JAMES B. STEEDMAN.
"Old Steady," as the soldiers affectionately called General James B. Steedman, possessed, perhaps, not greater, but certainly more available talents than Gordon Granger. He was more practical, of equally effective presence, equal daring morally, and greater daring mentally. Gordon Granger delights in responsibilities. Steedman dares to assume responsibilities which are at times appalling, and does so with so much cool impudence as silences you in astonishment, and such sublime nerve and boldness as hushes you in admiration. He defies argument by the preposterousness of his plans, and silences opposition by the daring with which he executes them. He hesitates at nothing. The magnitude of an undertaking has a charm for him, and he accomplishes great things in the most unexpected of ways. He is never so great as when struggling against great obstacles, or fighting against great odds. He is a positive and decided man; not merely opinionated and obstinate, but firm, unflinching, and resolute. Clear-headed and cool-headed—a man of uncommonly strong common sense—he always knows his own mind and always follows it. No man was ever less in want of advice, or ever treated it with such contempt. "Never, under any circumstances, take any body's advice, nor refuse any body's information," is an accepted motto with Steedman. He did not adopt it from actual experience, but received it intuitively, and is constituted, not educated, to depend upon and decide for himself. Experience, education, and natural shrewdness have taught him to instinctively divine the true in principle and character, and he seldom fails to correctly analyze men and motives. The same long experience, thorough education, and natural shrewdness have made him a splendid administrative officer, full of resources and ingenuity, which, added to the boldness, or perhaps it is best described by calling it the impudence, with which he acts, gives assured success to all his plans.
These traits of extravagance in the formation and boldness in the execution of his plans find many illustrations in Steedman's public career. Before the war one of the great men among Ohio local politicians and a leading spirit of the Democrats, he was the ruler of all the Democratic Conventions of his state from 1850 to 1860, and was noted for the ingenuity with which he pulled the political wires of his party. And not the least remarkable fact in connection with this matter is, that he attained this controlling position through his election as Superintendent of Public Works, an office which had previously been of minor importance and little patronage, but which Steedman made, by his positiveness and boldness, of such influence and power as to make its occupant a—in fact, the power in the party. And by his audacity and strong will, exercised with wonderful success over men, he retained, and still retains, this power to this day. His bolder confederates used to declare that he was destroying the party by the irregularity and impossibility of his schemes, and thus endeavor to impair his influence; but as, after each election, the party under his leadership came out ahead, faith in his boldness of manœuvre was restored, and his ambitious comrades, who wished to be also his rivals, would, like the more obedient of the party, rally again to his support and fight under his leadership. His boldness was really nothing more than the clear defining of the principle fought for, and in this lay the secret of success. It is related of Steedman that on one occasion he concocted a curious scheme for reconciling the discordant elements which threatened the unity of a State Convention of the party called to meet at Columbus. He went to the proprietor of the hotel at which the delegation usually boarded, and told him that when certain men whom he named, and who were the leaders of the two factions, arrived in town and called for rooms, they were to be told that the house was full, but that "probably Mr. Steedman might accommodate them in his room," which Steedman had taken care should be the largest in the house. The trick succeeded, and the leaders of the rival factions found themselves, much to their surprise, domiciled together in Steedman's room, and so intent on watching each other that neither faction could hold its proposed caucus. The evening before the Convention, having succeeded in getting the leaders of the two factions closeted in his room, Steedman exposed to each the private schemes of the other, and thus disarmed both. By the plentiful use of argument and the judicious use of ridicule, he reconciled the oil and water (not by lie however), and at last got them to agree on his platform and his candidate. I am not certain that he was not himself the candidate selected. The joke was too good to keep, and the hotel proprietor exposed it to the leaders, who went home declaring that they had one satisfaction, and that was, that "Jim Steedman had to sleep on the floor during the whole of the Convention, while they slept in his beds."
