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 Cornell University 
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 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
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 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924092907231 
 
AMERICAN AND ENGLISH STUDIES 
 BY WHITELAW REID 
 
 IN TWO VOLUMES 8vO 
 
 I Government and Education 
 11 Biography, History, and Journalism 
 
THE LIFE OF 
 WHITELAW REID 
 
THE LIFE OF 
 
 WHITELAW REID 
 
 BY 
 
 ROYAL CORTISSOZ 
 
 VOLUME I 
 JOURNALISM —WAR — POLITICS 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
 
 192 1 
 
 \ ' ' ' / 
 
 FT- 
 
 
A'il^i?? 
 
 Copyright, 1921, by 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
 Published March, 1921 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Introduction vii 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 I. Ancestry and Early Years 3 
 
 II. Choosing a Career 20 
 
 III. The Xenia "News" 31 
 
 IV. The Nomination of Lincoln 42 
 
 V. The Outbreak of War 57 
 
 VI. In the Fleed 69 
 
 VII. Pittsburg Landing and Gettysburg .... 82 
 
 VIII. Washington Scenes 99 
 
 IX. The South After the War 118 
 
 X. Early Relations with The Tribune . . . . 136 
 
 XI. An Editor's Methods 150 
 
 XII. The Franco-Prussian War 168 
 
 XIII. Grant and San Domingo 180 
 
 XIV. Greeley and the Presidency 195 
 
 XV. New York in the Seventies 229 
 
 XVI. "The Scholar in Politics" 254 
 
 XVII. The Rise of Tilden 276 
 
 XVIII. Building Up a Paper 301 
 
 V 
 
vi CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 XIX. Party Reorganization 3^4 
 
 XX. James G. Blaine 3^9 
 
 XXI. The Disputed Election 347 
 
 XXII. Rutherford B. Hayes 369 
 
 XXIII. The Cipher Despatches 392 
 
 XXIV. A Triumph of Journalism . 406 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 In 1889, when Whitelaw Reid was living in Paris, as 
 minister to France, John Hay asked him why he didn't 
 do what his predecessor, Benjamin Franklin, had done 
 at Passy — write his memoirs. Twenty years later, dur- 
 ing his service in London as ambassador to England, 
 Henry Adams repeatedly asked him the same question, 
 pressing it upon him as a duty. "No one else survives 
 of our time," he said, "who has enough skill to tell his 
 own story." Reid admitted that there occasionally 
 came over him the desire to make memoranda for the 
 work persistently demanded in his private circle and 
 regularly, for years, proposed to him by publishers. 
 "But," he said, "it is always so much easier, in such 
 things, to put it off to a more convenient season." I 
 frequently brought the subject up with him, in talk and 
 in letters, and in 1908 he wrote to me from London: 
 "It has kept coming up constantly in conversations with 
 all sorts of people, English and American, until the idea 
 has become a sort of obsession, I can't do it here; and 
 the oftener the notion is presented, the less agreeable it 
 seems — the kind of thing one feels he ought to do, but 
 hates to begin, and so comes to hate thinking about. 
 But it serves to remind me that when I am relieved from 
 my present duties I can still find something to occupy 
 myself with, if I have energy enough." His death in 
 19 1 2, while he was still busy as ambassador, put an end 
 to the hopes of the reminiscences so long pleaded for by 
 his friends. 
 
 Those hopes had been excited by the light which his 
 conversation often threw upon the stores of a pecuHarly 
 rich experience. Born in 1837, his life embraced some 
 
viii INTRODUCTION 
 
 of the most momentous years in the history of the United 
 States, and the nature of his profession brought him into 
 close contact with the men and events of his time. As 
 a young man he witnessed the outbreak of the Civil 
 War; as a correspondent in the field he described some of 
 its crucial passages; travel in the South and residence 
 there as a cotton-planter initiated him into the problems 
 of reconstruction which he continued to observe through 
 the years that developed their solution, and for a genera- 
 tion he was intimately associated with the work of the 
 RepubKcan party in its great task of healing the wounds 
 of conflict and re-estabhshing the prosperity of the na- 
 tion. As an editor he shared in the golden years of 
 American journalism, the years of Greeley, Dana, Wat- 
 terson, and their fellows. Beginning in diplomacy as 
 minister to France, he returned to Paris in 1898 as a 
 member of the commission which signed our treaty of 
 peace with Spain, and he rounded out his work in this 
 branch of the public service with more than seven years 
 in England. It was a long life, and Whitelaw Reid had 
 a good memory. Imagination rests with deep regret 
 upon the thought of all the historical truth, the ripe 
 judgments, and the picturesque anecdotes which he could 
 have poured into an autobiography. 
 
 I am aware of the inadequacy of the present volumes 
 as a substitute for the book which he might himself have 
 written, and it seems fitting that I should indicate the 
 method through which I have endeavored to execute a 
 difficult task. If long years of friendship and profes- 
 sional association with Whitelaw Reid have supplied me 
 with any guiding principle as his biographer, they have 
 left me with a conviction of his solicitude for the care- 
 ful statement of fact. The word "record" comes back 
 to me as having an important status in his vocabulary. 
 He used to say to G. W. Smalley that he would like the 
 
INTRODUCTION ix 
 
 record of his life and work as an editor to be as complete 
 as it could be made. When occasion arose to correct in 
 print some errors that had been made in the history of 
 his relations with The Tribune, the title of the editorial 
 was characteristically fixed — "To Keep the Record 
 Straight." I have sought to frame a record of his career. 
 
 Before beginning to write it I asked the counsel of 
 Henry Adams, and he placed emphasis upon the value of 
 a precise chronicle of Reid's achievements in journalism 
 and diplomacy. In the body of my book I have stated 
 this old friend's high appreciation of Reid's political in- 
 fluence. "Trace it in The Tribune and in your docu- 
 ments," he advised me, "and record the facts." When 
 I spoke of their elusiveness in the intricate labyrinth of 
 political history, he laughed and said: "Do as I did in 
 my life of Gallatin. Shove in a letter." It is, of course, 
 one of the helpfulest of expedients. Reid himself knew 
 the weight of the evidence lying in a letter. It was a 
 trait of his to preserve his correspondence with the ut- 
 most care. I have had unrestricted access to this, and 
 my effort has been to exhibit the relations between Reid 
 and his contemporaries, so far as possible, in their own 
 words. 
 
 Apropos of these questions of biography, I may note 
 here that Reid was deeply impressed by certain remarks 
 on the subject made to him at Oxford by Lord Curzon. 
 The chancellor said he was convinced that the public 
 never had a truthful conception of the character of any 
 public man, and never got an accurate knowledge of any 
 important series of transactions in which he was con- 
 cerned. His point was not exactly that people blamed 
 too much, or even that they praised too much, but sim- 
 ply that they never knew public men for what they 
 really were, and never got an exact idea of what they 
 really did. The latter part of this assertion he explained 
 
X INTRODUCTION 
 
 by saying that often the reasons for an action could not 
 be explained at the time, or even the sequence of different 
 actions; that documents which would put them in their 
 proper light and order had to be suppressed in the inter- 
 ests of other people or other countries. 
 
 In a record, then, based on painstaking research, I 
 have been content to embody what I hope is a truth- 
 ful conception of a character and a career. The art of 
 biography risks the sacrifice of something of its essential 
 aim when it deviates from disinterested portraiture into 
 exposition of the biographer's idea of his subject. Reid 
 used to call the vetoes of President Hayes "pistol-shots," 
 admiring the swiftness with which they went straight to 
 the mark. An editor's opinions are his pistol-shots, his 
 contributions to the political warfare of his time, like the 
 deeds of the man of action. Accordingly, I have been at 
 pains to illustrate in these volumes Reid's opinions, to 
 show exactly what they were upon such subjects as South- 
 ern reconstruction, the resumption of specie payment, the 
 disputed election of 1876, the tariff, or the Spanish-Ameri- 
 can War. I have cited them as they were brought out 
 by salient figures in our political life, such as Grant, 
 Blaine, or Cleveland. In diplomacy I have followed the 
 same method. Some of the subjects touched upon in this 
 book are still controversial. I have not attempted to sum 
 them up. My aim has been simply to show from doc- 
 umentary sources what Whitelaw Reid thought and did, 
 and, in so showing, to make plain the man that he was. 
 
 Royal Cortissoz. 
 
 New York, February lo, 1921. 
 
THE LIFE OF 
 WHITELAW REID 
 
THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 ANCESTRY AND EARLY YEARS 
 
 Whitelaw Reid was born at Xenia, Ohio, on October 
 27th, 1837. He was born into a memorable period, one 
 full of events indicative of the passing of an old order of 
 things. The irrepressible conflict was rising in this coun- 
 try. In his youth he was destined to watch the rapid 
 growth of the movement against slavery, and in his 
 early manhood to witness and describe some of the 
 crucial battles fought on that issue. Europe was every- 
 where still feeling its way toward a readjustment of its 
 economic and political aff"airs, after the long dislocations 
 of the Napoleonic wars. England, in the year of White- 
 law Reid's birth, was celebrating the accession of Vic- 
 toria, to whom, on the occasion of her jubilee, in 1897, 
 he was to convey, as special ambassador, the congratu- 
 lations of the United States. He came into a porten- 
 tously busy world. But the most significant episode in 
 it for him, when he was a child, was so prosaic a matter 
 as the building of a railroad hardly more than eighty 
 miles in length. This was the Little Miami, which ran 
 from Cincinnati to Springfield, taking Xenia by the way, 
 at about the middle of its course, and for which ground 
 was first broken in 1841. Far more than any political 
 development, it symbolized the changes in American 
 life which were to determine the evolution of his career. 
 
 It has been said of the region stretching from the Alle- 
 
4 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 ghanies to the Mississippi, that it was in the early thir- 
 ties "one vast incubator for railroad schemes," which 
 is but another way of saying that the West was then 
 emerging from the rude civilization of the pioneers. 
 Men and women still in their prime at that time had 
 emigrated thither from New England and the South in 
 wagons — and had done a lot of walking beside them, for 
 the roads were perilously rough, when there were roads 
 at all, and vehicles loaded with household impedimenta 
 provided scant room for passengers and had to be coaxed 
 over unnumbered obstacles. Margaret Dwight, a kins- 
 woman of President Dwight of Yale, whose journal of 
 "A Journey to Ohio in 1810" offers some vivid pictures 
 of the highway in that primitive epoch, has a telling pas- 
 sage on the "rest" available to the traveller. Writing 
 as she is just about to cross from Pennsylvania into 
 Ohio, she says: 
 
 We set out in the rain on Monday, & come on 13 miles — to a hut 
 — ^with a sign up cali'd a tavern — & such a place. — I found the people 
 belong'd to a very ancient & noble family — They were first and 
 second cousins to his Satanic Majesty. . . . Their dweUing resem- 
 bles that of their royal cousin — for it is very dark & gloomy & only 
 lighted by a great fire. . . . The house had only one room in it. 
 There was a number of travellers & we got but one bed — that was 
 straw or something harder. The pillow case had been on 5 or 6 
 years I reckon. . . . We are within 40 miles of Warren [her desti- 
 nation] & to be unable to get there under 4 or 5 days, is perfectly 
 tantalizing. 
 
 On both sides of the house Whitelaw Reid's forefathers 
 were accustomed to being thus tantalized. His father, 
 Robert Charlton Reid, and his mother, Marion White- 
 law Ronalds, had themselves been inured to the hard- 
 ships of life in crudely developed regions and touched 
 hands with the colonial types of the late eighteenth cen- 
 tury. Their parents were amongst the men who came 
 
ANCESTRY AND EARLY YEARS 5 
 
 here from Great Britain, not to settle in the comfortable 
 seaboard towns, but to build their homes in what was 
 then virtually the wilderness. 
 
 John Reid, the first of the name to appear in the 
 record, was a man of Scotch Covenanter origin, who 
 established himself on a little freehold that he owned 
 near Cookestown, County Tyrone, in Ireland. He had 
 no mind to emigrate. He was fairly prosperous and left 
 a family of two sons and several daughters. His elder 
 son, named for him, was the inheritor of the bulk of his 
 property. The exact date of this second John Reid's 
 coming to America is unrecorded, but it must have been 
 when he was well on in years, for he was accompanied by 
 a son old enough to buy on his own account a farm in 
 Indiana. John Reid was drowned in the Great Miami, 
 somewhere below Dayton, about 181 2. The future of 
 the family rested chiefly in the hands of his brother 
 James, who had come over at the same time. James 
 Reid, born in 1752, grew up near Cookestown, and there 
 he was married to Nancy, the daughter of a neighboring 
 farmer, Robert Charlton. I must cite a souvenir of the 
 latter, invaluable in its foreshadowing of the atmosphere 
 in which Whitelaw Reid was to be reared. It is a rag- 
 ged, faded old paper, a "Letter of Dismissal" such as 
 the good church member was wont to receive from his 
 pastor on moving from one parish to another. This is 
 signed by one William Dudgen, is dated 1795, and runs 
 as follows: 
 
 We do This Certifie, that the bearer Robert Charlton and all his 
 family did live in TuIIaughhurmey in the parish of Drumra, near to 
 Omagh in the County Tyrone in Ireland, scince they were born 
 untill the present date hereof. And always beheaved themselves 
 Both CarefuII and Honest with an on spotted charracter and always 
 lived in the fear of God, and was bred up to the Church of Scotland 
 from their Infancy and is now Bound for some of his Majesties plan- 
 tations in America. 
 
6 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 The Reids were all like that — rigid in the faith. For 
 their hard, daily tasks they had the resolution innate in 
 the Scotch character. Also they were sustained by a 
 constant sense of church and duty. They were moral- 
 ists to the core, a fact which keeps itself well in the fore- 
 ground, characterizing a race, and in this instance a 
 family. The pioneer Reids were people settling un- 
 daunted in wide, heavily wooded spaces, clearing away 
 the trees, ploughing virgin fields, keeping back the wolves 
 and wildcats (all these labors and dangers are authenti- 
 cally in the picture, wanting only the marauding savage 
 to recall the first generation of the Puritans), and their 
 outstanding trait is an heroic industry. But coloring all 
 their transactions is a simple ideal driving at conduct. 
 
 James Reid, whom we must keep in view, briefly, was 
 the true type of these devout folk. Drifting through 
 Pennsylvania on his arrival in America, some time in the 
 last quarter of the eighteenth century, he settled for a 
 few years in Kentucky. Antislavery principles led him 
 to depart from that State. In 1800 or thereabouts he 
 moved over the river into Ohio and lived in the region 
 along Brush Creek, on the southern border. Then he 
 proceeded a little farther west and where Cincinnati now 
 stands acquired a farm of several hundred acres. The 
 single picturesque anecdote allied with his memory illus- 
 trates the chances of fate — and the Covenanter spirit. 
 A ferry ran from his new land across the Ohio and a 
 clause in the deed required him to see that it was in 
 operation every day of the week. That meant a viola- 
 tion of the Sabbath, whereupon, making the discovery 
 too late, he escaped the penalty by the only possible 
 means, selling the land. If he had had any prescience 
 of the wealth of which he was thus depriving his de- 
 scendants, we may be sure that his decision would have 
 been the same. Regardless of profit or loss he moved 
 
ANCESTRY AND EARLY YEARS 7 
 
 on, a Stoic in homespun. Now he turned north and in 
 Greene County helped to found the town of Xenia. 
 
 It was on a good site, it was marked to thrive, and in 
 due course to become the county-seat, with all the appur- 
 tenances and dignity of such a centre, but when James 
 Reid sought his fortunes there conditions were of the 
 most primitive order. Ohio was only admitted to the 
 Union in 1803, and Xenia at that time was but a rudi- 
 mentary hamlet. It is a legend in that part of the world 
 that an ancient beech on the trail to Old Chillicothe long 
 bore the inscription, cut by some captive of the Indian 
 wars: "This is the road to hell, 1782." The scattered 
 log cabins of Xenia made no earthly paradise. They 
 but afforded repose after long days of back-breaking toil. 
 Yet the settlers were happy, having brought their church 
 with them. There was a clergyman of that period whose 
 home was separated from the place of worship by a 
 creek. When the water rose, he would cross it on stilts. 
 Distance and weather were of no consequence to his 
 people. For their two Sunday sermons they would ride 
 or walk miles, and sit uncomplainingly in a fireless room. 
 
 Robert Charlton Reid, second son of James, was born 
 near Lexington, Kentucky, in 1795, and was in his young 
 manhood when his father died on the farm at Xenia. 
 Four years later, in 1826, he was married at Garrison's 
 Creek, Indiana, to Marion Whitelaw Ronalds, whose 
 ancestry sprang direct from the ancient Highland clan 
 of that name. Robert Ronalds, her grandfather, a 
 farmer and cattle-raiser of Old Kilpatrick, near Glasgow, 
 strongly objected to the emigration of his son, George 
 Slater Ronalds, and only consented in the long run when 
 persuaded that the leader who was to "have the over- 
 sight of him" on the voyage was a "prudent man." 
 Such a sponsor appeared in the person of General James 
 Whitelaw, one of the two commissioners sent out by the 
 
8 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 Scotch-American Company of Farmers to select a town- 
 site for a body of colonists. After much travel and 
 chaffering, and thanks largely to the intervention of the 
 celebrated John Witherspoon, president of Princeton 
 College, they fixed upon Ryegate, in Vermont. White- 
 law, who was shortly to become surveyor-general of the 
 State, and to remain to this day the local hero, more 
 than fulfilled the Ronalds conception of the prudent 
 man. Under his guardianship George Ronalds entered 
 at once into the inner circle of the community. There 
 was some distant connection between the Whitelaws and 
 the Ronaldses, through a marriage far back. When 
 Marion Ronalds was born at Ryegate in 1803, she was 
 named also Whitelaw, in recognition of the tie, and cir- 
 cumstances deepened her loyalty to it. Part of her up- 
 bringing she received in the home of the old pioneer. 
 At times when he was away she was left in charge of 
 his office, a kind of microcosm of the aff^airs of Ryegate 
 — which, I may note in passing, were not unlike to those 
 of the slowly growing Xenia at which I have glanced, 
 especially in the admixture of religious zeal with worldly 
 energy. On her removal with the family to Garrison's 
 Creek in 1820, a girl of seventeen, she carried with her 
 an affection for the great man of her birthplace which 
 she never lost. It was this affection that she ex- 
 pressed in the naming of her son, the subject of these 
 pages. 
 
 She came as a bride to the ambitious little settlement 
 which I have indicated Xenia to have been early in the 
 last century, but she was to dwell far enough from the 
 "main street" on which the founders were even then 
 beginning to pride themselves. The Reid farm was well 
 out toward the eastern border of. the tract, and after- 
 ward — in fact, in 1850 — was absorbed into Cedarville 
 Township. It lies but a few miles from the centre of 
 
ANCESTRY AND EARLY YEARS 9 
 
 Xenia and very near the village of Cedarville. Robert 
 Charlton Reid built his homestead in the year of his 
 marriage, 1826, doing much of the work with his own 
 hands. He built it in the woods, making only a small 
 clearing in front, and the property, which was extended 
 ultimately to embrace some two hundred acres, is still 
 rich in timber. When in after years Whitelaw Reid 
 remodelled and enlarged the house he left ■ untouched, 
 so far as possible, its old simplicities. The principal bed- 
 room was barely large enough to hold the four-poster 
 which one of his mother's kinsmen had himself made for 
 her as a wedding gift. Near by the house the young 
 farmer let himself go in the making of a mighty barn, 
 the great hewn oak framework of which still testifies to 
 his foresight and to his skill as a craftsman. He was of 
 a grave temperament. It is recorded in his epitaph that 
 he was for forty years an active ruling elder of the Re- 
 formed Presbyterian Church, specially useful as a peace- 
 maker in the community. In those days of a thin and 
 widely scattered rural population it was the problem of 
 every parish to find a good shepherd and keep him. One 
 of the commonest duties of the elder Reid's life, to judge 
 from the evidence of his papers, was to circulate a docu- 
 ment beginning thus: "Anxious for the continuance of 
 Divine ordinances amongst us, we the subscribers bind 
 ourselves to pay the sums annexed to our names respec- 
 tively for the Ministerial labors of any minister in the 
 Reformed Church whom Providence may send our way." 
 Again and again the Covenanters of Xenia were obliged 
 thus to bind themselves, and always the name of Robert 
 Charlton Reid was early in the list. He was unmistak- 
 ably a man of good works, exemplifying to the full the 
 religious ardor of his fathers. But there was nothing 
 "dour," after the old Scotch fashion, about this pioneer 
 and his helpmeet. Among his time-worn manuscripts 
 
10 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 I have come upon "A gamott for the German flute," in- 
 scribed twice over with his careful signature, minutely 
 indicating the function of the right hand and that of the 
 left, and pointing, obviously, to a sprightly solace in his 
 hours of ease. He and his wife were both assiduous 
 readers. When he turned carpenter over the building of 
 his house he gave particular attention to the making of 
 the bookcases in the living-room, and saw that they 
 were kept well filled. Their Bible, of course, they knew 
 by heart. 
 
 There were three children of this marriage. Whitelaw 
 Reid had a brother, born April 8th, 1828, and named 
 Gavin McMillan, after a clergyman connected with the 
 family, and a sister, Chestina, born June 12th, 1844. 
 His christening, as I have indicated, was a ratification of 
 Ryegate memories, but though he was named for General 
 James Whitelaw, he did not receive the full patronymic 
 of that old friend of his mother's. The point is the 
 more exactly to be noted, for in after days it was not 
 infrequently misstated, especially by political opponents, 
 who for some mysterious reason fancied that they had 
 him on the hip when they called him James, and com- 
 pletely destroyed when they called him Jacob. He was 
 only amused by these amiable divagations, but when a 
 serious inquirer referred the question to him in the last 
 year of his life, he settled it, once and for all, as follows : 
 "I was baptized simply Whitelaw Reid, and the bap- 
 tismal name generally holds among Scotch Presbyterians. 
 While I was still an infant my mother concluded that 
 she would like to have the full name of General White- 
 law used, and I therefore used it until after my gradua- 
 tion, but dropped it when becoming of age." At college, 
 by the way, his nickname was not "Jim" but "White." 
 
 The district school was but little more than a stone's 
 throw from his father's house, and he was soon put to 
 
ANCESTRY AND EARLY YEARS ii 
 
 his lessons there. The master lived with the Reids and 
 appears to have carried the boy to and fro. This master, 
 one Bigham, was an original character, whose scholar- 
 ship may not have left an indelible impression but whose 
 popularity was beyond cavil. He had novel methods 
 whereby to keep the pupils amused. The Reverend H. 
 P. Jackson, a schoolfellow of Whitelaw's, has left this 
 picture of the scene: 
 
 When several scholars would get too lively to be tolerated, he 
 would call them all up in line in the centre of the room, shove a long 
 peacock feather down the back of the chief transgressor (the bushy- 
 part of the feather reaching above his head) and then cause each 
 one to lift a foot, which was caught in the hand of the one behind, 
 and so each in Hke manner, foot in hand, (excepting the one in the 
 rear, who walked) went "Injun" fashion around the stove, which 
 stood in the middle of the room; then right about face they hopped 
 back again, while the school laughed to their heart's content. White- 
 law and I had several parades of this kind during that term. 
 
 At one time he put Whitelaw in his desk and turned the key. It 
 was a large desk with a lid that could be lifted up and shut down 
 and locked and he called it his jail. It so happened that the teacher's 
 dinner was in the desk. Whitelaw immediately went to eating and 
 when his time was served out in that jail the teacher was minus his 
 dinner. 
 
 It is the observation of this old comrade that "White- 
 law was very small, but very bright and intelligent," 
 and he recalls him as a great talker, even in his tender 
 years sitting up for a whole evening in converse with his 
 elders. He was a true country boy, and his prowess in 
 the usual "old swimming-hole" is still remembered about 
 Cedarville. He loved the water always, and the exploits 
 of his manhood, when he would swim out to sea, beyond 
 the buoys, with his baby son on his shoulder, had their 
 origin in the days when he and his playmates haunted 
 Massie's Creek, the picturesque stream of his childhood. 
 But the characteristic souvenirs of that period are those 
 which point to his precocious mentality and his interest 
 
12 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 in bookish things. He was on fire to learn. The aptest 
 reminiscence of these days is his own : 
 
 I remember a lad, of ten or twelve years of age, coddled too much 
 perhaps by anxious parents and a physician, who was told he must 
 quit studying so hard, and take to light reading. Light reading was 
 a phrase not well understood in sober famihes in Greene County in 
 those days, and so the lad asked for particulars. "Oh, any light 
 thing you please," answered the physician; "take Shakespeare!" 
 The next week came along a doctor of another school, a Boanerges 
 of the faith. Dr. McMaster. . . . According to the fashion of the 
 day, the lad was promptly "examined," and after Catechism and 
 Psalm Book and Latin declensions, followed questions of books. 
 The advice about hght reading thus came out. "Very bad advice," 
 groaned the good doctor; "a very bad lesson for a boy. But what 
 light reading have you?" Then Shakespeare was confessed and the 
 horror was complete. "To think" exclaimed the doctor, "of the 
 son of so good a man wasting his time and corrupting his mind with 
 that frivolous and profane writer of plays!" And so Shakespeare 
 was summarily taken away, and in his place light reading was fur- 
 nished in the shape of RoIIin's "Ancient History" in eight volumes! 
 Not till nearly a year later did a kinder fate and a younger clergy- 
 man, the sainted McMillan, substitute Plutarch's "Lives" and the 
 "Percy Anecdotes." 
 
 The "sainted McMillan" of the foregoing fragment 
 was the Reverend Hugh McMillan, Whitelaw's uncle, 
 who presided over the Xenia Academy and there rounded 
 out his preparatory schooling. He was an ideal guide 
 for the boy's eager footsteps, -strict in discipline but as 
 kind and sympathetic as he was wise. In his view of 
 education the classics came second only to sound theo- 
 logical principles. So good a Latinist did he make his 
 charge that at sixteen the latter was able to enter college 
 as a sophomore and to rank in his special study with the 
 senior class. 
 
 Miami University, to which he proceeded in 1853, was 
 then but a little more than quarter of a century old. It 
 was estabhshed at Oxford, in Butler County, only about 
 fifty miles southwest of Xenia in a direct line, but far 
 
ANCESTRY AND EARLY YEARS 13 
 
 enough away in that era of slow communications to 
 make the adventure exciting. Though the university 
 was ultimately to justify its designation by its sons as 
 the Yale of the West, he found there an environment 
 and a mode of life very hke what he had left behind him, 
 a community slowly outgrowing the hard conditions of 
 a new settlement. It was only in the preceding decade 
 that it had been found necessary to warn students 
 against duelling, to say nothing of cards and dancing, 
 and amongst the university laws of that time there was 
 even this one: "No student shall wear about his person 
 pistol, dirk, stiletto, or other dangerous weapon." Evi- 
 dently, however, by the time Whitelaw arrived, these 
 edicts had accomplished their soothing effect. The life 
 upon which he entered is described in this letter to 
 Gavin : 
 
 p. r> . Miami University, Oct. loth, 1853. 
 
 I received yours of the 26th a week ago. I intended to answer 
 it last Saturday but forgot it and so I take this time, before daylight, 
 for it. Let me give you an outline of my way of doing for a day. 
 Then to begin, first and foremost I get up, and stay up. Now by 
 that you are to understand that I do not study lying on the bed, the 
 way I used to. Then after washing I sometimes start out and take 
 a long walk, especially if the morning be cool. It is, however, con- 
 trary to the strict law of College, and I always try to be back before 
 anybody else is up. The law is that we must be in our rooms from 
 7 in the evening till Chapel next morning. It is, however, only 
 intended to prevent the students from being on the streets late at 
 night, and I do not know that they would make any objection to 
 walking in the morning. I met Prof. Stoddard one morning anyhow 
 and he spoke to me very politely. I then study till breakfast, which 
 Stevens gets. Then I review until 7^ o'clock, when we meet in 
 Chapel. Then we recite at 8, 9 & 10 to Profs. Wylie, Elliott and 
 Bishop. Then study or write till 12. If it be either Monday, 
 Wednesday or Friday, at one we recite German to Prof. Thuby, the 
 best linguist in college. Then study for the next day till half after 5, 
 when I get my supper (each one of us prepares a meal). After that 
 I either walk, call on some one or am called on. 
 
 There are a great many fellows who come in when the mail comes. 
 
14 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 at ii>^, or at supper time. Then study, write or read till gyi to 
 ID. Thus you see I have my hands full. If a fellow gets his lessons 
 right the Sophomore year he has just as much £is he ought to do. 
 After that it becomes much easier. But to get lessons the way 
 most of our class do I could get all in an hour, or less. 
 
 I suppose you know Sam Hammel. At any rate he has been 
 telhng me a string of yarns about the times he used to have with 
 you. He is the most wretched bore I have met with at College. He 
 will come down and want to get out lessons along with me, and it 
 takes me half an hour longer to get them out with his help than 
 without it. We are now reading in Thucydides, about the hardest 
 Greek in the course. Well, the other day he came up here and got 
 me to read the lesson for the next day, and he wrote it down as I 
 read. That morning old Charley calls up Mr. Hammel. Sam gets 
 up and reads off the Greek, having the translation in the book. 
 He then very deliberately reads off the translation and takes his 
 seat. Now this is nothing uncommon here, with such fellows as 
 he is, but to make 99 or 100 on my labor was a little more than 
 I hked. I am getting in Greek a grade of 99 and 100, all the time. 
 About the same I believe in the other studies. 
 
 I go out to Uncle's every week when there is preaching there. I 
 have a standing excuse for Sabbath from Chapel. We get plenty of 
 apples at Uncle's. Our hall is something in a debate and no mis- 
 take. It, the hall proper, is nearly finished. I shall tell you next 
 time what it looks like. 
 
 Answer soon. I intend to write Saturday week. Next Saturday 
 
 I will write to Father, so that every Saturday I will write either to 
 
 you or Father. I expect by this time that you have wonderingly 
 
 come to the conclusion that there is plenty of gas about Oxford and 
 
 so I will quit. , , n- • i 
 
 Yours anectionately, „, ^^ 
 
 Whitelaw Reid. 
 
 The letter suggests a rapidly maturing character. His 
 life was one of plain living in the strictest sense, but at 
 sixteen a daily regimen recalling in its severity that of 
 Carlyle and his bag of oatmeal in Edinburgh has no 
 terrors for him. Neither Spartan fare nor unremitting 
 work can lower his spirits. The paper is of some inter- 
 est, too, in its clear, systematic statement of the day's 
 programme, a foreshadowing of the descriptive faculty 
 which he was to develop and make a source of his success 
 as a writer. The practical traits of his forebears and an 
 
ANCESTRY AND EARLY YEARS 15 
 
 inborn gift combined to enlist him, even in his youth, 
 on the side of balance, order. In the little book on 
 "Old Miami," by Mr. A, H. Upham, there is a sympa- 
 thetic vignette of Whitelaw Reid at the university, "a 
 long-haired, pale-faced, graceful youth, nervous, indus- 
 trious and ambitious." He was an active man in his 
 fraternity — a D. K. E. — and it is noted that his favorite 
 hobby in its councils was "compact organization." In 
 storm or calm he insisted always on "strict obedience to 
 King Caucus." It was part of his nature. He liked to 
 know what he was about, to proceed regularly, to know 
 where he — and others — stood, and to make all things 
 shipshape. There were no loose ends about his college 
 career. 
 
 The faculty was small but efficient. Stoddard in the 
 natural sciences, Elliott — "Old Charley" — in Greek Ht- 
 erature. Bishop in Latin, were the leaders in a group of 
 men whose methods were nothing if not thorough. They 
 gave their students a pretty exhaustive training, but if 
 they had a foible in common it was an almost religious 
 confidence in the classics. David Swing, who was grad- 
 uated in the Class of 1852, and filled a professorship at 
 Miami in Reid's time, recorded in his memories "the 
 general impression among us boys that nothing good 
 had been written since Homer and Virgil." Whitelaw, 
 whose experience in the Latin classes at Xenia had well 
 prepared him for this atmosphere of thought, and whose 
 taste responded to it with all the enthusiasm in the 
 world, was at the same time equally ready for other 
 subjects, as Doctor Swing thus relates: "He was a more 
 universal genius than any of his college companions. 
 He loved anything that was in a book. He could read 
 theology or a Patent Office report, a novel or a history, 
 with avidity. He was thus unconsciously preparing him- 
 self for that profession which demands a mind that will 
 
i6 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 turn in an hour from poetry to politics, from Homer to 
 Boss Tweed." The diversity of his interests kept him 
 from being a grind. 
 
 In his second year at Miami he began to write for 
 publication, a practice which he developed until on the 
 eve of his graduation he could claim to have won the 
 status of a "regular correspondent." Some of these 
 early ventures of his — chiefly reports of college lectures 
 — were printed in the local paper, the Oxford "Citizen," 
 and he found intermittent hospitality elsewhere for his 
 literary beginnings, notably in the "Kansas Free State," 
 of Wyandotte, for a series on "Heroes of Liberty in the 
 Commonwealth," John Hampden, Oliver Cromwell, and 
 John Milton. But the writings that meant most to him 
 were those for the "Intelligencer," a weekly of four 
 pages published at the near-by town of Hamilton. His 
 contributions were at first made casually and at varying 
 intervals, but for about four months in his senior year he 
 was in the saddle as sole conductor of the "Oxford De- 
 partment," a column or more devoted to affairs in the 
 university and its immediate neighborhood — and to com- 
 ment thereon. The work he then did, if necessarily 
 jejune in some respects, also reveals an aptitude greater 
 than he himself suspected, and an extension of his sym- 
 pathies far beyond the bookish horizon of the classroom. 
 He is still the burning young scholar, nay, a very pre- 
 cisian in the mint and cummin of the literary law, quick 
 to rebuke a contemporary in the smallest matter of 
 grammar or style; but he is almost excitedly aware of 
 the fact that the world is filled with a number of things, 
 and never was a budding editor readier to take account 
 of them all. The "Oxford Department" tingles with 
 the joy of living. 
 
 One of the books that he took with him to Miami was 
 
ANCESTRY AND EARLY YEARS 17 
 
 "The Student's Manual," piously designed by the Rev- 
 erend John Todd, author of "Lectures to Children," to 
 "aid in forming and strengthening the intellectual and 
 moral character and habits of the student." It is, to 
 tell the truth, a rather dull compilation of impeccable 
 axioms, but there are signs that Whitelaw read it, and it 
 was in line with his way of thinking to mark a passage 
 hke this: "We need a power, which, in the present state 
 of our existence, we do not possess, a power of keeping 
 all that ever passes through our mind which is worth 
 keeping." Again, he marks the page conveying the sol- 
 emn truth that "There is no excellence without toil," 
 and on the fly-leaf he scrawls the Virgilian tag — com- 
 mended to how many young collegians, before and since ! 
 — Labor omnia vincit. The interesting thing is that he 
 not only inscribed the trite motto in his book but Kved 
 up to it. This biography has not been projected as a 
 study in hero-worship; it is framed as a narrative of 
 facts, and the outstanding fact in the early hfe of its 
 subject is the solidity of his achievement. "I am get- 
 ting in Greek a grade of 99 and 100, all the time," we 
 have seen him writing to his brother, in the first of his 
 three years at Miami. "About the same, I beheve, in 
 the other studies." The quiet boast was made good. 
 He persisted in that spirit, and on his graduation, with 
 the honors of his class in science, he could claim also the 
 honors in classics. A graceful incident to record is that 
 at his request the latter were yielded to one of his class- 
 mates. 
 
 He issued from the university, then, well equipped and 
 uncommonly well poised. A thoughtful self-reliance and 
 a judgment beyond his years were the elements in his 
 character especially fostered by his life at Miami, and 
 soon thereafter made manifest in the unfolding of his 
 
i8 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 career. But he was still very young — only nineteen — 
 and along with his Scotch faculty of decision there were 
 plenty of the uncertain moods of youth. Before we fol- 
 low him back to Xenia it is interesting to observe how 
 he struck a contemporary, his college comrade, "Joe" 
 Millikin, afterward a clergyman, then and always the 
 frankest, most human of friends. Writing in the 
 late eighties a long letter of reminiscent reflection, he 
 says: 
 
 Since we were much together we have both become men, and I 
 wish I had a week to talk to you, and see how nearly the trees have 
 grown according to the bend of the twigs. I have had to dis-pedestal 
 some of my quondam gods — is your old pantheon intact? I believe 
 I had the most to learn — you the most to un-Iearn, and is the process 
 completed? To me the world was full of knighthness and wisdom 
 and charm; to you it was all Boeotia and whoever wasnt a hyena 
 was a jackass; what sort of a world is it now, old fellow? Anyway, 
 how you have prospered in it — and I owe it decent treatment for 
 that, if nothing else. From your debut at Oxford I knew you had 
 brains, but I confess to amazement at your having revealed any 
 tact whatever. I knew you had brains, but that you would ever 
 have any common sense and flexibility I confess was for a time 
 beyond my wildest hopes for you ! Well, you've worked for your 
 success — you deserved it — you've got it; and God bless you in it 
 and the world by it; and I'll fight the man that would detract 
 from it. 
 
 The good-will here so handsomely expressed was all 
 about him when he left the university. He was a popu- 
 lar student, admired for his abilities and liked for his 
 personality. His friends believed that he would make 
 his mark. How he would do this was, of course, a prob- 
 lem on the knees of the gods. His work for the "In- 
 telligencer" had given him some ideas to play with but 
 had left his future path undefined. He started for home 
 with no profession fixed in his mind, and as a matter of 
 fact it was to take him several years to find himself. 
 But he had at least a guiding principle. He had begun 
 
ANCESTRY AND EARLY YEARS 19 
 
 to translate into action the Latin poet's phrase I have 
 already cited, and, garnering the first-fruits of its appli- 
 cation, he faced whatever tasks might come with a deep 
 conviction that labor would indeed conquer all things. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 CHOOSING A CAREER 
 
 The Class of 1856 at Miami gave most of its members 
 to the professions. The law claimed nine and the church 
 seven. Two became teachers. Several business men 
 emerge from the group, and one of them, a banker, 
 appears to have engaged also in some agricultural enter- 
 prise. But there was only one farmer, pure and simple, 
 amongst them all. It is the subject for a remark — 
 which might easily be expanded into a chapter — on the 
 almost dramatically transitional nature of that period in 
 which Reid was turned loose to find a livelihood, pay 
 back his father for part, at least, of his college course, 
 and carve out a future for himself. "The tools to him 
 that can handle them," a phrase which he liked to quote, 
 has never meant more in American life than it meant to 
 the younger generation in the Ohio Valley. With in- 
 creasing material prosperity and the greater security in 
 new ventures which it promised, ambition was raised to 
 a higher pitch. It was the university that had done it. 
 It was the university that supplied the tools, and youth 
 was not only eager to use them but confident of its apti- 
 tude in the matter and proudly convinced that there was 
 nothing else to do. 
 
 The evidence that comes crowding upon the student 
 of this phase of our national history, in a region such as 
 that to which Reid belonged, is all illustrative of a type 
 of man not in the smallest degree disloyal to his fore- 
 bears — who worked with their hands — but moved, and 
 encouraged, as a matter of course, to work first and last 
 
 20 
 
CHOOSING A CAREER 21 
 
 with his brains. If opportunity was not to be met at 
 every turn of the road it was, at all events, in some 
 vaguely exciting way, to be felt in the air. The spirit 
 of the colonizers was revived in another form. They 
 had come over here to clear the forest and till the fields. 
 Their work being in large measure done, their descen- 
 dants turned to other spheres of action. Incidentally 
 the drift from farming to the bar or the pulpit or the 
 counting-room marked a change in racial habit. The 
 Scotch traits on which I have placed some emphasis in 
 the preceding chapter persisted as elements of character. 
 Allegiance to the church continued. But we are not so 
 much aware now of Scotch "local color," and if the 
 young Ohioan still recognizes the authority of his pastors 
 and masters he is, nevertheless, a more worldly wise 
 individual than he was before he went to college, and he 
 is given to a wider range of ideas. Some such transfor- 
 mation as this of the individual alumnus has doubtless 
 been observable in every community since our colleges 
 began. The graduate flourishing his degree, with the 
 world before him, is a familiar figure if ever there was 
 one. At a place like Xenia, in the fifties, he exercised 
 serious functions and is representative of a crucial stage 
 in the development of his State. Making the com- 
 mencement address at the seventy-fifth anniversary of 
 Miami, in 1899, Reid characterized the eff'ect of the little 
 college upon its earlier students — it had made of them 
 "citizens who leavened the lump of that growing West, 
 which was then a sprawhng, irregular line of pioneer set- 
 tlements and is now an empire." That was not an 
 empty compliment made by a prejudiced eulogist. It 
 was the exact statement of an historical fact. 
 
 The difference between the old point of view and the 
 new is well enforced by the diff"erence between Whitelaw 
 Reid and his brother. Though Gavin was only seven 
 
22 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 years older he was far more closely identified with what 
 I may designate as the routine sentiment of his people, 
 the strict Covenanter tradition. He, too, broke away 
 from the farm, going into business in Xenia and making 
 not infrequent journeys East and West, He was of an 
 energetic and cheerful temperament, and when in New 
 York he thought nothing of going to Niblo's to see the 
 Ravels, or of treating himself to an oyster supper after 
 a performance of "Romeo and Juliet." But it is more 
 characteristic of him to seize every possible chance to 
 hear Beecher preach or lecture, and the natural mood of 
 the man comes out most informingly in this passage 
 from a letter written in New York in 1855: "It is awful 
 to think of the wickedness of this great city. It has 
 produced an effect upon me which I think time can 
 never efface." Whitelaw just then was immured in Ox- 
 ford, quite safe from any metropolitan dangers. But if 
 I gather anything from the record of his college career 
 it is that, for him, Gavin's fears would have been un- 
 thinkable. He was the man of the world in his circle, 
 the rising hope of the whole clan. It seems to have 
 been expected, even then, that Xenia and its neighbor- 
 hood would not long confine him. 
 
 The elder Reid was in his sixty-first year when White- 
 law came home, and though he was not very strong he 
 was hale enough to keep the farm going. If he had 
 needed his son's help he could have counted upon its 
 being affectionately given, but he was good-humoredly 
 ready to accept the fact that the boy's mind was on 
 other things. It was, indeed, useless to send him out 
 with the plough. Whitelaw's mother used to recall with 
 a smile that when that happened he would shortly after- 
 ward be discovered leaning against the handle, absorbed, 
 Kke Bobbie Burns, in a book, while the horses took their 
 repose. He was more than ready to work — but with the 
 
CHOOSING A CAREER 23 
 
 tools he had acquired at Miami. He was graduated at 
 the end of June. In September a letter from the home- 
 stead, written to Gavin by his wife, contains the momen- 
 tous announcement that Whitelaw "has taken the office 
 of Superintendent of the Graded Schools at South 
 Charleston for $50.00 per month." His vocation seems 
 settled. There is, however, more interesting news in the 
 brief sentence that follows: "He delivers his speech in 
 Xenia one week from Friday." It was a speech for Fre- 
 mont, made by a youngster who could not yet vote, but 
 who thus early, and prophetically, affirmed his instinct 
 for what he was long afterward to call "the good old 
 wholesome Greene County respect for politics." 1856 
 was a presidential year. Pierce was presently to go out 
 and Buchanan to come in. Meanwhile Kansas was in 
 eruption, and public feeling on the grim subject of the 
 hour was nearing the explosive point. For Reid it was 
 impossible to sit silent, to take no part in the battle. In 
 fact, he had chosen his side and begun to fight for it 
 before he left college. He was already a devoted Repub- 
 lican. His speech at Xenia was above all things a 
 speech for the new party. He did not preserve it and 
 it is, indeed, only in retrospect that this slight political 
 experience assumes a certain importance. Thus regarded 
 it is a landmark in his life, a profession of faith carrying 
 with it unconscious intimations of his taste and fitness 
 for the career of a publicist. But he knew it only as an 
 interlude, part of the holiday due to him before he took 
 up his responsibilities as a school-teacher. 
 
 They were hard but not uncongenial, these duties of 
 the classroom — an interesting kind of drudgery. The 
 young women who were his subordinates attended to the 
 general curriculum. He had the classes in Latin and 
 French and taught, also, the higher mathematics. It 
 stiffened his self-reliance to deal with pupils who in some 
 
24 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 cases had passed Jiis own age, and in the pursuit of his 
 task he went further into his subject than he had gone 
 when in college. In later days, looking back at the^ dis- 
 cipline, he felt that it had done him good. He submitted 
 to it whole-heartedly. Though South Charleston was 
 only a little farther from the homestead than Xenia, and 
 quickly accessible by train, he lived close to his work. A 
 daily railroad journey was hardly practicable, and, be- 
 sides, it would have interfered with the plans of economy 
 he had in view. He wanted to repay to his father the 
 expenses of his senior year at Miami, and did so ulti- 
 mately by saving from his salary. Then the exile, if 
 such it was, had its pleasant side. Nettie, his sister-in- 
 law, was his favorite correspondent, and their letters 
 were usually written in gay spirits. The world went 
 very well. "I am prospering finely," he exclaims. The 
 Latin lessons lasted through two winters, and they were 
 beneficial. On the other hand, they led nowhere. While 
 he found inspiration in teaching, forming an interest in 
 the subject which was to keep him active in educational 
 matters down to the day of his death, he saw in South 
 Charleston no opportunity for a career. Not even at 
 Miami itself were there prospects exactly alluring. In 
 any case he did not yet know just what he wanted to 
 do. All he knew was that he wanted to do something, 
 something that was diff"erent. Meanwhile anything was 
 possible, so that it meant work and the reward for work. 
 Through this period the interest lies in his mere hunger 
 for employment and the variety of ways in which he 
 strove to get it. 
 
 He communicated with a New England lock-maker, 
 hoping to become that manufacturer's agent in Greene 
 County. Between recitations in the schoolhouse he co- 
 quetted with the idea of editing a little country paper in 
 Kentucky. When his health finally gave out under the 
 
CHOOSING A CAREER 25 
 
 strain of teaching he thought of restoring it by adopt- 
 ing some business embracing travel and exercise, and 
 wrote, explaining this, to his Congressman, the Hon. 
 Aaron Harlan. Could he not secure a situation as civil 
 engineer "in some one of the many expeditions sent out 
 by the Government which require the services of a Sur- 
 veyor, or in the unexecuted surveys in the Territories?" 
 He had got wind of an expedition fitting out to explore a 
 route for a wagon road to the Pacific. Why could he 
 not join it? Harlan's reply was cordial but disillusion- 
 izing. Every such situation was a political plum and 
 only bestowed by the bashaws controlling it upon their 
 followers and friends. "Indeed," he writes from Wash- 
 ington, "these places are not left open here long enough 
 for the lightning to carry you the news before they are 
 filled." That door, then, was hopeless. Whereupon he 
 remembered his French and German, which were above 
 the average collegian's, and proposed himself as trans- 
 lator to half a dozen of the great publishing houses in the 
 East. Lamartine's "Raphael" was one of the books he 
 talked about — and talked about in vain. The publishers 
 told him that translations were unprofitable, that the 
 few that got into print did so by way of England, and 
 that questions of copyright abroad were troublesome. 
 There was something paralyzing about the pronounce- 
 ment of one eminent firm. "Those who read the more 
 important works," he was informed, "would prefer to 
 read them in the original, and if they cannot read the 
 original they are not likely to have the taste." For an 
 all-round prohibitory clincher that was Kttle short of a 
 masterpiece. It was not for the would-be translator to 
 resist such an argument. If literature was at the mo- 
 ment impossible, there were humbler and perhaps stabler 
 sources of advancement to be tackled. He applied for, 
 and obtained, the local agency for a new writing fluid, and 
 
26 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 undertook at the same time to sell apple-trees for a Syra- 
 cuse firm of nurserymen. There was no end to his hopes 
 and fears or to his energy. He snatched at every straw. 
 A diary kept at this feverish stage of his ambition pre- 
 sents an interesting — and intensely American — ^picture of 
 life kept in touch with the outside world yet quite remote 
 from it. On the farm he was, in a sense, marooned. 
 For the folks thereabouts a journey to Xenia, "in the 
 cars," had by this time become distinctly a journey "to 
 town." Reid often went there, on horseback, and rode 
 or walked to Cedarville village, but most of his time was 
 spent at home, resting from his school labors, reading 
 omnivorously, and forever making plans. The atmos- 
 phere in the picture I speak of is one of detachment, of 
 a certain loneliness not uncheerful, of youth waiting 
 impatiently for fortune to turn up and in the interval 
 enjoying itself. For recreation there was the swimming- 
 hole in Massie's Creek, and occasionally he would go 
 out with a gun, but it was more profitable to "trifle 
 over 'The Newcomes.'" He "blew on the flute a lit- 
 tle," and from the frequency of another record — "prac- 
 tised drawing" — it is clear that he was happy with a 
 pencil in his hand. But most reveaKng of afl the odd- 
 ments in his diary are passages like the following: 
 
 Found a pleasant place in the grass and read "Raphael." 
 
 Got the "Atlantic" for July. Read a page or two in the delight- 
 fully cool ravine below Jackson's house. 
 
 Spent some time reading the Bible. Then read "Pilgrim's Prog- 
 ress." I find it delightful to dream over again those immortal dreams 
 which my youth has made mine as well as the tinker's. 
 
 Read the dailies. 
 
 Read The Tribune. 
 
 Spent the forenoon in an indolent way over my bound volumes of 
 The Tribune. 
 
 He read unceasingly. Some of his reading was done 
 for a practical purpose. Religiously he gave himself a 
 
CHOOSING A CAREER 27 
 
 daily task in French, and, he says, "this morning hour 
 somehow gets expanded sometimes so as to contain 
 twice sixty minutes." An apt note ensues therefrom: 
 "Agreed to give Stuart Frazier lessons in French." But 
 this is really a side issue. He reads, otherwise, all the 
 time, for the joy of reading, and he reads everything — 
 Bayne on Macaulay, Sumner's speeches, "Waver ley" 
 (in which he rejoices, though he can't like Scott's women, 
 Irving's Julia Somerville pleasing him "more than the 
 whole of them"), and De Quincey, whose "Kloster- 
 heim" he finds a "work too much on the sensation sys- 
 tem, but which betrays the hand of the artist." From 
 a friend he borrows Kinglake's "Eothen." On his own 
 shelves he had Homer, Virgil, "The Arabian Nights," 
 Cary's Dante, Paley's "Natural Theology," Carlyle, 
 Gray, and Keats. "The Eve of St. Agnes" so arrested 
 him that he "copied gems from it." In French he 
 ranged from Moliere to Scribe, read the letters of Vol- 
 taire and Rousseau, plodded through the solid volumes 
 of Merle d'Aubigne's "Reformation," and simply bat- 
 tened on De Tocqueville. The "Ancien Regime" of the 
 latter seizes his imagination — "it grows more interesting 
 as it proceeds" — and, finishing it in a few days, he de- 
 clares it "a masterpiece." 
 
 In the midst of his bookish absorptions there befell a 
 stimulating call from Miami. It was the custom there 
 for each of the three literary societies to summon an old 
 alumnus to act as "Diploma Deliverer" at Commence- 
 ment. In 1858, for the first time, the three united to 
 vote for one man who would be asked to act for all, and 
 Reid's election brought him, therefore, a new and pecu- 
 liarly resplendent honor. He accepted it with becom- 
 ing gravity and gave heroic pains to the composition of 
 the expected oration. It grew very slowly, bit by bit, 
 and to a great extent out of his reading. "Put in the 
 
28 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 forenoon in a sort of desultory way on my speech, inter- 
 mixing it with reading a good deal of poetry." He 
 speaks of ransacking his Latin authors for "old truisms 
 I ought to throw together," and he sought quotations 
 wherever he could find them. Then came the painful 
 job of memorizing his periods, and after that their dec- 
 lamation in solitude, so that when the great day arrived 
 he could record with some satisfaction that he had de- 
 livered "a good deal of it in extempore." The lines from 
 Shakespeare, from Virgil, from Tennyson, upon which 
 he relied in his study, were all directed on the platform 
 to the development of a thesis very much his own. 
 Other Diploma Deliverers before him had doubtless 
 urged their listeners to face the chances of the future 
 with resolution and a clean heart, to "suffer and be 
 strong," nor was there anything very novel in his adjura- 
 tion to them to think for themselves, to speak for them- 
 selves, to act for themselves, to follow no man's dicta- 
 tion, to walk in no party's leading-strings. But the gist 
 of the speech lies in a warning of the perils ahead, sug- 
 gesting almost an anticipation of the war so soon to 
 burst forth. "At home and abroad the same dark ter- 
 rible portents startle us. We are fast coming upon 
 times which will call for all your strength. We have 
 already seen wars and rumors of wars, but the convul- 
 sive upheaving of all things that the signs of the times 
 indicate as at hand no eye hath yet seen save that of 
 prophetic vision." He had, himself, a glimmer of that 
 vision. Young as he was he had read aright the lesson 
 of bleeding Kansas. 
 
 It helped to give a decisive turn to his thoughts on 
 his own course. That was all the time pointing to the 
 arena in which the battle of his generation impended, 
 and his growing realization of the fact is shown by the 
 manner in which he put aside intervening opportunities. 
 
CHOOSING A CAREER 29 
 
 On the way home from the ceremonies at Miami he 
 revisited South Charleston and saw all his old friends. 
 "Talked with Tom Houston. He as well as everybody 
 else here, seems very anxious to have me come back and 
 teach." They might as successfully have asked him to 
 come back and plough. In the process of snatching at 
 straws to which I have alluded he had steadily been 
 learning to pick and choose. The various agencies afore- 
 mentioned were little more than hopeful experiments, 
 soon abandoned. The offer of a share in the book-shop 
 at Xenia left him indifferent. But another proposal 
 soon after led to more serious reflefction. "Had a long 
 talk with Jim Liggett," he notes in his diary. "He has 
 sold out the 'News' to Hogue and is going to study 
 Theology. He wants me to do the same." The Cov- 
 enanter in him was touched but not convinced. He 
 knew his own temperament — as will appear by and by 
 in a deeply pondered letter on the subject — and though 
 he read sermons as well as listened to them (two every 
 Sunday, rain or shine), he had no impulse to preach 
 them. There is a modest dramatic interest in the little 
 episode of his talk with the editor turning churchman. 
 While Jim Liggett, all unconscious, was urging him to 
 follow the same path, he gazed past his friend into the 
 office of the "News," and his journalistic tendencies, 
 stirred to new life by new possibilities, suddenly asserted 
 themselves as never before. He began to look around 
 him. 
 
 With his friend Patton he talked about buying the 
 two papers published in Xenia and combining them. 
 When that plan fell through he went back to Liggett, 
 and this time nothing was said about the ministry. On 
 the contrary, the retiring proprietor of the "News" was 
 ready, instead, to persuade the new one to engage Reid 
 to edit the paper. Editorship alone was not enough. 
 
30 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 He wanted to taste the sweets of ownership, of complete 
 authority, and having set his heart upon them he moved 
 now with redoubled celerity. The subject had been 
 opened early in July. Before the middle of the month 
 he could report progress, and on the 14th he "spent the 
 day principally in negotiations for the paper." There 
 were the usual maddening hitches. Things would get 
 into a state of "proflusity," and on the eve of settlement 
 another purchaser appears to have turned up, so that 
 the] most earnest manoeuvring still left the outcome in 
 doubt. But he had a business man to go in with him, 
 a partner of Gavin's, R. P. Gray, and between them 
 they achieved the coup. Within a few days he was in 
 the saddle, and on July 23 rd, 1858, about a fortnight 
 after he had begun his campaign, the "News" bore his 
 name, at the top of its principal page, as editor and pro- 
 prietor. Not until the fall would he be twenty-one. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE XENIA "NEWS" 
 
 The inhabitants of Xenia were from the foundation of 
 the town hospitable to the press. If in the early days 
 they could not pay in cash for the luxury of a paper, they 
 paid for it in kind. The editor of the "People's Press 
 and Impartial Expositor," a journal of the twenties, was 
 wont to accept from his rural readers, in lieu of money, 
 flour, bacon, beeswax, feathers, sugar, and tallow. And 
 this public was exacting. Papers came, in surprising 
 numbers for so new a region, and, failing to satisfy, dis- 
 appeared. The "News," started by J. W. Dumble, a 
 printer, and Preston B. Plumb, afterward United States 
 Senator from Kansas, had lasted four years when White- 
 law Reid took it over. He gave it an even firmer foun- 
 dation and, in fact, so fostered its prosperity that within 
 little more than a year he could boast of the largest cir- 
 culation enjoyed by any paper of the kind published in 
 Ohio. The material achievement, substantial as it was, 
 would occupy as such but small space in this biography. 
 It formed only a brief prelude to other undertakings hav- 
 ing a far more decisive influence upon his career, and it 
 figures, indeed, as a rather isolated aff"air. The relation 
 of the paper to the growth of his character is of the high- 
 est interest, not only exposing individual traits but 
 bringing out, as in some poignant foot-note to history, a 
 representative American experience. The ninety-nine 
 numbers of the weekly bearing his imprimatur embody 
 a moving, sometimes positively thrilling, record of the 
 state of mind in which the North faced the lowering 
 
 31 
 
32 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 crisis. Events which have since taken on an historical 
 remoteness live again in the yellowed pages, quivering 
 with the passion they roused at the time. We know 
 their conclusion. We have seen the completed picture 
 and are thoroughly well used to it. The ante-bellum 
 files of the Xenia "News," more even than the equiva- 
 lent volumes of a great metropolitan daily, have some- 
 thing of the character of unpublished memoirs. The 
 predominating subject has a sharper salience. The at- 
 mosphere is more intensely personal. Reid's paper opens 
 a window on his fife. There is excitement in looking 
 through it, in observing the conduct of a young man 
 "on the ground," breathlessly watching for what each 
 day may bring forth and striking out, in the growing 
 dark, at what he knew for the oncoming evil. 
 
 A spectator of his doings then has left an impression 
 of him as a tall, sunburned youth, pointed out on his 
 walks abroad as one of whom it was well to stand a 
 little in awe, "as he was not afraid to make critical per- 
 sonal remarks in his paper." In his own accounts of his 
 apprenticeship he liked to remember its practical side, 
 calling himself a printer as well as an editor. Western 
 journalism was ever early in enterprise. As far back as 
 1834 a press run by steam-power had been installed in 
 the offices of the Cincinnati "Gazette." In towns like 
 Xenia such expedients were long to remain as unattain- 
 able as a numerous staff. Reid did all the multifarious 
 tasks that fell to the lot of the journalist in a small 
 county-seat sixty years ago. He wrote not only edi- 
 torials but "Chit Chat" — local paragraphs — and did 
 much besides writing. He set type and sometimes 
 worked off the paper on the clumsy machine that an- 
 swered the purposes of the "News." It was part of his 
 pride as a newspaper man, then and afterward, to pro- 
 duce a handsome page. " I have worked a hand-press," 
 
THE XENIA "NEWS" 33 
 
 he once told the Typothetse, "just enough to be not a 
 perfect workman, but a man capable of knowing perfect 
 work when I see it; more than that, a man capable of 
 appreciating fine taste and the typographical skill which 
 go to make a good printer." I remember his impatience 
 with a foreman in the composing-room of The Tribune 
 who sought to excuse a badly set column on the ground 
 of his not having received editorial instructions in that 
 particular case. "Editorial instructions !" he exclaimed. 
 "Are you not a printer? No printer who knows his 
 business needs editorial instructions as to how a column 
 in a newspaper should be made to look." 
 
 The printing of the "News" was extraordinarily good, 
 six broad columns of a bold, open type making a digni- 
 fied page. Errors would creep in, of course, and they 
 caused him anguish. "The types make strange havoc of 
 a writer's thoughts," he bitterly complains on one occa- 
 sion, and gives a few specimens. When he tried to pay 
 tribute to a college as a "well deserving institution," he 
 was made to call it "hell deserving." He learned to 
 take this sort of thing with resigned good humor. The 
 work in the office was done, on the whole, so well under 
 his vigilant eye that four hands had to be employed on 
 the job press, a considerable crew for the time and place. 
 In the make-up of the paper the sobriety of its typogra- 
 phy was an index to its character as a miscellany of 
 sound reading matter. His ambition was to make his 
 journal "a comprehensive and reliable newspaper, for 
 both foreign and domestic intelligence," and though he 
 pitched his standard high he would serve no academic 
 prejudices. In an early issue he makes the significant 
 announcement that "a great deal of matter is crowded 
 out this week by the report of the murder trial which 
 will be found in our columns." In the same issue he 
 pays his compKments to the spectators of the bout be- 
 
34 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 tween Morrissey and the Benicia Boy in Canada. "A 
 worse set of scape-gallowses could scarcely be collected, 
 low, filthy, brutal, bludgeon-bearing scoundrels, ready 
 for any dishonorable act — the very class of men who 
 have built up the Tammany Hall party in New York, 
 and to whose well paid labors that party owes almost its 
 existence." But he does not omit to record the name 
 of the winner, and in the spring of i860, when the Van- 
 derbilt reached New York with news from London of the 
 great Heenan-Sayers fight, he got out an extra on the 
 subject, a curious little leaflet, a sort of elongated post- 
 card, pasted to the main sheet. It was his recognition of 
 news as news. "The simple truth is," he said editorially, 
 "that everybody is interested in the fight, and every- 
 body reads about it. Look at the hundred thousand 
 copies apiece, of the 'Herald,' 'Tribune,' and 'Times' 
 that were sold in New York, within five hours after the 
 arrival of the steamer." It couldn't be explained away, 
 not even by referring it, quaintly, to a revulsion in 
 favor of Physical Education ! Meanwhile, there was 
 the news. He printed it. 
 
 I cite the incident as showing his possession of the 
 first instinct of the journalist, an instinct for the world 
 in which he lives. But that very world of Ohio in mid- 
 nineteenth century, avid for information of the ring, was 
 in nowise forgetful of the austerity of the pioneers. 
 That is what makes the "News" of Reid's administra- 
 tion worth reading. It had not the smallest resemblance 
 to the crude country paper, with "patent insides," out 
 of which the comic paragrapher still gets his fun by the 
 simple use of quotation. It reflected the fine idealism, 
 the good taste, the reading habit of a public accustomed 
 to sincere thinking on profitable subjects. The sub- 
 scribers to the "News" had no acquaintance with cul- 
 ture as Matthew Arnold understood it. On the other 
 
THE XENIA "NEWS" 35 
 
 hand, they believed utterly in the principle which he 
 was so fond of enunciating, the principle of knowing the 
 best that had been thought and said in the world. They 
 wanted to hear, also, about the things being done in the 
 world that were really worth while. When the Atlantic 
 cable was successfully laid, Reid printed Cyrus Field's 
 famous despatches announcing the fact at the top of the 
 editorial page and put a "scare-head" over them. That 
 was the kind of news he craved. The first page of the 
 paper frequently bears political intelligence and editorial 
 comment, but its one stable feature is a collection of 
 pure literature. Poetry is invariably there, the poetry of 
 such writers as Whittier, Lowell, Bayard Taylor, and 
 Bryant, and the fragments borrowed from the novehsts 
 and other prose writers are by Holmes, De Quincey, 
 Thackeray, Dumas, Edward Everett, Mrs. Stowe, and 
 the like — with Horace Greeley leading all the rest. It 
 is the business of a newspaper to be in the van; as he 
 expressed it, after years of experience, to embrace in its 
 outlook "every new and significant fact affecting the 
 social, poKtical, intellectual or moral movements of the 
 world." He had that doctrine in his youth at Xenia. 
 
 The noticeable thing about its influence upon him then 
 is the breadth of interest which it gave to his columns. 
 A good deal of his news — since the paper appeared but 
 once a week — was set forth in editorial paragraphs or 
 articles. These display the born journahst's ease in 
 handling such diversified topics as horse-breeding and 
 the Lady FrankKn expedition, Blondin's crossing of 
 Niagara River on a tight rope and Lord Macaulay's 
 retirement from pubKc life. He had the indispensable 
 flair for the subject promising "good copy." A typical 
 instance relates to Doctor Dionysius Lardner's letter to 
 the London "Times" in 1859, on the use of chemistry 
 in warfare, a letter uncannily foreshadowing the practices 
 
36 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 of the Germans in our own times. Reid pounced upon 
 the document and made it the subject of a leader which 
 yields these striking passages: 
 
 Dr. Lardner gravely states that the engines of war which destroy 
 life by mere mechanical effects, cutting, piercing, bruising, tearing 
 off limbs and the like, including the whole class of cannons, Paixhan 
 guns, bomb shells, chain shot, etc., may be wholly superseded, as 
 comparatively harmless, . . . For instance, he says there are com- 
 pounds known to chemistry, which spontaneously ignite, on being 
 exposed to the air, diffusing gases and vapors which have the effect 
 of rendering insensible all who breathe them. Such compounds, 
 thrown into the midst of an army, would destroy the activity of 
 thousands with the most unfaihng certainty. . . . But as if this 
 were not enough Dr. Lardner points out a mode of bringing Cyano- 
 gen into the service of war, and employing its terrible properties. 
 By combining it with arsenic, a compound is founded, which on 
 being exploded, will by combination with the gases of the atmosphere 
 instantly form two of the most fearful poisons known in modern 
 chemistry — arsenious acid and prussic acid. These would be dif- 
 fused, in a gaseous form, through the entire atmosphere and on 
 being thrown into bodies of troops, would destroy as suddenly as 
 the cannon ball, thousands at an explosion. Truly, as the eminent 
 chemist remarks, before such infernal enginery, gunpowder must 
 pale its ineffectual fires I 
 
 Yet terrible as these lessons of science are, they are not to be 
 regretted. Just as improvements in the destructive agencies of war 
 have advanced, has the destruction of hfe diminished. With such 
 tremendous agencies as these at its command, war becomes atrial 
 of speed. The party which can fire the first bombs is the victor. 
 No surer means can be devised for diminishing the number of hostile 
 encounters, and placing in its strongest colors the absurdity of war. 
 Viewed in this light, these terrible improvements in destruction, 
 these inventions for the wholesale murder of armies, become really 
 contributions to civiHzation, and harbingers of the better time com- 
 ing. As an able writer has remarked, "a formula of the chemist 
 thus becomes the terror of Moloch, the herald of the Millennium." 
 
 There are other evidences in the paper of his interest 
 in military questions. Magenta and Solferino were 
 fought while he was in the editorial chair at Xenia. He 
 wrote spirited leaders on both battles, and endeavored, 
 
THE XENIA "NEWS" 37 
 
 with the limited data at his command, to analyze them 
 with such reference to the numbers of troops engaged, 
 communications, topography, and so on as to throw 
 light on the strategical issues involved in them. 
 
 I have given some indications of the routine bases of 
 his journalism in Xenia, his attention to the general 
 questions of make-up and news, his practice as a printer 
 and reporter. These were, indeed, the foundations of his 
 success in the profession. But they were only the foun- 
 dations. When his friend Minor Millikin, Joe's brother, 
 withdrew from the editorship of the Hamilton "Intelli- 
 gencer," he announced that "of all the forms of labor 
 man is cursed with, that of editing and publishing a 
 country paper is the most exacting, the most slavish, the 
 most exhausting, and least remunerative." For Reid 
 the task of editing and publishing a country paper was 
 a sheer joy, a thing for exultation, and the reason is 
 plain. It suited his temperament and his natural gifts. 
 It gave him an outlet for seething mental energies. It 
 gave him a place in which to speak his mind on the 
 overwhelming subject of the moment, for which he cared 
 as the crusader cares for his goal. The Xenia paper was 
 for him no mere repository of news nor was it a mere 
 means of earning a living. It was his tripod, his pulpit, 
 his organ — as tangibly so as The Tribune was the mouth- 
 piece of his demigod, Greeley. There, as I have pre- 
 figured, is the point to his editorship of the "News," and 
 it is as one of the prime documents of his career that I 
 reproduce the "Salutatory" in which he announces the 
 color of his editorial policy: 
 
 The "News," it is scarcely necessary to say, will continue to main- 
 tain those Republican principles which are destined finally to become 
 the political creed of the nation. It is unnecessary here to make a 
 long "confession" of my political "faith." Suffice it to say that I 
 firmly believe in that "platform of 1776," which the Republican 
 
38 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 party re-affirm and maintain; and I hold that all other issues must 
 be held subordinate to those which imperatively called for the for- 
 mation of that Republican party in 1854, and which now as impera- 
 tively call for its continued existence. Those issues will not "down," 
 and until they are finally and successfully settled, all other issues 
 of less overwhelming magnitude must be held subordinate. The 
 present aspect of the political horizon affords little ground for the 
 belief that the cardinal principles, for which we contend, are likely 
 to be acknowledged and established without the triumph of the 
 Republican party. Meantime Republicans have every reason to be 
 encouraged. A party, which in four years has achieved so many 
 solid triumphs in the face of virulent prejudices, and in spite of the 
 most violent opposition, has no reason to doubt the final triumph of 
 its noble principles; and in that faith I shall battle on, with whatever 
 ability I may, until our labors shall be crowned with final success. 
 But while thus distinctly expressing my adherence to Republican 
 principles, I wish to be clearly understood as adhering to the PRIN- 
 CIPLES, and to the party only so long and so far as it remains true 
 to those principles. Parties are mutable and liable to corruption 
 and perversion; principles are enduring. I have no intention of 
 enrolling myself among the number of those party slaves, who fear 
 to believe save as the party may direct, and blindly follow their 
 leaders, no matter whither their course may tend. It is rather my 
 desire to sustain the character of the "News" as an independent, out- 
 spoken paper, having its own opinions and proclaiming them on all 
 fitting occasions, without fear or favor. I have long admired those 
 words which the Cincinnati "Commercial" bears at its head, "in- 
 dependent, not neutral," and it will be my aim to exhibit something 
 of their purport in my conduct of the "News." 
 
 The whole force of this manifesto of Republicanism is 
 concentrated in the assertion that "all other issues must 
 be held subordinate to those which imperatively called 
 for the formation of that Republican party in 1854." 
 The "News" was an antislavery paper or it was noth- 
 ing, and in its devotion to the all-engrossing topic exactly 
 mirrored the attitude of the party. Whitelaw Reid was 
 all his life an organization man, and acquaintance with 
 the campaigns of his youth enables us to see why. He 
 was born in the year which witnessed the killing of Love- 
 joy. From the moment that he began to think about 
 
THE XENIA "NEWS" 39 
 
 public affairs — and that, in his generation, was at an 
 early age — he was bound to think of freedom for the 
 slave. Hence the Republican party, which thought 
 hardly about anything else, entered into his life not alone 
 as an external rallying-point but as a kind of moral 
 agent, crystallizing his ideas and emotions. He was 
 already aware of what he had to fight for. To enroll 
 under the party banner put weapons into his hands, 
 organized the fight. Like a soldier he hearkened to the 
 clarion call that issued from "under the oaks" while he 
 was at college: 
 
 Resolved, That, postponing and suspending all differences with 
 regard to political economy and administrative policy, in view of 
 the imminent danger that Kansas and Nebraska will be grasped by 
 slavery, and a thousand miles of slave soil be thus interposed between 
 the free States of the Atlantic and those of the Pacific, we will act 
 cordially and faithfully in unison to avert and repeal this gigantic 
 wrong and shame. 
 
 Resolved, That in view of the necessity of battling for the first 
 principles of Republican government, and against the schemes of 
 an aristocracy, the most revolting and oppressive with which the 
 earth was ever cursed or man debased, we will co-operate and be 
 known as "Republicans" until the contest be terminated. 
 
 The platform of 1856, with the bulk of its resolutions 
 directed at but the one subject, gave him the one cue for 
 his Fremont speech. In the little scrap-book he framed 
 for that effort, the matters underlined are all brought 
 together under an antislavery head. Nobody had then 
 any illusions as to the true status of other questions — 
 questions of "political economy or administrative policy." 
 Jackson's shrewd commentary on the South Carolina 
 NuIIifiers whom he squelched in 1833 had put the whole 
 thing in a nutshell. "The tariff was but a pretext; the 
 next will be the slavery or negro question." By the time 
 Reid came into his editorial opportunity the hideous 
 motive of the South had been forced out into the open. 
 
40 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 where it stalked naked and unashamed. He hated it 
 with a personal hatred, and to read his Xenia paper is 
 to realize how he loved all good Republicans and held in 
 positive abhorrence all the members of the Democracy 
 — refusing to believe that there were any good ones. 
 How could there be any health in a party that trafficked 
 with the Beast? From Buchanan down they were all 
 anathema, and Douglas was their prophet. One sees 
 how, in a crisis like this, belief in a party gets into a 
 man's blood. Republicanism possessed Whitelaw Reid 
 like an evangel. In inflaming his enthusiasm it altered 
 his style. We all know the sort of language sanctioned 
 by that Mesopotamian phrase "political animosity." It 
 took on an accent of its own when it was fed from the 
 white-hot fires of antislavery resolution. Well launched 
 in his paper, Reid incontinently threw overboard the 
 suave rule as to poKtical candidates which had been good 
 enough for him when he spoke for Fremont — "Nothing 
 personal to say against any of them." In this fight, he 
 knew, fine words would butter no parsnips, and he let 
 himself go. It was as easy an indulgence as it was soul- 
 satisfying, but he had to be judgmatic, and it is import- 
 ant to note the conditions which made the policy of the 
 "News" no , child's play. Xenia was not by any means 
 all for the negro and the world well lost. 
 
 We think of the men of the North who died for the 
 Union as going into battle for the colored brother. 
 Without laboring that trite subject, I may nevertheless 
 emphasize the fact that in Reid's town the colored 
 brother was not loved at all. In a population of some- 
 thing over five thousand there were a thousand blacks. 
 The percentage was too large -for the comfort of the 
 whites, and when the new editor got through writing his 
 "Salutatory" he had to reckon with some embarrassing 
 facts. Readers of the "News" objected to having their 
 
THE XENIA "NEWS" 41 
 
 womenfolk jostled on the street by negroes; their own 
 habits of orderly and cleanly living put them out of 
 humor with negro shiftlessness and dirt; in short, they 
 loathed his ever-increasing pervasiveness, which was 
 offensive in itself and was, besides, giving the town a 
 bad name. Reid laid it down as an axiom that the more 
 or less intimate association of the two races was only 
 productive of continual evil. "Where negroes reside in 
 any great numbers, among the whites, in the existing 
 state of things, both parties are the worse for it, and it 
 is to the interest of both that a separation should be 
 made as soon as practicable." He was sympathetic to 
 the colonization idea then in the air. But I would not 
 make too much of his dilemma. The problem for Xenia 
 was, after all, brushed into a comparatively negligible 
 position by the problem for the nation. Reid did what 
 he could for the susceptibilities of his fellow townsfolk, 
 recurring to them whenever a just opportunity offered; 
 but he was not inclined, nor was he expected, to be 
 thinking of them all the time. There was much else in 
 the seething pot, among other things politics at large, 
 and upon these he flung himself. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 THE NOMINATION OF LINCOLN 
 
 The negro problem in Xenia might not be soluble in 
 a local election, but the latter always had in it far-reach- 
 ing possibilities, and in Reid's conduct of his paper his 
 realization of the fact is constantly coming to the sur- 
 face. No reform could be carried through until Repub- 
 licanism, everywhere, was set astride the prostrate form 
 of the rival party. The first ticket he had to announce 
 was that framed at the Democratic State convention in 
 the summer of 1858. He printed it with the terse obser- 
 vation that it was the duty of the Republican party to 
 consign it to pohtical oblivion, and thenceforth his col- 
 umns bristle with detailed arguments to that end, espe- 
 cially with indictments of Democratic villainy. Oddly, 
 as it happened, in this early stage of his political cam- 
 paigning, his loyalty to his own organization had to 
 undergo a painful strain. Greene County wanted to 
 return its favorite, Aaron Harlan, to Congress. The 
 Republican convention wound up by nominating "Black 
 Tom" Corwin, the "waggoner boy," once governor of 
 the State. It was with decidedly "mingled feelings" 
 that he gave the news. "While we shall glory in sup- 
 porting Thomas Corwin, it will be no matter for joy that 
 in so doing we must lay aside Aaron Harlan." 
 
 The election of Corwin, a trifling incident in the long 
 perspective of that period as we see it now, was then of 
 importance in its relation to national issues. When the 
 party triumphed and Reid printed his jubilate, the most 
 significant sentence in it ran as follows: "This election in 
 
 42 
 
THE NOMINATION OF LINCOLN 43 
 
 Ohio is one of the most telling rebukes which the present 
 administration has received. The one sole question of 
 dispute was the Kansas policy of Mr. Buchanan. He 
 himself had sunk all other issues in that, he had made 
 his Kansas policy a test, and the people have repudiated 
 it." The same note appears whenever Republican suc- 
 cess is to be recorded. It was wide-spread in powerful 
 sections that fall. A majority of fifteen thousand in New 
 York, an overwhelming victory in Massachusetts, success- 
 ful fights in New Jersey and Delaware, gave him grounds 
 for vociferous rejoicing. "An infatuated President had 
 imagined that the North could be held in party durance 
 forever — ^the threat had gone forth, *We will subdue you' 
 • — the people had been insulted and defied, and now the 
 answer goes thundering back from every hill and val- 
 ley, to the miserable, trembling sycophant in the White 
 House — 'The North stands redeemed, regenerated and 
 disenthralled.'" Nevertheless, the favorable change in 
 the complexion of Congress left him with no illusions as 
 to the great test still to be faced. The presidential cam- 
 paign of i860 would be, he knew, the really crucial con- 
 flict. "It will not be absolutely correct," he said, "to 
 reckon Administration defeats as Republican victories, 
 and base our calculations for the future upon those vic- 
 tories. We must remember that our ranks have been 
 greatly swelled by the disaffected among the Democracy, 
 and that to their timely assistance we owe much of our 
 success at the last elections. Will these Douglas Demo- 
 crats remain with us?" He was bitterly in doubt on 
 that last question and would not let it rest. The Repub- 
 lican party had acquired abundant prestige by its tri- 
 umphs, it had an undivided front and a clean record, the 
 moral eflfect of its recent achievements would be incal- 
 culable — but so, too, was the potency of Democratic cor- 
 ruption difficult to measure. He was a realist in politics. 
 
44 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 He saw things as they were and never ceased working, 
 never left anything to chance. Amid the excitement of 
 winning he still reasoned prudently about the outlook. 
 And not for a moment would he slacken in his campaign 
 of destructive criticism. 
 
 Much of the liveliest reading in his diary at this time 
 — for the "News" has really the character of such a 
 document — is due to the furious nature of his attacks. 
 Buchanan is the object of his unqualified contempt. The 
 last message of that inept statesman he published, of 
 course, in extenso, but if he describes it as "formidable" 
 it is only on account of its length. In substance it is 
 beneath notice. "We shall be very much mistaken if 
 the perusal of it does not leave the mind of the reader in 
 a state of deep pity for the poor old man who is endeavor- 
 ing to control the administration of our government." 
 For Douglas he had no pity at all and could hardly 
 allude to him save in scathing terms. The rrian is "shuf- 
 fling and evasive," no statesman in the legitimate sense 
 of the word. "His thoughts and ideas are always those 
 of a politician, his plans are always those of the man of 
 expedients rather than principles. He is an adroit spe- 
 cial pleader, skilful in the 'fence of words,' ready on the 
 stump, but to any higher character than this he has no 
 claim." Scarifying the enemy for his presidential ambi- 
 tions, he springs with whole-souled rancor upon every 
 chance that arises to reveal the disingenuous policy by 
 which they are promoted. That unspeakable thing. 
 Squatter Sovereignty, was never a more grateful topic 
 than when it could be assailed as one of the "Douglas 
 Dodges." Over the fiasco of the Charleston convention 
 he exulted with the more satisfaction because it put one 
 more spoke in the special pleader's wheel. Returning 
 from Columbus, where he had been listening to a speech 
 by Douglas, he describes him as "capable of sounding 
 
THE NOMINATION OF LINCOLN 45 
 
 any depth of falsehood to any altitude of impudence," 
 and adds this vignette: 
 
 As to his manner and apparent ability as a stump speaker, we 
 should be very sorry to think that there are half a dozen lawyers in 
 Xenia who could address an audience so poorly, and control it so 
 little. With every opportunity for it, he awoke no animation, 
 inspired no enthusiasm. The audience appeared to feel flat, in the 
 superlative degree. Mr. Douglas' appearance is coarse and very 
 unprepossessing. His face is essentially vulgar, — a compound of 
 low cunning and sensuahty. Altogether he looks and acts to the 
 life the character once given him by the editor of the Cincinnati 
 "Enquirer," that of an "impudent, uncouth, unhcked cub," and 
 his bearing as an orator fairly corresponds. If Mr. Douglas has 
 any desire of making Ohio a Douglas State, he would do well to 
 make his stump-speaking tours through it ("at the invitation of your 
 central committee," — ahem !) ^s few and far between as possible. 
 Let but the people hear him, and the idea of supporting a charlatan 
 and demagogue for the highest office in the gift of a mighty nation 
 will sicken and nauseate them. 
 
 So much for the counsels of perfection in the little 
 matter of political personalities. I have sufficiently 
 shown how Reid was carried into the thick and murk of 
 the combat, laying about him too wrathfully to think 
 any more of the old amenities. Thus were the men of 
 his time inflamed by their sense of intolerable wrong. 
 Any weapons would do for the flaying of a slave Democ- 
 racy. Such envenomed personalities as I have cited 
 were produced by conditions, events, which gave to in- 
 vective an almost sacred warrant. The tragedy of 
 Harper's Ferry offers perhaps the most startKng case in 
 point. When that befell, Reid's scorn for the panic- 
 stricken conduct of the Virginian government knew no 
 bounds and he waxed satirical over the exaggerated pre- 
 cautions taken by Buchanan and Wise. But as the 
 strange drama moved headlong to its fatal end his com- 
 ments take on a tenser solemnity. All over the North 
 the probable consequences of the event were disturbing 
 
46 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 men's minds. Their conviction was crystallized in Sted- 
 man's memorable ballad, published in The Tribune after 
 the conclusion of the trial. It was literally the voice of 
 the people that uttered itself in the stirring stanza: 
 
 "But, Virginians, don't do it! for I tell you that the flagon. 
 Filled with blood of Old Brown's offspring, was first poured by 
 
 Southern hands; 
 And each drop from Old Brown's life, like the red gore of the 
 
 dragon. 
 May spring up a vengeful Fury, hissing through your slave-worn 
 lands 1 
 
 And Old Brown, 
 Osawatomie Brown, 
 May trouble you more than ever, when you've nailed his coffin 
 down!" 
 
 A fortnight before, in his newspaper, Reid had in 
 common with all antislavery thinkers conceived the 
 same thought and he sounded the same warning. "It 
 will be well," he wrote, "for the Virginians to remember 
 the old saying about the blood of the martyrs. They 
 have the power to hang this poor insane man, frenzied 
 by the maddening outrages their own minions have com- 
 mitted, but the deed will be one of the blackest in Vir- 
 ginia's history, and will be bitterly repented long before 
 its consequences have ceased to operate." He watched 
 the trial in an agony of apprehension and at every step 
 made in it he recurs to the same ominous note. "Let 
 this man be executed as he has been tried, with a shame- 
 less partiality and injustice, and with an indecent haste 
 only equalled by the cowardice which prompted it; and 
 his blood will serve as the anointing oil for thousands 
 who will step forward to take up his mantle and do his 
 work !" All that he could bring to bear upon the dread- 
 ful subject he poured into his columns. He quoted Wen- 
 dell Phillips, Lydia Maria Child, and Greeley. He wrote 
 incessantly himself. On the day fixed for Brown's execu- 
 
THE NOMINATION OF LINCOLN 47 
 
 tion he had broken down under the strain. For a month 
 he had to keep away from the paper, resting and getting 
 back his morale. 
 
