Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2

by George Frisbie Hoar

He was the originator of the method of solution of the dispute as to the title to the Presidency in 1876. It ought to be said, however, that it was done in full consultation with Mr. Blaine. I was then quite intimate with both of them, and a member of the Committee in the House who reported the plan. On the seventh day of December, 1876, at the beginning of the winter session, after the election, Mr. McCrary offered the following resolution. It was adopted.

"Whereas there are differences of opinion as to the proper mode of counting the electoral votes for President and Vice- President and as to the manner of determining questions that may arise as to the legality and validity of returns made of such votes by the several States;

"And whereas it is of the utmost importance that all differences of opinion and all doubt and uncertainty upon these questions should be removed, to the end that the votes may be counted and the result declared by a tribunal whose authority none can question and whose decision all will accept as final: Therefore,

"Resolved, That a committee of five members of this House be appointed by the Speaker, to act in conjunction with any similar committee that may be appointed by the Senate, to prepare and report without delay such a measure, either legislative or constitutional, as may in their judgment be best calculated to accomplish the desired end, and that said committee have leave to report at any time."

I do not know that a sketch of Richard W. Thompson, or Dick Thompson, as he was familiarly and affectionately called, properly finds a place in my autobiography. I knew him very slightly. I dare say I visited the Navy Department in his time. But I have now no recollection of it. I had a great respect for him. He lived in the lifetime of every President of the United States, except Washington, and I believe he saw every one of them, except Washington, unless it may be that he never saw Theodore Roosevelt. He was a very interesting character, a man of great common sense, public spirit, with a wonderful memory, and a rare fund of knowledge of the political history of the Northwest. Indeed he was an embodiment of the best quality of the people of the Ohio Territory, although born in Virginia. His great capacity was that of a politician. He made excellent stump speeches, managed political conventions with great shrewdness, and also with great integrity, and had great skill in constructing platforms. Colonel Thompson was a very valuable political adviser. It has never been the custom to select Secretaries of the Navy on account of any previously acquired knowledge of naval affairs, although the two heads of that Department appointed by Presidents McKinley and Roosevelt have conducted it with wonderful success in a very difficult time. A day or two after the Inauguration, John Sherman, the new Secretary of the Treasury, gave a very brilliant dinner party to the Cabinet, at which I was a guest. The table was ornamented by a beautiful man-of-war made out of flowers. Just before the guests sat down to dinner a little adopted daughter of Secretary Sherman's attached a pretty American flag to one of the masts. Somebody called attention to the beauty of the little ornament. I asked Secretary Thompson across the table to which mast of a man-of-war the American flag should be attached. Thompson coughed and stammered a little, and said: "I think I shall refer that question to the Attorney-General."

David M. Key was appointed Postmaster-General in furtherance of President Hayes's desire, in the accomplishment of which he was eminently successful, to promote harmony between the sections, and to diminish, so far as possible, the heat of party feeling which had blazed so intensely at the time of his election. Mr. Key was a Democrat, and never, I believe, certainly not during President Hayes's Administration, abandoned his allegiance to the Democratic Party. He had been a member of the Senate from Tennessee, and Lieutenant-Colonel in the Confederate Army. His appointment was a popular one. Mr. Key administered the affairs of the Department very satisfactorily, in which he was aided very much by his Assistant Postmaster- General, Mr. Tyner, who had been an eminent member of the House, to whom, I suppose, he left the matter of appointments to office.

Carl Schurz was a very interesting character. When I entered the House he was a member of the Senate from the State of Missouri. He was admirably equipped for public service. Although a native of Germany, he had a most excellent, copious and clear English style. No man in either House of Congress equalled him in that respect. He was a clear reasoner, and not lacking on fit occasion in a stirring eloquence. He had rendered great service to the country. The value to the Union cause of the stanch support of the Germans in the Northwest, including Missouri, whose principal city, St. Louis, contained a large German population, can hardly be over-estimated. Without it Missouri would have passed an ordinance of secession, and the city would have been held by the Confederates from the beginning of the war. To prevent this the patriotism and influence of Carl Schurz, then very powerful with his German fellow-citizens, largely contributed. He also combated with great power the dangerous heresy of fiat money and an irredeemable currency. He was a stanch advocate of civil service reform, although he left Congress before the legislation which accomplished that was adopted. So he will be entitled to a high place in the history of the very stormy time in which he has lived, and to the gratitude of his countrymen.

But he seems to me to have erred in underrating the value of party instrumentalities and of official power in accomplishing what is best for the good of the people. When his Republican associates committed what he thought some grave errors, he helped turn Missouri over to the Democrats, who have held it ever since. So the political power of the State since Mr. Schurz abandoned the Republican Party because of his personal objection to President Grant, has been exerted against everything Mr. Schurz valued—honest elections, sound money, security to the enfranchised Southern men, and the Constitutional rights which Mr. Schurz helped gain for them. He has never seemed to care for organization, still less to be influenced by that attachment to organization which, while sometimes leading to great evil, has been the source of inspiration of nearly everything that has been accomplished for good in this world.

Mr. Blaine says of him, with some exaggeration, but with some truth, that he has not become rooted and grounded anywhere, has never established a home, and is not identified with any community.

So the influence of Mr. Schurz has only been to contribute some powerful arguments to the cause which he espoused and never, certainly for a great many years, that of a leader. Mr. Schurz's arguments for the last thirty years would have been as effective if published anonymously, and I dare say more effective than they have been when given to the world under his name.