My Memories of Eighty Years

by Chauncey M. Depew

It has been my good fortune to know well the governors of our State of New York, commencing with Edmund D. Morgan. With many of them I was on terms of close intimacy. I have already spoken of Governors Seymour, Fenton, Dix, Tilden, Cleveland, and Roosevelt. It might be better to confine my memory to those who have joined the majority.

Lucius Robinson was an excellent executive of the business type, as also were Alonzo B. Cornell and Levi P. Morton. Frank S. Black was in many ways original. He was an excellent governor, but very different from the usual routine. In the Spanish-American War he had a definite idea that the National Guard of our State should not go into the service of the United States as regiments, but as individual volunteers. The Seventh Regiment, which was the crack organization of the Guard, was severely criticised because they did not volunteer. They refused to go except as the Seventh Regiment, and their enemies continued to assail them as tin soldiers.

General Louis Fitzgerald and Colonel Appleton came to me very much disturbed by this condition. General Russell A. Alger, secretary of war, was an intimate friend of mine, and I went to Washington and saw him and the president on the acute condition affecting the reputation of the Seventh Regiment.

General Alger said: "We are about to make a desperate assault upon the fortifications of Havana. Of course there will be many casualties and the fighting most severe. Will the Seventh join that expedition?"

The answer of General Fitzgerald and Colonel Appleton was emphatic that the Seventh would march with full ranks on the shortest possible notice. Governor Black would not change his view of how the National Guard should go, and so the Seventh was never called. It seems only proper that I should make a record of this patriotic proposition made by this organization.

Governor Black developed after he became governor, and especially after he had retired from office, into a very effective orator. He had a fine presence and an excellent delivery. He was fond of preparing epigrams, and became a master in this sort of literature. When he had occasion to deliver an address, it would be almost wholly made up of these detached gems, each perfect in itself. The only other of our American orators who cultivated successfully this style of speech was Senator John J. Ingalls, of Kansas. It is a style very difficult to attain or to make successful.

David B. Hill was an extraordinary man in many ways. He was governor for three terms and United States senator for one. His whole life was politics. He was a trained lawyer and an excellent one, but his heart and soul was in party control, winning popular elections, and the art of governing. He consolidated the rural elements of his party so effectively that he compelled Tammany Hall to submit to his leadership and to recognize him as its master.

For many years, and winning in every contest, Governor Hill controlled the organization and the policies of the Democratic party of the State of New York. In a plain way he was an effective speaker, but in no sense an orator. He contested with Cleveland for the presidency, but in that case ran against a stronger and bigger personality than he had ever encountered, and lost. He rose far above the average and made his mark upon the politics of his State and upon the United States Senate while he was a member.

Levi P. Morton brought to the governorship business ability which had made him one of the great merchants and foremost bankers. As Governor of the State of New York, United States Minister to France, Congressman, and Vice-President of the United States, he filled every position with grace, dignity, and ability. A lovable personality made him most popular.

Roswell P. Flower, after a successful career as a banker, developed political ambitions. He had a faculty of making friends, and had hosts of them. He was congressman and then governor. While the Democratic organization was hostile to him, he was of the Mark Hanna type and carried his successful business methods into the canvass for the nomination and the campaign for the election and was successful.