 The task of editing a thriving paper had, indeed, 
 proved heavier than he expected. Within five or six 
 months of his taking charge of the "News" he had been 
 obliged to rearrange his affairs, announcing that the 
 business of the office had so increased that he could no 
 longer give it his personal attention, and it would thence- 
 forth be conducted under the firm name of Gray & 
 Reid. His name appeared at this time as editor alone, 
 and later the partnership was dissolved, leaving business 
 matters entirely in Gray's hands and nothing on his own 
 mind save the administration of the news and editorial 
 columns, especially the latter. It was better for his 
 health and for the flow of his ideas. When he came 
 back to his desk, after the Harper's Ferry excitement, 
 he was restored in strength and happy in a greater free- 
 dom. He went on belaboring Buchanan and Douglas. 
 He redoubled the force of his onslaught upon slavery. 
 These phases of his activity I have emphasized as strongly 
 characteristic of the time, but equal if not greater sig- 
 nificance attaches to the constructive side of his work. 
 Denunciation of the Democrats represented but the neg- 
 ative aspect of his steady advocacy of the Republican 
 party in general and Abraham Lincoln in particular. 
 His identification with the cause of the latter marks the 
 fundamental drift and the true climax of his first serious 
 venture in journalism. 
 
 He was proud of his share in the great campaign 
 of i860 and was wont to speak of it in later life, not 
 with vainglory, but with gladness that he had been privi- 
 leged to break a modest lance in Lincoln's cause. Two 
 years before his death, making at the University of 
 Birmingham perhaps the best of all his public addresses, 
 
48 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 the one on Lincoln, he thus recalled the signal political 
 encounter of' his young manhood in Ohio: 
 
 I had the honor of knowing Mr. Lincoln a little before his nomi- 
 nation for the Presidency; in fact, of having been among the first, 
 if not the first, of Republican editors outside of his state to pro- 
 pose his nomination, in preference to our own state candidate. The 
 acquaintance thus formed never of course became intimate — I was 
 only an unimportant boy; but he was always kind to me, and I 
 continued to see him from time to time till I sat near his bier in the 
 White House. 
 
 The "unimportant boy" of this passage was at any 
 rate an energetic journalist, politically sagacious, and 
 with a newspaper at his disposal through which to exert 
 a practical influence upon his community. His espousal 
 of Lincoln's candidacy, rising from the appreciation which 
 the latter was everywhere developing, was also stimu- 
 lated to some extent — and very humanly — by the antip- 
 athy he had for Lincoln's foil. We have seen how he 
 detested Douglas. In one of his blistering editorials he 
 speaks of him as descending "to the very bottom of the 
 gutter of humiliation, where he will rot and stink and 
 stink and rot forever." Lincoln's superiority was made 
 only the more manifest as it was contrasted with the 
 ineffable traits of Caliban Douglas. The historic debates 
 instantly captured his imagination. In the earliest of his 
 leaders on the subject, written after the meeting at Free- 
 port in August, 1853, he bears candid tribute to the arts 
 of Douglas, but notes that he had his full match in "the 
 cautious and clear headed Lincoln." The replies of the 
 latter are "carefully prepared and well considered." 
 Those of Douglas make a poor showing. He was not so 
 much confident as hopeful about the contest for the 
 senatorship in Illinois. When Corwin visited that State 
 to take the stump for "the cause of freedom and human- 
 ity" he cheered him on. Lincoln, he maintained, had 
 
THE NOMINATION OF LINCOLN 49 
 
 awakened an enthusiasm among the people possibly suffi- 
 cient to overcome the disadvantage which had been 
 created for him in the districting of the State, which had 
 been so determined as to subserve Democratic interests. 
 But he was not downcast by the result of the election. 
 On the contrary, it gave him renewed courage. In the 
 address on Lincoln from which I have just quoted there ' 
 is reference to Judah P. Benjamin's explanation in the 
 Senate of how Douglas had lost the friendship of the 
 South. "The Senator's adversary," he said, "stood 
 upon principle and was beaten; and lo! he is the candi- 
 date of a mighty party for the Presidency of the United 
 States. The Senator from Illinois faltered. He got the 
 prize for which he faltered; but lo ! the grand prize of his 
 ambition slips today from his grasp because of his fal- 
 tering in his former contest; and his success in the can- 
 vass for the Senate, purchased for an ignoble price, has 
 cost him the Presidency of the United States." Benja- 
 min said this in May, i860, before the presidential cam- 
 paign had got its momentum. Reid was thinking it 
 eight months previously. 
 
 In September, 1859, Lincoln made his fruitful visit to 
 Ohio, nominally to assist the candidacy of Dennison for 
 the governorship, but with the deeper purpose of bring- 
 ing out signs of Republican progress in the nation. He 
 made important speeches at Columbus and Cincinnati. 
 Announcing the first, Reid made this buoyant jjroclama- 
 tion: "Abe Lincoln, of Illinois, the great antagonist of 
 Douglas, who came off from the contest last fall, defeated, 
 but with the sympathies and high esteem of the entire North, 
 is to administer an antidote to Douglas' last Squatter 
 Sovereignty effort." He had divined the ultimate effect 
 of Lincoln's seeming indiscretion in asking Douglas a 
 question, an affirmative answer to which could not but 
 win him a temporary advantage. He knew that the de- 
 
50 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 bate was bound to be resumed, in one way or another, 
 after the election, and that in the upshot Northern sym- 
 pathy and esteem for the loser would tell. So when the 
 Columbus speech impended and the railroad was offering 
 to take passengers to the capital and back at half-fare, 
 he wanted to know "how many would go up from Xenia 
 to hear the great champion of the Right," and answered 
 his own question with the surmise that an immense 
 crowd would be there. He was in the thick of it, of 
 course, and came back to fill nearly three columns of his 
 paper with what he characterized as "the calmest, most 
 convincing and most complete refutation of the humbug 
 of Squatter Sovereignty that had yet been given to the 
 public of Ohio." He lauded the speech for its simplicity, 
 its logical accuracy of statement, and for its triumphant 
 success, but his political judgment appears more particu- 
 larly in the conclusion he drew from it that Lincoln was 
 the one man in the United States to follow the trail of 
 Douglas, to tear the miserable sophistry of that individ- 
 ual's pet doctrine into a thousand tatters, and, in short, 
 to beat the Democracy. This training of all his argu- 
 ments upon the hard necessities of the case and the de- 
 velopment of a working plan that would really work is 
 the element in his own situation which it is important to 
 detach from all others. A moral discrimination between 
 Lincoln and Douglas required no great originality. 
 Everybody in his environment was making it. What 
 was personal to himself was his instinct for the most 
 potential of all the Repubhcan candidates in the field. 
 Giving it free play, he carried the people of Xenia with 
 him. 
 
 They gathered in shouting numbers at the station 
 when Lincoln paused there for a few minutes on his way 
 to Dayton and Cincinnati. Some of them even went on 
 to the former place to hear him speak. When they read 
 
THE NOMINATION OF LINCOLN 51 
 
 the Cincinnati speech in the next number of the "News" 
 we may be sure that they approved the enthusiastic 
 editor's remark that it was a masterly production. But 
 as the campaign drew on it was made plain that the 
 preference of the State in general was tending in the 
 direction of Salmon P. Chase, a circumstance having an 
 interesting bearing upon Reid's editorial course. It was 
 about this time that he was made secretary of the county 
 committee, and as such he signed the call for the meet- 
 ing to prepare for the State convention which would 
 send delegates to Chicago. When the various rivalries 
 were threshed out at Columbus it was presumably his 
 official relation to the organization that dictated a fairly 
 colorless report of the vote which named Chase as the 
 first choice of the Republicans of Ohio for the presidency. 
 He could not well discredit the balloting on this sub- 
 ject. But neither could he, in honesty, applaud it, for 
 he was working all the time for Hivling, the Greene 
 County delegate, and that stout patriot was destined to 
 vote steadily for Lincoln at every ballot in the national 
 convention. Reid might accept the Chase movement 
 without comment, but he took pains to note that the 
 delegates were given no instructions, and a little later he 
 showed clearly enough where he believed the campaign 
 would land the voters. In a leader on the prospects for 
 the nomination he addressed himself with blunt direct- 
 ness to what was for him the question overshadowing all 
 others, the simple question as to who could win. We 
 can imagine the "mingled feelings" of such Chase read- 
 ers as the "News" had when they came upon observa- 
 tions as implacably logical as these: 
 
 We take it for granted that the Republicans want to nominate a 
 man who can be elected. We utterly scout the idea that the nomi- 
 nation is due to any particular candidate, no matter how fully he 
 may represent the party, how long, or how faithfully, he has de- 
 
52 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 fended our principles. The Republican party is not a pension office, 
 bound to deal out rewards to its members and bounties to those who 
 have been through its wars. If Senator Seward, or Gov. Chase or 
 Gen. Cameron, or anybody else, has served his constituents faith- 
 fully in the past he has simply done his duty, and has received 
 therefor, station and emolument. There can be no claims now for 
 back or extra services. 
 
 The real question for the Chicago convention to decide is: Who is 
 that clear, unquestioned, undoubted Republican, who is fully quali- 
 fied for the office of President and who, from location, personal 
 popularity, or any other circumstance, has the best chance of carry- 
 ing enough States to secure his election? We consider every State 
 that went for Fremont in '56 safe now, unless an absolutely suicidal 
 course should be taken at Chicago. On the four doubtful Northern 
 States, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Indiana and Illinois, everything 
 depends. What we want is a sound, able, unquestioned Republican, 
 who can carry those States. Give us such a candidate and we shall 
 not concern ourselves very much about his location. If Seward can 
 do it, we shall support him most heartily; if Chase or McLean can do 
 it, we shall support either, and rejoice that Ohio is able to give a sec- 
 ond President to the nation; if, as we now believe, Abraham Lincoln 
 shall be found better to combine the requisites of earnest Republican- 
 ism, fitness and availability, we shall support him, in the faith that 
 the long sought revolution in our National Administration will be 
 certainly and fully attained. 
 
 The Sting of this editorial resided in its tail. All Ohio 
 w^as for Chase. No other paper in the State, as we have 
 seen from Reid's recollections, was dreaming of going to 
 Illinois for a candidate, and for him to do so was not 
 only to run counter to the prevailing tide but to invite 
 the resentment of a man with whom he had every reason 
 to remain on friendly terms. He knew that his attitude 
 would vex Chase and in this his expectation was con- 
 firmed. The governor did not hke the young editor's 
 disinterested handling of the subject, with its candidly 
 philosophical assertion that a well-rewarded public ser- 
 vant had no vested interest in public office. It certainly 
 added no sweetness to the pill which had been adminis- 
 tered in the State convention. Chase's diary contains 
 
THE NOMINATION OF LINCOLN 53 
 
 a pointed reference to the subject, which shows, by 
 implication, how tangible an influence a paper like the 
 "News" could wield: 
 
 The Republicans of Ohio honored me by a declaration of their 
 preference in the State convention, which was held to appoint dele- 
 gates at large to the nominating convention. The Ohio convention, 
 however, did not nominate, as did many other State conventions, the 
 district delegates, but left the selection of these to district conven- 
 tions. This gave an opportunity to the partisans of other candi- 
 dates to foment divisions, and secure the selection in several dis- 
 tricts of delegates unfriendly to me. The result was the division 
 of the Ohio delegates in the nominating convention and the de- 
 struction of their influence. Without its united support there was 
 not much ground for expecting much support from other delegations, 
 in which I had numerous friends ready to unite with the Ohio dele- 
 gation had that delegation been itself united. 
 
 Chase, as is well known, went gallantly on the stump 
 for Lincoln, and the bitterness which he felt toward Reid 
 was shortly dissipated. He was himself of too large a 
 caliber to harbor enmity, and he probably saw, too, as 
 the campaign moved on, that Reid never in his life did 
 a better day's work than that which aided in sending 
 Hivling to Chicago. As later pages in this book will 
 develop, the two became very close friends. Meanwhile 
 the younger man was oblivious to all personal considera- 
 tions in his conviction that a winning candidate had to 
 be picked and that Lincoln was the only possible choice. 
 When May arrived and he scanned the reports of the 
 earlier proceedings of the convention, he observed with 
 gusto the signs that "Lincoln was looming up," and his 
 cup o'erbrimmed when the ticket at last was settled. 
 He had contrived, somehow, to secure for the "News" 
 a special correspondent on the scene, and that happy 
 man could hardly keep his head. "The ticket," he 
 wrote in ecstasy, "the ticket, Reid, so representative — so 
 manly — so honest — so dignified — so hearty — so sound — 
 
54 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 that is the thing, and I give you, in common with all the 
 Free Press everywhere, joy of its happy and auspicious 
 birth. Three cheers for the nominees!" It was hard 
 for the recipient of words like these to have to wait until 
 the news was cold to express his own feelings. Thus 
 they went into his paper: 
 
 The last issue of the "News" had not reached half its readers when 
 the glad tidings were brought over the wires that the candidate 
 whom we have all along believed best to unite ability and avail- 
 abihty had been nominated for the Presidency by the Chicago Con- 
 vention. 
 
 Our readers need not be assured of the hearty joy with which we 
 have received the news of this nomination. Recognizing in Abraham 
 Lincoln one of the most logical and clear-headed of our statesmen, 
 dowered with a magnificent intellect, all the more completely devel- 
 oped that its self-culture has progressed amid the most unfavorable 
 circumstances; regarding him as commended alike by the sound 
 fidehty of his principles and by the brevity and clearness of his 
 pohtical record, and beheving that his nomination insures at least 
 one of the four doubtful States, while it renders success highly prob- 
 able in the other three, we cannot but pronounce the choice of the 
 Chicago Convention the very best and the very wisest. Already 
 all sections of the party have united upon it. The most ardent 
 advocate of Seward is perfectly satisfied with the sterling and out- 
 spoken Republicanism of Lincoln. The most prudent and con- 
 servative adherent of Bates or McLean can urge no objection to 
 his record or position. With him as our standard-bearer we are all 
 harmonized, and with united front we can march forward to our 
 undoubted victory. 
 
 We regard Mr. Lincoln as possessing more elements of popularity 
 than any other candidate that could have been selected from the 
 whole array of Republican statesmen and politicians. Sprung from 
 the ranks, he is pre-eminently a Man of the People. Inheriting ht- 
 erally nothing but an honest name, and beginning Hfe as a farm- 
 laborer, he has risen to the proud position of the foremost lawyer in 
 Ilhnois, and now chosen leader of the great Repubhcan party. Be- 
 tween such beginning and such ripe completion of achievement, we 
 need not say how much of manly toil and stern endurance there lies. 
 In all his career, as the prairie farmer, as the Macon county rail- 
 splitter, as the Ohio flat-boatman, as the mihtia captain in the 
 Black Hawk war, as the western surveyor, as the law student, por- 
 ing over his borrowed books by the flickering light of the fire-place, 
 
THE NOMINATION OF LINCOLN s5 
 
 and trudging on foot for twenty miles to his recitations; then as the 
 rising member of the Legislature, as the leader of the Illinois Whigs, 
 as the faithful follower of Henry Clay in the National Congress, as 
 the head of the bar in the State of his adoption, as the chosen cham- 
 pion of his party and the brilliant contestant for Senatorial honors, 
 — in all this career, so full of romantic success and worthily-won 
 laurels, we see the elements for a popular enthusiasm, already swell- 
 ing from State to State, which will bear forward on the topmost 
 wave of triumph, this Child of the People to the proudest honors 
 the People have to bestow. 
 
 As to the manner in which he will perform the high duties of the 
 office which the nation is about to confer, we need only quote the 
 testimony of this great antagonist. Said Senator Douglas: "Mr. 
 Lincohi is one of those peculiar men that has performed with ad- 
 mirable skill in every occupation he ever attempted;" and we may 
 add, that the man who unaided and alone has risen from a western 
 rail-splitter to the position Abraham Lincoln now occupies, will do 
 honor to any post he may be called to fill. 
 
 Xenia took the new^s as he took it. When he got his 
 special despatch he posted it outside the office as a bulle- 
 tin and w^atched the crowd that quickly gathered. A 
 majority of the Republicans in the tovi^n were "original 
 Lincoln men." As he savored their triumph with them 
 it made him laugh to observe "the sudden discovery 
 made by many that they had been original Lincoln men 
 too." The Democrats naturally pulled long faces and 
 some of them tried to impugn the despatch as a hoax, 
 "not having sense enough apparently to know that a 
 newspaper office was not Kkely to damage its reputation 
 for rehabihty by promulgating such intelHgence without 
 being assured of its correctness." As the day wore on 
 the last doubters subsided. "In the evening Tecumseh's 
 Artillery was brought out, and round after round woke 
 the echoes far and near, and bore the glad news to the 
 surrounding country that the President for 1860-64 had 
 at last been chosen." He could feel that in some small, 
 obscure, but still recognizable measure it had been his 
 work. 
 
56 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 The satisfaction and the incentive were very great. 
 He had correctly interpreted the times to his readers. 
 In the scant two years of his management the "News" 
 had been a steady lamp to Republican voters within the 
 scope of its influence. They had heeded his opinions, 
 recognized his leadership. Now he had something to 
 show for it. In the flush of victory he thought first of 
 pursuing the fight, not only in the paper but out of it, 
 and once more as secretary of the central committee he 
 issued a call to the faithful. Three weeks after the 
 nomination the county was to select delegates for the 
 State convention at which ticket and platform would be 
 ratified, and in the meantime there was much to be done 
 in the general organization of the campaign. Reid was , 
 full of it, and so far as the spirit was concerned could 
 have gone on writing unnumbered leaders for Lincoln. 
 But the one I have quoted was to prove the last. An- 
 other lapse in his health sent him off to the woods, and 
 when he returned it was not to edit the "News." In 
 his eulogium of the great candidate he wrote his own 
 valedictory as a journalist in Xenia. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 THE OUTBREAK OF WAR 
 
 In a brief series of letters to the Cincinnati "Gazette," 
 Reid recorded some of his adventures in the Northwest 
 in the summer of i860. Joe Milhkin went with him. 
 They made a light-hearted pair, one still a young colle- 
 gian, the other "a wandering member of the Press-gang," 
 tired, and hungry for a holiday; but they mapped out 
 an heroic programme, aiming at nothing less than Lake 
 Itasca in Minnesota, the source of the Mississippi. In 
 the course of their travels they attached themselves to 
 a party traversing that region with serious purpose, and 
 earned something of the status of explorers. Crow Wing 
 was then the northernmost settlement on the river. The 
 fabulous growth of Duluth, with all the traffic on the 
 lakes that has since developed, was not to be dreamed 
 of by the wildest visionary when Reid and his comrade 
 stood upon its site. His home State seemed rooted in 
 antiquity as he left it behind him. Some things in Ohio 
 were doubtless new, but in Minnesota everything was 
 newer, and what interested him most were the signs of a 
 young commonwealth just beginning to grow. The jour- 
 nalistic instinct would not down. He was wilhng to lis- 
 ten to flamboyant fish stories and to try his luck in the 
 little lakes around St. Paul, which were supposed to be 
 so full that there was hardly room left for the water. 
 But he gave a more attentive ear to the even more roman- 
 tic tales of real-estate booms up and down the river, and 
 cynically checked them with what he saw. When he 
 
 57 
 
58 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 paused in a town he noted its area and population. His 
 letters are strong on facts. 
 
 From Cincinnati to St. Louis the journey was made 
 by rail. Then followed a week's dawdling up the Missis- 
 sippi to St. Paul. Reid was not greatly impressed by 
 the river life, around which even at that time legend had 
 begun to cluster. There were no John Oakhursts amongst 
 the gamblers on board. The very mixed crowd had an 
 unconventional Western air, but there was nothing really 
 picturesque about it. The early settlers in evidence were 
 tough, rugged types, and their wives and daughters were 
 not any too good-looking. It was borne in upon the pil- 
 grims with gentle melancholy that while there might be 
 plenty of pretty women in the West, they didn't travel 
 on steamboats. But it was amusing to go ashore when 
 there was a stop at some little town or at a clearing, to 
 take on firewood, and it was both amusing and instruc- 
 tive to observe the tragi-comic fate of towns which had 
 been laid out in the middle of the prairie as though for 
 the population of a Chicago. From the constant spoiling 
 of good farm lands along the river, to make villages and 
 specious "corner lots," he concluded that every one in 
 that part of the West had gone crazy. It was a comfort 
 to get to St. Paul, where life was more rationalized. 
 Once through with the sights of St. Paul they went on to 
 St. Anthony and thence by stage-coach to St. Cloud, 
 Crow Wing, and the wilderness — in Joe Millikin's breezy 
 words, "big-breeched, red-shirted, long-knived, big-pis- 
 tolled, mosquito-bedevilled and boil-tormented." They 
 were very happy. There was a thrill in navigating the 
 Mississippi, as there was in sleeping in log cabins and 
 wigwams or out under the pines. The Chippewas and 
 Sioux were interesting companions. For a little while 
 they were the guests of a notable chief, HoIe-in-the-Day. 
 What the rough life did for him Reid afterward explained 
 
THE OUTBREAK OF WAR 59 
 
 in a letter to his brother: "My trip to Minnesota did 
 me little good physically. It was too hard for me; but 
 it did me good by throwing all my thoughts into a new 
 channel and making me forget all about my sickness." 
 An effort of the will had something to do with this salu- 
 tary detachment. In another letter to Gavin he says: 
 "My motto is, never believe unpleasant things till you 
 have to. Always look on the bright side if there is any." 
 His vacation in the woods, bare of any striking incidents, 
 at least exposes his fidelity to his motto. He lost nothing 
 of his gayety because all through the hohday he was 
 aware of the problem awaiting him at home, the prob- 
 lem of his career. 
 
 We have seen how on the main point it had been solved, 
 how his work in the campaign for Lincoln had stamped 
 him as an effective journalist. It had also made him 
 acquainted with what he playfully called "the miseries of 
 an editor's life." He said something about them to Joe 
 Millikin by the camp-fire, and when in the winter that 
 cheerful sage decided to go to Europe he remembered 
 their talks and bade his friend farewell with this mean- 
 ing adjuration: "Don't kill yourself on anymore coun- 
 try papers!" He took the advice. It had been hard 
 to give up his interest in the "News," and on his return 
 it was harder to forego the warfare of the pen, carried 
 on from the commanding position in which an editorial 
 chair is placed. For a short time he dallied with the 
 idea of following Millikin abroad. Then the whole ques- 
 tion was postponed by the fall elections. Taking up 
 again his secretaryship of the county committee, he gave 
 all his fighting powers to the campaign. A famous 
 contribution made by the younger men in the United 
 States was the organization of companies of "Wide- 
 Awakes," or torchlight paraders. Reid got in touch 
 with the leader of the body in Cincinnati and helped to 
 
6o THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 start a local company. He made stump speeches him- 
 self and organized meetings for which he sought cele- 
 brated orators; Sumner, John Sherman, and Thomas 
 Ewing were among those he tried to get. The earliest 
 souvenir of the relations with pubhc men which were to 
 fill his life is a friendly note from the Massachusetts 
 statesman. 
 
 In his work on the spot, the practical work of "getting 
 the vote out," he had one more opportunity to write 
 what was really another editorial, one of those fervid 
 appeals which we have observed him making in the 
 "News" during the campaign for the nomination. It 
 fell to him, as secretary, to compose the address of the 
 committee to the men of Greene County, the pencilled 
 draft of which he treasured amongst the relics of his 
 youth. It runs as follows: 
 
 We need not, we are sure, urge upon you the importance of this 
 election. The day to which we have been looking eagerly forward 
 ever since the organization of our party is now upon us, — the day 
 when we have the means to gain control in the Federal government, 
 if we but put forth the power we possess. After so many years of 
 patient labor shall we now fail to "go in and take possession?" 
 
 Our candidates are now the only ones that have any chance what- 
 ever of election by the people, as the recent elections in Pennsyl- 
 vania and Indiana, the most important of the so-called "doubtful 
 States," clearly show. Vote for Lincoln and Hamlin and you vote 
 for an election by the People, of the People's choice; vote for any 
 of the other candidates and you cast your influence for the defeat 
 of a choice by the people, and for the fearful confusion and anarchy 
 tenfold worse than that which characterized the election of Speaker 
 last winter, — that must surely follow a scramble for the Presidency 
 in the American Congress. If ever this country shall be in danger 
 of Disunion it will be not from the constitutional election of an 
 honest and incorruptible statesman, but from the conflict of mad 
 passions, the coHisions, the imminent danger of bloodshed and civil 
 war, that such a warfare in Congress would occasion. Will you not 
 do all in your power to avert such a calamity, and to promote an 
 election by the people? 
 
 There is danger to the Republican party from over-confidence. 
 
THE OUTBREAK OF WAR 6i 
 
 Remember, the fight is not yet over. An absence of a hundred 
 voters in each county — and we can point to a single one of our 
 twelve townships, not one of the largest, either, in which over thirty 
 Republican voters were absent from the polls at the October election 
 — might yet turn the scale in Ohio. Besides, Ohio has already fallen 
 far behind even Pennsylvania in its majority. Republicans, are 
 you willing that new recruits should thus march in advance of old 
 veterans? 
 
 He was riding on the crest of the wave as this mani- 
 festo was issued, and only a few days later the results of 
 the election gave him once again the elation of victory, 
 the pride of achievement. At almost the same instant 
 he entered upon a period of depression. There was noth- 
 ing further for him to do in politics, and in journaKsm 
 there was nothing available that he wanted. A chance 
 to teach as an assistant in a Cincinnati academy flickered 
 on the horizon and went out. Settling down to read at 
 the homestead, he found that there was no one at hand 
 to look after the little district school. The neighbors 
 begged him to take charge for a couple of months, and 
 he did so, but it bored him terribly. He could scarce 
 live up to that motto of his: "Always look on the bright 
 side if there is any." There wasn't any. News of his 
 lowered spirits reached a friend of the family in the 
 northern part of the State, a clergyman, and he deemed 
 the moment ripe for an appeal to Reid to enter the 
 church. "I learned from your father," he wrote, "that 
 it is possible you may lose your last year's labors. This 
 would be grievous indeed. I know how faithfully you 
 wrought, and h,ow well. There is a lesson in all this mis- 
 fortune. You have been entrusted with talents which 
 can be turned to far better account than expounding and 
 defending our political creed." He made this reply: 
 
 You are right in saying that this is not the first time the subject 
 of studying for the ministry has been brought before me. Without 
 denying the force of any of the arguments you have urged, I may 
 
62 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 say briefly that I long ago concluded that it were worse than folly 
 for any man to enter upon that sacred and awful office without a 
 distinct and unmistakable Divine Call thereto. Such a Call I have 
 never felt as made upon myself and all my reflections on the subject 
 since the receipt of your letter (and they have been neither few nor 
 hasty) have but confirmed the opinion I had formed before. 
 
 Let me add one word more. AH these appeals to me to enter the 
 Ministry seem to be based upon an idea that my talents are of a 
 somewhat superior order. I am not usuafly blamed for distrust of 
 my own abilities, and yet I must be allowed to say, without the 
 sKghtest aff"ectation of mock-modesty, that my friends have always 
 very greatly over-rated whatever talents I may possess. I can, I 
 think, estimate myself more justly than others can, and I certainly 
 have never regarded my abilities as any special acquisition to any 
 cause. 
 
 At the time of writing this letter, indeed, he had made 
 his decision, as he had made it in the face of Jim Lig- 
 gett's urgings — a decision for journalism. All through 
 the winter he had watched for an opportunity to join 
 one of the Cincinnati papers. He applied for the post 
 of news editor on the "Enquirer" the moment he heard 
 that it was vacant, but his letter arrived a day too late. 
 Shortly afterward he tackled the " Press," again in vain. 
 But even while the proprietors of that journal were keep- 
 ing him on tenter-hooks, delaying their reply for several 
 weeks, the tide turned, and turned with a vengeance. 
 The Cincinnati "Times" engaged him to serve as its 
 legislative correspondent at Columbus, paying him five 
 dollars a week for a daily letter. He began the work in 
 the middle of March, 1861. It was but started when he 
 made a similar arrangement with the Cleveland "Herald" 
 — similar save for the bright detail that from this source 
 he received fifteen dollars a week — and before the month 
 was out he had added the Cincinnati "Gazette" to his 
 group of papers, with a weekly salary as large as the two 
 others combined. Since it cost him only five dollars a 
 week to live he was in afHuence. He assumed undismayed 
 
THE OUTBREAK OF WAR 63 
 
 the job of turning out three letters a day on the same top- 
 ics. It was for his work on the " Gazette " that he adopted 
 the pseudonym of "Agate," with which he was later to 
 make so deep an impression as war correspondent. On 
 his travels in the Northwest he had picked up a great 
 many agates in the vicinity of Agate Bay and other 
 points on Lake Superior, and had taken a fancy to the 
 stone. This was the origin of his choice of a signature, 
 which also, in recalling the name of a kind of type, kept 
 in remembrance his experience as a printer. 
 
 Howells, the novelist, whose father Reid succeeded in 
 the service of the "Gazette," knew him at this time and 
 has thus portrayed him: "I remember him a tall, grace- 
 ful youth with an enviable black moustache and imperial, 
 wearing his hair long in the Southern fashion, and carry- 
 ing himself with the native grace which availed him in a 
 worldly progress scarcely interrupted to the end." He 
 came to his new task in a new or, at any rate, rather 
 changed mood. The miscellaneous drudgery of his early 
 days on the "News" had so soon been subordinated to 
 the larger duty of deahng in leading articles with poKti- 
 cal questions that he had unconsciously taken for granted 
 a similar editbrial authority in his next niche, wherever 
 that might be. Though he still believed the news to be 
 the all-important ingredient in the making of a news- 
 paper, his zeal in gathering it was equalled by his in- 
 clination to comment upon it. In a reminiscence told 
 in later years he recalled how the confusion of ideas at 
 that time was put out of his head. "When I wanted to 
 leave country editing," he said, "and become connected 
 with some city press, I hinted to my friend and name- 
 sake, Henry Reed, one of the most trenchant writers in 
 the journalism of the West, that I didn't want to do 
 reporting. 'Youngster,' was the consolatory reply, 'if 
 anybody wants to succeed he must do whatever work he 
 
64 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 can get to do, and do it better than it has been done. 
 Report the law courts, fires, prize fights, anything they 
 set you at, and do your very best every time. That's 
 what I did, and you have no right to expect anything 
 else.' " 
 
 If the smallest dubiety lingered in his mind it disap- 
 peared before the excitements of the session. Chase 
 having entered Lincoln's cabinet, some one had to be 
 elected to- his chair in the Senate at Washington, and 
 Reid began his letters just as the contest was opened. 
 The secret caucus summoned in the hall of the House 
 promptly put him on his mettle. "Reporters were rig- 
 idly excluded, but, as is usual in such cases, the more 
 carefully they were warned off, the better posted they 
 were." He gave plenty of details in his daily record of 
 the prolonged fight from which John Sherman finally 
 emerged the victor. The signature of "Agate" soon 
 commanded respect. Reid's reports were compact and 
 vivid. He knew how to sift from the debates such mat- 
 ter as would appeal to distant readers, and where to 
 make pungent comment. Gibes at the Democracy in 
 general were forever in order and he watched for the 
 speech or vote by a member of that party which would 
 permit a particular application. After the struggle for 
 the senatorship was concluded he had to make the best 
 of a rather prosaic routine, and personalities were wel- 
 come. But most of the subjects coming up during his 
 few months at Columbus were obliterated by the war. 
 He went there, as I have said, in March. Sumter was 
 fired on within a month, and, of course, the trouble in 
 South Carolina had begun before the previous year was 
 out. His letters, which faithfully reflect the temper of 
 the period, preserve especially the strange, ambiguous 
 mood which prevailed. 
 
 The war which everybody expected was nevertheless 
 
THE OUTBREAK OF WAR 65 
 
 met as the most astounding of surprises when it came. 
 I have shown how Reid had had forebodings of it from 
 his college days, yet he was almost incredulous of its 
 actual onset. The first news from Charleston Harbor 
 on the fateful April 12th could not persuade him. He 
 thought the despatches were bogus ! All Columbus was 
 of much the same opinion — for a few hours. The crisis 
 was unbelievable. In the legislature miKtary appro- 
 priations were blocked by Democrats whose minds were 
 not merely clouded by party feeling but subject, hke all 
 others, to the hallucination that what had happened sim- 
 ply could not happen. As the storm fell and there was 
 no mistaking its import, every man in the town had to 
 remake his world overnight. The old story which is 
 the story of cities and towns all over the North — of in- 
 creduKty, of stunned emotions, of hurried, confused prep- 
 aration, and, amongst individuals, of heart-stirring choice 
 — was unfolded before Reid's eyes with the more dra- 
 matic effect because of the pecuhar position of his State. 
 There could be no question of where Ohio stood on the 
 national issue. Simon Cameron's despatch to the gov- 
 ernor, demanding thirteen regiments of militia for imme- 
 diate service, brought an instant response, and Dennison's 
 proclamation calling for volunteers raised men up as if 
 from the ground. But the danger on the border gave to 
 patriotism a sharper edge. Reid saw for himself how the 
 war was brought home to the people around him by 
 the situation which in his "Ohio in the War" he later 
 sketched in these words: 
 
 Along four hundred and thirty-six miles Ohio bounded Slave 
 States; and at every point in the whole distance was liable to inva- 
 sion. On the south-eastern border lay the State of Virginia, already 
 threatening to secede, and soon to become the main bulwark of the 
 Rebel cause. On the southern border lay the State of Kentucky, 
 already furnishing recruits by the regiment to the Rebel army, and 
 
66 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 soon to threaten yet greater dangers. To these States the first 
 earnest glances of the Governor were turned. The attitude of Vir- 
 ginia was the more alarming, and her geographical position made 
 her hostility a thing of grave purport. Thrust northward into the 
 space between Pennsylvania and Ohio like a wedge, she almost 
 divided the loyal part of the nation into two separate fragments. 
 Here, as an acute military critic has since observed, was the most 
 offensive portion of the whole Rebel frontier. Behind the natural 
 fortification of the mountains the communication with Richmond 
 and the whole South was secure. 
 
 Doubly concerned, then, for the Union and for her 
 own integrity as a State — this latter a factor in the prob- 
 lem never more jealously guarded than at that precise 
 moment in American history — Ohio was plunged at once 
 into the thick of the v^^ar, and Columbus, naturally, was 
 the focal point. Reporting the debates over the war 
 bill, Reid rushed to expose recalcitrant members. The 
 single "No" heard in the Senate he recorded with this 
 observation: "Mark the man who voted against the de- 
 fense of his State and nation, and let the craven reap the 
 heritage of infamy he has so fairly won." The son of 
 this man balanced his father's vote by enlisting in the 
 ranks. The backslider himself presently asked leave to 
 change his vote. He, and others, began to hear from 
 "back home," and the "Gazette's" correspondent de- 
 scribed the ensuing posture of affairs with a vigor of 
 which I may give a concise specimen: 
 
 The most uneasy politicians ever seen in this city were the Demo- 
 crats yesterday afternoon. They had begun to hear from their 
 constituents. Gamble received a dispatch from some of the most 
 prominent men among his constituents, telling him "for God's sake, 
 vote men and money to any extent, at once." . . . The operation 
 was not pleasant; they wanted to stop it — the sooner the better. 
 The leaders were terrified at the great ground swell of popular dam- 
 nation that was sweeping up to overwhelm them, and they sud- 
 denly reversed the caucus workings. Through the passages, and in 
 quiet groups through the hall, they were laboring with the refractory 
 members, and doing their best to bring them into the ranks. They 
 
THE OUTBREAK OF WAR 67 
 
 even proposed a bargain with the Republicans. They would forget 
 or forego their extraordinary conscientious objections to the sus- 
 pension of the rules, if the Republicans would only promise not to 
 prevent them from delaying action by debate, by the use of the 
 previous question. The Republicans sternly told them the time 
 for such agreements was past; they had now no bargains to make. 
 And so the poor partisans, swept from their old moorings and drift- 
 ing blindly before the storm they had insanely provoked, were fain 
 to put into the nearest place of security. It was astonishing how 
 suddenly their views had changed. Men who had protested that 
 the War bill was an infernal outrage, had experienced a change of 
 heart. Their desires had been gratified — every man of them had 
 had the felicity of hearing from his constituents. 
 
 This was what his paper wanted. The capitol was 
 the centre of the most important of current news for 
 Ohioans. He was eagerly concerned with the turmoil in 
 the streets and constantly sprinkled through his letters 
 the little human incidents showing more tangibly than 
 anything else how the "fighting fever" had taken pos- 
 session of the town. The volunteers already in camp 
 were offered money to give up their places to men who 
 feared they had come too late. A country fellow talking 
 secession on the sidewalk was first hustled by the crowd, 
 and then only saved from lynching by the artfulness of 
 his friends in spiriting him away. There were droll 
 stories to be told. Amid the general upsetting of all 
 routine a soldier found it convenient to write his love- 
 letter at a senator's desk, forgot it there, and so was 
 discovered to have wound up by telling his sweetheart 
 that he didn't intend to come home until he had Jeff 
 Davis's heart in his breeches p>ocket. A woman of Clyde 
 sent a huge bass drum to the governor, and with it a 
 long rope for the hanging of the rebel leader. The cap- 
 tain of a company on its way to camp was worried about 
 the blankets furnished them for the night at a stopping- 
 place and ordered that all were to be returned to him 
 in the morning. His men handed back all that had been 
 
68 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 supplied to them — and forty-seven more. Then there is 
 the anecdote of the man from Mississippi who boarded a 
 troop-train, took stock of the volunteers, and quickly 
 thought the thing over. He stepped off at the next sta- 
 tion and telegraphed to his brother: "I have seen some 
 of the northern troops. Pack up at once and bring our 
 sister north without a day's delay." Again and again 
 the letters celebrate the swiftness with which the armies 
 were gathering and the stern ardor with which they faced 
 the sacrifice. Thirteen regiments had been called for. 
 Promises of material for twenty poured into Columbus. 
 Reid emphasizes the spirit of dedication in which these 
 Americans came forward, paints them kneeling in prayer, 
 and in very nearly the same breath he discusses the food 
 provided for them and its cost, casting critical glances in 
 the direction of the quartermaster's department. He 
 had taken Henry Reed's counsel to heart. That these 
 earliest of "Agate's" despatches revive the very traits of 
 a typical American town in the first throes of the war is 
 obviously due to this fact. His letters reveal the expert 
 reporter. Of the three papers in which they were printed, 
 the Cincinnati "Gazette" was the one to decide that it 
 wanted the writer permanently on its staff. At the end 
 of the legislative session, in May, he was offered the desk 
 of city editor, and at once took up its duties. Thence- 
 forth, at different times, he was to do a good deal of 
 work, of various kinds, in the office. At the outset, 
 however, he could do little more than get acquainted 
 with his new post. In June he was sent to the war. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 IN THE FIELD 
 
 In distinguishing between the old and new traditions 
 of war correspondence it is customary to lay stress upon 
 two cardinal factors — ^the reporter's status in the field, 
 and the facilities available for the prosecution of his 
 work and the transmission of his despatches. The very 
 mixed conditions under which this arm of journalism was 
 invented are clearly exposed in the history of George 
 Wilkins Kendall, who reported for the New Orleans 
 "Picayune" our war with Mexico. His status was 
 ideal. Nobody complained if he took part in a fight. 
 When he not only did so but seized an enemy flag and 
 brought it out of action, he was cheerfully allowed to 
 keep it as a souvenir. Worth put him on his staff" and 
 named him appreciatively in his reports. But Kendall 
 starved in the midst of plenty. Privileged to see every- 
 thing, to gather at first hand news for which the whole 
 country was feverishly waiting, he had to send it by 
 courier and ship! In 1846-47 there was no telegraph- 
 wire nearer him than at Washington. To-day the war 
 correspondent, with every resource of science up his 
 sleeve, would nevertheless be wilhng to give a good two- 
 thirds of his outfit for a little of Kendall's luck in getting 
 on the spot. He, poor wight, is far less welcome, being 
 grudgingly allowed to approach only the fringes of bat- 
 tle, and, when he is fortunate enough to find something 
 to write about, he has still to reckon with an implacable 
 censor. 
 
 Reid began his career as a war correspondent just as 
 a new era for the craft was coming in, more favorable 
 
 69 
 
70 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 than any before it, if not altogether without pains and 
 penalties. The telegraph was there. When not imme- 
 diately accessible it was, at all events, within the reach 
 of a man with a good horse. The railroads were of 
 enormous service when a correspondent chose, for one 
 reason or another, to go home with his news, writing it 
 on the way. In the field, conditions varied. The press 
 was uncomfortably candid from the beginning, and 
 trouble ensued between it and more than one officer. 
 The censorship, too, was not long delayed in working 
 hardship for the newspaper men. Stanton was a fear- 
 ful thorn in their sides. And yet, first and last, they 
 enjoyed chances which their followers in recent wars can 
 read about only with wonderment and envy. Smalley's 
 experience at Antietam, carrying orders for Hooker, is 
 merely unthinkable as befalling any correspondent, no 
 matter how favored, at the battle of the Marne. " Look- 
 ing about him for an officer he saw me and said, 'Who 
 are you?' I told him. 'Will you take an order for 
 me?' 'Certainly.' There was a regiment which seemed 
 wavering and had fallen a little back. 'Tell the colonel 
 of that regiment to take his men to the front and keep 
 them there.' I gave the order." Imagine a correspon- 
 dent on the French battle-field, unknown to the general 
 save as he identified himself, being intrusted with a 
 message of such moment, and in such fashion ! 
 
 The Cincinnati "Gazette" was in the forefront of the 
 journalistic revolution developed by the war; it held up 
 its representative's hands, and as these pages will show, 
 Reid was one of those who gave a new standing to his 
 new profession. Yet it is noteworthy that for him it was 
 not a new profession in the later, more specialized sense 
 of the term. Since his day we have come to regard the 
 war correspondent as a type apart, who lies fallow be- 
 tween campaigns or retells his achievements in books 
 
IN THE FIELD 71 
 
 and lectures, and at all times belongs, in many instances, 
 as much to the magazines or to some syndicate as to a 
 particular newspaper. This kind of "expert" was un- 
 heard of when the Civil War began. Reid was a war 
 correspondent, proud of the title, and aware of the spe- 
 cific technic expected of him. It was as an aide-de- 
 camp on the staff of the commanding general that, with 
 the rank of captain, he made his first campaign. He 
 had the fullest appreciation of his prerogatives, oppor- 
 tunities, and duties. But they were all in the day's work, 
 and the distinctive note of his war correspondence is to 
 be traced to the manner in which he took it up and 
 dropped it, took it up again and dropped it again, and 
 so over a protracted period adjusted it to other tasks 
 and to the steady working out of his newspaper career. 
 He wrote his last despatch as legislative correspondent 
 at Columbus on May 12th, 1861. Serving for a short 
 time as city editor of the "Gazette," he proceeded to 
 the front in West Virginia early in June, and thenceforth 
 for some months he was with the army at numerous 
 points. But in midsummer he "did" the Democratic 
 State convention at Columbus, in October he took the 
 place of the managing editor at the office for a week, and 
 by the end of the year, having in the meantime observed 
 the war in Kentucky, he was once more at his desk, this 
 time writing editorials and organizing the field staff 
 which it had become necessary for the paper to employ. 
 These instances, which might easily be multiplied, will 
 suffice to foreshadow the character of Reid's service 
 during the war. It was arduous, dramatic, full of peril, 
 and tinctured with the vital force of a great passage in 
 history — and it was part of a broader progress. Also — 
 and this, likewise, is characteristic of both the man and 
 the period — it got something of its color from Reid's 
 upbringing and from his experience as the editor of an 
 
72 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 antislavery paper. He was of the North, and the rebels 
 were his personal enemies. If the war was for him, as 
 any war is bound to be for the correspondent, a spectacle 
 to be disinterestedly described, it was none the less in 
 his eyes the process, besides, by which the country was 
 to be purged of an infamous evil. This point of view it 
 was that lent to his despatches a good deal of their emo- 
 tional vigor. Every war correspondent is in the nature 
 of things a partisan. Reid's reports of battles, like his 
 editorials on Lincoln, are not only records of fact but 
 give expression to his belief in a cause. 
 
 He was fortunate, therefore, in his first campaign, the 
 purpose of which made a peculiarly clean-cut appeal to 
 his sentiments as an Ohioan and a defender of the Union. 
 Later on, as events took a wider sweep, given military 
 actions were chapters in a long sequence, each to be 
 apprehended at close range for its own sake, with only 
 a roughly speculative idea at the back of the writer's 
 mind as to its ultimate relation to the large aim of the 
 war. In West Virginia the issue was sharply defined. 
 It meant the rescue of that part of a State which was 
 tending strongly toward the Union, from that other part 
 which was unmistakably for secession. Reid knew when 
 he started for the front that the object of the campaign 
 was to make West Virginia what he afterward desig- 
 nated it in an historical passage on the subject, the gift 
 of Ohio to the nation. In the preceding chapter I have 
 shown why Ohio was nervous about her border. Gov- 
 ernor Dennison was the more disposed to act quickly 
 there, to the southeast, because he was well apprised of 
 the Union sentiment crystallizing in that direction. The 
 slaveholding population of Virginia was infinitely larger 
 in the eastern than in the western section of the State, 
 a fact which would alone account for the divergence of 
 political feeling between the two regions. Hence an 
 
IN THE FIELD 73 
 
 advance across the Ohio River, pushed well into the 
 interior, would achieve a double purpose. In forcing the 
 rebels over the mountain ranges, behind which barrier it 
 would not be very difficult to keep them, security from a 
 military point of view would be obtained. At the same 
 time the loyal Virginians would be enabled to work out 
 their destiny as the citizens of a separate State. The 
 campaign was, among other things, an indispensable col- 
 laborative agent in the proceedings of the Wheeling con- 
 vention. 
 
 It is a trait, a mark of his editorial habit of mind, that 
 Reid was thoroughly conscious of this, and always in his 
 letters feeling the pulse of the inhabitants. Many of the 
 latter declared themselves on the instant and with every 
 manifestation of joy. The national colors floated from 
 poor log cabins, women in the mountains used the Stars 
 and Stripes as aprons and handkerchiefs, and when the 
 people had no money to buy flags they fashioned them 
 out of calico. In the towns potential secessionists lay 
 low and had to be smoked out. One officer had a clever 
 way of dealing with the shifty tribe. A member of it 
 applied to him for a pass, whereupon this colloquy ensued : 
 
 "Certainly, sir, you shall have it. Hold up your right hand, if 
 you please." And without a word of explanation, the Major pro- 
 ceeded to administer the oath of allegiance ! He had not got half 
 through it, when the secessionist exclaimed: "Stop! I won't take 
 that." "Very well, sir," repHed Major Oakes; "I'm sorry for you, 
 then, but you can't go down to Philippi." And he didn't go. 
 
 The campaign moved slowly. After the first skirmish 
 at Philippi, the troops under General Morris settled down 
 to await the operation of General McCIellan's strategy. 
 At Grafton, where headquarters were established, Reid 
 gathered the usual incidents of camp life, watched the 
 sifting of the inhabitants into good and bad patriots, and 
 took note of what was being done or left undone as to 
 
74 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 the welfare of the troops. When their trousers went to 
 pieces before his eyes he reported the constituents of 
 those specious garments — factory clippings and sweep- 
 ings, almost as quick to wear out as wrapping-paper — 
 and he sent on a specimen of the "cloth" to his paper. 
 "Put it up in the counting room," he wrote, "and let 
 Ohioans see how Ohio troops in the field are clothed." A 
 little later some shoes belonging to rebels captured at 
 Philippi gave him the cold comfort of proving that 
 Southern army contractors had nothing to learn from 
 their Yankee brethren. The soles were made of wood, 
 glued to the uppers, and covered with stained paper. 
 His waiting letters are full, of course, of camp humors, 
 the excitements of "eye-balling," the art, in which the 
 troopers excelled, of "confisticating" a comrade's posses- 
 sions, and the bursting ardor of every man and officer in 
 the place. It is a captain of Hoosiers who takes the 
 palm in his collection of anecdotes and oddities. "Close 
 up, boys!" he shouted. "If the enemy were to fire on 
 you when you're straggling along that way, they couldn't 
 hit a d — d one of you! Close up!" But this sort of 
 thing made a sorry substitute for action. What Reid 
 and everybody else expected, after the initial successful 
 brush with the rebels, is reflected in this letter written 
 from Grafton to his brother: 
 
 I am just on the point of starting for Philippi, with Gen. Morris 
 and his staff. A battle is expected there in a day or two, more 
 important and bloody than any since the beginning of the insurrec- 
 tion. The road has now become exceedingly dangerous. The story 
 is that three Ohioans were shot down on it this afternoon. It is 
 utterly impossible for me to predict my future movements. I have 
 orders to keep with the advance of the army and hope to be at Rich- 
 mond before the summer is over. I go with any of the Generals, 
 as circumstances may dictate. Gen. Morris is the senior Brigadier, 
 and will command at the approaching battle, unless Gen. McCIellan 
 comes over. 
 
IN THE FIELD 75 
 
 He was too sanguine. McCIellan was a little more than 
 leisurely in coming over. He delayed after the Philippi 
 skirmish as he had delayed before it, and Reid's de- 
 spatches increasingly exhibit the impatience under which 
 the little army chafed. It is in this that they throw a 
 modest side-light on one of the notable figures of the war. 
 McCIellan's foible long since became an old story. But 
 it is interesting to observe it as it is discovered in Reid's 
 correspondence. At the beginning all was confidence in 
 the new departmental commander. It took a long time 
 to shake the general faith. Reid was placed by circum- 
 stances in a position to get acquainted very early with 
 McCIellan's curious habit of action — or inaction — and 
 "the strange torpor that subsequently befel the Army of 
 the Potomac" was no surprise to him. He had a fore- 
 taste of it in this campaign. 
 
 The battle which had seemed imminent when he wrote 
 to his brother late in June did not materialize until the 
 middle of July. The enemy, under Garnett, was en- 
 camped at Laurel Hill. McCIellan finally proposed to 
 move upon him in two columns, sending one, with Gen- 
 eral Morris, against his front, and himself taking the 
 other around to the rear. The trap was judiciously 
 planned, but while Morris executed his part of it, Mc- 
 CIellan failed to develop his own through a sufficiently 
 expeditious support of the advance he had thrown out 
 under General Rosecrans. The latter, to be sure, ac- 
 complished quite enough in the action he fought at Rich 
 Mountain for the news of it to alarm Garnett and cause 
 him to evacuate his position at Laurel Hill; but in the 
 absence of proper timely co-operation there Morris's 
 pursuit won far less than should have fallen to it. The 
 battle of Carrick's Ford, where Garnett turned to fight 
 a rear-guard action, resulted in his death and the demor- 
 alization of his troops. It did not prevent the majority 
 
76 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 of the latter from making their escape. "And this," 
 exclaimed Reid, "is the culmination of the brilliant Gen- 
 eralship which the journals of the sensational persuasion 
 have been besmearing with such nauseous flattery." The 
 most interesting disclosure of his own quality as a war 
 correspondent, fresh to his task, is his accurate "sizing 
 up" of McCIellan. How he met the test imposed upon 
 his reporter's faculty by his first battle I may show in 
 the following: 
 
 The enemy appeared to be ignorant of the nearness of our advance, 
 till the careless discharge of a gun aroused them, and they at once 
 pushed forward. Our troops rushed on with renewed impetuosity, 
 till at the third ford of the Cheat they came in sight of their train, 
 apparently "stalled" in the river. As Col. Steedman advanced 
 with the Ohio Fourteenth, the teamsters or soldiers in the wagons 
 called out: "Come on, we'll surrender." On the other side of the 
 river, and just above the ford, was a high bluff, the brink fringed 
 with a thicket of laurel. Just as the Fourteenth came fairly in 
 front of this bluff, and before they had reached the ford. Gen. 
 Garnett sprang up on the very brink, waved his hat, and shouted, 
 "Hurrah for Jeff. Davis." The words were scarcely out of his 
 mouth till the whole force, which had been concealed in an ambus- 
 cade on the bluff, poured down a perfect storm of bullets on the 
 Fourteenth, and two of their rifled cannon opened fire. 
 
 The Fourteenth stood up Hke regulars, without flinching, and 
 responded with as effective a fire as possible, considering the un- 
 favourable situation of the enemy. Col. Barnett speedily got his 
 cannon into position, and returned the fire of their artillery. Mean- 
 time Col. Milroy advanced with the Ninth Indiana, and formed in 
 line of battle on Steedman's left, while Col. Dumont was ordered 
 to ascend an apparently precipitous bank, some two hundred yards 
 up the river, and turn the enemy's flank. The ascent was almost 
 impossible, but the gallant Colonel had got up with two of his com- 
 panions, when, by some mistake, Capt. Benham, who had been 
 informed that the ascent could not be made, ordered him to pro- 
 ceed down the river with his regiment and turn the other flank of 
 the enemy. Right down the stony bed of the river went the gal- 
 lant Seventh, just between the fires of both sides. Coming out 
 between the baggage wagons standing in the fords they turned up 
 toward the enemy, when the rebels precipitately deserted their fine 
 position and fled. The Seventh pursued — having by means of this 
 
IN THE FIELD 77 
 
 flank movement got in advance of the Fourteenth Ohio — came up 
 with the enemy just as they had crossed Carrick's Ford, and again 
 opened fire upon them. 
 
 General Garnett attempted to rally his men, but they were too 
 much terrified to be stopped in their headlong flight. Just then. 
 Major Gordon, with Capt. Ferry's company, which led the advance 
 of Dumont's regiment, came to the brink of the river, where they 
 could see Gen. Garnett waving to his men to return. In an instant. 
 Sergeant Burlingame "drew a bead" on him and fired. He fell 
 instantly, and when Major Gordon reached him but a moment later, 
 his muscles were just giving their last convulsive twist. The Major 
 stooped down by his side, tenderly closed his eyes, bound up his 
 face, and left a guard to protect his body. 
 
 Returning from the bank where Garnett lay, I went up to the 
 bluff on which the enemy had been posted. The first object that 
 caught the eye was a large iron rifled cannon (a six pounder) which 
 they had left in their precipitate flight. The star spangled banner 
 of one of our regiments floated above it. Around was a sickening 
 sight. Along the brink of that bluff lay ten bodies, stiffening in 
 their own gore, in every contortion which their death anguish had 
 produced. Others were gasping in the last agonies, and still others 
 were writhing with horrible but not mortal wounds, surrounded by 
 the soldiers whom they reaHy believed to be about to plunge the 
 bayonet to their hearts. Never before, had I so ghastly a realiza- 
 tion of the horrid nature of this fraternal struggle. These men were 
 all Americans — men whom we had once been proud to claim as 
 countrymen — some of them natives of our own Northern states. 
 
 I have alluded to the comparative certainty with which 
 correspondents in the Civil War could count upon the 
 telegraph. But they had to reach it, and on this occa- 
 sion Reid had to consider ways and means. The fight 
 occurred on Saturday afternoon. To get his despatch 
 into Monday's paper he had to reach the telegraph-office 
 at Rowlesburgh, a long and ticklish journey, before mid- 
 night on Sunday. While he was debating this problem 
 circumstances seemed to play into his hands. It was 
 decided to send the body of General Garnett to Washing- 
 ton, and accordingly it had to be transported across 
 country to Rowlesburgh, the nearest railway-station. 
 
78 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 Reid was made a member of the little party organized to 
 perform the task, the others being Major Gordon, in 
 charge of the body, another correspondent, and a couple 
 of mounted soldiers. They started with a mule-team on 
 Sunday morning, in grave doubt as to whether they 
 might not stumble into an enemy encampment. As the 
 day wore on they struck a pike which grew ever more 
 difficult. It narrowed down until at some places it left 
 a scant six inches between the outer wheels and a drop 
 of two hundred feet into the coffee-colored Cheat. At 
 one breathless moment their wheels hung over the de- 
 scent while the devoted mules put their shoulders into 
 a last miraculous tug. In pitchy darkness they arrived 
 on the outskirts of their destination, only to be fired on 
 by their own pickets. The chances for Monday's paper 
 went a-glimmering as the exhausted travellers, unable to 
 make any impression on the excited minds of Rowles- 
 burgh's wary guardians, unhitched the mules and threw 
 themselves down under the trees, regardless of rattle- 
 snakes and copperheads. The blockade was not raised 
 until two in the morning. 
 
 By the time Reid got back to Grafton the substantial 
 effect of Rich Mountain and Carrick's Ford had been 
 realized. The campaign, though not altogether done 
 with, had pretty conclusively established Union control. 
 A few days later he left to report politics at Columbus, 
 but in a despatch written on the way he noted an impor- 
 tant fruit of the freeing of West Virginia. At Grafton 
 he had observed the effect of the first sinister rumors 
 from Manassas upon the troops. The latter had en- 
 listed for but three months. "The only effect," he says, 
 "was to make more of them three years' men." That 
 is an apt bit of testimony to the special significance of 
 the campaign. Its success fostered everywhere the re- 
 silience of spirit which was desperately needed through- 
 
IN THE FIELD 79 
 
 out the North in the face of Bull Run. The biographers 
 of Lincoln have feelingly painted his steadiness of de- 
 meanor under the weight of that disaster, the serenity 
 with which he met the daily torments of administration, 
 sighing over Greeley's famous letter, with its counsels of 
 compromise, but giving to such exhortations only the 
 tribute of a sigh. The programme which he then thought 
 out looked undismayed to victory. One source of his 
 confidence was the campaign in West Virginia. 
 
 Sharing in the buoyance which prevailed at the mo- 
 ment, Reid resumed work at the office with gusto, and 
 presently rejoined the troops in the best of spirits. Mc- 
 Clellan, still under the protection of that blindly amiable 
 fate which was to cost the nation so much, had been 
 summoned to Washington to receive the choicest of 
 rewards, the command of the Army of the Potomac. 
 Rosecrans was in charge in West Virginia, and Reid, a 
 happy aide-de-camp on his staff, saw only a swift ter- 
 mination to his task. There was nothing for the Union 
 forces to do but to hold what had been gained and repress 
 the secession tendencies of a portion of the population. 
 Lee's repute, already high, made his appearance at Cheat 
 Mountain Gap the source of some uneasiness, but this 
 was not taken too seriously at headquarters. Reid was 
 there one day when Rosecrans was asked if he did not 
 think the rebel commander likely to prove a trouble- 
 some antagonist. "Not at all," he replied. "I know all 
 about Lee. He will make a splendid plan of campaign; 
 but I'll fight the campaign before he gets through with 
 planning it." The correspondent at his elbow once more 
 was cheered by the prospect of an early fight — and once 
 more was disappointed. It took a month to bring off 
 the battle of Carnifex's Ferry, and then, though he de- 
 scribed the winning of that engagement with appropriate 
 ardor, the letters which served as postscripts to his main 
 
8o THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 despatch leave the reader in no doubt as to his belief 
 that Rosecrans had achieved but a barren victory. In 
 the protracted lull which followed everybody wondered 
 why the flying rebels were not pursued. Reid bitterly 
 noted that while we were sorting the enemy's frying-pans 
 and flintlock muskets he was hunting up another place 
 to fortify, and he concluded thus: "We had Western Vir- 
 ginia clear of rebel armies, we opened a gap to let them 
 in, then fought them, behind their entrenchments, on 
 ground of their own selection, drove them out again, and 
 then stopped. That is the sum of our Western Virginia 
 campaigning up to date." 
 
 The reader will not, I trust, interpret my use of the 
 last quotation as designed to revive — of all superfluities 
 — acrimonious discussion of minor and virtually forgot- 
 ten episodes. It is intended, simply, to point to a char- 
 acteristic of Reid's correspondence, its outspokenness. If 
 the criticism just cited, though tempered as to details of 
 individual responsibility, was repeated as tested and rati- 
 fied when he came to write "Ohio in the War," several 
 years later, it was because he had been extremely careful 
 to know at the time just what he was writing about. I 
 say this since I cannot, of course, reproduce the volumi- 
 nous columns of his correspondence, and nevertheless 
 wish to indicate their leading traits. His practice was 
 systematic. At the outset of a campaign he would sum- 
 marize the military situation, survey the topographical 
 conditions to be reckoned with — not neglecting the scenic 
 features of interest — and in so far as discretion permitted 
 him to do so he sent home the essential details of every 
 step in an advance. The continuity which the de- 
 spatches of a campaign derive as a matter of course from 
 the mere progression of events is so supported by the 
 manner in which he looks after the connecting-links that 
 those which he wrote under pressure for a newspaper 
 
IN THE FIELD 8i 
 
 might be lifted bodily into a book. I do not speak here 
 of the purely literary form, which he would naturally 
 have rehandled if he had ever made such use of his 
 despatches as I have hinted, but of the curiously bal- 
 anced nature of his matter. The fulness as well as the 
 graphic richness of his work enabled the readers of the 
 "Gazette" to follow the army in its environment, to 
 see it, and to know in remarkable measure what it was 
 about. Their appreciation of "Agate," contributing very 
 promptly to his advance in journalism, rested not only 
 upon this service which he rendered them, but upon the 
 constant display of his critical faculty where they were 
 personally most interested, that is, amongst the troops 
 so largely drawn from Ohio. He wrote of their health 
 and their food, reported when camps were unsanitary, 
 ventilated the wrath of surgeons supplied with bad in- 
 struments, and looked into the extravagances of the com- 
 missariat. The costliness of the amateur in the break- 
 ing in of mules was one subject of complaint. Another, 
 returned to again and again, was the fatuity which con- 
 tinued to send Northern troops into the field clad in gray, 
 the Confederate color, a source of frequent and some- 
 times fatal confusion. On the superiority of the rebel 
 secret service to our own he could not too often or too 
 indignantly dilate. The function of the war correspon- 
 dent at that time was not, exclusively, the painting of 
 battle pictures. He was there to awaken the public to 
 hit-or-miss policies, the plague of incompetent officers, 
 and all the other abuses which marked the opening of the 
 war. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 PITTSBURG LANDING AND GETTYSBURG 
 
 Returning to Cincinnati in the early fall, Reid left in 
 October for the war in Kentucky, another campaign of 
 rather indeterminate developments. He was glad to 
 diversify it by visits home, where he joined Sam Reed 
 and E. D. Mansfield on the editorial page, and con- 
 gratulated himself on being the youngest man who had 
 ever held such a position on the "Gazette." It renewed 
 his old zest for leader- writing and he went on producing 
 editorials when he left again for the front. At Frank- 
 fort the proceedings of the legislature which was so 
 active in rescuing the State from its "stupor of neutral- 
 ity" interested him even more than did the affairs of the 
 troops. All the time, too, he was gaining light on the 
 purely human emotions let loose by the onset of the war. 
 It still brings out in great vividness some of the episodes 
 in his newspaper correspondence. 
 
 There are no figures in the history of the earlier stages 
 of the conflict more sympathetic than those Southerners 
 on the border who were willing to fight for the preserva- 
 tion of the Union but who could not see why that re- 
 quired them to submit to the confiscation of their living 
 property. In one of his letters to the "Gazette" Raid 
 reports his encounter with a loyal Kentuckian, a legis- 
 lative leader, who by accident stumbled into his room 
 after dinner one night and fell into talk about the con- 
 duct of the war. This conversation reflects a typical 
 Southern view. I rescue a fragment of it to recall what 
 the policy down there was like in one of its more intelli- 
 
 82 
 
PITTSBURG LANDING AND GETTYSBURG 83 
 
 gible aspects. It is the Kentuckian, of course, who is 
 speaking : 
 
 Never before was a people so stricken by God with absolute idiocy 
 as these Slavery-defending Secessionists who started the rebellion. 
 Of course, if the constitution is violated by the North, as I freely 
 admit she has great provocation to do, of course Slavery is at an 
 end. The rebels were stricken with blindness. Sir. Never, in the 
 history of the world, was there as mad, as suicidal an attempt as 
 they have made. End the rebellion tomorrow, and they have given 
 Slavery a most threatening wound, if not its death blow. The 
 annals of the world's insanity might be searched without finding a 
 parallel. There is no use disguising the matter; theoretically you 
 northern people may be right in opposing Slavery — we'll not dis- 
 cuss that — but a decree of emancipation would be the opening of 
 a frightful war, and the end of Republican institutions. Liberty 
 would be gone, anarchy would be upon us, and sauve qui pent ! 
 Would it not be better than that, to adopt the pohcy Kentucky 
 wants? Kick out Cameron, drop the pitiful nigger question, tell 
 the armies just to let slaves alone, have nothing to do with them, 
 neither harbor them like Abolitionists, nor seize and return them 
 like nigger catchers, keep them out of your lines unless you need 
 them to work for you, quit your everlasting nigger agitation and 
 nigger discussion, and go ahead with your fighting. 
 
 Reid's interlocutor talked, he says, with an energy, a 
 fierceness even, that no Northern man could have felt. 
 His eloquence made a stimulating if not a convincing 
 appeal. It was through such meetings that Reid devel- 
 oped that understanding of the whole situation which 
 was to enable him not only to see current facts clearly 
 but to form judgments upon them. For weeks in Ken- 
 tucky he was occupied with the politics of the war rather 
 than with the armies in the field. The latter kept him 
 for a time in a curious state of suspense. The ever- 
 recurring prospects of an advance would only bring the 
 annoyance of one false alarm after another. One expedi- 
 tion he mournfully describes to his brother as "a terri- 
 ble sell." But at that very moment he was drawing 
 nearer to one of the major operations of the war. 
 
84 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 The rebel line then extended from Columbus, on the 
 Mississippi, straight across to Fort Henry on the Ten- 
 nessee and Fort Donelson on the Cumberland, thence to 
 Bowling Green, and from that point to Cumberland Gap, 
 the junction with their forces in Virginia. In the cam- 
 paign leisurely developed against this line Grant's de- 
 scent from Cairo and his timely seizure of Paducah, neu- 
 trahzing the rebel occupation of Columbus, seemed to 
 foreshadow early and more fruitful attacks. An advance 
 upon Bowling Green was perennially in the air, but as 
 1862 opened, Reid had the foresight to keep his feelers 
 out toward the other end of the line and in the direction 
 of the new officer who "meant fighting— not everlasting 
 preparations and proclamations." Then came Fort Don- 
 elson, to confirm his intuitions, and editorial writing lost 
 its charm. In one of the letters to Gavin through which 
 he kept the family circle at Xenia apprised of his move- 
 ments, there is a hurried explanation of his being at that 
 writing storm-bound with half a dozen army surgeons in 
 "this Egyptian country," namely, a way station in one 
 of the dreariest parts of Illinois. "I'd hardly got into 
 the office yesterday, till I had passes crammed in my 
 pockets, and was told to take the first train for Cairo and 
 Fort Donelson. How long I'm to be gone I don't know. 
 I am instructed to see to it that the 'Gazette' is first in 
 the news." He was gone for weeks and gave the "Ga- 
 zette" the news of Shiloh, which filled ten columns of 
 that journal, was reprinted in "extras" by the papers 
 of St. Louis and Chicago, and made the fame of "Agate." 
 
 How he fulfilled his mission he related in some detail 
 years afterward, when a memorable controversy over the 
 battle broke out. He went up the Tennessee River with 
 Generals Rawlins and Hillyer, of General Grant's staff. 
 He was all over the encampments at Pittsburg Landing 
 and at Crump's Landing long before the battle, and more 
 
PITTSBURG LANDING AND GETTYSBURG 85 
 
 than once was a guest in Lieutenant-Colonel Kyle's regi- 
 ment, of General Sherman's command. The day before 
 the battle he was ill in bed at General Lew Wallace's 
 headquarters at Crump's Landing, sharing that officer's 
 tent. On his way down to his headquarters at Savannah 
 that night Grant stopped briefly at Crump's Landing. 
 He said that if an attack were made at all by the enemy, 
 of which he was not sure, it would probably be made 
 there, and not at Pittsburg Landing. The next morning 
 Reid was waked by the firing at the latter place, several 
 miles above. Rising from his sick-bed, he made the best 
 of his way thither, arriving later than he wished, but 
 still as early as the general commanding, a fact which it 
 amused him to recall at the time of the aforesaid con- 
 troversy. General Wallace in his "Memoirs" explains 
 how Reid managed to reach the battle-field with Grant. 
 Between five and six o'clock Sunday morning Wallace 
 and his staff" went aboard a steamboat tied up at Crump's 
 Landing and breakfasted there, listening to the firing and 
 waiting impatiently for the appearance of Grant's 
 steamer, the Tigress. It came alongside at about eight- 
 thirty, Grant gave Wallace his orders and pushed off". 
 Reid was soon afterward missed and later it was dis- 
 covered that, "feeling the need of getting to the field 
 early, he had gone quietly aboard the Tigress." 
 
 He was thus on the field throughout the first and dis- 
 astrous day of the battle. He slept on the bluff under 
 Beauregard's shells through Sunday night. He witnessed 
 the successful advance the next day, and that night 
 slept with a number of the members of General Lew 
 Wallace's staff" in one of the tents to the right of Shiloh 
 Church, from which General Sherman's men had been 
 driven the morning before. He had seen all that it was 
 possible for one man to see of a chaotic battle, involving 
 a hundred and fifty thousand men, fighting backward 
 
86 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 and forward for two long days, in a five miles' line and 
 over four miles' retreat and advance, in a country largely 
 covered with dense forest. For what he could not him- 
 self see he sought the best authority, riding carefully 
 over and over the ground, asking questions innumerable 
 of those who knew, and sifting consistent truth from the 
 multiplicity of replies with such skill as experience had 
 taught him. Primed with all this information he made 
 swiftly for the "Gazette" office. He had begun on the 
 field to write his account of the battle, and he finished it 
 partly on a hospital boat going down the river, partly 
 on the cars between Cairo and Cincinnati. A fellow 
 correspondent who met him at Cairo noted his appear- 
 ance. "His expression suggested an escape from some 
 imminent and frightful danger, He was no coward, but 
 there was a good deal of apparent awe on that face." 
 
 There are dramatic passages in his long narrative, 
 rapid thumb-nail sketches flung into the broad panorama 
 as individual regiments or officers assumed salient parts 
 in the fight. Typical is an incident of the assault on 
 Sherman's left, in the first day's battle, when Stuart's 
 brigade was engaged at Lick Creek. As the rebels rushed 
 down and crossed the ford, under cover of fire from the 
 bluffs, their color-bearers stepped defiantly to the front. 
 Our sharpshooters wanted to pick them off, but Colonel 
 Stuart interposed: "No, no, they're too brave fellows to 
 be killed." It was not, however, for its anecdotes, its 
 picturesque impressionism, that the despatch was read". 
 The essential thing in it is the writer's large survey of the 
 battle, a perfect illustration of the technical method to 
 which I have already referred. That method was the 
 harder to apply, too, for a reason of which he speaks 
 himself in the middle of the despatch, and to which his- 
 tory, I may add in passing, has given sufficient ratifica- 
 tion: "Thus far I have said little or nothing of any plan 
 
PITTSBURG LANDING AND GETTYSBURG 87 
 
 of attack or defence among our commanders. It has 
 been simply because I have failed to see any evidences 
 of such a plan." His task was to explicate in an orderly, 
 understandable manner a battle which had a good deal 
 more of improvisation about it than ordinarily goes with 
 an action as important as Shiloh. He prepared his read- 
 ers for this with a terse summary of the situation before 
 the battle and brought it out in blazing relief in his 
 description of the manner in which, on Sunday morning, 
 our men were surprised: 
 
 Some, particularly among our officers, were not yet out of bed. 
 Others were dressing, others washing, others cooking, a few eating 
 their breakfasts. Many guns were unloaded, ammunition was ill- 
 supplied — in short, the camps were virtually surprised — disgracefully, 
 it might be added, unless some one can hereafter give some yet 
 undiscovered reason to the contrary — and were taken at almost 
 every possible disadvantage. 
 
 The first wild cries from the pickets rushing in, and the few scat- 
 tering shots that preceded their arrival, aroused the regiments to a 
 sense of their peril; an instant afterward, shells were hurthng through 
 the tents, while, before there was time for thought of preparation, 
 there came rushing through the woods, with lines of battle sweeping 
 the whole fronts of the division-camps and bending down on either 
 flank, the fine, dashing compact columns of the enemy. 
 
 Into the just-aroused camps thronged the rebel regiments, firing 
 sharp volleys as they came, and springing toward our laggards with 
 the bayonet. Some were shot down as they were running, without 
 weapons, hatless, coatless, toward the river. The searching bullets 
 found other poor unfortunates in their tents, and there all unheeding 
 now, they still slumbered, while the unseen foe rushed on. Others 
 fell, as they were disentangling themselves from the flaps that formed 
 the doors to their tents; others as they were buckling on their ac- 
 coutrements; a few, it was even said, as they were vainly trying to 
 impress on the cruelly-exultant enemy their readiness to surrender. 
 
 Hard reading this must have made for the people in 
 Cincinnati who had kinsmen in the Army of the Ten- 
 nessee, and there was, of course, worse to follow — the 
 shattering of Prentiss's division, the terrible losses suf- 
 
88 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 fered by McCIernand's and Sherman's divisions as they, 
 too, were forced to give ground, and the whole army was 
 crowded back on Pittsburg Landing. Reid's despatch 
 spares nothing of the bitterness of that first humiliating 
 day. There is scarce a ray of light in it, save as it flashes 
 forth from some instance of personal heroism, until as 
 the battle dies down news comes that Buell's troops are 
 at hand across the river and that Lew Wallace's division 
 is advancing from Crump's Landing. Both reinforce- 
 ments could be counted upon to be ready in the morn- 
 ing. Then, under the shadow of defeat. Grant set his 
 teeth for victory. Reid watched him as he sat on his 
 horse on the bluff amid his staff, quiet, thoughtful, almost 
 stolid, and heard his reply to some one who asked if the 
 prospect did not begin to look gloomy. "Not at all," 
 he said. "They can't force our lines around these bat- 
 teries to-night — it is too late. Delay counts everything 
 with us. To-morrow we shall attack them with fresh 
 troops and drive them, of course." It was from that 
 moment that Reid dated his belief in Grant's greatness 
 as a military commander, and the immediacy of his im- 
 pression is shown by the effect which the soldier's words 
 had in his despatch, where it is plain that the morning's 
 battle was awaited with grave confidence. 
 
 At the dawn of the day which merged the name of 
 Pittsburg Landing into that of Shiloh, he noted the de- 
 meanor of Buell's men, hastening over the river, aware 
 of the reverses they had come to repair, but in nowise 
 depressed. They took up their work "determinedly, 
 hopefully, calmly," and though as the conflict was re- 
 sumed there were still evidences of the want of system 
 which had been so expensive on Sunday, he lays stress 
 on the superb morale of the Federals. It was that that 
 broke the rebel resistance, and the despatch is thence- 
 forth but a picture of swaying lines until the hard-lost 
 
PITTSBURG LANDING AND GETTYSBURG 89 
 
 fields of Sunday are regained in a "wave of successes." 
 ' He has less to say of strategy than of bloody collisions, 
 and at the end, summing up the killed and wounded, 
 and the forces engaged, he closes with the reiteration of 
 his belief that "it was not numbers that gained us the 
 day, it was fighting." 
 
 It was harder fighting than any he had yet seen, on a 
 bigger scale, and more closely alhed to the national 
 aspects of the war. Shiloh was a critical battle, admin- 
 istering a check which in the process of time was to take 
 on an even greater significance than was perceptible at 
 the moment, and in rising to his opportunity Reid made 
 a profound impression upon his readers. The brilliance 
 of his despatch brought "Agate" into wider repute as a 
 war correspondent, and in Cincinnati, where the cost of 
 the fight was felt with a directness comparatively un- 
 known in the East, there was especially abundant appre- 
 ciation for the man who had had the courage to give the 
 facts concerning it. But the very outspokenness which 
 made him popular at home was making him anything 
 but popular in camp. While the people of the "Gazette" 
 were congratulating him on a masterly coup and increas- 
 ing his salary, there was trouble brewing for him at the 
 front, for him and for other newspaper men. He had 
 felt, before, the pressure of official resentment of his too 
 candid criticisms, and in the course of the movement on 
 Corinth he had to face it in virulent form. 
 
 Returning to Pittsburg Landing a fortnight after the 
 battle, he had not long to wait before Halleck, now in 
 supreme command, let loose his famous war upon the 
 press. It was short, sharp, and conclusive enough from 
 the general's point of view, but with enough ambiguity 
 and evasiveness about it in the actual orders issued to 
 make the correspondents show fight. Reid was elected 
 their chairman and spokesman, and from his memoranda 
 
90 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 of the incident it is to be inferred that they were all very- 
 hot. For a man duly accredited with a pass, fresh from 
 the secretary of war at Washington, it was disconcert- 
 ing, to say the least, to be told that Stanton's authority 
 in the matter would not be recognized. The situation 
 became galling when it developed that the process of 
 exclusion directed at the press was genially aimed at 
 "unauthorized hangers-on." The ugly phrase, like Mac- 
 beth's Amen, stuck in the throat. The correspondents 
 got some solace from General Pope's action. Familiar 
 with the machinations of the newspaper-haters, and 
 knowing at once what the order was meant for, he 
 resolved to do nothing without explicit instructions. 
 He accordingly sent to General Halleck the question: 
 "Whom do you mean by unauthorized hangers-on?" 
 The general attempted to dodge, "The Regulations fully 
 explain that point," was his answer. Determined not to 
 move in the dark. General Pope again inquired: "Do 
 you include newspaper correspondents among the unau- 
 thorized hangers-on?" This time there was no possibility 
 of evasion, and General Halleck was compelled to answer 
 that he did. Then came a meeting of the correspon- 
 dents and the preparation by Reid of this address to the 
 only arbiter of the trouble: 
 
 To Major-General Halleck, 
 
 General; 
 
 The undersigned, loyal citizens and accredited representatives of 
 loyal journals, respectfully represent that they came here in com- 
 pliance with the order of Secretary Stanton, authorizing journalists 
 to accompany the army — some of them bearing passes issued by his 
 authority, and have remained here several weeks, for the sole pur- 
 pose and exclusive purpose of recording the approaching battle. 
 
 They are now informed that Field Order No. 54 requires them to 
 leave the army Hues. 
 
 While they will not attempt to remain unless they can do so 
 openly, and with the permission of Major-General Halleck, there 
 are many newspaper letter-writers attached to the camps in fictitious 
 
PITTSBURG LANDING AND GETTYSBURG 91 
 
 capacities, who, notwithstanding whatever precautions may be 
 taken, will succeed in evading Field Order No. 54, and remaining 
 with the army, while the duly accredited and responsible representa- 
 tives of the press are excluded, in manifest injustice to themselves 
 and the journals which they represent. 
 
 While desirous of avoiding everything injurious to the army, or 
 any portion of it, they represent that their exclusion, just on the 
 eve of the event which they came here especially to record, will be 
 unjust to the loyal public journals and to the country which looks 
 to them for information; and respectfully ask whether, as has been 
 suggested by Colonel Scott, Assistant-Secretary of War, there are 
 any conditions on which they will be permitted to remain. 
 
 Halleck dodged his obligation to give a written reply, 
 and in the personal interview which took its place he 
 exacerbated matters by remarks about "spies," in which 
 the signers of the protest saw only a paltry pretence. 
 They were not in the dark as to the continued complaint 
 that had worked upon the general. Provost-Marshal 
 Key had stated it, in terms, and without qualification. 
 The complaint was that correspondents praised some 
 generals and did not praise others, and the complaint 
 came from the parties not praised ! The situation was 
 impossible for self-respecting men, and it resulted, with- 
 out further parley, in the voluntary withdrawal from the 
 lines of every legitimate, accredited correspondent, save 
 three, one of whom was too sick to leave his bed, while 
 the other two, alone out of all the representatives of the 
 press assembled there, resolved to attempt skulking 
 through the camps in fictitious positions. 
 
 The "Gazette's" answer, so far as "Agate" was con- 
 cerned, to the slight put upon the press before Corinth, 
 was to advance him on its staff", sending him forthwith 
 to Washington. His activities there belong to another 
 chapter, but it is proper to anticipate chronology and 
 fill out this sketch of his work as a war correspondent 
 with some notice of his last appearance in that role, on 
 
92 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 the field of Gettysburg, In a sense he had not aban- 
 doned it when he began in June to send his daily de- 
 spatches from the capital. These are rarely without 
 their echoes of the war, comments on battles and cam- 
 paigns — and commanding officers — which show that he 
 continued to follow these subjects as zealously as when 
 at the front. But he had put aside his horse, and did 
 not mount it again until the autumn. Then, on a visit 
 home, news of the battle of Perryville drew him into a 
 fortnight's expedition to get at the truth about the third 
 invasion of hapless Kentucky. He wrote some scorch- 
 ing letters on Buell's failure to catch up with Bragg and 
 Kirby Smith, but the campaign hardly figures as such in 
 the body of his despatches. His war news thenceforth is 
 all of the sort that would befall the regular routine of a 
 Washington correspondent, until the fateful summer of 
 1863. 
 
 The first intimations of great events to come devel- 
 oped when he was at Columbus in the spring of the new 
 year, reporting the Democratic convention which nom- 
 inated Vallandigham for the governorship. He had fin- 
 ished with that scandalous affair and was peacefully 
 meditating on its grotesque features when the tidings of 
 Ewell's raid into Pennsylvania broke upon the town. 
 With them came his marching orders, and he took the 
 first train out for Philadelphia. His impressions there 
 inclined him to scoff a little at the panic-stricken stories 
 which came out of the disturbed portion of the State, 
 stories of fabulous numbers of rebel troops, and he re- 
 turned to Washington discounting them with energy. 
 Nevertheless, there is a tremor of excitement agitating 
 his despatches at this time. Something is in the wind. 
 There is a stir in the Army of the Potomac. Hooker is 
 ordering his troops forward with great rapidity, and it 
 seems certain that there will soon be a decisive battle 
 
PITTSBURG LANDING AND GETTYSBURG 93 
 
 somewhere, in Maryland, or possibly along the southern 
 border of Pennsylvania. He made a flying trip to Fred- 
 erick, to watch for tell-tale straws, and wondered if he 
 had found one when he met General Seth Williams there, 
 just at the end of a fifty-mile ride in the saddle. He was 
 consumed with anxiety as to what Hooker was going to 
 do. It was Hooker's name, of course, that was on every- 
 body's lips, it was Hooker whose possible plans sent rip- 
 ples of restlessness through the streets of Washington, 
 now resounding again with the march of troops, and off 
 in Cincinnati it worked the same spell. On Sunday 
 evening, June 28th, Reid received from the "Gazette" 
 this telegram: "Would hke you (if you are able) to equip 
 yourself with horse and outfit, put substitutes in your 
 place in the office, and join Hooker's army in time for 
 the fighting." Only the day before Hooker had been 
 relieved of his command and Meade had been put in 
 his place, one more sensation to spur a newspaper man 
 on in a crisis. But he had time for but little speculation 
 on this startling aftermath of Hooker's failure at Chan- 
 cellorsville. The tension prophesying Gettysburg grew 
 by the hour. It was increased for the correspondents by 
 the sudden interposition of alarming obstacles. There 
 was no getting beyond Baltimore on Monday; the rail- 
 road had been cut. The next day, however, it was 
 opened again, as far as Frederick, and from there he rode 
 out on horseback to join headquarters twenty-seven miles 
 away, at Taneytown. 
 