Sleeping on a carpeted floor was not a particularly severe hardship for the sinewey Steedman, for when under great mental or nervous excitement he can not sleep at all. At the Cincinnati Convention of 1856, in which he was the leading Ohio wire-puller, he went for four days and nights without closing his eyes, and three fourths of the time he was on his feet on the cold stone floor of the Burnett House, "manipulating" the politicians. He can neither eat nor drink under great excitement. At the battle of Chickamauga he ate nothing for two days, and though he carried a canteen of whisky through the entire battle, he forgot all about it until after the retreat to Rossville, when a wounded soldier in the hospital asked for a drink, and Steedman gave him his canteen.
Steedman was a Douglas Democrat of very strong proclivities, and very much astonished his friends, when the war was about beginning, by arguing in his paper, the Toledo Herald and Times, the propriety of permitting the Southern states "to go out," i.e., to peaceably secede. Such a doctrine from a Douglas Democrat was astonishing, and the article created much comment. Without saying that the states ought to be allowed to depart, he argued that secession was its own punishment; that the seceded states could not hold together if allowed to secede; and that a few years only would elapse before they would be begging their way back into the Union; and that, while it would cost a river of blood to keep them in, a war would not more effectually settle the question of secession than if allowed to fall of its own weight. Steedman's friends declared him crazy, but he only laughed at them, and in the next issue of his paper finished his argument, or rather gave the other side of the question. Claiming that the first conclusion was correct, and that the course suggested would be equally effective with war, he then went on to show that it was not the one which a great people could pursue; that peaceable secession was a doctrine we ought not to admit merely for the sake of the humanitarian argument of "no bloodshed," and that nothing was left for the loyal people but the other bitter alternative of war. That alternative the people of the North, he declared, would unanimously accept in the spirit of right and justice, and that it became the people to prepare for the blood-letting which was to ensue. The first of these articles eventually found its way into Congress at a time when Steedman's confirmation as brigadier general was pending, and being construed into "Copperheadism," retarded that confirmation for nearly two years, Mr. Ashley, who had defeated Steedman for Congress, holding it over his head as a balance of power to keep the general from running against him for that position. At the next election, instead of agreeing to abandon the field to Ashley, and thus secure his confirmation, Steedman took the very opposite grounds, and announced his intention, since he was not likely to be confirmed a brigadier general, of running against Mr. Ashley. This had the desired effect, and Ashley hastened, by his recommendation and influence, to secure Steedman's confirmation in the Senate, and shortly after, also, that of major general, to which Steedman was nominated after the battle of Chickamauga.
Steedman's admiration of Douglas amounted almost to idolatry, and to such excess that Douglas's political enemies were held by Steedman to be his personal foes, and more than one of them was treated so by him. When Steedman was public printer at Washington, Isaac Cook, postmaster of Chicago, and a former Douglas Democrat, but who had, in order to retain his position, sided with Buchanan in his famous quarrel with Douglas, came into his office complaining that Douglas had abused him for his defection. In relating what had taken place, and in what manner Douglas had denounced him, Cook remarked to Steedman that he had just met Douglas in the Capitol, and was prepared, in case the "Little Giant" spoke to him, to "give him a good caning." The picture of Stephen A. Douglas being caned by "Ike" Cook was too much for Steedman. Clearing a table which stood between him and Cook at a bound, he seized the astonished postmaster by the collar, and with a furious oath exclaimed,
"You cane Douglas! You strike Stephen A. Douglas, who made you all you are! Get out of this office, or I'll kick you out!"
Cook began to expostulate, when the infuriated Steedman carried out his threat, and Cook made a hasty and inelegant retreat.
Next day President Buchanan sent for Steedman, and lectured him regarding his treatment of Cook. Steedman had by this time began to look at the comic side of the affair, and listened patiently and good-humoredly to the President's lecture, until Mr. Buchanan alluded to Douglas contemptuously as "the little traitor." Steedman's blood boiled with fury, but by a great effort he controlled his passion, and, rising, said, with a voice of measured calmness,