“Long ago,” he said, “I made a vow to the people that in the performance of my duty no influence would control me but the dictates of my conscience and my determination to do the right—as I see the right—day in and day out, regardless of political future or personal consequences. Have no fear—I will stick at that.”

These were brave words. But Sulzer proved unequal to their promise. All he did was to go far enough in the surface appearance of independence to rouse the Tiger of Tammany to a fury of vengeance.

Tammany soon found an occasion to carry out this intention, and they removed Sulzer from his office. This act of private vengeance cost Tammany four years of control of the city government of New York, for Hennessy’s disclosures made the public eager to administer a rebuke to Tammany, and this rebuke took the form of electing Mitchel as Mayor.

The Tiger’s opportunity to impeach Sulzer came about in this way: When Sulzer filed his sworn statement of campaign expenses, Tammany scented some gross discrepancies and did some shrewd detective work. The result was that they discovered that he had not included in his list of contributions the $2,500 he had received from Jacob H. Schiff, nor the checks of several others, including my own, which amounted in all to many thousands of dollars. By careful investigation they had established the fact that he had not applied these moneys to his campaign expenses, but had deposited them to his personal account and used the money as margin with a Wall Street broker for stock-market speculation. Thereupon, Tammany leaders in the State Legislature arose in the Assembly Chamber and impeached William Sulzer of high crimes and misdemeanours. They charged him, among other things, with filing a false statement of campaign expenses, with perjury, and with the suppression of testimony; and demanded his dismissal from office. The Assembly sustained a motion for his impeachment. When I returned from Europe in September, 1913, I found that his trial was in progress, and I was summoned as a witness to testify before the High Court of Impeachment.

It would take the pens of a Macaulay and a Swift to do justice to this modern burlesque of the trial of Warren Hastings. I use the term “burlesque” in no sense of disrespect toward the Court and its setting. The dignity of the proceedings was almost awe-inspiring. But the defendant lent no such exalted interest to the event as did the romantic figure of Warren Hastings. The offences of Hastings had, at least, the dramatic merits of their magnitude. Burke’s indictment of him was a recital of crimes worthy of the treatment of a Greek tragic poet. Hastings’s accusers were distressed queens, pillaged treasures, and suffering peoples. Burke’s plea for a verdict was an appeal to the conscience of mankind.

By this comparison the Sulzer impeachment was a travesty, the defendant a petty misdemeanant, and the purpose of the trial a spiteful vengeance on a rebellious henchman. The setting of the Court, however, gave the event a fictitious dignity. The Senate Chamber at Albany had been altered for the occasion by the state architect. A lofty seat had been provided for the presiding judge of the High Court of Impeachment, Judge Edgar M. Cullen, who, as chief judge of the Court of Appeals, presided ex officio. Below him was a long seat for the associate judges. Ascending tiers of seats were provided for the forty-four members of the State Senate who, with the judges of the Court of Appeals, constituted the High Court of Impeachment. Behind Judge Cullen’s chair the entire wall of the room was hung with a dark red velvet curtain in the centre of which was emblazoned the coat of arms of New York in gold embroidery, flanked on either side by national emblems. At one side of the court room, places were provided for the “Fourth Estate,” the gentlemen of the press, to whom Burke had made so eloquent an appeal on the greater historical occasion. The public balcony, which at the Hastings trial had been crowded with the Sarah Siddonses and the haut ton of London, was, here at Albany, crowded with the vengeful Knickerbocker aristocracy, who had come to gloat in triumph over the final discomfiture of the demagogic desecrator of the executive mansion. The Edmund Burke of the Sulzer impeachment was Edgar T. Brackett, late of the New York Senate. Alton B. Parker and John B. Stanchfield were the chief counsel of the managers for the Assembly which had presented the indictment, but Brackett was the man who made the oratorical impeachment. Sulzer stood upon the prerogative of early precedents and refused to make a personal appearance before the Court. In compliance with a judicial ruling he abstained from functioning as Governor while the trial was in progress and, instead of facing his accusers, spent his time in a frantic but futile effort to make political combinations that would save him.

Witness after witness testified to Sulzer’s solicitation of contributions for which he had made no accounting. My testimony was only confirmatory of a mass of evidence elicited from men of eminence like Jacob H. Schiff and many others. I appeared before the Court on September 24, 1913. Replying to questions from the prosecutor, I repeated the conversation I had had with Sulzer when I gave him my check for $1,000, and I also testified to the fact that on the day I returned from Europe, Governor Sulzer had telephoned me, “If you are going to testify I hope you will be easy with me”—to which I answered that I would testify to the facts.

The verdict of the court was “Guilty.” Sulzer was shorn of his high office. His proud hopes, fostered by the soothsayer’s prophecy, were sadly broken. Knickerbocker society had its revenge; the “People’s House” became again the executive mansion. And Tammany had its vengeance; it had crushed its rebel henchman and given all other potential malcontents a spectacular object lesson.

CHAPTER X
THE SOCIAL SIDE OF CONSTANTINOPLE

THE Senate confirmed my appointment as Ambassador to Turkey on September 4, 1913. Soon afterward I went to Washington to familiarize myself with the duties of my office and to receive my instructions. A new Ambassador is allowed thirty days for this purpose. Usually, he spends them in the State Department, taking a sort of course of intensive training. I did not take the full month allowed me. The Chief of the Division of Near Eastern Affairs took me in hand, and in a series of conversations outlined to me, first, the duties, prerogatives, and privileges of an Ambassador; and, second, a general survey of existing relations between Turkey and the United States. Then several hours were occupied in studying the methods of keeping the accounts of the Embassy, and of handling its funds.