 It was at that point that Meade received news of the 
 desperate fighting which had unexpectedly begun the 
 battle on the left, and Reid was thus given, by an odd 
 turn of fate, the chance to repeat his experience at Shiloh. 
 It will be remembered how he had there contrived to 
 arrive on the field "as early as the general command- 
 ing." In this instance, too, he was resolved to do that, 
 
94 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 and hastened on to even "precede headquarters" if he 
 could. He reached Two Taverns by moonlight, slept 
 there, and at four in the morning, on July 2nd, was off 
 for the field to keep pace with Meade's first orders. Too 
 late for the preceding day's battle, his ride luckily took 
 him at once to the top of Cemetery Hill, the centre of 
 our line, and the most exposed point for a concentration 
 of the rebel fire, where General Howard was good enough 
 to explain the action as he had seen it. He made other 
 explorations and presently wove into a connected nar- 
 rative all that he could learn about the battle from four 
 of the most prominent generals engaged in it and from 
 numerous subordinates. The rest he saw and described 
 in his usual systematic fashion, outlining the positions 
 taken, connecting them with the topography of the scene, 
 and especially bringing out the shrewd defensive charac- 
 ter of Meade's battle plan — "the enemy was to fight him 
 where he stood." It is a close-knit narrative, but broader 
 in sweep and fuller of atmosphere than the account of 
 Shiloh. There is more to indicate the progress of the 
 battle in time, to communicate a sense of the strange 
 medley of action and calm on such a field, of the inevita- 
 ble pauses as well as the crucial movements. Scattered 
 through the steadily advancing story of the fight there 
 are vignettes of Meade at headquarters, looking more 
 the general and less the student, under the inspiration 
 of the moment; of Sickles borne away with his leg shot 
 off and a cigar in his mouth; of Reid and his friend 
 Wilkinson, of the "Times," lying on the grass and dis- 
 cussing the question as to whether the sound of some 
 unfamiliar bullet flying over their heads might fairly be 
 called "a muffled howl." From the fourteen columns of 
 newspaper print I take, at random, this passage: 
 
 Some Massachusetts batteries — Capt. Bigelow's, Capt. Phillips's, 
 two or three more under Capt. McGilvry of Maine — were planted 
 
PITTSBURG LANDING AND GETTYSBURG 95 
 
 on the extreme left, advanced now well down the Emmetsburg road, 
 with infantry in their front — the first division, I think, of Sickles' 
 Corps. A little after five (on July and), a fierce rebel charge drove 
 back the infantry and menaced the batteries. Orders are sent to 
 Bigelow on the extreme left, to hold his position at every hazard 
 short of sheer annihilation, till a couple more batteries can be brought 
 to his support. Reserving his fire a little, then with depressed guns 
 opening with double charges of grape and canister, he smites and 
 shatters, but cannot break the advancing line. His grape and can- 
 ister are exhausted, and still, closing grandly up over their slain, 
 on they come. He falls back on spherical case, and pours this in 
 at the shortest range. On, still onward comes the artillery-defying 
 line, and still he holds his position. They are within six paces of 
 the guns — he fires again. Once more, and he blows devoted soldiers 
 from his very muzzles. And still mindful of that solemn order, he 
 holds his place. They spring upon his carriages and shoot down 
 his horses ! And then, his Yankee artillerists still about him, he 
 seizes the guns by hand, and from the very front of that line drags 
 two of them off. The caissons are further back — five out of the six 
 are saved. 
 
 That single company in that half hour's fight, lost thirty-three of 
 its men, including every sergeant it had. The captain himself was 
 wounded. Yet it was the first time it was ever under fire ! I give 
 it simply as a type. So they fought along that fiery line ! 
 
 It is chiefly of the monstrous carnage that he writes, 
 rising to the crescendo of Pickett's historic charge and 
 to those last convulsive struggles from which both armies 
 emerged so torn that if Lee knew he was defeated, Meade 
 was hardly aware of the extent of his own victory. Pay- 
 ing tribute to his colleagues who had faced death on the 
 field, Reid remarked that "their accounts may well be 
 said to have the smell of fire upon them," and they in 
 turn would have said it of his own. The morning after 
 the battle he made the indispensable last hurried survey 
 of the field, rode up Cemetery Hill for one more wide 
 view, and with a trophy of roses and columbine plucked 
 from an old grave set off" on a mad gallop for Westmin- 
 ster through nearly thirty miles of mud and rain. He 
 was just in time to catch the hospital train for Baltimore 
 
96 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 — "out of the field, once more; may it be forever!" as 
 he exclaims in the last line of his despatch. 
 
 The commendation he received at the time for his 
 work at Gettysburg was confirmed in later years, in the 
 wide acceptance of his narrative as a permanent contri- 
 bution to the literature of the war. It is a part of the 
 record, recognized at once for its truth and for its tense 
 dramatic quality. The mifitary student seeking to estab- 
 lish the facts of the battle, and the lay reader concerned 
 chiefly with the recovery of its tragic glamour, have 
 both found Reid a trustworthy historian. One instance 
 of his usefulness on this subject, long afterward, has the 
 special interest of exposing something of his own view 
 of what he did, as well as the basis of his method as a 
 war correspondent. In 1872 Edmund Clarence Stedman 
 accepted a commission to write the poem for the reunion 
 of the Grand Army of the Potomac in the following year. 
 He chose the battle of Gettysburg for his theme, and, 
 rereading Reid's despatches as preserved in Moore's 
 "Rebellion Record," he sought his friend's aid on certain 
 points which he thought might enter into his composi- 
 tion. Was the third stage of the fight developed on a 
 bright, sunny day? Were all the nights moonlit? Did 
 the second day's battle actually rage in the cemetery, so 
 that our killed and wounded lay around among the 
 graves? He turned to Reid because the latter had 
 written on Gettysburg "the best group of battle letters 
 made up during the war, without exception." He had 
 found some errors in them, on studying the official re- 
 ports, but he marvelled at their having been made so 
 nearly correct, and they were "beautifully done." Reid 
 sent him the following letter: 
 
 ,, o New York, March loth, 1872. 
 
 My dear bXEDMAN; :^ ^ 1 
 
 I am more touched than you can well imagine by what you say 
 about my almost forgotten battle letters. I worked hard on them 
 
PITTSBURG LANDING AND GETTYSBURG 97 
 
 and conscientiously at the time, as indeed I have done on nearly 
 everything I have ever tried. I never envied anything so much as 
 that facility of work which allows your "great genius" to throw 
 off his best things on the inspiration of the moment, and indeed I 
 never was quite so skeptical about anything in the world. I know 
 that my account of Gettysburg must be inaccurate in many points, 
 though I have never had occasion since to make a critical study of 
 the subject. On the Pittsburg Landing fight I think I was more 
 accurate, having a better knowledge of the troops and of the ground. 
 I had been over it, you know, for weeks before. 
 
 The third day's fight at Gettysburg was sunny. I recollect very 
 well lying in the shade, at the end of the little house in which Meade 
 had his headquarters, on the grass, with a group of correspondents 
 and staff officers, as well as feeling the grateful nature of the shade 
 once or twice as I came from Seminary Hill towards Meade's head- 
 quarters. I have an indistinct recollection that late in the evening 
 the air became heavier, but at the time of the grand cannonade in 
 the afternoon there were light clouds in the sky and the atmosphere 
 was wonderfully clear whenever you got outside the smoke. 
 
 My recollection is that the intervening nights were not moonlit, 
 though certainly the night between the first and second days' bat- 
 tles was clear, and I think also the early part of the night between 
 the second and third. I slept in a house round which there was 
 some cavalry fighting on our extreme right on the last day there and 
 through all the nights, and so am not so certain of the character of 
 the nights. 
 
 The second day's battle did not rage in the Cemetery in the sense 
 that any rebel soldiers got up there, but did in the sense that occa- 
 sional round shot and minie balls went through the Cemetery and 
 that a good many men were killed there. I thought myself that I 
 was in more danger sitting on Cemetery Hill on the third day than 
 at any time during the war, and the next day, revisiting the Ceme- 
 tery, I found many of the grave stones broken down with round 
 shot, and in some cases corpses still lying about on the graves. 
 
 I am sure you will make an admirable battle poem. You wrote 
 the best cavalry poem of the war, ["Alice of Monmouth"] and there 
 is no reason why you should not make the best battle Poem. 
 With cordial regards. 
 
 Always faithfully yours, 
 
 Whitelaw Reid. 
 
 The Gettysburg despatches fittingly marked the close 
 of Reid's career as a correspondent on the battle-field. 
 In his campaigns in West Virginia, even such materials 
 
98 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 as those with which he had to deal in battles like Car- 
 rick's Ford and Carnifex's Ferry were predominantly 
 local in character. They had their more distant psycho- 
 logical effects, but they belonged to the period in which 
 the Northern armies — and the Northern policies — were 
 seeking their ultimate direction. In Kentucky these 
 conditions persisted. Shiloh introduced him to the more 
 eflFective prosecution of the war, and after that his work 
 in Washington, the focal point, prepared him to report 
 Gettysburg with a firmer grasp not only upon military 
 movements but upon their grand strategical meaning. 
 Shiloh and Gettysburg were the high peaks in his range. 
 I have endeavored to show how he handled them, as 
 fully as has been consistent with limitations of space. 
 Needless to say, I have not traversed any of his de- 
 spatches without reference to other sources. Through- 
 out they have proved to be in accord, in all essentials, 
 with accepted history, justifying such comment as that 
 made by General H. V. Boynton when, in 1881, the 
 Shiloh despatch was the subject of controversy: 
 
 Three careful comparisons of this account, made in three different 
 years, each time after extended reading of the official records of 
 Shiloh, warrant the declaration that it is one of the most accurate 
 and graphic newspaper accounts of a two days' battle written by 
 any one during the war. It is far more accurate than any important 
 chapter of Gen. Sherman's "Memoirs," written as those volumes were, 
 ten years after the war, and with all the official records of the war 
 at his full control. It was accepted as correct at the time, and in 
 everything but a few minor details, which the Generals on the field 
 could not have given more accurately at the time, it will stand the 
 test of the records today. 
 
 It is perhaps with such testimony as this that I may 
 most appropriately close the foregoing analysis of the 
 war exploits of "Agate." 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 WASHINGTON SCENES 
 
 The state of the Union in 1862, when Reid was estab- 
 lished at Washington as the correspondent of the "Ga- 
 zette," might be likened to that of an army which has 
 been repulsed in the first shock of a long and deadly 
 battle, and has been forced by the inexperience of officers 
 and men to suffer terrible damage in manoeuvring for 
 position. The Civil War lasted four years, but they 
 were not four years of systematic campaigning. From 
 Sumter to Shiloh, and for some time thereafter, the mili- 
 tary power of the North was slow in organizing itself. 
 The country was steadied after the first exaggerated ter- 
 rors of Bull Run by the permanent elements of strength 
 in the national fibre. It needed time to create a fight- 
 ing machine and supply it with efficient generals. It is 
 the testimony of all the historians of that epoch that the 
 earliest of our men in the field were more than willing to 
 fight. But the valor of those troops could not push 
 beyond the limits set for it by leadership, the gallantry 
 of which was not always matched by judgment. The 
 tragic motive in Lincoln's long vigil is to be discerned in 
 his ceaseless prayer for victories clean-cut and fruitful, 
 unmistakable steps in the crushing of the rebellion. 
 
 His generals often enough forced the enemy back in 
 virtual defeat; they did not break him. McCIellan, of 
 course, was the worst offender in this regard. "Please 
 do not let him get off without being hurt," Lincoln wrote 
 to that commander before Antietam, but Lee inevitably 
 crossed the Potomac, having suffered heavy losses but 
 
 99 
 
100 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 no rout. Well might the President in his bitterness 
 speak of the army, that should have been used to so 
 much greater purpose, as "only McCIellan's bodyguard." 
 The cup was always bitter. Shiloh and Island No. lo 
 came together. So handsome a brace of victories should 
 have supplied a durable tonic. Instead, the North had 
 to possess its soul in patience while Halleck followed up 
 Grant's costly but powerful stroke at Shiloh with the 
 crawling "pick and shovel" movement on Corinth — and 
 Beauregard's fifty thousand men got away. They were 
 incessantly getting away — ^Johnston from McCIellan at 
 Yorktown, Stonewall Jackson from Fremont and his col- 
 leagues in the Shenandoah Valley, Longstreet and Jack- 
 son from Pope at Second Bull Run. And in the mili- 
 tary hierarchy of the North, McCIellan gives way to 
 Burnside; Burnside, after the failure of Fredericksburg, 
 to Hooker; Hooker, after Chancellorsville, to Meade — the 
 list of supersessions sounds like a dirge. It is only with 
 Meade's success at Gettysburg and Grant's at Vicks- 
 burg, in 1863, that we hear in the tread of our armies the 
 first intimations of an irresistible rhythm. Intolerable 
 were the delays before such men as Grant, Sherman, and 
 Sheridan were fixed in the saddle. There were periods 
 when the turn of the tide seemed lost in a moonless night, 
 when the promise to be fulfilled at Appomattox seemed 
 not a promise but only a chance, postponed, and post- 
 poned, and again postponed. 
 
 The interest in Reid's despatches at this time springs 
 from his criticism of military affairs, and, even more, 
 from his running analysis of the particular political dis- 
 temper which aff'ected Washington life, keeping pace 
 with the sluggish movement of the war. They clarify 
 the aspect of the struggle which is, I suppose, the hardest 
 for readers of the present generation to realize — the slow 
 deliberation with which the slavery question was set- 
 
WASHINGTON SCENES loi 
 
 tied, the backings and fillings, the hesitancies, the inter- 
 minable framing of laws, the pleadings with border 
 States, the endless debates, the perpetual interposition 
 of the hateful topic in half the business of the govern- 
 ment. Work done in the forwarding of the great object 
 was ever having to be done all over again, and the states- 
 man congratulating himself on a step gained had still 
 to reckon with a stifFer climb. There is a striking in- 
 stance offered in the circumstances surrounding Sum- 
 ner's tribute to the Thirty-seventh Congress. It had 
 done much beyond any other Congress in our history, he 
 said, to entitle it to the gratitude of the nation, and 
 then he continued as follows: "Measures which for long 
 years seemed attainable only to the most sanguine hopes, 
 have triumphed. Emancipation in the National Capi- 
 tal; Freedom in all the national territories; the offer of 
 ransom to help emancipation in the States; the recogni- 
 tion of Hayti and Liberia; the treaty with Great Britain 
 for the suppression of the slave trade; the prohibition of 
 the return of fugitive slaves by military officers; home- 
 steads for actual settlers on the public lands; the Pacific 
 Railroad; endowments of agricultural colleges out of pub- 
 lic lands; such are some of the achievements by which 
 the present Congress will be historic. Besides, we have 
 raised an army, and made important additions to our 
 navy; and have provided means for all our gigantic 
 expenditures by a tax, which is in itself an epoch." If 
 Sumner, of all men, could thus felicitate his co-workers, 
 things were verily going well in July, 1862. But the 
 words I have quoted were spoken at the end of a plea for 
 the Confiscation Act; the orator was still at hardly more 
 than the beginning of the nation's task. 
 
 The act in favor of which Sumner made his speech in 
 the Senate superseded the law of 1861. The new mea- 
 sure broadened the scope of the old one. But like so 
 
102 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 many of those military actions at which I have glanced, 
 it checkmated the enemy without sufficiently hurting 
 him. Lincoln was often blamed in those days because 
 he did not immediately improvise a workable policy. 
 He had one all the time, but it was one of gradual eman- 
 cipation, to rest so far as possible on voluntary State 
 action. His prompt revocation of Fremont's blithe essay 
 in military emancipation in Missouri in 1861 is perhaps 
 the most pointed evidence of his reluctance to press 
 matters, the expression, in a quick administrative act, of 
 the caution running through all the letters and conver- 
 sations which display the growth of the emancipation 
 proclamation in his mind. In his grave conferences with 
 the Border State delegations his voice is steadily on the 
 side of generous, prudent, unhurried negotiation. When 
 he crossed the bridge it was only as conditions invited 
 the crossing and dictated the moment. In the whole 
 literature of the great event the homeliest, most char- 
 acteristic allusion to it is the best, because it preserves 
 most convincingly the President's state of mind. To the 
 artist. Carpenter, who painted the picture of the sign- 
 ing of the Proclamation he said: "It had got to be mid- 
 summer, 1862. Things had gone on from bad to worse, 
 until I felt that we had reached the end of our rope on 
 the plan of operations we had been pursuing; that we 
 had about played our last card, and must change our 
 tactics, or lose the game. I now determined upon the 
 adoption of the emancipation policy." The game went 
 right on. It was not won out of hand by the proclama- 
 tion, for the difficulties hedging round the subject in 
 every one of the secession States multiplied down through 
 the period of reconstruction and beyond. 
 
 I dwell upon the fortuitous nature of military and 
 political developments in Washington as Reid knew them 
 in order to suggest something of the atmosphere in which 
 
WASHINGTON SCENES 103 
 
 he ripened his character as a journalist. It set the seal 
 upon his growth at Xenia and made him an editor in the 
 metropolitan acceptance of the term. In his campaign- 
 ing for Lincoln emotion had had every outlet that youth 
 could ask. What he had heard and seen in the legisla- 
 tive session at Columbus and on the battle-field was well 
 calculated to heighten his ardors and at the same time 
 to mature his judgment as it widened his view. I recall 
 a saying of Disraeli's on the political writers who com- 
 municate to their readers their theories and not their 
 observations of facts. Reid was lavish of observations 
 of facts, and with them he gave his readers not theories 
 but opinions, strong, well-reasoned opinions, and plenty 
 of them. The "Gazette " was doubly pleased. The news 
 from Washington then was only half told if it consisted 
 in nothing more than a bald, routine report. The tale 
 had to be completed by a candid observer's views of men 
 and measures, his interpretations of conflicting currents. 
 Reid travelled far as he set it forth, asserting himself as 
 one of the frankest correspondents ever known at the 
 capital. More than once a question of privilege was 
 raised in the House, following some statement of his in 
 the "Gazette," but he never failed to justify his case 
 against the complaining member. 
 
 His frankness was accompanied by a seriousness of 
 purpose and a sense of responsibility which, if character- 
 istic of him at all times, was specially fostered by per- 
 sonal incidents in the year of his coming to Washington. 
 Gavin's wife died in that year, and Gavin himself soon 
 followed her. Reid immediately took out the papers 
 which gave him the guardianship of their two young chil- 
 dren, and at the same period became more than ever the 
 reliance of his father and mother. His private papers 
 now reveal him as altogether the head of the family at 
 Xenia, and, in that position, doing everything possible to 
 
104 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 augment his resources. He had scarcely arrived in Wash- 
 ington before he had a pleasant intimation of the repute 
 he had already earned. The proprietors of the St. Louis 
 "Democrat," then the great Republican paper of the 
 West, offered him the leading editorship at a good sal- 
 ary, with the promise of a speedy increase. It was a 
 brilliant opening, offering him what he felt to be the 
 most promising and prominent position to which a news- 
 paper man out there could aspire. The "Gazette" peo- 
 ple promptly countered by admitting him to ownership 
 in their paper, permitting him to pay for his stock out of 
 the dividends declared, a process which accounted for 
 two-thirds of his purchase in the first year. Also, they 
 pointed out that by staying two or three years on the 
 "Gazette" he might become as much of a leader in their 
 columns as he could desire. To make his decision finally 
 auspicious the New York "Times" asked him to take 
 charge of their Washington business through the sum- 
 mer, paying him well for the same despatches that he 
 was sending to the "Gazette." It is amusing to note, 
 by the way, that the "Times" then had some idea of 
 permanently acquiring his services. In view of subse- 
 quent events, when Reid at the head of The Tribune 
 and George Jones at the head of the "Times" carried 
 on a dire warfare, this proposal belongs amongst the 
 minor oddities of American journalistic ana. (The Wash- 
 ington arrangement with the "Times," as a matter of 
 fact, shortly expired.) During the third session of the 
 Thirty-seventh Congress he acted as clerk to the mili- 
 tary committee of the House, and throughout his three 
 years at the capital he served as librarian of the House, 
 an appointment that greatly aided him in his profes- 
 sional work, giving him admission to the floor and fur- 
 thering relations with the members through which he 
 secured valuable news and "inside views." This last- 
 
WASHINGTON SCENES 105 
 
 mentioned adjunct to his post as correspondent brings 
 up the matter which he valued most, his friendship with 
 certain of the leaders in public life. 
 
 Chase was his chief sponsor. The former aspirant to 
 the presidency was now in the cabinet of his successful 
 competitor, and Lincoln's secretary of the treasury no 
 longer had any ill-will for Lincoln's editorial partisan. 
 The relations which had been strained in Ohio were 
 renewed in Washington on their original cordial footing, 
 and so persisted down to Chase's death. Sumner, whose 
 eloquence he had sought to enlist in his electioneering 
 days, he now came to know face to face and on terms 
 of ever-increasing friendhness. Ben Wade and Henry- 
 Winter Davis he knew and loved. Thaddeus Stevens he 
 knew — and profoundly admired. Love was not precisely 
 the emotion to be awakened by that antique Roman. 
 Amongst the younger men Garfield was perhaps his clos- 
 est friend. They had been thrown together some time 
 before, and when the general resigned his commission, 
 following his splendid conduct at Chickamauga, to take 
 the seat in Congress to which he had been elected when 
 in the field, the two permanently revived their old pact. 
 At the White House, where he met Lincoln from time to 
 time, Reid made the acquaintance of the President's sec- 
 retaries, Nicolay and Hay, laying with the latter the 
 foundations of a hfelong intimacy out of which all man- 
 ner of interesting relations were to flow. He knew Hay 
 then not only as the zealous young functionary but as 
 the no less zealous hterary amateur, discreetly charged 
 by his friends with occasional sparkhng editorials in the 
 "Chronicle," and frankly recognized by them as the 
 author of a couple of sonnets to General Banks, "very 
 good in poetry and questionable in politics." Another 
 companion of Reid's Washington fife, likewise long cher- 
 ished, was Edmund Clarence Stedman, sedately filHng 
 
io6 THE LIFE OF'WHITELAW REID 
 
 the post of clerk to Attorney-General Bates, but using all 
 his spare time to finish his "Alice of Monmouth." There 
 are other literary figures in the circle. Walt Whitman is 
 one of them, tramping the hospitals, a stout, burly crea- 
 ture, with the head of Orestes Brownson set on a neck 
 that Jove might have envied, and flaunting a great green 
 handkerchief loosely knotted under his Byronic collar. 
 Then there is the good old Polish diarist, Count Gurow- 
 ski, with his tremendous gutturals, explosive, vitriolic, 
 the Nemesis of every statesman and general on the hori- 
 zon, and very lovable withal. 
 
 Towering above all the writers with whom he was 
 associated at that time is, of course, Greeley. It was 
 under the auspices of Chase and Sumner that he made 
 the acquaintance of the man who had given him so much 
 inspiration in his youth. They met very frequently 
 thenceforth, whenever the older man was in Washington 
 or his junior was in New York. In the latter city they 
 foregathered on every subject under the sun. At a din- 
 ner-party there in his company Reid met and exchanged 
 badinage with the aging but still sprightly N. P. Willis. 
 The next morning" Greeley called for his young friend and 
 took him for a horseback ride through Central Park. In 
 Washington, politics made their staple fare. Greeley was 
 constantly in the House, observed at close quarters Reid's 
 mastery of the themes it provided, and learned to 
 rely upon his observations. Personal liking reinforced 
 by sympathy and appreciation in professional matters 
 quickly paved the way for the understanding which was 
 in due course to take Reid to The Tribune. An incident 
 connected with the organization of the Thirty-eighth 
 Congress will show how soon and how closely they were 
 allied. 
 
 It was the purpose of the opposition to get control of 
 the House with the connivance of the clerk, Emerson 
 
WASHINGTON SCENES 107 
 
 Etheridge, a peace Democrat from Tennessee, who was 
 to celebrate his last hour in parliamentary office by 
 throwing out the credentials of certain duly elected Union 
 men. A collateral complication threatened was the put- 
 ting forward of General Frank P. Blair, as a compromise 
 candidate for the speakership, a Republican, to be sure, 
 but not by any means the man for the administration. 
 It is the squelching of this little scheme, by one of Lin- 
 coln's astutest strokes of diplomacy, that Reid thus 
 reports to Greeley: 
 
 Gazette Rooms. 
 
 My dear Mr. Greeley: ' ' ^' 
 
 I snatch a moment to say that the Frank Blair danger has just 
 been handsomely averted. He sent Montgomery to the President 
 to ask him whether he should remain in the army or come to Con- 
 gress. Mr. Lincoln took the question as intimating that Blair gave 
 him absolute authority to decide the matter. So he took time to 
 consider; — then told Montgomery to tell Frank that if he would 
 come on, go into the Administration Caucus and help organize the 
 House, he would then give him back his Major Generalship and let 
 him at once return to the army. That would, he told him, harmo- 
 nize all these difhcuhies, and. do a world of good. " I dont know," 
 said Mr. Lincoln this morning, "whether Frank will do this or not, 
 but it will show durned quick," (I quote hterally,) "whether he's 
 
 honest or not." r-- i 
 
 bmcerely yours, „, -n 
 
 Whitelaw Reid. 
 
 The Blair business must not get "out," but I knew you ought to 
 understand it. If Colfax is in town I hope you'll tell him of it. 
 
 The date of this communication is the date of Lin- 
 coln's letter to Montgomery Blair, admonishing the lat- 
 ter's brother in terms exactly confirming the accuracy of 
 Reid's statement to his friend. ' Greeley got his news on 
 the minute, and it was authentic. 
 
 Blair was amicably disposed of Etheridge remained, 
 and the sequel to his ill-omened intrigue has a piquancy 
 in congressional annals which must be my excuse, if one 
 
io8 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 is needed, for quoting a part of Reid's description of it. 
 Greeley came over for the fray and was present in the 
 House on the momentous 8th of December, dividing with 
 Longfellow the honors of those strangers granted the 
 privileges of the floor. The great editor and his disciple 
 exulted together as they watched the unfolding of the 
 scene, heard the sharp rap sounding from the clerk's 
 table, and, in the sudden hush that followed, saw Eth- 
 eridge craftily embark upon his perfidious adventure: 
 
 It is not a bad face, that of the man who stands in the centre of 
 the group of clerks, and thus calls the inchoate House to order; and 
 yet he is about to attempt a scheme that only falls short of being 
 monstrous because he is a moral coward. The roll is called, and it 
 is seen that this Border State man, who has been lavishly rewarded 
 with the favors of the Government for his supposed fidelity among 
 the faithless, has undertaken to disfranchise five States of the Union 
 rightfully represented here, and to foist upon Congress a set of rebels 
 who have scarcely yet forgotten to speak of Richmond as their capi- 
 tal, as representatives of another. 
 
 Members exchange angry glances; a few suppressed expressions of 
 disgust at the paltry trickery are heard — not alone on the Adminis- 
 tration side of the House; the galleries lean over in intent watchful- 
 ness. There is a moment's whispering in the group near the centre 
 of the Administration side; and grim old Thad. Stevens, in the quiet- 
 est of his quiet ways, rises to say that "if the Clerk has concluded 
 the reading of the Hst which he proposes to read, he asks that, for 
 the information of the House, he will now read the names which he 
 has omitted to call." The Clerk blandly suggests that he would 
 like to read the list of territorial delegates first, and Stevens courte- 
 ously bows assent. Manifestly both sides are to be on their most 
 gracious behavior — as long as possible. Then follows a little by- 
 play about contested seats and territorial delegates; and the Clerk 
 seizes the opportunity to edge in the hasty law of last session, on a 
 technically Hteral construction of which he rests his case: 
 
 "Be it Enacted, etc.. That before the first meeting of the next 
 Congress, and of every subsequent Congress, the Clerk of the next 
 preceding House of Representatives shall make a roll of the Repre- 
 sentatives elect, and place thereon the names of all persons, and of 
 such persons only, whose credentials show that they were regularly 
 elected in accordance with the laws of their States respectively, or 
 the laws of the United States." 
 
WASHINGTON SCENES 109 
 
 The last lines he emphasizes very forcibly, and looks half defiantly 
 to the Adniinistration side, as if to say: "There, get over your own 
 legislation if you can." He will now, he says, read the credentials 
 he has thrown out from Missouri. "Read those from the State of 
 Maryland; they seem to be first upon the list," quietly interposes 
 Dawes. The Clerk seems a little confused by the tactics, but he 
 makes no objection. From the outset he lacks the nerve for his 
 undertaking. . . . 
 
 As the reading progresses, there is a curious, expectant air on all 
 faces. Where does the informality come in on which the monstrous 
 effort is made to disfranchise a State? The law on which the Clerk 
 relies only requires the certificate to show an election " in accordance 
 with the law of the State or of the United States." This certificate 
 recites the law of the State, says the election was held in accordance 
 with it, and officially certifies, under the seal of the State and the 
 signature of the Governor of the State, that certain men had the 
 greatest number of votes, respectively, and were duly elected ! And 
 these names the Clerk has committed the infamy of leaving out I 
 
 The rank and file on the Democratic side look dismayed — the 
 doubtful but honorable Border State men disgusted. They are will- 
 ing to do much to gain advantage for their party, but they will not 
 attain it by a sacrifice of their honor. 
 
 The culminating point of the contest between the conspirator 
 Clerk and the outraged majority has come. While the certificate 
 was being read, the group on the left has been consulting; the mur- 
 mur of indignation at the close has hardly run around the hall, till 
 Dawes is again on his feet and has compelled the Clerk's attention. 
 
 "Mr. Clerk, I offer the following resolution; and upon it I demand 
 the previous question." 
 
 Half a dozen pages dart for the bit of paper in his hand; it is borne 
 to the Clerk, who, (if his face be taken as evidence) would as lief 
 receive a lighted bomb; galleries and floor give the profoundest 
 attention, while he reads: 
 
 "Resolved, That the names of John A. J. Cresswell, Edwin H. 
 Webster, Henry Winter Davis, Francis Thomas, and Benjamin G. 
 Harris, be placed on the roll of this House of Representatives from 
 Maryland." 
 
 It is a bomb. Mr. Etheridge has just two things to do. If he 
 dares to carry out his conspiracy he must promptly refuse to enter- 
 tain the motion, on the ground that the unorganized House has 
 no power to instruct him to violate his construction of the law; 
 or he must rule the resolution in order, and hopelessly abandon his 
 plot. 
 
 The galleries do not fully understand the exact point the game 
 
no THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 has reached, and merely look on in curious expectancy. On the 
 Floor it is understood.* There has been talk all day Sunday, and 
 this morning, of a possibihty of violence. The Administration men 
 have calmly resolved that, having gained the majority before the 
 people, they will not be cheated out of it by a renegade trickster in 
 the House. If Mr. Etheridge refuses to entertain this motion, Thad. 
 Stevens will instantly move that the oldest consecutive member of 
 the House be declared Speaker pro tem., and put the question, and 
 Mr. Washburne will be at once escorted to the Chair. There is a 
 singular collection of muscular Unionism just about that gentleman 
 that looks very much Hke business, and several burly Administration 
 men are observed carelessly sauntering over toward the Opposition 
 side of the Speaker's chair and Clerk's table. We are ready for any 
 emergency — semper paratus. 
 
 Possibly the Clerk does not know all this; much more probably he 
 does. It is a great stretch of charity to give him the benefit of the 
 doubt. / 
 
 A second class Democrat has incautiously recognized the resolu- 
 tion by moving to lay it on the table, and calhng for the Yeas and 
 Nays; A shrewder one demands whether it is not out of order, as 
 it instructs the Clerk to do what a law of Congress forbids.' It is 
 Mr. Etheridge's last opportunity, but — he lacks the nerve to do as 
 he would. "The Clerk is of opinion that it is in order, as being 
 pertinent to the organization of the House." There is nothing left 
 but to call the vote on laying it on the table. Bailey of Pennsylvania 
 (Democrat) votes No, with the Administration side. Several more 
 follow his example. This settles the question — counting up is but 
 a formahty. The Opposition have broken ranks, in disgust at the 
 bold treachery of the Clerk. The result is announced. Yeas 74, 
 Nays 94 — a clean twenty majority for the Administration. A ripple 
 of anxious inquiry runs around the galleries, in an instant applause 
 bursts out, the ladies heartily joining, and the congratulations on 
 the peaceful victory begin. The Clerk snappishly announces that 
 he would keep order if he could. "Yes," growls Lovejoy, away on 
 the extreme left, standing with his hands thrust in his pockets, and 
 
 * In view of the threatened outrage he [Lincoln] sent for some of the leading 
 congressmen and told them the main thing was to be sure that all the Union 
 members should be present. "Then," he said, "if Mr. Etheridge undertakes 
 revolutionary proceedings, let him be carried out on a chip, and let our men 
 organize the House." This practical solution of the trouble had occurred to 
 others, and the Rev. Owen Lovejoy, disregarding for a moment the etiquette of 
 his sacred calling, announced that he was quite ready himself to take charge of 
 Etheridge, and was confident of his muscular superiority to the Tennessean. — 
 "Abraham Lincoln: A History." By John G. Nicolay and John Hay. Vol. VII, 
 P- 391- 
 
WASHINGTON SCENES iii 
 
 his head thrown surlily on one side, like a bull-dog watching a mouse, 
 and feeling half-ashamed of himself for condescending to that kind 
 of game. "Yes," in an audible undertone, "the Clerk would like 
 to disorganize the House, if he could." 
 
 Thus the famous purging of the House tested Reid's 
 faculties as a parliamentary reporter. The whole de- 
 spatch — a long one — sustains the tone of the part I have 
 quoted, illustrating his seizure of telling points, and his 
 familiarity with the forces underlying congressional de- 
 bate, the factors — like Lovejoy's preparedness and Lin- 
 coln's political adroitness behind it — known only to the 
 initiated. I could quote many more examples, for there 
 were plenty of brilhant field days in Congress hke the 
 one on which we have just paused. He was in the House 
 in January, 1863, when Vallandigham finally won the 
 leadership of his party by discharging the worst of his 
 copperhead venom in the teeth of the administration, 
 and he looked on at the flaying bestowed upon the traitor 
 by Bingham of Ohio and Wright of Pennsylvania. In 
 the spring of the following year he witnessed Alexander 
 Long's similar outbreak, and rejoiced in the withering 
 invectives of Garfield and Winter Davis. "No man in 
 either House can compare with Davis," he observed, "for 
 the clear, lucid precision of his thought, the absolute, 
 white radiance of star-light which he casts upon what- 
 ever subject he discusses." Reid was a critical student 
 of the public speaking of his time before he came to 
 Washington, and there he had an unwearied curiosity to 
 discover the orators capable of really asserting themselves 
 in "the most disorderly deliberative body in the world." 
 Disorderly as he knew it to be, he knew also how remorse- 
 less the House was in judgment of intellectual force, how 
 pitiless in criticism. On the eve of his departure from 
 the press gallery, after three years of judicial observa- 
 tion, he arrived at this conclusion: 
 
112 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 Whoever has passed its crucible, and has come out successful 
 from its test, has approved his title to consideration either as an 
 honest and able thinker or a consummate orator. One or the other 
 any man must be, who can always be sure of commanding the atten- 
 tion of the House. There are now just two members who can stand 
 this test, Thad. Stevens and Winter Davis. No matter what tumult 
 may be raging or what listlessness may prevail, neither of these gen- 
 tlemen will be on his feet three minutes till every member is listenr 
 ing, and those from distant parts of the Chamber are crowding over 
 toward the speaker's desk. No other member has this power over 
 the House. Several of them come very near it; can, on special occa- 
 sions, have undivided audience, and never speak without being lis- 
 tened to by a majority of the members; but Thad. Stevens and 
 Winter Davis are alone sure of being always heard — at any time, 
 under any circumstances, on any subject. 
 
 It is difficult, I think the reader will admit, to dismiss 
 the echoes of those voices and those subjects, the echoes 
 of a great period, feeding a young man's imagination, 
 quickening his sense of historical values. One reflects on 
 what it must have meant to the future editor of a power- 
 ful newspaper to sit at the centre of the events which 
 were moulding a nation, determining the political devel- 
 opments on which he was to wreak the energies of his 
 prime. Surely the man who shared in the vicious night 
 session of the long struggle for the arming of the negroes, 
 who followed the fortunes of the great conscription bill 
 on the floor of the House, who saw the passage of the 
 Thirteenth Amendment, who hung daily on the settle- 
 ment of grave parliamentary issues, must have stored up 
 not only indelible impressions but priceless instruction in 
 the art of public affairs. And outside the House he was 
 as deeply immersed in the stream of unforgetable occur- 
 rences. He was one of those who surged around the 
 White House on "Emancipation Night" and cheered 
 Abraham Lincoln as he stepped out into the mist to 
 receive the first testimony of his countrymen's approval: 
 
 The cheers are gradually hushed, and the Man who has proclaimed 
 the abolition of American slavery speaks. Not triumphantly — 
 
WASHINGTON SCENES 113 
 
 hardly confidently. He trusts in God— and he says it reverently 
 and humbly, as one well may, who has done so momentous a deed 
 —he trusts in God he has made no mistake. It is now for the 
 country to pass judgment on it, and perhaps— and he pauses as if 
 dreading the storms to come— and perhaps to take action on it. 
 Meantime good and brave officers and men have been battling nobly 
 and successfully for us in the field, and he asks that foremost of all 
 there be remembrance for them. 
 
 Every movement of Washington life came under his 
 view, and at intervals he extended his range. I have 
 dealt with his Gettysburg foray, noting how he had 
 thrown himself upon it from the Columbus convention at 
 which Vallandigham had reaped the worthless reward of 
 his treachery. After Gettysburg he hurried from Cin- 
 cinnati to New York to witness the expiring throes of 
 the draft riots — and to call upon Greeley in an office 
 transformed into an arsenal: 
 
 Muskets were provided for every employee. The floor of the 
 editorial room was littered with hand grenades, and extra bayonets 
 were lying about on the desks like some new pattern of mammoth 
 pen-holders. Arrangements for pouring a volume of scalding steam 
 into the lungs of anybody attempting to force an entrance had been 
 perfected. In the midst of all the warhke preparations, Mr. Greeley, 
 coat ofi" and apparently just risen from preparing a leader, was hs- 
 tening to the statements of his reporters as to the progress of the 
 mob, and making suggestions for perfecting the defences of the office. 
 
 In that year he went on to Frankfort to report the in- 
 auguration of Governor Bramlette, where he overheard a 
 Kentuckian scornfully calling him "a rank abolitionist," 
 and presently was astounded to have the same individual 
 cordially oflPer him "a prime article of old Bourbon" — a 
 contrast destined, like many other kindred instances, to 
 illuminate his understanding of Southern types. When 
 Chase went home to Ohio to vote and thereby help crush 
 Vallandigham, Reid went with him and stopped long 
 enough in Cincinnati to write an exultant leader on the 
 downfall of the traitor. In 1864 he went to the conven- 
 
114 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 tion at Baltimore that renominated Lincoln, and a few 
 weeks later saw the Democrats place McCIellan and Pen- 
 dleton on their ticket at Chicago. Then followed the 
 election, the second inauguration, and, with auspicious 
 celerity thereafter, the fall of Richmond. 
 
 The thrilling news from the Confederate capital was 
 another trumpet call to "Agate," and he made haste to 
 get to the city. It was not easy to make a start: 
 
 Washington was aflame with its triumphant glow. The War 
 Office was surrounded with a great multitude, clamoring for more 
 news, cheering, waving hats, singing "Rally Round the Flag," em- 
 bracing each other, and making the most formidable efforts to em- 
 brace — Stanton ! " I forgive ye all yer sins, ye old blizzard ! " shouted 
 a jubilant soldier at the Secretary; while Seward shook him by the 
 hand till the radical and conservative had melted into one, in the 
 nervous, spasmodic grip; and tears stood in Stanton's eyes, as he 
 turned from one to another to acknowledge the rush of blood-hot 
 congratulations that had suddenly transformed him — revival though 
 it was of the age of miracles — into the most popular man in Wash- 
 ington. 
 
 Reid had need of a miracle himself to get any official 
 aid in the midst of this pandemonium, but he got it — a 
 pass from the War Department to Richmond direct, a 
 boon so rare just then that speculative persons oflFered 
 him a hundred dollars and more for the precious bit of 
 paper. On the boat for City Point he encountered a 
 number of his former comrades in the "old guard" of 
 war correspondents, and with two of these friends, Page 
 of The Tribune and Colburn of the "World," he divided 
 the honor of forming the van of the press into the evac- 
 uated city. At the old Spottswobd House, where the 
 rebel landlord delightedly received him, he registered his 
 name below a swarm of rebel officers, "the first arrival 
 direct from Washington or the North." The columns 
 that he wrote for his paper are packed with details sig- 
 nificant of a fearful material confusion and of the politi- 
 
WASHINGTON SCENES 115 
 
 cal degringolade implied in it. He saw everything, be- 
 ginning with the outlying defenses and those thick layers 
 of torpedoes, now marked with little red flags, through 
 which the ambulance in which he and his companions 
 were driven slowly made its way past endless fortifica- 
 tions into littered streets. He saw the crumbling walls 
 and smoking debris of the burned part of the city, mark- 
 ing how the Libby Prison stood untouched amid the 
 ruins — "a retributive Providence had further use for it." 
 He visited the State House and Jeff Davis's late abode, 
 snatched at the lucky chance which permitted him to 
 explore some of the rebel archives, and talked with a 
 multitude of the inhabitants, high and low. Calling on 
 ante-rebelHon friends, he was struck alike by their courte- 
 ous hospitality and their still defiant spirit. There were 
 people in Richmond who did not doubt that their armies 
 would regain the city. "With none is the submission 
 other than sullen, or forced. I have neither seen nor 
 heard of one who was really an honest Unionist. Loy- 
 alty in Richmond must be sought outside the 'upper 
 classes.'" He began his despatch in Richmond. As he 
 closed it in Cincinnati the tidings of Lee's surrender were 
 swelling through the land, and he adds a postscript which 
 must find a place here as a characteristic expression of 
 his point of view at the end of the war: 
 
 Yet, even in this hour of universal exultation and generosity — 
 when all are ready to welcome back the prodigal sons, and kill fatted 
 calves, in the rejoicings over the Peace that dawns — I must say that 
 no such treatment will do for Richmond. There, above all other 
 places, must it be shown that treason leaves a stain. There were 
 concentrated the daring spirits that conceived and conducted the 
 rebellion which has laid waste the land. Some of them have gone, 
 but others coolly remain, and the virus of all inheres. In a com- 
 munity thus tainted, the iron hand must govern. Case it in velvet, 
 if you will, but beneath must be the iron still. Above all, let us 
 have no hasty patchings up of a reconstructed State Government. 
 There need be no haste in re-clothing defeated rebels with pohtical 
 
ii6 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 power, least of all in Richmond. Some such ruler as Butler they 
 want — milder, more diplomatic, smoother spoken if need be, but not 
 less inexorable in his requirements, nor less clear-sighted in his 
 exhaustive knowledge of the rebel infection. 
 
 They sound a little — these stern periods — like the 
 ideas of an irreconcilable. As a matter of fact, there 
 was not a trace of vengefulness in Reid's attitude toward 
 the South when the rebellion was broken. But neither 
 was there a trace of sentimentality in it. It was simply 
 that, reared in the fiercest years of the antislavery move- 
 ment, he had too full, too poignant, a knowledge of the 
 evils it combated to feel lightly on any of the questions 
 that followed in its train. And his more recent experi- 
 ences had only confirmed him in the tendency which I 
 have signalized as characteristic of him from his youth 
 up, to think clearly and to look facts in the face. He 
 was resting at the homestead when the blackest of all the 
 days of the rebellion befell. Fresh from the impressions 
 of Richmond that I have described, he looked beyond 
 Lincoln's assassin, and in a burning editorial pointed to 
 the dangers which, as the event proved, were to make 
 reconstruction one of the worst chapters in our history: 
 
 For last night's murder there will be ample retribution; but let not 
 the vengeance that is sure to come escape the right heads. Wilkes 
 Booth is but the ready tool; they were bigger men who prepared 
 and dealt the blow. The spirit of the rebellion — the spirit we are 
 now soothing with turtle-dove cooing — striving to appease with soft 
 words — exorcising with extraordinary generosity and unasked par- 
 don in advance, — that stands behind the stealthy deed in Ford's 
 theatre, just as it prompts Johnston to continue the hopeless strug- 
 gle, and Virginia States-Rights men to reassemble their Legislature. 
 Does it indicate the pressing necessity for hastening to invest these 
 men again with political rights? Whence comes the need for this 
 hot haste to "reconstruct the rebel States?" Mr. Lincoln's last 
 speech treated it as a matter of such instant importance that it would 
 brook no delay whatever. Others have even urged that gross wrong 
 was done to rebel States with irresponsible rebel officers at their 
 head, already clamoring for admission, in that their representatives 
 
WASHINGTON SCENES 117 
 
 were not forthwith placed on an equality with the representatives of 
 Ohio and Massachusetts. The whole talk of the Capital has been of 
 reorganization; the air has been vexed with the projects and counter- 
 projects which had the common end of seeking the speediest possible 
 reconstruction of the rebel State governments, and the re-admission 
 of their Representatives and Senators to Congress. Why? For 
 what sufficient reason? To what good end? 
 
 These were the thoughts in his mind when he returned 
 to Washington, mingling with his grief. I have said 
 enough about his early labors in Lincoln's cause to sug- 
 gest the emotion with which he came back to the funeral 
 of the murdered President. "I sat near his bier in the 
 White House, and afterward watched from the roof of 
 the Treasury the long procession pass through Pennsyl- 
 vania Avenue and up the Capitol Hill — the ever renewed 
 procession, that lasted for a fortnight, that swept great 
 cities into its ranks, and crossed half the country, to lay 
 him at last at rest, amid the scenes of his youthful strug- 
 gles and triumphs." It was his last great scene, for a 
 long time, in Washington. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 THE SOUTH AFTER THE WAR 
 
 In the spring of 1865 Reid was invited to accompany 
 a small oflScial party on a voyage of inspection from Fort 
 Monroe around the whole Atlantic and Gulf coast to 
 New Orleans, and thence up the Mississippi. After Lin- 
 coln's death this developed into a quasi-diplomatic expe- 
 dition, undertaken by Chief Justice Chase for the pur- 
 pose of making a confidential report to the new President 
 on the state of the late rebellious and still desperately 
 disorganized South. Reid went aboard the revenue cut- 
 ter Wayanda, on which the journey was to be made, 
 bearing a pass signed by Andrew Johnson, but he owed 
 more to the fact that he was one of Chase's closest 
 friends. He shared to the full in all of the leader's inves- 
 tigations. They were gone two months, and so interest- 
 ing was the experience that on his return to the capital 
 Reid found the old routine of his life there wanting a 
 little in its customary savor. His health was a trifle 
 shaken by the hard work and continuous excitement of 
 long service in Washington. In the fall his father died, 
 a blow so heavy that for a time all his plans were at sea. 
 Then he recovered himself, and with the idea of turning 
 cotton-planter in his mind, he decided to go South again 
 and look over the field. Hugh McCuIIoch, secretary of 
 the treasury, gave him a flattering letter of introduction 
 to the provisional governors, and in order that he might 
 claim, if necessary, some official status, Dennison, the 
 postmaster-general, appointed him a special agent of his 
 own department. But he had seen enough of official 
 
 118 
 
THE SOUTH AFTER THE WAR 119 
 
 circles when with Chase. This time he wanted to study 
 the people at home and "out of company dress." He 
 took train for Richmond on perhaps the most leisurely 
 and intimate of all his many journeyings. 
 
 He had no difficulty in getting at the objects of his 
 search. Previous experiences in the South had taught 
 him the excellent effect of what he called his "rebel 
 look." The Georgia planter who mistook him for a 
 Southerner early in his pilgrimage had more than one 
 successor. Reid richly enjoyed the consternation of his 
 interlocutors when he let them see their error, usually by 
 the full confession of his "Yankee" origin and abolition 
 principles. It is a sign of the resignation which was cul- 
 tivated by most of the people he met that his candor 
 provoked some bluster but no violence. In the cars one 
 day he heard from a meek-looking individual what had 
 been going on amongst a number of their fellow passen- 
 gers. "Did you know those fellows got very mad at 
 your Abolitionism? That sallow, long-haired Macon 
 merchant wanted to have you lynched and swore roundly 
 that tar and feathers would be too good for you." Reid 
 asked him how it ended. "Oh a little Georgian said it 
 was all true and you ought to be lynched, but, that since 
 this d — d war, that thing was played out." He put it 
 all into his letters to the "Gazette," the oddments and 
 humors of casual intercourse, along with descriptions of 
 town and country, and notes on cotton-raising, pictur- 
 esque and practical. When this second tour was ended 
 he assembled all his notes, overhauled those he had writ- 
 ten on the earlier trip, and in the library of the House 
 threw the material into a book, "After the War," which 
 was published in this country and in London in 1866. 
 
 His first appearance between covers was well received. 
 It disclosed him in that attitude of distrust toward soi- 
 .disant rebels as political timber of which I have already 
 
120 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 given some evidence. The London "Saturday Review" 
 found him distinctly wanting in respect for "the heroic 
 qualities displayed by the Confederates in their struggle 
 for independence." But that self-same organ of Anglo- 
 Southron sympathies nevertheless felt constrained to 
 characterize the volume as "in many respects remarkable 
 for a much more fair and temperate tone than we have 
 found in any other expression of Northern feeling and 
 opinion concerning the South," a judgment the more con- 
 clusive, I think, when we remember its source. The 
 book has still a warm vitality. The life of the "old 
 South" is depicted in it in varied colors, and there is no 
 stint of the incidents proper to a record of personal im- 
 pressions. Newspaper men seem somehow to have a 
 way of stumbling upon occurrences which escape other 
 mortals. I must cite in illustration an episode of the 
 trip with Chase, and its sequel. At Newbern, North 
 Carolina, they fell in with Sherman: 
 
 Nervous and restless as ever, the General looked changed (and 
 improved) since the old campaigns in the South-West. He was 
 boihng over with pride at the performances of his army through the 
 winter, and all the more, indignant, by consequence, at the insults 
 and injustice he imagined himself to have received in consequence 
 of his arrangements with Johnston. " I fancied the country wanted 
 peace," he exclaimed. "If they dont, let them raise more soldiers." 
 
 The General complained, and, doubtless, with some truth, if not 
 justice, that the Government had never distinctly explained to him 
 what policy it desired to have pursued. "I asked Mr. Lincoln 
 explicitly, when I went up to City Point, whether he wanted me to 
 capture Jeff. Davis, or let him escape, and in reply he told me a 
 story." 
 
 That "story" may now have a historical value, and I give it there- 
 fore, as General Sherman said Mr. Lincoln told it — only promising 
 that it was a favorite story with Mr. Lincoln, which he told many 
 times, and in illustration of many points of public policy. 
 
 "I'll tell you General," Mr. Lincoln was said to have begun, "I'll 
 tell you what I think about taking Jeff. Davis. Out in Sangamon 
 county there was an old temperance lecturer, who was very strict 
 in the doctrine and practice of total abstinence. One day, after a 
 
THE SOUTH AFTER THE WAR 121 
 
 long ride in the hot sun, he stopped at the house of a friend, who 
 proposed making him a lemonade. As the mild beverage was being 
 mixed the friend insinuatingly asked if he wouldn't hke just the 
 least drop of something stronger, to brace up his nerves after the 
 exhausting heat and exercise. ' No,' replied the lecturer. ' I couldn't 
 think of it; I am opposed to it on principle. But,' he added, with a 
 longing glance at the black bottle that stood conveniently at hand, 
 I if you could manage to put in a drop unbeknownst to me, I guess 
 it wouldn't hurt me much.' "Now General," Mr. Lincoln con- 
 cluded, "I'm bound to oppose the escape of Jeff. Davis; but if you 
 could manage to let him slip out unbeknownst-like, I guess it wouldn't 
 hurt me much." 
 
 "And that," exclaimed General Sherman, "is all I could get out 
 of the Government as to what its pohcy was, concerning the Rebel 
 leaders, till Stanton assailed me for Davis' escape!" 
 
 About six weeks after this colloquy with Sherman, the 
 chief justice and his party, approaching Savannah, en- 
 joyed the good offices of General Gillmore, the gallant 
 artillerist of "Swamp Angel" fame. He showed them 
 over Fort Pulaski, and that night they slept in his boat. 
 Early next morning, when only the crew was awake, the 
 news burst into the cabins that Jeff. Davis was along- 
 side. The story of his arrest Reid had from the lips of 
 his captor, standing in the gray morning within a bis- 
 cuit's throw of the fallen rebel. 
 
 At New Orleans he met Sheridan, "a compact, little, 
 big-chested, crop-headed, fiery-faced officer, flushing red- 
 der than ever when a lady addressed him." Another 
 acquaintance in that city was Paul Morphy, the renowned 
 chess-player, "a modest-looking little gentleman, of retir- 
 ing manners, and with apparently very Httle to say, 
 though the keen eyes and weH-shaped head sufficiently 
 showed the silence to be no mask for poverty of intel- 
 lect." His fellow lawyers were dubious about his fame. 
 "If he were only as good in his profession as he is at 
 chess playing!" they exclaimed, with portentous shrugs 
 of the shoulders. There were other interesting encoun- 
 
122 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 ters, but I hasten on to the subject dominating the book, 
 the question of the Southern spirit at that time. It finds 
 concise celebration in this passage: 
 
 I do not mean that these people are nursing a new rebellion. For 
 many years they will be the hardest people in the civilized world to 
 persuade into insurrection. But they nurse the embers of the old 
 one, and cherish its ashes. They are all Union men, in the sense 
 that they submit, (since they cant help themselves,) and want to 
 make all they can out of their submission. But to talk of any 
 genuine Union sentiment, any affection for the Union, any intention 
 to go one step further out of the old paths that led to the rebellion, 
 than they are forced out, is preposterous. They admit that they are 
 whipped; but the honest ones make no pretence of loving the power 
 that whipped them. 
 
 It is the judgment running through all his observa- 
 tions, in the dravi^ing-rooms of wealthy planters and in 
 roadside cabins. As Reid finished his survey of the 
 South he parted with his last, slenderest hope of any 
 rehabilitation promoted from the centre outward. Po- 
 litically he was half inclined to give the Southerner up. 
 Yet he perceived that the whole body politic was as wax 
 to receive the impress of edicts from Washington until 
 Johnson's blunders forced a bellicose reaction of senti- 
 ment; and if "After the War" is relentless in its exposure 
 of Confederate pertinacity, it is also a candid indictment 
 of the stupid reconstruction which went from bad to 
 worse and finally fastened the disgrace of "carpetbag- 
 gery" upon an unhappy land. He was the more exas- 
 perated by these things, too, because he soon saw the 
 economic possibilities of the country. The openings pre- 
 sented in the South for Northern capital were unsur- 
 passed. His own course was promptly decided. At the 
 same time he proceeded with caution. His friend Hay 
 had invested five hundred dollars in a Florida orange- 
 grove. Reid looked at orange-groves, including Hay's, 
 and an enthusiastic native pointed out to him on the 
 
THE SOUTH AFTER THE WAR 123 
 
 spot that the previous year's crop thereon was worth two 
 thousand five hundred dollars. But before he had left 
 Washington, Hay had told him of his financial success in 
 Florida. It was the familiar tale of "incidental ex- 
 penses," and while the orange-crop might have been, for 
 all Hay knew, a very fine one, he had never seen an orange 
 or received a penny from it. Sceptical of local ardor, 
 Reid stopped looking at orange-groves. He essayed, 
 instead, to find out if, as the current legend had it, cot- 
 ton still was king. 
 
 Friendly planters proved it for him. They took him 
 on long rides over their fields, explained their methods, 
 gave him access to their books, and, in a word, revealed 
 all the mysteries of their pursuit. He took the plunge 
 then for himself, entering into partnership with his 
 friend General Francis J. Herron, of New Orleans, and 
 thenceforth, for two years, only a few flying trips North 
 interrupted the administration in Louisiana and Alabama 
 of his first business venture on a large scale. All the 
 auguries were favorable. Some years afterward, in a 
 chapter of Southern reminiscences, he recalled the per- 
 fection of the February day on which he crossed from 
 Natchez to take possession, in Concordia Parish, Louisi- 
 ana, of two of the three river plantations on which he 
 dreamed of making his fortune in a year. The "man- 
 sion" in which he was to make his home was only a cot- 
 tage, propped up four or five feet from the damp soil by 
 pillars of cypress, but he was monarch of all he surveyed, 
 and though his hundred and fifty negroes, supplied by 
 the Freedman's Bureau, affirmed their new-born spirit of 
 independence by calling him "Mistah" instead of 
 "Massa," there was nothing in that to irk the soul of 
 an abolitionist. The world was rose-colored just then, 
 and hardly lost its happy hue even when he came to 
 taste the miseries of breakbone fever and was condemned 
 
124 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 to hourly Gargantuan doses of quinine. That wretched- 
 ness passed, after a while, and he faced cheerfully the 
 more serious developments of his situation. The weather, 
 of course, was the great factor. His prospects as he got 
 well advanced as a planter are described in the following 
 letter : 
 
 Scotland Plantation, La. 
 
 -, ,, September nth, 1866. 
 
 My dear Mother; 
 
 The weather has been dreadfully against us; — raining almost 
 every day. I have twelve or fourteen bales of seed cotton on hand 
 on this plantation, so damp that I can't gin it, and the sun doesn't 
 shine, so that I can't put it on the platforms to sun it. I have 
 started the gins, however, this morning, and have run two or three 
 bales through in some sort of style. It now begins to look clear, 
 and by noon perhaps the sun may be out. On the lower plantation 
 I have fifteen or twenty bales that I can't gin. 
 
 Here is a little cotton, taken just as it dropped from the mouth 
 of the gin this morning. If you want to know what ginning is, con- 
 ceive two big threshing machines, set in a barn, with the horse power 
 below them, with a room as large as our whole barn into which they 
 throw the straw, and an enormous press in it, worked by a big screw 
 turned by mules below. Then imagine cotton fed in, instead of 
 wheat, and the big room into which the ends of the machine project 
 filled with the fleecy clouds of cotton, sinking in long soft banks, or 
 floating through the air till it looks like the heaviest snow storm you 
 ever saw. Then remember that, in good weather, these gins start 
 at daylight and run till dark, day after day and week after week, 
 with no stoppage whatever except to change mules three times a 
 day, — the men hastily eating their meals while the mules are chang- 
 ing — that there are more men and women about such than it would 
 take to run an ordinary threshing machine — and that everything is 
 kept constantly rushed to its highest speed, — and you may have 
 some idea of what we have to keep up, every day from now to Christ- 
 mas, to get out the crop. 
 
 I am running four gins, two here by horse-power, and two at 
 Fish Pond by steam. Meantime I keep big gangs, 50 in one, 70 in 
 each of the others, out picking all the time, and weigh the cotton 
 picked by each, twice a day, before it is emptied into the wagons, to 
 be hauled to the gin. Of course my overseers do the work, but I 
 have to keep a constant supervision over everything. 
 
 I shipped about four thousand dollars' worth of cotton Saturday. 
 As soon as we get good weather, I shall ship not less than fifteen to 
 
THE SOUTH AFTER THE WAR 125 
 
 eighteen thousand dollars' worth per week. In this way, after a 
 while, I'll get back the money I've put in, and perhaps some more. 
 Love to all. - . „ . 
 
 Your atlectionate son, „. _, 
 
 Whitelaw Reid. 
 
 It was a vain hope. Protected from the Mississippi 
 on the front, the most ingenious system of embankments 
 was not proof against the swamp in the rear. Reid's 
 predecessors had managed in the year before to rescue 
 three hundred out of twelve hundred acres of cotton 
 land. He saved barely two hundred more. And when, 
 on the receding of the waters, he planted in the ooze, it 
 was just in time to have the cotton beautifully fresh and 
 tender for the worms. When the latter came they cov- 
 ered the ground ankle-deep. The planter's golden pros- 
 pects were swept away in a night. Though on trying 
 again, in Alabama, he restored his losses and managed 
 to close up his investments without disaster, he bade 
 farewell to cotton-growing, richer chiefly in that precious 
 commodity, experience. 
 
 I would say that he returned to his pen, but the truth 
 is that he had never abandoned it. The man born with 
 the writing instinct in his bosom never disobeys its 
 promptings, and least of all does the experienced journal- 
 ist miss an opportunity to exercise his craft. In the 
 midst of his troubles as a planter Reid heard one day 
 the call of his profession. Business took him for a short 
 visit to New Orleans in the midsummer of 1866, and 
 there, by the turn of fate which brings the trained corre- 
 spondent face to face with sensational events, he came 
 full upon the historic massacre growing out of the con- 
 flict between whites and blacks over the convention to 
 settle the fifling of two seats in the United States Senate. 
 The result was a despatch to the "Gazette." Returning 
 to the plantation, he was for a while, at least, detached 
 again from journalism, but the writer in him, as I have 
 
126 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 said, never slept, and, in fact, all through this period had 
 a peculiarly powerful incentive. As early as the sum- 
 mer of 1863 he had been visited in Washington by Mr. 
 William H. Moore, member of a leading firm of publish- 
 ers in Cincinnati, and requested to prepare a work on the 
 services rendered by Ohio to the Union during the Rebel- 
 lion. His own experience had supplied him with much 
 of the material for such a volume. Mr. Moore under- 
 took to procure for him all the books, documentary mat- 
 ter, personal statements, and the like, that would be 
 needed to amphfy his resources. Agents were sent out 
 for this purpose, to visit the armies in the field, and, on 
 the close of the war, to talk with generals and other offi- 
 cers, and with private soldiers. An immense amount 
 of data was thus secured. I have before me a typical 
 and deeply interesting fragment. It is the sheaf of labori- 
 ously written pages in which the old tanner of Galena 
 sets forth with obvious pride and some combativeness 
 "facts relative to the early history of my son. Gen. 
 U. S. Grant." 
 
 On his plantation, in the intervals of labor on his 
 crops, Reid wrote "Ohio in the War," in two stout vol- 
 umes of over a thousand pages each. In the first he 
 recited the history of the State during the war, and in 
 biographies of the generals she gave to the Northern 
 armies not only sketched their personal traits but out- 
 lined their campaigns. In the second he compiled the 
 rosters of Ohio regiments and companies, and framed 
 records of their services. This part of the work is of 
 value chiefly for purposes of reference. The first volume 
 is an historical study in the broad sense, really a history 
 of the war, for Ohio, as all men know, gave the nation an 
 extraordinary number of its military leaders in its time 
 of trial. Dealing with a theme of which, in so many of 
 its aspects, he had the liveliest personal knowledge, and 
 
THE SOUTH AFTER THE WAR 127 
 
 painting his portraits of Grant, Sherman, Buell, Sheridan, 
 Garfield, Rosecrans, McPherson, Custer, McDowell, and 
 a troop of others — not forgetting his pet aversion, Mc- 
 Clellan — from the point of view of one who had met 
 most of them face to face and had lived through the very 
 hours of their achievements, he gave to what might have 
 been a conventional record the body and energy of a 
 piece of creative literature. His reviewers did not fail 
 to note the persistence in it of "Agate's" readiness to 
 call a spade a spade, the fearlessly critical style of his 
 analyses, but they united in praise of his fairness. The 
 "Atlantic" said of it that it was "unscrupulously frank," 
 and that considering what popular histories usually were, 
 it was amazingly free from idolatry. "Plainly," the 
 Boston critic remarked, with mild humor, "it is Mr. 
 Kinglake among modern historians, rather than the Rev. 
 Mr. Abbott or the Rev. Mr. Headley, whom Mr. Reid 
 has had in mind." Rather, indeed! The "Nation," 
 beginning then to be known for the carefulness of its 
 literary judgments, was lavish of appreciation, and pro- 
 nounced the opinion that no military Hbrary in America 
 could be complete without it. It pleased Reid to learn 
 from his friend Wendell Garrison that this was the con- 
 clusion of no layman, but of a late officer of Massachu- 
 setts volunteers. Garfield's letter to him I may also 
 quote, for its purely personal interest: 
 
 Washington, 
 
 ,, _, March 5th, 1868. 
 
 My dear Reid: 
 
 I have this evening, for the first time, seen your "Ohio in the 
 War," and have just completed your sketch of me. The bravery 
 with which you have handled Grant and Sherman is equalled by the 
 generous boldness with which you express your approval of their 
 good points; and, what is still more marked, you do not hesitate to 
 speak strongly of the merits of those who never reached a first place 
 in military achievements. 
 
 You have comprehended and expressed more perfectly the spirit and 
 
128 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 purposes of my life than has ever been done by any one before — even 
 my most intimate and life-long friends. If I dared to hope it would 
 not be regarded by the public as too comphmentary, I should be 
 wholly satisfied. At two or three points in the reading I was alarmed 
 at your comparisons, lest they should hurt some of my friends, for 
 instance. Cox and Monroe. I am very glad you noticed my much 
 speaking. It was a serious blunder, which I have been trying for 
 years to atone for. I can every day see it in new members, as old 
 ones then saw it in me. . . . 
 
 I have been thinking that you and I came to the surface of public 
 life about the same time in Columbus, and have been able to know 
 more of the development of each other than usually falls to the lot 
 of men in different lines of life. My work lies diffused, membra 
 disjecta, destined to perish with the using; yours is crystallized into 
 the enduring form of a literary monument which will be more valu- 
 able when you are dead than it is now. I look upon it, however, 
 valuable as it is, only as an earnest of what you are destined some 
 day to achieve. If your life and health are spared, I hope and 
 believe you may some day conclude the last paragraph of a work to 
 which the world will apply the words that Thucydides applied to 
 his history — "an everlasting possession." The road to that lies 
 through study, travel and patient labor. 
 
 Very sincerely your friend, r a ^ 
 
 ^ ^ ^ ' J. A. Garfield. 
 
 The second of Garfield's requirements for success in 
 literature was surely fulfilled by his friend in the last 
 year of his activities as "Agate," a year of almost inces- 
 sant travel. On the resumption of his relations with the 
 "Gazette" his functions as chief editorial writer, joined 
 to the comfortable situation of a stockholder in a highly 
 prosperous paper, ought to have given him the sensa- 
 tions of a storm-tossed mariner safe in port. Instead he 
 was in Washington, reporting the trial of Andrew John- 
 son; in Chicago at the Republican convention which 
 nominated Grant and Colfax; in New York, when the 
 Ku KIux Democracy put up Horatio Seymour and Frank 
 Blair; in Cincinnati again — on the editorial page — and 
 then once more in New York, this time to stay. Private 
 aff'airs took him to New Hampshire and professional 
 duties drew him again and again to the capital. In sheer 
 
THE SOUTH AFTER THE WAR 129 
 
 movement 1868 was one of the busiest years of his life, 
 well calculated to make his arduous struggle as a cotton- 
 grower seem the lightest of idyls. 
 
 The most important of his subjects in that year was, 
 naturally, the impeachment. He treated it in an ex- 
 traordinary series of despatches, remarkable alike for the 
 animation and fulness with which it reproduced the 
 scene and for the gallery of portraits it assembled. The 
 character of the whole of this farewell exploit of his I 
 may illustrate with a few passages from his tribute to 
 the leading speaker in the President's behalf: 
 
 Figure to yourselves a slender, nervous, hollow-chested person of 
 about the medium height, straight as an arrow, with what is called a 
 "long head," (narrow from ear to ear, but swelling nobly above the 
 temples), covered with short black hair, with a pinched, parchment- 
 skinned face, that always reminds one of the pictures and descrip- 
 tions of the Opium Eater, De Quincey. The nose is long and hooked, 
 and the chin projects, as if half-minded to meet it. This is Evarts 
 as he stands up at the counsel's table to address the Senate for a 
 man whom personally he detested, but whose defense he believes to 
 be legitimate. 
 
 His voice is more remarkable than his appearance. It seems to 
 be a shrill tenor, of very little volume, but it is wonderfully well 
 managed. The enunciation is simply perfect; and so this thin-voiced, 
 narrow-chested speaker, rarely rising above conversational tones, is 
 heard with a distinctness that becomes a positive pleasure. No 
 man ever seemed to speak more easily; sometimes, in the sarcastic 
 or more impressive passages, he throws some force into his utterance; 
 but generally without seeming effort the sentences fall from his hps, 
 slow and rounded, like drops from a fountain, in a steady, easy suc- 
 cession, every word in its place, every clause poHshed, without a 
 moment's hesitation for an expression, or a single recalled phrase. 
 It is seldom stirring, but it is throughout one of the rarest and most 
 attractive of intellectual displays, the perfection of unimpassioned 
 extempore speaking. 
 
 He gesticulates freely, but not often with any vehemence. A 
 favorite position is with the left hand thrust into the back pocket 
 of his frock coat, while the right, holding the gold-rimmed eye glasses 
 which he uses whenever he has occasion to refer to his notes or read 
 an authority, comes down upon the audience at every emphatic 
 
130 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 word of the sentence. His whole manner is that of perfect ease, of 
 perfect satisfaction with his audience and himself, of perfect delib- 
 eration. Nothing, it seems, could hurry this man — nothing discon- 
 cert his easy dignity and self-possession. . . . 
 
 Still, with all the delight, one felt more and more distinctly two 
 impressions concerning this remarkable effort. Things were said in 
 the daintiest of ways, with the choicest selections of words, with the 
 most deHghtfuI humor, with sarcasm as good natured as it was 
 severe; but, after all, there was what I think Artemus Ward called 
 the sense of muchness. The things said were well said; but it took 
 too long to say them. The sarcastic hits were inimitable but it 
 took too long to lay the train for them. In fact many passages 
 were verbose — a fault very natural to one who speaks with such 
 perfect ease; for it often holds true of speaking as of writing, that 
 the easy writing makes very hard reading. And, besides being 
 verbose, it lacked conclusive force. 
 
 The impeachment offered, as I have said, the chief 
 occasion for Raid's exercise of his descriptive powers just 
 prior to his final removal to New York, and the sketch 
 of Evarts is a representative example of the style he had 
 developed in the press gallery at Washington. He would 
 hardly have migrated to New York, however, if his years 
 as a correspondent had not endowed him with something 
 more than a style. "I am a good deal of a jack-at-all- 
 trades in journalism," he wrote in a private letter at that 
 time, "having done everything about such a paper as 
 the 'Gazette' save running the six-cylinder press." The 
 discipline had given him a rich equipment. As the fre- 
 quent quotations I have made from his despatches have 
 shown, the experience which had sharpened his instru- 
 ments of expression, strengthened by the thought and 
 patient labor of which Garfield speaks, had made him 
 not only the observer but the philosophical critic of pub- 
 lic men and their acts. I close this chapter, therefore, 
 not with a fragment but with a full-length study. 
 
 In August, 1868, Thaddeus Stevens died. Reid had 
 long known the old man, had witnessed some of the most 
 stirring episodes in his later congressional life, when the 
 
THE SOUTH AFTER THE WAR 131 
 
 lion was aging but could still put forth a lion's strength, 
 and he had seen the stanch leader in parliamentary con- 
 flict maintain his last great fight, when Andrew Johnson 
 was summoned to the bar of the Senate. Immediately 
 on receiving in Cincinnati the news of the statesman's 
 death he announced it in an editorial which was itself a 
 well-reasoned tribute. A few days later, when the body 
 of Stevens was committed to the grave, he wrote the 
 "character" which I reproduce below: 
 
 "These were the two half men of their time," says Mr. Carlyle in 
 one of those noble essays written before his intellect began to run 
 from the dregs. "Who so should combine the intrepid candor and 
 decisive scientific clearness of Hume, with the reverence, the love, 
 and devout humility of Johnson were the whole man of a new time. 
 Till such whole man arrive for us, and the distracted time admit of 
 such, might the Heavens but bless poor England with half men 
 worthy to tie the shoe-latchets of these, resembling these even from 
 afar!" 
 
 Mr. Stevens seems to us one of the half men of our time. His 
 great characteristic was will rather than judgment — conscience rather 
 than insight. We shall not greatly err if we look to Daniel Webster 
 as his complement. Who so should combine the intrepid will and 
 the faithful conscience of Stevens, with the massive judgment, the 
 penetrating insight, the broad statesmanship of Webster were the 
 whole man of a new time. Till such whole man arrive for us, and 
 the distracted time admit of such, might the Heavens but bless 
 poor America with half men worthy to tie the shoe-latchets of these, 
 resembling these even from afar. 
 
 It will be seen that we do not regard Mr. Stevens as having been 
 a great statesman. He was not, indeed, even a great party leader. 
 He was often at variance with his party; he rarely possessed its 
 entire confidence; and not a few of his triumphs were won in spite 
 of it, by carrying his personal following over to the Democracy in a 
 combination against it. Inexorable will, a high purpose, tact, par- 
 liamentary skill, an earnestness so striking as to be persuasive, and 
 a reckless determination to carry his points at any cost — these vari- 
 ous and sometimes almost contradictory qualities made him a leader 
 of men. 
 
 There were a score of prominent Republicans, at the opening of 
 the Thirty-ninth Congress, as vehemently opposed to Mr. Johnson's 
 provisional government system of reconstruction as Mr. Stevens; 
 
132 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 but there was no one so remorseless in the determination to shut out 
 the Southern states, definitely and peremptorily, leaving not a loop- 
 hole of entrance to any assault, till they should fully comply with the 
 Congressional requirements. Scores of Republicans seemed as 
 earnest from the outset in seeking the death of slavery and the en- 
 franchisement of the negro; but no one impressed friends and foes 
 alike as being so penetrated with an enthusiastic and almost roman- 
 tic devotion to this cause as the highest, purest work a public man 
 could accomplish. In almost any Congress in which he served there 
 were a score of Republicans as well versed in parliamentary law as 
 himself; but none combined his tact for yielding when to yield was 
 good policy, and for defying majorities when pluck and defiance 
 could carry the day, with the utter indifference to all considerations 
 save his own, that enabled him to use his power in contemptuous 
 scorn of appeals to which almost any other man would have yielded. 
 In public affairs he seemed, indeed, to be proof against all appeals — 
 to be made of frosty intellect and a frostier conscience, with which 
 no thing of warmth had any affinity. He would co-operate as 
 heartily with his bitterest enemy as with his warmest friend; he 
 would use his advantages as mercilessly, when it served his turn, 
 upon his warmest friend as upon his bitterest enemy. 
 
 He was not endowed with extraordinary intellectual gifts beyond 
 many others who will never achieve his fame. He was an indifferent 
 scholar, and a blunt, unpolished writer. It has been common to 
 speak of him as eloquent; but when his speeches are seen, discon- 
 nected from the man and his surroundings, in the cold mausoleum 
 of the " Congressional Globe," they quite often look like second rate 
 performances. Industry and tact, combined with his wonderful will 
 and his fervid devotion, did more for him than volume of brains or 
 fineness of culture. 
 
 Withal he was wonderfully aided by a tart tongue. Here again 
 the mere printed reports of his speeches fail to confirm the reputation 
 which he enjoyed and deserved. There was much in his manner, 
 and much more in the surroundings to give point to his acrid assaults. 
 Then his domineering way and his fame for repartee went far with 
 him; till at last, when a peculiar smile was seen upon his face, the 
 House would take his joke on credit and break out into a roar of 
 laughter, though not half of them had heard it. His wit was mostly 
 very personal and sometimes malicious, while his readiness was mar- 
 vellous. Men learned to fear him as the most dangerous person in 
 Congress to interrupt; and the instances were very rare in which any 
 one who grappled with him did not come out second best. Some- 
 times he was ugly and malignant without provocation — through pure 
 perversity as his enemies were wont to say. Thus he was once de- 
 
THE SOUTH AFTER THE WAR 133 
 
 bating a subject on which Wadsworth of Kentucky had spoken, and 
 chanced to refer to some argument of "the eloquent and distin- 
 guished gentleman from Kentucky." Mr. Wadsworth, intent on not 
 being misrepresented, rose to inquire if the honorable gentleman 
 referred to him. "No," was the instant reply in Mr. Stevens's most 
 cold-blooded manner. "I did not refer to you. I referred to the 
 gentleman's colleague, Mr. Crittenden, whom I always delight to 
 call eloquent and distinguished — because he is so." Wadsworth was 
 young then; and through that Congress he never recovered from the 
 stab. 
 
 Yet it was observed by those who had watched the old man the 
 longest, that he rarely made attacks. So long as people were content 
 to let him alone he would keep the peace. But woe to the unlucky 
 wight who ventured rashly to provoke his displeasure. 
 
 He rarely set for himself any bounds in his denunciation. Some- 
 times his tact taught him to damn an opponent with contempt rather 
 than with denunciation, as when he replied to Mr. Johnson's famous 
 speech inquiring why "you do not hang Thad. Stevens," with a 
 thoroughly good-tempered and deliciously comic defense of Mr. 
 Johnson against the slanderers who traduced the President of the 
 United States by inventing such a speech and putting it into his 
 mouth. But where his principles were concerned rather than him- 
 self his invective more often partook of a ferocity almost brutal, as 
 when he said of Chief Justice Taney, before the grass had grown 
 over his grave, that he was condemned to eternal infamy as well as 
 to eternal flame. He was ready to attack anybody. No station, no 
 character, no services to himself, no influence could deter him. Only 
 at the last session he was balked in an effort to get through a resolu- 
 tion increasing the salaries of the House eniployees twenty per cent 
 by the opposition of Mr. Greeley, than whom, through a large part 
 of his career, he had no warmer or more powerful friend; straight- 
 way he denounced Mr. Greeley in the House as an old scarecrow, 
 who had come down from New York to frighten simpletons. 
 
 But with all his pubhc bitterness he was in private warm-hearted, 
 often forgiving, and often unexpectedly generous. Many a Southern 
 rebel, returning to Washington after the surrender, was received by 
 Mr. Stevens almost with open arms in spite of his inflexible hostility 
 to their political claims. His old Southern associates in Congress, 
 especially, received from him the heartiest of welcomes. Political 
 bitterness, indeed, he scarcely ever carried into private life. He 
 lived in the same town with ex-President Buchanan, against whom 
 he had often inveighed almost virulently; yet they were on pleasant 
 social terms, and one of his latest acts was to repel the insinuation 
 that he wished to lay one straw in the way of the payment by Con- 
 
134 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 gress of the accustomed honors to the dead Chief Magistrate. Still 
 he had his small jealousies and resentments; of which perhaps the 
 most noticeable were his feelings against persons in high station, 
 distinguished for more dignified character, or aristocratic habits, or 
 profound scholarship than himself. Ben Wade was always a man 
 much more after his heart than Charles Sumner. He liked General 
 Butler far better than John A. Bingham. He respected rather than 
 admired Winter Davis; and he never could forego his sneer at Chief 
 Justice Chase's deportment, even at the time when they were in the 
 fullest political accord. 
 
 We have denied to Mr. Stevens pre-eminence in intellect, culture 
 or eloquence. It remains to show wherein his great strength lay. 
 His parliamentary qualifications, his tact, his wonderful readiness of 
 repartee, his ferocity of invective, his acknowledged vigor of intel- 
 lect, will not wholly account for his position as, during the recon- 
 struction, if not during the war, the most influential character in 
 American poHtics. The secret of his strength, we imagine, is to be 
 found in that source to which mere politicians so seldom look — his 
 high, all-embracing devotion to a noble idea. Before the present 
 generation of politicians was out of its infant schools Mr. Stevens, in 
 the Constitutional Convention of Pennsylvania, staked his whole 
 career as a public man on a fervid opposition to the disfranchisement 
 of the few negroes resident in that State. His defeat was the great 
 victory of his life. He threw the whole intensity of his intense nature 
 into the struggle; and when he was beaten stood out before the 
 Commonwealth, the solitary member of her Convention who would 
 not sign the new Constitution because it refused justice to the negro. 
 That was in 1836. From that day he was committed to the idea of 
 securing justice to an oppressed race. It has transfused his life and 
 made his career glorious forever. 
 
 An acute critic has said that his devotion to the slave came rather 
 from a hatred of the oppressor than a love of liberty. This distinc- 
 tion is valuable for it serves to explain the grim features of his char- 
 acter and work. The state of Pennsylvania has reason to remember 
 Mr. Stevens with gratitude as the founder of her common school 
 system. But it is to his life-long hostility to slavery and to the 
 determination, at last taking the form of a religious zeal, with which 
 he fought the slave's battles, that Mr. Stevens owes his sure place 
 in history. That place will not be the highest, even for this genera- 
 tion and this Republic, but it will be high. He will be credited with 
 a rank second to none in sustaining the war. He will be reckoned 
 the master and more than any other one man the author of the 
 reconstruction that followed. 
 
 On these his fame must rest. He was out of place as Chairman of 
 
THE SOUTH AFTER THE WAR 135 
 
 the Ways and Means Committee. This journal led in the demand 
 for his removal from that position, and its only regret is that the 
 demand was not sooner urged. His financial notions were utterly 
 crude, and the zeal with which he supported them only made him 
 the more dangerous. Within the last year his intellect often seemed 
 dulled. The impeachment called out one of his best speeches; but 
 on financial matters, as well as on details of Reconstruction, he was 
 confused and sometimes contradictory. It would have been better 
 for his fame if he had been out of Congress a year ago. He was full 
 of projects but without a policy. 
 
 Such — set down after a very Imperfect and unsatisfactory fashion 
 — we consider to have been the leading characteristics of Mr. Stevens's 
 life and works. His directness, his scorn of cant, his honesty, dis- 
 tinguished him from common politicians. His ability, his earnest- 
 ness, his courage and his long services, lifted him to the front rank 
 of the public men of our time. But his sublime devotion to the 
 cause of an oppressed race, the iron purpose, and the conscientious 
 zeal with which, in season and out of season, he labored for it, made 
 him worthy of a place second to none in the war and foremost of all 
 in the Reconstruction. Yet it is for purpose, courage, devotion, not 
 for broad statesmanship that we can commend him. After all, he 
 was only one of Carlyle's half men. 
 
