My Memories of Eighty Years

by Chauncey M. Depew

In the early part of his canvass Mr. Greeley made a tour of the country. There have been many such travels by presidential candidates, but none like this. His march was a triumphal procession, and his audiences enormous and most enthusiastic. The whole country marvelled at his intellectual versatility. He spoke every day, and often several times a day, and each speech was absolutely new. There seemed to be no limit to his originality, his freshness, or the new angles from which to present the issues of the canvass. No candidate was ever so bitterly abused and so slandered.

A veteran speaker has in the course of his career original experiences. The cordiality and responsiveness of his audience is not always an index of their agreement with his argument. During the campaign Mr. Greeley came to me and said: "I have received encouraging accounts from the State of Maine. I have a letter from such a place"—naming it—"from the principal of the academy there. He writes me that the Congregational minister, who has the largest church in town, the bank president, the manufacturer, the principal lawyer, and himself are lifelong readers of the Tribune, and those steadfast Republicans intend to support me. He thinks if they can have a public meeting with a speaker of national reputation, the result might be an overturn in my favor in this community, which is almost unanimously Republican, that it may influence the whole State, and," continued Mr. Greeley, "he suggests you as the speaker, and I earnestly ask you to go."

When I arrived at the place I was entertained by the manufacturer. The audience crowded the largest hall in the town. The principal of the academy presided, the Congregational minister opened the exercises with a prayer, and I was introduced and received with great cordiality.

For such an audience my line of talk was praising General Grant as the greatest general of modern times, and how largely the preservation of the Union depended upon his military genius. Then to picture the tremendous responsibilities of the presidency and the impossibility of a man, however great as a soldier, with a lifetime of military education, environment, and experiences, succeeding in civil office, especially as great a one as the presidency of the United States. Then came, naturally, a eulogium of Horace Greeley, the maker of public opinion, the moulder of national policies, the most eloquent and resourceful leader of the Republican party since its formation. The audience cheered with great enthusiasm all these allusions to General Grant, and responded with equal fervor to my praise of Horace Greeley.

When I concluded they stood up and gave me cordial cheers, and the presiding officer came forward and said: "I now suggest that we close this meeting with three rousing cheers for Horace Greeley." The principal of the academy, the manufacturer, the minister, the lawyer, a very few of the audience, and several women responded. After this frost a farmer rose gradually, and as he began to let out link after link of his body, which seemed about seven feet tall, he reached his full height, and then in a voice which could be heard a mile shouted: "Three cheers for General Grant!" The response nearly took the roof off the house. I left the State the next morning and told Mr. Greeley that he could not carry Maine.

Among the amusing episodes of the campaign was one which occurred at an open-door mass meeting at Watertown, N. Y. John A. Dix had been nominated for governor on the Republican ticket, and I was speaking of him and his career. He had changed from one party to the other five or six times in the course of his long career, and each time received an office. There was great doubt as to his age, because in the American Encyclopaedia the date of his birth was given as of a certain year, and in the French Encyclopaedia, which published his biography when he was minister to France, a widely different date was given. In the full tide of partisan oratory I went over these changes of political activity, and how each one had been rewarded, also the doubt as to his age, and then I shouted: "I have discovered among the records of the Pilgrim Fathers that when they landed on Plymouth Rock they found John A. Dix standing on the rock and announcing that unless they made him justice of the peace he would join the Indians." An indignant farmer, who could not hold his wrath any longer, shouted: "That's a lie! The Pilgrims landed more than two hundred and fifty years ago." I saw that my interrupter had swallowed my bait, hook, and line, bob and sinker, pole and all, and shouted with great indignation: "Sir, I have narrated that historical incident throughout the State, from Montauk Point to Niagara Falls, and you are the first man who has had the audacity to question it."

Another farmer stepped up to the heckler and said: "Here is my hat, neighbor. You can keep it. I am going bareheaded for the rest of my life." In his uproarious laughter the crowd all joined. It was years before the questioning farmer could visit Watertown without encountering innumerable questions as to when the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock.

The last meeting of the campaign was held at Mr. Greeley's home at Chappaqua in Westchester County. We all knew that the contest was hopeless and defeat sure. I was one of the speakers, both as his neighbor and friend, and accompanied him to New York. A rough crowd on the train jeered him as we rode along. We went to his office, and there he spoke of the lies that had been told about him, and which had been believed by the public; of the cartoons which had misrepresented him, especially those of Tom Nast, and of which there were many lying about. Leaning upon his desk, a discouraged and hopeless man, he said: "I have given my life to the freeing of the slaves, and yet they have been made to believe that I was a slave driver. It has been made to appear, and people have been made to believe, that I was wrong or faithless, or on the other side of the reforms which I have advocated all my life. I will be beaten in the campaign and I am ruined for life." He was overcome with emotion, and it was the saddest interview I ever had with any one. It was really the breaking of a great heart. He died before the votes were counted.

There was instantly a tremendous revulsion of popular feeling in the country. He had lost his wife during the campaign, and the people woke up suddenly to the sorrows under which he had labored, to his genius as a journalist, to his activity as a reformer, and to a usefulness that had no parallel among his contemporaries. The president-elect, General Grant, and the vice-president-elect, Schuyler Colfax, attended the funeral, and without distinction of party his death was universally mourned.

After the election, in consultation on railroad affairs, Commodore Vanderbilt said to me, "I was very glad you were defeated," which was his way of saying that he did not want me either to leave the railroad or to have other duties which would impair my efficiency.