presidential lieutenant. Nobody doubts the intimacy between the President and the Collector, who are bound in friendship by other ties than those of seaside neighborhood. The Collector was determined to obtain the control of the Republican State Convention, and appealed to a patriot citizen for help, who replied, that in his judgment “it would be a delicate matter for office-holders to undertake to dictate to the associations in the different districts who should go from them to the State Convention, and still more delicate to attempt to control the judgments of men employed in the different departments as to the best men to represent them.” The brave Collector lieutenant of the President said, “that he should not hesitate to do it; that it was General Grant’s wish, and General Grant was the head of the Republican Party, and should be authority on this subject.”[146] Plainly, the Republican Party was his perquisite, and all Republicans were to do his bidding. From other testimony it appears that the President, according to the statement of his lieutenant, “wanted to be represented in the Convention,” being the Republican State Convention of New York,—“wanted to have his friends there in the Convention”; and the Presidential lieutenant, being none other than the famous Collector, offered to appoint four men in the custom-house for the witness, if he would secure the nomination of certain persons as delegates from his district, and he promised “that he would immediately send their names on to Washington and have them appointed.”[147] And so the Presidential dictatorship was administered. Offices in the custom-house were openly bartered for votes in the State Convention. Here was intolerable tyranny, with demoralization like that of the slave-market.
But New York is not the only scene of this outrage. The Presidential pretension extends everywhere; nor is it easy to measure the arrogance of corruption or the honest indignation it quickens into life.
PRESIDENTIAL CONTRIVANCE AGAINST SAN DOMINGO.
These Presidential pretensions, in all their variety, personal and military, with reckless indifference to law, naturally ripened in the contrivance, nursed in hot-house secrecy, against the peace of the island of San Domingo: I say deliberately, against the peace of that island, for under the guise of annexing a portion there was menace to the Black Republic of Hayti. This whole business, absolutely indefensible from beginning to end, being wrong at every point, is the special and most characteristic product of the Administration, into which it infused and projected itself more than into anything else. In this multiform disobedience we behold our President. Already I have referred to this contrivance as marking an epoch in Presidential pretensions. It is my duty now to show its true character as a warning against its author.
A few weeks only after beginning his career as a civilian, and while occupied with military usurpations and the perquisites of office, he was tempted by overtures of Dominican plotters, headed by the usurper Baez and the speculator Cazneau: the first an adventurer, conspirator, and trickster, described by one who knows him well as “the worst man living of whom he has any personal knowledge”;[148] and the second, one of our own countrymen, long resident on the island, known as disloyal throughout the war, and entirely kindred in character to Baez. Listening to these prompters, and without one word in Congress or in the press suggesting annexion of the island or any part of it, the President began his contrivance; and here we see abuse in every form and at every step, absolutely without precedent in our history.