 In one of his "Imaginary Conversations" Landor puts 
 into the mouth of Alfieri a notable summary of the quali- 
 ties constituting a great writer — "adequate expression of 
 just sentiments, plainness vv^ithout vulgarity, elevation 
 without pomp, sedateness without austerity, alertness 
 without impetuosity." These were specifically the quali- 
 ties which Whitelaw Reid considered the objects of the 
 journalist no less than of the "great writer." His char- 
 acterization of Thaddeus Stevens exhibits in concise form 
 the progress that he had himself made in the cultivation 
 of tliem when he was ready to enter upon the most re- 
 sponsible years of his editorial career. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 EARLY RELATIONS WITH THE TRIBUNE 
 
 A man is known by the opportunities he rejects as 
 well as by those which he accepts. Amongst the various 
 elements of character and circumstance that account 
 for Reid's progress much weight is to be attached to his 
 constitutional unwillingness to be stampeded into any 
 engagement. He was never in a hurry. The prospect 
 of an immediate advantage, no matter how tempting, 
 never distracted his mind from consideration of the per- 
 manent issues involved in a given proposal. It was not 
 the question of material interest that concerned him, but 
 the deeper, more serious responsibility which a man has 
 for the direction he takes in life. I may quote on this 
 point some typical observations he made in 1876, when 
 he was in full control of The Tribune. The late E. V. 
 Smalley was at that time on the Washington staff of the 
 paper. He received an offer of the agency of the Asso- 
 ciated Press at the capital, and before making up his 
 mind wrote to Reid for advice. The letter in which this 
 was very frankly given to him minimized none of the 
 benefits appertaining to the post. It was one of unques- 
 tionable power and consideration. Nine out of ten of 
 the correspondents in Washington would consider it an 
 enormous prize. But the man who took it needed to 
 have a great love of drudgery and to be, besides, a man 
 without opinions. Continuing thus to look at the prob- 
 lem in its larger aspects, Reid wrote to him as follows: 
 "I don't think the question of salary amounts to a great 
 deal. I can express this opinion all the more frankly, 
 
 136 
 
RELATIONS WITH THE TRIBUNE 137 
 
 since when I held a position in Washington very similar 
 to yours I repeatedly declined offers of from one half 
 more to three times the salary I was receiving, beginning 
 with the leading editorship of the St. Louis 'Democrat,' 
 and ending with an offer on a guarantee for a term of 
 years of a salary of $10,000 a year as chief editor of the 
 New Orleans 'Times.' On the whole that success gives 
 most comfort while you are winning it, and counts for 
 most in the end, which is made in the Hne of one's natural 
 tendencies, and which not making haste to get on too 
 rapidly builds all the firmer the foundation for the com- 
 ing superstructure." His own gravitation to The Trib- 
 une is seen to take on something in the nature of fate 
 and predestination as one IoqIcs back at it, but the prin- 
 ciple enunciated in the foregoing passage has also to be 
 reckoned in the balance. 
 
 Not all the editorships which were open to him before 
 he elected to come to New York invite special comment, 
 but one of them, offered as early as 1865, awakens an 
 association of ideas too piquant to be neglected here. A 
 close friend of Reid's during the war was George L. 
 Stearns, the antislavery paladin of Whittier's elegy, who 
 "forgot his own soul for others," who counted it the 
 proudest act of his life that he gave good old John Brown 
 every pike and rifle he carried to Harper's Ferry, and 
 who labored above all others to place on a practical basis 
 the policy of enlisting negro soldiers in the Northern 
 armies, organizing and systematizing the work. He was 
 one of the largest individual stockholders in the com- 
 pany that founded the "Nation," and when the new 
 weekly was being planned he remembered the young 
 journalist whose work in the thick of things at Gettys- 
 burg and at Washington had won his admiration. In a 
 letter of Whitelaw Reid's to me the practical outcome of 
 this remembrance is thus recalled: "The editorship was 
 
138 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 first offered to George William Curtis, and next, by the 
 unanimous vote of the men raising the capital, to me. 
 It was only after I had declined that the offer to Mr. 
 Godkin was made. I have no doubt he made on the 
 whole a better paper than I should have done at that 
 time, for I was still very young; but I am sure he made 
 a worse one in some respects !" For better or for worse 
 Reid would have made it a totally different sheet. I 
 can easily enough imagine him in some political taber- 
 nacle other than that to which, as a matter of fact, ,he 
 was always faithful — but I can't imagine him a Mug- 
 wump. 
 
 The launching of the "Nation" was sympathetically 
 recorded by Reid. "I do not remember to have ever 
 seen so nearly perfect a first number," he wrote. But 
 he was altogether too red-blooded an American to have 
 been happy with the Brahminical caste which took the 
 paper under its special protection. I doubt if he would 
 have completely harmonized even with Stearns himself. 
 "He was one of those rarely unselfish and high principled 
 men," Reid wrote me, "of whom the country never has 
 too many; a man who deserved greater recognition than 
 he ever got during the anti-slavery struggle and the war. 
 That is not to say that I fully endorse either his ideas or 
 his methods." The sincerity and thoroughgoing nature 
 of Reid's abolitionism I have shown in earlier pages. 
 Sitting down at the famous Saturday afternoon dinner- 
 table of Frank Bird's Radical Club in Boston he was 
 welcomed as one of themselves by such men as Sumner, 
 Boutwell, Governor Andrew, and John Murray Forbes. 
 But his whole experience and training, after his first 
 ecstatic plunge into the great controversy of his youth, 
 tended to make him very cool-minded in his dealings 
 with the leaders whom he was wont to designate to me 
 as "the New England come-outers." With Stearns he 
 was bound to go a certain distance. There were other 
 
RELATIONS WITH THE TRIBUNE 139 
 
 figures in that circle from whom, sooner or later, he could 
 not but part company. I don't think he ever quite for- 
 gave Garrison for his lurid flourish about the Constitu- 
 tion as a covenant with death and an agreement with 
 hell. That sort of rhetoric seemed to him to take the 
 subject into a region of emotionalism inimical to con- 
 structive statesmanship. 
 
 Though Horace Greeley was no niggard of highly col- 
 ored speech in the heat of debate, there was a fund of 
 practicality at the bottom of his eloquence, and it was 
 this, very largely, that drew Reid to The Tribune when 
 the time came. The editorship of the "Nation" could 
 not tempt him away from his cotton venture in the 
 South. It did not open the right door. The tradition 
 of The Tribune was exactly what he had been forming 
 himself for from his youth up, a tradition based on patri- 
 otism plus common sense, and directed with an intensely 
 American vigor toward the really effective settlement of 
 tangible problems. He was ever sceptical of the minis- 
 trations of purely academic publicists, those etiolated 
 oracles of the coteries that have been educated beyond 
 their intellects. "They evolve theories of how people 
 live, of how they ought to live," a shrewd commentator 
 has said, "and both sets of theories are mainly cobwebs." 
 In Greeley's environment, Reid well knew, there were at 
 all events no cobwebs, despite the old Fourierite sympo- 
 sia which had graced the columns of The Tribune in the 
 forties. It was, in short, a summons to the one opening 
 fulfilling his ideal in the journalism of the country that 
 he received when Greeley sought him out. 
 
 It is an interesting point in his relation to The Trib- 
 une that from the first Greeley most ardently wanted 
 him in the office and tried repeatedly to get him there. 
 Wherever Reid was, the discerning old editor kept an 
 eye upon him, watching for the favorable opportunity to 
 revive in more permanent form the alliance 1 have noted 
 
140 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 in a preceding chapter. His eagerness for every clew to 
 Reid's plans is disclosed in a note sent to Schuyler Colfax 
 in 1866: "S. C. If you ever get a letter from Whitelaw 
 Reid that you can spare a body, please enclose it to, 
 Yours, Horace Greeley." If he could not lure his young 
 friend to New York, then he wanted to employ him in 
 Washington. The moment he heard that Reid was aban- 
 doning a planter's hfe he hastened to write him, inquiring 
 as to just how far he was involved with the "Gazette." 
 He did not forget Reid's interests. "I would not have 
 you weaken your hold on the 'Gazette,'" he wrote, "till 
 you are wholly sure of something better, for I know 
 yours is a good and strong concern, whose dividends of 
 late beat The Tribune's." But he wished that the situ- 
 ation might be cleared up to his way of thinking, and 
 that at least they might meet in Washington, where John 
 Russell Young, his managing editor, was at the time, 
 and where "both he and I could frequently meet you 
 and try to shape matters to mutual satisfaction." 
 "Well," he concludes, "I will try to be in Cincinnati 
 during the winter; the time will be foreknown. Will you 
 try to be there when I am? If the mountain will not 
 come to Mahomet, etc. I infer that nothing can be 
 definitely done at present; but, whenever you have the 
 money that you do not borrow, I hope you will author- 
 ize me to buy one or two shares in The Tribune for you. 
 I believe it will pay, even in 1868, and thereafter. And 
 I believe you are mistaken as to my withdrawing from 
 the active direction of The Tribune in 1869. I guess I 
 shall be able to do it. At all events, I hope to try." 
 Surely these were remarkable words, and a little more 
 than flattering, with their closing hint as to the possible 
 accessibility of the blue ribbon of American journalism, 
 for the wearer of that ribbon to write to a man just 
 thirty years old. 
 
 They were written late in 1867. At the same time 
 
RELATIONS WITH THE TRIBUNE 141 
 
 Garfield was urging Reid to settle in Washington. "I 
 feel as I have felt for a long time," he wrote, "that this 
 is the theatre for your best efforts, at least for the pres- 
 ent. You have so many friends who will be rejoiced to 
 see you — and so many opportunities will open for you 
 that I can hardly think any other place can do so much 
 for you." His friends at the capital were, in fact, so 
 active, that presently there was some talk of his taking 
 the editorship of the "Chronicle." Meanwhile Young 
 added his adjurations to Greeley's. Why, oh why, 
 wouldn't Reid come to New York? Did he have an 
 angry creditor or two in the city, whose vengeance he 
 dreaded, or was he a defaulting director of Erie, in ter- 
 ror of one of Judge Barnard's injunctions? "We are 
 sorely in want of a strong man," he added. "I cannot 
 say positively how you would do with brevier, as my 
 only knowledge of your work is correspondence, but if 
 you could do half as well editorially you would make a 
 very enviable reputation here. I know no man in the 
 American profession of journalism that I would rather 
 have on The Tribune staff than yourself." 
 
 In default of getting him at once on the editorial page 
 they persuaded him to write a life of Grant in a pam- 
 phlet of some fourscore pages, to be circulated as a cam- 
 paign document. In April, when he went with Greeley 
 to the great banquet given by the press of the country 
 to Charles Dickens, on the eve of the novelist's return 
 to England, Young tried to talk shop between courses 
 and humorously repined because they were all too ab- 
 sorbed in the convivialities of the occasion. Greeley's 
 frequent notes at this period are so characteristic that I 
 must quote one of them: 
 
 New York, 
 
 April 29th, 1868. 
 Friend Reid: 
 
 I mean to be down next week — that is if the Impeachment Trial 
 
 shall come to an end. I do not want to visit Washington again 
 
142 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 while that nightmare is upon us. And if the Senators should spring 
 
 a leak, as is threatened, I may hold off a week longer. Look for me 
 
 at Mrs. Greeley's rooms on the morning of the day after the verdict 
 
 is rendered. , , 
 
 Yours, TT r- 
 
 Horace Greeley. 
 
 Poor Greeley ! As history sadly relates, the country 
 wasn't released from that "nightmare" until nearly the 
 end of May. But then at last the long negotiations 
 came to a head and Reid accepted the position of "first 
 writing editor," with the understanding that he was to 
 receive orders from no one excepting Greeley or Young. 
 "As previously talked about between us," he also said, 
 " I should of course hope for some favorable opportunity 
 to buy Tribune stock." When he joined the staff, in the 
 early fall of 1868, the presidential campaign was rising 
 to its climax. He came to the paper in the midst of just 
 such a political conflict as he loved. A generous propor- 
 tion of the leaders in The Tribune which promoted the 
 election of Grant and Colfax were his. Upon an issue of 
 this kind, however, I need not now dwell. At this time, 
 and for several years thereafter, until his assumption of 
 full control of the paper, I am chiefly concerned with 
 his more intimate experiences in his new environment. 
 
 It was our great period of "personal journalism," when 
 the name of a newspaper of any power immediately re- 
 called to readers anywhere in the country the name of 
 its editor. Some of the more conspicuous leaders were 
 nearing the last of their battles — Raymond, of the 
 "Times," who died in June, 1869, and the elder James 
 Gordon Bennett, of the "Herald," who survived him 
 only about three years, and Greeley himself. But George 
 Jones, with the aid of Louis Jennings, preserved for a 
 while something of the vigor of Raymond's policy, and 
 the younger Bennett was not unworthy of his sire. 
 Dana, of the "Sun," was in his early prime. Sam 
 
RELATIONS WITH THE TRIBUNE 143 
 
 Bowles, of the Springfield "Republican," was waxing 
 ever more expert in his venomous sprightliness, and in 
 the columns of the "Sun" Dana showed that he was in 
 a fair way to surpass him. Henry Watterson, in the 
 Louisville "Courier- Journal," and Murat Halstead, in 
 the Cincinnati "Commercial," like Reid, their friend, 
 were making the old tradition their own, and infusing 
 new life into it. Manton Marble, W. H. Hurlbert, Hor- 
 ace White, E. L. Godkin, A. K. McCIure, Joseph Medill, 
 and divers others were, in a very acute sense, flourishing. 
 Most of these men were good, some of them were bril- 
 liant, writers. They were all confident and combative. 
 An interchange of compliments between any two of them 
 was apt to bristle with well-sharpened points, and the 
 other members of the company were quick to make their 
 contributions to the fray. Irony, more or less subtle, 
 was a common enough weapon. Sarcasm with nothing 
 at all subtle about it was even commoner. I do not 
 mean to suggest that these eminent publicists were for- 
 ever abusing one another, but simply that it was an 
 energetic and notably candid era, in which a newspaper 
 "spoke its mind" with robust freedom — the mind being 
 unmistakable as that of an individual known of all men 
 and richly colored with idiosyncrasy. There were ver- 
 bal savageries practised, too, in those days, on the dis- 
 appearance of which the historian now looks with a cer- 
 tain philosophic complacence. We have changed all that. 
 Personal slang-whanging is pretty nearly as dead as the 
 duello. But there was a biting freshness in the air which 
 was not unwholesome. The journalist resolved to hold 
 his own had to have a head on his shoulders, and, withal, 
 courage, endurance, and consummate readiness. 
 
 Greeley, a warrior to the end, and dying almost lit- 
 erally with his armor on, made his paper successful 
 through the sheer force of his personality and his vie- 
 
144 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 torious habit in the general journalistic melee. Yet the 
 stinging, quotable things he was always saying in print 
 were not by any means the principal source of The Trib- 
 une's influence. The strength of the paper, founded in 
 the first place on its antislavery leadership, resided in 
 the merit it possessed in all its departments. Godkin, 
 recalhng his impressions of The Tribune, formed when 
 as a foreigner he first studied the newspapers of New 
 York, has left perhaps the best characterization of it: 
 "The paper was an institution more hke the Comedie 
 Frangaise than anything I have ever known in the jour- 
 nalistic world. The writers were all, as it were, partners 
 in a common enterprise, and Greeley, though all-power- 
 ful, was simply looked upon as primus inter pares. . . . 
 He sacrificed everything, advertisers, subscribers, and all 
 else, to what he considered principle. . . . During the 
 three or four years before the war to get admission to 
 the columns of The Tribune almost gave the young 
 writer a patent of Hterary nobility." As a matter of 
 fact the desirabihty of access to the columns of The 
 Tribune was as widely recognized after the war as be- 
 fore it. I have delved a good deal in the history of its 
 contributors. Surveyed en masse, and over a long 
 period, their names read hke an index to some manual 
 of American letters. 
 
 Reid settled down in this Frangaise at his ease and 
 well content, though not without thoughts, curiously, of 
 other ambitions. His mood at the outset is reflected in 
 his correspondence with Garfield. "I see your hand- 
 prints in The Tribune," wrote the latter, shortly after 
 the election, "and am anxious to know how you are 
 enjoying your new field and what is the outlook." The 
 reference to the outlook points to the fact that even then 
 the idea was in the air that Reid would by and by be 
 advanced to a more commanding role in the management 
 
RELATIONS WITH THE TRIBUNE 145 
 
 of the paper. How he was occupied, and what his 
 reflections were, these fragments will show: 
 
 New York, 
 My dear General: December 27th, 1868. 
 
 I wrote all the articles assailing Morton, excepting the one over 
 Mr. Greeley's own signature. He was away in Canada when the 
 speech was delivered, and of course I had to take up — not exactly 
 the cudgels for him, but his cudgels, which is a slightly different 
 matter. I could only take his premises, and from them bombard 
 Morton's conclusions. Still, I went after M. con amore. He seems 
 to me an unprincipled demagogue, of large ability and utter un- 
 scrupulousness; and I think his tortuous record both on Reconstruc- 
 tion and Finance sufficient evidence of these characteristics. 
 
 Everything is done here to make my position pleasant. My own 
 theory of H. G's policy is that I am a "Rod in Pickle," — useful 
 mainly to show the Powers that are what might be, — and so gently 
 terrify them into doing well. I do not think he wants me to dis- 
 place , only to show him that he could be displaced at a mo- 
 ment's notice. Still, there are some of the stockholders who believe 
 the gossip of the evening papers, that I am to go in soon after the 
 1st of January. I can't say that I greatly desire it. For the present 
 I am doing well, — pecuniarily and in the way of experience and 
 influence. For the future, I still look longingly to a chance for 
 study and careful literary work. . . . 
 
 Faithfully yours, „, t, 
 
 ■^ "^ Whitelaw Reid. 
 
 New York, 
 
 »- „ February vth, 1860. 
 
 My dear General: 
 
 I find I am getting rather more credit than I desire for "slashing 
 articles." In particular I hear that Wells attributes The Tribune's 
 criticisms to me. In point of fact, I have written scarcely anything 
 about him, excepting the jocular paragraph in reply to Delmar's 
 complaint that we compared him to Wells, in which I revived the 
 old story about the fellow who didn't like being compared to Judas, 
 and the retort, "Well, if you don't like it, what do you suppose Judas 
 thinks of it?" But I can tell Mr. Wells that if he doesn't call off 
 his dogs, big and little (in the last category is to be included Mr. 
 Don Piatt) we can say of him as I said in that paragraph of Delmar, 
 — "if we ever do undertake to give him full and exact justice, he will 
 never write to us asking for any more." 
 
 I do my full share of hitting heads when I see them, but I don't 
 do all that sort of thing, by a good deal. I am writing on all sorts 
 
146 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 of subjects. "Cuba for the Cubans" was my last leader, though I 
 
 shall probably write another tonight. About three fourths of the 
 
 short editorial paragraphs in every paper are mine. The work is 
 
 pleasant; and I am having a quiet and agreeable winter. Still, I 
 
 am sometimes haunted by my old feehng that I might better be at 
 
 magazine and book work, if I could afford it. Nothing could be 
 
 more agreeable than my personal relations. 
 
 Faithfully yours, „, „ 
 
 Whitelaw Reid. 
 
 The haunting continued, as frequent passages in his 
 letters to Garfield clearly show, and he would have to 
 take refuge in Kinglake or Buckle to quell his doubts. 
 Not even the joys of reading could invariably ease the 
 chafing of what sometimes proved just a wearying yoke. 
 "Every now and then the old feeling comes over me of 
 wanting to run away from newspaper offices, and all 
 manner of hard work, and lounge on my farm in the 
 Miami Valley." What tired journalist has not fallen 
 into this dejected mood? But the zest of the work is 
 perennial, and Reid had it in generous measure. In the 
 same letter from which I have just quoted his pastoral 
 aspiration he says to Garfield: "Read The Tribune to- 
 day, and especially the article on the celebration at 
 Derry, headed 'Old Wood to Burn.' H. G. did not 
 write it as most people will think he did." There were 
 numberless editorials of Reid's in those days which read- 
 ers were wont to ascribe to H. G. — they had in them 
 so much fighting force. When he had written one of 
 them the blues had been shaken off and he must have 
 smiled over his own yearnings for rural idleness. 
 
 Besides, there was always the cheering stimulus of 
 contact with Greeley, Young, and the rest of an incom- 
 parable staff. Young, of whose brilliant work on The 
 Tribune Reid used to speak with high appreciation when 
 he talked with me of the paper's past, had a pretty faculty 
 for lightening the pressure of hard daily tasks. "John 
 was just a man of genius, gentle and peaceable, with no 
 war in him at all," Colonel Watterson once told me, and 
 
RELATIONS WITH THE TRIBUNE 147 
 
 there is much quiet humor in the few notes that survive 
 to illustrate the comradeship between him and Reid. A 
 reminder for an editorial runs: "Don't forget that rap 
 on the bronze knuckles of Mr. Oakes Ames, the Chicopee 
 foundry man in Mass." And in regard to an article of 
 his own — "I can change the names in it and make it a 
 eulogy upon Grant or an obituary of Louis Napoleon." 
 Leaving for a stay in Washington, some weeks before 
 Grant's inauguration, he offers help to Reid, who is left 
 in charge, and rambles on in this vein: "If I can fathom 
 the mysteries of the inscrutable Ulysses, I shall probably 
 send you a mysterious, semi-official illumination of the 
 new Government, but I make no promise on that score. 
 If I shall follow my own tendencies, which have been 
 headachey for the last three weeks, I should instantly 
 seek out the genial Spofford in the alcoves of the Library, 
 there being no drinking allowed in the Capitol, and read 
 his immense black-letter books. But I fancy I shall 
 have to do a good deal of walking, and inquiring, and 
 asking of questions or what the elegant and accompKshed 
 Albany correspondent of The Tribune calls 'chin music' 
 I never leave the old rookery, even for a day, so much 
 as a boy goes away from home, and with a good deal of 
 the same feeling of regret. I know you will get along 
 just as well without me, which is not at all consoling, 
 but what is the use of living, if you can't be a bother to 
 your friends." Friendliness like this made fife very sunny 
 in "the old rookery." It reKeved the fatigue of writing, 
 for example, all in one day, editorials on the salaries of 
 government clerks in Washington, the fur and seal trade 
 in the islands of St. Paul and St. George, and the revision 
 of the Department of the Interior. Not forgetting, either, 
 a little piece on salt ! A certain variety was implicit in 
 the job of "first writing editor." 
 
 Reid held that post until the summer of 1869, when 
 trouble arising between the Associated Press and The 
 
148 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 Tribune that involved Young, the latter resigned. Forth- 
 with Greeley wrote with his own hand and posted in the 
 editorial rooms what Reid described to Smalley, in Lon- 
 don, as "a somewhat famous general order." It an- 
 nounced the acceptance of Young's resignation, and con- 
 tinued: "The office of managing editor is abohshed, and 
 Mr. Whitelaw Reid will see that Mr. Greeley's orders 
 are obeyed, and give instructions at any time in his 
 absence to subordinates." The news made a sensation 
 in the journalistic world. No paper could get on, it was 
 beheved, without a managing editor, duly designated as 
 such. Greeley, as usual, knew what he was about. The 
 distinction vaguely but conclusively enough established 
 in his order gave effect, for one thing, to a purpose which 
 had all along been forming itself in his mind. This was 
 to make Reid his second in command, with a wider scope 
 than was perhaps compatible with too sharply defined a 
 status. Writing to Smalley, Reid says: "For a week or 
 so precisely what was meant by the order was a trifle 
 uncertain to all of us. It soon became plain, however, 
 that Mr. Greeley's object was simply to obviate the em- 
 barrassment of Mr. Young's departure by a nominal 
 abolition of the office, the duties of which have still de- 
 volved upon me almost precisely as they had upon him. 
 Mr. Greeley has instructed me to retain a general super- 
 vision of Foreign Correspondence as well as of al! the 
 other departments of the paper." 
 
 In giving the measure of his new responsibilities I may 
 well begin with Smalley's reply, in which congratulations 
 are strongly tempered by the writer's sense of the grave 
 difficulties to be faced: 
 
 London, 
 My dear Reid: ^""^ ^^th. 1869. 
 
 If Young was to go I knew of course that you would succeed him, 
 and the aboHtion of the office is only the abolition of a name. Mr. 
 Greeley certainly will not give the time needed for management, 
 
RELATIONS WITH THE TRIBUNE 149 
 
 and it was plain to me from the first — what you say became evident 
 after a while — that Mr. Greeley's order was meant to smooth matters 
 over for the time. I can't say that I congratulate you. I think I 
 know pretty well what you succeed to — about the most difficult 
 place in America, lots of enemies, secret and open, all around you, 
 work enough for two men, and for general task set before you, — to 
 accomplish the impossible. Nevertheless, though you and I have 
 always been good friends, I should have done as Mr. Greeley has, 
 put you into this purgatory, had it depended upon me. Mr. Gree- 
 ley's old liking for you did not prevent him from doing it, and, now 
 you are in, it will of course be invaluable to you. 
 
 I shall hold you to your promise of writing me letters to which 
 your first shall seem short — at least I shall try to hold you, but I 
 don't believe much in a managing editor's keeping any promise which 
 is not in the way of business and for the good of his paper. Dana 
 once defined to me a Managing Editor as a being to whom the sen- 
 timent of remorse was unknown. Don't prove him in the right. 
 Ever faithfully yours, 
 
 George W. Smalley. 
 
 The purgatorial hypothesis in this letter is a trifle over- 
 done. There weren't "lots of enemies" dogging Reid's 
 footsteps, nor did he have to accomplish the impossible. 
 He had, undoubtedly, to do the work of two men, if not 
 of three. But the only comment to be made upon that 
 is that he enjoyed doing it. It is never really a hard- 
 ship to have too much to do, when a man is placed in a 
 position of importance, and left, on the whole, to use 
 his own judgment in the administration of it 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 AN EDITOR'S METHODS 
 
 Reld's ability to edit The Tribune, and Greeley's con- 
 fidence in him, created a situation satisfactory to them 
 both. For the older man it meant, especially, an en- 
 largement of his liberty, with increased ease of mind. 
 He was always going off on lecture tours. Now he could 
 undertake them more freely, and even when in town he 
 found it more comfortable to leave the management of 
 the paper more and more in Reid's hands. Wherever he 
 was, in Texas or in Brooklyn, he wrote constantly, brief 
 communications which illustrate both his readiness to 
 criticise and his almost touching dependence upon the 
 man at the wheel. In the picture presented in their 
 association one sees Greeley ranging hither and yon, or 
 hovering, as it were, about the office, and Reid anchored 
 there in an absorption broken only by dashes to catch 
 hurried interviews with his chief. Some of Greeley's 
 messages show how they met, or failed to meet. " I was 
 over at the Astor House, but probably asleep when you 
 called. If not hurried, please look me up tomorrow at 
 323 West 57th St. I may not be there, but the ride 
 will do you good anyhow." And from a friend's house, 
 on another occasion, he sends this: "Bring an evening 
 paper. I live in outer darkness." There was no sub- 
 ject on earth on which he was unlikely to ask for light. 
 It might be a matter of politics. Or with an editorial in 
 hand that he was writing in his familiar character of the 
 farmer's friend, he would suddenly demand rainfall sta- 
 tistics. Correspondents who bothered him were turned 
 over to Reid, with some such tip as the following: "This 
 
 150 
 
AN EDITOR'S METHODS 151 
 
 fellow is the biggest humbug and nuisance in or out of 
 Bohemia. Beware of him." Nor was he at all ambigu- 
 ous in his reflections on Tribune men when their work 
 irritated him. " I want to ascertain what reporter of a 
 late Democratic Union Convention talked of that Con- 
 vention going through the 'farce' of making up a ticket. 
 Whoever doesn't know what is a reporter's business, and 
 that it is not that of editing the paper — ought to find 
 some other place." But the jewel amongst these do- 
 mestic complaints is the one provoked by a troublesome 
 though brifliant member of the staff": "Isn't it possible 
 
 that I may indulge the cheering hope that will 
 
 cease to inflict himself on the readers of The Tribune 
 ere I die? I consider him a breeder of useless, unprofita- 
 ble quarrels, and would like to see him abated." As in 
 the fragments of some splintered mirror we arrest fleet- 
 ing glimpses of the valiant old publicist's moods and 
 opinions, his views on human nature as well as his policy 
 on a current issue. 
 
 Hear him apropos of a political scandal long since gone 
 down the wind: "I guess you are mistaken about the 
 public interest in such wrangles. The multitude run in- 
 stinctively to a dog fight, and I guess they relish a rasp- 
 ing of Seward by his jail bird. I know I do." Yet he 
 had compunctions for that statesman, I may note in 
 passing, as is shown in a note which also displays his 
 editorial discretion. "Such paragraphs as that about 
 Seward's late speeches are needless, and he will consider 
 them malignant; therefore, let us have none of them. 
 When we are constrained to fight his policy, let us do 
 so, but never poke straws at him." The journalist pure 
 and simple, the man of news, is, of course, always mani- 
 festing himself, alert for the making of a point. In the 
 midst of the Tammany uproar he writes: "Believing 
 that Tweed must soon run away or in some manner 
 
152 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 explode, I wish you to have ready for use the 'Sun's' 
 gorgeous account of his daughter's diamond wedding 
 early last summer. It can be made to point a moral." 
 Tweed's accomplice, "Slippery Dick" Connolly, it will 
 be remembered, was widely suspected of eloping tenden- 
 cies as the Ring began to break up. Greeley anticipated 
 the event in a note to Reid: "Epigram on Dick Con- 
 nolly, when he clears out, as he must. The sheriff went 
 for Dick — Dick cut and ran; so proved himself, for once, 
 a non est man." 
 
 The great editor's little missives, fluttering in almost 
 daily, consoled Reid for his labor in deciphering Greeley's 
 unspeakable chirography. The light touches rewarded 
 effort. He could be querulous sometimes, and, pouring 
 in more leaders than could always be printed "on the 
 nail," he would forget his own philosophy on the making 
 up of a day's page, which was to make it up in its 
 own interests, regardless of anybody's private feelings. 
 "Please don't let us be crowded off the editorial page," 
 is one of his most frequent admonitions. Delay in the 
 publication of an article of his made him wrathy. If it 
 was due, as in one historic instance, to the intervention 
 of some stuff about city real estate, the welkin rang. " I 
 won't stand it," he exclaims, on the verge of hurling a 
 veritable thunderbolt. But mostly he kept to the vein 
 of this delectable example : 
 
 New York, 
 j^gjjj. February 27th, 1871. 
 
 Don't you remember Artemus Ward thought a joke once a month 
 in a comic paper might not be out of place? If you do, get me in 
 some editorials. You gave me no show this morning. . . . 
 
 Have something about peace. You can't guess how my gorge 
 rises at all you have printed in deprecation of the Germans entering 
 Paris. I think the French objections to it base and paltry. If ever 
 men won a right to march through a city the Germans have that 
 right to go through Paris, and it is babyish to object to it. Bah ! 
 
 ^°''''' H. G. 
 
AN EDITOR'S METHODS 153 
 
 The full-dress editorials in which he liberated his larg- 
 est, most dynamic ideas, are hardly more characteristic 
 of Greeley than these casual outflingings from his pen. 
 In the latter we get, at all events, the very accent of his 
 daily familiar speech, the speech of the man as well as 
 of the editor, of the Greeley between whom and Reid 
 there developed not only so strong a professional tie but 
 so deep an affection. He was not always talking shop. 
 "If there be places at the Opera tomorrow, remember 
 yours, H. G.," runs one of the notes, and there were 
 countless occasions on which the hardened politician for- 
 got all about politics. That "old liking" of his for 
 Reid, to which we have seen Smalley referring, was a 
 matter of sympathy and trust. He perfectly under- 
 stood the unanswerable editorial reasons for those delays 
 attending his own articles, from time to time, on which 
 he was accustomed to be so seemingly annoyed, and the 
 last fragment I shall here quote from him is perhaps the 
 most representative of them all: "Do your best, and lose 
 no sleep because of grumblers." In the original memo- 
 randa made for the sketch of his chief which Reid pre- 
 pared for the "Cyclopaedia of American Biography," I 
 find certain of Greeley's gentler traits particularly under- 
 lined for notice. One of these was his love of poetry, 
 evinced, by the way, with striking critical prescience. 
 Greeley was one of the earliest of Swinburne's apprecia- 
 tive readers. Reid mentions also his quickness amongst 
 American editors to recognize the rising genius of Dick- 
 ens, and his discovery of Bret Harte's merits before 
 others in the East were awake to them. Passing from 
 purely literary matters he refers with emphasis to his 
 friend's "quaint ways and dry humour." These, above 
 all, were of immeasurable solace to Reid in the difficult 
 and strenuous period of his first years on The Tribune. 
 
 A letter of his own will best serve to disclose his atti- 
 
154 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 tude toward Greeley and the manner in which he filled 
 Greeley's place, when circumstances required it, behind 
 the scenes in New York political journalism. It was 
 written in the course of the Tammany exposures, when 
 Tweed's mayor, Oakey Hall, was doing his best to with- 
 stand the Fates, and Tilden — ^with visions of the presi- 
 dential nomination floating before him — was watching 
 for the psychological moment at which to take a hand in 
 the smashing of the Ring and come forth as the savior 
 
 of his party. 
 
 New York, 
 
 ,, KT ^ September i8th, 1871. 
 
 My dear Mr. Greeley: 
 
 I need not say that personally I shall be more than glad of your 
 return whenever you feel that you can come. I am always sorry 
 when you leave and delighted when you get within consulting dis- 
 tance. I am willing to do any amount of work and would gladly 
 relieve you of four-fifths of that which harasses you when here, but 
 I feel more comfortable when once in 24 or 48 hours I can go to you 
 for advice and counsel. 
 
 I had a long talk with Tilden last night. He is backed up by 
 O'Connor, and I suspect by Tweed, although he denies it. He 
 means to cut the Tammany Ring adrift, and if possible save the 
 party, but I suspect a closer affiliation than we would like with 
 O'Brien and the Custom House crowd. On the other hand, when 
 at the outset he enquired whether I was as much opposed to Gen. 
 Grant as he knew you to be, and on my replying that I rather thought 
 so, he said, " Very well then, our interests are not adverse." 
 
 The excitement in political circles in consequence of the extraordi- 
 nary proceedings at the City Hall is greater than anything I have 
 ever seen in New York. We were miles ahead this morning both 
 in our news, interviews with Tilden, Havemeyer, etc., and in our 
 editorial comments, dealing in two articles with the various phases 
 of the question brought up by Hall's attempt to checkmate Tilden, 
 all written after half past one o'clock and on the presses at half past 
 two. The other papers were almost utterly without comment. Hall 
 having evidently delayed the correspondence till the last moment in 
 the hope of getting 24 hours start of any comment that could be 
 made. We have flanked him this way once before and the matter 
 causes a great' deal of talk and wonderment among newspaper men 
 in town. It was done by being ready the instant the news came in 
 and dividing the work, Hay taking one half and I the other. 
 
 Always faithfully yours. Whitelaw Reid. 
 
AN EDITOR'S METHODS 155 
 
 The sentence at the end is eloquent of an important 
 factor in Raid's management. If Greeley gave him pre- 
 cious support and companionship, so likewise did all the 
 members of the staff. Exploring old files and letter- 
 books, I have found voluminous evidences of the under- 
 standing existing between Reid and his men, and espe- 
 cially of the enthusiasm with which they all worked to- 
 gether in the common cause. On his first absence for 
 rest a telegram of Hassard's told him at Cedarville how 
 his orders were being carried out. "Tuesday's Tribune 
 is pronounced by H. G. the most perfect daily paper ever 
 printed. Greeley and Sinclair [the business manager] 
 both boiling over with dehght. Every other paper beaten 
 out of sight. Expect equal success tomorrow." He had 
 a priceless coadjutor in John R. G. Hassard, a man who 
 could do anything and was of a very lovable character. 
 If Reid was away he could trust Hassard impHcitly to 
 "managing edit" with flawless judgment. His leaders 
 were of the best. When Ripley, the veteran literary 
 editor of the paper, went abroad for a year in 1869, it 
 was Hassard who quite naturally took his place, and 
 down to the day of his death he was one of The Tribune's 
 most dependable reviewers of books. From 1867 to 1883 
 he was also the musical editor, exercising in that capac- 
 ity a knowledge, a taste, and a style which left their 
 mark upon American criticism in this department of 
 art. He commemorated in The Tribune the initial per- 
 formance of Wagner's "Nibelungen" tetralogy at Bay- 
 reuth, giving to this country the first authoritative ac- 
 count of the composer's momentous enterprise. Hassard 
 it was, too, who later solved the famous Tilden cipher 
 despatches, simultaneously with Colonel William M. 
 Grosvenor, for many years a writer on financial and 
 kindred topics in The Tribune. Reid could not have had 
 a more resourceful or more loyal "right-hand man." 
 
156 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 If it was upon the high abilities of his subordinates 
 that he chiefly counted, there was hardly less strength 
 and cheer to be got out of their friendship and their 
 abounding cleverness, their gay humor, their way of 
 prosecuting the day's work with equal skill and spirit. 
 There is a story of Hugo's "La Legende des Siecles" 
 arriving at the office just in time to be placed in Bayard 
 Taylor's hands that evening. Twenty-four hours later 
 The Tribune's compositors were putting into type the 
 exhaustive review in which he embodied translations of 
 five of the poems, versions which still endure. It brought 
 peace to an editor's soul to have such a critic to rely 
 upon, and it gave him another joy when on another occa- 
 sion he found Taylor striding up and down the editorial 
 rooms, rapturously reciting the "Jabberwocky." When 
 Fechter paid his first visit to America and controversy 
 waxed hot over his Hamlet, there was a prodigious 
 amount of log-rolling done in his interest, and some of 
 it was directed at Reid. He backed up William Winter 
 in the latter's caustic criticism of the actor, and ended 
 by getting immense amusement out of the episode. "He 
 is a diluted Gustave Dore sort of an artist — all India ink 
 and gamboge," wrote Winter, and in that vein of merry 
 satire they withstood together the campaign of the Fech- 
 terites. Typical of the blithe terms on which he lived 
 with his staff is this note from inimitable, mischievous, 
 convivial Charles T. Congdon, gracefulest of writers on 
 "miscellaneous" topics, moody, improvident, and sub- 
 limely resilient: 
 
 T^ iir n Lynn, April 12th. 
 
 Dear W. R.: j^ > i' 
 
 Please employ some trustworthy person to redeem this raiment 
 from the Israelite; and send it to me, express paid. Draw funds 
 enough of mine to satisfy the vampyres, and then let the transaction 
 pass into obHvion ! 
 
 I am ratherish out of sorts, but with a plan of changing my quar- 
 ters to a village within five miles of "the spot where I was born," and 
 
AN EDITOR'S METHODS 157 
 
 where your confounded brethren, Her Majesty's Sixtieth Regiment 
 of Infantry, burned my great grandfather's ware-houses, and fright- 
 ened my grandmother, a mere slip of a girl, out of her young senses. 
 I know that it was the 6oth Regiment, for we shot one of them, and 
 
 when I was in long clothes I had his buttons to play with, d him. 
 
 Faithfully yours, n ^ r- 
 
 C 1. CONGDON. 
 
 There was plenty of "temperament" to be dealt with. 
 Here is a sprightly specimen of it as exhibited by the 
 poet, Richard Henry Stoddard: 
 
 MydearReid: Friday Evening. 
 
 Of all the damned, infernal pieces of work that a white man ever 
 undertook to do, reporting a book sale intelHgently is about the 
 worst. Three hours under the gas light, for three nights in succes- 
 sion! "Get thee behind me, Satan." „ 
 
 bTODDARD. 
 
 Mark Twain, a not infrequent contributor, and a 
 warm friend of Reid's, was another man certain to add 
 to the day's entertainment. He was just coming into 
 view as author and lecturer when they first became ac- 
 quainted, and the humorist's notes often relate to his 
 affairs and his friend's careful interest in them. "I 
 thank you heartily for saving me that gratuitous snub 
 in The Tribune, and shall be glad to choke a slur for you 
 if I ever get a chance. I guess this emanated from some 
 bummer who owes me borrowed money and can't for- 
 give the offence. Yours ever, Mark." Again he asks 
 for the announcement of a new lecture — "it covers my 
 whole acquaintance, kings, humorists, lunatics, idiots 
 and all" — and again it is his "Innocents Abroad" for 
 which he craves a helpful word. "Today," he writes, 
 "my new book will be sent to The Tribune and this is 
 to ask you if you won't get your reviewer to praise the 
 bad passages and feeble places in it for me. They are 
 the only ones I am worrying about, you know — the meri- 
 torious parts can get along themselves, of course." 
 
158 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 It is not only for the sparks of fun that may be left 
 in them that I quote these old strays from an editor's 
 correspondence. Their spirit, their atmosphere of good 
 comradeship, is of more importance than that, helping 
 us to realize what manner of man Reid was when he was 
 called to manage the greatest American newspaper of his 
 time and how he contrived to get the best out of his 
 brilliant men, inside and outside the office. He did it 
 by force of character. He was never a demonstrative 
 man and strangers sometimes thought Greeley's other 
 self too reserved, too proud. He had, as a matter of 
 fact, that defensive pride which Johnson claimed when 
 he was accused of matching arrogance with arrogance in 
 his quarrel with Lord Chesterfield. He had barriers up 
 against no man — until some one menaced his self-respect. 
 In the administration of his office he maintained disci- 
 pline, but if his men worked for him with splendid zeal 
 it was because he combined strictness with kindness. 
 The staff were his friends. No detail in the make-up 
 of the day's paper was too minute for his attention. For 
 years it had been Ripley's function to see that the author 
 of the faintest hint of slang or bad English was duly 
 immersed in boiling oil. Reid took over that responsibil- 
 ity also and stirred the caldron well for the man whose 
 grammar limped. He preserved an almost military rule. 
 But he wore the velvet glove. His reprimands left no 
 hard feeling. They were just and they were consider- 
 ately administered. He governed by good-will and 
 generosity, and I could fill pages with instances of his 
 helpfulness in counsel, his goodness and delicacy in times 
 of illness and sorrow. 
 
 Salaries were never high anywhere in the sixties and 
 seventies. Reid's readiness to raise them when he could, 
 and the singularly friendly notes he had a way of writing 
 when he did so, bound the staff to him with another 
 
AN EDITOR'S METHODS 
 
 159 
 
 strand of loyalty. He was wont to remind a man that 
 he had done some exceptional piece of work, in a special 
 crisis, by writing him a letter of appreciation, and en- 
 closing a check. "Be assured," writes one such recip- 
 ient, "that I deeply appreciate your goodness, and shall 
 always remember it. I thank you for the bit of money, 
 but I thank you a hundred times more for the consid- 
 erate courtesy and good feeling which prompted you to 
 send it." Another member of the staff, thanking him 
 for a similar action, says: "I am still better pleased with 
 the strong expression of your personal friendship." I 
 need not enlarge upon the subject, but neither would I 
 omit it. It is well to remember that the leadership 
 which bore The Tribune on to new triumph and pros- 
 perity was that of the heart as well as the head. He 
 won loyalty because he gave it. One of the prettiest tes- 
 timonies to this is Winter's, written in the midst of the 
 Fechter business, when all manner of vain stratagems 
 were employed to cause Reid to restrain his critic: "This 
 I say with all my heart, that I honor, and always shall 
 honor, the firm, unwavering integrity and justice with 
 which you have sustained me in the performance of my 
 duty." He was always like that. 
 
 It has been one of the complaints levelled against 
 Amercan journalism, that ' it has sometimes been too 
 complaisant toward external influences, especially those 
 manifesting themselves through the advertising columns. 
 I have known an advertiser to threaten the cancellation 
 of a large contract unless an adverse criticism was repu- 
 diated. Reid's answer was to instruct his critic to return 
 at once to the charge, with redoubled energy. He was 
 equally impervious to the purely personal considerations 
 which are frequently forced upon an editor. Authors, 
 painters, workers in any of the fields of art, who fancied 
 that the best way to obtain "a favorable notice" was 
 
i6o THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 to solicit his intervention, were ludicrously disillusioned. 
 It was not the glowing letter of introduction from a 
 friend that counted, it was the work itself, which was 
 left to the critic, for him to test upon its merits. With 
 the upshot of that process — having once given his con- 
 fidence to the critic — Reid resolutely refused to have 
 anything to do. This was primarily a matter of princi- 
 ple. His refusal to interfere with a subordinate's intel- 
 lectual operations was also an expression of his ideas on 
 newspaper technic. He wanted good workmanship. 
 For that, he knew, the good workman must have free- 
 dom. His supervision of that freedom told only in ways 
 that heightened its value, not in modifying what a man 
 had to say, but in bettering his way of saying it. He 
 was an inflexible hater of redundancy, and I recall a 
 pithy saying of his: "The reader never misses what is 
 not there." There never was an editor quite like him 
 with a blue pencil, so swift to see where an article could 
 profitably be cut, or so skilled in the art which Mr. 
 Howells once described to me as the art of "joining the 
 bleeding parts." Reid knew what he wanted journalistic 
 writing to be — clear, direct, interesting — and he knew 
 how to develop it in his staff". It was for this reason, 
 and because of that fine standard of disinterestedness I 
 have just alluded to, that under him, as under Greeley, 
 access to the columns of The Tribune was "a patent of 
 literary nobility." 
 
 The number of writers, then or afterward famous, to 
 whom the paper thus appealed, was rapidly increased as 
 he developed his policy of strengthening the staff". Bret 
 Harte, Henry James, Isaac Bromley, Rebecca Harding 
 Davis, Ars^ne Houssaye, Bronson Howard, Emily Craw- 
 ford — a positive host comes into view as one traverses 
 the record. But I pause now upon only a single mem- 
 ber of that host, the writer amongst all his earlier acqui- 
 
AN EDITOR'S METHODS i6i 
 
 sitions whom Reid regarded as perhaps his luckiest find. 
 This was John Hay. In view of his subsequent career 
 as diplomat and secretary of state, and of their long 
 friendship, productive of many episodes to which we 
 shall return, it is especially interesting to exhibit the 
 manner in which Reid gave him his first serious oppor- 
 tunity as a writer for the daily press. 
 
 Hay quitted his diplomatic post in Spain, where he 
 was first secretary of legation at Madrid, in the summer 
 of 1870, and returned to America in September with 
 plans for joining Nicolay, who had taken the editorship 
 of the "Republican," the paper which Dana had started 
 in Chicago. He saw Reid in New York. Reviving mem- 
 ories of their days in Washington, when one was in the 
 White House and the other was in the press gallery, 
 they drifted into the subject of Hay's future. He had 
 already some irons in the fire. There was the possibility 
 of work with Nicolay and he had received some over- 
 tures from the "Times" in New York. At the moment 
 of his meeting with Reid there was talk in The Tribune 
 office of changing the Paris correspondent of the paper, 
 and when they parted, his projects still in a nebulous 
 state. Hay kept this fact in mind. He went on to Chi- 
 cago, and presently wrote to Reid that he had not found 
 there the elements of stability he expected. Nicolay 
 was doing his best, but he was making a losing fight 
 against inexorable figures. Hay then proceeded to glance 
 at the possibilities of Paris. He was not unwilhng to go 
 there as The Tribune's representative, and wondered 
 what the wage would be. The idea of Hay, launched 
 and perhaps kept going indefinitely as a newspaper man 
 in Paris, intrigues the fancy. How superbly well he 
 would have done the work — and how diff"erent a number 
 of other things would have been ! The decision was in 
 Reid's hands. He was always a stanch friend of Hay, 
 
1 62 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 true in affection and in service, but I don't suppose he 
 was ever kinder, or exercised a more telling influence 
 upon Hay's life, than when he replied to him in this 
 fashion : 
 
 New York, 
 
 , , , - ., September 21st, 1870. 
 
 My dear Mr. Hay: ^ 
 
 I am sorry to hear the ill news about Nicolay. It has also reached 
 me from other sources and has indeed a more serious look than I at 
 first supposed; nothing less, it appears, than the suspension of the 
 paper has seemed to be impending. 
 
 Many thanks for the suggestion about the Paris place. Matters 
 are still a Httle uncertain but within a month I shall want to decide 
 definitely and shall think of you first. I would rather indeed have 
 you come to New York, and if you were not a fellow of such diplo- 
 matically extravagant habits as to be beyond the reach of our mod- 
 est salaries I should try to tempt you. We have been paying Cook 
 $1000 a year in gold for a weekly letter. When I directed him to 
 write more frequently I promised him, I think, $20 per letter in gold. 
 If you should go there for us I think I could make the terms one half 
 better, possibly even more, though of the last I am doubtful. I 
 should quite like to have you there on many accounts, though if 
 you will permit me the freedom of saying so, I doubt whether it 
 would be really so good for you, in case you have definitely deter- 
 mined on journalism, as steady work here or in some large city on a 
 leading newspaper and on the magazines. A pleasant note from 
 Howells on another matter makes cordial mention of you. 
 
 Faithfully yours, „, _ 
 
 •^ -^ Whitelaw Reid. 
 
 This was precisely the letter that Hay needed. The 
 Paris place was not refused and his ambition was stirred 
 in the right direction. He took Reid's advice, which 
 was the more welcome because, as he now wrote from 
 Chicago, the "Republican" was hopelessly water-logged. 
 He journeyed back to New York, accepted a post on the 
 editorial staff" of The Tribune, groomed himself for the 
 work by studying the files for the preceding three or four 
 years, and with his characteristic aplomb soon fitted him- 
 self into his niche. Reid appointed him without consult- 
 ing Greeley. The latter, in fact, had never thought well 
 
AN EDITOR'S METHODS 163 
 
 of Hay since his action at the so-called Niagara Falls 
 Peace Conference. When, within two or three weeks 
 after the appointment, he heard of it, he said it was a 
 mistake, and assured Reid that it could not last long. 
 Shortly afterward he asked who had written an editorial 
 which he particularly admired, and when told that Hay 
 was the author he could hardly believe it. A little later 
 he picked out another editorial for praise, and, on learn- 
 ing that it was also written by the man whose failure he 
 had predicted, he broke out into a generous encomium. 
 I have taken these notes on Hay's joining the staff 
 from a reminiscence of Reid's. In it he also recalls the 
 facts relating to his friend's early poems. The first 
 of them to be printed was "Little Breeches." Hay 
 handed it to Reid over the table when they were dining 
 together one evening at the Union League Club, and 
 seemed surprised when, after reading it, Reid put it in 
 his pocket, saying that he should print it conspicuously 
 in a day or two in The Tribune. He shook his head 
 incredulously and said: "You wouldn't dare to." It was 
 duly printed, and the evening of the day of its appear- 
 ance, riding up-town in a horse-car. Hay had the satis- 
 faction of seeing a man whom he did not know take it 
 out of his pocket and read it to a neighbor on the car, 
 and then found that several others on the car had also 
 read it, and were talking about it. Within a week or 
 two he wrote the next of the series, "Jim Bludso," but 
 Reid handed it back, observing that the last stanza 
 wasn't worthy of the rest of it, and that a far more 
 effective ending could be made. Hay wrote another, 
 which Reid handed back again, a day or two later, 
 saying it could still be improved upon and suggesting 
 that the poem ought to be wound up with a sort of epi- 
 grammatic snap. The third version, finished the next 
 day or the day after, is the one which then appeared in 
 
i64 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 The Tribune and made an instantaneous success, there 
 and throughout the country. The manuscript, with 
 Hay's original ending of the poem and a note in his 
 handwriting at the bottom, explaining the change, Reid 
 had bound into his copy of the first edition. Hay was 
 not as pleased with his triumph as might have been 
 expected. He thought a good deal more of his book on 
 Spain, and it became a positive torture to him to be con- 
 stantly referred to, not as the author of "Castilian Days," 
 but as the author of the "Pike County Ballads." Fre- 
 quently, in after years, when he and Reid met, he would 
 ask: "Shall I never be able to shake off the cursed repu- 
 tation of those youthful follies?" 
 
 Apart from his verses. Hay rarely strayed from the 
 editorial page. Once he did so, on a lurid occasion. 
 Reid sent him to "clean up" the news of the Chicago 
 fire. But that was his sole reportorial excursion. His 
 regular function was to comment on public affairs. He 
 was a good writer, and, after Reid's heart, a hard hitter, 
 with an inestimably deft touch. One of the legends long 
 surviving in The Tribune office describes him as rising 
 gleefully from a leader on European politics and exclaim- 
 ing: " I've been taking another hack at them kings. There 
 will be wailing and gnashing of teeth in royal palaces 
 to-morrow." He particularly excelled in the castigation 
 of Napoleon III, for whom he cherished an unquenchable 
 loathing. He used to tell, also, of an editorial he had 
 written on Gustave Dore, so ferocious in its candor that 
 he was a little surprised at its getting past Reid's critical 
 eye. Reid was of great service to him in the develop- 
 ment of his gifts as a writer. There was a difference of 
 but one year between their ages, but Reid's rich profes- 
 sional experience made him a monitor no less respected 
 than Greeley himself. Their friend John Bigelow wrote 
 to Reid from Berlin: "The only thing about which Hay 
 
AN EDITOR'S METHODS 165 
 
 and I ever differed seriously, I believe, was in regard to 
 the availability of his talents for journalism. I expect 
 now to have my opinion vindicated. You must not 
 work Hay too hard at first, but leave him pretty much 
 to the perverse impulses of his naturally depraved nature. 
 He will not abuse your forbearance, but in that way his 
 genius will find the most convenient door through which 
 to communicate with The Tribune's world," Reid's 
 tutelage was immediately successful. "I have never 
 seen a more brilliant beginning," he replied to Bigelow, 
 "and it is an immense comfort to have him with me." 
 And in another letter: "His only danger is from a desire 
 to do too much, against which I constantly warn him. 
 He doesn't ring the bell every time — no marksman can 
 — but I know no writer on any newspaper in the country 
 who displays greater versatility and in the main writes 
 more charmingly." It is pleasant to cite with reference 
 to Hay one of those surprise letters which, as I have 
 already shown, Reid liked to indite: 
 
 New York, 
 
 T. , IT December 3rd, 1870. 
 
 My dear Hay: ^ ' 
 
 I have a fancy that hereafter your Saturday cheques will have a 
 look more satisfactory to us if we have on them the figures d^ instead 
 of 50, and have directed that little arithmetical emendation. Your 
 work thus far has been exceedingly valuable, and I have seen now 
 enough of your capacity in sudden emergencies and in a wide scope 
 to be ready to repeat the assurance which I gave you at the begin- 
 ning, that journalism is sure to prove your true field. More famil- 
 iarity with Tribune ways and dropped or unknown links in New 
 York politics, will soon make you still more valuable, and I hope 
 that so long as I remain on The Tribune, at least, you will add to 
 my comfort as well as strength by feeling it to be your home also. 
 With the heartiest good wishes, I am always. 
 
 Faithfully yours, ,,, „ 
 
 Whitelaw Reid.. 
 
 This was part of a holiday treat. Eight other letters 
 of similar import were sent out to Tribune men that 
 
i66 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 day. But Hay's came first, and, I think, meant most to 
 Reid, for in a few weeks of New York intercourse the 
 two had come to know one another better than in the 
 Washington days back in 1862. They were together in 
 the office and out of it. At the end of the afternoon's 
 work they used to walk up-town to the Italian restaurant 
 on Third Avenue, above Cooper Institute, known as 
 The Brigands, where they often dined. They met in 
 society, at the clubs, at the theatre, everywhere. Notes 
 like the following would be dropped on Reid's desk: 
 
 We ought to see the Black Crook before it stops. Send the boy 
 for two tickets (good ones) and we will dine together chez le Frencby 
 and go. ^^^ 
 
 And sometimes the buoyant young leader writer would 
 play truant, disarming his mentor after this fashion: 
 
 Farewell, I hear a voice you cannot see. It is at Newburgh. I 
 
 will meet you at the Century tomorrow at a ghastly late hour, very 
 
 drunk. For tonight the G. M. O. [the Great Moral Organ] will 
 
 worry along without ■, „ 
 
 J. rl. 
 
 Decidedly there was comfort and strength in the aid 
 and companionship of the future secretary of state, all 
 youthful high spirits, jokes and fun. And there were 
 similarly helpful friends outside the office — George Wil- 
 liam Curtis, letting him know that his brother was going 
 out to Des Moines to photograph an eclipse and could 
 give him a good report; Samuel J. Tilden, personally 
 interesting himself in a matter of legal documents to be 
 furnished to the press, and calhng to explain an unfor- 
 tunate delay in one notable case; and, in Boston, the 
 younger Charles Francis Adams. The last-mentioned 
 was no lover of the newspapers of his own city. Sending 
 an editorial on the subject, he writes: "The present 
 condition of the Boston press is a disgrace to journalism 
 
AN EDITOR'S METHODS 167 
 
 and I want to make them feel it. A great raid is going 
 on upon the State treasury and every single paper in this 
 city is either in the pay or under the influence of the 
 raiders." The Tribune was his hope and reliance in all 
 serious matters. "It does not do to fire one's heaviest 
 guns every day, and The Tribune I keep, as it were, a 
 peculiarly heavy cudgel against an emergency." He 
 was a frequent contributor on railway subjects, but 
 balked at tackling some others: 
 
 Boston, 
 Dear Sm: ^^^'""^'^ "^th. 187K 
 
 Yours of the 22nd came to hand this A.M. and rather took away 
 my breath. I'm not aware of knowing anything more about the 
 Alabama Claims than about Chinese metaphysics; — if you like I'll 
 read up in the Encyclopaedia under the several heads of "Alabama" 
 and "Claims" and combine my information. I'm much obliged for 
 the chance but there really are bounds to my impudence. 
 
 Yours truly, /^ t- a t 
 
 •^ C. F. Adams, Jr. 
 
 It was no use assuming that, because of the elder 
 Adams's diplomatic relation in London to the events of 
 the Civil War, his son might fairly be expected to have 
 some inspiration on the subject. "Really," he remarks, 
 in another letter, "who was Alabama? and what did he 
 claim?" 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 THE FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR 
 
 Delane, of the London "Times," had a humorous 
 designation for the routine process of instructing his 
 staff as to what was needed for the next issue. He 
 called it "feeding his ravens." Reid had a flock to feed 
 not only at home but abroad. Smalley, doing great 
 work himself in London, was also in general charge of a 
 small but efficient Continental force. In Paris he relied 
 upon William H. Huntington, whom Reid once described 
 to me as "wayward, fascinating, and brilliant." He was 
 so clever that Reid was well content to bear the trouble 
 of having his letters "translated from Carlylese into 
 English." About the time of Reid's accession to the 
 managing editorship Huntington was succeeded by Clar- 
 ence Cook, previously and at a later date the art critic 
 of the paper, but in due course he was restored to his 
 post. Hay thought him the right man for the place even 
 when he wanted it himself. Joseph L. Hance, secretary 
 of legation under Bancroft at Berlin, wrote from that 
 capital, M. Chamerauzan from Spain, Mr. W. J. Still- 
 man from Greece, and Madame Mario — in close relations 
 with Garibaldi — from Italy. More or less regular con- 
 nections with Constantinople and Vienna were kept up, 
 and the paper had some representation in St. Petersburg. 
 
 News came from all these sources, light on current 
 incidents, but Reid, who kept the whole field in view, 
 and, through Smalley, was constantly spurring his cor- 
 respondents to fresh eff^ort, was particularly concerned 
 with the play of European ideas. It was a happy period 
 
 i68 
 
THE FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR 169 
 
 for the foreign emissary of an American newspaper. He 
 would write not only reports but studies, and since he 
 used the leisurely mails he could take time to give his 
 lucubrations a literary polish. Comment, when it rose 
 to a certain plane, was quite as important as news. The 
 kind of thing that was swept into Smalley's net is well 
 exemplified here: 
 
 London, 
 
 AT D June 25th, 1870. 
 
 My dear Reid: ^ ' ' 
 
 You know Tourgenieff as a very famous Russian novelist whose 
 novels are always translated into French, etc. Our Russian corre- 
 spondent, who has the remarkable peculiarity of knowing Russian 
 well, sends me this translation of T's account of the last night and 
 execution of Troppmann, just published in St. Petersburg. A Ger- 
 man translation will appear in July at Berlin. It is, says our corre- 
 spondent, the strongest kind of an indirect argument against capital 
 punishment, and, as such, good Tribune matter. 
 
 Faithfully yours, ^ iir c 
 
 George W. smalley. 
 
 Good Tribune matter was always drifting in from 
 Europe in this way. Much of it was casual, started 
 upon its path by the fame of the paper and the instinct 
 of writers for a good vehicle. More of it was the fruit 
 of foresight and organization. This proved emphati- 
 cally the case when, with Smalley's stalwart co-operation, 
 Reid brought off his first great cowp in The Tribune, the 
 publication of reports of the Franco-Prussian War — and 
 especially of Sedan — in advance of all his contemporaries, 
 using the cable as it had never before been used for the 
 transmission of news. As Smalley has recorded in his 
 "Anglo-American Memories," this worked nothing less 
 than a revolution in journalism. To a contributor at 
 home Reid once stated his requirements in an epigram 
 which I fancy no other editorial master of news has ever 
 improved upon: "Matter for a paper hke The Tribune 
 generally consists of things which could not have been 
 printed yesterday and must be printed tomorrow." 
 
170 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 That was the standard which he resolved to maintain in 
 the paper's treatment of the war in Europe, an under- 
 taking in which the energy he had displayed at Shiloh 
 and Gettysburg was reinforced by the consciousness of 
 having far better practical resources at his command. 
 
 Dana had had the glittering inspiration to engage 
 "Bull Run" Russell, and though, as events proved. The 
 Tribune was comfortably to beat the London "Times," 
 the announcement of this alliance was at the moment 
 disconcerting. The "Herald," too, caused him some 
 nervousness. His first step was to cable instructions to 
 Smalley, bidding him to arrange at once for full de- 
 spatches from London, Paris, and Berlin. He took pains 
 at the same time to see Cyrus Field, making sure that 
 the machinery in the telegraph-ofFice would be adjusted 
 to the smoothest and swiftest possible handling of Trib- 
 une business, and then he followed up his messages to 
 Smalley with this letter: 
 
 New York, 
 
 T,. o July 20th, 1870. 
 
 My dear Smalley: 
 
 I think it desirable that we should be represented by first class 
 correspondents with both armies, and that in case of any necessity 
 for these correspondents to leave with accounts of battles or the 
 like we should be prepared promptly to fill their places or to give 
 them as much aid as they may require. I am by no means certain 
 that it is good policy either for The Tribune or for you that you 
 should be retained in London discharging functions which after the 
 first organization is complete cannot amount to very much more 
 than those of a telegraphic agent. On this point, however, I am 
 disposed for the present to defer largely to your judgment. If we 
 had you in the field I should be willing to put your letters and de- 
 spatches against those of Russell. Possibly if you have thoroughly 
 good men for the two armies we may still be able to beat the "Sun," 
 though I shall feel less confidence about it. 
 
 We have had something like forty or fifty applications here within 
 the last four days from young men generally without reputation or 
 capacity to go abroad as war correspondents. I have declined all 
 of them, but may possibly send one or two with letters to you dur- 
 ing the ensuing week. 
 
THE FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR 171 
 
 For the next two months, if the war should last so long, remember 
 that we look to you to keep us ahead of any other paper in New 
 York on war news, and place no limitation upon your expenditures 
 save that in case they should seem likely to reach extraordinary 
 amounts you should keep us regularly and early advised of them. 
 
 I see that you, like the rest of us here, are pursued by the gnats. 
 Here is one which has just come in to me from the Boston "Post." 
 If you saw all the New York papers you would learn that your char- 
 acter as here shown is that of an angel of hght compared with the 
 unfortunate presentment of 
 
 Faithfully yours, ,,, ^^ 
 
 ■^ ■' Whitelaw Reid. 
 
 P. S. 
 
 - Since the above was written I have heard some things which make 
 me more than ever anxious about our despatches. Thus far the 
 "Herald" has had practically nothing, but I am inclined to suspect 
 that they are lying back for a grand coup. The first battle will 
 doubtless be the occasion for the sharpest competition. If we can 
 make a hit on that it will be of incalculable advantage to us, both 
 for the actual news and as an advertisement. If we can give a com- 
 plete account of the first battle in advance of everybody else we 
 shall make The Tribune the recognized authority on foreign news. 
 But with the "Herald" lies our greatest danger. If they see a 
 chance to get ahead they will willingly spend $50,000. in doing it. 
 
 If you look closely at Dana's correspondence with Russell, which 
 I enclose, you may perhaps put a difi'erent interpretation upon it 
 from that which I at first gave it. It looks to me as if he had punc- 
 tuated it wrong and purposely. Russell's answer may be read in 
 this way — " I will save you if I go to the field." At any rate I have 
 very little fear of his doing anything to embarrass us. Russell's 
 strong point never was the collection of news, nor do I believe that 
 in a telegraphic despatch he can display any of the excellences as a 
 descriptive writer to which his whole reputation is due. 
 
 His surmise came true. There must alw^ays have been 
 a special relish for him in the oft-quoted passage from 
 "Friendship's Garland" in which Arnold paid his com- 
 pliments to Russell at Versailles: "Bismarck at his horse's 
 head, the Crown Prince holding his stirrup, and the old 
 King of Prussia hoisting Russell into the saddle." It 
 was a perfectly lovely picture — but only a pretty pen- 
 dant to the cold, hard fact that the "Tim^s" man con- 
 firmed Reid's belief that he would not, after all, "do 
 
172 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 anything to embarrass us." Smalley played up in a 
 manner worthy of his record at Antietam. He faced 
 enormous difficulties and lived in a fever of anxiety lest 
 his correspondents should fail him. "The greatest mis- 
 ery in this world," he wailed, "is having to depend on 
 other men." But he was heartened by the confidence 
 breathing through the incessantly cabled orders of his 
 chief, and with extraordinary rapidity he got a staff into 
 the field. Holt White, formerly of the "Pall Mall Ga- 
 zette," with no pass but trusting adventurously to luck, 
 headed for Metz, with orders to follow the army. He 
 got a letter through to Smalley within a few days. 
 Chamerauzan looked after the situation in Paris. A 
 member of the staff of "Figaro," who was going as an 
 officer in the army to Cherbourg, was half promised as 
 a contributor. Another foreigner ("his name was Den- 
 nis, and we'll let it stay so"), started to join Bazaine's 
 staff, but, for reasons of his own, failed to get there. 
 "From a private source not mentionable," Smalley re- 
 ported, "I have promise of letters direct from French 
 Headquarters, exclusive for us. For these I have off"ered 
 so high a price that I have some faith in their coming." 
 On the German side, Hance, The Tribune's regular Berlin 
 man, was to go with Prussian Headquarters; he had 
 orders to engage a second correspondent before he left, 
 and from this side, also, there promised to come occa- 
 sional despatches from Sir Charles Dilke. Other engage- 
 ments were soon made, and on top of them all Smalley 
 arranged with the London "Daily News" an interchange 
 of all war news, a scheme which would seem common- 
 place to-day, but which was then promoted only by 
 heroic effort. It doubled The Tribune's chances of being 
 ahead of its New York rivals in great events, and as the 
 effects of the partnership developed they amply proved 
 the wisdom of the plan. On the other hand, it was 
 
THE FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR 173 
 
 always a matter of pride with Reid and Smalley that the 
 initiative was The Tribune's, and that their own men 
 were responsible for the greatest achievements in the 
 campaign. It was American energy and foresight that 
 turned this war into a landmark in the history of news- 
 paper correspondence. 
 
 The Tribune's men at the front had instructions to 
 send their reports to London by telegraph; when that 
 was not possible they were to use special couriers, and 
 in the case of a great battle they were to come straight 
 to England themselves. A man was sent to Luxembourg 
 to organize facilities there for the transmission of de- 
 spatches by wire. Smalley waited with agonizing im- 
 patience for tidings wherewith to load the cable to New 
 York. " It is roasting on a slow fire," he wrote to Reid. 
 But the first actions of the war were adequately and 
 even sensationally covered. The despatch on Spicheren 
 which Holt White telegraphed — about a column in length 
 — ^was so remarkable as coming by that process that the 
 "Daily News" had to be shown the telegraph forms be- 
 fore they could quite believe in it. With Gravelotte 
 The Tribune completely astounded the journalistic scep- 
 tics. Smalley's letter must tell the story: 
 
 London, 
 
 ,, „ August 25th, 1870. 
 
 My dear Reid: ^ ;> > / 
 
 The account of Gravelotte telegraphed you 23rd and about which 
 
 you ask was written by a correspondent present on the field, and 
 
 who came straight to London, and when he reached London was 
 
 certainly the only man in England who had seen that fight. He 
 
 wrote his account here, in the "Daily News" office. I sat beside 
 
 him, took his slips as fast as written, copying and in the last half 
 
 considerably rewriting and extending his letter — not going outside 
 
 his facts, of course. It will not do to say — at any rate yet — even 
 
 to you, who was the author, nor dare I explain the circumstances 
 
 which put you in possession of the account. When the excitement 
 
 has a little died away, I may be able to tell you the history of this 
 
174 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 coup.* All I can say now is that it cost a lot of money. The addi- 
 tional particulars sent you same day were from Hance, and it was 
 he who was captured by the French, and really had a rough time 
 of it and was unable either to get his letter through so promptly as 
 he would have done. The account first telegraphed you (Sunday 
 night, August 22nd,) was White's, by telegraph from Saarbruck. 
 And his long account, which he unaccountably trusted to the post, 
 arrived in pieces yesterday and today. It is better in many re- 
 spects than any other, more precise and mihtary by far than the 
 long one I telegraphed you but less picturesque. Judge our difficul- 
 ties and successes by the fact that this delayed account is the fullest 
 —and excepting one brief letter in "Pall Mall Gazette" — the only 
 one even yet received in London, excepting also of course what has 
 been telegraphed you and printed following days in "Daily News." 
 The "Daily News" has beaten every London journal out of sight. 
 I won't say how much of their success is due to us, but they frankly 
 acknowledge the full extent of their obligation. That the arrange- 
 ment has been helpful to us you already know. Our telegrams from 
 Saarbruck and Luxembourg made far more impression than the 
 detailed account, because they were telegrams. 
 
 Faithfully yours, „ at? o 
 
 George W. smalley. 
 
 There was good reading for Smalley in the London 
 papers at that time. The "Spectator," commenting on 
 White's telegram from Saarbruck, remarked: "The cor- 
 respondent stood near the King and was worthy of his 
 good fortune. No more effective bird's eye view of a 
 great battle was probably ever written by a civilian, as 
 we take the correspondent to be." This telegram, as 
 disclosed by Smalley's letter and by the files of The 
 Tribune, was only one of several communications on 
 Gravelotte to the paper. The fulness as well as the 
 swiftness of the work done told heavily in its resounding 
 success. But the rather complicated nature of that work, 
 the diverse authorship involved, and, as we have seen, 
 the little mystery enveloping one of the despatches, all 
 made it a little easier for the inevitable commentator to 
 arise in due course for the purpose of restating the his- 
 tory of the affair. Some ten years later it seemed worth 
 
 *The late Moncure D. Conway was the author. 
 
THE FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR 175 
 
 while for The Tribune to affirm once more the priority of 
 its news from Gravelotte. It is interesting to record 
 that the editorial in which it did so, on December 19th, 
 1880, was written by Archibald Forbes, then on a lecture 
 tour in the United States. He had views on the jour- 
 nalistic aspects of the Franco-Prussian \^^ar, and erro- 
 neous ideas on certain matters of fact, which led Smalley 
 to the making of some tart comments when the noted 
 correspondent published his "Memories," but he was 
 both sound and sympathetic in his conception of The 
 Tribune's famous coup. He had himself witnessed the 
 battle and knew his ground. I need not cite his article, 
 for its details are no longer necessary, but I may borrow 
 a few words from the covering letter he wrote to Reid: 
 "The little question about the priority of the Gravelotte 
 despatch afforded a point on which The Tribune has the 
 plainest grounds and the strongest provocation to assert 
 itself directly in defence of its character for promptitude 
 in war news. You have the fairest opportunity for a 
 little legitimate swagger on this point without being un- 
 duly aggressive, seeing that plain facts are on your side. 
 I have taken the pains to write a httle article embodying 
 the facts." The facts leave the paper with its glory 
 undimmed. 
 
 The war was so short that Smalley had really very 
 little of that roasting on a slow fire against which he 
 raged. Coup followed coup, with ineffable speed. The 
 excitement of Gravelotte had hardly died down when he 
 sent a despatch to Reid giving warning of the tran- 
 scendent exploit of the campaign. "Correspondent will 
 arrive London this evening," it ran, "with account bat- 
 tle of Sedan. Shall I telegraph tonight or hold back 
 for Monday's paper?" Imagine Reid's holding back! 
 Smalley has in a book of his own told how the despatch 
 was written and put instantly on the cable. I shall not 
 
176 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 attempt to summarize his dramatic narrative. More to 
 the purpose, indeed, is his report to his chief, which 
 gives, if anything, a fresher because more immediate 
 impression. He wrote: 
 
 London, 
 
 , , r. September 8th, 1870. 
 
 My dear Reid: 
 
 I was very much gratified by your despatch received this morn- 
 ing, sending your congratulations and thanks and those of The 
 Tribune on our successes. A great share of your recognition belongs 
 to two or three men by whom we have been so splendidly served. 
 The account of Sedan telegraphed Saturday night was by Holt 
 White. He left the field against the remonstrances of his friends 
 on the Prussian staff, and rode across country at the risk of his life 
 through three armies, (Prussian, remnants of the French, disorgan- 
 ized and more dangerous than all, and the Belgians who guarded 
 the frontier) travelled night and day, and reached London 5 P.M. 
 Saturday, only a few hours later than the official telegraphic news of 
 surrender, which was the first, half starved and exhausted. I took 
 him to dine, then set him down to his work here in the office, send- 
 ing every 6 or 8 sheets to the telegraph, 3 miles from here, and he 
 finished at half past three Sunday morning. To facilitate transmis- 
 sion I copied the whole, sheet by sheet, the clerks being so used to 
 my writing that in a long despatch they reckon it makes 2 or 3 hours 
 difference in getting it off. Part of this he gave to the "Pall Mall 
 Gazette" for Monday afternoon, he being formerly, in Paris, and 
 still partly now, their man. Nothing else was printed in London 
 (as I could not give this to the "Daily News") till Tuesday morning. 
 
 The French account telegraphed you Tuesday was by Mejanel, 
 about whom I have before written you. He stuck to Mac Mahon 
 after every other correspondent had been driven off, and after being 
 shut up in Sedan got away, got a Prussian endorsement on his French 
 pass, and came straight to London. The "Daily News" printed 
 simultaneously with you. Nothing else from the French side even 
 yet. 
 
 The detailed account sent Monday night of interview between 
 Emperor and Bismarck was Skinner's, "Daily News." The Bis- 
 marck conversation sent Sunday night and the battle of Beaumont 
 with it were White's. White and Mejanel were our own men. 
 
 I should not be sorry if the war ended here. The last week has 
 been hardest of all. I have not been home once, and for three suc- 
 cessive nights was not in bed. The siege of Paris will make it more 
 difficult than ever to get news through. I have couriers waiting 
 
THE FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR 177 
 
 both here and there and until the investment is absolutely complete 
 
 shall hope to get letters through after the mail and wires are done. 
 
 Faithfully yours, „ _ 
 
 George W. Smalley. 
 
 How complete the triumph of The Tribune was ap- 
 pears from a later letter of Smalley's exposing the falsity 
 of certain despatches in one of the rival papers, and cast- 
 ing the same aspersions upon another. The particular 
 forgery to which he addressed himself was one relating 
 to the capitulation of Metz. He says of it : 
 
 London, 
 
 ,^ D November 15th, 1870. 
 
 My dear Keid: ^ ' 
 
 This instance is the worst because Metz was a great point, and 
 there has been nothing done for us more promptly than our account. 
 The surrender took place Saturday afternoon, our correspondent, 
 MuIIer, spent the afternoon in the town — it was a great feat to get 
 in — got to Esch, in Luxembourg, early Sunday morning, and Mon- 
 day morning his despatch was printed in The Tribune, which ought 
 to have the credit of it. Nothing in London has made so much sen- 
 sation as our despatch in the "News," which the "Times" copied 
 next day, and which was three days ahead of everything else. I 
 think it deserves to rank with Gravelotte and Sedan, and beats both 
 in promptitude. It might have been longer but MuIIer is a new 
 hand and was nervous about using the telegraph freely. 
 
 Faithfully yours, „ ^^r c- 
 
 •' "^ George W. Smalley. 
 
 Reid was not content with cabling his thanks to 
 Smalley. When the treaty of peace was in sight he cele- 
 brated the occasion by bringing before The Tribune's 
 board of trustees, and carrying, a resolution to send the 
 paper's London correspondent a special honorarium in 
 recognition of his masterly services during the war. 
 They were both inordinately glad when the war was 
 ended. It had been a heavy strain at each end of the 
 wire. Also, it had been an investment of heroic propor- 
 tions. The cable tolls, amounting at some crises to as 
 much as four thousand dollars a day, were at that time 
 
178 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 enough to terrify an editor. Reid never blenched and 
 Greeley backed up his policy. To Curtis Guild, who 
 had been noticing in his own paper the magnificent 
 results achieved at the very opening of the war, Reid 
 wrote: "The Tribune is the only paper which has thus 
 far printed a line of special news from either of the 
 armies or from either of the leading capitals during the 
 present European troubles. We have a thoroughly 
 organized corps of correspondents with each army and 
 in the leading capitals. You may perhaps gather some 
 idea of the expenditures we are making in this direc- 
 tion from the simple statement that the mere cable tolls 
 on my despatches to our London correspondent, in- 
 structing him as to the organization of this force, cost 
 us over I200 in gold for the first two days." Those de- 
 spatches of his in the first two days, and the others that 
 steadily followed, were worth the money. He fulfilled his 
 ambition to make The Tribune "the recognized authority 
 on foreign news." It was from one of the most brilliant 
 of modern historians, prejudiced, if anything, against 
 journahstic procedure, that the best tribute to his suc- 
 cess was ultimately to come. When Kinglake was 
 writing his "Invasion" he introduced a highly critical 
 chapter on the newspaper correspondents in the Crimea 
 and their relation to "the demeanour of our people" in 
 the matter of that war. Appending a foot-note, he said: 
 "In justice toward the great nation which I hke to call 
 'English,' and sometimes refuse to call 'foreign,* I ought, 
 perhaps, to acknowledge that the extraordinary tri- 
 umphs of European journalism at the time of the Franco- 
 Prussian War of 1870-71 were due, in no slight degree, 
 to the vigor, the sagacity, and the enterprise that were 
 brought to bear on the objects from the other side of 
 the Atlantic. The success of that 'partnership for the 
 purpose of war news' which had been formed between 
 
THE FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR 179 
 
 one of our London newspapers and the New York Trib- 
 une was an era in the journalism of Europe, though not 
 in that of the United States, where the advance had an 
 older date, deriving from their great civil war." 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 GRANT AND SAN DOMINGO 
 
 I have sketched Reid In his relations with Greeley and 
 others closely allied in the making of The Tribune. As 
 I have also indicated, he sought contributors everywhere. 
 Service outside the staff was almost as important to him 
 as service within it. One of the interesting episodes of 
 his treatment of the Franco-Prussian War is a brief cor- 
 respondence with Kossuth, from whom he tried to obtain 
 letters on aspects of European politics. It came to noth- 
 ing. The famous patriot preferred silently to watch 
 events from his exile in Turin, "Firm in my convic- 
 tions, and unfaltering in the hope of the ultimate realiza- 
 tion of my aspirations," he replied in his stately fashion, 
 "I reserve for action the remnant of forces which age, 
 public adversities, and the weight of dire domestic afflic- 
 tions may still have left me." It was characteristic of 
 Reid to make an effort to enlist the old lion, the idol of 
 his youth, and characteristic, too, was his rejection of 
 the aid offered, in substitute, by the younger Kossuth. 
 The article he submitted was not good enough. Senti- 
 ment could not sway Reid's editorial judgment. He 
 looked elsewhere, and found what he wanted. 
 
 He found it, thanks to the wide intercourse with all 
 sorts and conditions of men which has its origin in the 
 very nature of the journalistic profession. Much of the 
 best material that reaches an editor's desk is unofficial. 
 He records the history of his time with the greater fresh- 
 ness and truth in proportion to the number of "feelers" 
 that he has thrown out into the world at large. As his 
 influence waxes, so do his external sources of information 
 
 multiply. In the whispering-gallery which the press has 
 
 1 80 
 
GRANT AND SAN DOMINGO i8i 
 
 been called, he sits, the recipient of a thousand confi- 
 dences. When he is not weighing the statements of his 
 reporters, he is sifting the communications of friends and 
 acquaintances. Reid could not employ Kossuth, but by 
 good fortune he could at the very moment count upon 
 a really more serviceable observer, reporting to him in 
 private letters which, with the writer's consent, he freely 
 pillaged for his paper. This was John Bigelow, then in 
 Berlin. His status as an ex-diplomat put him in the 
 way of hearing a good deal of unpublished news. His 
 old experience as editor of the "Evening Post" made 
 him a judge of precisely what Reid would want to know. 
 Long versed in public affairs, not only knowing his 
 Europe but adding to a cosmopohtan flair for it the 
 humor and shrewdness of an essentially American point 
 of view, he made at once the delightfulest and most 
 helpful of oracles. 
 
 He had an aflFectionate regard for Reid, and wrote to 
 him as he might have talked to him through a long eve- 
 ning at the Century, lightly philosophizing events. He 
 gossiped, as he said himself, but it was the gossip of an 
 intellectual man of the world. His discursive, utterly 
 frank pages, written on the thinnest of old-fashioned thin 
 paper, voluminous, dogmatic, entertaining, were wel- 
 comed by Reid as so many bulletins from the zone just 
 outside the war, valuable to some extent on matters of 
 fact, but even more to be read as suggestive comment. 
 Here is part of one of these letters, written while the 
 future of Paris still hung in the balance, repeated sorties 
 beating in vain against the Prussian advance: 
 
 Berlin, 
 
 _, December 17th, 1870. 
 
 My dear Keid: 
 
 The war, I think, is rapidly drawing to a close. Trochu will make 
 
 one more desperate effort to cut his way with his army out of Paris 
 
 [there were three more before the capitulation] leaving the Parisians 
 
1 82 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 to their fate and to the Prussians. He is not likely to succeed, nor 
 very likely to survive the effort. If he is driven back the govern- 
 ment will probably try to escape in a balloon. If, however, they 
 remain it seems to be generally supposed that the people will compel 
 them to make peace before the expiration of the month of January. 
 They will not be permitted to capitulate and go out simply as pris- 
 oners. That I think I may say is pretty definitely resolved upon. 
 They must stay in Paris and abide their rat diet or fast in imitation 
 of our jury system, until they can agree to sign such a treaty as Ger- 
 many will accept. In preparation for that event this Government 
 is reducing to possession all the territory and fortresses that she 
 means to keep, providing them with German laws, officers and flags 
 and effacing as fast as possible all traces of French sovereignty. The 
 purpose of this is that when Trochu & Co. come to sign the treaty 
 they will not have to sign a document that alienates French terri- 
 tory but simply, in regard to territory, accept the status quo, leaving 
 with those who occasioned the loss, all responsibility for it. 
 
 By taking thus what they please in territory, the pecuniary in- 
 demnity will be proportionately less and of that Paris will be required 
 to pay up her share at once in money or paper and it is pretty well 
 understood that the loan negotiating in London by Morgan & Co. 
 will go more to Berhn than to Paris. In this way the balance to be 
 paid after the German army retires will be so much reduced that it 
 will not be worth the while of the rest of France to continue resis- 
 tance. It will find it in all respects most expedient to accept the 
 situation, kiss the rod and set to work and see if there is any form 
 of government that can suit them more than twenty years at a time. 
 
