After General Garfield was elected to the Presidency, but before his inauguration, I determined that I would urge upon him the appointment of Mr. Robert T. Lincoln as a member of his cabinet. I thought then that his selection would not only be an honor to the State, but that the great name of Lincoln, so fresh then in the minds of the people, would materially strengthen General Garfield's administration.
With this purpose in view, I visited Garfield at his home in Mentor. This journey was an extremely difficult one, owing to the circumstance that the snow was yet deep on the ground; so I arranged with the conductor to stop at the nearest point to General Garfield's house to let me off, which he did. I walked from the train through banks of snow, and after the hardest kind of a walk, finally reached his house.
I at once told him the mission on which I had come. We had quite a long talk, at the end of which he announced that he would appoint Mr. Lincoln his Secretary of War.
In this connection I desire to say a few words concerning Robert T. Lincoln. He is still living. I have known him from boyhood. He has the integrity and the character which so distinguished his father, and was marked in his mother's people as well. It is my firm conviction that long ago Robert T. Lincoln could have been President of the United States had he possessed the slightest political aspiration. He has never been ambitious for public office; but, on the contrary, it has always seemed to me that the Presidency was especially repugnant to him, which would be natural, considering the untimely death of his father, if for no other reason. He was almost forced to take an active interest in public affairs, but as soon as he was permitted to do so he retired to private life to engage in large business undertakings, and finally to become the head of the Pullman Company.
It seems strange to me that he should consider the presidency of a private corporation, no matter how great the emoluments, above the Presidency of the greatest of all Republics. How unlike his father! He was a most excellent Secretary of War, and one of General Garfield's cabinet officers whom General Arthur invited to remain in his cabinet, which he did.
Under President Harrison he consented to become Minister to England. Neither my colleague, Senator Farwell, nor I favored this appointment —not because of any antipathy for Mr. Lincoln, for whom I not only have the highest respect and admiration, but like personally as well; but Mr. Blaine, who was Harrison's Secretary of State, called on me one day and asked me to recommend some first-class man from Illinois for the post. After a consultation with my colleague, we determined to recommend an eminent lawyer and cultured gentleman of Chicago, John N. Jewett. We did recommend him, and assumed that his appointment was assured; but Harrison—probably to humiliate Mr. Blaine—called Senator Farwell and me to him one day and announced that he had determined to appoint Robert T. Lincoln Minister to England.
Farwell was extremely angry, and wanted to fight the nomination. However, I counselled moderation. I pointed out that no criticism could be made of Mr. Lincoln, and that since he was my personal friend I could not very well oppose him. So I was glad to favor the appointment, although I was as humiliated as my colleague at the cool manner with which Harrison had snubbed us after Mr. Blaine's overtures.
I recollect very well the telegram which Mr. Lincoln received when he was in Springfield, attending the business of the Pullman Company. It was from his office in Chicago. It stated that there was a letter there that demanded immediate attention, and asked whether it should be forwarded. He gave instructions to forward it to Springfield. It turned out to be the invitation of General Garfield to enter his cabinet as Secretary of War, and asking an immediate reply. He brought it to me in the Governor's office, where he sat down and wrote his reply accepting General Garfield's invitation.
But to return to General Garfield. He was not a strong executive officer. In the brief period in which he occupied the White House, he did not make a good President, and in my judgment would never have made a good one. He vacillated in the disposition of his patronage. When I visited him while he was yet President-elect, he told me that Mr. Conkling would be with him the next day, and asked my advice as to what he should say to him. It was understood that Conkling was coming to protest against the appointment of Blaine as Secretary of State. My advice was to let Mr. Conkling understand that he would appoint whomsoever he pleased as members of his cabinet; that he would run the office of President without fear or favor; and that he would appoint Mr. Blaine as Secretary of State because he considered him the very man best qualified for that high office. Garfield agreed with me, asserting that I had expressed exactly what he intended saying to Conkling; but if we are believe the stories of Senator Conkling's friends, he made far different promises to Senator Conkling in reference to this as also to other appointments.
But the culmination of the trouble between Garfield and Conkling was the appointment of Robertson as Collector of Customs at the Port of New York. The President took the ground, for his own reasons, that the Collector of Customs of New York was a National office, in which every State had an interest, and was not to be considered as Senatorial patronage. Conkling strenuously contended that it was exclusively Senatorial patronage, and in this he was sustained by precedents.