He retired from office after Mr. Cleveland was elected, and has since achieved distinction as an author. He has written several very interesting books which have had a wide circulation. For many years Colonel Carr has taken an active part in our State and National campaigns. He is a forceful speaker, so naturally his services have been in constant requisition by the State and National Republican Committees. He has rendered very valuable service to the Republican party both in the State and in the Nation.
I had known President Harrison for many years. He represented a neighboring State in the Senate, of which body he was a leader when I entered it in 1883. I probably knew him as well as any of my Republican colleagues; but his was a very cold, distant temperament, even in the Senate, hardly capable of forming a very close friendship for any one, and he had no particular friends.
In justice to Mr. Harrison, however, it must be said that he was a masterly lawyer, and his appointments generally were first-class. Especially was he fortunate in his selection of Federal judges. He selected them himself, and would tolerate no interference from any one. He did select the very best men he could find. For instance, he appointed such men as Justice Brewer, of Kansas; Justice Brown, of Michigan; Judge Woods, of Indiana; and it was Harrison who appointed President Taft as a Federal Judge. He was an exceptionally able President, and gave the country an excellent administration.
But at the same time he was probably the most unsatisfactory President we ever had in the White House to those who must necessarily come into personal contact with him. He was quite a public speaker, and the story has often been told of him that if he should address ten thousand men from a public platform, he would make every one his friend; but that if he should meet each of those ten thousand men personally, each man would go away his enemy. He lacked the faculty of treating people in a manner to retain their friendship. Even Senators and Representatives calling on official business he would treat with scant courtesy. He scarcely ever invited any one to have a chair.
Senator Platt, of Connecticut, asked me one day if I was going to the White House to dine that evening, stating that he had an invitation. I told him no, that I had not yet been invited, that I had never yet during the Harrison administration even been invited to take a seat in the White House. Some one overheard the remark and it was published in the newspapers. I visited the White House shortly afterwards, and I assume that Harrison had seen it because as soon as he saw me, without a smile on his face or a gleam in his eye, he hastened to get me a chair, inviting me to be seated. I declined to sit down, explaining that I was in a hurry, and closed the business I had come for, and left. Afterwards he invited me to dinner and treated me with marked consideration.
I have sometimes wondered whether President Harrison's apparent coldness may not be ascribed to an absorption in his duties that made him unintentionally neglectful of the little amenities of polite usage, they never even having occurred to him. Despite his cold exterior and frigid manner, it may have been he was sympathetic at heart. When the Tracey homestead was destroyed by fire, which resulted in the death of several persons, including the daughter, and finally resulted in the death of Mrs. Tracey, President Harrison took the family into the White House and did everything a man could do to relieve their sufferings.
I suppose he treated me about as well in the way of patronage as he did any other Senator; but whenever he did anything for me it was done so ungraciously that the concession tended to anger rather than please.
In looking over the letters which I received from President Harrison, I find one which would show that he placed considerable confidence in my recommendations.
"Executive Mansion,
"Washington, Oct. 24, 1889.
"Hon. Shelby M. Cullom,
"Springfield, Ills.