 Trochu wishes to avoid any participation in this treaty if he can 
 and will try in the course of the coming week to cut out. It is ex- 
 pected to result in a frightful carnage. The Germans are under the 
 impression that he will make his sortie in the direction of St. Denis 
 and are preparing for him. The world outside of Paris is so accus- 
 tomed to the defeat of the French and the success of the German 
 arms that no one seems to anticipate anything but disaster for 
 Trochu. I once had a fight with a cat shut up in a room from which 
 there was no escape for her and since then I have learned to beware 
 of desperate remedies. 
 
 You are already aware, I suppose, that Luxembourg has been 
 greased preparatory to being swallowed by Germany. The English 
 press is making a terrible ado about it but you are sure to be misled 
 if you pay any attention to the tone of the English press about 
 anything now occurring upon the Continent. All it reveals correctly 
 is the chagrin and discontent with which the Continental doings 
 inspire the ruling classes in England. You have not forgotten that 
 in 1867 France offered a big price to Holland for Luxembourg and 
 
GRANT AND SAN DOMINGO 183 
 
 Bismarck put his veto upon the negotiation at the peril of a war 
 with the Emperor. The King of Holland, who is a nasty creature 
 and over head and heels in debt, is now wishing to sell to Germany, 
 and the circular issued the other day is the first act of the comedy 
 which is being played for the entertainment of Europe while the 
 transaction is being negotiated. I hope Mr. Gladstone and the 
 "Times" will find this out in time "to retire in good order" for of 
 course after consenting or not dissenting from a sale to France they 
 cannot now object to a sale to Germany. 
 
 And speaking of Holland, I hear that Motley has been invited by 
 the Queen of Holland to take up his residence at the Hague in a 
 house which she has placed at his disposal. This is the greatest com- 
 pliment ever paid by a crowned head to any American, I beheve, 
 and quite reminds one of the days when Voltaire was the guest of 
 the great Frederick, Goethe the guest of the Duke of Weimar, and 
 some great mathematician whose name I forget made almanacs for 
 the Emperor of Austria. Holland has always proved a favorable 
 climate and country for the student, a country, says Henri Martin, 
 OM le temperature n' excite pas les sens, et laisse d l' esprit plus d' empire 
 sur lui-meme. Nor would it be too much for Holland to give Mot- 
 ley a handsome home for hfe for he has placed that country under 
 obligations which are without price. If Motley accepts the offer I 
 suppose he with it accepts Holland as his country for the future 
 and wishes to be regarded as no longer a candidate for the honors 
 of his native land. 
 
 His diplomatic career, though it has twice decorated him with 
 the crown of martyrdom, has scarcely been a successful one. He 
 hardly got on as well with Fish as he did with Seward, though it 
 was to be presumed that the Historian of the Dutch Republic would 
 have had no difficulty with our Dutch Secretary of State. Such 
 bad luck with two foreign posts so unlike as Vienna and London 
 may have set him thinking that he can be more useful in writing 
 history than in making it. But how will our Dutch Secretary hke 
 this implied rebuke from the Sovereign of his Dutch cousins? 
 
 Berlin is full of the most delightful people in the world outside 
 of New York, but is not gay in the technical sense this winter, as 
 you may suppose. There is scarce a family in all Germany that is 
 not mourning some near relative whose blood has gone to the pur- 
 chase of Alsace and Lorraine. The Queen does not go to the opera 
 or any other public places but the hospitals and the church. When 
 the King returns with his victorious army it is unlikely that this 
 will be materially changed. I shall be glad to hear from you when 
 you have time, if ever, to throw away upon a vagrant like myself. 
 
 Yours very truly, j^^^ Bigelow. 
 
1 84 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 All of Bigelow's letters in this period have a decidedly 
 Germanophile tinge. France was in everybody's bad 
 books then, when the sins of the Second Empire were 
 being visited upon the nation, and few commentators 
 had the patience to distinguish between the two. If 
 Bigelow could have foreseen the manifestations of "Ger- 
 man frightfulness " in the war begun with the violation 
 of Belgian neutrality in 19 14, I dare say his meditations 
 in Berlin on "the most delightful people in the world" 
 might have been a little different. The judgments and 
 impressions he sent to Reid were not by any means all 
 confirmed by the event. But they were very readable 
 and apposite, excellent raw material for "copy," and 
 sometimes they cut to the bone. He was, for example, 
 profoundly convinced that Prussia's success in the war 
 marked only the beginning of an era of unrest. Writing 
 early in 1871 he says: "This I think is quite certain, that 
 whenever France makes peace with Germany and upon 
 whatever terms, Europe will not disarm but on the con- 
 trary will be more likely to increase its military strength 
 in every direction. It is not generally known, I think, 
 that Austria was all armed and prepared to attack Prus- 
 sia at the commencement of this war and only waited 
 some reverses to the Prussian arms which everyone here 
 as well as elsewhere expected from the want of prepara- 
 tion of the Prussians, to march to Berlin. The battle of 
 Woerth put such a different face upon the matter that 
 within a week from that battle Russia, till then uncom- 
 mitted to either of her neighbors, sent a notice to Aus- 
 tria that if she attacked Prussia she might expect to be 
 attacked by Russia in turn. That threat has kept Aus- 
 tria quiet; that and nothing else. As soon as this war 
 is over Bismarck will come to some understanding with 
 Austria, either as he has done with France, by whipping 
 her, or by such a convention as will protect the Germans 
 
GRANT AND SAN DOMINGO 185 
 
 from such menaces as that which hung over them pre- 
 vious to the battle of Woerth." 
 
 Returning to the subject a few days later, he felt even 
 surer of an increase rather than a reduction of Euro- 
 pean armaments. "England is preparing to reorganize 
 her army upon the German basis to some extent," he 
 wrote, "and in her old age aspires to be a military na- 
 tion. Russia has been making and continues to make 
 enormous military preparations. While the present Em- 
 peror lives her relations with Prussia are likely to be 
 friendly, at the same time there is a very formidable 
 anti-German party in Russia. France will at first be 
 disposed to enter into any combination that will promise 
 her the best chances for the recovery of her Rhenish 
 provinces about to be taken from her, and revenge." In 
 a postscript written a few days afterward he says: "I 
 learned last evening through a member of the Russian 
 legation that Russia has determined to adopt the Ger- 
 man military system, universal military education and 
 compulsory service. The decree has not yet been pro- 
 mulgated but it may be expected any day. I also gath- 
 ered from a conversation with the head of the English 
 legation here that England is trying to bring about an 
 alliance between Austria and Prussia to resist Russia." 
 The alignments he suggests have hardly been ratified by 
 history. In their insistence upon the bad prospects for 
 European harmony, however, these casual reflections of 
 more than forty years ago possess, in the light of very 
 recent events, an almost startling aptness. And some- 
 times the prophetic note is without flaw. Witness the 
 foresight in this passage from a letter of February 15th, 
 1871: 
 
 I enclose by this mail a pamphlet just printed for some members 
 of Parliament but not yet published, explaining the military organi- 
 zation of Germany. The author is a young English gentleman who 
 
i86 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 was educated in Germany and had reached the rank of lieutenant 
 in the German army. At the commencement of the war he was 
 incapacitated for active service by a fall from his horse and has at 
 the suggestion of his friends consecrated a portion of his involuntary 
 leisure to the enlightenment of the public in regard to the construc- 
 tion of the terrible machine which has in a few short months scat- 
 tered to the winds the chivalry of France. You will nowhere else 
 find the same information collected in so complete and compact a 
 form and as the United States by her system of comparatively general 
 if not universal education is better prepared than any other nation 
 to profit by this example of Germany, and from the popular char- 
 acter of our government stands more in need of the education and 
 training it implies, you can't begin too soon to study up the ques- 
 tion. If I were the conductor of a public journal in America I 
 should set to work at once to educate our people up to the idea of 
 making a knowledge of the arts of war a part of every young man's 
 education as in Switzerland, which I hke better than the German 
 system because the military knowledge is there acquired with other 
 knowledge at school in hours usually devoted to recreation and 
 exercise, and therefore without any loss of time, whereas in Ger- 
 many it is usually acquired during an interruption of school or 
 professional training. 
 
 Very suggestive, too, is another of his Berlin com- 
 ments, apropos of Bismarck's seeking to snub England 
 by asking her to send a minister, instead of an ambassa- 
 dor, to the German capital. "England in general and 
 Lord Loftus [then ambassador] in particular are particu- 
 larly offensive to this court." The request, as we know, 
 was withdrawn — after its malicious purpose had been 
 served. The world knows, also, with what hidden energy 
 the venomous sentiment behind it persisted. 
 
 The war in France has diverted us from the ordinary 
 current of Reid's activity. When he launched Smalley 
 upon the European campaign he remarked to him that 
 nothing was going on in this country, and that but for 
 the war the newspapers would have the dullest of dull 
 seasons. Nevertheless, he was himself desperately busy. 
 He handed Bigelow's letters over to Hay, when they 
 were to be editorialized. "Reid writes very little," the 
 
GRANT AND SAN DOMINGO 187 
 
 latter reported to their friend in Beriin, "but when ft is 
 necessary he beats me two to one." Domestic affairs, 
 cast into the shade by the military events abroad in 
 1870, were exciting enough in the following year. The 
 Tweed exposures, though initiated by the "Times," and 
 promoted largely by revelations in that paper, were, of 
 course, not negligible in The Tribune, which was, indeed, 
 the first of the dailies to associate itself with the leader 
 in that famous crusade. Just prior to the breaking of 
 this storm Reid had a curious little problem of his own 
 to deal with. Adams's question was up — "Who was Ala- 
 bama, and what did he claim?" The joint commission 
 appointed to discuss it met in Washington in February 
 and sat until the spring. In May, when the Treaty of 
 Washington was signed, The Tribune published it before 
 its promulgation. Uproar in the Senate ensued, in which 
 Roscoe Conkling was conspicuously active. The two 
 correspondents of The Tribune at the capital were taken 
 into custody, and threatened with all manner of dire 
 punishment for their contumacy in refusing to tell what 
 they were supposed to know about the acquisition of the 
 treaty. They were to be fed on bread and water until 
 they consented to answer. One exacerbated Solon 
 thought that forty years in prison would be a mild re- 
 ward for their wickedness. 
 
 Never was there more savory grist for an editorial mill. 
 As a matter of fact. White and Ramsdell, The Tribune 
 men haled before the Senate for contempt, underwent 
 no suffering in the custody of the sergeant-at-arms. 
 Their rooms were large, airy, and cool, their fare the 
 best to be obtained in Washington, and their friends had 
 ready access to them. Writing gayly from "The Senate 
 Bastille, U. S. Capitol," White reported: "We are, of 
 course, delighted at the noble course The Tribune has 
 taken in this matter and our pleasure is none the less 
 
1 88 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 because we see that you are turning the matter to such 
 good account for the paper." Reid handled the situa- 
 tion to Greeley's infinite satisfaction. Incidentally he 
 stored up future trouble. I do not doubt that the ridi- 
 cule with which he flayed Conkling in the course of up- 
 holding his correspondents accounted for some, at least, 
 of the enmity with which that individual long cherished 
 for him in political affairs. Sumner, of course, was 
 Reid's stanch defender, spoke in The Tribune's favor, 
 and presented a resolution for the release of the prisoners. 
 When that came, on the adjournment of Congress, Reid 
 philosophically counted the cost. "We were subjected 
 to some extra expense," he explained to The Tribune 
 trustees; "lawyers' fees, and double salaries to corre- 
 spondents while in prison being included, it probably 
 amounted to $800. It is doubtful whether the same 
 amount of advertising could have been procured in any 
 other way for $8000." The Tribune profited, which was 
 undoubtedly his object, but it should be added that 
 if the publication of the treaty was an exploit in the 
 field of news, Reid's defense of the correspondents was 
 also recognized as a stalwart blow against secret and in- 
 quisitorial methods in the Senate. 
 
 There were other more or less sensational occurrences 
 that year, testing his conduct of the paper — the Chicago 
 fire, the Ku-KIux trials in North Carolina, and, in New 
 York, matters of judicial corruption and of custom-house 
 administration, in the exposure of which he rivalled the 
 enterprise of the "Times" in its uncovering of the Tweed 
 scandals. But one subject, San Domingo, dominates in 
 historical significance, and, in view of subsequent devel- 
 opments, requires some consideration in this memoir. 
 Reid's first experience, soon to be discussed, as a cam- 
 paign manager with a responsibility far heavier and more 
 direct than anything he had known in his work for Fre- 
 
GRANT AND SAN DOMINGO 189 
 
 mont and Lincoln, was to involve him in strenuous oppo- 
 sition to Grant. The decisive motive in that, of course, 
 was supplied by his support of Greeley. But it had 
 other sources. If he was Grant's eulogist during the war 
 he was also his critic, and the San Domingo affair did a 
 great deal to turn him from a critic into an opponent. 
 
 On the academic question of policy raised by Grant's 
 curious craving for territorial expansion — a craving 
 doubly curious then — I need make no comment, though 
 the later history of the island and of our relations to it 
 might justify some sympathetic reflections. Years after- 
 ward, when as a member of the Paris Peace Commis- 
 sion, Reid exercised a powerful influence upon the acqui- 
 sition of the Philippines, it is conceivable that he might 
 have revised his old judgments on the scheme for the 
 annexation of San Domingo. On the other hand, it is 
 certain that he could never have lost his distaste for the 
 intrigues surrounding it and for the uses to which Grant 
 turned the management of his favorite project. It was 
 the declension of the President's colonial ambition into a 
 personal quarrel with Sumner that crystallized his an- 
 tagonism. The senator from Massachusetts was not 
 only his friend but a statesman in whose character and 
 ideas resided, as he saw it, something of the hope of the 
 republic. And this man was flouted and insulted by 
 Grant for no other reason than that he would not sub- 
 serve the latter's foolish whim ! Sumner, as chairman of 
 the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, was in a 
 position to work with deadly effect against the San 
 Domingo treaties. From the highest motives he did so 
 work against them. Grant tried to placate him, even 
 calling unexpectedly upon him at his dinner-table one 
 night to ply him on the subject, and some years later, 
 travelling in Spain, he spoke to Lowell, then minister 
 there, of his efforts. "Sumner is the only man I was 
 
190 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 ever anything but my real self to," he said; "the only 
 man I ever tried to conciliate by artificial means." Sum- 
 ner's answer to all the presidential cajolings was his 
 famous "Naboth's Vineyard" speech, in which he tore 
 the presidential scheme to very fine tatters. Grant's 
 apologists, and Grant with them, made it a personal 
 issue. Reid knew better, and did what he could to affirm 
 his loyalty, though his own position in the matter was 
 one of some deficacy. 
 
 How this came about may best be indicated by a note 
 of Greeley's written in the full tide of the conflict: "I 
 send a letter from Hayti about San Domingo matters 
 from my old friend and correspondent, whose name you 
 probably know. She is a San Domingoite, as I partly 
 am and you are not; but she knows what she writes, and 
 her letter is worth the space it will take. Don't bear 
 hard against San Domingo, for I believe its acceptance is 
 Manifest Destiny, and will ultimately be popular." The 
 Tribune's poficy on this question was, of course, for 
 Greeley to settle, and Reid was bound to support it. 
 But the two men were wholly frank and outspoken with 
 one another, and after talking over the resolution in the 
 Senate for the appointment of commissioners to proceed 
 to San Domingo, and obtain material for a full report, 
 Reid wrote an editorial which was equally satisfactory 
 to him and to his chief. It approved the commission on 
 the ground that it would at least get information, enlight- 
 ening the United States as to "whether we are or are 
 not to buy a lively revolution and a dropsical debt," and 
 it wound up with an expression of the utter disgust of 
 the public at the conduct of the senators, whose idea of 
 debating the subject had apparently meant no more 
 than the browbeating of Sumner. "Doubtless he had 
 been imprudent," wrote Reid, "bitter, and unjust, but 
 at least he was senatorial. Some of his antagonists 
 
GRANT AND SAN DOMINGO 191 
 
 appear to have behaved like Bowery Boys at a Tam- 
 many primary. These senators may forget themselves, 
 as the republic will in time forget them; but neither 
 their motives nor his own mistakes can now perma- 
 nently affect the sure place of Charles Sumner in the 
 esteem of his fellow citizens and the history of his coun- 
 try." Sumner's grateful response was instant: 
 
 Washington, 
 Dear Mr. Reid: December 24th, 1870. 
 
 The kindness of your article on San Domingo tempts me to write 
 a word. Read my speech, and you will see that there is not one 
 word of personal imputation or personality towards the President. I 
 assailed this scheme on grounds which nobody answered. It is my 
 nature to be aroused always when I see the weak oppressed, and, 
 as I became acquainted with this San Domingo business my blood 
 boiled. All the evidence shows that at great expense we keep Baez 
 [President of the island government] in power — that without our 
 naval force he would be obliged to flee, and then, still further, in 
 carrying out the same scheme we menace Hayti. I was determined 
 to make sure such an exposure as would make it difficult to pursue 
 the scheme. The only answer to me was a volley of personalities. 
 
 I challenge anybody to show one word of misrepresentation. 
 Everything I said is sustained by the evidence; and as to the Presi- 
 dential pressure it surpasses that of other days against Kansas. 
 
 Sincerely yours, ^ c 
 
 ■' •' Charles Sumner. 
 
 P. S. The resolution was unnecessary, except as a device to com- 
 mit Congress to the scheme. The President may send agents with- 
 out an act of Congress, — ^the most important information is docu- 
 mentary and on the files of the Department. 
 
 Where Reid's sympathies were I have already shown, 
 but to the editorial passage quoted above I may add the 
 following reply to Sumner's letter: 
 
 New York, 
 
 December 26th, 1870. 
 Dear Mr. Sumner: 
 
 I was exceedingly glad to receive your letter of the 24th instant, 
 both because of the information it contained and because of the 
 grateful assurance it gave me that you understood the kindness 
 
192 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 intended in the closing paragraph of my article on the San Domingo 
 trouble. 
 
 The necessities of the position compelled me to sustain Morton's 
 resolution. Mr. Greeley has committed himself to this view, and 
 although, for my own part, I should greatly prefer to see an end of 
 the whole San Domingo negotiations, yet I cannot honestly divert 
 The Tribune from the policy on which Mr. Greeley has decided. 
 The best I can do is to endeavor that justice be done its opponents. 
 I took the more pleasure in saying what I did of you because, as I 
 said to Mr. Greeley when we were afterwards speaking of it, I have 
 the feeling which I presume most young men who came into poli- 
 tics during the excitements of the organization of the Republican 
 party and the Fremont campaign, entertained towards yourself, Mr. 
 Chase, and one or two others who remain the great figures of the 
 struggle. 
 
 I remain, my dear Sir, with great regard. 
 
 Faithfully yours, ,,, „ 
 
 ■^ ^ WHITELAW ReID. 
 
 He did his duty as an editor by the San Domingo 
 expedition, sending one of his Washington men, Rams- 
 dell, to report its transactions, and arranging for letters 
 also from the private secretary of President A. D. White, 
 one of the members of the commission. In the long run 
 it proved the general estimate, and especially at Wash- 
 ington, that The Tribune's correspondence under this 
 head was superior to that of any other paper in the 
 country. But it was only his professional amour propre 
 that was gratified. His scorn for Grant's conduct in 
 the matter had been rendered final when immediately 
 upon the rejection of the annexation treaty in the Sen- 
 ate, in June, 1870, the President struck at Sumner by 
 calling for the resignation of his friend Motley, minister 
 to England. This was piling scandal upon scandal. 
 Motley refused to resign, whereupon, a few months later, 
 he was summarily removed. 
 
 There was nothing ambiguous about public opinion 
 on this extraordinary episode. Whatever Motley's fail- 
 ings as a diplomat — and that he had them is undeniable 
 
GRANT AND SAN DOMINGO 193 
 
 — it was obvious that his dismissal was an act of petty 
 malice, the payment of a grudge against Sumner. How- 
 ever, the errors had to be reckoned with, and there was 
 the question, too, not to be blinked, as to whether Mot- 
 ley had not been, after all, more Sumner's man than the 
 President's, from the beginning. An editorial in The 
 Tribune, written by Greeley himself, when the official 
 correspondence was published, gave some weight to this 
 last point. Sumner's comment upon it, sent to Reid 
 under the impression that he had prepared the editorial, 
 is as follows: 
 
 Senate Chamber, 
 
 Dear Mr. Reid: "^^'^"^'^ '^^^' '^^i- 
 
 I have not read the Motley correspondence, except the first and 
 last paragraphs of the reply, which were to me simply disgusting — 
 knowing, as I do, this whole case; but I have read your notice, and 
 I write to correct an idea, at least so far as it may refer to me. 
 
 You say that "Mr. Motley's appointment must have been pressed 
 upon Gen. Grant with an urgency which, though he deferred to it, 
 he did not the less keenly feel to have been excessive and annoying." 
 I never spoke to the President on the subject but twice, the first 
 time casually on the stairs of the White House, and never in any 
 way asked or urged the appointment. This is not my habit. I 
 stated to Gen. Grant that, with his admission, I desired to make 
 suggestions with regard to our diplomatic service in Europe. After 
 insisting upon experience and culture I proceeded to recommend 
 strongly the retention of Mr. Marsh at Florence, Mr. Morris at Con- 
 stantinople, Mr. Bancroft at Berhn, and I then added that this hst 
 would be properly completed by appointing Dr. Howe at Athens and 
 Mr. Motley at London, where he had already a position of influence, 
 and I assigned reasons why I thought he could do much there. This 
 was my only conversation with the President on the subject. 
 
 When what is called the "brief" for the appointment was made 
 out in the State Department, it stood thus: 
 
 John Lothrop Motley, Massachusetts. 
 
 John Jay, New York. 
 
 Horace Greeley, New York. 
 
 This was shown me by the Secretary of State before presentation 
 to the President. 
 
194 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 I doubt not that the other persons spoke to the President but I 
 contented myself with the opinions and recommendation I have 
 mentioned, which it seems, were sustained by the State Department. 
 After the appointment was made and Mr. Motley had left, the 
 President spoke to me of him as "the right man for the place." The 
 first intimation of dissatisfaction was after the San Domingo differ- 
 ence, when the President said he wished somebody in London "more 
 American." The idea about Lord Clarendon's death which I am 
 told plays a part is simply ridiculous. A fortnight before that Mr. 
 Fish tendered the mission to me — after entreating me to abandon 
 my opposition to the San Domingo scheme. 
 
 Yours very truly, ^ ,. 
 
 Charles Sumner. 
 
 This letter adds substantially to the documentation of 
 a once poignant and never quite forgotten controversy 
 in our diplomatic annals. Sumner's own vv^ords are the 
 best in the refutation of the idea, first put forward by 
 Fish in Grant's defense, that the President would not 
 have saddled himself with Motley if he had not been 
 badgered into making the appointment. But I print 
 them also as a contribution to the development of Reid's 
 position in the campaign of 1872. As Greeley's devoted 
 lieutenant he would have fought Grant in any case. He 
 fought him with a greater intensity of feeling because of 
 the light on Grant which he owed to his correspondence 
 with Sumner. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 GREELEY AND THE PRESIDENCY 
 
 If Whitelaw Reid had written the reminiscences which 
 his friends were always urging him to write in the later 
 years of his life, the book would have shed some interest- 
 ing light on the psychology of the presidential candidate 
 as a type. An editor necessarily looks into that subject. 
 Acquaintance with it must enter into his professional 
 equipment. Reid's knowledge of it was developed out of 
 much personal experience. He was thrown into more or 
 less intimate relations with presidential candidates all 
 his life, and stood very close to several of them in their 
 campaigns. I have shown how, in his youth, his advo- 
 cacy of Lincoln's nomination estranged him from Chase, 
 and how the latter, afterward, in Washington, neverthe- 
 less became his friend again. Thenceforth they were in 
 some sort allies, though not invariably in as close accord 
 on all points as the critics of both were wont to assume. 
 There are elements of interest in the story of their friend- 
 ship as it bears upon this question of presidential aspira- 
 tions. The celebrated chief justice was a singular figure 
 in the field where such longings flourish. 
 
 In 1864, when Chase was still in the cabinet, he was 
 used — to quote Reid's own words — as a rallying-point for 
 the disaffection which sought to prevent Lincoln's re- 
 nomination. Some of "Agate's" readers in the Cincin- 
 nati "Gazette" were disposed to surmise that he was 
 amongst the disaffected. He was not in that company 
 at all, but, like a good many observers at the time — 
 Greeley among them — kept an open mind on the subject 
 of the nomination. He realized the importance of the 
 
 195 
 
196 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 military situation as a factor in political slate-making. 
 Weeks before the Chicago convention he was asserting 
 in his correspondence that if events in the field were 
 favorable during the spring and summer, no political 
 power on earth could prevent the renomination and re- 
 election of the President. On the other hand, he saw 
 that even Lincoln's personal popularity might be low- 
 ered by military reverses. This was not for him a mat- 
 ter of opinion — it was a matter of fact. Hence he was 
 prepared for almost anything, including a possible carry- 
 ing of "the Chase movement" to the point where it 
 would function in party councils. In the interim his 
 good-will for Chase and support of him in the "Gazette" 
 had nothing to do with presidential bees. He was con- 
 cerned solely with the exposition of what he knew to be 
 the truth about the secretary of the treasury's admin- 
 istration of his department. That had been attacked 
 with mean injustice. Reid took an aggressive part in 
 Chase's vindication, a very different thing from election- 
 eering for a rival of Lincoln's. Yet the legend of his 
 having abetted Chase in that rivalry was a fearful long 
 time a-dying, and in campaign after campaign would 
 crop up in the columns of some newspaper adversary. 
 Once this misrepresentation provoked him to set the 
 record straight, and in a letter to Colonel R. J. Hinton, 
 at Washington, he had some things to say which illu- 
 minate not only his own position but Chase's. Writing 
 June 13th, 1870, he says: 
 
 The talk of my being an advocate of Mr. Chase as an aspirant for 
 the Presidency has always seemed to me so absurd that I have 
 never thought it worth while to tfeat it seriously. I earnestly begged 
 Mr. Chase, when he took his seat on the Supreme Bench, to aban- 
 don all ideas of the Presidency. I did the same thing before I left 
 for the South in the Spring of 1866, and subsequently wrote him 
 more than once to the same effect. He has more than once told me 
 that he had dismissed all such ideas, and on the last occasion on 
 
GREELEY AND THE PRESIDENCY 197 
 
 which I met him, in a long and frank conversation with regard to 
 political matters, and recent publications concerning him, he said 
 as I was taking my leave: "I don't care for outsiders, but I want 
 you to beheve that I have no ambition save to discharge my duties 
 in the office in which I am now placed, and that I have done with 
 politics finally." Mr. Chase may not know himself — very few poli- 
 ticians, and, for that matter, very few people of any kind do — but 
 that he was perfectly honest at that time in this declaration I don't 
 doubt for a moment. At the same time the necessity of his position 
 is such that he is sure to be the centre of presidential speculation at 
 least until after the next election; and I suppose the fact of my per- 
 fectly well known and long continued friendship for him is sufficient 
 in the minds of many to convince them that I am endeavoring, as I 
 think it has once or twice been expressed in the Radical papers, to 
 betray The Tribune. 
 
 It is plain enough from this that Chase's attitude in 
 the campaign of 1864 never left upon Reid's mind any- 
 thing like the virulent impression that it left upon the 
 minds of Lincoln's official biographers. They estimated 
 it — naturally enough, I suppose — at its worst, seeing it 
 in its unloveliest aspects and diagnosing it as sympto- 
 matic of an inexcusable ambition. Reid could put it in 
 a less sensational perspective, because he understood it 
 better, apprehended it more accurately as a queer but not 
 at all evil warp of temperament. He M^as Chase's de- 
 fender in 1868, when there was some thought of picking 
 the chief justice as a candidate likely to unite the pro- 
 gressive Democrats and the "reasonable" Republicans. 
 After Seymour's nomination Chase was characteristically 
 desirous of establishing an exact record of his relation 
 to the event. Reid saw to it for him, and in their subse- 
 quent correspondence there are passages richly explana- 
 tory of this figure in our long procession of presidential 
 candidates. "You see," Chase writes, "what need I 
 have to stick to that which can never contradict itself — 
 the truth. Yet even the truth as to our feelings and im- 
 pressions and even convictions may change so much as 
 
198 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID. 
 
 to give the impressions at one time the appearance of 
 contradiction to statements made at another." So there 
 was nothing for cynical comment in the remark contained 
 in the same letter: "I am glad and thankful that I was 
 not nominated at New York," Of course he was truly 
 glad and thankful, just as he would have been thankful 
 and glad (like any other mortal) if he had been nomi- 
 nated. The most revealing of the passages I have men- 
 tioned is this one, also dating from the campaign of 1868: 
 "A very curiously contrasted character of me might be 
 very easily made out from the writings and sayings of 
 the same man at different times." Reid knew this, and 
 the knowledge of it is reflected in the eulogy which he 
 published in The Tribune when Chase died in 1873. 
 
 The tribute was ungrudging, an expression of full 
 and even aff"ectionate understanding. Reid was a pall- 
 bearer at the funeral, and was one of those, I may also 
 note, appointed to serve again in that capacity when the 
 body of the chief justice was taken from Washington in 
 1886 to its final resting-place at Cincinnati. He was, in 
 short, to such an extent a member of Chase's circle that 
 whatever he said about him had the stamp of authority. 
 He spoke always as the loyalest of friends. Neverthe- 
 less, the eulogy aforesaid, in its discriminating touches, 
 reflects his lasting sense of that innocent duality which 
 Chase himself had recognized, and he explains, without 
 specifically saying so, why the chief justice could never 
 have been made President. Reid drew in 1873 ^^^ <^Js- 
 tinction he had drawn in 1864. Salmon P. Chase was 
 doubtless the one man to save the treasury from bank- 
 ruptcy during the Civil War. Lincoln was the one man 
 to guide the nation through the long and terrible strug- 
 gle. The first presidential candidate with whom he 
 maintained close personal relations over a considerable 
 period of time left Reid with abiding memories of a 
 
GREELEY AND THE PRESIDENCY 199 
 
 noble character. His eminent friend left him also with- 
 out any illusions. Because of this intimacy the student 
 of politics in him became only the more decisively a 
 student of human nature. 
 
 It is upon the human nature aboundingly exposed in 
 the campaign of 1872 that I purpose chiefly to dwell in 
 the present chapter. There is no reason for reviewing in 
 exhaustive detail the history of that event. An unsuc- 
 cessful candidacy is rarely a fruitful subject, and this 
 one is a thrice-told tale. Everybody knows how the 
 shortcomings of Grant's first administration sapped the 
 prestige of the party which had put him in power, how 
 Greeley was inducted into the leadership of an oppo- 
 sition too heterogeneous to be effectively united with the 
 cement of mere discontent, and how he went down under 
 an avalanche of defeat, the presage of his death. But 
 there are obvious reasons, in a biography of Whitelaw 
 Reid, for some survey of the fight as he and certain of 
 his colleagues carried it on under Greeley's banner, and 
 his papers are peculiarly illuminating on the state of 
 men's minds at the time, on various leading personali- 
 ties, and on the inner spirit and development of a famous 
 political movement. 
 
 The gallant, disinterested nature of the enterprise, 
 which has come to be the more generously appreciated as 
 time has healed old political wounds, was conspicuous 
 amongst Reid's articles of faith. The last time I saw 
 him, only a few weeks before his death, we talked at 
 length about Greeley in 1872, and I particularly remem- 
 ber the emphasis he placed upon his chiefs unselfish 
 motives. Greeley was no small-souled politician, he said, 
 nor as President would he have been a calculating dis- 
 penser of political plums. There was no guile in him at 
 all. Never had there been in political life an embodi- 
 ment of a cleaner ambition. Principle, and nothing else. 
 
200 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 was his ruling force; the service of the republic his sole 
 aim. In a foot-note to Watterson's delightful chapter 
 on "The Humor and Tragedy of the Greeley Cam- 
 paign," Reid says on this point: "With my intimate 
 knowledge of Greeley at that period, I should hardly 
 have said he had a passion for office. What I did 
 think was that he had a passion for recognition, and 
 was very sore at being treated not as an equal and com- 
 rade, but as a convenience to the machine, by Seward 
 and Thurlow Weed. It was less office he sought than 
 an opportunity to teach those gentlemen their places 
 and his. Certainly he never had a lifelong passion for 
 office like Lincoln." Reid came to know this very early 
 in his dealings with Greeley, and subsequently his con- 
 victions on the subject were being deepened all the time. 
 They caused him to observe with an intensely critical 
 eye every move made in the political world to "use" 
 Greeley, and one reason the latter had for depending 
 upon him was his skill in handling such attempts as they 
 arose. Prior to the presidential campaign he had no 
 formal functions to discharge in the role of political co- 
 adjutor, but from the beginning he kept a sort of friendly 
 watch and ward over his chiefs interests. 
 
 The first serious opportunity to do this came in the 
 summer of 1870, when some of the Republicans in New 
 York fondly fancied that the anti-Hoffman movements 
 amongst the young Democracy might help them to win 
 the governorship. Once more "convenience" promoted 
 talk of nominating Greeley. Joe Medill, of the Chicago 
 "Tribune," wrote to Reid about it in high spirits, spurred 
 thereto by a momentous occurrence. He had seen Grant, 
 and the latter was much in favor of the idea ! "He had 
 no hesitation in saying that in his opinion it was the 
 wisest thing the Republicans could do. Greeley would 
 poll more votes than any other candidate they could 
 agree upon." Reid hadn't the smallest confidence in his 
 
GREELEY AND THE PRESIDENCY 201 
 
 doing anything of the sort, and even a letter from Vice- 
 President Colfax, bringing the same bizarre tidings "about 
 the President and H. C," left him still sceptical. To 
 Medill he replied, saying: "I am a sort of traitor in the 
 camp, as I told Mr. Greeley last night. I don't want him 
 nominated for Governor because I think this business of 
 nominating him to head a forlorn hope has ceased to 
 be a joke. Still, that is something which cannot be said 
 outside, and which perhaps good fortune this Fall may 
 show to be a thing that ought not to be said at all." He 
 would hope, with the rest of them, while there was a 
 ghost of a chance — but at bottom he never believed in 
 ghosts. Meanwhile he spared no vigilance. A rumor 
 was telegraphed on from Washington that Grant — for all 
 his fine words — was about to tilt over the apple-cart by 
 tendering the English mission to Greeley. Through a 
 friend in the State Department, Bancroft Davis, Reid in- 
 stantly pointed out to the President and Secretary Fish 
 the embarrassing consequences of any such move, and suc- 
 cessfully pleaded that "for the present we be let alone." 
 The mere excitement of the campaign temporarily 
 heartened him, and he began to wonder if Medill's long- 
 ing to "see the philosopher Governor, to round out his 
 record before he dies," might not, after all, be realized. 
 Going off to Cedarville for a rest, he made the most of 
 all the favorable auguries and sped Greeley on his way 
 to the convention at Saratoga with cheering words. But 
 he was not really surprised by the result, which left the 
 philosopher to his philosophy, and he read with all the 
 humorous appreciation it invited this message that 
 reached him at his farm: 
 
 New York, 
 
 September loth, 1870. 
 Dear Reid: 
 
 You will see that Saratoga went back on your predictions. I 
 think you will know that I didn't take much stock in that under- 
 taking. Hassard sent a donkey named (I think) Miller, who kept 
 telegraphing all manner of bosh, implying that the universe was 
 
202 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 created in order to have me run in it for Governor, and would go to 
 pot if thwarted in this profound design, Only a little of this got 
 into the paper. But even this was enough to physic a horse. 
 
 I am glad my name went into the convention. So many are ready 
 to swear that I always kick the dish over, that I am glad of one case 
 in which it cannot be charged that I kicked at all; it is all right every 
 way. And now if Grant will only let me alone, there is no more 
 trouble ahead for two years at least. At any rate, if he should ask 
 me to go to England, I shall decline, and no one will know anything 
 of the matter. But I guess he won't bother me. 
 
 ' Horace Greeley. 
 
 Grant did bother him, as he bothered a good many 
 others. The issues rapidly ripening for discussion in the 
 forthcoming campaign were all of his making. For Reid, 
 as I have previously indicated, he offered beyond all 
 argument the one salient and vulnerable point of attack, 
 and in his correspondence with political friends the name 
 of the President incessantly recurs. Long before Gree- 
 ley's outlook brightened he was on the watch for signs 
 that Grant's was growing dark. A typical judgment of 
 his, a year before the battle was joined, is in this letter 
 
 to Garfield: 
 
 New York, 
 
 July 17th, 1871. 
 My dear General: 
 
 The riots here [between Orangemen and Irish Catholics] have 
 
 materially changed the aspect of the presidential question, and 
 
 greatly helped Grant's chances only because they have greatly 
 
 helped the chance of carrying the State for the Republicans this 
 
 fall. Still I don't believe Grant's renomination either assured or 
 
 very probable. People are constantly reasoning about it from a 
 
 comparison with the feeling before Lincoln's second nomination but 
 
 the circumstances are wholly different. Then we were in the midst 
 
 of a war apparently near its crisis, and Lincoln neglected himself 
 
 when he told that wonderfully apt story about the impropriety of 
 
 trading horses while crossing the stream.* Grant's present situation 
 
 *" I have not permitted myself, gentlemen, to conclude that I am the best 
 man in the country; but I am reminded in this connection of a story of an old 
 Dutch farmer who remarked to a companion once that it was not best to swap 
 horses when crossing a stream." — Lincoln, at the National Union League in New 
 York, on June 9, 1864. 
 
GREELEY AND THE PRESIDENCY 203 
 
 seems to me much more analogous to that of Seward before the 
 
 Chicago Convention. He was more talked of than anybody else, 
 
 and consequently drew upon himself the fire of all the others. The 
 
 one thing to be avoided by Grant's antagonists is the possibility that 
 
 leading State Conventions will commit themselves to him before the 
 
 hostility is clearly developed. If the delegates can only come to 
 
 the convention of '72 as they went to that of i860. Grant will have 
 
 his throat cut as dexterously as was Seward's. 
 
 Faithfully yours, ,,. „ 
 
 ■^ -^ Whitelaw Reid. 
 
 Garfield, in the long run, could not follovi^ his old com- 
 rade in this matter. Neither could Reid's very warm 
 friend in the President's official household, Postmaster- 
 General Cressw^ell, who was, indeed, "grieved to the 
 soul" by The Tribune's anti-Grantism, and wrote to 
 tell him so. There were other solicitous commentators, 
 in and out of politics, and one of the most candid was 
 Bigelow, writing from Berlin, where he felt that he could 
 see the subject with a detachment "equivalent to the 
 separation of generations." He wasn't in love with 
 Grant, but neither was he indiff"erent to his merits. He 
 was grateful for the latter, in spite of all the President's 
 "ineptiae," and in any case he couldn't perceive any one 
 in the offing who would be likely to do better in his 
 place. It was useless to try to fight an administration 
 without a candidate around whose personaHty pubKc 
 sentiment could crystalHze. This was essential. "We 
 could do nothing towards building up the Republican 
 party in 1856 till we got a candidate, and when we got 
 one, though a wretched stick, the party grew Kke Jonah's 
 gourd." Reid's reply sketches the answer which he had 
 
 ready for all his critics: 
 
 New York, 
 December 30th, 1871. 
 My dear Mr. Bigelow: 
 
 With me the course of The Tribune has been one of instinctive 
 dislike of men of Gen. Grant's character and calibre for our highest 
 position, and of deliberate belief that it would be best for a great 
 
204 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 journal like The Tribune to hold itself above party. With Mr. 
 Greeley it has been a dislike of Gen. Grant personally, and belief 
 that he is too small a man for the Presidency, and great dissatisfac- 
 tion with many parts of his management, particularly with his en- 
 couragement of disreputable men, and his partisan interference with 
 the civil service all over the country. That the general estimate of 
 Grant's administration thus far is likely to be favorable, I concede; 
 the payment of the debt and the treaty with Great Britain are great 
 achievements. I am sure we have statesmen under whose guidance 
 each would have been better, but, as it is, each is a success. On the 
 other hand the treatment of the South has not been a success, and 
 it is a significant thing that Gen. Grant's partisan management has 
 resulted in making a Chandler, a Butler, Carpenter, Conkling, Mor- 
 ton, Stewart, and their kind his devoted champions; Sumner, Trum- 
 bull, Schurz, Bryant, Greeley, and their kind his determined antag- 
 onists. 
 
 All Administrations, I suppose, are more or less corrupt; certainly 
 the depth of corruption this one has reached is scarcely suspected as 
 yet, even by its enemies. There is an utter surrender of the Civil 
 Service to the coarsest use by the coarsest men. Mr. Grinnell goes 
 out [of the New York Custom House] to make room for Mr. Murphy. 
 When we drive Mr. Murphy out his counsel and personal represen- 
 tative takes his place. „.,.,, 
 
 haithiully yours, ,,, ^^ 
 
 ^ ■^ Whitelaw Reid. 
 
 It will be observed that he says nothing here about a 
 candidate, and the omission is not altogether due to his 
 absorption in the indicting of Grant. As a matter of 
 fact, the names of Charles Francis Adams, Judge Davis, 
 Sumner, and Greeley had already been bruited about, 
 and in view of subsequent events it would seem quite 
 natural for him to have cited Greeley's as pretty certain 
 to exert all the enkindling influence that Bigelow consid- 
 ered indispensable. But while Reid did more than any 
 other single man to promote Greeley's candidacy, once 
 it was launched, he did not invent it, nor did it, in the 
 stages preliminary to launching, wholly commend itself 
 to his judgment. 
 
 Though the idea warmed his imagination, he was, as I 
 have said, without illusion in these matters, and, looking 
 
GREELEY AND THE PRESIDENCY 205 
 
 at the subject in the cold light of practical politics, he 
 counted his chief's chances without prejudice, never for- 
 getting, in all his calculations, to give Grant the benefit 
 of the doubt. Willing as he was to work without stint 
 to put Greeley in the White House, he was also ready to 
 give all the thought and prudence there were in him to 
 sparing Greeley the pangs of defeat. Convinced that 
 Grant was doing vital damage to Republicanism, im- 
 pressed by the Liberal movement initiated by Carl Schurz 
 and others^in Missouri, and strongly inchned to believe 
 that events portended a break-up of political parties be- 
 fore the election, he could see that on such a troubled 
 sea Greeley might easily prove the chosen helmsman. 
 But he wanted time, and still more time, before he would 
 agree that his old friend's bark might safely be shoved 
 off upon those treacherous waters. Not if he could help 
 it would Greeley ever again be "used," and least of all 
 upon the wide stage of national politics. All through 
 that preliminary period he waited for signs that the 
 Liberal Republicans could really make a fight, something 
 more than an academic demonstration. Then, and not 
 until then, would he take off his coat. In the interim he 
 was careful to note where all the other potential candi- 
 dates stood. Chance presently brought him enlighten- 
 ment on one of them. 
 
 Early in 1871, when The Tribune began to give a 
 hearing to disgruntled Republicans, Bigelow had noticed 
 some commendation of Sumner. "I marvel that his 
 name has not been presented before," he wrote. "It is 
 because, I suppose, he has more capacity for making 
 friends for his principles than for himself. Besides, we 
 never get madly attached to man or woman who loves 
 all people equally and without distinction of age, color 
 or sex. And yet of all our living statesmen I don't think 
 of one whom Americans will be so proud of as of him 
 
2o6 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 when he has been buried as long as Jefferson." Sumner 
 was ill at the time, and Reid sent this passage on to him, 
 to cheer his tedium. It drew from him a letter of value 
 then as indicating his position in the approaching cam- 
 paign, and of interest now as one more illustration of 
 his lofty nature: 
 
 Washington, 
 
 Dear Mr. Reid: ^^^'"'^'^ '^'^' '^^\ 
 
 I have been much touched by the revelation of your note, which 
 was entirely unexpected. But I beg you to believe that I do not 
 consider myself a candidate for anything — unless it be the good will 
 of good men. 
 
 Mr. Greeley and myself are of the same age, both born in 1811; 
 but he is an older as well as a better soldier than I. My controversy 
 has been constant for more than quarter of a century, and during 
 some of this time he has thought kindly of me. If he is disposed 
 to be sharp on me it is because he follows a rule different from mine. 
 My rule has always been never to assail or criticize those who agree 
 with me sincerely in object and aim, although I could not accept 
 their methods. 
 
 But I have had enough of combat and am very weary. And yet 
 combat is before me. I cannot look without moral repugnance on 
 this whole St. D. business, and especially the treatment of the Black 
 Republic. 
 
 I hope to be in my seat tomorrow for an hour. 
 
 Believe me, dear Mr. Reid, 
 
 Sincerely yours, 
 
 Charles Sumner. 
 
 Sumner thus withdrew from the field, of his own voli- 
 tion. Reid thereby knew his ground in that quarter, 
 and could feel free to act with reference to it if occasion 
 arose. Meanwhile the policy of the paper was fixed. 
 Greeley could open his columns to all the irate Republi- 
 cans in the land, but he was a Republican himself, and, 
 though likewise irate, in no hurry to embarrass the party. 
 He was anti-Grant, but judgmatic about dealing with 
 him. Then, too, his own possible relation to the coming 
 contest made him doubly desirous of postponing the in- 
 
GREELEY AND THE PRESIDENCY 207 
 
 evitable break. The bad taste of grinding his own axe 
 was as offensive to him as it could be to any one. To a 
 political acquaintance, confident that Grant would have 
 a second term, he wrote in midsummer, in 1871 : "I have 
 no gift of prophecy, and will not undertake to compete 
 with you in that line. And yet I see many reasons for 
 my belief that it will be far more difficult to re-elect Pres- 
 ident Grant than it was to elect him. The only point on 
 which I am positive is this: If the Republicans are to 
 elect a President in 1872, they must let President making 
 alone in 187 1. I think the position of candidates has 
 been too early begun, and that it were well for us if no 
 more were said on that point till next Christmas. I 
 shall try to have The Tribune set other journals a good 
 example in this respect. I commend the wisdom of 
 doing in 1871 the work pertaining to that year, and leav- 
 ing that of 1872 to be done in its proper season." 
 
 Reid was more than willing. It was another safeguard 
 against the premature decision he most feared, and in his 
 correspondence at this time there is scarce a trace of 
 Greeley's candidacy — the burthen of it is always the drift 
 of party politics, and, in particular, the swift growth of 
 the Liberal Republican movement. "Does not the po- 
 litical cauldron bubble?" he wrote to his friend Wilkin- 
 son in Syracuse. "It is not a fire of thorns under it 
 either, but of a good deal more lasting kind of fuel." I 
 have spoken of the human emotions that still glow in 
 the ashes of this old, buried campaign. They live espe- 
 cially in souvenirs of the happy fervor with which Reid 
 and his comrades looked to the new organization to 
 repair the sins of the old one — it was as if the youth of 
 the Republican party were going to be revived again, in 
 a better fabric. The Cincinnati convention was to be 
 another meeting "under the oaks." Reid spread the 
 good news everywhere and was particularly constant in 
 
2o8 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 his jubilant interchanges with his brethren of the craft. 
 A remark of his to Watterson — "the Cincinnati move- 
 ment goes on gloriously" — is typical of all his reports to 
 editorial friends, and to political correspondents he writes, 
 with the convention impending, in the vein of this note 
 to Senator Allison: 
 
 New York, 
 
 ,, A April nth, 1872. 
 
 My dear Allison: 
 
 The Cincinnati movement looks brighter than it did when you 
 were here. Our people who are inside are all confident; the Admin- 
 istration, on the other hand, seems to be equally confident, and 
 indeed pooh poohs the Cincinnati movement, though with a ner- 
 vousness which indicates the reverse of satisfaction at the prospect. 
 The only movement gaining any strength now is the Cincinnati 
 movement. The Grant force has been developed long ago. 
 
 Very truly yours, Whitelaw Reid. 
 
 Greeley insisted that Reid should himself go to the 
 convention, and he left for it in the mood of the fore- 
 going message to Allison. Even then it was first and 
 last as an anti-Grant man that he went West. On the 
 eve of his departure, writing to his old college friend 
 Joe Millikin, he says: "We hope to make the Cincinnati 
 Convention a success, and to defeat Grant by the elec- 
 tion of a sound Republican, who was a Republican in the 
 days when Grant's only boast was that he had never 
 voted for anybody but James Buchanan." 
 
 He went to the convention a journalist with political 
 enthusiasms and aptitudes. He returned in the same 
 role, but with another technic added to his equip- 
 ment. Reid's career in diplomacy began, of course, only 
 when he was appointed minister to France by President 
 Harrison in 1889. It had its origin, however, at an 
 earlier date, in May, 1872, when at the Cincinnati con- 
 vention he acted as Greeley's personal representative, 
 kept in close touch with the organization of his chief's 
 
GREELEY AND THE PRESIDENCY 209 
 
 followers, and, biding his time until the psychological 
 moment struck, carried off the prize. Never did a politi- 
 cal lieutenant shoulder more delicate responsibihties. It 
 was then that his diplomatic faculties were called into 
 play, and in the period immediately following they were, 
 of necessity, sharpened day and night. This was a re- 
 form convention and there seems always to be some- 
 thing Alpine about political reformers. They call a little 
 frostily to one another from peak to peak, each very 
 happy on his glacial height, nourishing his ego on an air 
 on which the ordinary mortal is fain to choke to death 
 — and they are terribly indisposed to come down and 
 foregather with the crowds in the valley below, where 
 men give and take, indifferent to each other's foibles. 
 Reid was a reformer himself, but he was too busy to sit 
 upon a peak, too busy shepherding, amongst others, 
 those who were thus aloofly elevated. He had to get 
 the reformers together after the convention. Hence, as 
 I say, his diplomatic efflorescence. 
 
 Greeley's nomination, receiving as it did a large im- 
 petus from his personal popularity, was nevertheless — in 
 the convention — the outcome of fortuitous circumstances. 
 It emerged from a welter of cross-purposes, and amongst 
 the men who left Cincinnati committed to his cause there 
 were numbers who had gone there with no intention 
 whatever of supporting it. This was especiafly true of 
 the famous journalistic "Quadrilateral," which had so 
 heavy a share in the earlier proceedings, eliminating Davis 
 and paving the way, as they fancied, for the adoption of 
 a programme utterly of their own devising. Neither 
 Sam Bowles nor Horace White was inclined to advocate 
 Greeley. Far from it. The most they could do in the 
 way of harmony was to unite on Charles Francis Adams, 
 the candidate whose attitude toward the whole Liberal 
 Republican affair was one of Adamsesque disdain ! Hal- 
 
210 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 stead, more than a year before, had nominated Greeley 
 in his paper, but he could realize well enough, at the 
 convention, that other things were toward and was will- 
 ing to wait upon their development. Watterson, a South- 
 ern Democrat, though friendly to the philosopher, was 
 of a similarly open mind. Taking Reid into their coun- 
 sels, not because they wanted to but because they had 
 to, they looked askance at the candidacy they suspected 
 to be within his ideas. Schurz, the orator and high 
 pontiff of this tabernacle, was for Adams or Trumbull, 
 preferably Adams. The mere medley of their views 
 would make subject for diverting comment. Yet it is 
 not of the composition of their first differences that I 
 would speak. All that lies behind the fact of Greeley's 
 nomination, and it is enough to state that when Gratz 
 Brown hurried on from Missouri, furious over rumors of 
 the betrayal of his own chances, to throw to Greeley the 
 substantial support he could command, the thing was 
 settled. It is in the ensuing part of the drama that the 
 "human nature" of the campaign comes vigorously to 
 the surface, and Reid's diplomatic adroitness is tried, 
 sometimes to the breaking point. I must turn here to 
 Colonel Watterson's pithy note on the situation: 
 
 The Quadrilateral had been knocked into a cocked hat. Whitelaw 
 Reid was the sole survivor. He was the only one of us who clearly 
 understood the situation and thoroughly knew what he was about. 
 He came to me and said: " I have won, and you people have lost. I 
 shall expect that you stand by the agreement and meet me as my 
 guests at dinner tonight. But, if you do not personally look after 
 this, the others will not be there." I was as badly hurt as any; but 
 a bond is a bond, and I did as he desired, succeeding partly by coax- 
 ing and partly by insisting, though it was uphill work. Frostier con- 
 viviality I have never sat down to than Reid's dinner. Horace 
 White looked more than ever like an iceberg; Sam Bowles was dip- 
 lomatic, but ineffusive; Schurz was as a death's head at the board; 
 Halstead and I, through sheer bravado, tried to enliven the feast. 
 But they would have none of us, nor it, and we separated early and 
 sadly, reformers hoist by their own petard. 
 
GREELEY AND THE PRESIDENCY 211 
 
 And these were the men with whom Reid now had to 
 work ! Naturally, they did not fail him. From the mo- 
 ment they had combined to further the progress of the 
 Liberal Republican movement they were sworn to rally 
 round its appointed standard-bearer. But it is to be 
 remembered that they were all men of decisively marked 
 individuality, independent journalists, with that habit of 
 mind — authoritative, shall we call it? — which goes with 
 editorial power. Team-work was what they loved — only 
 not in harness. I don't know what Reid would have 
 done if Watterson and Halstead hadn't been in the 
 group, men of humor both, never missing an aspect of 
 the campaign that had a trace of lightness about it. Re- 
 quired to give all his energies from day to day to the 
 management of The Tribune, Reid was none the less 
 obliged constantly to turn aside from that task to 
 straighten out some little political tangle. And Greeley 
 himself, of course, was not by any means to be neglected. 
 
 The very generosity of the man laid him open to in- 
 trigue. Good faith like his breeds almost too ready a 
 confidence in the good faith of others. Was a question 
 asked? Greeley's first impulse was to answer it, regard- 
 less of the possible purposes of the questioner. His fame 
 as a writer of letters had long been abroad in the land. 
 With all his native shrewdness he was still ideally easy 
 to "draw." The nominating vote had scarce been re- 
 corded when the enemy began to prod him with inquiries. 
 There was, for example, the burning question as to what 
 the Democrats might or might not do when they held 
 their convention, and Greeley's own reflections on that 
 problem were of intense interest to everybody concerned. 
 He was nominated at Cincinnati on May 3rd. Only four 
 days later the "World" was plaintively asking for light. 
 "If Mr. Greeley is a proper Democratic candidate," it 
 remarked, "let the party have a frank statement of the 
 
212 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 reasons why he ought to be nominated." Greeley would 
 have let them have the reasons offhand — he was in 
 fighting trim by now — but his lieutenant had other views, 
 which I reproduce as a specimen of his political judg- 
 ment : 
 
 New York, 
 
 »T ^ May Qth, 1872. 
 
 My dear Mr. Greeley: 
 
 I looked for you after having read through the editorial which 
 you wanted me to examine, but you had gone. Liberally construing 
 your instructions to me about it, I have felt sure that the best thing 
 I could do for you, would be to leave it out. My objections to it 
 are two-fold. First, that there are some things said in it which the 
 Presidential candidate of a great national party ought not to say 
 save in the most formal manner possible in his letter of acceptance, 
 or otherwise; and second, that such candidate ought not, under any 
 circumstances, to permit himself to be drawn into newspaper con- 
 troversies with anybody on any subject. The moment you begin to 
 let the press of the country see that you hold yourself ready to answer 
 questions which they discharge at you, that moment, to use the lan- 
 guage of the Bowery, they have you on a string, and it would not 
 take a month of such work to make an end of the most brilliant pros- 
 pects of the most popular candidate that ever received a nomination. 
 It seems to me that there is no salvation for you save in standing 
 squarely on the platform of the party which has nominated you, and 
 in declining to answer any question or make any formal expression. 
 Dangerous as letters from presidential candidates are, editorials in 
 explanation of position would be a thousand fold more dangerous. 
 
 With your permission I shall endeavor to keep The Tribune out 
 of all newspaper controversies. This is the uniform policy of the 
 London "Times," and it seems to me that there is no better occasion 
 for us to introduce it here. For myself I mean to make no reply to 
 the dirty attacks of the "Times" upon me, or to the malignant on- 
 slaughts of the "Post" upon our position. If we are grossly mis- 
 represented it is always possible to make a brief impersonal state- 
 ment setting the matter right without naming the newspaper or pro- 
 voking controversy. I feel sure that this is an indispensable feature 
 of our policy for the campaign, and hope that in this judgment I 
 may have your approval. 
 
 As to the particular case in question, I don't see how any harm 
 can be done by utterly ignoring the "World's" question. I see 
 nothing but harm to result from any offer to answer them. When 
 the formal notice of your nomination reaches you and you make 
 
GREELEY AND THE PRESIDENCY 213 
 
 your formal reply, that, it seems to me, should be most carefully 
 
 considered, and with it should end any public or avowed utterance 
 
 of yours from the beginning to the end of the campaign. 
 
 This has been from the beginning my own judgment. I know, 
 
 however, from scores of letters and from the expressions of all our 
 
 leading friends, that it is also the universal judgment. I hope you 
 
 may approve it. . , r • , r „ 
 
 Always faithfully yours, „, „ 
 
 Whitelaw Reid, 
 
 Greeley was cheerfully amenable. The editorial stayed 
 out. But, I repeat, he was very human. People would 
 Vi^rite him letters, and he would ansvi^er them, to the dis- 
 traction of his backers. They got at him vi^ith tears and 
 adjurations, but with the Democratic convention just in 
 sight they would find him, in print (though publication 
 was not his fault), making this helpful observation to a 
 New England correspondent: "I have no possible claim 
 to Democratic support and never made any." This had 
 the efiFect of a red-hot poker upon Watterson's iceberg 
 friend, Horace White, and while disdaining to worry 
 about its particular harmfulness, if it had any, he threw 
 off some steam as to the general principle involved : 
 
 Chicago, 
 
 T-. »* Ti June 27th, 1872. 
 
 Dear Mr. Reid: 
 
 I observe that Mr, Greeley has written one letter at least since the 
 tacit agreement which he made, or which Mr. Hutchins'and myself 
 understood that he made, that he would write no more. I see noth- 
 ing specially objectionable in this letter. He has apparently shot an 
 apple off our heads. But I cannot avoid asking whether he is going 
 to continue shooting. Have we not anxieties enough resting upon 
 us, without this additional and most unnecessary one? Has Mr. 
 Greeley forgotten that Clay killed himself and almost broke Mr. 
 Greeley's heart by writing one letter? Has he forgotten Cass's 
 experiment in letter writing? 
 
 My wife sails for Europe next month. If I supposed that this 
 business of shooting apples oif people's heads was to continue I would 
 certainly go with her and remain until after the election. 
 
 Yours very sincerely, ^^^^^^ ^^^^^_ 
 
214 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 White had to be soothed. Everybody had to be 
 soothed. Bowles was in a quaint state. He knew Gree- 
 ley well. "He is not a man to be put into leading 
 strings like any ordinary candidate," he wrote to Reid. 
 But Bowles, gloomily convinced that they were not to 
 have a holiday campaign, that the result would be doubt- 
 ful down to the very day of the election, stoutly clam- 
 ored for Greeley's immediate retirement from the editor- 
 ship of The Tribune. He was willing that the candi- 
 date should write for the paper over his own name or 
 initials, but on the main point the Springfield oracle 
 was fixed. From him, as from others in the camp, there 
 steadily went up the cry: "The old gentleman must 
 quit!" Greeley saw that himself, with his usual faculty 
 for grasping a practical point, and in his famous "card" 
 of May 15th made his withdrawal from the conduct of 
 The Tribune, thereby soothing some terribly agitated 
 bosoms. Until he did so, however, Reid had absurd 
 difficulty in showing his anxious colleagues that his 
 tongue was necessarily tied on the subject, that he was, 
 in fact, powerless. And there were other restless souls 
 to be stilled, as well as critics to be answered. Grave 
 inquirers had to be assured that Greeley was neither 
 bibulous nor profane, and Charles Dudley Warner needed 
 to be instructed in the fact that the Liberal Republican 
 movement was not a parade but a battle. Luckily there 
 were some of Reid's friends who guessed his trials and 
 had the good sense to send him only encouragement and 
 cheer. In the intervals of trying to satisfy a thousand 
 impossible demands it was heartening to hear from Wat- 
 terson. Against such attacks as we have observed him 
 mentioning in his letter to Greeley, he could set, for his 
 private consolation, congratulations like these from his 
 friend William Henry Smith, of the Western Associated 
 Press : 
 
GREELEY AND THE PRESIDENCY 215 
 
 Chicago, 
 My dear Agate: ^^^ '4th. 1872. 
 
 It is not too much to say — and no person in attendance on the 
 Cincinnati Convention had better opportunity for forming an im- 
 partial opinion — that the nomination of Mr. Greeley was really due 
 to the rare judgment and firmness displayed by you on that occa- 
 sion. A friend less self-possessed or less true, occupying the same 
 position, would have failed; that is, he could not have preserved for 
 twenty-four hours that morale in the Greeley band, composed as it 
 was of discordant elements, which defeated every artifice of the 
 opposition and snatched victory from the grasp of the Adams men, 
 who felt sure of their right to it with all the confidence of an heir 
 apparent. And, too, very few could have succeeded so well in 
 speedily healing the wounds of the discomfited enemy. 
 
 I have bought me a white hat ! 
 
 Very truly yours, 
 
 William Henry Smith. 
 
 "Speedily healing the wounds of the discomfited en- 
 emy." It is a good saying. That was a large part of 
 Reid's task. In his reply to this letter there is an obser- 
 vation which I have found confirmed in many quarters. 
 " I think," he says, " I came away from Cincinnati with- 
 out having made a single enemy for Greeley, but I am 
 sure I helped make him some friends." In the continu- 
 ance of that devoted policy he was well supplied with 
 material for amused reflection — in after years. Even at 
 the moment there must have been laughter in some of the 
 little storms he had to quell. David A. Wells, the emi- 
 nent tariff" reformer, was always at odds with Greeley 
 over his favorite issue, required all sorts of careful groom- 
 ing before he would "come in," and then was in a 
 fret because he could not be sure of the treatment he 
 might receive at the hands of the candidate. "I am 
 just in receipt of a bit of intelhgence," he writes to Reid, 
 "which sets me all adrift again. It is to this eff'ect, that 
 notwithstanding Mr. Greeley's announcement in his let- 
 ter of acceptance that he would not discriminate against 
 
2i6 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 his former free-trade opponents, in case he was supported 
 by them, and notwithstanding the assurances I have 
 from Gov. Fenton that he was wiUing to bury the hatchet 
 so far as myself was concerned, I have it on authority 
 that does not admit of a doubt that Mr. Greeley in con- 
 versation still continues to denounce Mr. Atkinson, Mr. 
 Grosvenor and myself as representative free-traders in 
 the most scurrilous language." He was ready to pro- 
 duce affidavits in support of the damning charge. I pass 
 over the vortex of investigation, pleas of justification, 
 explanation, recrimination, and reconciliation into which 
 Greeley, Bowles, Wells, and Reid were all incontinently 
 plunged, with letters flying about like spray, a published 
 speech at the bottom of it all. But the clearing up of 
 the business, by Wells, who had been the fussiest, is too 
 good to be lost. "I have an explanation," he says, "of 
 the cur speech. It occurred in one of the reports of 
 Atkinson's speech. He said 'we distrust the Greeks 
 bearing gifts' — and the reporter put curs for Greeks." 
 As Reid digested this silly sequel to the long, super- 
 fluous chapter of errors which had been inflicted upon 
 him, he must have turned with piquant appreciation 
 to another note, this one from Hay, lying just then 
 upon his desk: "My dear W. R. I am going to Cold 
 Spring today to pass the night. Be cool and you will 
 be happy. J. H." 
 
 Of all those associates in the campaign who kept life 
 cool and happy for Reid, the most pertinacious, I think, 
 was Carl Schurz. His case was not without its pathetic 
 aspect. He had not wanted Greeley for a candidate in 
 the first place. We have seen him at the Cincinnati 
 dinner, "a death's head at the board." He swallowed 
 the ticket only with an eff"ort, and it left a bitterness 
 under his tongue which he did not pretend to conceal in 
 writing to Greeley, just after the convention, on his 
 
GREELEY AND THE PRESIDENCY 217 
 
 inability to shape an immediate course for himself. To 
 Reid he wrote in the same inspiriting vein: 
 
 Washington, 
 My dear Sir: ^^^ ^oth, 1872. 
 
 r am very sorry to learn that I shall not have an opportunity to 
 talk with you. There are many things which it is difficult to write. 
 
 I do not know whether Mr. Greeley has shown you my correspon- 
 dence with him. If he has you will understand my views and feel- 
 ings concerning the present situation of things. I spoke to him 
 with entire candor, deeming it my duty to do so, although I know 
 Ayell how seldom that kind of spirit is rightly appreciated. 
 
 Mr. Greeley writes me that he now sees his way clear. I think 
 he is indulging in a delusion. The reports he receives are naturally 
 all favorable. I am probably the only croaker among all his corre- 
 spondents. But I have opportunities of observation which he has 
 not. We have not only not been gaining since the Cincinnati Con- 
 vention, but except perhaps in the South, where under all circum- 
 stances the movement was bound to go like wildfire, we have not 
 regained one half of the support the movement had before, and lost 
 by, the nomination. That support is now to a great extent based 
 upon the pressure of the alternative, "Grant or Greeley," and a 
 very large portion of it would vanish at once, did any possibility 
 present itself outside of that alternative. But even should that 
 alternative remain, that is not the spirit which will make a vigorous 
 campaign. 
 
 I wrote to Mr. Greeley, that, if there was any doubt in his mind 
 as to whether he should accept the nomination, it is not quite time 
 yet to form a final decision. His way is less clear today than it 
 was a week ago. 
 
 I esteem Mr. Greeley so highly and I cherish so sincere an affec- 
 tion for him personally, that it is very painful for me to tell him 
 things which may be unpleasant to him. But I cannot help it. I 
 have so much of personal responsibihty in the Liberal Republican 
 movement that its fortune, one way or the other, cannot be a mat- 
 ter of indifference to me. t, , 
 
 Truly yours, ^ ^^^^^ 
 
 I shall be very glad to hear from you, but should be happier still 
 to see you here. 
 
 Here was another Brutus come to judgment. "Not 
 that I loved Caesar less, but that I loved Rome more." 
 
2i8 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 There was no blinking the danger on the horizon, and 
 
 Reid hurried to Washington to learn the worst of those 
 
 "many things which it is difficult to write." His account 
 
 of them, in a letter to Bowles, gives a vivid idea of his 
 
 difficulties : 
 
 New Yorlc, 
 
 AT TIT r. May 26th, 1872. 
 
 My dear Mr. Bowles: 
 
 I found Schurz talking very badly in Washington the other day. 
 He is contemplating a bolt and trying to persuade himself that it 
 would be possible to have the side show at Cincinnati (I have for- 
 gotten what the long name of it was) reconvened, make up a new 
 Liberal Republican ticket headed by either Adams or Cox, present it 
 to the Baltimore convention, get it accepted by that convention, 
 and so either force Greeley off the track or leave him without sup- 
 porters. I talked with some emphasis on this subject, saying among 
 other things that it might possibly result in the defeat of Mr. Greeley, 
 but would in that case only make sure the re-election of Gen. Grant 
 and the ruin of the man who accomphshed it, adding that we sin- 
 cerely deplored a fight but that if we had to do it only asked that 
 it be made open and we would promise to make it warm enough. 
 Before I had left I had much more hope that Schurz would see the 
 fatal character of the policy he was contemplating, and letters I 
 have had from Washington since greatly encourage me. I should 
 above all things regret such a defection as seemed to threaten us 
 last week. Schurz is immensely strong and is the kind of man we 
 ought to save. Evarts and Atkinson, I have been told, have been 
 stirring him up. 
 
 Always very truly yours, 
 
 Whitelaw Reid, 
 
 The defection didn't occur. "If you know how to 
 encourage Carl Schurz, do it," Reid wrote to Horace 
 White. The word was passed along and all the faithful 
 put their oars in. The famous Fifth Avenue Conference 
 was called, at which the malcontents got together — and 
 concluded to stick together, this time with Greeley. 
 Schurz's doubts were set, to some extent, at rest. A few 
 days later he was writing from St. Louis for certain 
 documentary ammunition the candidate had promised 
 him. "Please see to it," he writes to Reid, "that I get 
 
GREELEY AND THE PRESIDENCY 219 
 
 his reply as soon as possible and that the original is to 
 be accompanied with a good legible copy so that all mis- 
 takes be avoided which his awful chirography might 
 occasion. I intend to speak as soon as I can get ready." 
 Thus at last, some six weeks after the convention, its 
 leading spirit brought himself to abide by its decision. 
 He made numerous speeches in the campaign, but it is 
 hardly surprising to find the editors of his "Reminis- 
 cences" remarking of these speeches that "they were 
 naturally against Grant rather than for Greeley." 
 
 In Reid's comment on Watterson's story of the cam- 
 paign in the "Century," from which I have already 
 quoted, there is a note on the drolly mixed relations be- 
 tween himself and the Quadrilateral. "While you all 
 thought you were taking me into camp, I was comfort- 
 ing myself with the belief that I was taking the Quad- 
 rilateral into camp, and should find them very useful 
 articles to begin housekeeping with." Halcyon house- 
 keeping it was, as the reader has, no doubt, detected, the 
 housekeeping of a galaxy of glorious incompatibles. I 
 cannot leave this serene menage without one or two more 
 glimpses. Least of all could I omit this endeavor of 
 Watterson's, in a letter to Greeley, to bring brooding 
 peace where, even after the burial of the hatchet, it 
 vainly fluttered : 
 
 Louisville, 
 
 . , c J"Iy 2 1 St, 1872. 
 
 My dear sir: 
 
 Well, I suppose you saw Schurz and talked the old talk over again. 
 You and he are so different in temperament — and yet in a few things 
 so very much ahke — that I have feared you could never come quite 
 to understand one another. I beHeve Schurz to be a truthful, can- 
 did man — not over selfish or conceited — with a deal of inspiration and 
 culture guided by the unpractical practicality of the litterateur, who 
 has achieved a great place in public affairs. I know him intimately 
 and am fond of him. But, my dear Mr. Greeley, hke you yourself 
 — like all men of genuine affections and strong will — he has his 
 angles, and these can only be got round by the sort of kindness which 
 
220 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 composes children, for both of you, believe me, are in your personal 
 relations, ardent, outspoken and childlike. I am sure that I make 
 no mistake in this that Schurz takes a disinterested, meddlesome, 
 childlike concern in you — very much the concern I take in him — and 
 that this sentiment, though sometimes annoying and always exact- 
 ing, is still a thing to be proud of, to be valued and to be tolerated. 
 
 Pray forgive me if I am absurd in throwing out these hints, not in 
 the way of counsel but merely as bits of information, the result of 
 much knowledge of Schurz and of a warm desire to keep our little 
 family together; for it is small and will need to stick. You are going 
 to be elected and then the trial — the real trial — of your life will 
 come. I have feared there was danger of a division with Schurz and 
 that kind of personal alienation which comes from incompatibility 
 of temper, not of interests and ideas. The principle of your whole 
 life, and I know I do not read your career a-wrong, is embraced in 
 the impulse of this campaign. To that Schurz is really devoted. In 
 its practical development he will be a power for good or ill, and, 
 aside from pubhc considerations, there is a sentimental consideration 
 why he should be closely alhed to your Administration. 
 
 I am writing, as I would talk, out of hand as it were, and, begging 
 
 your pardon for detaining you so long, have merely to add the hope 
 
 that we shall have an opportunity to show you in September the real 
 
 personal enthusiasm we all have for you. 
 
 Sincerely, ,, ,,, 
 
 H. Watterson. 
 
 How did Greeley carry himself under the affectionate 
 admonitions of the various members of this "little fam- 
 ily" of his? He freely, gratefully, and sometimes even 
 submissively, took counsel with Reid. But Reid was his 
 staff to lean upon, and his intimate. Elsewhere he made 
 frequent concessions — he was notably patient with Schurz 
 — but he could be restive, also, and, en occasion, as dis- 
 concertingly plain-spoken as any of them. Though he 
 wanted support in the campaign, he was not the man to 
 placate anybody for it. Characteristic is this to Reid: 
 "As to Sam Bowles, and the rest, I am always glad to see 
 and to confer with them, but I do not solicit interviews 
 or support. I shall be very glad to meet the Senators 
 you name, or any of them, but not as a suppliant for 
 their support. They must determine their own course. 
 
GREELEY AND THE PRESIDENCY 221 
 
 If they are with me in the fight all the better." To this 
 attitude he adhered himself, and though detached from 
 the conducting of The Tribune he commended it to Reid 
 as fitting for the paper. Writing from New Hampshire 
 in August, he says: "Please have a strong article repro- 
 bating the practice of boring, bullying and browbeating 
 people to make them act and vote as they prefer not to 
 do. It is the chief business of the Grant men at present. 
 We shall carry New Hampshire and Rhode Island." If 
 he was to carry any State, he wanted it to be through the 
 determination of its people to fix their own course. In a 
 letter to Warner, Reid refers to his chief as "pugnacious 
 but not warlike." He could be savage, at the moment, 
 with an opponent. There was in him no instinct for the 
 organized, sustained domination of his fellows, and he 
 was as innocent as a baby of the ruthlessness which 
 war connotes. The echoes of his campaigning as I 
 have seemed to hear them in the reconstruction of his 
 intimate circle have about them much of simple valor, 
 of disinterested truth, and — most personal of all — of a 
 great, buoyant faith in his countrymen. I do not know 
 anything that could justify my threshing over at this 
 point the views that he held on the tariff, the views so 
 abhorrent to Wells and the rest; but I must find room 
 for his reply to the political supporter who wanted to 
 know what he would do with this problem if he were 
 
 elected : 
 
 New York, 
 Hon. Wm. D. Murphy. August 25th, 1872. 
 
 Dear Sir: 
 
 The Cincinnati Platform and my letter of acceptance seem to me 
 as clear as anything I could say on the subject. They remit the 
 whole question of Tariff to Congress, where I believe it should rest. 
 A President may recommend; I do not think he should veto any 
 Tariff bill but one passed by corruption. Such a one he should veto 
 though he approved every line in it. 
 
 Yours, Horace Greeley. 
 
222 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 That swift deviation into the moralities, at the close, is 
 pure Greeley, and supplies a good key to the sympathy 
 with which he was listened to by the people. As the 
 event proved, they would not vote for him. The sheer 
 honesty of his appeal, when he and the voters were face 
 to face, met with an extraordinary response, Watter- 
 son wrote to Reid of the electrifying effect of the candi- 
 date's speeches in Kentucky, late in the campaign. The 
 condition of things had been alarming. The party man- 
 agers, as he said, "had just as good as given up the 
 ghost." But Greeley talked to the people and Watter- 
 son could gleefully report: "The situation out here is 
 revolutionized and reversed." The recipient of this good 
 news acknowledged it with these comments: 
 
 New York, 
 
 ,, „. October 2nd, 1872. 
 
 My dear Watterson: 
 
 I have just got yours of the 28th and am only sorry that Mr. 
 Greeley slipped off to deliver his agricultural address in Berks. Co., 
 Pa., before I could show it to him. He would, I am sure, be greatly 
 gratified by it. For myself, I have hesitated to say in The Tribune 
 how highly I have thought of his speeches. They seem to me per- 
 fect, being at once strong, terse, comprehensive, adapted to the 
 plainest understanding and yet rising at times to true eloquence. 
 The old gentleman came back tired but jolly, and after a night's 
 sleep looked as offensively fresh as if he had not gone through days 
 of exhaustive work. When I told him he had tired out all the boys, 
 he rephed with a sardonic smile, "You know that I am as tough as 
 a boiled owl." I wonder if he hadn't boiled crow in his head at 
 the time. 
 
 Hay and I have both been worked to death, and Hay, poor fellow, 
 is not very well. Still, we both managed to endure three hours of 
 opera last night. 
 
 Always very truly yours, ^hitelaw Reid. 
 
 Hay and Reid, worked to death, recall us to what the 
 reader must remember was, after all, Reid's chief and 
 nearly overwhelming responsibility, the management of 
 the paper. Behind the politics with which he was un- 
 
GREELEY AND THE PRESIDENCY 223 
 
 remittingly concerned, behind all the pacificatory duties 
 thrust upon him, lay The Tribune, and there, even more 
 than in the campaign as a campaign, Greeley's interests 
 and his own demanded the most strenuous exercise of 
 his thought and energy. He had faced some stiff prob- 
 lems as a journalist, but this was the stiffest of them all, 
 so far, and it would be futile to pretend that it did not 
 tax him hard. To manage The Tribune as an organiza- 
 tion was, by this time, easy enough. To manage it 
 while its founder was a presidential candidate was the 
 thorniest kind of exploit. The following letter gives 
 Reid's own account of what it meant to him : 
 
 New York, 
 
 ■K, e June 24th, 1872. 
 
 My dear Smalley: 
 
 Yours of the 6th came over a week ago and if I had not been 
 exceedingly busy should have had an earlier answer. I didn't think 
 it worth while to go into the formal business of announcing myself 
 as the Acting Editor in Chief, just as I did not think it worth while 
 four years ago to go into the business of announcing myself as the 
 Manager, or to sign every letter I wrote Managing Editor. These 
 are the signs of a departed regime. 
 
 I am exceedingly obliged for your congratulations, and still more 
 for your good opinion of the rather hazardous experiment I have 
 been trying in journalism. Nobody knows better than you how 
 impossible it will be to go through the campaign without making 
 more exertions for the election of Mr. Greeley than would naturally 
 be consistent with the idea of a thoroughly independent journal, 
 whose main object is the honest elucidation of the news and com- 
 ment upon it from the highest grounds rather than the advance- 
 ment of a particular candidate's interests. Journalistically, the for- 
 tune of The Tribune would have been made if Chas. Francis Adams 
 had been nominated, and I saw that just as clearly at Cincinnati 
 while working for Mr. Greeley, as I do now. But Mr. Greeley had 
 been put forward, his heart was in it, he had personally asked me 
 to go to Cincinnati as his immediate representative, and I did the 
 best I could for him. 
 
 But I should have shrunk from all the cares and distractions of 
 this place if I could have done it honorably. Now it begins to get 
 easier again and I think we shall go through with the campaign with 
 flying colors. The Weekly is increasing very largely in circulation. 
 
224 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 and has been ahead every week since the first of January. Our 
 daily is suff'ering the usual summer falling off, and has hardly begun 
 to experience yet the campaign demands but the paper is in a thor- 
 oughly healthy condition, and neither our correspondence, our cir- 
 culation or our business gives the slightest trace of reason for any 
 suspicion that our constituency is displeased with our independence. 
 
 I am particularly gratified by your approval of my policy of print- 
 ing the views of both sides. I have had some little opposition to it 
 here, but believe everybody is now a convert to it. For myself I am 
 perfectly sure that nothing else could have saved us from a damag- 
 ing attack all along the line during the first two weeks of Mr. Gree- 
 ley's candidacy. For some weeks I felt that it was incumbent upon 
 us to move with excessive caution in our editorial columns and to 
 avoid much praise of Mr. Greeley. As the campaign grows warmer 
 and as the Democrats declare their position, we begin to strike out 
 more freely, and after Baltimore shall make a pretty lively pohtical 
 fight. 
 
 I have wanted a dozen times since the nomination to give you 
 some idea of the prospect, but in truth I never found the time. I 
 was confident when I went to Cincinnati that we would be able to 
 secure the nomination. Immediately after it I expressed to the 
 doubting and bewildered politicians, who, didn't know whether to 
 laugh or to be angry at what they considered a preposterous joke, 
 my firm conviction that the election in November was even more 
 certain. For a long time even the sagacious men here disbelieved in 
 the Democratic endorsement, but we have never doubted it, and I 
 think now that it is as well nigh as certain as anything in the political 
 future can be. Our people talk rather wildly about the prospect, 
 some of them going so far as to say we shall leave Grant only 3 or 
 4 states. I am not so certain of this. Events seem to have shaped 
 themselves in our favor in Pennsylvania and Indiana, which I feel 
 pretty confident we shall carry in October. Of Ohio I have far less 
 confidence. In Maine, which votes early, we ought to make a good 
 fight, and I should say that with as much good fortune in the next 
 three months as we have had in the last three, the chances incline in 
 our favor. North Carohna, which also votes early, we ought to 
 carry. We are confident of two New England states, Connecticut 
 and Rhode Island, reasonably hopeful that we have about equal 
 chances in Maine and New Hampshire, and have no sort of hope of 
 anything in Massachusetts, although Frank Bird is enthusiastic and 
 Sumner may yet do wonders, if he could only contrive to understand 
 himself and his time. 
 
 But we have got past the point where we depend on one or two 
 leaders; in fact many of the leaders have been against us all along. 
 
GREELEY AND THE PRESIDENCY 225 
 
 especially in the Democratic party; but the Greeley movement has 
 really aroused the people and they have taken the reins in their 
 own hands. It is, more than anything. I have seen since the Fre- 
 mont campaign, a genuine popular movement. The democratic 
 masses are in earnest and mean to get out of the ruts, and we shall 
 have in many of the States a Liberal Republican strength which will 
 startle Grant. . , p • , r „ 
 
 Always taithfully yours, „, „ 
 
 Whitelaw Reid. 
 
 Early in this chapter I indicated that it would be 
 closely confined to the merely human aspects of the 
 campaign, and nothing could come more definitely under 
 that head than the confidence, so clearly reflected in the 
 foregoing letter, engendered by Greeley and the Liberal 
 Republican movement. If Reid's judgment on the 
 prospects of his friend was in the upshot belied, it had 
 every conceivable basis in the tendencies wide-spread 
 during the first half of the campaign. As Watterson said 
 of the nomination, "the people rose to it," and by the 
 time the Democrats held their convention at Baltimore 
 in July the public pressure for ratification of the ticket 
 was so strong that, as he remarks again, "the leaders 
 dared not resist it." The conviction that Greeley would 
 win seemed then in a fair way to become universal. 
 Yet within a few brief weeks there were unmistakable 
 signs of reaction. Even while Greeley's speeches were 
 restoring, as I have shown, the depressed spirits of his 
 supporters, the facts were portending a stern answer to 
 his eloquence. The zealots who had at first talked 
 grandly of conceding "three or four States" to Grant 
 sensed only too soon the bitter truth that they could 
 carry but little more than that number for his oppo- 
 nent. Reid, as we have seen, thought even in June that 
 such talk was rather wild, and as the fight wore on a 
 man of his political experience was bound to perceive 
 with rapidly increasing clearness the inevitable end. The 
 situation was not, indeed, excessively obscure. 
 
