Arriving in Rome, and resuming the direction of the consulate, I found to my dismay that General King had appointed as secretary of legation a local American banker, a "Copperhead," who had in the name of the government, but without authority, requested the Roman Ministry of Foreign Affairs to dispense with the visa on the passports of all American visitors, and Antonelli was, of course, too glad to be relieved of the embarrassment which had been often caused him by the regulation, which all the Southerners had asked to be relieved from. Thus I found that the principal resource of the consulate was gone. As the home government had given the strongest orders to protest against any such exception being made of American passports, I, of course, protested, but was informed that the rule had been taken at the request of my own government; and, though Antonelli knew perfectly that Hooker had no authority to enter into any negotiations with him on any subject, and that he had no official position, it suited him to accept the contrary, and my remonstrances to the minister, General King, had no effect. I then laid the matter before the Department of State at Washington, but, as General King was the close personal friend of Seward, who was quite indifferent to diplomatic scandals away from England, no attention was paid to my complaints, and I gave up the consulate to Brown, the consular agent at Civita Vecchia, to get what he could from it, and devoted myself entirely to painting, by which, with a little writing, I made enough to live in the simple manner which I was accustomed to.
Released from all obligations to remain at the consulate, I spent the most of my time in sketching on the Campagna. Of all the landscape I have ever seen, in the Alps, Sicily, Greece, the American forests and lakes, or semi-tropical Florida, nothing has impressed me as did the Roman Campagna in its then condition of decay and neglect. The beauty of line of its mountain framework is still there, and passages here and there are untouched, but the improvements of progress have intruded in so many points that, as a whole, the solemn and poetic aspect of those days is irretrievably lost. I used to sit out in the most lonely passages painting into the twilight until I could no longer distinguish my colors, and then tramp back to Rome at my fastest, to get in before the gates closed for the night. If it was not the rapture of art, it was the passion of poetic nature.
As fortune would have it, there was in Rome that winter Mr. George G. Fogg, the minister of the United States of America at Berne, a personal friend of Lincoln, and chairman of the Young Men's National Committee, which arranged the convention that nominated him. On Lincoln's election Fogg was offered his choice of the diplomatic appointments, and selected Berne, the most modest position he could take. He came to pass the Christmas holidays at Rome, and of course I laid my case before him. He in turn put it before his late colleagues in the House, and the committee on foreign affairs made a strong representation at the Department of State; and, when Seward refused to recall King, or take any measures to correct the injustice done me, they struck out from the consular and diplomatic appropriation bill the appropriation for the legation at Rome, which meant the abolition of the legation, and I was a little later transferred to Crete, a salaried post, where there was supposed to be nothing to do but make my quarterly report.
My commission must have been one of the very last Lincoln signed, for he was assassinated before it reached me. I was spending the evening at the quarters of one of my best Roman friends, Mr. John A. King (a cousin of, but not a sympathizer with, the general), when the news came of the murder of Lincoln and the attempt on Seward, and very vivid still is the recollection of the horror and grief we all felt. But we also felt that the President's work was done, and that his fame was set securely in history, beyond the chance of any political blunder to damage it. Could he ever have devised a better death in view of his future influence and honor? I learned from one of Lincoln's Illinois friends, whom I later saw in Rome, that the appointment in Crete was intended by the President as the recognition of the injustice with which Seward had treated my case. My experience of Seward's way of looking at public appointments and public interests, when crossed by his personal relations, certainly went to confirm the apprehensions of Mr. Fogg and his friends that Seward's personal following would stand between him and the best interests of the state. As Fogg used to put it, "He won't steal, himself, but he don't care how much his friends steal." But my misfortune brought about the abolition of what had always been a scandal and a job—the legation of the United States of America to the Pope.