Only on one occasion was the subject ever mentioned. About two weeks before the Republican Convention of 1884, I met Mr. Blaine in Lafayette Square. He beckoned me to a seat on a bench. He opened the conversation by saying that he was glad to have some votes in the convention, but that he did not wish for the nomination. He expressed a wish to defeat the nomination of President Arthur, and he then said the ticket should be General Sherman and Robert Lincoln. Most assuredly the nomination of that ticket would have been followed by an election. To me General Sherman had one answer to the suggestion: "I am not a statesman; my brother John is. If any Sherman is to be nominated, he is the man."
I did not then question, nor do I now question, the sincerity of the statement that Mr. Blaine then made. My acquaintance with Mr. Blaine began with our election to the Thirty-eighth Congress, and it continued on terms of reserved friendship to the end of his life. That reserve was not due to any defect in his character of which I had knowledge, nor to the statements concerning him that were made by others, but to an opinion that he was not a person whose candidacy I was willing to espouse in advance of his nomination. I ought to say that in my intercourse with Mr. Blaine he was frank and free from dissimulation.
I was on terms of intimacy with Mr. Conkling from the disastrous April, 1866, to the end of his life. Hence it was that I ventured upon an experiment which a less well-assured friend would have avoided. I assumed that Mr. Blaine would close the controversy at the first opportunity. It may be said of Mr. Blaine that, while he had great facility for getting into difficulties, he had also a strong desire to get out of difficulties, and great capacity for the accomplishment of his purposes in that direction.
On a time, and years previous to 1880, I put the matter before Mr. Conkling, briefly, upon personal grounds, and upon public grounds in a party sense. He received the suggestion without any manifestation of feeling, and with great candor he said: "That attack was made without any provocation by me as against Mr. Blaine, and when I was suffering more from other causes than I ever suffered at any other time, and I shall never overlook it."
General Grant's strength was so overmastering in 1868 and 1872 that the controversy between Blaine and Conkling was of no importance to the Republican Party. The disappearance of the political influence of General Grant in 1876 revived the controversy within the Republican Party, and made the nomination of either Blaine or Conkling an impossibility. Its evil influence extended to the election, and it put in jeopardy the success of General Hayes. At the end, Mr. Conkling did not accept the judgment of the Electoral Commission as a just judgment, and he declined to vote for its affirmation.
I urged Mr. Conkling to sustain the action of the commission, and upon the ground that we had taken full responsibility when we agreed to the reference and that there was then no alternative open to us. I did not attempt to solve the problem of the election of 1876 either upon ethical or political grounds. The evidence was more conclusive than satisfactory that there had been wrong-doing in New York, in Oregon, in New Orleans, and not unlikely in many other places. As a measure of peace, when ascertained justice had become an impossibility, I was ready to accept the report of the commission, whether it gave the Presidency to General Hayes or to Mr. Tilden. The circumstances were such that success before the commission did not promise any advantage to the successful party.
For the moment, I pass by the Convention of 1880 and the events of the following year. In the year 1884 Mr. Conkling was in the practice of his profession and enjoying therefrom larger emoluments, through a series of years, than ever were enjoyed by any other member of the American bar. He once said to me: "My father would denounce me if he knew what charges I am making." That conjecture may have been well founded, for the father would not have been the outcome of the period in which the son was living. The father was an austere county judge, largely destitute of the rich equipment for the profession for which the son was distinguished. After the year 1881, when Mr. Conkling gave himself wholly to the profession, Mr. Justice Miller made this remark to me: "For the discussion of the law and the facts of a case Mr. Conkling is the best lawyer who comes into our court."
If this estimate was trustworthy, then Mr. Conkling's misgivings as to his charges may have been groundless. If a rich man, whose property is put in peril, whose liberty is assailed, or whose reputation is threatened, will seek the advice and aid of the leading advocate of the city, state, or country, shall not the compensation be commensurate with the stake that has been set up? Is it to be measured by the per diem time pay of ordinary men?
Whatever may have been Mr. Conkling's pecuniary interests or professional engagements in the year 1884, he found time to take a quiet part in the contest of that year, and to contribute to Mr. Blaine's defeat.
In the month of November, and after the election, I had occasion to pass a Sunday in New York. It happened, and by accident, that I met Mr. Conkling on Fifth Avenue. After the formalities, he invited me to call with him upon Mr. William K. Vanderbilt. Mr. Vanderbilt was absent when we called. Upon his return, the election was the topic of conversation. Mr. Vanderbilt said that he voted for Garfield in 1880, but that he had not voted for Blaine. Mr. Conkling expressed his regret that Mr. Blaine had come so near a success, and he attributed it to the fact that he had not anticipated the support which had been given to Blaine by the Democratic Party.