226 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 Looking about for the causes of Greeley's defeat, com- 
 mentators have touched upon the apprehensions of the 
 business world, surmising that in a period of reconstruc- 
 tion the country felt safer with Grant than with a man 
 of no administrative experience, no matter how much it 
 respected him on other grounds. No doubt this pruden- 
 tial impulse had its influence. But in the contemporary 
 view of the matter party lines were the factors of capital 
 importance. "The philosophy of the campaign is just 
 here," wrote Horace White to Reid about the middle of 
 September. "If the Democratic vote can be held for 
 Greeley there are Liberal Republicans enough to elect 
 him." Reid was absolutely of the same belief. "Our 
 people did their share of the fight," he wrote on election 
 night, "and the Democrats fell back, that's the whole 
 story." The Democrats, as he explained to Smalley, 
 had at no time gone into the work heartily. This was 
 due in a measure to the fact that a good many of them 
 were dissatisfied with the idea of contributing most of 
 the votes in a coalition where they got no representa- 
 tives, but more to the lack of organization in the party 
 itself. Senator Casserly told him, immediately after 
 Baltimore, that the Republicans had always been de- 
 ceived in supposing the Democratic organization perfect. 
 Under their twelve years of defeat, he said, it had run 
 down until it was worse than the organization of the 
 old Whig party had ever been. Thus enlightened and 
 prepared, Reid met the decision philosophically and even 
 with calm, but not, of course, without the deep inner 
 sorrow which was rooted in sympathy for his chief. 
 Loyalty had sustained him in the fray, and it kept him 
 with a stiff" upper lip as the votes were being counted. 
 Smalley wrote him in high wrath against the Democrats 
 when the result was made known, and in his reply there 
 is a passage showing how far he went in his demeanor 
 
GREELEY AND THE PRESIDENCY 227 
 
 before the world ere he gave up the battle. "Like you," 
 he says, "we were not expecting quite such an avalanche. 
 We still hoped indeed to the last that there was a 
 chance for New York, though a few evenings before the 
 election I made up my mind that Democrats like Tilden 
 had abandoned it. Tilden himself told me the other 
 evening that when he and I met on the evening before 
 our Waterloo he was trying to keep up my spirits by 
 refusing to let me know that he had abandoned it, pre- 
 cisely in the same way I was acting towards him." He 
 preserved his spirit from loyalty and in obedience to the 
 dictates of his character. In the voluminous record of 
 the campaign that is embodied in Reid's correspondence 
 there is no more typical expression than this to his friend 
 Wilkinson, written as the last returns came in: "I, too, 
 have practised your Wall St. virtue, and since the day 
 after the Pennsylvania election have discounted the 
 result, though I did not admit even to myself that all 
 was lost, believing that the true way to fight your ship 
 was to keep on firing till the muzzle of the last gun was 
 under water." 
 
 Horace White, commenting upon Watterson's sketch 
 of this campaign, thought that his old comrade in the 
 Quadrilateral had made too much of what was humor- 
 ous in the subject and too little of what was grave. He 
 wondered if those who read it would be brought to realize 
 the full weight of the issues then toward — "disfranchise- 
 ment, or Santo Domingo, or nepotism, or whisky frauds, 
 or civil service rapine, or the real causes of the uprising 
 of 1871-72." The criticism is not wholly relevant. In a 
 formal history of the epoch it is true that the matters 
 cited by Mr. White must loom large. From any other 
 point of view the appeal of the campaign must remain 
 that of an extraordinary personal adventure, forever 
 bringing us back to the traits and proceedings of a hand- 
 
228 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 ful of brilliant men. In this biography it emphatically 
 so operates. The episode, as it reacted upon Reid, left 
 no permanent mark upon his political character, save 
 in so far as it confirmed him in his ideas of independence. 
 To that extent the movement which he had insisted was 
 not a parade but a battle continued to give him impetus 
 and force. 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 NEW YORK IN THE SEVENTIES 
 
 The New York of the seventies lies separated from 
 the New York of our own time by differences on which 
 the statistics of the census-taker throw but the thin- 
 nest of watery lights. He gave the city, at the begin- 
 ning of that decade, a population of something under a 
 million. Doubtless this implies a fine, large, metropoli- 
 tan state of things; but it affords no very profitable clew 
 to the atmosphere Whitelaw Reid breathed when he 
 came to make his permanent home in the East. I find 
 such a clew, rather, in an allusion made by Henry James, 
 in the recollections of his boyhood, to "the small, warm, 
 dusky, homogeneous New York world of the mid-cen- 
 tury." That was the world, persisting well after the 
 fifties, in which Reid established his new fortunes. It 
 kept its character for a long time, and it is not in the 
 growth of numbers but in the march of science that 
 evidences of progress and change within its borders are 
 to be detected. The tone of New York life, and that 
 especially characteristic thing, its pace, still obeyed the 
 habit of an earlier generation. The movement of the 
 city, accelerated by the war, nevertheless was leisurely 
 compared with what it is now. It awaited, as that of 
 the whole country awaited, further expansion of our 
 inventive genius. 
 
 In his Western childhood Reid had been unconsciously 
 
 affected by the tremendous strides made in railway 
 
 building. In his young manhood he had witnessed the 
 
 influence of telegraphy upon journalism. Now, as the 
 
 229 
 
230 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 editor of a great New York daily, he saw the introduc- 
 tion of hardly less momentous factors in the speeding up 
 of social and business life. He had a pioneering bent 
 and was sympathetic to them all. The typewriter, for 
 example, was just coming in. His letter-books show that 
 he was one of the first to give it a trial. The interest 
 in the subject, which was then wide-spread, sprang in 
 his case from a particular curiosity as to devices of the 
 sort. Later on he was a leader in organizing the de- 
 velopment and manufacture of the linotype machine. It 
 was perfected under his encouragement in the compos- 
 ing-room of The Tribune, and it was there first brought 
 into effective use. In the period with which we are now 
 concerned, another potent instrument, the telephone, 
 was scarcely more than a wonder and a toy. A quicker 
 adaptation of it to general use would have made a very 
 practical diff'erence in Reid's aff"airs. In the first years 
 of his control of The Tribune, when he often worked 
 eighteen hours a day, he was even then unwilling to lose 
 touch with the paper for ten minutes, in a crisis. Ac- 
 cordingly, he had a bedroom fitted up in the tower. A 
 telephone would have saved him that. 
 
 The tower points to another significant aspect of New 
 York at that time. Steel-cage construction was un- 
 known. The sky-scraper was undreamed of — until Reid 
 laid the corner-stone of the Tribune Building in 1874. 
 The Florentine campanile that he then lifted into the 
 air gave his contemporaries what was, for them, a greater 
 sensation than their descendants have received from 
 Manhattan's tallest towers. Voyagers coming up the 
 bay hailed it with astonishment, little imagining the for- 
 midable structures it foreshadowed. The sky-line it broke 
 was that of an essentially flat, low-lying city. In Reid's 
 eyes New York was not then precisely beautiful. So we 
 may judge from the instructions he sent to Clarence 
 
NEW YORK IN THE SEVENTIES 231 
 
 Cook in 1870, with a request for a series of architectural 
 articles. "What I want," he wrote, "is first a crisp 
 editorial on the prevailing lack of architectural taste in 
 New York, the dreary miles of brown stone fronts, the 
 worthlessness of brown stone as a material for building, 
 the monstrosities given us by our wealthiest men." 
 Then article after article was to be written, discussing 
 the question of architecture in our cities generally, but 
 particularly in New York. The "frightful example" 
 was to be fearlessly pilloried, and suggestions for a 
 rational architectural reform were to be made. I hap- 
 pen to know that he never thereafter lost his interest 
 in the physiognomy of New York or his solicitude for its 
 betterment. He kept The Tribune always stanch for 
 pubKc improvements and a steady supporter of the 
 Municipal Art Commission, when that serviceable body 
 came into being. I have known him to work as earnestly 
 for the proper placing of a new statue as for the winning 
 of an election, notably when the choice of a site for 
 Saint-Gaudens's Sherman was at issue. But I shall not 
 pretend that problems of this kind cost him, in the sev- 
 enties, much sleep. He was otherwise occupied, and, 
 besides, despite its ugliness, there was a good deal in 
 that small, warm, homogeneous New York world to 
 beguile any man into cheerfully taking it as he found it. 
 Its very smallness and homogeneity increased its wel- 
 coming warmth. The measure of its smallness may be 
 drawn from the fact that he who journeyed to Union 
 Square found himself emphatically "up-town." The 
 Thirties and Forties were portentously high latitudes. 
 Washington Square, serenely rebuking with its fine archi- 
 tectural survivals those brownstone fronts which Reid 
 abhorred, was a sanctuary possessing a kind of remote- 
 ness. Only a stone's throw from Broadway, it yet pre- 
 served its ancient peace — for Broadway itself still had 
 
232 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 its Knickerbocker dignity. Fifth Avenue, save for its 
 churches and a few public institutions, like old St. Luke's 
 Hospital, was an avenue of homes, with trees along the 
 curb. At its foot the Brevoort House had the quietude 
 and stateliness of one of London's venerable "private 
 hotels," and earned some of its high repute, in fact, as 
 the favorite resort in New York of British noblemen 
 on their travels. The Prince of Wales, later King 
 Edward VII, stayed there on his historic visit. I remem- 
 ber, far away, its vast, solemn rooms, its massive dining- 
 tables, and the noiseless staff, all just going out of fashion 
 to make way for the modern regime. Also I remember 
 the food, savoring, like the rest, of tradition. The 
 Brevoort wasn't always full of titled foreigners. New 
 Yorkers of the old school frequented its conservative 
 portals, as did, by the way, many of the political lights 
 of that period. The latter went to the Astor House 
 down-town when they wanted to be near the thick of 
 things. The Brevoort was the place for unhurried con- 
 fabulations. Amongst the restaurateurs the name of 
 Delmonico led all the rest, though one could dine with 
 LucuIIus at more than one address in those simple days. 
 In University Place, as sedate a thoroughfare as Wash- 
 ington Square itself, Solari's became pretty nearly his- 
 toric, thanks to a perfect cuisine, a memorable wine- 
 cellar, and the patronage of "Sam" Ward, Pierre Loril- 
 lard, and other authoritative gourmets. The "quick 
 lunch" of latter-day New York had, it is to be presumed, 
 its equivalent in the seventies; but Delmonico, not con- 
 tent to rule only within the limits of his domain up- 
 town, ministered also in Chambers Street, and there 
 were divers "chop-houses" in the business district which 
 enjoyed, in their solid English way, as high a favor. I 
 mention these adjuncts because they were not unim- 
 portant to an editor. 
 
NEW YORK IN THE SEVENTIES 233 
 
 Greeley, no matter how busy, always had time for 
 the amenities, and held many of his conferences at Del- 
 monico's. Reid followed his example, meeting numbers 
 of his professional engagements at the dinner-hour. He 
 disposed of many others at home. When he came to 
 The Tribune he settled in the Stuyvesant Square region, 
 taking rooms in East Eighteenth Street, only a step from 
 that oasis. In 1874, when Gavin's two daughters, his 
 wards, were getting through with their education at 
 boarding-school and he could plan to have them with 
 him, he set up housekeeping at 23 Park Avenue, nearly 
 a mile farther north. At both places, and later, when he 
 took a house at 271 Lexington Avenue, it was his custom 
 to rise late and at breakfast receive visitors. The tale 
 of these appointments through the years discloses an end- 
 less procession of public figures. Statesmen from Wash- 
 ington looked in to talk about current legislation. Po- 
 litical leaders from all over the country discussed with 
 him over the coffee their campaign plans, and editorial 
 colleagues from as wide an area came to exchange ideas. 
 Nor was it all business. Innumerable friends, not only 
 political but military, literary, and "plain civilian," 
 learned to drop in for breakfast, and made that institu- 
 tion one of the pleasantest as well as one of the usefulest 
 of Reid's resources. Some of his most constant relations 
 in those days, indeed, carry one far away from the grave 
 world of editorial responsibility, into an atmosphere of 
 pure frolic. 
 
 Hay, as I have indicated, was the gayest of com- 
 panions, always ready for a day's — or an hour's — escape 
 from the grind. He had his match, too, in their friend 
 Seaver, William A. Seaver, who had had a taste of the 
 publishing business, but whom the Fates had then trans- 
 lated into the presidency of a fire-insurance company. 
 He was duly thoughtful to keep Reid's policies alive — 
 
234 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 "to extract from us the value of your traps, in case of 
 singe" — but that was a prosy matter and he was more 
 eloquent when giving sound advice on claret. "I think 
 you will enjoy hurling them into your noble person," he 
 writes, with some bottles of Cusack, Grand Puy, and 
 Lafitte. Seaver lived at Mount Vernon and liked to 
 lure Reid up there. "I shall brew chowder with my 
 own hands," he would promise. "We will take a drive, 
 have music, tell jokes, talk constitution, and such." 
 But his most characteristic missives are for casual inter- 
 ruptions of the down-town routine. "On Saturday next, 
 at one hour, post meridian, come to Delmonico's, and 
 have a small gorge. I expect Brady, Sam Cox, and one 
 or two other swells, including that good young man 
 Hay." And in another he seizes the jocund moment 
 quite literally as it flies, in this fashion: 
 
 Dear Reid: '*' 
 
 Could you rub in a little food at 4}4 P.M., at Del's? Nice food. 
 I had a little windfall this morning and feel disposed to disseminate 
 a vulgar fraction of it in a sweet little dinner. Giraud Foster is 
 coming; nobody else. r^ . 
 
 * William A. Seaver. 
 
 The Brady expected at Seaver's "small gorge" was 
 the Judge Brady, as Reid points out to Levi P. Morton 
 on another cheerful occasion, a justice of the supreme 
 court, but altogether a human brother, as evidenced by 
 his own style of invitation: "My dear Reid; I have a lit- 
 tle dinner of 6 tomorrow (if you come) at 7 P.M. Will 
 you give me the pleasure of your countenance? The 
 clams will wriggle at 19 West 33rd Street, which is my 
 abode." Reid was one of the founders of the monthly 
 dining-club which Morton invented in the seventies, and 
 gave at the Union League the dinner which marked the 
 first regular meeting of the little group. He had for his 
 guests Clarkson N. Potter, Levi P. Morton, John Jay, 
 
NEW YORK IN THE SEVENTIES 235 
 
 E. Randolph Robinson, Clarence King, William Henry 
 Hurlbert, William M. Evarts, Judge Brady, Samuel D. 
 Babcock, and James Gordon Bennett. The noted old 
 merchant Royal Phelps, who did so much to secure the 
 erection of the statue of Washington on the steps of the 
 Sub-Treasury in New York, was another of Reid's close 
 friends. He had a wonderful cellar, and, sometimes, 
 when one of his own famous whist-parties kept him from 
 coming to Reid's to dinner, he would send, as his am- 
 bassador, a bottle of priceless Madeira. In acknowledg- 
 ing one such gift, Reid writes: "Mr. Evarts and others 
 were loud in its praises, and Mr. Tilden, not to be out- 
 done, straightway sent around to his house for a bottle 
 of marvellous Johannisberger of 1862. Between the two 
 we sat around the table until half past eleven." Reid 
 was no stranger to the city when he came to New York 
 to live; he had a wide circle of friends to start with on 
 his arrival. That circle increased in circumference with 
 extraordinary rapidity; it grew like Jonah's gourd. He 
 knew everybody, everybody knew him, and there were 
 red-letter days on which he found a lifelong comrade. 
 Such a date was his birthday, October 27th, 1871, when 
 he first met William Walter Phelps. His earlier friends, 
 the Bigelows, the Godwins, the Stones, the Bottas (pre- 
 siding over the successfulest literary salon in New York 
 annals), were ever faithful. Through these and other 
 constantly multiplying ties he was identified more and 
 more with the representative elements in the metropolis. 
 As a good Republican he had joined the Union League 
 as early as 1868, but he was on clubable grounds with 
 men of all parties — Evarts, Tilden, Hewitt, Choate, Wil- 
 liam C. Whitney, John Jacob Astor, Thurlow Weed, and 
 so on. In 1870 Bayard Taylor proposed him at the 
 Century, and he was elected in that year. In 1872, 
 when the Lotos Club, then a very young organization, 
 
236 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 was rent by dissension, the predominant party looked 
 around, outside the membership, for a likely leader, and 
 fixed upon Reid. Proposed on April 30th and admitted 
 May 1 6th, two days later he was unanimously elected 
 president, and, as his old colleague in the club. Colonel 
 Thomas W. Knox, once expressed it, "from that time 
 onward there was no more disunion in the Lotos." Save 
 for two years, when he declined re-election, he was ami- 
 ably compelled to stay in office until the late eighties, a 
 period, all told, of fourteen years. The literary and 
 artistic associations of the Century were likewise char- 
 acteristic of the Lotos, and at the junior club the ruling 
 figures of the stage also foregathered — John Brougham, 
 John Gilbert, Lester Wallack, "Billy" Florence, and 
 their fellows. One great function of the Lotos, then as 
 since, was the entertainment of distinguished guests, 
 foreign and American. Reid, presiding over the ban- 
 quets to which they were bidden, and making introduc- 
 tory speeches in their honor, considerably enlarged his 
 scope in the recondite art of dealing with celebrities. 
 His first lions, Kingsley, Froude, and Edmund Yates, 
 kept him on familiar ground; but he had in time to 
 tackle almost any theme, welcoming the explorer Stan- 
 ley, the canal-builder De Lesseps, Lord Houghton, 
 Wilkie Collins, Hans von Bixlow, Henry Irving, Gilbert 
 and Sullivan, and, on one romantic occasion, no less a 
 potentate than his Majesty Kalakaua the First, King of 
 the Hawaiian Islands. There was entertainment in these 
 dinners and, incidentally, they brought him a repute for 
 public speaking which was elsewhere confirmed. 
 
 In the spring of 1872 he was asked to lecture upon 
 journalism at the University of the City of New York. 
 His discourse,* widely reported in the press, was repro- 
 
 *See " American and English Studies," by Whitelaw Reid, New York, 1913, 
 vol. II, pp. 193-344, for this and other papers on the subject. 
 
NEW YORK IN THE SEVENTIES 237 
 
 duced in "Scribner's Monthly," and then issued in book 
 form. In the following year he delivered the commence- 
 ment address at Dartmouth College, speaking on "The 
 Scholar in Politics," and gave, in substance, the same 
 paper at Amherst College and Miami University. This, 
 also, from the extracts in the newspapers and the com- 
 ment provoked, preliminary to its publication in "Scrib- 
 ner's," made his name increasingly familiar outside as 
 well as inside New York. But the particular effect of 
 all these activities was the conclusive affirmation of his 
 citizenship. In the course of them he was established 
 once and for all as a New Yorker. The public influence 
 which he was coming to exert was matched by the pri- 
 vate good-will that fell to his portion. People developed 
 a warmly interested feeling for the dark-haired, hand- 
 some, brilliant editor rising in their midst, "the young 
 man -in the tall tower," as he was called. They liked his 
 personality and his talk, and the intellectual appeal in 
 the arresting quality of his journalism was made only the 
 more sympathetic by the traits he revealed as a man. 
 Reid's personal popularity at this time, the tenacious 
 roots he struck down into the life of the city, must be 
 reckoned amongst the signal facts of his career. A large 
 part of the success which he won in that small, warm, 
 dusky, homogeneous New York world of his, he won 
 because he there raised up literally troops of appreciative 
 friends. 
 
 He needed them, for solace, if for nothing else. Any 
 strong man needs them when he takes his own line in 
 public affairs and fights for it, making, as sure as the 
 sun goes down, a horde of enemies, and an editor, of 
 course, in the nature of things, can count upon his full 
 quota. The attacks levelled against Reid in some sec- 
 tions of the press, bitter enough before the campaign of 
 1872, grew doubly venomous at that time. Quantities 
 
238 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 of the mud thrown at Greeley were aimed also at his 
 lieutenant, and, in fact, Reid told Smalley that he thought 
 he was getting much more than his fair share of black- 
 guarding. Vigorous fighter as he was, he nevertheless 
 could not retort in kind, and his letters reflect a constant 
 worry over the problem, how much he longed to hit 
 back and how resolutely he strove to adjust the hitting 
 to his own decent sense of things. He thus exhibits his 
 dilemma and his course: 
 
 ,, ,, „ New York, October 3rd, 1872. 
 
 My dear Mrs. Bigelow: j » / 
 
 We are now, as you must see from the American papers, immersed 
 in the hurly burly of the campaign, which is, I must say, more viru- 
 lently and viciously personal than any I have yet seen. I made an 
 heroic effort to conduct The Tribune on a judicial plane of impartial 
 discussion for a long time, but the attacks upon our people were so 
 wanton and so aggravated that it seemed necessary at last to retah- 
 ate by telling a small part of what we know concerning a number 
 of the most prominent Federal officials. This made things lively 
 and promises to make things livelier. For myself, I believe I am 
 about the best hated man in New York. Mr. Murphy's grudge 
 has been fed fat by time and diligent cultivation. Mr. Henry Clews, 
 Collector Chester Arthur, Mr. Naval Officer Laflin and others are 
 now taking their turn, and a lively time they are having of it. The 
 whole business is distasteful to me, but I honestly believe we are 
 right. 
 
 Gen. Dix [then Governor of the State] has thus far been as great 
 
 a humbug as the steeple of Trinity Church. We propose to show 
 
 that like it he is a wooden sham before we get through with him, 
 
 and to make the people of New York believe it. 
 
 Always very truly yours, 
 
 TV* T u T3- I Whitelaw Reid. 
 
 Mrs. John Bigelow, 
 
 Dresden, Germany. 
 
 To the political animosities indicated in this letter 
 there were added enmities less easily explained. There 
 were years, late in the lives of both, when Reid and 
 Dana were on the friendliest of friendly terms. But in 
 those early days, for no reason perceptible to the ordi- 
 nary inquirer, Dana's abuse of his rival was diabolical. 
 
NEW YORK IN THE SEVENTIES 239 
 
 I once asked a sagacious observer of the feud who knew 
 them both if he could tell me anything about it, and he 
 gave me an astounding reply. "I never could under- 
 stand," he said, "how Dana could so pursue Reid. He 
 was extraordinary in his malevolence. He had hatreds, 
 queer hatreds, based on grounds unthinkable to any 
 other human being. Thus he seemed to hate anybody 
 succeeding him in the managing editorship of The Trib- 
 une. That was why he hated John Russell Young and 
 Reid, and printed calumnies about them both!" The 
 hatred passed, and was revived, and passed again, a 
 fantastic mystery of human relations. But a generous 
 amount of the opposition encountered by Reid had noth- 
 ing mysterious about it at all, as his friends, at any rate, 
 could see. Garfield bluntly puts his finger on the secret 
 of the trouble when he says, in a letter of June ist, 1872: 
 "It is not surprising that your brilliant success on The 
 Tribune has awakened envy and jealousy." Envy and 
 jealousy were precisely what he awakened, in positive 
 storms. To an interviewer, years ago, Reid once said, 
 "I have never had anything that I did not work for," 
 and he might justly have added, "or little that I did 
 not fight for." 
 
 It would be a very false picture of him in the seven- 
 ties that presented .only his success, ignoring the almost 
 daily efforts made by political and journalistic enemies 
 to discredit his work and break him down. He laughed 
 them to scorn, realizing, for one thing, that they could 
 do him no harm. When Walter Phelps went to Congress 
 and suffered the usual hard knocks, he told him not to 
 worry. "Next to being the subject of discriminating 
 praise," he wrote, "the best thing that can happen to a 
 man is to be the subject of indiscriminating and violent 
 abuse. The violence always leads people to think there 
 must be something in the man who provokes it." With 
 
240 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 this philosophy he could laugh, as I have said, at his 
 detractors. But he was not indifferent to criticism, and 
 one instance may be cited here, though not so much for 
 its own sake as for that of a collateral document. "Tell 
 me honestly," he wrote to Watterson, in the heat of the 
 campaign, "whether you think we are making The Trib- 
 une too political. I get alarmed about it sometimes, 
 and yet I have people who complain that we don't print 
 enough politics." Here is Watterson's reply: 
 
 - - „ Louisville, September 5th, 1872. 
 
 My dear Reid: ' ^ j y 1 
 
 My dear boy ! I read The Tribune every day carefully and I flatter 
 myself that, if there is anything I io understand, it is a daily news- 
 paper. Barring that your news editor misses some magnificent 
 rebel-liberal campaign material, for New England consumption, that 
 I now and then provide for your special benefit, I really can't see 
 how you could improve the paper. Seriously, you may as well ex- 
 pect the kind of criticism to which you are exposed. That you are 
 not up to Marble; that you are a failure; that the absence of Greeley 
 is fatal, you may confidently look to hear. If you had twice Greeley's 
 pecuHar genius, and all your own, it would be still the same. The 
 world does not allow a young buck like you to step into such a pair 
 of boots without its word; and you know yourself that one must 
 e'en have his feet pinched with every new pair of boots, particularly 
 if they be a tight fit, as they are in your case, for that The Tribune 
 is quite up to itself, that you are filling the measure as full as need 
 be or can be, " I'm free to maintain." You are, indeed, and if White, 
 Halstead or Bowles — to take the standards — co^di do better, they 
 doTit do better, and, for my part, I couldn't do better. Don't you 
 
 bother about it, me boy I a rr • i 
 
 Atiectionately, „ ^rr 
 
 Watterson's heartening words must have been very 
 welcome, like balm bestowed amid hurtling missiles, and 
 there were other friends, in and out of journalism, quick 
 to give counsel and encouragement. Yet if the columns 
 of The Tribune offer any criterion, Reid needed no con- 
 soling support — they glow with the joy of battle. That 
 was one reason why his newspaper neighbors were so 
 vexed with him — he gave back blow for blow with such 
 
NEW YORK IN THE SEVENTIES 241 
 
 gleeful zest. He had the energy to meet all their on- 
 slaughts and even had some to spare with which to speed 
 the quarrel of a friend. It is interesting to find him, in 
 one instance, the vigilant custodian of Godkin's good 
 name. In the course of a disagreement on public affairs 
 in 1872, the "Times" sought to confute the "Nation" 
 by assailing its editor on personal grounds connected 
 with old contributions of his to the "Times." Godkin 
 framed a withering reply, sent it to The Tribune, with- 
 drew it from publication on the advice of friends, but 
 returned it the next day with the following: 
 
 T^ HT r> New York, March 25th, 1872. 
 
 Dear Mr. Reid: j ' i 
 
 I enclose you the letter once more, and shall feel obliged by your 
 getting it in tomorrow if possible. 
 
 May I ask you one thing more? I am going out of town for ten 
 
 days, being considerably run down in health. They will probably 
 
 pitch into me daily, for a while, and I have no daily paper to reply 
 
 in and shall not be here to look after myself, even if I had, and have 
 
 done with the controversy forever. Would you, therefore, take care 
 
 of me by an occasional shot, during my absence? 
 
 Yours very truly, ^ •< r- 
 
 •^ Edwin L. Godkin. 
 
 Reid began to take care of him by having his defense 
 put in type within an hour of receiving it and sending 
 him a proof; he printed it in the morning, and then, 
 giving the "Times" the following day for the pubhca- 
 tion of a reply, he came out on March 28th with a terse 
 exposure of the latter as an illustration of "unaccount- 
 able spite and perversity." It was swift, serviceable co- 
 operation, from which Reid desisted only because Godkin 
 himself asked to have the matter dropped. "As you 
 were kind enough to back me up with a vigorous blast 
 in The Tribune," he wrote, a few days later, "you will 
 perhaps allow me to bore you with one or two words of 
 explanation about the last article in the 'Times'"; but 
 these were only for Reid's private ear, and Godkin would 
 
242 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 have no further parley with the enemy. Meanwhile, the 
 episode served to cement the bonds between the two 
 men, and in view of the antagonism in which political 
 differences long afterward involved them, it is a little 
 amusing to observe the amity in which they once dwelt. 
 In the winter of 1875, fo^" example, there was a London 
 letter of Smalley's which, for certain reasons, was not 
 exactly suitable for The Tribune. On the other hand, it 
 seemed to Reid too good to be thrown away, and, in 
 fact, just what the "Nation" would want. Whereupon 
 he sent it over to Godkin, who told him when they met 
 at the Century that he was very glad to get it. "I 
 hope," wrote Reid to Smalley, "this may be the end of 
 the bitter feeling between yourself and the 'Nation.' 
 It is in many ways one of our most valuable friends 
 here, and whatever may have been its attitude in the 
 old times, it fights now for most of the things for which 
 The Tribune fights, and goes largely into the same class 
 of educated thoughtful men." Alas for that amiable 
 hope! The end of the bitter feeling was not to be so 
 easily brought about. Seasoned readers of The Trib- 
 une, of "G. W. S.," and of the "Evening Post," in God- 
 kin's administration, readers who remember how the 
 London correspondent was wont to excoriate "the Illus- 
 trious Immigrant," and how the New York editor poured 
 out the vials of his wrath upon "the Old Tory Squire," 
 will agree with me, I think, in the reflection that God- 
 kin, publishing with pleasure an article of Smalley's, 
 offers a delectable subject for an historical painting in 
 the temple of journalism. 
 
 It was in the campaign of 1872 that Reid got a new 
 sense of what the "bitter feeling" of political debate 
 could produce in the way of personal abuse, and yet the 
 close of the canvass, which should naturally have wit- 
 nessed the burial of many hatchets, only sharpened them 
 
NEW YORK IN THE SEVENTIES / 243 
 
 for more outrageous attacks. Colonel Watterson has 
 told me of the wretched physical state in which Greeley 
 made his last stand in the West. His speeches were 
 magnificent, but his health was unmistakably breaking 
 down. When Watterson sped him on his journey home 
 he was never to see him alive again. The old warrior 
 went back to tend his wife in her last days; she died on 
 October 30th, and a month later he followed her. It was 
 then that the storm broke over Reid's head, and he was 
 embarked in dreadful earnest upon a sea of troubles. 
 
 There were jealous competitors of The Tribune who 
 w^ere mean enough to try to make capital for themselves 
 out of the heavy loss it had sustained, and there were 
 personal enemies of Reid's, of an even ignobler breed, 
 who were ready with insinuations associating him with 
 the causes of his chiefs death. If he had not forced 
 Greeley's nomination at Cincinnati, they said, Greeley 
 would not have been crushed by defeat and the conse- 
 quent ruin of The Tribune. If he had not edited and 
 suppressed articles written by Greeley after the election, 
 Greeley would not have died of a broken heart. And 
 so on in the same edifying strain of silliness and malice. 
 It was all wickedly made out of whole cloth, and, as 
 Watterson said to me when we discussed the subject, no 
 more wicked than absurd. Detraction so grotesque 
 could not but defeat itself. Even men who had been 
 no well-wishers of Reid's could see that. Among them 
 was the editor of the "Commercial Advertiser," an 
 opponent whose action at this crisis is perhaps as sig- 
 nificant a tribute as I could cite. It took this shape: 
 
 _ New York, November 30th, 1872. 
 
 Whitelaw Reid, Esq. 
 
 Dear Sir: 
 
 You and I have travelled in different directions since your advent 
 and mine into journalism in this city. I have said hard and mean 
 things about you which were the ebullitions of the moment and 
 
244 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 which I regretted afterwards. You and I never have met that I 
 am aware of. I should not know you if I stumbled on you in the 
 street. I would not now be communicating with you but that I 
 respect ability and pluck, and sympathize with the "under dog" in 
 a fight. The article in the "Sun" of today was so cruel, so das- 
 tardly, that I could not resist offering you my sympathy, my hum- 
 ble pen, my assistance, to defend you against this sort of inhuman 
 warfare. Because your side did not succeed I don't believe in hunt- 
 ing you down hke a dog. I see that a systematic effort is to be made 
 in that direction. Will you pardon my warm nature when I say 
 that I can't stand by and see a man kicked when he is down. Com- 
 mand my poor services. 
 
 Yours to serve, Hugh Hastings. 
 
 Hastings vi^as no squeamish amateur in the journalistic 
 arena. What made his gorge rise had to be pretty 
 strong. But Reid's course was clear. In thanking 
 Hastings, he wrote, "I will have no wrangles with slan- 
 derers over Mr. Greeley's open grave," and, in a letter 
 of similar import to Charles Dudley Warner, about the 
 attacks, he explains that at least until after the funeral 
 "there shall not be a line in The Tribune to indicate that 
 we have even seen them." He would not even reprint 
 articles appearing in other papers in his defense. After 
 all, it was hardly necessary. Nobody who knew him, 
 least of all those who knew him in his relations with 
 Greeley, needed to be told of the scrupulous loyalty, nay, 
 the tenderness, with which he watched over his friend 
 and his friend's interests down to the end. He left the 
 lies to perish of their own baseness. But now and then 
 some one far from the scene would in good faith be 
 bewildered by flying rumors, and to him Reid would 
 make reply. Such an inquirer was Greeley's zealous 
 supporter in Kansas, the old antislavery politician, Wil- 
 liam Larimer, of Leavenworth. Reid wrote to him as 
 follows : 
 j^ c . New York, March nth, 1873. 
 
 I am greatly obliged by your favor of the 6th inst. Of course the 
 talk about anybody being responsible because of his [Greeley's] 
 
NEW YORK IN THE SEVENTIES 245 
 
 nommatlon for the Presidency is preposterous. For my own part I 
 was opposed to his nomination up to within two weeks of the Cin- 
 cinnati Convention, and again and again stated my grounds of oppo- 
 sition. When he finally told me that he wanted me to go to Cincin- 
 nati to represent him, and I undertook the work, I made up my 
 mind as a matter of course to do my best for him. He wanted me 
 there mainly to look after the tariff, and that I did. But I should 
 have been an exceedingly poor friend of his if I had not also done 
 the best I could for the nomination. 
 
 His death was not due to any pohtical disappointment but almost 
 entirely to the enormous overwork which, continuing for years, 
 finally culminated in the tremendous strain of the trip West, and 
 the return to his wife's death-bed, over which he watched almost 
 sleepless for a month. No human frame could have borne what he 
 then underwent, I am a living witness that he gave far less atten- 
 tion for weeks to the political situation than most of his friends, 
 and that from the date of the Vermont election he had substantially 
 made up his mind to the probability if not the certainty of defeat. 
 They grossly slander and outrage his memory who falsely say that 
 he died because of political disappointment. 
 
 Very truly yours. Whitelaw Reid. 
 
 Hon. Wm. Larimer, 
 
 Leavenworth City, Kan. 
 
 In the month immediately follow^ing Greeley's death 
 the emotional consequences of that event lost none of 
 their dramatic character by the intervention of hard, 
 practical issues. What was to become of the paper? 
 The w^hole country may be said to have taken an interest 
 in the question, w^ith which the press resounded. The 
 Tribune was, as Watterson whimsically styled it, a 
 "stockocracy." When Greeley died he possessed only 
 six of the one hundred shares in which the ownership 
 was vested, but so long as he lived the fate of The Trib- 
 une was so bound up with his personality that in spite 
 of the small number of his shares the determination of its 
 policy hinged as a matter of course upon his decision. 
 The moment he was gone the stockocracy brought diver- 
 gent views to the front, and at its first meeting to con- 
 sider the future it was confronted by a crucial question 
 which Reid thus formulated: "Shall The Tribune aban- 
 
246 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 don wholly the independent attitude which it won from 
 the Cincinnati movement, and fall into the ranks of 
 Repubhcan organs behind the New York 'Times/ or 
 shall it continue honestly as an independent newspaper, 
 supporting what can be honestly approved in Gen. 
 Grant's Administration, and as frankly opposing the 
 rest?" The solution of this problem was, as I have 
 said, more than a private interest; it was a public trust. 
 Greeley had hardly been laid in his grave when letters 
 poured in upon Reid, full of anxious inquiry, and im- 
 ploring him to save the day. The intensity of feeling 
 behind these pleas bursts all bounds in the case of one 
 faithful reader, who had heard a prophecy that the 
 paper would now go to eternal smash. "For God's 
 sake, Mr. Reid," urges this alarmed correspondent, 
 "make that man a liar !" To do that he had to combat 
 a movement to make Schuyler Colfax editor, an appoint- 
 ment not only inept in itself but one promising the 
 triumph of Conkling and his associates and the handing 
 over of The Tribune to the administration, lock, stock, 
 and barrel. 
 
 The man who has served as Speaker of the House, and 
 twice been re-elected to that office, surely need not 
 apologize for his abilities, and ex- Vice-President Colfax 
 doubtless seemed in many quarters a very desirable 
 choice, indeed, for the editorship of The Tribune. But, 
 as a matter of fact, not even such modest success as he 
 had won editing his St. Joseph Valley "Register" out at 
 South Bend could persuade anybody who knew any- 
 thing about journalism to believe that he could fill 
 Greeley's chair. Some commentators were purely hor- 
 ror-struck. "It is not true, I trust," wrote Halstead, 
 "that the editorship of The Tribune is tendered Colfax. 
 That would be ruin and disgrace." But chiefly the wel- 
 kin rang with ridicule. Here is a specimen: 
 
NEW YORK IN THE SEVENTIES 247 
 
 Dear Mr. Reid: Hartford, Dec. loth, 1872. 
 
 I have asked Mr. Osgood to send you and Col. Hay, with my 
 compliments, copies of the "Back Log." I do not hold you respon- 
 sible for the part of it that is new, but you certainly advised the 
 rest of it. 
 
 Why don't you get for editor of The Tribune, Victoria, or Plon 
 
 Plon, or ex-Napoleon HI, or Kossuth, or the Equator, or Daniel 
 
 Pratt, or the Milky Way, or the Committee of Seventy, or Weed's 
 
 Sewing Machine, or the Ten Commandments, or the Multiphcation 
 
 Table — something that is well known in and has the confidence of 
 
 the back districts? I hope the Lord will give me to see the day 
 
 when a good newspaper will command itself. 
 
 Yours sincerely, „ t-. ^tt 
 
 Charles D. Warner. 
 
 John Defrees, Lincoln's old public printer, summed up 
 the general feeling about the whole unbeHevable business 
 when he wrote to Reid from Washington: "Well, all I 
 have to say of it is, that it is a very silly effort to fill a 
 very great void by the insertion of a very small cork." 
 Reid, himself, remained "Smiler's" kindliest critic. 
 "There is this to be said about Colfax," he wrote to 
 Bayard Taylor, "that he has always surprised people in 
 every position he has obtained by doing better than they 
 expected." Still, he had to add that letters of protest 
 past counting were coming in from leading RepubHcan 
 statesmen, of all regions in the country, and that even 
 the Grant newspapers were firing hot shot into the new 
 combination. At the height of the crisis he came to 
 know the full value of those troops of friends we have 
 seen him making. They raUied round him with whole- 
 hearted offers of immediate aid, and in the office he was 
 surrounded by the same affectionate loyalty. When 
 Reid resigned Hay resigned with him, and virtually the 
 whole staff was eager to take the same course. He had 
 strenuously to reason with some of his men to keep them 
 from sacrificing their own interests to their personal 
 devotion. For his own part, he went back to the motto 
 
248 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 of his youth, which the reader may recall: "Always look 
 on the bright side, if there is any." The axiom held 
 true, and when, after days of suspense, he retained the 
 editorship, the office floor was littered with torn-up 
 resignations. The happy event fell in the happiest of 
 seasons, only a day or two before Christmas. Reid 
 spent part of December 24th writing letters to his lieuten- 
 ants, raising their salaries, and bidding the staff to a 
 banquet at Delmonico's on the 28th. 
 
 "Hurrah for our side!" cried Walter Phelps, one of 
 the stanchest of his numerous adherents, and in all the 
 letters of congratulation that swept in upon him the 
 same note was sounded. Horace White's words of rejoic- 
 ing were all for "your triumph over the powers of dark- 
 ness." Mark Twain's accustomed levity disappears be- 
 neath his solemn sense of the rescue of principle that had 
 been compassed. "My dear Reid," he writes, "the 
 Lord knows I grieved to see the old Tribune wavering 
 and ready to tumble into the common slough of jour- 
 nalism, and God knows I am truly glad you saved it. 
 I hope you will stand at its helm a hundred years." 
 Bigelow hailed him as even more the editor for the situ- 
 ation than his great predecessor would have been. "I 
 can see better reasons than the others," he wrote from 
 Paris, "for thinking that any change that should result 
 from a reaction against your administration of The Trib- 
 une would prove disastrous to it and injurious for a 
 time — unjustly so — to you. The prospects of your paper 
 now seem to me as good as possible after what has 
 occurred. You know I have long thought that The 
 Tribune has suffered rather than gained for many years 
 from Greeley's influence upon it, fully as I recognize 
 some of his marvellous talents for journalism. It is ad- 
 mirably managed now and must rapidly heal any wounds 
 it received during the late campaign." s- Bret Harte, 
 
NEW YORK IN THE SEVENTIES 249 
 
 whose pen Reid had been seeking just as the storm 
 broke, called to speak his good-will face to face, and, 
 finding his friend absent, wrote this graceful note: 
 
 Sturtevant House, 
 
 »» r> December 30th, 1872. 
 
 My dear Reid: ^ ' ' 
 
 My visit last Friday was only one of congratulation — only to say 
 how glad I was that the King should enjoy his own again — that the 
 true Prince should hold his own against all Pretenders, and to drink 
 confusion to all rebels and crop-eared time-servers. Of course with 
 my facile promptness I say "Yes" to your proposal. But pray 
 believe me in spite of this. I really want to connect myself in ever 
 so humble a fashion with The Tribune, which after this sore travail 
 really seems to have been born again, and to promise all that I, in 
 my younger newspaper days, used to dream of as my ideal of jour- 
 nalism. So look for me, with shps, before long, when the year is 
 new. If this hand hath not lost its cunning— but I'll say no more. 
 
 Yours ever, „ ,, 
 
 Bret Harte. 
 
 Nothing was more welcome than a letter like this, 
 which contained not only cheer but the promise of 
 "copy." All through the period of stress Reid had, of 
 course, gone on editing, and now his labors were doubled, 
 involving not only those of editor but those of publisher 
 as well, and one of his tasks, as he wrote to Bigelow, 
 was to bring the business department up out of "a hor- 
 rible state of chaos." He chose this moment, also, to 
 make the resolution that on the ist of May they would 
 begin tearing down the old building, so as to put up on 
 its site the best newspaper office in the country. "Yes, 
 I see you won," wrote Halstead, "and I almost felt 
 sorry for you when you did. It's a devilish long rough 
 road — fighting through and paying out after your long- 
 time old leader is dead is what brings a fellow's gray 
 hairs. But it's worth the gray hairs and the rest, I sup- 
 pose." He was not the only one to see the magnitude 
 of Reid's task and to warn him. His friends were always 
 begging him to take care of himself, to work less inordi- 
 
250 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 nately. But Walter Phelps, a constant mentor, showed 
 in one of the earliest of his many remonstrances how 
 well he understood the futility of argument on this 
 point. "If it were any use," he says, "I would preach 
 to you upon the necessity of your working less. But I 
 know it is of no avail. Like a tiger that has tasted 
 blood, you know the zest that comes from power and 
 that power can be had only by working harder than 
 others, and so you will work on, until you drop." Pinned 
 to a letter of Jay Cooke's, written at this time, there is 
 a faded clipping from a New York paper, describing 
 "Whitelaw Reid's tall, muscular figure, clad in a long 
 surtout far below the knee, wearing a Scotch cap, his 
 long hair brushed back, and his eyes closed with weari- 
 ness, going home in the Third Avenue cars at one, two 
 or three o'clock in the morning." It was the last detail 
 that moved the old Philadelphia banker to admonish 
 his friend. "Don't do this kind of thing," he implores. 
 But it was only by doing this kind of thing that he 
 could satisfy his conception of what was due to the 
 situation. 
 
 Doubtless it was pleasant to have the solicitude of his 
 friends. It was pleasant, too, and perhaps even more 
 fortifying to receive, shortly after Cooke's adjuration, 
 such a message as this from Godkin: "Let me take this 
 opportunity of congratulating you sincerely on The 
 Tribune, which is, in my judgment, by long odds, the 
 best newspaper that has ever been here, and I trust you 
 may have the patience to persevere in your present 
 course, and that the Lord will in some manner remove 
 that amazing blackguard in the 'Times' office." 
 
 The concluding passage in Godkin's tribute reminds 
 us of the crumpled rose-leaf that is never missing, for 
 any man. His enemy, and Reid's, in the "Times" office 
 was in nowise silenced by the turn taken in the affairs 
 
NEW YORK IN THE SEVENTIES 251 
 
 of The Tribune. On the contrary, he continued his 
 animadversions, and there were others in the press, of 
 his acidulated disposition, who were as unremitting in 
 their industry. But as in private Reid had his goodly 
 band of sworn followers, so in pubhc there was no lack 
 of defenders. I might, from many sources, here frame 
 a kind of composite portrait, revealing Whitelaw Reid 
 as he appeared to his contemporaries in the hour of his 
 establishment in editorial control of The Tribune. Bet- 
 ter than that, however, is the sketch drawn by a jour- 
 nalist, J. C. Goldsmith, who was competent to delineate 
 him, and in the process was bent not upon eulogy but 
 upon justice. From his brief study of Greeley and Reid 
 I take these passages: 
 
 Life was to Greeley like the breeze that plays upon an Aeolian 
 harp. Where Greeley hesitated, Reid pushes. Greeley discussed 
 premises; Reid insists on the undeniableness of his conclusions. He 
 cares nothing for the passing rhetorical effects of his sentences, pro- 
 vided he wins. The pail may be red or yellow; but does it hold 
 water? He is indefatigable. This man — keen, cool, judicious, 
 strategical, unflinching — has not the slightest doubt that the prob- 
 lem of guiding The Tribune through the many years to come has 
 been solved by him. He has a firm reliance on his own strength, 
 and he asks no man to confirm it. In his management he is as 
 much like Barnes of the London "Times" as anybody. 
 
 This is the man Reid as he prominently appears at first sight. 
 His executive ability is so great that you are likely to forget that his 
 other qualities in journalism are by no means dwarfed. They are 
 merely subordinated. Men have been fond of saying that Reid is 
 very like Greeley. With great love for the memory of the one and 
 great admiration for the abihties of the other, we suggest that this 
 estimate is not strictly correct. In Greeley sentiment was pre- 
 dominant, and the only so-called errors that the dear old man ever 
 committed were the effects of his sentiment at white heat. We will 
 not call them errors, because they were caused by great faith in ideas 
 without regard for the ways of the world. Reid has sentiment, 
 but it is kept in command, and he is able to calculate the time when 
 ideas may have the greatest effect. This is the historical faculty. 
 Greeley's was that of a poet. We can easily see why he admired 
 Reid. Reid was what he was not — practical in his sagacity. No 
 
252 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 one believes that he would have made him his lieutenant for that 
 quality alone, or that a man so warm in his tastes and affections as 
 Greeley was should have selected as his nearest acquaintance one 
 whose sentiments were rigidly cold. Reid is eminently a genial, 
 companionable man, and his friendships with men like Chase, Gar- 
 field and Hay are very close and sincere. But it is in the manage- 
 ment of his paper that we do not see the traits of character that 
 belong to a man who is the foster-father of orphans and whose chari- 
 ties are as broad as the principles of his journalism. The manage- 
 ment of The Tribune could show nothing but intellect. Saladin 
 carving the floating veil can hardly show the heart that is in him. 
 So that we must consider Reid as a cool, keen, sagacious, politic 
 man, while we come to know that The Tribune is now displaying 
 better morning journalism than any other paper on the two con- 
 tinents. 
 
 In the letter of acknowledgment that Reid wrote to 
 the author of the foregoing there is a sentence character- 
 istic of that sentiment to which Mr. Goldsmith refers: 
 "Four-fifths of all the praise The Tribune gets belongs 
 first of all to its splendid stafi"." He ruled it, as he had 
 from the first moment in which Greeley had placed 
 authority in his hands, with consideration and generos- 
 ity. But there was no doubt at all about his ruling. 
 Nor did the legend which he proudly affixed to the 
 paper, "Founded by Horace Greeley," the sign manual 
 of a fidelity in which he never wavered, in one whit 
 affect his course in making The Tribune the expression 
 of his own ideas. Thenceforth, in every detail that de- 
 termines a paper's character, stamping it as the work of 
 one man's guiding genius, the instrument of his thought 
 and influence, The Tribune was Whitelaw Reid's. 
 
 It is important to note here, however, one far-reach- 
 ing trait underlying Reid's dominance. I have spoken 
 of our era of "personal journalism." He easily held his 
 own against its fierce and often even violent competi- 
 tion, and a question that naturally presents itself is the 
 question of just how he spoke his mind in a debate car- 
 
NEW YORK IN THE SEVENTIES 253 
 
 ried on by men like Greeley and Bowles, Dana and Wat- 
 terson. Greeley, for example, was a kind of modern 
 Bunyan, whose personality fixed the color of his paper in 
 a peculiarly decisive way. The Tribune was for him a 
 pulpit from which the doctrines that he preached took 
 on an accent absolutely his own. Readers turned to 
 the paper every morning wondering "what Uncle Horace 
 would say." Something like this was the habit of Dana's 
 followers and of other devotees of other guides. It was 
 not in quite the same sense the habit of those who be- 
 lieved in Whitelaw Reid and were aware, into the bar- 
 gain, of his sufficiently affirmative personality. Where 
 he was concerned, rather, the public wondered "what 
 The Tribune would say." His influence was recognized, 
 if I may make the distinction, not as that of an oracular 
 editor, but as that of an editorial oracle. His secret 
 was one of organization. His closest prototype is Delane, 
 in the most powerful days of the London "Times," when 
 everybody was aware of his power behind the editorial 
 columns, but no one could identify in detail his relation 
 to the writing of a given editorial. Reid's contribution, 
 in short, to "personal journalism" was a kind of edi- 
 torial management which sacrificed individual idiosyn- 
 crasy to the weight of the paper as an institution greater 
 than any member of its staff. He lost nothing of per- 
 sonal fame by this subordination of his gifts as a writer 
 to his gifts as an editor. He had a style, a style in 
 which Hay and other friends of his exulted, recognizing 
 his touch when it appeared. But he sought no salience 
 for it. He was content that his spirit should be merged, 
 for the world at large, in the spirit of The Tribune. 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 "THE SCHOLAR IN POLITICS" 
 
 General Grant settled down to his second administra- 
 tion with a majority behind him which, considered as 
 a vote of confidence, rang ominously hollow. It would 
 seem natural to assume that the people, in re-electing 
 him, showed that they loved Greeley less, yet it would 
 hardly be accurate to say that they loved Grant more. 
 It was a case, rather, of their having made a rough-and- 
 ready bid for what looked to them hke the more prac- 
 ticable way out of a state of poHtical muddle — and, as 
 sometimes happens in a matter of specious compromise, 
 they were incontinently sold. The President was re- 
 inaugurated while the embers of the Credit Mobiher in- 
 vestigation were still burning hot, and he took with him 
 into his new tenure of the White House a rich share of 
 the odium attaching to the quite as detestable "salary 
 grab." These episodes were prophetic. They fore- 
 shadowed his further bedevilment of civil service reform, 
 his Laodicean handhng of the currency issue, his more 
 than inept Southern policy, and the culmination of his 
 errors in the Third Term heresy. What a chance was 
 here, ready to the hand of an editor whose columns were 
 now conclusively given to a programme of independence ! 
 For it was a chance offered not only by the declension of 
 a great soldier into a poor president, but by the existence 
 of a thoroughly national state of discontent. There was 
 no narrow partisanship in the anti-Grantism which 
 marked Reid's conduct of The Tribune at this time. 
 On the contrary, it was a whole-souled, disinterested 
 revolt against corrupt party domination that he carried 
 
 254 
 
"THE SCHOLAR IN POLITICS" 255 
 
 on, and in this he soon had, in his turn, a rousing majority 
 behind him, one which, unlike the President's, rang 
 auspiciously true. 
 
 It was his popular backing, as well as his own tempera- 
 ment, that saved him in his independence from the 
 holier-than-thou tendencies of the Mugwump. He up- 
 held what he called "the sacred right of bolting and 
 scratching," not as a fetich, but as the practical resource 
 forced upon honest men by actual conditions. A type 
 of editorial frequently recurring in The Tribune during 
 this administration is one philosophizing current events 
 in the political world. The State conventions which 
 turn up with such appalling frequency in American life 
 could be relied upon to supply the necessary theme. 
 They were not always to be taken seriously, it is true, 
 and least of all was there any sustenance in the sawdusty 
 comments of these assemblies on the shortcomings of 
 the administration. "There's hardly anything in the 
 machinery of politics so cheap as resolutions," was 
 Reid's cynical reflection on what the oracles generally 
 had to say. But there was no mistaking their funda- 
 mental restlessness, and the mounting evidence of the 
 news columns gave him a basis for the following char- 
 acteristic diagnosis: 
 
 It would be hard to find in the history of the country any parallel 
 for the present political conditions. If it is not chaos now, it is the 
 beginning of it. Never sat party allegiance so lightly before; never 
 was the dictum of the caucus so weak, or the sanctity of the regular 
 nomination so lightly regarded. The party in power has, from all 
 present appearances, the best of it; but we are much mistaken if all 
 these signs do not portend mischief for it as well as for the other 
 organizations; and perhaps for the great and good men who make 
 their living by controlling them. 
 
 This passage points, like innumerable others of the 
 same tenor which I might draw upon, to the close con- 
 
256 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 nectfon between Reid's policy and the drift of the times. 
 The deeper elements of his political thought are ex- 
 pressed in the address on "The Scholar in Politics," 
 which, as I have previously noted, he gave at more than 
 one university in the summer following the national 
 election. It won warm approval at Amherst and Miami, 
 and Dartmouth emphasized its appreciation by confer- 
 ring upon him the degree of Master of Arts; but what 
 gave Reid the most satisfaction was the assurance of 
 his friends, in and out of the press, that he had spoken 
 constructively to the needs of the hour. These he rec- 
 ognized as the needs of an altogether new and different 
 state of affairs. The age of the sentimental in politics 
 had passed. We had ceased to conduct campaigns on 
 fine feelings. Emotional politics had gone out with the 
 war. Questions of God-given rights had made way for 
 others having to do with the tariff on pig iron and with 
 rates of mileage. The right of the black man to the 
 free air of heaven had been forever settled, and now it 
 was time to tackle the knottier problem of keeping him 
 from reducing South CaroHna to bankruptcy. And all 
 this required not emotion but hard thinking, the best 
 service of the best-trained men : 
 
 Anybody could understand sentimental politics; It takes thought 
 and training, and all the scholarship you can get for It, to master the 
 more difficult Issues of this more critical time. On mere questions of 
 justice to the enslaved or loyalty to the flag, there was no fear of 
 the people; with or without the active co-operation of their best- 
 taught men, they were sure to take the right course. But the issues 
 that are now upon us are as grave and more complicated. How to 
 efface the scars of a civil war; how to preserve safe relations between 
 slaves suddenly made citizens and masters suddenly made paupers; 
 how to repair the financial waste of an inflated currency and an 
 enormous debt; how best to adjust the burdens of an exhausted 
 revenue to the needs of struggling industries; how to protect labor 
 from capital, and how to control the corporations that absorb and 
 dominate both, — these are problems worthy the best thought of our 
 
"THE SCHOLAR IN POLITICS" 257 
 
 best-trained thinkers; and in handling them a government of the 
 people has the right to the aid of the finest culture and highest intel- 
 lectual power that people has been able to develop. 
 
 We deplore the evils of politics. Our tastes are offended by their 
 turmoil, our morals outraged by their deceit and dishonesty. They 
 are coarse, they are vulgar, they are demoralizing, they are degrad- 
 ing. It is all true; and all the more it is your duty to go into poli- 
 tics! The man who complained of his termagant wife that there 
 was no living with her or without her, was the exact type of the 
 American scholar who stands outside the political arena, daintily 
 sniffing at the odors of the struggle and wondering how he can get 
 beyond their reach. That is just what he cannot do. He must 
 suffer the errors of an ignorant policy, or he must help to shape a 
 wise policy. He must permit the less intelligent to govern, or he 
 must bring intelligence to the affairs of government. 
 
 That fling at the too fastidious observer of political 
 life shows how far removed his independence was from 
 the cold-blooded aloofness of Mugwumpery. In plead- 
 ing for an intellectual leadership of the radicals, he 
 pleaded, above all things, for practical good sense, for 
 actual freedom as well as theoretical liberty of thought, 
 for candid consideration of every question on its indi- 
 vidual merits, for fairness to antagonists, and a willing- 
 ness to hear the other side. Nevertheless, his few damn- 
 ing words on the evils of politics were spoken with pecu- 
 liar feeling. As he was just then observing them, they 
 were enough to discourage the most resolute of scholars 
 in poKtics. 
 
 Reid's characterization of the re-elected President's 
 inaugural clearly expresses both his critical attitude and 
 his readiness to give support when he could do so. "It 
 is the utterance of a man of the best intentions profoundly 
 desirous to govern wisely and justly, and profoundly 
 ignorant of the means by which good government is 
 secured." Has any better epitaph on Grant's two ad- 
 ministrations ever been written? "He promises," the 
 leader continues, "little but what we heartily approve 
 
258 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 — little but what The Tribune will sustain during the 
 coming term with its usual energy, no matter what the 
 President may do." In the meantime it was impossible 
 to ignore the openings offered for attack upon Republi- 
 can misconduct. When the insinuating Mr. Oakes Ames, 
 the "Chicopee foundryman" of John Russell Young's 
 vigilant satire, went divagating around Congress, plac- 
 ing his Credit Mobilier shares where they would do the 
 most good for the Union Pacific Railroad, he concocted 
 about as nasty a bolus as any political party has ever 
 had to swallow. Reid watched its workings with a piti- 
 less eye. One bright spot there was for him in the in- 
 quest upon the scandal, the complete exoneration of 
 Blaine, but nowhere else could he find occasion for any- 
 thing but scorn. Throughout the investigation his col- 
 umns rang with reprobation of the whole disgusting cir- 
 cle, and long after the official inquiry had been wound 
 up he kept its history alive, a blister upon the back of 
 the party. Some of the sins of the administration he 
 was content to bring home to the door of the White 
 House, notably Grant's weakness for the notorious Boss 
 Shepherd, presiding genius of the ring fastened upon the 
 District of Columbia, and it was Grant, too, whom he 
 regarded as chiefly responsible for the injection of fed- 
 eral bayonets into the settlement of disputed elections in 
 Louisiana, and, in fact, for the entire political misery of 
 that State, of Arkansas, and of South Carolina. But those 
 episodes were, after all, but episodes, certain to be cor- 
 rected in the rehabilitation of the South. The battle 
 which of all those he fought in this period stands out as 
 most important in itself, and the one in which he ren- 
 dered the greatest service, was the battle for a purified 
 currency. There both Grant and his party were long 
 in the same boat. 
 
 Editorials on the subject of the currency made an 
 
"THE SCHOLAR IN POLITICS" 259 
 
 almost daily part of the fare put before readers of The 
 Tribune. Reid had been printing them long before 
 John Sherman made his memorable speech in the Senate 
 in January, 1873, ^"^^ thenceforth they became even 
 more numerous. The ugly situation in our finances, 
 inimical as it was to a stable prosperity, was doubly 
 humiliating in morals. Stricken France shamed us. 
 With her wounds still bleeding, she went heroically about 
 the resumption of specie payments. No sooner had she 
 paid off the last instalment of her staggering indemnity 
 to the German invader, than she took steps to get the 
 Bank of France back upon the right metallic basis. We, 
 with an unquestionable superiority to France in the 
 number and aggregate income of inhabitants, in re- 
 sources, and in power to sustain taxation, nevertheless 
 lagged far longer after our Civil War, content with a 
 Sahara of paper. Grant's contribution to the sorry 
 plight of the United States in this matter consisted in the 
 first place in a plentiful lack of financial genius, and, 
 secondly, in his famihar awkwardness where the choice 
 of cabinet officers was concerned. Boutwell, his original 
 secretary of the treasury, was surely no Colbert, and his 
 next appointee, William A. Richardson, was a far less 
 presentable minister. Richardson, blithely free-handed 
 in the issuance of greenbacks, was not merely unaware 
 of the future, he was well behind the times in which he 
 lived, and Reid was wont to scarify his "deadness" as 
 an oracle on money. Compared with him indeed, in the 
 matter of having a vital spark, "the late Julius Caesar is 
 in the din of youth, walking Broadway with a spring 
 style hat on and a green cotton umbrella under his arm." 
 When that was written, by the way, the poor secretary 
 was on the eve of leaving the post which he so slenderly 
 adorned, and under his successor, Bristow, there seemed 
 the prospect of better things. Besides, in the course of 
 
26o THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 the developments leading up to this change of function- 
 aries, Grant had given signs of reformation. Sherman's 
 appeal, and the speeches of men like Schurz, W. W. 
 Phelps, and Fenton, had made an impression upon him. 
 He vetoed the bill of the inflationists which had been put 
 through despite their efforts, and Reid applauded him 
 with confidence in the early dawning of success. "He 
 merits this morning," The Tribune declared of the Presi- 
 dent, "the thanks of Congress no less than those years 
 ago when he defended the country against the assaults 
 of a no more dangerous enemy." Grant's subsequent 
 handsome profession of faith in the gold standard, em- 
 bodied in his celebrated memorandum to Senator Jones, 
 of Nevada, seemed to Reid as meritorious a performance 
 as the Vicksburg campaign. The President was at last, 
 and, it Was to be presumed, permanently, on the right 
 track. In arresting the insane down-hill legislation which 
 spelled only more and more paper, he was making glori- 
 ous atonement for all his blunders. But this flattering 
 picture of him was to pass like a mirage. Congress had 
 been working, ever since the veto, on a compromise; the 
 makeshift measure tinkered together had, significantly, 
 the solid support of the whole body of inflationists in 
 both Houses, and to Raid's benumbing astonishment 
 Grant accepted it. His comment on the news — "The 
 lion's skin drops off; the President has signed the infla- 
 tionists' bill" — gives well enough the measure of his bit- 
 terness, which could suffer no abatement through the 
 few crumbs of consolation left in the affair. He went 
 on with the fight, and when victory was ultimately 
 secured he could claim to have helped appreciably in 
 the winning of it. In the interim he could not but feel 
 a deep discouragement. He no longer could hope that 
 Grant would make any really serviceable move in the 
 matter. 
 
"THE SCHOLAR IN POLITICS" 261 
 
 The faculty for disappointing his fellow countrymen 
 which belonged to our famous soldier-President comes 
 persistently into the foreground of even so circumscribed 
 a survey as mine must be of the period now under review 
 in Reid's career. It reacted everywhere, alike in what 
 has been aptly termed "Rebellion's purgatory," the long- 
 drawn-out reconstruction of the South; in the mal- 
 administration of federal offices, and in the ramifying 
 influence of the White House upon State campaigns. 
 The whole party fabric seemed tinctured with the same 
 evil. Few things that the Republican organization 
 touched were not the worse for the contact. Even the 
 beggarly little Modoc war had to be mismanaged, one 
 more symptom of "the vacillation, the capriciousness 
 and hesitation, which have characterized the dealings of 
 the Government with the Indians generally." Reid's 
 independent policy and his unremitting labor in opposi- 
 tion are certified as sound and for the public good no- 
 where more emphatically than by the bald record of the 
 proceedings on which he kept melancholy watch. On 
 the other hand, that record was not altogether barren 
 of reassuring passages, and in faithful redemption of his 
 promise to give support when he could Reid was so 
 helpful in his treatment of one of them as actually to 
 win the warm if judiciously unofficial thanks of the ad- 
 ministration. This occurred in the fall of 1873, when 
 Spain was struggling with the Cuban insurrection, and 
 embroiled herself with the United States by her capture 
 of the Virginius, and her atrocious execution of certain 
 of the prisoners she then took. The popular pressure 
 was instantly for extreme measures, and at the outset, 
 impelled by a not unnatural scepticism as to Grant's 
 diplomacy, Reid bent his eflforts toward stiffening the 
 backbone of Secretary Fish. Soon perceiving, however, 
 that the latter was shaping a firm course, he threw the 
 
262 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 full weight of The Tribune's influence upon the side of 
 the administration's policy. 
 
 Whether Spain had strained the right of seizure or not 
 was a point important to be looked into before drastic 
 action could be taken. When filibustering is toward, the 
 government threatened must be given every opportunity 
 to present its case. Castelar was having trouble enough 
 in his effort to establish republican principles in Spain, 
 and he deserved the chance to at least show his good 
 intentions respecting a country with which he was known 
 to be, personally, in lively sympathy. All these points 
 Reid advanced with constant emphasis upon the advan- 
 tage which tact has over violence. When the news was 
 received of the revolting slaughter of American citizens 
 in Santiago, as the result of a farcical court martial. The 
 Tribune pressed for complete satisfaction. But not even 
 this outrage could weaken Reid's steady protest against 
 recognition of the Cuban belligerents and against other 
 heated, short-sighted proposals. He cheerfully served as 
 one of the vice-presidents of the Steinway Hall mass- 
 meeting, held to denounce Spanish lawlessness. He 
 would not adopt the idea then current in the country 
 that the time had arrived for annexation of the island 
 so long tormented by oppression and revolt. Some in- 
 teresting germs of the point of view and policy which he 
 was to advocate as a peace commissioner after our war 
 with Spain, twenty-five years later, are to be found in 
 his editorials of 1873. Sooner or later Cuba was bound 
 to be lost to Spain. It would be lost under circumstances 
 discreditable to the Spanish Government. Cuba would 
 gain her independence through foreign intervention. As 
 for annexation, it seemed inevitable, but he did not 
 share the general desire for it. "We should infinitely 
 prefer a free confederation of the West Indies, under the 
 protectorate of the United States, if necessary." There 
 
"THE SCHOLAR IN POLITICS" 263 
 
 is a curiously prophetic ring about many of his sentences 
 on this subject. One immediate effect that they had 
 was greatly to smooth Fish's path, bringing public opinion 
 to support the peaceful negotiations that led to apology 
 and indemnification. Following the surrender of the 
 Virginius to the naval representatives of the United 
 States, this brief but eloquent correspondence between 
 the secretary of state and Reid ensued : 
 
 Personal. Department of State, 
 
 Unofficial. Washington, 
 
 ,»r T> 1- December 22nd, 1873. 
 
 Whitelaw Reid, Esq. 
 
 Dear Sir: 
 
 Justice and gratitude alike impel me to express to you my appre- 
 ciation of the cordial and generous support which you have given 
 to my efforts, under circumstances of much difficulty, to uphold at 
 the same time the dignity and honor of the nation, and assert rights 
 which cannot be waived, and to maintain the peace of the country. 
 
 That our paths, in the political contests of the country, for some 
 short time past, have not been in exactly parallel lines, gives addi- 
 tional value to the kind expressions you have used, and to the sup- 
 port which the great influence of your journal has given. 
 
 Accept, I pray you, my thanks with my best wishes for many 
 happy returns of the season. 
 
 With much respect. 
 
 Very truly yours, 
 
 Hamilton Fish. 
 
 New York, 
 The Hon. Hamilton Fish, December 29th, 1873. 
 
 Secretary of State, U. S. 
 
 Dear Sir: 
 
 I am gratified that the efforts of The Tribune throughout the late 
 Spanish difficulties, to defend the national interest and honor, have 
 elicited the appreciation expressed in your courteous note. 
 
 We have in the main supported your policy in this deplorable 
 Virginius business, because it seemed to us just, sagacious and dig- 
 nified — worthy every way of a nation strong enough to protect its 
 flag anywhere, but too strong to make war hastily, or on other than 
 imperative grounds. 
 
 Nor have we failed to recognize that you have consistently ad- 
 hered to the policy in every critical period, when mere politicians 
 
264 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 might be stealthily whispering that another course would better 
 subserve the political fortunes of the Administration, whose chief 
 officer and support you are. 
 
 In the sincere hope that the future may afford us many oppor- 
 tunities for applauding your statesmanlike conduct of the foreign 
 affairs of our country, and with the sincerest good wishes of the 
 season, I am, with much, respect. 
 
 Very truly yours, Whitelaw Reid. 
 
 There were other reasons why the Virginius episode 
 left its mark upon the annals of The Tribune. Asso- 
 ciated with it was a tragic mystery, the death of the 
 paper's Cuban correspondent, Ralph Keeler. In the pur- 
 suit of his duties he took a steamer from Santiago to 
 Havana, and on the voyage disappeared. The current 
 belief was that he was murdered and the body then 
 thrown overboard, but the secret of his loss has never 
 been discovered. Keeler was one of a staff which did 
 splendid work in the Virginius affair. From the begin- 
 ning The Tribune's despatches were the fullest printed 
 in the American press, and it was the only paper to have 
 a representative at those ceremonies with which Spain 
 turned over the ship that had caused all the trouble. 
 Reid underlined the fact with pardonable pride. Recall- 
 ing The Tribune's famous reports of Antietam, Woerth, 
 and Sedan, its unique promptitude in supplying details of 
 the great Ville du Havre disaster, and its recent exploit 
 in beating the government by full forty-eight hours in 
 news of an Indian fight on the Yellowstone, he thus 
 Imked the paper's newest feat with its old tradition: 
 "Yesterday morning our special despatches gave to Presi- 
 dent Grant, Mr. Fish and the rest of mankind the only 
 account yet received of the surrender of the Virginius at 
 Bahia Honda." 
 
 The returns from management of this kind were swift 
 and inspiriting. When Reid wrote to Smalley about his 
 obtaining control, and spoke of his election to the editor- 
 
"THE SCHOLAR IN POLITICS" 265 
 
 ship for five years, he added: "In that time I hope to 
 make The Tribune worth a million and a half and to 
 assure its position as leader in the journalism of one 
 continent if not of two." From the start fortune smiled 
 upon his ambition, partly because he was unquenchably 
 sanguine about it. His letters breathe nothing but con- 
 fidence. General Ashley had noticed that he looked 
 pale and careworn in the presidential campaign, and 
 wrote to warn him against overexhaustion. "My 
 friends are all talking in the same way about my health," 
 Reid replied, "but to me it seems better than for years 
 past. Mere hard work never hurts me, and I am past 
 the worries and cares which used to be so distracting. 
 The Tribune is doing well financially." The crashes in 
 Wall Street that year left him unscathed. In a mid- 
 winter letter to Smalley he observed that there had 
 been no time either during the panic or since that the 
 paper had not more than paid expenses. His pride in 
 this was not lightly to be trifled with, and there is enter- 
 tainment in an episode of his correspondence in 1874, 
 when he got wind of some strange gossip in Philadelphia 
 reflecting upon the financial stability of The Tribune. 
 The staid editor of the "Ledger," Mr. G. W. Childs, was 
 indicated as the source of these rumors, whereupon 
 Reid "went for" his old friend with a kind of bland 
 ferocity. He would pay the editor of the "Ledger" a 
 hundred dollars for one on any bill whatever which, 
 since his control of The Tribune, had been a second time 
 presented. He got back the warmest possible protesta- 
 tions of innocence and good-wifl. "What a great and 
 glorious journal you are making," he was told. The 
 Tribune was simply, in the opinion of Mr. Childs, one 
 of the best papers the country had ever had, and before 
 that admiring colleague got through he was asking Reid 
 for his photograph, to be put in a frame and hung beside 
 the portrait of Greeley in the offices of the "Ledger." 
 
266 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 There is nothing like a self-respecting alertness to 
 keep indiscreet hands off the gilt on your gingerbread. 
 It was a trait of Reid's to see that nobody who inno- 
 cently or otherwise misrepresented The Tribune was 
 left, through want of admonition, to do it a second time. 
 "The paragraph referred to was obviously wrong, and 
 I am sorry for it. I will see that nothing of the sort 
 occurs again." An amende like that was a good deal to 
 extract from a man like Horace White, and, in fact, 
 Reid hated to ask for anything like it from his old com- 
 rade of the Quadrilateral. But if the "Tribune" of 
 Chicago would permit itself to be inaccurate in its allu- 
 sions to The Tribune of New York, it simply had to be 
 corrected. Still, these occasions for setting critics right 
 about the paper were few in number, compared with the 
 incidents of encouragement spontaneously occurring. It 
 would never have done if I reproduced all the messages 
 of good-will that reached Reid, but now and then these 
 tributes are a shade too interesting to be ignored. Wit- 
 ness this one from the renowned preacher of that epoch, 
 full of his fun, as yet untouched by tribulation: 
 
 Twin Mountain House, N. H. 
 Whitelaw Reid, Esq. August 13th, 1873. 
 
 Dear Sir: 
 
 Did you ever have the Hay Asthma? It is a tragedy. No man 
 
 sh'd die without trying it. It requires a complex, multiform patience 
 
 — one sort for the head, another for the throat, and another for all 
 
 the way down. The remedy is found by coming to this charming 
 
 Twin Mountain House. Here am I and my sister, and my three 
 
 boys, but not The Tribune. I enclose therefore one dollar for a 
 
 month's reading. Up here a dollar means more than in New York. 
 
 It took me half a day to earn mine. (I picked a man's pocket for 
 
 it.) By spending it for your paper, wh' I shall lend, after reading, 
 
 the moral equilibrium will be restored — a la Tweed — and the broken 
 
 commandments repaired. ,, , tt ttt t. 
 
 Yours truly, H. W. Beecher. 
 
 Some of the criticisms bestowed upon him were funny, 
 too; notably those emanating from his free-trade moni- 
 
"THE SCHOLAR IN POLITICS" 267 
 
 tors. David A. Wells, a frequent and peculiarly wel^ 
 come contributor on economic topics, was fairly comic 
 in his distress over the obstinacy of his friend. It was 
 comforting, no doubt, to liberate in The Tribune his 
 wrath over evil doings in the Custom House, but it was 
 anguish to have to steer clear of the tariff allusions which 
 he longed to make. To talk about fiscal reform and 
 leave out the iniquity of protection was as though a 
 theologian were to preach the necessity of redemption 
 and ignore the evidence of sin. He was sure that Reid 
 would have to come over into the free-trade fold. " While 
 I would not counsel you to abandon Protection all at 
 once in The Tribune," he writes with patient considera- 
 tion, "yet it must be evident to you that the day for all 
 such stuff is rapidly passing, and that neither you nor 
 The Tribune can expect to receive the support of the 
 most intelligent minds in the country as long as you 
 are bound to any such dead carcass." What extraordi- 
 nary vitality has persisted in that carcass I Reid only 
 went on teasing. He knew then, as he knew long there- 
 after, during the years through which he kept his paper 
 on the even keel of a protective tariff, that in this matter 
 he had the laugh on Wells. Meanwhile, free-traders and 
 protectionists alike were faithful to The Tribune. Wells 
 was glad to continue writing for it. And a free-trader 
 like W. C. Whitney would be moved to write to the 
 editor: "There is no comparison between your paper 
 and the rest." 
 
 In the making of it Hay was a great help at this time, 
 writing brilliant editorials on foreign politics and prov- 
 ing at every point a well-spring of inspiriting comrade- 
 ship. He was on the watch for those special contribu- 
 tors through whom Reid always liked to strengthen his 
 columns. "Castelar writes to me wanting to write a 
 weekly, bi-weekly or monthly 'review' for The Tribune. 
 Do you think you want it, and if so how much?" In a 
 
268 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 longer, later letter there is a passage about meeting 
 "two of the most interesting people I have ever seen in 
 my life" — Laurence Oliphant and his wife. "It is a com- 
 bination I have never seen before, the highest knowledge 
 of society and the world, combined with a mystic and 
 passionate philosophy. He talked to me in a way that 
 indicated he would like to write occasionally for The 
 Tribune. I think it might be worth while to ask him." 
 Hay's infectious liveliness, always bubbling up, became 
 immeasurable after the blissful event of his engagement 
 to Miss Stone. " I would not have died before this hap- 
 pened for a great deal of coin," he confided to Reid, and 
 when the latter is off on a vacation at Cedarville he 
 sends him news of the office keyed to the same glad 
 pitch. The world was wrong, on points, but the paper 
 was all right. "There will be plenty of horrible mis- 
 takes made, but no one will know it and when you 
 come back you can turn everybody out." In a post- 
 script: "I saw also Nilsson last night, who is prettier 
 than ever and asked affectionately after you." I can- 
 not turn too often to souvenirs of the affectionate atmos- 
 phere of those days. They are very numerous and very 
 significant of a vein of lightness gratefully relieving 
 Reid's daily tussle with the hard stuff of politics. In 
 his correspondence with Watterson, for example, politics 
 could hardly ever be avoided, yet they couldn't keep 
 down the brilliant Southerner's inimitable effervescence. 
 When he got back from a European journey in the fall 
 of 1873 ^6 wickedly stole away home without looking in 
 on his New York cronies. To Reid's reproaches on this 
 perfidy he replied: 
 
 Louisville, 
 My dear Reid: September 9th, 1873. 
 
 It is very good of you to think of me. For my own part I have 
 somehow taken on a big disgust of myself, and on that account ran 
 
"THE SCHOLAR IN POLITICS" 269 
 
 away from New York in order that I might save you an infliction of 
 which you have had enough this last year or two. Damn the world, 
 the flesh and the devil I a pock and a murrain on Seaver and Hay ! 
 I'd get me to a nunnery if I could. I'll not get me to New York 
 until The Tribune building is completed, when it is my wish to sprinkle 
 a little holy water on it and say grace. As to Smalley — but what's 
 the use of talking about Smalley? The next thing we hear of him 
 he'll be in Parliament. Reid, Reid, Reid! Don't you be wicked. 
 Be goody, goody, all the time. Don't write any lewd letters when 
 you go to Europe. If I should turn the "Courier- Journal" into a 
 religious paper and issue a Sunday edition every day in the week 
 for half a dozen years — if I should be able to secure the pen of a 
 good man like Bromley — I'd barely come off by sufferance, and then 
 with a damaged reputation. I am up to my chin in household dirt. 
 Write to me again and again. Look upon me as a man who is 
 grateful for encouragement. Secure me a place in the prayers of the 
 woman you love. Think of me sadly when the twilight descends 
 upon Delmonico's. Remember me as one that hath starved and 
 been mortified withal. The which notwithstanding I am ever and 
 
 Your friend, tt iir 
 
 H. Watterson. 
 
 His allusion to Delmonico's recalls more of those din- 
 ners to w^hich I have referred, festive banquets at the 
 Lotos, and others, of Reid's own giving, at their favorite 
 haunt or at the Union League; dinners to Wilkie Collins, 
 to divers kindred literary figures, and to a very different 
 celebrity, Bonamy Price, the noted political economist 
 from Oxford. Over the Price dinner there arose a pre- 
 liminary confusion of dates, leading to this droll response 
 from one of the guests invited : 
 
 9 Lexington Ave., 
 
 „ November 17th, 1874. 
 
 My dear Reid: 
 
 One or the other of us will on Saturday be "a pearl without Price." 
 He agreed today with me to dine here on Saturday, and you were 
 on the list as one on whose presence I counted to assist in impress- 
 ing the Guest with a sense of our intellectual development. Governor 
 Tilden opened my eyes tonight by insisting that you had him booked 
 for Saturday to meet Price. Sliall we go half Price? Or as your 
 invitations are out shall I resign to you on condition that I have 
 
270 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 a chance to do the genteel thing, i. e., whole Price, later in the sea- 
 son? Awaiting your decision, I am. 
 
 Faithfully your Bon Ami, 
 in the market 
 but without Price, 
 
 Abram S. Hewitt. 
 
 Wayne MacVeagh was another friend who liked to 
 deviate from the prevailing political atmosphere into 
 delightful fooling. He and Reid were in constant corre- 
 spondence over corruption in Pennsylvania, and he kept 
 appreciative watch over The Tribune's attacks upon 
 the Philadelphia Ring. One morning he was rewarded 
 for his attention by an editorial from Bromley's comic 
 pen, which, as a member of the recent constitutional 
 convention in his State, he was specially fitted to enjoy. 
 The president of that august assemblage had been the 
 Hon. William Morris Meredith, whose respectable but 
 not by any means brilliant qualities had touched the 
 sentiments of Secretary Richardson. Meredith died, and 
 the master of the Treasury paid tribute to him by plac- 
 ing a very dubious portrait of him on a new ten-cent 
 note. Bromley poked cruelly uproarious fun at the 
 whole transaction, whereupon MacVeagh took a hand 
 with these ingenious solemnities: 
 
 Harrisburgh, Penn. 
 Whitelaw Reid, Esq. May 9th, 1874. 
 
 My dear Sir: 
 
 As you are reputed to be the responsible editor of the New York 
 Tribune, I write to express to you something of the burning indig- 
 nation which is aflame in the neighboring city of Philadelphia and 
 is rapidly spreading into the rural districts, and which unless checked 
 will itself check the further progress of your new building or will at 
 least render the erection of that tower on which you and your co- 
 adjutors in evil deeds are known to have set your hearts, not to say 
 "garnered up your Hves," impossible. Even if you could borrow 
 the money with your entire subscription list in this State cut off, we 
 would not suffer the tower to be erected after your infamous conduct 
 to the late lamented President of the Convention of which I may be 
 
"THE SCHOLAR IN POLITICS" 271 
 
 permitted to say without undue egotism I was a bright and shining 
 member. It was none of your business whether the likeness of our 
 Presiding Officer was put on a ten cent or a ten dollar note, for when 
 the choice was made they were likely soon to be of equal value — 
 indeed the discredit was sure to be less and therefore the honor 
 greater to be on the lesser lie. 
 
 You are not a judge of photographs, evidently, for in Philadelphia 
 the profile is not only approved as a likeness, but the spirit of the 
 late Joseph Harrison, Jr., the authority of that city in such matters 
 and the patron of the great historical painter Rothermel, has been 
 consulted and declares it is an excellent work of art. At every 
 point, you see, you are unhorsed, discredited, rebuked, disgraced. 
 
 On these two conditions you can have peace! The instant dis- 
 missal of the low-bred fellow who wrote the malignant and slander- 
 ous article. He evidently has a private grudge against our late 
 President and must be at all points a despicable character. There is 
 some talk of lynching him and a rumor is gaining credence that his 
 name is Bromley and that his spite arises from an application — 
 rejected, of course, and instantly on sight of the applicant — for 
 some subordinate position in our late Convention. Secondly his 
 written consent that a picture shall be taken of him under the su- 
 pervision of the friends of the late lamented President and when 
 taken be substituted for the picture of which he has so irreverently 
 spoken. 
 
 Make terms while it is possible. You have no conception of the 
 state of public feeling here. It grows more bitter every hour and 
 while today it may be satisfied with Bromley's disgrace, tomorrow 
 it will demand his imprisonment, and the day after his blood. 
 
 Indignantly yours. ^^^^^ MacVeagh. 
 
 Reid's reply follows: 
 
 New York, 
 Hon. Wayne MacVeagh. May 14th, 1874. 
 
 My dear Sir: 
 
 Bromley shall not be offered up. We will fight first, and from the 
 loop-holes of the new Tribune fortifications will level the camera of 
 the photographer on every wretch of a Pennsylvanian who dares a 
 hostile approach. 
 
 Do look at the financial performances yesterday in the Senate. 
 The last end of that man is worse than the first. Can we depend 
 on Grant for another veto? 
 
 Very truly yours, ^hitelaw Reid. 
 
