FOOTNOTES:
[114] Cong. Globe, March 10, 1871, p. 48.
[115] Cong. Globe, 1871, p. 51.
[116] E. L. Pierce, in his Life of Sumner, says that the position was first offered to Frelinghuysen, of New Jersey, and that he was confirmed by the Senate on the last day of the session. Evidently he did not accept it.
[117] Mr. Charles F. Adams has shown in a recent essay that the British Ministry were perfectly aware that the capture of Mason and Slidell was justifiable by British custom and precedent, but that public opinion was so inflamed on the subject that they were swept off their feet, and could not have faced Parliament an hour if they had not demanded the surrender of the prisoners. On the other hand, our practice and precedents were directly opposite. The American doctrine was "free ships make free goods" and a fortiori free persons, but so inflamed was public opinion on this side of the water that the British demand for the surrender of the prisoners would have been refused even at the risk of war, if we had not had one war on hand already. Both nations "flopped" simultaneously. The Trent Affair—an Historical Retrospect. By Charles Francis Adams. Boston, 1912.
[118] Washington letter in the Nation, January 6, 1870.
CHAPTER XXIII
THE LIBERAL REPUBLICANS
The Liberal Republican movement of 1872 took its start in Missouri. During the war between the states, Missouri had been a prey to a real civil war, in which much blood had been spilled, and where churches, communities, and particular families had been torn asunder. In the agricultural districts and small towns, which were nine tenths of the whole, nobody, whether Secessionist, or Unionist, or neutral, could feel certain, when he went to bed, whether he should sleep till morning, or be awakened after midnight by a guerilla raid or a burning roof. The contending forces were not unequally divided. The Confederates were the stronger half in wealth and influence, although not in numbers, but the proximity of the Federal armies and their actual occupation of the soil gave a preponderance to the Unionists and strangled secession in its infancy. When the war came to an end, all the heart-burning that it had engendered was still raging. Not only were the Republicans in power, but the most radical of them had control within the party. Lincoln was not sufficiently advanced for them. They had refused to vote for his renomination in the Convention of 1864.