Fifty years in Wall Street

by Henry Clews

This descent of personal dignity on the part of the President was received by the audience with a feeling of ineffable disgust. He had stooped beneath the level of the average electioneering stump speaker. He was greeted with jeers and hooting, and the meeting was turned into a roaring farce, in which the President played harlequin, to the great delight of the ignorant element in the crowd, and the terrible mortification of those who had conducted him thither.

His friends were greatly incensed at his conduct. My business friends and I were heartily sorry that we had anything to do with this unruly Executive, who had evidently lost his head through the sudden acquisition of power.

The President’s journey was continued to Chicago by way of Cleveland, where he made similar outbursts to those displayed at Albany. By the time he had reached Chicago he had become a public object of ridicule. He spoke so vociferously about “my policy” that the very boys in the streets began to utter these words ironically and jeeringly.

The tour of the President was designated “Swinging around the circle,” and when he returned to Washington he had become an object of national contempt, and the majority of the people had entirely lost confidence in him.

One thing about this time that intensified the popular feeling of hostility against him was the attitude he assumed concerning the massacre of New Orleans, which occurred about a month before he started on his political tour.

The Convention which had formed the free constitution of the State of Louisiana in 1864 had been ordered to reassemble by its President. The Confederate sympathizers, who had been greatly encouraged by the acts of the President to keep alive their old feelings of hostility to the North, resolved that the Republican Convention should not be permitted to meet. The ground they urged for this proposed action was that the Convention proposed to recommend the imposition of Negro suffrage upon the State. There was a riot and a terrible massacre, in which over a hundred lives were lost, and several hundred persons were wounded. The municipal authorities of New Orleans gave aid and comfort to the rioters.

The Congressional Committee that investigated the circumstances connected with the riot reported that the President knew that riot and bloodshed were apprehended. He knew what military orders were in force, and yet without the confirmation of the Secretary of War, or the General of the Army, upon whose responsibility these military orders had been issued, he gave orders by telegraph, which, if enforced, as they would be, would have compelled our soldiers to aid the rebels against the men in New Orleans who had remained loyal during the war, and sought to aid and support, by official sanction, the persons who designed to suppress, by arrest and criminal process under color of the law, the meeting of the Convention; and all this although the Convention was called with the sanction of the Governor and by one of the judges of the Supreme Court of Louisiana claiming to act as President of the Convention. The effect of the action of the President was to encourage the heart, to strengthen the hand, and to hold up the arms of those who intended to prevent the Convention from assembling.

The President’s opposition to the Reconstruction Bill probably rendered him more unpopular than any other executive act during his administration. The bill was passed by large majorities in both Houses of Congress.

The President’s repudiation scheme was another very unpopular recommendation, for which he was very strongly reproved by the action of Congress. He stated in his message of December, 1868: “That the holders of our securities have already received upon their bonds a larger amount than their original investments, measured by the gold standard. Upon this statement of facts, it would seem but just and equitable that the six per cent. interest now paid by the Government should be applied to the reduction of the principal, in semi-annual instalments, which in sixteen years and eight months would liquidate the entire national debt.”

This clause of the President’s message was condemned by an almost unanimous vote of both Houses.