272 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 The performances, of course, were those which marked 
 the hybridization of the currency bill. The one Grant 
 had vetoed was indefensible enough, but it was "as 
 the common sparrow to the dodo" compared with the 
 complicated monstrosity that took its place. In a note 
 of Garfield's written in that winter, he regrets missing 
 Reid on a brief visit to the city, "where, in the language 
 of the Pacific coast, we might have swapped growls 
 pleasantly." It was a favorite occupation in their circle 
 at this period, but before I return to the familiar cause 
 of it I must touch upon one or two more instances of the 
 brighter, suaver web in the thick-woven chronicle. Writ- 
 ing to Reid about a letter just received from Bayard 
 Taylor, Mrs. R. H. Stoddard says: "He gives you warm 
 and touching praise. He writes me that you as a Jriend 
 fill the place Greeley held with him." The dossiers be- 
 fore me yield endless evidences of this capacity of Reid's 
 for binding his comrades to himself. He had, for one 
 thing, a way of furthering their interests. When J. Q. A. 
 Ward, the sculptor, was starting for the frontier forts to 
 study Indian life and character, it was Reid who intro- 
 duced him to General Sheridan, the one sponsor in the 
 world for an artist embarked upon such an adventure. 
 Lew Wallace, looking for a publisher for his first novel, 
 "The Fair God," found one through Reid's intervention 
 with Osgood. That individual's gratitude o'erflowed. 
 "You were the first to introduce Gen. Wallace to me, 
 and consequently to fame!" he writes — and by and by 
 came an odd sequel to this. It was a request from Wal- 
 lace to Reid to examine and criticise "Commodus," an 
 historical play in blank verse, a task before which the 
 busy editor frankly blenched. He had a good deal to 
 do, first and last, with the ventures of his literary friends. 
 Warner and Mark Twain looked to him for important 
 aid in the launching of "The Gilded Age." In view of 
 
"THE SCHOLAR IN POLITICS" 273 
 
 the interest which always attaches to the art of collabo- 
 ration in fiction, I append the letter in which he was 
 apprised of the manner in which that book was produced: 
 
 Hartford, 
 Dear Mr. Reid: ^P"^ 7th, 1873. 
 
 Maybe it's a great piece of presumption, but Mark and I are writ- 
 ing a novel, and can so nearly see the end of it that it is safe to speak 
 of it. No one here, except our wives, knows anything of it. We 
 conceived the design early in the winter, but were not able to get 
 seriously at work on it till some time in January. If there is any 
 satire on the times in it, it won't be our fault, but the fault of the 
 times. We have hatched the plot day by day, drawn out the char- 
 acters, and written it so that we cannot exactly say which belongs 
 to who; though the different styles will show in the chapters. This 
 may be a good feature, giving the reader relief, and it may be it will 
 only bother him. It is, under the circumstances, rather a novel 
 experiment. 
 
 We hope to get it ready for the press before Clemens goes to Eng- 
 land. And when it is done we propose to go down and see you and 
 take a rest from the distractions of country life for a few days. I 
 am glad to see you are going to Dartmouth. I came near going 
 there myself — if I had only been a poet. Our society convention 
 there wanted " a poem." But I shall go to Cornell June 25th. We 
 ought to compare notes on our orations. When it gets green and 
 cheerful, remember that you and Col. Hay are due here. 
 
 Yours faithfully, ^^^^ ^ ^^^^^^ 
 
 Mark was in prodigious feather over the prospects of 
 the book. He was going to take a copy of the manu- 
 script over to England with him, so as to publish simul- 
 taneously on both sides of the ocean. "Some people 
 think I have no head for business," he wrote, "but this 
 is a lie." And, with gay anticipations of the pause in 
 New York on the way to the steamer, he tantalizingly 
 adds: "I have a nice anecdote that Hay will like. Am 
 preserving it in alcohol — in my person." In the mean- 
 time the important thing was for The Tribune to spring 
 the great news upon an unsuspecting world. "We want 
 a mere mention, now, with either exceedingly compli- 
 
274 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 mentary additions, or pitiless abuse accompanied with 
 profanity. We shall be down there within a fortnight. 
 We think a pretty good deal of this novel I can tell you; 
 even the paper it is written on cost eleven dollars." The 
 plea bears this indorsement: "Dear Hay. Here's a 
 chance for a rollicking bit of minion. W. R." Hay 
 duly roHicked, to a tune which may be inferred from 
 his opening remark — "Beaumont and Fletcher may now 
 retire as instances of genius working in double harness" 
 — and if the mails had been properly working just then 
 Mark would have been duly elated before the sun went 
 down. But his first impression of the "rollick" appears 
 to have been received from a bald, brief quotation in 
 some exchange, and his expectations were cruelly dis- 
 appointed. Notoriously abysmal is the depression and 
 tragic are the fears of the humorous temperament, when 
 it subsides at all. Dreading the worst, but hoping that 
 the first announcement was only the precursor of a 
 second, the volatile Mark wrote as follows: 
 
 Hartford, 
 My dear Rfeip: ^P"^ "'^^' ^^73- 
 
 Cheque received for $12., for which this is acknowledgment. All 
 right! You go ahead and give us that other notice. Bilious? I 
 was more than bilious — I was scared. When a man starts out in a 
 new role, the pubhc always says he is a fool and won't succeed. So I 
 wanted to make every knife cut that could help us succeed, anyway. 
 Why of course The Tribune would make Hartford talk, and the rest 
 of the country for that matter — else why would I be so solicitous 
 about what The Tribune said? That is just the point. I want 
 The Tribune to say it right and say it powerful — and then I will 
 answer for the consequences. The consequence will be that all 
 other papers will Jollow suit — which you know as well as I do. And 
 then our game is made and our venture launched with a fair wind 
 
 instead of a baffling one. ,, 
 
 Yours, ^ 
 
 Clemens. 
 
 That must have been written in the morning, before 
 Hay's paragraph, in its full perfection, had burst upon 
 
"THE SCHOLAR IN POLITICS" 275 
 
 the anxious author. It came, shortly, and the happy 
 man hurried off this happy note: 
 
 Hartford, 
 My dear Reid: ^P"' ^^^f^' ^^73- 
 
 Now, that notice is bully! If any man is deceived by that he 
 will be deceived in the happy direction, at any rate— and that is 
 
 what we want. All right, now ! . . 
 
 Yours, ^^ 
 
 Mark. 
 
 Pungent and pointed is Mark, but not more so than 
 his antithesis, Charles Francis Adams. His is the brief- 
 est of the colloquies which I find amongst these old pas- 
 sages. "We kept faith on the report. Did the Boston 
 people?" Reid asks him. "They didn't. Damn 'em!" 
 is Adams's sole reply. The vexations of an editor's 
 world are never far off. They cannot break the sway 
 of gentler things, it is true. Just at this time a letter 
 from Charlotte Cushman brings a touching appeal for 
 one in distress. "Like a good and true Knight," she 
 begs, "keep a watchful eye for this kind old man, and 
 set your lance in rest against his persecution." The 
 subsequent correspondence shows that the great actress 
 was well rewarded for her intercession. Reid was very 
 helpful and his friends loved him for it. One of the 
 most fragrant of these fugitive relics is a dinner-card of 
 Stedman's, inscribed to Reid with this quotation from 
 Holland's- "Pliny": "Among which plants the Reeds 
 may be ranged in the first place, for necessarie they bee 
 in time both of warre and peace; they have their use be- 
 sides and are accepted among the delightsome pleasures 
 of this world." Delightsome, indeed, to Reid himself, 
 were all the pleasures of peace. Only, as it happened, 
 nine-tenths of his friends were incessantly summoning 
 him to "warre." 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 THE RISE OF TILDEN 
 
 The call to arms heard once more at the close of the 
 preceding chapter was to be expected as a result of the 
 general situation in the United States. "On the whole 
 things do not look as cheerful for our beloved country 
 as they might," remarked Watterson, and the theme 
 was taken up in the same pessimistic key by everybody 
 in the group to which he and Reid belonged. Public 
 affairs were under a blight, and popular sentiment seemed 
 incredibly slow in the assertion of any corrective, if, 
 indeed, it was at all concerned about making itself felt, 
 or had any intelligent sense of the direction in which 
 its power might best be employed. In the cynical 
 observation of Mr. Henry Adams, the people themselves 
 had got a little out of hand in the seventies. In those 
 brilliant autobiographical pages of his, gathered together 
 under the title of "The Education of Henry Adams," 
 there are some biting remarks on this point. "Society 
 hesitated, wavered, oscillated between harshness and lax- 
 ity, pitilessly sacrificing the weak, and deferentially fol- 
 lowing the strong. . . . The moral law had expired, — 
 like the Constitution. Grant's administration outraged 
 every rule of ordinary decency, but scores of promising 
 men, whom the country could not well spare, were ruined 
 in saying so. The world cared little for decency. What 
 it wanted, it did not know; probably a system that 
 would work, and men who could work it; but it found 
 neither." Amongst Reid's friends the prevailing tone 
 was almost as mournful. Yet amongst them, too, there 
 was a survival of hope. 
 
 276 
 
THE RISE OF TILDEN 277 
 
 One and all, exacerbated no less than he was by the 
 ravages of Grantism, they sang in despair the Stygian 
 engulfment of parties, but they saw both the necessity 
 and the possibility of "doing something," and as prac- 
 tical workers in the political vineyard they still pinned 
 their faith on political organization. If the existing par- 
 ties would not answer, then salvation might be found 
 in some other quarter. The first man to seek out Reid 
 with a view to persuading him into some sort of action 
 from this point of view was Charles Francis Adams, 
 then, at all events, more sanguine than his brother 
 Henry. He visited The Tribune office one day in haste, 
 on his way back to Boston, missed the editor, and went 
 on, leaving vague and even troublous intimations that 
 serious subjects were toward. He explained them, pres- 
 ently, as follows: 
 
 Boston, 
 
 Tj Ik* r> November 13th, 1873. 
 
 My dear Mr. Reid: ^ ' '^ 
 
 Yours of loth has come to hand. I am sorry to have given you 
 so much trouble in running after me, but I regret very much not 
 seeing you. The matter was one of very considerable importance 
 and about which it is very difficult to write. I want to organize a 
 political movement to influence events during this period of party 
 disintegration and I have aheady seen several of the leading men of 
 discontented mind on the subject. I wanted to see how The Trib- 
 une felt about co-operating in such a move; — my own impression is 
 strong that a common ground could have been arrived at. 
 
 If this move is made it will be one of a good deal of significance. 
 I have not yet had time here to bring things into a practical shape, 
 but, if a demonstration is attempted, it will probably be about the 
 Christmas holidays. I shall hope to have a chance yet to talk with 
 you before any action is taken, and am very sorry we could not 
 have exchanged views at this earlier stage of proceedings. 
 
 Very truly yours. ^ p ^^^^ ^^ 
 
 For a little while the idea throve. Plans were made 
 for a conference, and at first Reid was so far sympathetic 
 as to agree that it should be held under his roof. D. A. 
 
278 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 Wells was easily enlisted, and, in fact, helped to draw 
 up the list of eligible conspirators. It is interesting to 
 see who the men were who were to do what the Liberal 
 Republicans had failed to do, that is, unhorse Grant. 
 The band, as adumbrated by the originator of the move- 
 ment, was to have consisted of himself, Bowles, Hal- 
 stead, Reid, Wells, Godkin, Watterson, Schurz, Evarts, 
 Isaac Sherman, Orton, J. D. Cox, Sam. Cox, Edgar 
 Wells of Hartford, Walter Phelps, Bromley, and Charles 
 NordhofF. Would the redoubtable eighteen have saved 
 the State? We shall never know, for they never got to 
 the point of trying. 
 
 Schurz and Adams couldn't be in New York on the 
 date first fixed for the conference, and so it was post- 
 poned, with hopes of a dinner later on that might serve 
 the same purpose with less solemnity. Meanwhile Reid 
 was sceptical, and his scepticism grew. He was repeat- 
 edly indicting the Republican party in detail, and he 
 summarized it on one occasion as the Captain Kidd of 
 modern politics. The saddest feature of the situation 
 was, moreover, that the honest masses turning away 
 from the party of the administration had nowhere else 
 to go. The Democracy surely offered no decent refuge. 
 But would a new party? It was by no means plain. 
 He wrote discouragingly about it to Bowles, and pres- 
 ently arrived at the conclusion which, in a letter to 
 Halstead, is thus expressed: "Young Charles Francis 
 Adams has been in lately, and he. Wells and the rest 
 insist that it is time the process of manufacturing the 
 party of the future were fairly begun. I still hold that 
 the best thing to do is to do nothing — save come to New 
 York as often as possible, eat quiet dinners, and talk a 
 great deal over the political situation, chiefly with a 
 view to understanding each other's ideas and seeing 
 when and where the chance for concertec^ action is going 
 
THE RISE OF TILDEN 279 
 
 to appear." As was to be expected — and as Reid warned 
 his friends, telling them that early publicity was about 
 the worst enemy it could encounter — rumors of the move- 
 ment leaked out. Forthwith, comedy. When Schurz 
 delivered his eulogy on Sumner at Boston in the spring 
 of 1874, three members of the old Quadrilateral were in 
 the audience and stayed to talk with him. To the ob- 
 servant reporters this could mean only one thing. They 
 put their heads together, decided that a new party was 
 impending, and started hotfoot to be in at its birth, 
 clamoring for information as to the exact date and the 
 name under which the latest political hope would be 
 introduced to mankind. The absurdity of the thing was 
 too much for Reid. He explained, editorially, with min- 
 gled amusement and impatience, that the reporters were 
 on the trail of nothing more than an insubstantial buga- 
 boo. It never came to anything more than that, and in 
 refusing to take it seriously he really helped to give it its 
 quietus. 
 
 His faith in the principles which had inspired the Cin- 
 cinnati movement was not shaken. Neither was his con- 
 viction that there are inalterable laws ruling in these 
 matters. A party is the outcome of natural causes, it 
 cannot be fabricated with malice prepense. "New par- 
 ties are not made in that way," he told the readers of 
 The Tribune; "in fact they are not made at all, they 
 grow." And history would seem to confirm his judgment 
 pretty conclusively, with its records of political mor- 
 tality. The factitiously produced party is, as a rule, a 
 blighted body from the start, all over pimply with isms 
 which repel normal folk even before they strike inward 
 and superinduce extinction. The way out from Grant's 
 misrule was not to be by that uncertain road. What 
 other offered itself to The Tribune? Reid was not, to 
 be sure, at all perplexed. His policy of independence 
 
28o THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 served very well, and he had no thought of subjecting 
 it to alteration. There were those, however, who were 
 quite ready to make up his mind for him, and they 
 flourished nowhere more actively than, by a quaint para- 
 dox, in the administration ranks at Washington. They 
 wanted him back in the fold! Walter Phelps thus re- 
 ported this queerest of congressional phenomena: 
 
 Washington, 
 Dear W. R.: ^^■^"^'"^ '^th. 1874. 
 
 Member after member comes to me, on the assumption that if I am 
 not owner I am friend. To sum: They hate the "Times," since it 
 has proved recreant to the Republican faith, bitterly. They would 
 love The Tribune, and give it most zealous aid, if it would be Repub- 
 lican. It might lead the party, and have an influence and circu- 
 lation unparalleled in journalism. They would want nothing more 
 than a statement of future intention, not of past repentance. Say, 
 e. g., "The Tribune under its present management has sought to 
 maintain that independent position which would enable it without 
 prejudice to criticize the acts of both parties. But blind and repre- 
 hensible as are many of the acts of the Republican party, it is still 
 the great party, etc. As for the Democracy — salary grabber nomi- 
 nated for Speaker, etc., — there isn't salt enough to save it, etc." 
 What merit in their suggestions I cannot tell. I know they are 
 sick of the "Times," and would like to rally round The Tribune. 
 George Jones is here and pays me flattering attention. He says 
 these anti-" Times" straight-laced RepubHcans are trying to get up 
 a real Repubhcan paper in New York. But George Jones doesn't 
 fear. The "Times" is too strong longer to need the aid of politi- 
 cians. I hope you keep well and happy. „, 
 
 From a certain point of view these would-be peace- 
 makers in Congress could feel that their advances were 
 not altogether irrelevant. In so far as The Tribune 
 had any party tendencies they were naturally Republi- 
 can. Some time before the letter just quoted had reached 
 him, Reid had made in his paper this clear statement: 
 "There is an impression throughout the country yet 
 that the Republican party is the safest, wisest, and most 
 
THE RISE OF TILDEN 281 
 
 honest." He shared that impression. But he did not 
 stop there. " If only it can rescue itself from the grasp 
 of the scoundrels who have so long controlled it," his 
 statement cruelly concluded. Hence it was in vain that 
 the net was spread in the sight of the bird. The lure 
 was tempting, but Reid's perspicuity was quite awake 
 and so was his sense of humor. In Hay's pithy phrase, 
 he "bited not," but returned to the politicians who had 
 sought him out through Phelps this cool reply: 
 
 New York, 
 My dear W. W. p.: February 22nd, 1874. 
 
 As to that suggestion about the unpopularity of the "Times" and 
 the desire of Republicans that The Tribune should give them half 
 a chance to come back to it: 
 
 Practically we have said again and again all that they suggest to 
 you. We have said that the Democratic party lagged superfluous 
 on the stage; that its conduct in the election of Fernando Wood 
 was a final proof that it could not be trusted, and that there was 
 no chance for a reorganization of parties until its demagogues got 
 out of the way, etc. On the other hand we stood almost alone at 
 the outset in the breach against Gushing, absolutely protecting the 
 Republicans from their own President, who wanted to give them 
 the worst sort of a copperhead Chief- Justice. 
 
 The difficulty is that while these people say that all that they 
 want is just what we have already said, and while they doubtless 
 befieve that that is all they want, what they really want is something 
 different. Their actual wish is that The Tribune should squarely 
 defend Grant and the Administration against assailants. Their 
 grudge against the "Times" is that it has refused to do it in certain 
 flagrant instances. 
 
 Now there is no doubt that in a mere party point of view it would 
 be possible for The Tribune at present to sHp back into its old posi- 
 tion as the leading RepubKcan paper. I think we might have done 
 it six months ago. But aside from the fact that it would be a dis- 
 honest thing for us to undertake to support men and measures we 
 don't believe in, it would be shockingly bad policy to sacrifice the 
 splendid position we have gained and the independent constituency 
 that has gathered round us, only to go back to the old enfeebling 
 and always dangerous position of an organ, just at the time when 
 the party itself gives more signs than ever before of going to pieces. 
 With a party paper the life of its party is a vital thing for itself. 
 
282 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 With The Tribune the destruction of the Whig party was a critical 
 point; the destruction of the Republican party, if it had remained 
 an organ, would have been an alarming one. The fate of a million 
 dollars' investment might depend on the accuracy of a single man's 
 judgment as to which way the popular current was going to set. 
 If he happened in a period of political dissolution to strike the side 
 that was going to win, he would preserve the property; if not he 
 might shatter it. With an independent paper there is no such 
 business risk involved. The people who take The Tribune now 
 take it because they want what it gives them. They will want that 
 no matter what parties rise or fall. Aside from the general interest 
 which all citizens of the country have. The Tribune has no interest 
 in the downfall or building of any party. Its business at any rate is 
 secure. 
 
 If this reasoning is correct, we should be abandoning a certainty 
 which promises every year to grow larger and better, for an inferior 
 position which would not be a certainty at all, if we should sacrifice 
 our present independence for the old attitude of organship. At the 
 same time I should like it very much if our Republican friends would 
 only rub the scales off their eyes far enough to see that we have done 
 and are doing nothing inconsistent with the most absolute fealty to 
 the Republican principles which they learned from The Tribune 
 and which this day have no more staunch defence than its columns 
 
 Always faithfully yours, ,,, „ 
 
 W. K. 
 
 Translated into action "this reasoning" placed The 
 Tribune in a position strategically ideal for the best 
 exercise of its influence in the forthcoming State cam- 
 paign. Local conditions played into Reid's hands, cry- 
 ing aloud for non-partisan reform. In the bitter fight of 
 1873 o^^^r ^^6 ^^w charter then being framed for the 
 city, the enemy seeking by subterranean methods to 
 make that document a cloak for further administrative 
 rascality was as much Republican as Democratic. More- 
 over, wherever he looked the relation of local ring politics 
 to the national situation was vividly apparent. Abuses 
 in New York and across the river in Brooklyn, abuses in 
 Philadelphia and in Washington, were all manifestations 
 of the same political rottenness which festered in the 
 
THE RISE OF TILDEN 283 
 
 federal organism, and it was difficult to find points at 
 which the national and State "machines" were not 
 allied. The spectacle of Ben Butler, that "pufiy dem- 
 agogue," as Warner politely called him, trying to subdue 
 the great State of Massachusetts to his will, off'ered a 
 flagrantly conspicuous but not by any means isolated 
 example of what the materialization of our politics had 
 brought us to. Grant himself — ^perhaps unconsciously 
 admonished by his recent sequence of misadventures in 
 filling the chief-justiceship, trying first for George H. 
 Williams and then for Caleb Gushing, before he had the 
 good luck to fix upon Waite — ^was, as he rather naively 
 expressed it, "beginning to think it was time for the 
 Republican party to unload." That was in January, 
 1874. Reid was in no doubt at all about telling him 
 what to unload. What needed to be cast overboard 
 was chiefly "the system of picking and stealing" which 
 his party had developed. 
 
 In New York circumstances combined in an unusual 
 manner to promote an open-minded canvass, one in 
 which the voter could direct his whole attention upon 
 this simple issue. Both candidates were, as individuals, 
 beyond cavil. Reid had come to revise his judgment 
 upon Dix. The latter proved himself an able governor 
 as his administration progressed, and he was no longer 
 compared to the wooden steeple of Trinity Church. His 
 personal character was, of course, irreproachable. So 
 was Tilden's, and by good luck he, too, had a record on 
 which to stand making a direct appeal to the citizen 
 on practical political grounds, the result of his leading 
 efi"orts in the smashing of the Tammany ring. Indeed, 
 so evenly balanced were the two contestants in their 
 claims, and so little was there to choose between the 
 respective organizations behind them, that the voter was 
 left in somewhat of a quandary. Reid thus hit off the 
 
284 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 situation in a note to his friend David Gray, the editor 
 of the "Courier" in Buffalo: 
 
 New York, 
 
 ,, m ^ October Qth, 1874. 
 
 My dear Mr. Gray: 
 
 I don't know as to the political outlook. The case is in a nutshell. 
 Both the State candidates are good men; both the parties need 
 black eyes. You know the judgment of the alarmed negro who, 
 when informed by the camp meeting preacher that the road on his 
 right hand led to hell fire, while the road on his left led to damnation, 
 decided that it was about time for dis nigger to take to de woods. 
 
 Very truly yours, Whitelaw Reid. 
 
 That state of dubiety persisted in the public mind 
 down to within a few weeks of the election, and there 
 were moments in which Reid himself shared it; but he 
 was not a man to evade decisions, and some time before 
 this letter was written he had divined the crux of the 
 matter, shaping his policy in accordance with it. He 
 was eminently fair to Dix, and did not exaggerate by a 
 hair's breadth the governor's share of responsibility for 
 the fact that taxes had not been brought into moderation 
 under his administration, and that the canal and prison 
 rings remained unbroken. But he blinked nothing of 
 the cowardice shown by Dix and his party in the matter 
 of the Third Term issue, which by this time was revealing 
 itself as paramount. In its earlier stages that issue had 
 amused while it startled. "Grant is in the field, be sure 
 of that," Watterson had written in June. "Not that 
 only; he can only be certainly beaten by becoming the 
 nominee of the Democrats." This was considered at the 
 moment an alarmist's view. Reid was half inclined, as 
 were many others, to look upon the Third Term idea as 
 a joke. But he could sniff the danger. It was a joke, 
 yes, but one with ugly possibilities. It inspired in him 
 not so much a fear of Grant as a fear of the enthrone- 
 ment of King Caucus, the perpetuation of party manage- 
 
THE RISE OF TILDEN 285 
 
 ment in its worst form. So he fought it in season and 
 out of season, editorializing the subject from one angle 
 after another, printing a long historical analysis of it, 
 "The American Rubicon," from Bigelow's caustic pen, 
 reproducing every specious outgiving of the administra- 
 tion press in order to confute it, and altogether making 
 the most of what he had finally come to regard as a vital 
 principle. It was on this principle that he successfully 
 led thousands of voters to the parting of the ways, the 
 rival conventions happily giving him a clean-cut oppor- 
 tunity. 
 
 The Democrats were the first to get into action, at 
 Syracuse. They were not, by the way, elated by the 
 chance to nominate Tilden. How could they be, after 
 what he had done to a number of perfectly good Demo- 
 crats in New York? Besides, he had given his party 
 colleagues a wicked snub in the earlv fall of 1873, when 
 he had offered his resignation as chairman of the State 
 committee and had rubbed salt in the wound by adding 
 that he did not propose to cut short his pleasure tour in 
 Europe in order to get home in time to vote. "His 
 enemies have long been wont to call Mr. Tilden as cun- 
 ning as a rat," The Tribune had said at the time, "and 
 certainly he is contriving to keep out of the Democratic 
 ship on the present voyage." But they needed him too 
 sorely to keep him off the quarter-deck in 1874, and the 
 factional opposition that at first threatened, soon died 
 down. Reid gave cordial approval to his nomination, 
 which he frankly characterized as dictated in advance 
 by the well-nigh unanimous sentiment of the people, and 
 he was on the whole satisfied with the platform. In one 
 respect — and that was crucial — he could praise the Demo- 
 crats with positive fervor. They had properly stigma- 
 tized the movement for a third term, and the last sen- 
 tence of his rejoicing editorial pointed straight to the 
 
286 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 burning question of the moment — " Now let us see what 
 the Republicans can do." 
 
 Reid made, himself, the utmost effort to get them to 
 do something. I have spoken of the campaign of educa- 
 tion which he carried on with Bigelow's aid. In edi- 
 torials he adjured Grant, he adjured Dix, he adjured the 
 party, to speak out. In private intercourse and letters 
 he also did his best to move the men in whose hands the 
 matter rested. He saw a good deal of Thurlow Weed in 
 those days, and got him very sympathetically interested. 
 On the eve of the Democratic convention, where the 
 strong probabilities of a good Third Term plank in the 
 platform only intensified his anxiety for Republican 
 action, he wrote thus to the nestor of the party in the 
 State: 
 
 New York, 
 
 ,, HI t^T September nth, 1874. 
 
 My dear Mr. Weed: ^ 
 
 I am so strongly persuaded of the possibility of a contingency in 
 which Gov. Dix's chances may be materially diminished by the 
 failure of the Republican convention to pass a strong explicit resolu- 
 tion distinctly denouncing the Third Term movement, that I hope 
 you and he may be able to carry it through. 
 
 My own interest in it is primarily the desire to have this Third 
 Term folly stopped at once before Grant has begun to throw patron- 
 age into the scale. I am unluckily compelled to be out of town 
 for a week or two, and so trouble you with this hasty private note. 
 With great regard. 
 
 Very truly yours, 
 
 Whitelaw Reid. 
 
 By a fortunate chance, a very favorable opportunity 
 arose at this juncture of affairs to press the point with 
 Dix himself. There had been a matter pending with 
 reference to certain city affairs about which The Tribune 
 had taxed the governor with delay. Writing to explain 
 his position, Dix also took occasion to add: "I avail 
 myself of the opportunity to say that I hope the conven- 
 tion of the connection of the Liberal Republicans with 
 
THE RISE OF TILDEN 287 
 
 the Democratic party is at an end. Their true place is 
 
 with those from whom they were separated two years 
 
 ago; and it has been my earnest desire that the re-union 
 
 should be encouraged by a Kberal poKcy on the part of 
 
 my political associates. Our interest in the measures of 
 
 reform which we have been laboring to carry out, is a 
 
 common one; and it would be a pubKc calamity if they 
 
 should be imperilled by a further separation." He 
 
 couldn't have given the editor of The Tribune a better 
 
 opening. If there was one thing that Reid wanted to 
 
 talk to him about just then it was public calamity. He 
 
 replied to the governor as follows: 
 
 New York, 
 Gen. John A. Dix, September nth, 1874. 
 
 Governor of New York. 
 
 My dear Sir: 
 
 No one would be more delighted than myself if it were possible 
 to realize the reunion on sound principles of the Republicans and 
 the Liberals, to which you refer as now specially desirable. I made 
 my entry into the Republican party, as soon as I got out of college, 
 at the age of eighteen, by going on the stump for Fremont and Day- 
 ton; and I have certainly never swerved from any principle which 
 I learned in the Republican party during the days of its struggles 
 and greatness. I must say frankly, however, that, as parties now 
 stand, I can see little of anything like a clear continuous dividing 
 line of actual principles between the national organizations. Cer- 
 tainly the Republicans in the different states are not agreed on the 
 question of specie resumption, though I should be heartily delighted 
 if we could plant them all on the safe ground of your admirably 
 timed, most able and effective message. The Democrats are as 
 destitute of cohesion on this as on any of the other vital questions 
 with which the statesmanship of the next ten years must grapple. 
 
 Personally, it would give me great pleasure to support you for 
 the Governorship, and I sincerely hope and firmly believe that in 
 spite of the intrigues which I know have been going on against you, 
 your nomination may be made by acclamation. I must say, how- 
 ever, in addition, that, other things being equal, I could also well 
 enough support Mr. Samuel J. Tilden, whose attitude on most of the 
 questions which seem vital to the time is satisfactory, and whose 
 service in the overthrow of the Tammany Ring none of us will ever 
 question or forget. I have, therefore, held The Tribune up to this 
 
288 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 time uncommitted, and mean to do so until I see the platfornas of 
 the two great parties. I specially hope that you may be able, either 
 by some masterly public demonstration like your financial message, 
 or by the private exertion of your controlling influence, to force the 
 Republican party to a distinct and unequivocal declaration against 
 the Third Term. The President evidently encourages this move- 
 ment if he does not openly commit himself to it; but it seems to me 
 little short of an effort to change the form of our Government. The 
 Repubhcan Convention of New York can end the Third Term folly 
 at once. Will you not force them to do it, and thus earn anew the . 
 public gratitude which your great career has so often inspired, and 
 which, no matter what the future may have in store, I shall always 
 take pleasure in expressing. 
 
 Believe me. Dear Sir, with the greatest respect. 
 
 Very truly yours, Whitelaw Reid. 
 
 Ten days later, as the Republicans gathered at Utica 
 for their convention, Reid addressed to them on his edi- 
 torial page the same warning plea. The State, he re- 
 minded them, was pretty evenly balanced between the 
 two candidates. For the Republicans to pass by the 
 question of a third term would be for them to throw 
 into the hands of their opponents a large advantage. 
 The action of New York would go a long way to settle 
 the matter. Here, then, was a precious opportunity.! 
 In the stagnant harmony which prevailed at Utica that 
 opportunity was callously thrown away. When the nom- 
 ination was made The Tribune expressed once more its 
 amiable opinion of Dix as a man and a governor, but it 
 damned the platform as a shuffling and evasive docu- 
 ment, from which only one idea was to be gathered — 
 the re-election of Grant. Not so much as a gesture was 
 made in reprobation of that possibility. Summing up 
 the whole transaction, The Tribune said: "Of all the 
 State Conventions thus far held by either party, it pre- 
 sents the vainest show of empty rhetoric and the weakest 
 array of positive declarations." Thenceforth, while con- 
 tinuing to preserve a certain impartiality in the editorial 
 
THE RISE OF TILDEN 289 
 
 columns of his paper, Reid made no pretense of disguis- 
 ing his conviction that the Republicans had made a fatal 
 blunder, nor did he conceal the direction in which his 
 sympathies were now placed as between the candidates. 
 He remained quite unmoved when the party began to 
 send up signals of distress, bringing in the potent name 
 of Governor E. D. Morgan to strengthen its expression 
 of serious alarm about the pending election. The best 
 that he could do for the gentlemen on the anxious seat 
 was to commend their case to the voters, with this two- 
 edged advice: "What original Republicans should do is 
 a question they must decide (without aid from any dif- 
 ferences in the position or character of the candidates) 
 according to their best judgment as to the effect, on the 
 one hand, of encouraging Gen. Grant to believe that 
 the people approve his course and want to have him a 
 candidate again, or^ on the other hand, of stimulating a 
 revival of the old rebel and Tweed Democracy." Con- 
 sidering all that The Tribune was constantly saying 
 about Grantism and the perils of its perpetuation, and, 
 even more, considering Tilden's known attitude toward 
 the Tweed Democracy, the irony with which these al- 
 ternatives were cited must have struck the Dix people 
 as freighted with peculiarly mischievous humor. 
 
 Reid's sarcastic advice was addressed to his readers 
 on the morning of October 20th. That evening, at a 
 Cooper Institute mass-meeting, Dix spoke out at last 
 against the third term, facing, after a fashion, the issue 
 which he had dodged at the convention. It was too 
 late, it bound no one but himself, and Reid could only 
 point out to him the sad fate of the statesman whose 
 political epitaph ran to the effect that he had died of 
 being wrong at the right time and right at the wrong 
 time. "Death-bed repentance," he wrote, "is better 
 than none; but it does not inspire unbounded confidence. 
 
290 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 The Governor was wrong, persistently, contemptuously- 
 wrong, at the right time." Every political observer with 
 his eyes open could see that, as well as the inconclusive 
 nature of Dix's belated utterance, and no one quicker 
 than his astute rival. Tilden pounced with all his fox- 
 like expedition upon the vulnerable point. The gov- 
 ernor made his speech on the evening of October 26th, 
 anticipating by only twenty-four hours a Democratic 
 rally at which note of his expressions was certain to be 
 taken. In the morning Reid received this missive: 
 
 New York, 
 
 ^ October 27th, 1874. 
 
 Dear Mr. Reid: 
 
 It seems desirable to press to a categorical answer, the question — 
 What will Gov. Dix do if Grant decide? to run a third time? Will 
 he bolt? Or will he acquiesce? S T T 
 
 The ink upon this was scarcely dry before Bigelow, 
 
 stanchest of Tildenites, had hastened to urge the same 
 
 point upon their friend. He wrote: 
 
 The Squirrels, 
 
 ^ October 27th, 1874. 
 
 My dear Reid: 
 
 Dix is opposed to a third term but he carefully neglects to say 
 that he would not support a Third Term candidate of his party. 
 Will he have any more courage in the presence of the next Presiden- 
 tial nominating convention than he had in the presence of the late 
 convention? Pohtical huzzies are very much like the other kind of 
 whom Don Juan's mistress was the type, who — 
 
 Swearing she would ne'er consent, consented. 
 
 Would it not be well to suggest to the Governor that it was never 
 seriously questioned that he was opposed to a third term for Grant 
 — all the candidates for the succession are — but whether he will 
 oppose Grant if nominated for a third term? Grant and his Mur- 
 phies think not, and have so mean an opinion of the Republican 
 party as to beheve that very few of them would dare oppose him. 
 He has a right to this opinion when he finds leaders like Dix, Conk- 
 ling and Morgan yielding hke wax in his hands. 
 
 Very sincerely yours, , „ 
 
 ■^ J J > Jqjjj^ Bigelow. 
 
THE RISE OF TILDEN 291 
 
 Like wax the too complaisant governor went down, 
 and with him a startling number of his "political asso- 
 ciates." Nowhere in the country were the mid-term 
 elections more significant than this one of the final exas- 
 perated revolt of the pubhc against what Reid bluntly 
 characterized as six years of rule remarkable for nothing 
 but blundering and greed. The State of New York, 
 which had given Grant and Dix a majority of 53,450 in 
 1872, and had elected twenty-four administration men 
 out of her thirty-three congressmen, now defeated Dix, 
 solely on account of Grant, by a majority of over 30,000, 
 and left the administration not over ten representatives 
 in the next House. Thus Reid tersely summarized the 
 bulletins on the morrow of election, and, as a matter of 
 fact, as the returns kept coming in, they only made the 
 figures more crushing. He had accurately envisaged the 
 issue. It was Grantism, pure and simple. 
 
 Favorably disposed as he was toward Tilden, he still 
 distinguished between that leader and the heterogeneous 
 nature of his following, building no false hopes of a com- 
 pletely regenerated opposition. The Democratic party 
 had been not restored to public confidence, but used by 
 voters, who would not trust it utterly, as an instrument 
 for discipline. It had been placed on trial, and would 
 so remain for the next two years. At the moment, the 
 verdict delivered by the State — as by the country — bore 
 only upon the question as to whether the administration 
 deserved the public confidence and ought to be per- 
 petuated. The negative had been pronounced, so loudly 
 that even the President could not but hear. He knew 
 now, with a vengeance, that the time had indeed come 
 for the Republican party to unload. In fact, the people 
 had begun to take charge of the unloading. The general 
 sense of this fact, evidenced by comments in all quarters 
 of the press, resounded chorus-wise in Reid's private 
 
292 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 correspondence. Earliest of all, as was appropriate, came 
 from the Tilden camp the congratulations of Bigelow: 
 
 The Squirrels, 
 
 „ November 4th, 1874. 
 
 My dear Reid: 
 
 The King is dead ! Long live the King I The grave has been 
 dug large but not too large to hold Dix, Grant, and the Third Term 
 abomination. Had the election been deferred a fortnight the grave 
 would have been 10,000 votes larger. When Catherine de Medicis . 
 learned that an assassin had emancipated her son Henri HI from 
 the thraldom of the Duke of Guise, she exclaimed "The garment is 
 well cut, now let us see if you know how to sew it up." With your 
 help I trust the work of construction will prove as acceptable as that 
 of destruction has proved to the country. The Tribune has cov- 
 ered itself with glory, while Organic remains smell to heaven. Ac- 
 cept my cordial congratulations and may the august shadows of 
 yourself and staff never be less. 
 
 Very sincerely yours, , r. 
 
 •^ J J ' Jqjjj^ Bigelow. 
 
 Tilden's own comment, in his speech at the Manhat- 
 tan Club two nights later, clearly recognized the true 
 posture of affairs. The great victory achieved in the 
 State of New York, he said, was not a personal victory. 
 No man, single-handed, had won the day. Reid knew 
 this. He was quick, for example, to credit Bigelow with 
 plenty of useful work. "I very cordially return your 
 congratulations," he wrote. "No man has done more 
 than you to bring about the result." And if there were 
 to be any parcelling out of responsibility, Manton Mar- 
 ble, of the "World," who wrote the Syracuse platform, 
 could not be forgotten. But Reid's share in the organ- 
 ization of victory was very great, hpw great will pres- 
 ently be shown by reference to the testimony of the 
 man most closely concerned, and it is the special sig- 
 nificance of his work in the campaign that has com- 
 pelled the narration of the latter in some detail. The 
 fight as he carried it on in the columns of The Tribune 
 was but incidentally in the service of Tilden. It was, 
 
THE RISE OF TILDEN 293 
 
 primarily, a fight for the public good, and as such it 
 takes a clearly marked place in the history of indepen- 
 dent journalism. All independent journahsm, of course, 
 is dedicated to the public good. We know that because 
 the independent journalists have told us so. But its be- 
 setting tendency with us has been to approach the pub- 
 lic ills with an arbitrary specific, or with something akin 
 to the "King's touch" in mediaeval times, which is to say 
 with the omniscience of the superior person. The creed 
 of the independent editor is frequently the only ortho- 
 dox instrument of political regeneration in the world. 
 He is the Stubbornest of "offensive partisans." He 
 allows his formulas and his temperament to obscure his 
 view of life, like a man who holds a penny between his 
 eye and the sun. Having on occasion high abilities, the 
 influence which should be commensurate with them is 
 restricted to a limited circle of fastidious malcontents by 
 the Pharisaical drift of his political philosophy. Reid's 
 chapter in the annals of independent journalism owes its 
 salience to the disinterested manner in which he framed it. 
 Himself a reformer, he had a superabundance of griev- 
 ances, but they never promoted in him the querulous 
 conviction that whatever is is wrong. His editorials in 
 this campaign are often honestly explosive with wrath, 
 never peevish with ill temper. Neither is there any hint 
 of dogma in the record. Independent journalism, as he 
 saw it, functioned the better for the public welfare when 
 it rested not upon an esoteric programme, drawn up for 
 the millennium, but upon the practical conditions actu- 
 ally confronting it. He was, as I have repeatedly said, 
 a party man by nature, and when he left the Republican 
 party it was not to sulk in a Cave of AduIIam, it was to 
 fight Grant and his people from the best point of van- 
 tage — from the outside. His independence was that of 
 the liberty-loving rebel, not that of the doctrinaire who 
 
294 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 wants to substitute for the current shibboleth a shibbo- 
 leth of his own. Hence the satisfaction with which, 
 after decades of the closest identification with the 
 Republican party, he could always look back upon the 
 few years of his break with it. Some time ago I had 
 occasion to seek some light from him on that period, 
 and he wrote to me as follows : 
 
 London, 
 
 _ n, /- April 22nd, 1908. 
 
 Dear Mr. Cortissoz: 
 
 There are one or two points in my relation to Mr. Tilden which I 
 would be glad to see brought out. The thing I am best content 
 with in the whole story is the fact that after his election as Governor 
 he sought to make me some recognition of my share in it, which he 
 chose to describe as controlling. In fact, he said in so many words 
 that he owed his election to me. I replied that I wanted nothing 
 from him but a definite act binding his party to an acceptance of 
 the results of the war, and particularly the sanctity of the debt, and 
 the binding nature of the Constitutional amendments. Mr. Tilden 
 assented to my wish, and inserted a paragraph intended to express 
 it in his inaugural message. A copy of this was sent to me in ad- 
 vance, but I objected to it as too vague. He thereupon sent his 
 private secretary to me, asking me to write it to suit myself, which 
 I did, and he inserted it verbatim in the message as delivered. Who- 
 ever reads it will find it a stiff enough committal of the Democratic 
 party to the support of the Constitutional amendments, and at that 
 time I thought this a great point gained for the good and for the 
 
 repose of the country. , , . , 
 
 Yours smcerely, ,,, „ 
 
 WHITELAW KeID. 
 
 Reid's urgency in the matter of the amendments needs 
 no gloss as an instance of public pohcy. The bitter need 
 for a thoroughly national recognition of their heahng 
 purpose is writ large across the history of the times. 
 Ten years after the war the processes of "reconciliation 
 and reform" were still grotesquely delayed, and by no 
 agencies more powerful than those of Grant's adminis- 
 tration. In view of the monstrous muddle which federal 
 interference had produced in Louisiana — to cite the an- 
 griest of the several sores which that administration kept 
 
THE RISE OF TILDEN 295 
 
 festering — ^The Tribune was surely justified in its state- 
 ment that General Grant and his followers were laboring 
 to make the war perpetual in the South, for the most 
 sordid uses of party. But here, to throw a little addi- 
 tional light on Reid's concern over the amendments, I 
 must recall the early origin of that pohcy which he 
 pressed upon Tilden. 
 
 His point of view at the end of the war, expressed on 
 the fall of Richmond, has ah^eady been stated — "There 
 need be no haste in re-clothing defeated rebels with 
 political power" — and I have alluded to the shght hopes 
 of Southern rehabiHtation which were raised in him by 
 his observations on the tour he made with Chase. Yet 
 there is nothing more marked about his subsequent 
 thought on the subject than its freedom from rancor or 
 the fixity of his belief in a truly fraternal settlement of 
 the Southern problem as the only settlement worth hav- 
 ing. Five years before this argument of his with Tilden, 
 the appearance in The Tribune of an editorial indicative 
 of a liberal ideal of reconstruction had irritated the 
 nerves of Colonel T. W. Higginson. Busy over an article 
 on Horace for Reid, he suspended his meditations on 
 that classical theme long enough to say: "It's a wonder I 
 could write for you today, after reading in yesterday's 
 paper 'Chivalry and Carpet Bags.' That even the war 
 should not have ended that miserable myth of Southern 
 chivalry, 'pure domestic morality' (faugh!), and all the 
 distinction of 'the hightoned gentleman !' I have lots of 
 cousins among the F. F. V's and have seen the best side 
 of the plantation life years ago and it was barbarism and 
 nothing else." Reid's answer follows: 
 
 New York, 
 
 _ February 7th, 1870. 
 
 My dear Colonel: 
 
 This morning I opened two letters in succession: one of them was 
 yours covering the review of Horace and the criticism on our article, 
 
296 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 "Chivalry and Carpet Bags," the other enclosed this clipping from 
 the Pittsburg "Chronicle," which calls to mind the profound obser- 
 vation of an old moralist that the color of your spectacles makes all 
 the difference in the world in the apparent color of the things you 
 are looking at. 
 
 I, too, have seen much of the Southern people, having lived among 
 them not merely for months but for years. There is some truth in 
 what you say, and there is some truth in what our article said. Per- 
 haps if the two were fused together it would make a more perfect 
 and rounded statement of the entire truth concerning that same 
 Southern character, but on that we probably could not agree. 
 
 On one point I think we ought to. Let us have done with this 
 miserable spirit of carping at the South. We are the conquerors in 
 the fight. The boy who is whipped generally feels sulky and if the 
 boy who whips is magnanimous he doesn't undertake to thrash him 
 again for having the sulks, less even stand off and call him names. 
 
 I will go to any length you may ask in demanding the enforce- 
 ment of equal right for all at the South; but with the same earnest- 
 ness with which I believe in this I repudiate and abhor the doctrine 
 that a minority composed of negroes and disreputable carpet baggers 
 can permanently and safely govern a large majority in any American 
 state. Let us compromise in this. 
 
 Faithfully yours, ,,, _ 
 
 •^ ■^ Whitelaw Reid. 
 
 It was, then, only accidentally, as an opponent of 
 Grant's, and far more — and fundamentally — as a recon- 
 structionist w^ith a long-established policy, that he made 
 his request of Tilden. It arose in conversation first, as 
 his letter to me explains, and while the new governor's 
 message was in proof, but fortunately I can append the 
 documents which embrace the further decisive phases of 
 the matter. They failed to meet on the day when 
 Tilden was leaving for his inauguration, and Reid there- 
 fore wrote to him thus: 
 
 New York, 
 Dear Mr. Tilden: December 31st, 1874. 
 
 I was exceedingly sorry that the pressure of unavoidable engage- 
 ments made it impossible for me to call on you again at the hour 
 you were good enough to name before your departure. I wanted 
 to say then in full what I must here set down briefly. 
 
THE RISE OF TILDEN 297 
 
 I am more than ever convinced that the very great importance 
 to the Democratic party, to the Opposition of all parties, and espe- 
 cially to yourself, of a ringing declaration on the subject of the 
 Amendments to the National Constitution embodying the results 
 of the war, does not meet in your message such full recognition as 
 it deserves. I know very _well what the counsels of timid men, who 
 fear to offend the South or to go too far for the prejudices of their 
 supporters, would be. But you can afford to disregard them. You 
 are able to grasp the key to the situation; but you do not grasp it 
 in this message. The man whom all the crowds of the Opposition 
 are to recognize as their leader for the next two years, is the man 
 who starts on the platform of an unequivocal, distinct recognition 
 of the results of the war as a finality, to which all parties and par- 
 tisans are in honor pledged, and to which he is bound not only by his 
 honor but by his judgment. The man who does not do that, and 
 does not make the common, hastily-reading people see that he does 
 it, cannot hold the support which elected you. What you say on 
 the subject of the Amendments is all right; but it is inadequate, and 
 it seems grudging. 
 
 I write this with the frankness which I know you desire. I sin- 
 cerely hope that before the message is irrevocable you may see your 
 way clear to another paragraph, if possible toward the beginning 
 of the message, or at least so conspicuously placed, and so explicitly 
 phrased, as to attract attention throughout the whole country. 
 There is the true starting point for any effort by the leaders of the 
 Democracy to gain the confidence which during the war and since 
 has been withdrawn from them. 
 
 Merely as political strategy (to say nothing of the great principle 
 involved, which I am sure you will recognize) I do not believe that 
 I overrate the importance of this matter. I beg you to give it your 
 gravest consideration as, above everything else discussed in your 
 message, the most important matter you have to deal with. 
 
 Very truly yours, Whitelaw Reid. 
 
 Tilden was inaugurated the next day. The day after 
 he sent his secretary to New York with this letter: 
 
 Albany, 
 
 ^ , , „ January 2nd, 1875. 
 
 Dear Mr. Reid: -^ ^ 
 
 Fear as to how it will strike the South has no place in my motives 
 on the subject. I am, personally, so committed, on several occa- 
 sions, that I could save nothing now if I wished. But I have shrunk 
 a little from giving occasion to the comment that in my message I 
 
298 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 nominate myself for the Presidency and lay down my Presidential 
 platform. You will see how, at the beginning and the end of the 
 discussion of the currency, I put in a passage to shield myself from 
 criticism in deahng with that as if it were a state matter. This was 
 the idea of introducing the topic of the amendments as an incident 
 to the financial discussion. There is besides more emphasis and 
 solemnity in putting it near to the close of the document. 
 
 I had already, since I saw you, introduced the words "final" and 
 "in good faith," but since hearing from you, I have made a separate 
 paragraph and added a declaration that the amendments are binding 
 not only on the South but on both political parties comprising the whole 
 American people as a final settlement. 
 
 That, I think, is all that you can wish; but I am sorry I cannot 
 see you to discuss forms and words. As the best substitute, I send 
 my nephew, Mr. Pelton, to show it to you, and also to have the 
 proof corrected in a New York office. 
 
 ^^ ^' S. J. TiLDEN. 
 
 Mr. P. will read this to you, if you cannot. 
 
 The chirography was obscure, as the postscript quaintly 
 admits, and as I can myself freely testify, but the v^^ill- 
 ingness of the governor to meet the demands of his 
 friend was refreshingly clear, and Pelton must have 
 brought verbal messages making it even clearer, for, as 
 we have seen, Reid settled the fate of the paragraph by 
 writing it himself. Surely it was an odd concatenation 
 of circumstances that brought this about. Few things 
 in the queer kaleidoscopic movement of political life 
 could surpass in singularity the turn of chance by which 
 a man born and bred in Republicanism, and destined to 
 spend all his life, save for one brief interlude, in the 
 inner circles of the Republican party, was thus permitted 
 to affect the fortunes of the opposition at an intensely 
 critical moment in its history. 
 
 Reid devoted one of his editorials on the message, the 
 day after it went to the legislature, entirely to the pas- 
 sage which had cost him so much concern, stating that 
 in it the governor had formulated "the most important 
 
THE RISE OF TILDEN 299 
 
 article of the creed of the new Democracy." With the 
 writing of those words there went an amused sense of 
 his own relation to them. They left him still with an 
 open mind, still well aware of the fact that the Demo- 
 cratic party was only on trial. The reader will not 
 expect me to terminate this chapter with the shghtest 
 modification of any of the ingredients of independent 
 journalism out of which it has been compounded. 
 
 After the election Watterson wrote to him, saying: 
 "You have won a real triumph in Tilden, a pure and 
 able man, and doubtless your personal private friend. 
 Why not rally on him for '76?" The essence of the 
 whole matter is contained in Reid's reply: 
 
 New York, 
 
 1., „r November 7th, 1874. 
 
 My dear Watterson: 
 
 Yes, Tilden is personally an old and cordial friend. But it is too 
 soon to be making personal plans for 1876. Tilden himself makes 
 none, although the necessity of his position is upon him, and he 
 cannot help being talked about as a Presidential candidate. 
 
 The Republicans under Morgan are talking very wisely about 
 reorganization on a broader basis. The only reorganization they 
 can make is one which shall cut off Grant and Grantism abso- 
 lutely. 
 
 I can't quite see my way out of the muddle of existing parties as 
 yet but one thing I do see, that it is safe to hold fast, namely, thor- 
 ough independence of all party organizations, reserving the right 
 to commend what is good in all, and to strive solely for the result 
 of avowed principles with absolute indifference to any party claim 
 save in so far as they try to secure the triumph of those prin- 
 ciples. 
 
 How thoroughly events have vindicated your prescience last 
 
 Spring, when you astonished us all with declaring that Grant really 
 
 meant a Third Term. I woke up to it in midsummer and made 
 
 my plans for our Third Term campaign here before I was driven 
 
 by a chronic sleeplessness to the country. Looking back over it 
 
 now, I feel rather well satisfied with the various steps in our 
 
 attack. A, ^ T 
 
 Always very truly yours, 
 
 Whitelaw Reid. 
 
300 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 It was in the mood of this letter that he began the 
 new year, well satisfied with what he had done as regarded 
 the governor's chair, and utterly free as to the course 
 to be pursued when the time, near at hand, came for 
 tackling the problem of the President's. 
 
CHAPTER XVIII 
 BUILDING UP A PAPER 
 
 In the midst of hard times The Tribune prospered. 
 Shortly after the Tilden campaign Reid wrote to Smalley 
 that the circulation was larger than it had ever been in 
 Greeley's lifetime, excepting at certain high tides regis- 
 tered in the Civil War. "We have passed handsomely," 
 he said, "above the highest point reached during the 
 Franco-Prussian War; and the peculiarity of all the 
 spurts we have made in the last year and a half is that in 
 every instance, after the special excitement has passed 
 away, we have held at least three-fourths of what we 
 had gained." On April loth, 1875, when the paper 
 entered upon the thirty-fifth year of its existence, and 
 celebrated the event by taking possession of its new 
 building, note was duly made of an average daily circu- 
 lation of 50,230 copies. The new building had a place 
 of its own in all these developments. The reader has 
 heard of it before, but must not be surprised at hearing 
 of it again, for the truth is that it was an important fac- 
 tor in Reid's plans for his administration. From the day 
 the foundations were laid his friends recognized this. 
 In his correspondence for the two years of construction 
 the new building crops up pretty nearly as often as the 
 wickedness of Grantism. Watterson, as we have seen, 
 threatened that he would not come to New York until 
 the edifice was up, "when it is my wish to sprinkle a 
 little holy water on it and say grace." They cheered 
 him on, poked fun at him, condoled with him when ruth- 
 less hod-carriers struck for higher wages, and endlessly 
 gave him advice. Halstead, with poignant fellow feel- 
 
 301 
 
302 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 ing, thus adjured him: "I infer from a publication in 
 The Tribune concerning the new Tribune building, that 
 you propose to heat the house with steam. It occurs to 
 me as a matter of humanity to say to you, before it is 
 everlastingly too late, if it is not already, that you should 
 provide for the room that you occupy yourself, to omit 
 the steam pipes and put in a neat fireplace. The steam- 
 pipe system of heating is the most infernal ever invented, 
 for the destruction of editors especially." He found the 
 neat little fireplace, andirons, cheerful glow and all, 
 when he visited his friend that winter. 
 
 The building was, indeed, a fulfilment of all that Reid 
 and his sympathizing friends could ask. It was literally 
 true that no newspaper had up to that time, anywhere 
 in the world, been so well lodged; there were new presses 
 in the cellar to keep pace with the new requirements of 
 the paper, and from top to bottom the work of con- 
 struction had been perfectly done. "It is more strongly 
 built than the temple of Psestum or the aqueduct of 
 Segovia," runs the dedicatory editorial, a boast which 
 was made good when in after years the height of the 
 building was increased and the well-nigh cyclopean walls 
 proved their capacity for strain. Reid loved those walls. 
 He used to speak with pride of their bulk and inde- 
 structibility. And he rejoiced, too — trebly at the time — 
 in his high-erected tower. In 1875 ^ts elevation of two 
 hundred and sixty feet above the pavement was only 
 beaten by that of Trinity's spire. It bowed to the capi- 
 tol at Washington, but it looked down upon Bunker Hill 
 Monument, and these were the sole structures off Man- 
 hattan Island which it deigned to recognize as rivals. It 
 stood for success, too, where success had seemed almost 
 impossible. On the night of the great day of its dedica- 
 tion Hay drew his chief to the office on the vague plea 
 that the staff" wanted to see him. They gave him a piece 
 
BUILDING UP A PAPER 303 
 
 of silver, with an affectionate tribute that Hassard wrote 
 and everybody signed, and Ripley, who made the speech 
 of presentation, adverted in this wise to Greeley's death 
 and the time of doubt which followed it: "The enemies 
 of The Tribune predicted that its days were numbered, 
 and that the bells which had tolled its founder to his 
 final rest were still ringing out the knell of its departed 
 greatness. It was then that one of the youngest soldiers 
 of our corps, young in years but ripe in wisdom, with a 
 sagacity that would do honor to gray hairs, with a cour- 
 age that no perils could intimidate, with an energy that 
 was ready to thrash mountains with a flail, and with a 
 noble ambition that did not overleap itself and fall upon 
 the other side, but which put the right man in the right 
 place, came forward and took the helm of the new Trib- 
 une, whose birthday may well be dated from that auspi- 
 cious hour." From the many letters of congratulation 
 that reached Reid at that time I may draw the follow- 
 ing, from Blaine: 
 
 Washington, 
 
 April loth, 1875. 
 My dear Mr. Reid: 
 
 I have just read today's Tribune — and I cannot help writing you 
 a line of congratulation. You have the most abundant reason to 
 be proud of your wonderful achievement in journalism — for I think 
 in all the elements of a really great newspaper The Tribune is un- 
 equalled today on either continent. And you are acquiring such 
 prestige that I hardly know what limit can be placed to the progress 
 and power of your paper. 
 
 I do not, of course, know anything about the pecuniary results of 
 your dashing and daring enterprise — but I can plainly see that you 
 are making it terribly expensive and burdensome to the other met- 
 ropolitan dailies to even keep in sight of you. In a very short time 
 The Tribune will be practically without competition in the most 
 advanced sphere of journalism. 
 
 A note of this kind from me would be misconstrued by the pubhc. 
 By you it will be understood as my tribute to the victor in one of 
 the greatest, most difficult and most heroic fields of intellectual 
 
 ^^°^- Very sincerely, J. G. Blaine. 
 
304 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 Nothing could have been more inspiriting. Sweet is 
 the encouragement of friends. It was pleasant to hear 
 from Hay in that same year, writing after he had gone 
 back to Cleveland: "You have made a great position, 
 personal and professional. You are probably the best 
 known man of your age in the country." 
 
 The reader who sought in the files of The Tribune for 
 the sources of its success at this time would be struck, in 
 the first place, by the evidence of what Reid meant when 
 he claimed to at least know "what a newspaper ought 
 to be." He meant, before anything else, that it should 
 be a full and faithful record. The most obvious feature 
 of the paper in the middle seventies was its exhaustive 
 treatment of the great news sensations of the period. 
 No historian dealing with the subjects could afford to 
 neglect The Tribune's reports of events like the inves- 
 tigation into the Pacific Mail Subsidy, the State Canal 
 Ring, and the national Whiskey Frauds ; they are, in fact, 
 themselves pages of history. As the Beecher trial drew 
 its slow length along, piling up its dreary mounds of tes- 
 timony and argument, the verbatim reports in The Trib- 
 une were made so well that by common consent judge 
 and counsel turned to them as the authority of the court. 
 A striking tribute to the value of the paper as a calendar 
 of events comes in this letter from Reid's friend Adams, 
 who as chairman of the Board of Railroad Commission- 
 ers in Massachusetts had a particular interest in pub- 
 lished statements of fact : 
 
 Boston, 
 My dear Mr. Reid: ^^^'""^"y '3th, 1875. 
 
 I want to suggest to you the idea of having prepared and printed 
 in future, year by year, an index of The Tribune. I have, in my 
 investigations, to examine the files of papers, and they drive me 
 nearly crazy for want of an index. The London "Times" publishes 
 one and it is of immense service. If an American paper like The 
 Tribune would do it, it would at once place that paper at the head 
 
BUILDING UP A PAPER 305 
 
 of the press as the standard for reference. Put it, in fact, in the 
 position of the "Times." I wish you would consider this and make 
 it a yearly publication, like your Almanac. A person like myself 
 could then buy it each year, and examine it at home, going to the 
 files to find what was referred to. 
 
 C. F. Adams, Jr. 
 
 He was so keen about this that in a further letter he 
 undertook to figure out what the thing would cost, how 
 much an indexer would have to be paid, and what the 
 printing bill would be. An edition could easily be sold, 
 he argued. "Libraries must have it and the whole race 
 of politicians could not live without it." They had 
 already been doing in The Tribune office for some years, 
 in an imperfect way and purely for office use, what 
 Adams suggested. But now the scheme was improved, 
 and early in 1876 an index in pamphlet form for the 
 preceding year began the annual series which he wanted. 
 Meanwhile the audience to which the annual appealed 
 was steadily augmented in quarters where numbers and 
 loyalty were most to be desired. William CuIIen Bryant, 
 of the "Evening Post," was indignant because, through 
 the rivalry of The Tribune, his journal "was losing the 
 distinction of being the only paper for gentlemen and 
 scholars ! " A note from President Gilman, of Johns 
 Hopkins, sheds a bit of light on this subject. "The 
 Tribune hits college people so widely over the land," he 
 says, "that I shall be particularly glad to be heard by 
 that audience which you command so completely." It 
 hit them through the editor's interpretation of the word 
 "news." The sensations aforementioned stick out, nec- 
 essarily, in the annals of those days. But the "tone" 
 of The Tribune was determined in other ways also; by 
 a notable interview with Andrew Johnson on his election 
 to the Senate; by a series of financial letters from Hugh 
 McCuIIoch in London, the former President's secretary 
 
3o6 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 of the treasury; by Charles Reade, expounding his views 
 on the rights and wrongs of authors; by Garibaldi, ex- 
 plaining his plans for the reclamation of the Roman 
 Campagna; by Thurlow Weed, setting forth his reminis- 
 cences of Queen Victoria's good-will for the United States 
 in certain historical crises; by Hans Christian Andersen, 
 expressing thanks for a birthday gift which an editorial 
 in The Tribune had originated; by Hassard's memorable 
 description of the opening performances at Bayreuth. 
 It was Hassard again, and Bayard Taylor, who led the 
 staff assigned to describe our Centennial exhibition at 
 Philadelphia. When there was particular occasion for 
 an article on Carlyle, Reid tried to obtain one from 
 Emerson. Decidedly The Tribune was what Godkin 
 had found it in Greeley's day, "like the Comedie Fran- 
 gaise." 
 
 Reid's experience with one of his brilliant " Societaires," 
 Henry James, brings out in an amusing manner the play 
 of his idea of what a newspaper ought to be. He had a 
 strong European staff, but with the opening of the new 
 building he was in the mood to think of additional men, 
 and he received with cordial approval this letter of Hay's, 
 proposing that he give the author of "A Passionate Pil- 
 grim," now turning pilgrim himself, a chance: 
 
 Cleveland, 
 Dear Mr. Reid: -^"^^ ^^th, 1875. 
 
 Henry James, Jr., wants to write for The Tribune, letters from 
 Paris, where he is going to live for some time to come. He considers 
 The Tribune the only paper where business could be combined with 
 literary ambition. I hope you will engage him in place of Houssaye. 
 He will write better letters than anybody — you know his wonderful 
 style and keen observation of hfe and character. He has no hesita- 
 tion in saying that he can beat Houssaye on his own ground, gossip 
 and chronicle, and I agree with him. Besides, his name is almost, if 
 not quite, equally valuable — and far more regarded by cultivated 
 people. He would cost not more than half what Houssaye costs 
 
BUILDING UP A PAPER 307 
 
 (counting translation) and I think his letters would be about twice 
 as good. He would not interfere with Huntington but would simply 
 take Houssaye's place — and in my opinion fill it much better. 
 
 He will start in the autumn some time. You might let Houssaye 
 run on until James gets there and then discharge him with a Grantish 
 letter telling him how deHghted you and the public have been with 
 his letters, but that the labor of translation has been very difficult 
 and now has become almost impossible through the removal from 
 New York of the invaluable rooster who did it, etc., etc. 
 
 In short, this is the statement. You pay Houssaye I30. for a 
 not very good letter and me. Heaven knows how much for translat- 
 ing it. For, say, $20. or $25. James will write you a much better 
 letter and sign his name to it. 
 
 His address is 20 Quincy St., Cambridge, Mass. You can write 
 
 Yours faithfully. Hay. 
 
 Reid's answer was a request to Hay to go ahead and 
 make the engagement. The first-fruits of it, gathered 
 before Christmas, were very encouraging, and if the 
 nineteen letters which were scattered through The Trib- 
 une over a period of eight or nine months were not pre- 
 cisely what Hay had expected them to be — "the best 
 letters ever printed from Paris" — Reid nevertheless be- 
 lieved that they gave a great deal of satisfaction to his 
 readers, as he was careful to tell his correspondent. Some 
 of them were very good, notably the three on Chartres, 
 Rouen, and Etretat, which were later incorporated in 
 "Portraits of Places." They were "played up" and due 
 heed was given to this plea, which I cite for its delight- 
 fully "Jacobean" fastidiousness: 
 
 29 Rue de Luxembourg, 
 My dear Mr. Reid: ^P"^ ^^rd, 1876. 
 
 I enclose another, a 14th letter. Let me add a most earnest and 
 urgent request that the practise of inserting headings to the succes- 
 sive paragraphs in my letters, which I see was begun on April ist last, 
 be not continued. I object to it in the strongest possible manner 
 and I entreat and beseech you to cause it to be suppressed. May I 
 not safely count upon your doing so? The thing is in every way dis- 
 
 ^^^ ^ ' Yours very truly, Henry James. 
 
3o8 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 The luckless copy-reader who had sought with "cross- 
 heads" to break up an unusually long letter was forth- 
 with admonished to let that expedient alone. Reid was 
 quick to sympathize with the instinct of a man of letters. 
 But his decision a few months later offers a striking 
 example of his own instinct as an editor, the instinct 
 convincing him that the man of letters, writing in a 
 newspaper, must also be a journalist. He wrote to 
 James, asking him to make his letters shorter and to 
 get more news into them. The subjects chosen were 
 sometimes too remote from popular interest. The most 
 interesting period of the Centennial was approaching, as 
 well as the active stage of the presidential campaign. 
 The Tribune constituency, inteUigent as it was, might 
 very possibly fail to rise at such a time to the pure lit- 
 erary treatment of a subject. Brevity, variety, topics of 
 wide interest — ^these were the virtues commended to 
 James, and above all else, brevity. "Even when the 
 hmit is fixed at a column it is best, as the candid church- 
 goer said to his parson, to err on the side of mercy. You 
 must not imagine that any of us have failed to appre- 
 ciate the admirable work you have done for us. The 
 difficulty has sometimes been not that it was too good, 
 but that it was magazine rather than newspaper work." 
 
 The Jacobite, conscious only of devotion to his master, 
 might find these sayings a little cruel, addressed to Henry 
 James. But they drive straight at the central principle 
 of journalism, the only principle on which a great news- 
 paper can be founded, and James himself saw that they 
 were just. His reply follows : 
 
 Chateau de Varennes, 
 My dear Mr. Reid: ^"^ust 30th, 1876. 
 
 I have just received your letter of August loth. I quite appreciate 
 what you say about the character of my letters, and about their not 
 being the right sort of thing for a newspaper. I had been half ex- 
 pecting to hear from you to that effect. I myself had wondered 
 
BUILDING UP A PAPER 309 
 
 whether you could make room for them during the present and the 
 coming time at home, and I can easily imagine that the general 
 reader should feel indisposed to give the time requisite for reading 
 them. They would, as you say, be more in place in a magazine. 
 But I am afraid I can't assent to your proposal that I should try and 
 write otherwise. I know the sort of letter you mean — it is doubt- 
 less the proper sort of thing for The Tribune to have. But I can't 
 produce it. I don't know how and I couldn't learn how. It would 
 cost me really more trouble than to write as I have been doing (which 
 comes tolerably easy to me) and it would be poor economy for me 
 to try and become "newsy" and gossipy. I am too finical a writer 
 and I should be constantly becoming more "literary" than is desir- 
 able. To resist this tendency would be rowing up stream and would 
 take much time and pains. If my letters have been "too good" I 
 am honestly afraid that they are the poorest I can do, especially for 
 the money! I had better, therefore, suspend them altogether. I 
 have enjoyed writing them, however, and if The Tribune had not 
 been the better for them I hope it has not been too much the worse. 
 I shall doubtless have sooner or later a discreet successor. Believe 
 
 me, with the best wishes, ^ . , 
 
 Yours very truly, ^ j^^^^^ j^ 
 
 James had talked to Hay of beating Houssaye on his 
 ow^n ground of "gossip and chronicle." He had failed 
 to do this and it left a smart. It left also a journalistic 
 ambition that was still unsatisfied. The "Nation" was 
 always there and James went on contributing to it, as 
 he had for several years, but his desire to turn the trick 
 in The Tribune, in a newspaper in the strict sense, comes 
 out in a note of his written that winter. "I have trans- 
 ferred myself, you will see by my date, to London, whence 
 I sometimes wish there were an occasional pretext for 
 writing to The Tribune. But, with Mr. Smalley here, 
 there of course can be none whatever." He was right. 
 Smalley, like an anaconda, devoured all the pretexts. 
 
 There is diversion. in the contrast between James and 
 Charles Reade in their relations with The Tribune, a 
 contrast between two drastically different types of the 
 literary temperament. The author of "The Cloister and 
 the Hearth" had in him, surely, the genius of the born 
 
310 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 romancer, but he was also the most biddable of practical 
 journalists. He liked the idea of receiving part pay- 
 ment for his contributions in advertisements, and when 
 a proposal to that effect rather staggered Reid, he said: 
 " I do beg of you to consider that I sell ideas and words 
 and you sell advertisements, and what I propose is a 
 just exchange of commodities." His first appearance in 
 the paper was made in 1874, when his narrative of "A 
 Hero and a Martyr" recited the exploits of one James 
 Lambert, a Scotsman who had saved some forty odd 
 persons from drowning, and then had been rewarded by 
 fate with blindness and penury. It was a thrilling com- 
 position. Bret Harte came running across the street to 
 say to Reid :_ "It is in my judgment the very highest 
 work of art in modern English literature. Nothing that 
 any English novehst has ever written equals it." Jn 
 passing on that gorgeous tribute to the author Reid nat- 
 urally offered him the further hospitality of his columns. 
 The invitation was accepted, as I have already indi- 
 cated. I need not recapitulate Reade's various papers, 
 but I must quote the letter in which he outlined his 
 plans for them: 
 
 2 Albert Terrace, 
 Knightsbridge, 
 Dear Sir: _ ^^^ "^rd, 1875. ^ 
 
 Many thanks for your kind letter. I have been thinking of it, 
 though I did not answer it till I had something tangible to say. I 
 will send you now and then a letter or article in advance of its pub- 
 lication in any Enghsh journal. These articles should deal with 
 current events and topics of discussion or controversy. Sometimes 
 a pure argument. Sometimes a description and comment. Some- 
 times a little narrative and comment. Every one of them will be 
 written with rather more care than usual with me, not less. 
 
 Now of course I know that the narrative and descriptive articles 
 will be more agreeable to you in the way of business than the argu- 
 mentative ones. But I think you are too reasonable and too well 
 disposed to me to refuse to take the vegetables along with the meat, 
 as the saying is. For my part, as I am about to make you the sole 
 
BUILDING UP A PAPER 311 
 
 vehicle of my convictions in the U. S., I shall of course expect those 
 convictions to be printed, even when you differ from me; but in that 
 case, confute my letter if you please in another column. I only ask 
 publicity, not assent, and my letters, being signed, commit you to 
 no opinions you disapprove. 
 
 With regard to the remuneration, I entirely agree with you. So 
 strange and exceptional a thing as "A Hero and a Martyr" rests 
 entirely on its own basis. I shall never again encounter a James 
 Lambert. Nothing in the way of comment can ever be worth pay- 
 ing for on that scale: and what you and I are now going into is prin- 
 cipally comment. My proposal to you is this: Do not take each 
 article by itself but on settling the payment put them together, and 
 do not pay me at all till you see whether they fall dead, or are quoted 
 by other journals and magazines: and then pay me a little less than 
 they have proved to be worth, but not much. That is sound business. 
 
 I will send you herewith two letters, one on the popular subject, 
 "Dogs," the other on the unpopular subject, "Authors." The dig- 
 nity of the quadruped is to balance the insignificance of the Biped, 
 when I can find a powerful vehicle in England I propose to treat the 
 rights and wrongs of authors, and expose the cant and equivokes, 
 and droll errors, cf statesmen and judges, and the false arithmetic of 
 publicists, and pour the light of common sense and idiomatic English 
 on the subject. These articles shall be sent you in advance and 
 will, I think, open everybody's eyes more or less. 
 
 Yours very sincerely, „ t, 
 
 Charles Reade. 
 
 Everybody's eyes were opened very wide indeed. He 
 was gloriously truculent and rejoiced in the sensation his 
 articles created, especially those on copyright. "I don't 
 care how much temporary bile I stir up," he remarks in 
 the midst of the fracas. "The country will know one 
 day whether I was its friend or not. All I fear is falling 
 dead." What a contributor! Charles Reade was one 
 with so much of the journalistic habit in his make-up 
 that he could meet an editor half-way without even wait- 
 ing for a formal statement of the editorial point of view. 
 
 Another highly reasonable contributor was Walt Whit- 
 man. At the time of the massacre of the Little Big 
 Horn, Reid printed "A Death Sonnet for Custer," by 
 him. It had arrived accompanied by this modest note: 
 
312 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 Camden, New Jersey. 
 
 July 7th. 1876. 
 My dear Reid: 
 
 I send a piece for the paper, on Custer's death. If you can give 
 
 me $10. for it, well and good — if not, not. If it comes in time, get 
 
 it in tonight, as earliness is everything. ^^^^ Whitman. 
 
 Reference to Custer moves me to retrace my steps for 
 a moment and to introduce here a letter of his possessing 
 a melancholy historical interest. He and Reid had been 
 warm friends from old days in the Civil War. Early in 
 1876, in a pause in the Indian fighting which for some 
 years had occupied him, Custer thus sketched the cam- 
 paign which was to prove his last: 
 
 St. Paul, Minn. 
 
 -, „ February 26th, 1876. 
 
 My dear Friend: 
 
 Thinking you would like to have The Tribune represented I write 
 confidentially to say that the most extensive preparations are being 
 made for a combined military movement against the hostile Sioux 
 that have been attempted since the war. A column under my com- 
 mand will leave Fort Lincoln, D. T. not later than April ist, prepared 
 to remain in the field all summer. Gen. Crook has already started 
 to concentrate his column at Fort Fetterman, while Gen. Gibbon 
 will do the same at Fort Ellis. There is scarcely a chance of avoid- 
 ing a general Indian war this coming season. The Sioux have 
 already begun and are now surrounding a party of white men at 
 Fort Pease on the Yellowstone (not on an Indian reservation). 
 Troops are marching to the rescue from Ellis. This I write to you 
 for your personal information. The authorities have been laboring 
 to keep all movements secret but they will all be made public per- 
 haps by the hour this reaches you. If you send a special corre- 
 spondent select some good man accustomed to roughing it. I wish 
 Mr. Barrows could accompany us again. The party going should 
 reach Fort Lincoln by the 25th of March. I leave here Wednesday 
 next for Fort Lincoln by the N. P. R. R. 
 
 Truly yours ^ ^ ^^^^^^ 
 
 That was really Custer's farewell to his old comrade. 
 His departure, for Fort Lincoln marked the opening of 
 the swift drama which was to end at the Little Big Horn. 
 
 One of the duties imposed upon Reid at this time was 
 
BUILDING UP A PAPER 313 
 
 that of speaking at the annual distribution of prizes to 
 pupils of the Academy of Design. Another was to sit 
 in judgment, with others, upon an Intercollegiate Lit- 
 erary Contest. He did a lot of that sort of thing — so 
 much that Walter Phelps, in one of his affectionately 
 solicitous notes, expresses anxiety lest he should do more. 
 "Wherever you are," he writes, "patriotic peace. The 
 'Sun' is very wicked — so is the Devil. Miss Schurz 
 read the Evarts address aloud. In hstening to it, I 
 thought, as I have done in the case of every public ad- 
 dress since, 'Why, wasn't there more thought in your 
 "Scholar in Politics" than in all of them?' It really 
 seems so, more and more, as effort after effort for similar 
 occasions come into sight, and fail in the comparison. 
 But I would rest on that, and not do anything more of 
 any kind, however good, out of my paper. You have 
 shown with conspicuous success that you can do orations 
 or essays, and that is enough. It is much nicer, having 
 proven this, to keep close to your own business. All of 
 which is fatherly — but aren't you sometimes fatherly to 
 mer* 
 
 He needn't have worried. Even if Reid had been 
 tempted to give more time to his lighter activities, the 
 automatic pressure of public affairs was enough to rele- 
 gate them to the background. In another note from 
 another intimate the political thread is resumed in a few 
 sentences that have a world of meaning. Hiram Barney 
 wrote it, saying on Tilden's election to the governorship: 
 "I heard the news at Keokuk, Iowa, as soon as you did 
 here in New York, and I was, as you may have supposed, 
 glad to hear it. I felt like singing the Doxology in long 
 metre. I thought Third-Termism is dead, Grantism is 
 dead, Butlerism is dead, and where are the mourners? 
 Well, I am not sure that, all those deaths have actually 
 occurred." 
 
CHAPTER XIX 
 
 PARTY REORGANIZATION 
 
 There were thousands and hundreds of thousands of 
 voters who found themselves in precisely the state of 
 mind that visited Hiram Barney. They had thought 
 the battle virtually won, and all the time its decisive 
 phase was exasperatingly awaiting them. None of the 
 detested "isms" was dead, and if any observer was 
 aware of the dangers of premature singing of the Doxol- 
 ogy over them, in metre long or short, it was Whitelaw 
 Reid. He had never lost sight of the fact that the close 
 of the war had still left the country exposed to more than 
 one peril. Rebellion had been crushed, slavery abolished, 
 and disunion had been escaped. But in the reconstruc- 
 tion of the Southern States a point had been reached 
 where it was necessary to say either that they had to be 
 governed as conquered provinces or left to govern them- 
 selves — and at that point the administration had only 
 irritated the problem. Secondly, we remained enmeshed 
 in the toils of an irredeemable currency, and, to con- 
 clude, we suffered from what Reid described as "a wide- 
 spread prevalence of corruption and bribery." 
 
 It is an axiom that every Amurath has his successor. 
 The scandal of Credit Mobilier was followed by that of 
 Pacific Mail. To the amiable Oakes Ames succeeded an 
 equally amiable lobbyist. As The Tribune concisely put 
 it, it was believed that he had received a sum not less 
 than $750,000, and perhaps amounting to over a mil- 
 lion, to get the Pacific Mail Subsidy through Congress. 
 There was nothing to show what he did with it, but there 
 were reasons for thinking that some of this money had 
 
 314 
 
PARTY REORGANIZATION 315 
 
 passed into the hands of members of Congress. The 
 Tribune made a strenuous campaign on the issue, forcing 
 the fight to such an extent that Reid was presently sub- 
 poenaed as a witness, and went down to Washington to 
 be examined by the congressional committee appointed 
 to inquire into the subject. "You think we have got 
 to the door [of Congress itself] and will not enter," said 
 one of his inquisitors, "but we will enter, if you only 
 show us the way." The remark, with its appeal to edi- 
 torial responsibility, invites here a brief excursion on 
 just what Reid's conception of editorial responsibility 
 was in matters of this sort. Summing up not long after- 
 ward the relations of The Tribune to the Pacific Mail 
 business, he wrote, among other things, the following: 
 
 It is a foolish waste of time to call upon Editors for details of the 
 crimes they denounce to public reprobation. It is their business to 
 print what they know of such matters, and to leave the rest to the 
 proper authorities. We learned that the Pacific Mail Company had 
 spent money like water in Washington. We asserted this, and the 
 Committee has proved it. If we knew what Congressmen got the 
 money we would print the names; it would need no subpoena from 
 Washington to make us do that. We do our best, and that is a great 
 deal. We cannot always wait for exact legal evidence before de- 
 nouncing a dangerous wrong. If we had waited for that. Judge 
 Barnard and his corrupt associates might have been today upon 
 the bench. Over and over we made charges against them of which 
 we were morally sure, but as to which we were not fully prepared 
 with strict legal proof. If they had not been true the corrupt judges 
 might have sued us and obtained damages — that was our risk, one 
 which we are always ready to run in a cause which we think to be 
 just. No newspaper, however powerful or enterprising, can compel 
 the legal proof which lies in the hands of a Court or a Congress. 
 We can only say what we believe to be true and right, and accept 
 the full responsibiUty. 
 
 With that philosophic contribution to a subject of 
 everlasting interest to editors, if not to all their readers, 
 I may turn from Reid's contact with Pacific Mail — but 
 not before I have noted a comedic sequel to his atten- 
 
3i6 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW R,EID 
 
 dance upon the committee at Washington. Incidentally 
 he sufiFered a droll interruption. That evening, at the 
 Arlington, he was arrested on a criminal process issued 
 by the supreme court of the District, in an action for 
 libel brought against him by Boss Shepherd, whose pub- 
 lic conduct had long been subjected to scathing treat- 
 ment in The Tribune. 
 
 He was arrested as he was preparing for dinner, but on 
 his promising to appear and answer in court in the morn- 
 ing, the officers went away, A little later, when he was 
 dining at the house of Speaker Blaine, he was called to 
 the door and papers were served on him in a civil suit 
 for libel brought by Shepherd. But their vexatious ac- 
 tion only served to bring powerful friends to Reid's aid. 
 M6re than one indignant citizen hastened to arrange the 
 matter of bail, and the affair brought about one espe- 
 cially valued manifestation of friendship. It came from 
 the venerable Reverdy Johnson, the successor of Charles 
 Francis Adams as minister to England. When at his 
 home in Baltimore he heard of Reid's arrest he left at 
 once for Washington, arriving late at night, and sent his 
 son to see whether he could be of service in the morning 
 — refusing, in fact, to retire until he could learn that 
 there was no imminent danger of any eflFort at high- 
 handed proceedings. The next day he made a more 
 formal tender of his services as counsel, on the double 
 ground of personal friendship and sympathy with the 
 defendant in the cause of prosecution. On the eve of 
 sailing for Europe that fall, Mr. Johnson wrote: "I hope 
 that the libel suits against you in Washington will not 
 be disposed of before my return, as I am anxious to 
 appear in them on your behalf." One of his first acts on 
 returning was to ask about the state of the litigation, 
 repeating his offer. As a matter of fact, the frivolous 
 nature of the suits was perfectly clear to Reid from the 
 
PARTY REORGANIZATION 317 
 
 start; he did not think that the Boss ever really meant 
 to bring them to trial, and even in that event he feared 
 nothing worse than a packed jury. Quite apart from 
 the personal bearing of this absurd incident there was, in 
 its having occurred as it did, a symptom of the unhealthy 
 state of things in Washington. The evilest aspect of the 
 arrest resided in the matter of the time and place chosen 
 for it. Representative Hoar of Massachusetts offered a 
 resolution the next day for the appointment of a com- 
 mittee to inquire whether the privileges of the House 
 had been violated by the serving of papers upon Reid 
 while he was in the District under congressional sub- 
 poena, and even Representative Dawes, who felt himself 
 aggrieved by publications in The Tribune on Pacific 
 Mail, cordially gave his aid to pushing the measure 
 through. The general impression that went abroad was 
 that the suits, like the subsidy, made an ugly sign of the 
 times. 
 
 The worst indications of the persistence of Grantism 
 in this period were perceptible, of course, in purely politi- 
 cal affairs, and they became most alarming in the crisis 
 in Louisiana. There, as the logical result of two years 
 of political fever, a minority legislature, foisted upon 
 the State by fraudulent proceedings in the fall elections, 
 was seated in New Orleans under the protection of fed- 
 eral bayonets. "The President of the United States was 
 at their back, and the army and navy at their com- 
 mand," Reid declared in scarifying those adventurous 
 politicians, and all through the winter he fought against 
 the national disgrace which presently called out, indeed, 
 something like a national protest. The tremendous mass- 
 meetings promoted in New York, in Boston, in Balti- 
 more, echo as with the passion of war through The Trib- 
 une's editorials. These expressed biting views on the 
 burden the President had laid upon the Republican 
 
3i8 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 party. The party, in accepting it, had gone out of its 
 head. Through its lawlessness in Louisiana it was com- 
 mitting absolutely gratuitous suicide. Subsequent de- 
 velopments in South Carolina were only to confirm this 
 hypothesis. The Southern question was foredoomed to 
 stay an ill time in our political life, and Reid returned to 
 it again and again during the campaign of 1876. It was 
 his opinion that we had not gone so far away from the 
 RebelKon as we had then supposed, and his search, when 
 the time of presidential candidacies drew near, was all 
 for the man who could shape a satisfactory course toward 
 a people still disaffected, discontented, and heart-sore. 
 
 Yet of the issues which he was now constantly thresh- 
 ing out, that of the currency was the one on which con- 
 ditions stimulated him to deal his most vigorous blows. 
 In the middle of Grant's second term we were heading 
 steadily toward a gold famine and all the embarrassments 
 of a bad national deficit. Maladministration alone could 
 do sufficient damage — Reid was a firm believer in the 
 maxim that one hole is enough in a balloon — but the 
 outlook was rendered doubly menacing by the unremit- 
 ting growth of the greenback craze. Americans of a 
 later generation are famihar with the emotions of mild 
 terror and not quite so mild wrath aroused by the fanati- 
 cal frenzy of the silverites, and, having withstood the 
 storm, they can look back upon it with a certain humor. 
 Reid, himself, after that later disturbance, could be thus 
 serene. Once, in a talk with him about the sixteen-to- 
 one madness, I asked him what, in a nutshell, was his 
 opinion of Bryan. "Well," he replied, with a twinkle in 
 his eye and an ironic smile, "when a man polls as many 
 votes as he has received for the Presidency, I suppose 
 there is something in him." But in the seventies there 
 was no twinkle in his eye for the advocate of inimitably 
 expansible paper. The Senate Currency Bill which was 
 
PARTY REORGANIZATION 319 
 
 jammed through the House in January, 1875, ^^ de- 
 nounced as the product of organized lying, offsetting 
 whatever merit there was in the Act of June, 1874. 
 "This is a party measure," he scornfully said of it, "the 
 child of a party caucus; it was carried through by a 
 united vote. It promises specie resumption. The prom- 
 ise is so hollow that the avowed opponents of resumption 
 voted for it with their tongues in their cheeks." I cite 
 the brief passage — one of a thousand expressions of the 
 same solicitude for hard money principles — especially for 
 its frank uncovering of the purely political motives 
 underlying the legislation then current. All through 
 1875, ^ri<i ill the following months as the campaign 
 moved to a climax, he kept close to this text, and in 
 scoring the adjustments of currency tinkering to party 
 purposes he drew every day nearer to the broad line of 
 battle fixed for the presidential year. This was clearly 
 defined by the sentiment of the country at large. It 
 meant a general and definitive overhauling of parties. 
 
 The Republican organization was in thoroughly bad 
 shape as the Forty-third Congress faced adjournment. 
 Carl Schurz, from the Senate, wrote to Reid: "The party 
 is just staggering along." As it staggered there were 
 stirrings of hope once more in those independent quar- 
 ters always favorable to dreams of a complete overturn 
 in the political world, and I must confess that in follow- 
 ing the trail of these matters through Reid's private cor- 
 respondence I would have suflFered a certain disappoint- 
 ment if Charles Francis Adams, Jr., had not duly ap- 
 peared upon the scene. He came, as faithfully as the 
 tides, with a banquet for Schurz in his hands, to speed 
 that statesman on his way to Europe for brief respite 
 from political life. He wanted Reid's aid to launch the 
 banquet in New York, where it was presently given with 
 every element of success. "You must lend a hand to 
 
320 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 start this thing," he said, "which is to be the nucleus of 
 an 'armed neutrality.'" Incomparable phrase! It was 
 just about this time that neutrality, armed or benevo- 
 lent, began to go out of fashion. In March the Repub- 
 licans of New Hampshire won only a partial victory, in 
 the following month the administration was defeated in 
 Connecticut, and in the spring elections generally the 
 Democrats registered an astonishing measure of success. 
 With a Democratic House assembling in December, the 
 Republican party was brought more painfully than ever 
 to realize that it was indeed "time to unload." Even 
 this seemed a hopeless expedient. It was a Republican 
 congressman who admitted in an interview in The Trib- 
 une that the members of his party might as well make 
 up their minds that the next President would be a straight- 
 out Democrat, and Thurlow Weed, mournfully descant- 
 ing at great length on the causes of Republican defeat, 
 could not well say him nay. Neutrality, in this crisis, 
 would not do. 
 
 It was a time for new leaders, and these, alas ! were 
 slow in forthcoming. Meanwhile Grant, so far as mortal 
 man could see, was in nowise indisposed to go on "lead- 
 ing." In May, when the Republicans of Pennsylvania 
 got together to nominate for the governorship and put 
 an anti-Third Term plank in their platform, the Presi- 
 dent was at last stung to write the famous disclaimer 
 which he sent to General Harry White. The nubbin of 
 that document resides, however, in the concluding para- 
 graph, where he said: "I would not accept a nomination 
 if it were tendered, unless it should come under such 
 circumstances as to make it an imperative duty, circum- 
 stances not likely to arise." Paying his compliments to 
 the "somewhat Delphic phraseology" of the letter, Reid 
 exposed its sophistry. The unconscious disclosures of the 
 message were enough, he thought, to open the eyes of 
 
PARTY REORGANIZATION 321 
 
 voters and to cause their dismissal of the President from 
 the list of possible candidates for 1876. He saw, in fact, 
 that the Third Term menace was dying down, and, be- 
 sides, perceived the infinitely greater danger by this time 
 embodied in the inflationists. They were rampant in 
 both parties. In the fall, chances of their triumph in the 
 Ohio elections put even the fear of a third term tem- 
 porarily out of people's heads. The fight there, pecu- 
 liarly calculated to have in its results a heavy effect on 
 the national campaign, was ominous in its earlier devel- 
 opments. Hay was in a profound disgust about it. 
 "Think of this state," he said, "with half the Republi- 
 cans and all the Democrats inflationists at heart, and 
 carrying on a campaign on the bald issue whether the 
 nation shall be a liar and a thief or not. I don't like the 
 job you propose to me of skinning that skunk." Great 
 hopes were built upon Schurz's aid in the skinning. 
 When news came of his returning from Europe, Halstead 
 wrote to Reid from the seat of war, charging him to get 
 hold of the orator and groom him for the fray — if he 
 could be secured for it at all. " I have a late letter from 
 him and he is very particular that his friends shall not 
 commit him. He says, 'Not a word.'" It was Reid's 
 duty to spur him to the utterance of many words, to 
 show him the situation and help in getting him, somehow, 
 on the stump. Schurz landed on September 14th, and 
 in the right mood of susceptibility, for the very next day 
 Reid could report the satisfactory execution of his task, 
 writing to Walter Phelps : " No end of gossip and excite- 
 ment here over politics and business. Schurz predicts a 
 panic arising from the return of U. S. bonds from Europe 
 in case inflationists carry Ohio. Grosvenor says there is 
 great danger of it. Schurz goes on the stump soon." 
 Apropos of the service he rendered on that proud emi- 
 nence, and of the auspicious election of Hayes to the 
 
322 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 governorship, it would seem pertinent here to pass to the 
 matter of Reid's support of Hayes for the presidency. 
 But a question intervenes of some importance in his 
 biography. Why and how did he make the transition from 
 the role of an editor, glad to have forwarded Tilden's elec- 
 tion as governor, to that of an editor bending all his efforts 
 toward the triumph of his rival in the presidential race? 
 His independence remained unshaken. I may remark 
 in passing that The Tribune's support of Hayes was 
 never that of a Republican "organ." Even at the close 
 of the Ohio campaign to which I have just alluded, he 
 was as contemptuous as ever of the party's myriad short- 
 comings. Neither the party nor the administration had 
 done anything during the year to command public confi- 
 dence or popular support. The moral of the election 
 Reid very curtly stated — it was not so much a Republi- 
 can victory as a Democratic defeat. Why, then, did he 
 come to repudiate so wholeheartedly the idea which we 
 have seen Watterson suggesting to him, the idea of rally- 
 ing on Tilden for 1876? The point bears too directly 
 upon principles of independence in journalism and upon 
 his personal relations with the governor for me to neg- 
 lect it. His reply to Watterson has shown us his indiflFer- 
 ence to party claims, save as they were to be judged by 
 results actually achieved. In consonance with this view, 
 after the election he went on with Tilden as he had 
 begun, co-operating unreservedly in what promised from 
 the start to be a model administration. The governor 
 had not been in office much above a month before he 
 turned to Reid for aid, as witness the following note 
 from his secretary: 
 
 Albany, 
 My dear Mr. Reid: ^^^'■'^^■"y ^th. 1875. 
 
 The active and open opposition of the Governor to the Lobby 
 and all its schemes is getting to be very well understood here. . . . 
 
PARTY REORGANIZATION 323 
 
 There is nothing that will more surely check bad and corrupt legis- 
 lation than to have well understood just what the Governor's posi- 
 tion is on that subject. No one can make better use of that idea 
 and with more effect upon public opinion than yourself. We hope 
 to see you here on Monday evening at the reception given to Mr. 
 
 Bryant. , , , 
 
 Very truly yours. ^_ ^_ p^^^^^_ 
 
 An appeal like this could not but enlist Reid's sup- 
 port, and he was in any case against the dishonest 
 politicians who were banded together as Tilden's foes, 
 both in the Republican camp and within the governor's 
 own party. His most conspicuous work for reform was 
 done in furtherance of the Canal Ring investigation. 
 For weeks and months the paper hammered at that 
 scandal. "We are getting on very well with our investi- 
 gation," wrote Bigelow, one of Tilden's commissioners, 
 "thanks to your seasonable assistance from time to 
 time," and there was, indeed, not a critical stage in 
 the inquiry at which Reid failed to give instant and 
 abundant support. He backed the governor in the re- 
 moval bill framed to strengthen his hands for the second 
 and punitive part of the canal crusade; he backed him 
 on smaller but still important issues; and in something 
 like enthusiastic admiration for his reformatory zeal and 
 administrative shrewdness he repeatedly called attention 
 to Tilden's growth as a national figure. Tilden had put 
 his party in a commanding position from which it would 
 not be dislodged except by its own blundering. Tilden's 
 state papers were full of a sagacity which should win him 
 thoughtful attention everywhere. Tilden was, in short, 
 a man with whom it would be well to reckon. Early in 
 the administration, writing to the governor on a crisis 
 which the mayor of New York had provoked, Reid said 
 to him: "It looks like the opportunity to assert fairly 
 your leadership of a real reformed Democracy against 
 
324 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 the mere place hunters." All his private letters, as well 
 as the editorial page of The Tribune, tend to show how 
 strong was his confidence in Tilden and how far he was 
 willing to go with him along the same road. He could 
 think of him cheerfully for the presidency. As late as 
 the spring of 1876, when writing to the governor about 
 another matter, only two or three days before the Dem- 
 ocrats at Utica were to instruct their delegation to vote 
 as a unit for Tilden at St. Louis, Reid could wind up in 
 this sympathetic fashion: "I see that your forecast of a 
 month ago about the State Convention is coming out 
 almost exactly. Mr. Evarts said to me the other day 
 what many men of less political weight and sagacity 
 have been saying for a good while past, that your nom- 
 ination is almost if not absolutely inevitable. If so, it 
 will take more than a Conkling or Morton to infuse into 
 the contest any of the elements of a race." Yet even 
 while he was writing that cordial tribute in all sincerity 
 and giving editorial approval to the course followed at 
 Utica, Reid was keeping his eye on the progress of 
 inflationism in the Democratic party. With dire ra- 
 pidity the triumph of that movement sapped all his 
 confidence in the man to whom he had pinned so much 
 faith. 
 
 He had written the passage I have just quoted late in 
 April. By the end of June the national Democratic 
 convention at St. Louis had counterbalanced the nomi- 
 nation of Tilden, their strongest man for the presidency, 
 as Reid heartily admitted, by the adoption of a shuffling 
 platform in which resumption was threatened with in- 
 definite postponement, and finally to compromise the 
 ticket a paper-money man was chosen for the vice-presi- 
 dency in Governor Thos. A, Hendricks, an able and 
 worthy gentleman whose chief popularity nevertheless 
 came from his financial heresies. Reid did not hesitate 
 
PARTY REORGANIZATION 325 
 
 even overnight. The next morning's editorial page bore 
 this statement of his position : 
 
 We have cordially recognized Gov. Tilden's great services to the 
 State and his eminent fitness for the highest office in the land, and 
 we rejoice that the Democrats have been driven to nominate so 
 admirable a candidate. But yoked with Mr. Hendricks and ob- 
 structed by a bad platform, independents cannot take the risk of 
 voting for him. The election of President involves the triumph of 
 a party in Congress and throughout the country and if the infla- 
 tionists who cowed the Convention and forced upon it a poHcy which 
 a majority of the delegates knew to be false should gain possession 
 of the House of Representatives, not even the firmness and ability 
 of a President Tilden could save the Union from enormous disaster. 
 
 The St. Louis ticket was a ticket to be beaten, and 
 forthwith Reid did what he could to beat it, ceasing to 
 feel much regret over the disillusionment to which Tilden 
 had subjected him as he saw that the Democratic party 
 had found in its nominee not a master but a servant. 
 That was the crux of the situation. If Tilden's leader- 
 ship had been so asserted at St. Louis as to have put the 
 repudiators in their place with fair indications of their 
 being thenceforth held in check, much might have been 
 forgiven him. It would have implied a moral and politi- 
 cal force pushing other indiscretions of his campaign 
 down to the level of minor errors. That he missed his 
 chance to impose authority made only the more ominous 
 his silence on the currency in his speech to the nominat- 
 ing committee, and when at last his formal letter of ac- 
 ceptance promulgated the right principle, his delay in 
 writing it lessened its weight. Walter Phelps thought 
 that Reid was perhaps unduly hard on the Democratic 
 candidate in regard to his famous income tax — on which 
 he was suspected of having acted with something less 
 than complete candor — but if the issue was taken seri- 
 ously in The Tribune it was because it seemed but another 
 clear manifestation of the weakness revealed by Tilden 
 
326 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 at St. Louis. The words of the paper in 1874 — "Mr. 
 Tilden will make one of the most admirable and irre- 
 proachable Governors the State has ever had" — were in 
 no way disconcerting to Reid when they were flung in 
 his teeth in 1876. He reprinted them, willingly, and 
 with the assertion that he had nothing to take back. 
 The point for him, at the later date, was that the ques- 
 tion of the moment was of parties, not persons; the 
 Democratic party was floundering about in the morass 
 of soft money, and so far from showing that he could 
 curb it or save the country from the perils of its estab- 
 lishment in power, Tilden threatened to be, as Evarts 
 put it in his speech just before election, "the phantom 
 of Buchanan's likeness in the Presidential chair." Reid's 
 choice, as he made it in this campaign, was to a great 
 extent forced upon him by Tilden himself. 
 
 Moreover, as events developed, the independent edi- 
 tors and voters who cooled toward Tilden were presently 
 encouraged to hope that so far from being driven to the 
 risky expedient of a third party, they could count once 
 more on the time-honored alternative to Democratic 
 folly. The Republican party began to show signs of 
 reformation. State conventions came out against the 
 third term. More than one administration leader of 
 "the more odious" type was relegated to his private 
 station. Secretary Bristow's terrific and successful at- 
 tack upon the Whiskey Ring gave evidence that the ad- 
 ministration itself, on occasion, could go in for a drastic 
 bit of housecleaning. The impeachment of Secretary 
 Belknap in the following year afi"orded further testimony 
 to the growth of a new spirit of reform. Senator Sher- 
 man was gradually beating out his policy of resumption, 
 and as he moved toward the goal his party gave more 
 and more promise of moving with him. The great coup 
 of the period, which is to say the everlasting dishing of 
 
PARTY REORGANIZATION 327 
 
 the inflationists, if not actually in sight was foreshad- 
 owed on the horizon. The Republicans, always promis- 
 ing to "unload," were pretty nearly ready for the deed. 
 As their national convention approached they proved by 
 regaining lost ground that their party still possessed its 
 historic vitality. 
 
 With his political past, Reid could not but find a deep 
 measure of satisfaction in the changes going on about 
 him. He welcomed with the feeling of an old Lincoln 
 man the logic of events beckoning him to the point where 
 he could cheerfully support the candidate of the organi- 
 zation in which he had served his political apprentice- 
 ship. Nevertheless, he continued to steer an independent 
 course. Slate-making began early in that campaign. 
 The inventors of presidents were as busy as bees, and 
 like bees they rose up in swarms. Reid declined to join 
 them. "We are not in the business of making candi- 
 dates," he said. "Whom we shall support in the cam- 
 paign we do not yet know. It will be that man who 
 best represents the principles of just government, admin- 
 istrative reform, and honesty in the national finances." 
 That was his attitude in February, 1876. The Republi- 
 can national convention was assembled at Cincinnati in 
 June. It was hardly more than a month ahead of him 
 when he replied in the same detached terms to the friends 
 and correspondents who were writing from all parts of 
 the country to know the probable course of The Trib- 
 une. "The simple truth is," he told them, "that The 
 Tribune has no Presidential candidate, as it certainly 
 has no party affiliations nor partisan complications." It 
 was not indeed until the ticket was settled that he com- 
 mitted his paper to a candidate. Then I 'might say that 
 he burned his bridges if it were not that he had, strictly, 
 no bridges to burn. 
 
 The party hack who ventured to hail his advocacy of 
 
328 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 Hayes as a sign that he had "returned to the fold" 
 would have received something like a snub for his pains. 
 The reader will recall Reid's letter to Walter Phelps in a 
 preceding chapter, and his observations on "the desire 
 of the Republicans," as he proudly put it, "that The 
 Tribune should give them half a chance to come back 
 to it." He never deceived himself on the sanctity of 
 folds, as folds. "I should like it very much," he wrote, 
 "if our Republican friends would only rub the scales off 
 their eyes far enough to see that we have done and are 
 doing nothing inconsistent with the most absolute fealty 
 to the Republican principles which they learned from 
 The Tribune and which this day have no more staunch 
 defence than its columns afford." His support of a Re- 
 publican nomination was but the natural sequel to a 
 consistently sustained policy — the moment it could be 
 given as support to sound Republican principles. And 
 as he gave it he retained the privileges of the candid 
 friend. 
 
CHAPTER XX 
 JAMES G. BLAINE 
 
 Refd had, as I have said, no presidential candidate, 
 prior to the convention, but he had, naturally, any num- 
 ber of distinct views on the various men brought into the 
 field, and private communications with some of them. 
 These passages in his biography, like his reaction against 
 Tilden, both illustrate his own character and career, and 
 renew the undercurrents in a chapter of our political his- 
 tory. Through his contacts with the struggle we may 
 apprehend the rise and fall of memorable ambitions, the 
 play of hidden forces, in the great game of poHtics; some 
 of the piquant personal elements involved in the defeat 
 of Grantism. I have spoken of the want of leaders, 
 which Reid deplored as one of the prime difficulties of 
 the period. Just where the fightning was to strike re- 
 mained a puzzfing problem; how puzzfing may be judged 
 from a characteristic anecdote. In the spring of the 
 year, when Blaine's chances were being widely canvassed. 
 Judge Jeremiah Black was said to have met him one day 
 and to have asked him if he felt apprehensive that Sen- 
 ator Morton would defeat him. "Morton will have a 
 fair strength in the convention," was the reply, "but it 
 will not represent a single sure electoral vote. You see 
 it would never do to nominate such a candidate. I'm 
 not at all afraid of him." Neither was he alarmed by 
 the doughty destroyer of the Whiskey Ring. "Bristow," 
 he said, "has a good deal of strength among the people, 
 but it is not organized. I don't see how he can possibly 
 get a majority in the convention." Senator Conkling 
 he dismissed on the ground that he could not carry his 
 
 329 
 
330 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 own State. His candidacy was an absurdity, nothing 
 more. "Is there anybody you are afraid of?" the judge 
 asked him at last. "Yes, there is," answered Blaine, 
 with a serious air. "The Great Unknown." 
 
 True or invented, the story was intensely apposite. 
 It went the rounds with great swiftness, and made a 
 deep impression. Editors in every corner of the country 
 started off in all directions to find the Great Unknown. 
 
 The vicissitudes of Blaine's own candidacy are the 
 more provocative of comment in this place because of 
 the subsequent political battles that brought him and 
 Reid together. We can trace in the developments of 
 1876 the gradual formation of that judgment on Blaine 
 which strengthened Reid in support of him in the great 
 campaign of 1884. Their acquaintance, which dated 
 from old days in Washington, rested in 1876 on a basis 
 of mutual liking which had not, however, ripened into 
 complete intimacy. Their intercourse was cordial, yet it 
 left each with an open mind on the public policy of the 
 other. Nothing is more interesting about it than the 
 plain-speaking by which it was marked. Blaine was a 
 good sportsman. He never balked at frank discussion. 
 Yet his accessibility had its limits, too, a circumstance of 
 which I shall presently give amusing evidence. He hated 
 the invertebrate programmes so often characteristic of 
 academic politics. There was exasperation, for example, 
 always lurking in the possible conduct of those advocates 
 of "armed neutrality" at whom we have already glanced. 
 When one of the most notable "reform" movements of 
 this campaign was launched, a typical ward leader was 
 asked what had been done by Schurz and his colleagues 
 in a certain meeting. "Oh," he said, "they have re- 
 enacted the moral law and the Ten Commandments for 
 a platform, and have demanded an angel of light for 
 President." Cruel comment though it was, it pointed to 
 
JAMES G. BLAINE 331 
 
 a by no means impossible clanger. It was the kind of 
 danger that roused all of Blaine's scorn. Plain-speak- 
 ing? He indulged himself in it to the full when one 
 unlucky correspondent approached the subject from the 
 wrong angle. He replied in a philippic which made some 
 sensation when it found its way into The Tribune, and 
 which even now is not without its glow of indignant 
 energy: 
 
 Washington, D. C. 
 My DEAR Friend: December loth, 1875. 
 
 I shall not lose my patience with you, but another letter of same 
 purport from anyone else will certainly try my temper — ^which has 
 already been put to the test by two similar raids upon it. I met 
 Bowles of the Springfield "Republican" a few weeks since in Maine 
 on his return from a Moosehead Lake tour, and rode with him for a 
 day Boston-wards. He improved the occasion by assuring me that 
 I had no chance for the Presidency but that I might do a great thing 
 for myself and my country by openly espousing the cause of Charles 
 Francis Adams. Shortly afterwards Charles Nordhoff wrote the 
 same thing in substance on both points — urging me to "see Adams 
 at once, ally myself with him, and make myself chief of his party." 
 
 From Nordhoff, whom I like, this mild nonsense may be tol- 
 erated; but from Bowles, whom nobody likes, it is quite unendurable. 
 I replied to Nordhoff in writing as I did to Bowles in conversation, 
 without mincing my words, and I shall do you the same favor. I 
 assured Nordhoff that he could not have a lower estimate of my 
 personal prospects than I had myself — that in fact the subject never 
 entered my mind as one of serious promise — and I am sure I told 
 you at Saratoga in August last that my nomination was not within 
 the scope of remote probabilities — scarcely of possibilities. You 
 need not therefore try so gingerly to let me down without hurting, 
 for I really never felt that I was up. 
 
 But the cant and the nonsense which Bowles and Nordhoff and 
 yourself put forward about Adams as the coming man both amuse 
 and enrage me. When he comes the Repubhcan party is gone. It 
 would not be Adams' fall but his rise that would ruin us. No Adams 
 ever yet headed a party without taking the life out of it. Old John 
 — in many respects the best of them — took the Federal party in 1796 
 when it had the talent, the character, the culture, the wealth and the 
 patriotic traditions and prejudices of the country all largely in its 
 favor, and in four years he so entirely destroyed it that it never 
 reappeared except as a ghost wherewith to frighten two succeeding 
 
332 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 generations of statesmen. A large part of the quarter century that 
 he lived after he retired from the Presidency, was spent in querulous 
 efforts to throw the responsibility of his failures on the friends of 
 Hamilton and the eleven other contrary jurymen. 
 
 John Quincy Adams was equally unfortunate with the Republi- 
 can party of his day. When he was inaugurated in 1825 there was 
 no other political organization in the country, and a wise leader of 
 men and of parties would have found no difficulty in harmonizing 
 the personal feuds which were permitted to grow into such fearful 
 magnitude and acquire such destructive force. Indeed the Admin- 
 istration of the second Adams so entirely wrecked the great Repub- 
 lican party which Monroe left, that it never was heard from again 
 except under an alias. Had John Quincy Adams died the day he 
 left the Presidency he would never have filled the prominent place to 
 which he is entitled in our history. He would simply have been 
 known as a child of political fortune — always in office no matter 
 which party was in power — head of an Administration which was 
 remarkable only for its failures, author of a diary conspicuous only 
 for its malignity, sire to a son unwise enough to publish it. The 
 last seventeen years of his life, spent in the House of Representatives, 
 all but one year in the opposition, developed those qualities and 
 gave him those opportunities which secure him his fame. It is in 
 that field alone that the present generation know him, and Mr. 
 Seward when he wrote the biography of "the old man eloquent" 
 (he never was eloquent when young!) devoted more space to his 
 service in the House than to all the preceding history of his official 
 life, which may be said to have begun about the time he was weaned. 
 As an Executive he was as utter a failure as his father. 
 
 Don't talk to me then, I pray, about nominating Charles Francis 
 Adams as our candidate for the Presidency unless you mean death 
 for us without resurrection. The Republican party can be beaten 
 under some candidate in 1876 and still have a future — but if it should 
 win with Adams it would never breathe again. The day of his in- 
 auguration would be the day of its funeral. He is not the equal in 
 talent of his father or grandfather, and though I have a very slight 
 personal acquaintance with him, I judge him to have a plentiful 
 supply of those qualities which made the two Adamses the con- 
 spicuous failures among our early Presidents, and a great lack of 
 those characteristics which, with all their faults and failures as 
 executives, still made them justly illustrious in our annals. 
 
 The Presidents who were great leaders of men and of parties 
 have been our successful Presidents, Washington and Jefferson, 
 among the early Presidents, Jackson and Lincoln at later periods, 
 are the most shining examples. Among the men who possessed in 
 
JAMES G. BLAINE 333 
 
 a preeminent degree the talent and aptitude for the station were 
 
 Hamilton, De Witt Clinton, Henry Clay, Seward, and Stephen A. 
 
 Douglas. But in not a single quality of any one of them can you 
 
 find the least counterpart in Charles Francis Adams. Stat tnagni 
 
 nominis umbra. And only the shadow I ' 
 
 Very sincerely yours, t /- r> 
 
 J. Cj. Blaine. 
 
 The outlook for Blaine's candidacy was, as a matter 
 of fact, not at all unfavorable at the time this letter was 
 written. Then he raised a tremendous tempest in the 
 House by his speech on the Amnesty Bill, the speech in 
 which he demanded the exclusion of Jefferson Davis 
 from the provisions of the act on the ground of his re- 
 sponsibility for the horrors of Andersonville. Amnesty 
 Reid considered a dead issue, anyway, and Blaine's wav- 
 ing of the bloody shirt he thought not an argument but 
 an exhibition of parliamentary fence. In The Tribune 
 he was tart on the subject. Mr. Blaine was at the 
 moment the most conspicuous candidate in his party for 
 the presidency, and the best judges were inclined to 
 think the most of his chances. But he could throw all 
 away by a few more such fiery appeals to partisanship. 
 The country didn't want the healing wounds of the war 
 torn open afresh. Shortly after this, when some un- 
 scrupulous opponents were trying to impugn Blaine's 
 religious belief, he asked Reid to print an explanation 
 from a clergyman friend. In replying Reid took occa- 
 sion to return to the Amnesty speech: 
 
 New York, 
 
 »T HI r> January 23rd, 1876. 
 
 My dear Mr. Blaine: j- j > / 
 
 Yes, I will print the Pittsburgh letter with pleasure. I do not 
 
 myself, however, believe that the story was likely to hurt you. What 
 
 will hurt you, however, is the evident concentration on a Western 
 
 candidate, and the defection already apparent in Pennsylvania and 
 
 in New England, which in part at least must be due to the Amnesty 
 
 business. Considered solely with reference to its political bearing 
 
 the Amnesty movement may have been a shrewd stroke for the 
 
334 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 South, but I cannot help thinking that the debate which your Ander- 
 sonville charge provoked has damaged you with the class of men 
 whose support you most wanted in New England. On this point, 
 however, I find shrewd poKticians differing from me. 
 
 Very truly yours, ,,r „ 
 
 •^ "^ *' WHITELAW ReID. 
 
 If Reid, having no candidate, was looking for one, this 
 letter scarcely suggests that he was ready to bank on 
 Blaine as a likely winner in the race. Meanwhile his 
 correspondence shows some curious movements on the 
 horizon. From Bigelow came this arresting epistle: 
 
 Albany, 
 
 ,, „ January 21st, 1876. 
 
 My dear Reid: 
 
 I learn today that Grant has formally signified to Senator Conkhng 
 and others that he will not be a candidate nor accept a renomination 
 for the Presidency. I learn also from an equally and entirely satis- 
 factory source that Conkling has formally avowed his purpose to be 
 a candidate and has already begun the organization of his campaign. 
 You will soon find the confirmation of this in the Repubhcan papers 
 that have a party authority. Grant has thrown his truncheon 
 towards none of his following in particular but it requires no effort 
 of imagination to conceive that he is grateful for Conkling's forbear- 
 ance until he. Grant, withdrew. The chances are that the organiza- 
 tion will prove at least as favorable to C. as to any one, which is 
 enough to ensure his nomination. This will also tend I should say 
 to compel the nomination of Tilden, by "the fierce Democracie." 
 For with whom else could there be any hope of carrying New York. 
 The State of New York has a fair prospect of being the battleground 
 
 Faithfully yours, . t-. 
 
 John Bigelow. 
 
 Reid promptly put these quaint tidings in the fore- 
 front of his political news; but his opinion of Conkling's 
 candidacy was about that attributed to Blaine in the 
 colloquy with Judge Black. How they were both con- 
 firmed in the convention may be inferred from the 
 figures. On the first ballot, the one most flattering to 
 his pretensions, Conkling received the magnificent trib- 
 
JAMES G. BLAINE 335 
 
 ute of ninety-nine votes. Replying to Bigelow, Reid 
 thus summed up the situation as it then looked to him: 
 
 New York, 
 My dear Mr. Bigelow: ^^'^^^'^y ^4th. 1876. 
 
 You will have seen before this what use I made of your letter 
 concerning Conkling. I don't believe that his candidacy is going to 
 produce much effect. He has no strength outside of this State and 
 not much in it. Still if he can secure the choice of delegates by the 
 State Convention, he would get the State. Thurlow Weed says the 
 nominations of both parties are going to the West. Gov. Morgan 
 says the same thing. Other long-headed poHticians still think 
 Blaine has a show. Tilden stock doesn't seem just now to be on 
 the rise, though its time may come. 
 
 Very truly yours, Whitelaw Reid. 
 
 While the politicians w^ere racking their brains with 
 the presidential problem, some sentiment was developing 
 outside their circles in favor of Benjamin H. Bristow. 
 It was a healthy sentiment. The secretary of the trea- 
 sury had acquired the kudos which belongs to the suc- 
 cessful ring-breaker and the value of this, pohtically, 
 was not to be despised. Reid was not precisely enthu- 
 siastic. He did not believe that the popular furor 
 really marked Bristow as the ideal statesman. He was 
 not at all sure that either experience or natural abilities 
 had fitted him to measure up to the requirements of the 
 presidential office. Still, he discussed this candidacy not 
 unsympathetically, a fact which appears to have got a 
 little on the nerves of John Hay, who wrote to him 
 about Bristow in this vein: "His one sole public act is 
 the prosecution of the Whiskey Ring. It is enough to 
 make him a Governor, if he could carry his own State, 
 and might honestly win him the Vice-Presidency. But 
 twenty men are ready to work for Blaine to one for 
 Bristow. Blaine has shown positive capacity for gov- 
 ernment and Bristow has not. Besides this, Blaine is 
 
336 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 the only serious candidate against the Grant faction. 
 He has more friends by far than any two of the others, 
 but perhaps the field, if united, can beat him. Cameron, 
 Morton, Logan and Hayes may keep their delegations 
 from Blaine, but it will be in the interest of some dirty 
 trade. I cannot help shivering at the prospect of being 
 compelled next fall to choose between Morton and Hen- 
 dricks, both citizens of mee native State." Hay's argu- 
 ment is characteristic of the good-will which the best 
 men in the country were giving to Blaine. His strength 
 increased every day. And yet the leaders could not 
 tell. The observations of Weed and Morgan, glanced at 
 in the letter to Bigelow just cited, come up again in a 
 long report of Reid's to Murat Halstead about a con- 
 ference with those two stanch and anxious Republicans. 
 Weed, inclining to Bristow, also had what seemed to 
 Reid an exaggerated view of the chances of Elihu B. 
 Washburne, of Illinois. This candidate, he thought, 
 would have the benefit of Grant's support. Reid told 
 him that for six months Washburne's personal friends 
 had been stating as a positive fact that he felt unkindly 
 toward Grant and believed Grant felt unkindly toward 
 him. Weed believed that Washburne had a strong hold 
 on the German vote, but from Schurz, who was surely in 
 a position to know, Reid had received a directly con- 
 trary assurance on this point. The presidential views of 
 that statesman, by the way, are tersely stated in this let- 
 ter. "Schurz," wrote Reid to Halstead, "as you know 
 doubtless far better than I, is warmly in favor of Bris- 
 tow and vehemently opposed to Blaine." 
 
 To increase the density of the political atmosphere in 
 which every one was groping at this time, Washington 
 supplied a sensation of the first order. The administra- 
 tion suffered another scandal in the impeachment of 
 General Belknap, its secretary of war, in the matter of 
 
JAMES G. BLAINE 337 
 
 moneys alleged to have been paid for a post-tradership 
 in the West. It was an old story, which The Tribune, 
 as it happened, had brought to light in 1872, a circum- 
 stance which ultimately led to Reid's being summoned 
 as a witness at the trial. On its breaking out afresh he 
 was deeply impressed by the setback it threatened to 
 give the Republican campaign, and among other things 
 he noted that it boded ill for Blaine's candidacy. This 
 point recurs in the further correspondence with Hay 
 which perpetually revolves around the prospects of the 
 Maine statesman: 
 
 New York, 
 
 ., TT March 14th, 1876. 
 
 My dear Hay: ' 
 
 What do you think of Blaine now? It seems to me that the tide 
 
 is now running very strongly, both East and West, in favor of Bris- 
 
 tow, and that if Bowles hadn't so vulgarized the name of Adams we 
 
 might even have a chance for such a ticket as Adams and Bristow. 
 
 Still, this is surface enthusiasm, while far down below the surface 
 
 Blaine's machinery is at work, fastening the delegates. If Blaine 
 
 should be the candidate, on the one side, however, and Tilden on 
 
 the other, Blaine would probably find that the odium of the Belknap 
 
 business and his own leadership in the party without protest against 
 
 the course of the Administration, would carry him down. He could 
 
 not carry New York, and I don't beheve he could be elected. If he 
 
 had only done one or two plucky things instead of being forever a 
 
 partisan, — he is an abler man than Bristow and would probably 
 
 make a better President. Personally it would be an easy thing for 
 
 me to support him. Indeed up to this time it was the easiest thing 
 
 to do, but I don't believe I am mistaken as to the set of the present 
 
 popular tide. Tell me how it strikes you. 
 
 Faithfully yours, „, „ 
 
 ^ ^ Whitelaw Reid. 
 
 Hay's faith remained unshaken. He couldn't but go 
 on wishing for Blaine's nomination, and cited in support 
 of his views the opinion of a kinsman of his well qualified 
 to report on public sentiment in his Western State. 
 "Blaine is nothing to him," wrote Hay, "any more than 
 to me or you. I am only anxious for myself to have a 
 
338 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 man on one ticket or the other for whom I can vote 
 without nausea, and you only want one whom The Trib- 
 une can support with self-respect." As the campaign 
 progressed he became only the more convinced, writing 
 in April: "If anybody wants a better pair of candidates 
 than Tilden and Blaine, the two most promising politi- 
 cians of the two parties, he must wait till he gets to 
 heaven — and finds an absolute monarchy. Better men 
 than these are not given to Republics." If Reid in his 
 turn was not so convinced it is, on the other hand, im- 
 portant to note here that he was not stampeded in the 
 direction that he might have been expected to take when 
 the campaign grew hotter and Blaine's enemies sought 
 to do their worst against him. They revived the old 
 charges of corruption in railroad matters. In 1872, when 
 The Tribune had given credence to those charges, and 
 presently found that it had been made the victim of a 
 clerical blunder involving a mistake in identity, the 
 paper published a full retraction. In 1876 the renewal 
 of the scandal only defeated its own purposes. 
 
 Reid accepted Colonel Scott's exoneration of Blaine 
 as ending the Union Pacific business forever. Later, in 
 June, the episode of the Mulhgan letters momentarily 
 disturbed him. He saw that no matter what private 
 judgment might be, the only thing for Blaine to do, if 
 he was to allay the doubts in the public mind, was man- 
 fully to bear the ordeal by fire placed before him. He 
 knew that his friend had, as he expressed it, a capacity 
 for shedding scandal equal to that of any ten of his ene- 
 mies for inventing it, and he divined in this affair, as in 
 the subsequent effort to make political capital out of 
 Blaine's fainting-fit in Washington, the same meanness 
 of "manslaughter in politics" which he had witnessed in 
 the case of Greeley. But he was worried — -worried for 
 Blaine and worried for the campaign. The politicians in 
 
JAMES G. BLAINE 339 
 
 New York were talking of Blaine as out of the field, they 
 were wondering if he took the same view himself, and 
 they were asking if he could control any considerable 
 part of his strength in the impending convention. If he 
 could swing that strength, upon whom would the advan- 
 tages of it be conferred? Reid's correspondence shows 
 what agitation prevailed in New York political circles. 
 Also, it shows the determined efforts he made to get at 
 the bottom facts himself, and to do what he could to 
 save the situation. When it was saved by Blaine's dra- 
 matic victory in the House, through the reading of the 
 letters and the exposition of their meaning, which an- 
 swered all the innuendoes of his antagonists, Reid's emo- 
 tion of relief was not political alone — ^the personal ele- 
 ment counted heavily. 
 
 A confidence developed in adversity has a durable- 
 ness of its own. In Reid's sympathetic yet cool and 
 even detached observation of Blaine during those critical 
 weeks of 1876, the observation of a man concerned not 
 with special pleading, but with evidence, we may discern 
 the seeds of the complete understanding which marked 
 their relations in later years. He was not swayed by 
 impulse. It was the thoughtful, reasoned nature of his 
 backing that fixed its value. But there was heart in his 
 attitude, also. I have recalled his scorn of the ignoble 
 nature of some of the attacks upon Greeley. It sprang 
 both from his love of fair play and from his sensitiveness 
 for a friend. His support of Blaine had the same dual 
 origin. Of the expressions of appreciation which it drew 
 forth none touched him more than the following : 
 
 Yale College, 
 Whitelaw Reid, Esq. June 8th, 1876. 
 
 Sir: 
 
 As one wholly unknown to you except by name and connection, 
 permit me to thank you for the very noble and manly course which 
 
340 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 The Tribune has taken. I feel that very much of the sudden rever- 
 sion in pubhc feeling, the successful turning-back of a tide of unwar- 
 rantable and unfounded calumny, which at one time almost threat- 
 ened to hide beneath its shme an honorable reputation fairly and 
 justly earned, is due to the course of the journal which you so worthily 
 edit. It is difficult for a man's children to bear with patience the 
 smallest amount of unjust criticism, of a Father, of one whom they 
 have always found more than honorable and generous. Children 
 still love a Father, though he be a culprit on the gallows, or a wretch 
 pubhcly branded as a thief; and the world honors the devotion and 
 the sentiment. Imagine then how painful and distressing must 
 have been the attacks, wholly malicious and unfounded, which have 
 been aimed with diaboHcal intent at my Father during the past 
 week! 
 
 Permit me then as the eldest son to thank you for the justice, 
 kindness and sympathy which you have publicly displayed towards 
 Mr. Blaine, and to assure you that the gratitude for your course will 
 not pass away with this written expression. With the deepest feel- 
 ings of gratitude, I have the honor. Sir, to be. 
 
 Your very obedient servant. 
 
 Walker Blaine. 
 
 At the moment, though fixed in his resolution to choose 
 no candidate, Reid certainly put Blaine's chances in the 
 fairest possible light. Blaine had seized his opportunity 
 and w^as once more the man of the hour. The patriots 
 who had been parting his garments among them vi^ould 
 be well advised to abandon that cheerful task. The 
 revulsion in his favor w^as instantaneous and overwhelm- 
 ing. If he was the strongest candidate a week ago, he 
 was stronger on the morrow of his cruel test. He had 
 done far more than simply to disprove the allegations 
 against him. That, indeed, he had done thoroughly. 
 The letters about which Mulligan had declared that 
 Blaine was ready to commit suicide, had been given to 
 the world, and they were seen to be harmless. But in 
 war it had always been held a wise rule to do what your 
 enemy doesn't want, and the upshot of the conspiracy 
 had been to show just what the Democracy didn't want. 
 It didn't want Blaine to be the Republican nominee. It 
 
JAMES G. BLAINE 341 
 
 had no fear of any of the others. It had attacked none 
 of the others. Blaine, and Blaine alone, it had sought 
 to remove from the track. Thereby it had given the 
 Republicans a valuable hint. Blaine was to be counted 
 from that day a stronger candidate for the support of 
 the Republican party than he had been at any time since 
 his candidacy was first mentioned. 
 
 Charles Nordhoff wrote to Reid from the scene of 
 Blaine's triumph prognosticating the possible results in 
 the convention. "Even his opponents were ready to 
 admit that he had been abused. It is too early to tell 
 what will be the result on the country; but if his friends 
 are active there is no reason to doubt that he ought to 
 go to Cincinnati very strong, strong enough to go in. 
 The letters show absolutely no wrong, but some impru- 
 dence, and the people will fall in. That is my present 
 belief, and so far as I could hear on the floor and else- 
 where this evening, the general and indeed universal be- 
 lief; and this I mean of the politicians. Blaine I haven't 
 seen yet. He does not give up by any means; did not 
 I mean before this. He doesn't mean to give up, and 
 has not yet contemplated it. I ought to say that I did 
 give up B. as out of the canvass, till today. I count 
 him iii very largely now." 
 
 No candidate stormed with obloquy at the eleventh 
 hour ever received a finer tribute than was given to 
 Blaine at Cincinnati a week after his great battle. As 
 the convention assembled it seemed from the demeanor 
 of an astonishingly large number of delegates as if his 
 fight for the nomination had really been won when the 
 House had adjourned and the report of his speech on the 
 letters had gone to the country. The early ballots bade 
 fair to confirm this judgment. From the start Blaine 
 enthusiasm was a little more than articulate, and it rose 
 swiftly enough to the pitch of delirium. But Conkling, 
 
342 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 his mortal enemy, who he had thought could not carry 
 his own State, held the New York delegation, and though 
 he could not profitably use it for himself he could keep it 
 out of Blaine's hands, a circumstance having due weight 
 as the forces of the different contestants waxed and 
 waned, and the period of compromise set in. Once that 
 period was reached, the commanding eligibility of Hayes 
 became manifest. He had no bitter enemies in his own 
 party. There were no past controversies the revival of 
 which would have placed him on the defensive. Wheeler, 
 the running mate chosen for him, was in the same secure 
 case. They made an auspicious because thoroughly safe 
 pair, and that was what the party wanted. 
 
 Bromley, reviewing the convention after the dust had 
 subsided, recognized as its most thrilling moment that in 
 which the furor for Blaine swelled to its climax. It was 
 then that IngersoII coined the phrase destined to a robust 
 life in our political nomenclature, figuring Blaine as a 
 leader of leaders, standing in the midst of his foes like 
 an armed warrior or "plumed knight," and hurling his 
 glittering lance. The house shook under tempests of 
 prolonged applause, in which even the enemies of this 
 candidate participated. It was Bromley's opinion that 
 Blaine would have received the nomination if the con- 
 vention had been governed by its emotions. But it 
 wasn't. He compared it with the great gathering at 
 Chicago in i860. "That was a convention with the 
 inspiration of a great work before it; this, one with the 
 consciousness of a past for which to make amends. It 
 was the difference, in short, between the promise of youth 
 and the remorse and penitence of premature age. That 
 there were both the consciousness of error and some signs 
 of penitence were the most encouraging symptoms of 
 returning moral health." The hour had come, the hour 
 in which to "unload," in which the party could only 
 
JAMES G. BLAINE 343 
 
 hope to win by nominating a ticket essentially above dis- 
 paragement, a ticket on which not even the most dis- 
 gruntled Republicans in the Independent camp could 
 throw the faintest shadow of a doubt. Reid, like most 
 of his political intimates, could not but feel that just 
 such a ticket had been framed in the nomination of 
 Hayes and Wheeler. 
 
 He engaged in the campaign for it grievously burdened 
 by private circumstances. In June he lost one of those 
 nieces and wards of his to whom he was devoted, Gavin's 
 elder daughter, Caroline; and a few months later his 
 sister Chestina died. But in his reply to a friend who 
 had written him on these misfortunes there is a very 
 characteristic sentence — " It has been a pretty hard sum- 
 mer, and nowadays the chief comfort I get is in burying 
 myself in hard work." He worked, indeed, with per- 
 haps a little more than his usual energy in the critical 
 months of 1876. How critical they were he saw not only 
 as a judge of the inflationist peril thinly concealed behind 
 the St. Louis ticket but as an unprejudiced observer of 
 Democratic strength. When the issue was drawn he bent 
 all his efforts toward warning RepubKcan leaders against 
 the error of underrating their opponents. It was a mis- 
 take, he thought, to attach overmuch importance to 
 Democratic dissensions. They nearly always ended after 
 the manner of cat fights. Hendricks and repudiation 
 would go far to reconcile Western opposition, and Tilden's 
 professions of hard money and reform might be expected 
 to count heavily in the East, carrying New York and 
 Connecticut. His letters, like the editorial page of The 
 Tribune, are full of this subject. Confidence in the can- 
 didate he now had at last did not lull his vigilance. 
 Meanwhile it was a boon to have so satisfying a man to 
 support. 
 
 The Republican nominee's letter of acceptance, un- 
 
344 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 equivocal and stirring both on the financial question and 
 on civil service reform, was like a cup of clear cold water 
 after the sickly brews of Grantism and the decidedly 
 "mixed" drink proffered by the Democracy. Schurz 
 wrote with unusual fervor. Doubts had been floating 
 around as to whether 'he was going to support the ticket 
 or not. Of course he was going to support it, heartily 
 and actively, and never had he felt more clearly con- 
 scious of doing the right thing for the best interests of 
 the party. "Is not Hayes's manifesto a good thing?" 
 he asked, and Reid thus replied: 
 
 New York, 
 
 T^ r> July i2th, 1876. 
 
 Dear General: 
 
 Yes; I think Hayes' letter on the whole the most judicious and 
 satisfactory thing thus far on either side of this canvass. He said 
 to a personal friend of mine a day or two before the publication of 
 the letter, in answer to the inquiry — "Will not what you have said 
 offend some of the machine men?" — "Well, I must offend some- 
 body, I suppose, and I had rather offend them than the men whom 
 this letter will please." He will do. 
 
 Very truly yours, Whitelaw Reid. 
 
 Hayes would do, but in that same week Reid wrot^ to 
 Garfield, saying: "I have meant to write to Gov; Hayes 
 but have thus far been too busy. If you are writing to 
 him, pray say to him frankly that the Democrats are 
 confident of carrying both Ohio and Indiana in October. 
 Tilden himself is very confident of election, and he is 
 not generally over-sanguine, or likely to express opinions 
 without very careful examination of the reasons for 
 them." Garfield was no less anxious. He was disturbed 
 by news that the Democrats were making heavy inroads 
 among the German voters in Ohio, and said to Reid: 
 "Our friends will make a great mistake if they fail to 
 recognize the fact that we are entering upon a very 
 close and doubtful fight." To the nominee himself Reid 
 finally wrote with the frankness justified by their long 
 acquaintance. He knew his man. In a letter that fall 
 
JAMES G. BLAINE 345 
 
 from W. D. Howells, the latter says: "I have found your 
 'Ohio in the War' of the greatest use to me in writing 
 my life of Hayes." Reid had understood the soldier 
 and he now went straight to the point with the poli- 
 tician : 
 
 New York, 
 
 ■K/t c July 2 1 St, 1876. 
 
 My dear Sir: -^ 
 
 I want to thank you very heartily for your admirable letter of 
 acceptance. If it had been specially designed to enable The Trib- 
 une, and those for whom it speaks, to make their support of you effec- 
 tive, it could not have better accompHshed the purpose. 
 
 But you ought to know, and your friends directing the canvass 
 ought to be thoroughly alive to the fact, that the leading Democrats 
 here believe they have grounds for confidently expecting success. 
 For instance, there is no reason why I should not mention to you, 
 confidentially, the fact that when I was dining a few days ago with 
 Mr. Abram S. Hewitt, the Chairman of the National Democratic 
 Committee, he told me that the Democrats believed they had grounds 
 for expecting the vote of Ohio in October. I am sure he didn't say 
 it in any spirit of brag, or for any other reason than because he 
 believed it. 
 
 Gov. Tilden, too, is singularly confident, and my experience with 
 him has led me to regard him as the most sagacious political calcu- 
 lator I have ever seen. 
 
 On the other hand, I have reason to think that Tilden is very 
 much embarrassed by Hendricks' position, and has been sending 
 peremptory messages to Washington against the repeal of the Re- 
 sumption act of '75. ,r ^ , 
 
 Very truly yours, Whitelaw Reid. 
 
 Gov. R. B. Hayes, 
 Columbus, O. 
 
 The governor was of a more optimistic turn of mind. 
 With his equable temperament he was prepared to look 
 composedly upon almost any developments in the con- 
 test, and as a matter of fact he felt fairly secure. He 
 
 replied thus: 
 
 Columbus, Ohio. 
 
 July 25th, 1876. 
 My dear Sir: 
 
 I am glad, you endorse the letter. It seemed to me that its doc- 
 trines would, if need be, stand defeat. I have long since got over 
 
346 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 all tendency to panic because of Democratic professions of confi- 
 dence. They study it as an art. It is also a test of orthodoxy. A 
 Democrat loses caste with his fellows if he doesn't brag on the 
 prospects. Thank you for the letter, and the good things you are 
 
 '*°'"^* ^^'^'^^y' R.B. Hayes. 
 
 Whitelaw Reid, Esq. 
 
 Here'was a candidate who at all events went into the 
 fight with the spirit that wins. He had, from time to 
 time, to be warned against his own confidence — quite as 
 thoroughgoing in its way as Tilden's — but there was a 
 calm, quiet strength about his conviction in which Re- 
 publicans could not but recognize a good omen. 
 
CHAPTER XXI 
 THE DISPUTED ELECTION 
 
 The good things which Hayes congratulated Reid upon 
 doing embraced the advancement of arguments bearing 
 upon the campaign at large, East and West, but he 
 agreed with Bigelow in identifying New York as the 
 battle-ground, and a large amount of his energy was 
 given to State politics. In that field particular interest 
 attaches to his promotion of the candidacy of William 
 M. Evarts for the governorship. The selection of A. B. 
 Cornell, strongly advocated in machine quarters, hardly 
 seemed propitious in a presidential year, when it was of 
 the utmost importance to save the State for the party. 
 To that end a man of the caliber of Evarts was clearly 
 needed. Reid's campaign for the great lawyer was not 
 confined to the editorial page of The Tribune. It in- 
 cluded much personal exhortation of Evarts himself and 
 frequent consultation with State leaders. Amongst the 
 latter General E. A. Merritt was ardent for this candi- 
 dacy and convinced that it would make headway at 
 Saratoga, but he and Reid had to labor heroically in 
 order to protect it against itself. Evarts consistently 
 shrank from any decisive appearance as a competitor. 
 The movement in his favor was tangible, a movement for 
 all men to see, and his friends were zealous in openly 
 keeping it going — yet he would not commit himself. 
 
 Down to very nearly the last minute Evarts was re- 
 solved to stay foot-free, where Reid was resolved that he 
 should enlist in the fight, and the result makes a pretty 
 picture of the conflict of wills. They had been good 
 
 347 
 
348 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 friends for so long that they could argue over the matter 
 without much ceremony, and in the closing days of the 
 affair their relations suggest those of two amiable fencers. 
 Reid's letters to Merritt at this time are like bulletins 
 from the field of honor. The convention at Saratoga 
 was set for August 24th. On the i8th Reid writes: "Mr. 
 Evarts will not say anything on the subject beforehand, 
 but if properly nominated he will accept." Two days 
 later he reports only dubious progress. "He is full of 
 the idea of declining to be a candidate. I put it to him 
 strongly that he could not now withdraw after what 
 Choate and others had said for him, without placing his 
 supporters in an awkward position and giving them just 
 cause of complaint. He is to see me again tonight, un- 
 less he concludes to delay action until the Convention. 
 My judgment still is that he can be nominated and 
 elected, and I hope he may come to it, too." The results 
 of the interview here foreshadowed are set forth in a 
 letter too full of Reid's political ardor to be omitted: 
 
 New York, 
 
 _ ^ August 2 1 St, 1876. 
 
 Dear General: 
 
 Mr. Evarts has fully made up his mind to decline a nomination. 
 A letter to that effect is written, and will be in Mr. Curtis's hands 
 with instructions to present it either before or after the jiomination. 
 
 In talking the matter over with Evarts I made all the representa- 
 tions I could as to the injurious effect of this course, and finally said 
 that if I were in Mr. Curtis's place, and found the situation what I 
 now beheve it to be, I would pocket the letter and make the nomina- 
 tion all the same. He replied that that would place him in a very 
 embarrassing position; to which I answered, it would place him in a 
 position where he couldn't refuse to accept. Without directly and 
 seriously assenting to this, he did leave on my mind the impression 
 that he could not deny it. 
 
 I do think it of the utmost importance to have Evarts nominated. 
 He complains that he has not been more formally solicited to be a 
 candidate by leaders of the party, and that a nomination over the 
 heads of Conkling & Co., instead of at their request would only widen 
 breaches instead of healing them. I don't see the force of this but 
 
THE DISPUTED ELECTION 349 
 
 its bearing on the work of the Convention is clear. If he is to be 
 nominated at all, it ought to be done handsomely, and the movement 
 ought, if possible, to come from some conspicuous man on Conkling's 
 side. 
 
 If Cornell or Andrew D. White is nominated, I think the Liberal 
 
 Republicans, Independent Republicans, and others of that class, 
 
 ought to issue a call for a new Convention to meet lo days or 2 weeks 
 
 hence, to support Hayes and Wheeler and nominate a State ticket. 
 
 In great haste. 
 
 Very truly yours. 
 Gen. E. A. Merritt. Whitelaw Reid. 
 
 With the final plea described in the foregoing, Reid felt 
 that he had exhausted his resources, and retired in good 
 order to await the outcome. He had not, as that showed, 
 reasoned altogether in vain. When it came to the turn 
 of George William Curtis to rise from amongst the dele- 
 gates at Saratoga and take the platform he drew no dis- 
 concerting letter from his pocket. Instead, he placed 
 the name of Evarts in nomination, winning thereby 
 "great and continued applause," and to that extent 
 Reid's candidate was brought, in the long run, to figure 
 harmoniously in the situation. It was something. As 
 Walter Phelps wrote, watching the fray from afar off in 
 Paris: "He didn't do the worst. He might have with- 
 drawn before the Convention, and that The Tribune 
 could never have forgiven." By allowing the nomina- 
 tion to be made Evarts did much to raise the tone of the 
 convention, and though the party managers rejected 
 him they at least had the wit to take in his place not 
 Cornell but Governor E. D. Morgan, and with that sub- 
 stitution Reid was, after all, well cqntent. "The sup- 
 port of Mr. Evarts made the success of ex-Gov. Morgan 
 possible," he said in The Tribune the next day, "and, 
 next to the choice of Mr. Evarts himself, we count that 
 of Gov. Morgan the best that could have been made." 
 It was not ratified, to be sure, at the polls in November. 
 
350 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 But at the moment it was reassuring, and Reid accepted 
 it in the cheerfulest of spirits. 
 
 So, likewise, did Evarts. At Saratoga, when the roll- 
 call on the single ballot taken had revealed Morgan's 
 commanding lead, Curtis had moved to make his nomi- 
 nation unanimous, offering the proposal in the name of 
 his own candidate. With what philosophical approval 
 Evarts contemplated this and all the other developments 
 of that adventure upon which he had so unwillingly em- 
 barked is suggested by the following amusing epistle: 
 
 Windsor, Vermont. 
 Dear Mr. Reid: ^"^"^* ^^th. 1876. 
 
 "Conventio vincit kgem." The politicians beat the lawyer. 
 
 "All things work together for good to them that fear God." 
 
 "Whom the Gods love die easy." 
 
 "A man born to be hanged will never be drowned." 
 
 "Thy faith has saved thee." 
 
 "Behold the ram in the thicket." 
 
 With many thanks for your kind attendance through the valley 
 and shadow of this second death. 
 
 Yours very truly. ^^ ^ ^^^^^^ 
 
 In his reply Reid added to this sheaf of biblical quo- 
 tations. '"Blessed are the meek,'" he reminded Evarts, 
 "'for they shall inherit the earth.' I had no idea you 
 could string together so much good Scripture in favor 
 of the meekness, not to say the joy, with which you greet 
 the Saratoga outcome." 
 
 It was just at this time that Reid received from How- 
 ells, then editing the "Atlantic Monthly," a request 
 with which we cannot but wish he had complied. "Can 
 you let me promise in our prospectus for next year," 
 asked his friend, "an article from you on the editorial 
 management of a metropolitan newspaper?" If he had 
 written it he could have shown how wide is the scope of 
 such management, the political aspects of the subject 
 
THE DISPUTED ELECTION 351 
 
 alone illustrating the extent to which the journalist is 
 also the man of action. The Evarts episode was followed 
 by one in which Reid appears as the counsellor of Levi P. 
 Morton, presiding in a measure over that gentleman's 
 political debut. Morton was appointed financial chair- 
 man by the Republican National Committee, and first 
 turned to Reid in that role, seeking aid in the composi- 
 tion of what he wanted to make "ringing appeals." 
 From these, presently, he passed to a more personal 
 subject. In the fall of 1876 he was offered the nomina- 
 tion for Congress from the eleventh district in New 
 York. He had not been disposed to entertain it, but at 
 the same time he had thought a good deal about going 
 out of business and wondered what Reid would advise 
 him to do. "If elected," he said, "and I wanted a 
 foreign mission, could I well resign and accept that, or if 
 defeated, what then? I have never made a speech in 
 my life." Reid told him not to worry about the speech- 
 making. Men were wanted in Congress who under- 
 stood business, whether they made speeches or not. He 
 pointed out that Morton couldn't resign after election 
 without making a good deal of ill feeling, especially if he 
 subjected the people to the expense of another ballot 
 before the next fall. On the central point of the matter 
 he said: "If you don't mind being defeated, and do want 
 to help the party, then it would be a good thing to take 
 the nomination even if the chances were clearly against 
 success. There is no doubt that your nomination would 
 very greatly strengthen the Republican chances in that 
 district." The hesitating candidate took Reid's advice, 
 and, making the canvass, repeatedly came back for more. 
 He lost the race, but it was only by a small margin, and 
 in polling a vote greater by more than four thousand 
 than that received by the previous Republican candi- 
 date, he had the satisfaction of rendering a certain help 
 
352 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 to the party, as Reid had told him he would do. Like 
 Evarts, he felt in defeat only gratitude toward his spon- 
 sor. After the returns were in he wrote to express his 
 thanks. "You could not have done more for a brother," 
 he said. He saw the larger, strategical purpose which 
 Reid' had all along had in mind, and passing from the 
 matter of his own fortunes he added: "If Hayes is elected 
 the Republican party will owe a debt of gratitude to you 
 for your invaluable service." If it was invaluable it was 
 because it left no stone unturned to assist the triumph of 
 the national ticket. I have recited these two incidents, 
 the candidacies of Evarts and Morton, simply as perti- 
 nent to the exposition of Reid's broader activities in the 
 campaign of 1876. They illustrate his method in a 
 political fight, his watchfulness over every point in the 
 line, his care for skirmishes that might contribute to the 
 success of the main action. 
 
 There were temptations, early in the fall, to believe 
 that the line was safe. The Democrats played straight 
 into the hands of the Republicans when at their State 
 convention they nominated Seymour for the governor- 
 ship. "It scarcely looks," wrote Evarts to Reid, "as if 
 Providence was on Tilden's side. The Seymour affair 
 is a monstrous weakness whichever way it turns." In 
 Reid's opinion the nomination of "the candidate of Val- 
 landigham" meant that, automatically, Tilden was him- 
 self beaten, and the Seymour declination hardly bettered 
 the Democratic situation. The substitution in his place 
 of the unexceptionable Lucius Robinson was only too 
 plainly a case of window-dressing, of what in the slang of 
 to-day would be termed political camouflage. In Sep- 
 tember, too, the Maine elections rolled up an auspicious 
 Republican majority. Blaine, who was working hard up 
 there, sent Reid a private despatch which rang like a 
 trumpet: "Our victory runs far beyond our calculations. 
 
THE DISPUTED ELECTION 353 
 
 We have made a clean sweep of all the Congressional 
 districts, and all the counties in the state." He fol- 
 lowed this up with a cordial recognition of The Tribune's 
 part in the work: 
 
 Augusta, Maine. 
 Dear Sir: September 13th, 1876. 
 
 We are feeling well here over the great victory we gained on 
 Monday — and before the matter grows cold I desire to say to you 
 that the Republicans of Maine fully appreciate the course of The 
 Tribune. You did us immense service not only in holding firmly 
 those Republicans who supported Mr. Greeley in 1872 but in the 
 wise direction you gave to the general campaign. I feel well assured 
 that wherever your circulation is largest. Republican gains will be 
 the most marked and the prospective success of Gov. Hayes will be 
 due in very large part to the efforts and influence of The Tribune. 
 
 Very truly yours. j ^ g^^^^^_ 
 
 The auguries were good. Reid could be a little 
 more sanguine at this time in his communications with 
 Hayes. "We have no sort of doubt now," he wrote, 
 "about the result in New York, and are greatly gratified 
 at the manifest strength of your nomination, which every 
 week of the canvass only more clearly reveals." The 
 governor's reply is equally spirited. "The impression 
 seems to be general," he says, "that the tide is with the 
 Republicans. No good thing can come from a Demo- 
 cratic victory gained by means of a United South. This 
 is the sentiment that is growing and winning. Our ad- 
 vices from the East concur with your opinion that New 
 York is safe, unless both Ohio and Indiana are carried 
 by the Democrats in October, by decided majorities." 
 In the State elections the Republicans won Ohio but lost 
 Indiana, and in the face of this rather disconcerting de- 
 velopment Governor Morgan carried on his campaign in 
 New York with far less vigor than Reid thought neces- 
 sary. Promptly he took up again his task of uttering 
 warnings against undue confidence. "Neither Gov. 
 
354 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 Morgan nor any of the Republicans appreciate," he wrote 
 to his friend S. J. Boweh, "the elaborate and painstak- 
 ing nature of Gov. Tilden's canvass of this state. I 
 have gone through two such canvasses with him, and 
 know how complete his preparations are. Nothing on 
 the Republican side has been done at all comparable to 
 his work in thoroughness or minuteness of detail. I 
 don't think much of his organization in other states, 
 because he doesn't understand them so well; but in New 
 York of all the politicians I have ever seen he is the 
 supreme organizer." His correspondence with Wheeler 
 shows that they were both alarmed over the efficiency 
 of Democratic propaganda in New York and the extent 
 to which the Republican State Committee had allowed 
 the campaign to drift, expecting Republican success in 
 Ohio and Indiana to carry them through. "The past 
 week or ten days," Reid wrote late in October, "I have 
 been doing what I could in a private way (and a little 
 in The Tribune) to give the Republican leaders a whole- 
 some scare." 
 
 His political judgment was never more emphatically 
 confirmed than at this time. The scare he sought to 
 communicate was heightened by the event. Tilden car- 
 ried his State by a majority of some thirty thousand, 
 and the morning after election it looked as if he had 
 carried the nation. The Tribune so stated the results 
 on that day. But the first results were accepted with 
 prophetic reserves, and in fact it was at this point that 
 Reid lifted his paper to a new plane of influence through 
 the manner in which he governed its utterances on an 
 extraordinarily difficult situation. With the dramatic 
 conclusion of the campaign of 1876 — which was not so 
 much a conclusion as it was the prelude to an even more 
 bitter contest — he brought The Tribune back into the 
 fullest exercise of its power in Republican councils. The 
 
THE DISPUTED ELECTION 355 
 
 date is happily suggestive, marking as it does an anni- 
 versary of Reid's entrance into political life. In 1856, in 
 his youth, he had gone on the stump for Fremont, and 
 since then he had witnessed not only the triumph of 
 Republican principles as it was embodied in the rise of 
 Lincoln and the successful prosecution of the war, but 
 the swift declension of the party under the maladminis- 
 tration of Grant. In 1876, as the Republicans once more 
 came forward really to serve the nation, Reid, in his 
 prime, had the opportunity to share in the work. 
 
 Concerned as I am primarily with his share in that 
 work, I need make no apology for referring the reader 
 to other sources for an exhaustive study of the disputed 
 election. The theme is still debated with unalterable 
 convictions on both sides. As recently as 19 13, Colonel 
 Watterson, who was chairman at the St. Louis conven- 
 tion in 1876, opened his "Century" article on the con- 
 test with the observation that "the time is coming, if it 
 has not already arrived, when among fair-minded and 
 intelligent Americans there will not be two opinions 
 touching the Hayes-Tilden contest for the Presidency in 
 1 876-77 — that both by the popular vote and a fair count 
 of the electoral vote Tilden was elected and Hayes was 
 defeated." In his rejoinder to this paper. Senator Ed- 
 munds, who had served on the Electoral Commission, 
 was equally confident that Hayes "was lawfully elected 
 and instituted to the office by fair and lawful means." 
 I certainly shall not attempt to hold the scales between 
 these two oracles. But some light on their problem may 
 nevertheless be struck here and there from an exposi- 
 tion of Reid's relation to it. He was not, like either 
 Watterson or Edmunds, in Congress, but perhaps that 
 very fact enabled him to take the more dispassionate a 
 view of a controversy that was peculiarly inflamed with 
 passion. It is interesting, at all events, to note as the 
 
356 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 first of his traits as they are disclosed in this matter an 
 open-mindedness which commended the policy of The 
 Tribune, when the storm was at its fiercest, alike to friend 
 and foe. If he came to believe absolutely that Hayes 
 was entitled to the election, he could claim to have, 
 arrived at that conclusion without prejudice. 
 
 It was not by any means in a spirit of partisanship 
 that he turned to the support of the Republican candi- 
 date. The testimony to this which appears in the files 
 of The Tribune receives interesting confirmation in his 
 private papers. I may cite, for example, a character- 
 istic note from W. C. Whitney, then corporation coun- 
 sel in New York, active in the parleys of the reformed 
 Democracy, and a devoted Tilden man. Tilden's elec- 
 tion, as I have stated, was conceded in The Tribune of 
 November 8th, but on the following day the principal 
 news columns and the leading editorial bore the same 
 exciting headline — "Hayes Possibly Elected." Whitney, 
 who had long been in friendly alliance with Reid, con- 
 sulting him on matters of local politics, wrote at once 
 
 in this earnest vein: 
 
 New York, 
 
 -^ _ November gth, 1876. 
 
 Dear Reid: 
 
 I want to tell you that our people are absolutely sure. I have 
 been around a good deal today, and the sentiment of Republicans 
 is that he must not be counted out. Don't fail to get right on this 
 subject. Pardon the suggestion, but in the present state of public 
 sentiment it is the card, and worth a presidential election to you. 
 You must furnish a contrast to your neighbor. This is by way of 
 suggestion. I make it because my only regret in connection with 
 it is that you have been on the other side. This is your chance in 
 my judgment. Yours, W. C. Whitney. 
 
 Your articles since election have been commented on as manly and 
 fair. 
 
 His response to this plea consisted in brushing aside 
 all questions of "sentiment," and looking solely to a solu- 
 tion of the difficulty that would be indeed fair, based 
 
THE DISPUTED ELECTION 357 
 
 upon hard facts and justice. All through the incerti- 
 tude and strain of the months preceding the inaugura- 
 tion Reid's correspondence and his editorials have but 
 one burden — "Let partisanship cease for a moment, and 
 all honest citizens unite in the demand for an honest 
 count and honest declaration of the vote." It was the 
 manifest disinterestedness of his arguments that gave 
 them their weight and that in the upshot, I may add, 
 increased their value for Hayes and the party. In the 
 midst of countless heated improvisations of elective pro- 
 cedure he was steadfastly for legal and constitutional 
 processes. While the advocates of immediate action 
 were uproarious he urged Congress to make haste slowly, 
 and above all he kept his temper. Nothing, I think, 
 could better show how suavely he preserved his balance 
 at this time than his readiness, on one occasion, to go 
 out of his way in praise of Conkling — of all men ! — when 
 for once that venomous opponent gave him the chance 
 by displaying true senatorial dignity. And, by the same 
 token, his impartiality gave to one of his dearest com- 
 rades a very ugly quarter of an hour. Watterson's un- 
 lucky proposal for the march of a hundred thousand 
 petitioners upon Washington was nowhere more flatly 
 condemned or more cruelly ridiculed than in The Trib- 
 une. The truth is that, as I have more than once had 
 occasion to remark, Reid was never averse to conflict, 
 and the open-mindedness on which I have been laying 
 stress did not in the slightest degree incline him to let 
 Democratic claims — or campaign expedients — ^go un- 
 challenged. 
 
 From the start he wa.s insistent upon the fullest inves- 
 tigation of the elections — on which so much was to turn 
 — in Oregon, South Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana, 
 and especially in the last-mentioned State he made 
 arrangements to have local conditions frankly exposed 
 by a member of his own staff. During the progress of 
 
358 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 events, and particularly while the development of the 
 Electoral Commission was toward, he was in frequent 
 consultation with Evarts. They were united in empha- 
 sizing the necessity of action that would be unimpeach- 
 ably constitutional, and Reid tried early in the affair to 
 pave the way for the lawyer's collaboration in whatever 
 was to ensue at Washington. To Garfield, soon after 
 placed upon the Electoral Commission, he wrote as 
 
 follows : 
 
 New York, 
 
 Ti, r- January oth, 1876. 
 
 My dear Garfield: 
 
 Mr. Evarts came in this-afternoon and had a long talk with me, 
 which has produced such an impression upon me as to lead to this 
 note. He very earnestly and emphatically approves the view which 
 The Tribune has expressed from the start, that the whole business 
 of counting the Presidential vote is in the hands of the President of 
 the Senate. He has made an exhaustive study of the proceedings 
 in the Constitutional Convention bearing upon this point and with 
 some curious results. He spoke with kindness of Mr. David Dudley 
 Field, but says that his recently published book is so weak as to be 
 childish. He is in a good deal of uneasiness lest Mr. Ferry, or who- 
 ever occupies his seat during the critical moment, may not be care- 
 ful to use all the powers which the Constitution gives him. 
 
 Mr. Evarts' position is such that he is not likely to volunteer 
 opinions. If I knew Mr. Ferry well, I should write to him suggest- 
 ing a correspondence with Mr. Evarts, or an interview, for the pur- 
 pose of getting his opinions. Perhaps this note to you may accom- 
 plish the same purpose. 
 
 My own conviction on the subject is very strong. I utterly de- 
 spise the sentimental talk of the people who have done no thinking 
 on the subject, and who have an idea that it would be better to 
 throw away the greatest prize ever contended for in such an arena, 
 and allow Mr. Tilden to become President, rather than have any- 
 body dispute the title of Gov. Hayes. I fancy that you feel the 
 same way, and so I write to you frankly and confidentially to sug- 
 gest that it would be wise for Mr. Ferry and others of our real friends 
 at Washington to get the benefit of Mr. Evarts' opinions. I write 
 absolutely without his knowledge or approval, and should not do it 
 excepting to an old friend. , , , 
 
 Very truly yours, ^^^^^^^ ^^^^ 
 
 P. S. I have sent a line to Blaine on the same subject. Pray 
 
 talk with him if you think it desirable. „, ,^ 
 
 W. K. 
 
THE DISPUTED ELECTION 359 
 
 To the constitutional point raised in this letter, I may 
 say in passing, Reid adhered in public as well as in pri- 
 vate. He denounced from its inception the compromise 
 bill which ultimately defined the character and func- 
 tions of the Electoral Commission, and even on its pas- 
 sage through both Houses he condemned it as establish- 
 ing a dangerous precedent. On the other hand, there 
 was nothing to do but to make the best of it, and to be 
 at least grateful for the promise that it gave of an expe- 
 ditious settlement. As that drew near, as first Florida, 
 then Louisiana, and presently Oregon and South Caro- 
 lina were fixed beyond recall, by the Electoral Commis- 
 sion, in the Republican column, Reid was quite humanly 
 ready to drop his tussle over a matter of constitutional 
 interpretation. So was Evarts, who as Republican coun- 
 sel before the august company in Washington saw on the 
 last day of February that the law had been vindicated. 
 To his friend in New York he sent this terse but elo- 
 quent despatch: 
 
 Washington, 
 
 Whitelaw Reid, Esq.: I'^^^^^'^y ^^^^' '^77- 
 
 Nothing can postpone the regular declaration of Hayes beyond 
 tomorrow. I think Appropriation bills will also pass. 
 
 Wm. M. Evarts. 
 
 It was a private communication, but Reid printed it 
 the next morning, thus explaining his action to the 
 
 sender: 
 
 New York, 
 My dear Mr. Evarts: March ist, 1877. 
 
 I was a thousand times obliged for your despatch and sincerely 
 hope that the use I made of it will not seem to you wholly unwar- 
 ranted. The feeling of suspense here, especially among the capital- 
 ists and business men, was so great, that I knew how grateful they 
 would be to you for a positive statement. I am hoping now that 
 the disorders in the House this morning may not prevent the fulfil- 
 ment of your expectations. 
 
 We are going to say something in the morning as to the proper 
 head for Gov. Hayes' Cabinet. 
 
36o THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 I may possibly come down to Washington Saturday night if it 
 should seem necessary to reinforce our views by my personal repre- 
 sentation, though I have on the whole thpught this needless if not 
 undesirable. 
 
 Mr. Conkling's friends here have been saying quite openly within 
 a day or two, that he would yet be elected President of the Senate 
 by a coalition with the Democrats, the completion of the count would 
 then be prevented and he would then succeed Grant. I should 
 attach no importance to this story were it not that some of his spokes- 
 men are so positive about it. I think our friends ought to be very 
 watchful on this point — especially if there should arise between now 
 and Saturday any wranghng which should seem to make the elec- 
 tion of a new President of the Senate necessary. 
 
 Very truly yours. Whitelaw Reid. 
 
 The "something" which The Tribune was going to 
 say in the morning, and did say, as the election of Hayes 
 was officially announced, was a most eulogistic nomina- 
 tion of Evarts as secretary of state. It brings up again 
 a matter to which I have briefly alluded, Reid's work as 
 a party counsellor and the increased significance given 
 to it by his conduct of The Tribune in this campaign. 
 The Republican leaders were quick to admit his right to 
 be heard on party management. Throughout the cam- 
 paign and the subsequent developments they sought his 
 advice and support. How far the influence of the paper 
 carried is illustrated by an appeal of Blaine's, when the 
 Republicans were in danger of losing a senator in IIH- 
 nois. "There are a few Independents in the Legisla- 
 ture," he wrote, "who hold the balance of power and 
 there is no journal that influences them so powerfully or 
 so constantly as The Tribune." He pleaded for a kindly 
 word in favor of Logan as for a help that would be in- 
 valuable, saying that it would largely influence, if it 
 did not, indeed, absolutely control, the Independents 
 aforesaid. The exertion of Reid's influence one way or 
 the other was regarded with the more solicitude because 
 every one knew that it was determined by a dispassion- 
 
THE DISPUTED ELECTION 361 
 
 ate study of the situation of the moment. The point 
 comes out in the correspondence that he had with his 
 friend W. H. Smith, of Chicago, on this matter of the 
 Illinois senatorship. Smith was the general agent of the 
 Western Associated Press, the "Wilham Henry" of one 
 of Reid's oldest and most affectionate alhances. He 
 was also an intimate of the new president. It was to 
 him that Hayes wrote his noted' letter from the field 
 during the war, refusing to go home to canvass his dis- 
 trict for Congress, and saying that the man who would 
 leave his command under such circumstances deserved 
 to be scalped. He and Reid dealt very frankly with 
 one another over the incoming administration, which 
 they both foresaw was bound to be confronted by enor- 
 mous difficulties. 
 
 Writing to him about Hayes, Reid said: "He is going 
 to have the most trying task any man excepting Lincoln 
 has had in this generation, and nothing but the utmost 
 wisdom can prevent him from shattering the Republican 
 party in the first year of his Administration, and from 
 having that Administration overwhelmingly condemned 
 at the polls in the second." He hoped that Smith and 
 other close advisers had talked freely with Hayes. "I 
 have not," he said, "mainly because my motives might 
 be misunderstood. I want nothing whatever of the Ad- 
 ministration." It was natural for him to move with 
 some hesitation at this juncture of affairs. From the 
 moment that the election of Hayes had seemed assured 
 the word appears to have gone forth in some mysterious 
 way that Reid's services in the campaign had established 
 > I him as the best "friend at court" an office-seeker could 
 have. This was nonsense, which he lost no opportunity 
 to repudiate; but the legend persisted, and he had to 
 parry one request after another for intervention in the 
 matter of some diplomatic, consular, or other govern- 
 
362 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 mental post. "I promised Gov. Hayes at the begin- 
 ning," he replied to one of these applicants, "that I 
 would not interfere with his efforts at Civil Service Re- 
 form by recommending anybody to him for office." As 
 the pressure continued it embarrassed him enough to 
 keep him silent for a time. At last, however, when 
 every chance of misunderstanding had been removed, he 
 wrote to Hayes, offering him the counsel which many 
 of the Republican leaders felt he needed: 
 
 New York, 
 
 T-,, y-, February 21st,. 1877. 
 
 Dear Governor: 
 
 An old Republican friend, whom I think you also trust, writes me 
 from Washington, asking me to attack editorially a scheme for bring- 
 ing pressure upon you to retain Don Cameron in the Cabinet. To 
 this, and to other letters asking me to favor this or that person, I 
 have replied that it does not seem proper that you should be embar- 
 rassed now by such discussions in The Tribune. For that matter, I 
 am not likely, either in print or privately, to trouble you with recom- 
 mendations for office. For eight years I have rigidly refrained from 
 asking anybody's appointment to any place. National, State or 
 Municipal. At the same time I have always held myself bound to 
 place any personal or other information I had at the disposal of the 
 appointing power, whenever it was sought, and am glad to know 
 that in State and City this has often resulted in appointments which 
 have helped the public service. I do not want to bother you now, 
 or at any time, with such matters, and only wish to say that I have 
 had exceptional means for knowing Eastern politics and politicians 
 pretty thoroughly, and that, whenever you want it, any information 
 I have is absolutely at your command. It is most hkely to be of 
 use — if at all — in the way of showing who ought not to be appointed. 
 I have the least hesitation in saying this, since I have no personal 
 ends to serve, and want nothing for myself. 
 
 Will it seem intrusive if to this I add a few words as to what the 
 people of my way of thinking in politics expect of the incoming Ad- 
 ministration? 
 
 Above all things we hope that it will be broad and National, rather 
 than narrowly partisan. We hope for that genuine Civil Service 
 reform, which consists in not turning people out of office merely to 
 make places for other people — in making no change save for cause. 
 We hope for a policy that may retrieve the errors and disgrace of 
 Republican dealing with the South — precisely in accordance with the 
 
THE DISPUTED ELECTION 363 
 
 admirable tone of your letter of acceptance. We very much hope 
 that you may find it possible, as an earnest of this spirit, to make a 
 place for at least one good representative of the South in your Cabi- 
 net, and we think especially well of Lamar and Randall Gibson. We 
 should not groan if such an appointment were to be followed by the 
 downfall of such Southern State Governments as can only stand 
 while propped up by bayonets — provided their downfall does not 
 involve a practical re-enslavement of the blacks. We hope to see 
 your Administration thoroughly Repubhcan, because we believe in 
 Republican principles and hold it safer that power should rest in the 
 hands of men backed by the honesty and intelligence of the country, 
 which are unquestionably lodged in the Republican masses. But 
 we hope to see your Administration totally dissociated from the 
 mistaken policy and ruinous leaders that have brought this party 
 and its principles to the verge of defeat, and have seriously dimmed 
 the lustre of the party record. 
 
 As to persons, but a word: — Bristow seemed for a little while a good 
 presidential candidate, but would be for many reasons a bad presi- 
 dential appointment. If Pennsylvania has claims, Galusha A. Grow 
 is better than Cameron, and Cameron's son-in-law is better than 
 his son. We think very highly of Stanley Matthews, and if he can 
 be sptired from the contest with Banning, should welcome him to 
 the Attorney-Generalship, or any place in which he might be useful. 
 The Greeley Republicans should be recognized, but not at too great 
 a cost. And finally we hope that you will make up your Cabinet 
 yourself, using or rejecting at pleasure hints like those which may 
 come to you from any quarter in which you may trust, but not going 
 to Washington much in advance of the inauguration, to have party 
 chiefs pulling and hauling over Cabinet places. 
 
 I have written, you see, with absolute frankness and freedom. 
 
 Pray use or drop in the waste basket as may best accord with your 
 
 own judgment. In any case I earnestly hope for and expect the 
 
 success of your Administration. 
 
 Very truly yours, ,,, „ 
 
 •^ •' •' Whitelaw Reid. 
 
 Gov. R. B. Hayes, 
 Columbus, O. 
 
 The disinterestedness of this letter requires no em- 
 phasis, but it received such pointed confirmation in a 
 subsequent episode that I may here fittingly anticipate 
 a later date in my narrative and exhibit Reid's whole 
 attitude tov^^ard the question of public office as it was 
 
364 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 then forced upon him. He pretended to no influence 
 with Hayes. The President nevertheless welcomed his 
 counsel and valued his support, which was by and by to 
 prove of exceptional service; and as I have said there 
 was an impression abroad, before and after the inaugu- 
 ration, that the editor of The Tribune, who, as we have 
 seen, did not want anything of the administration, 
 could, in the parlance of the office-seeker, "have any- 
 thing he wanted." Perhaps the best evidence of the 
 vitality of this current idea is supplied in the following 
 
 letter from Hay: 
 
 Cleveland, Ohio. 
 
 ,, T^ March 4th, 1877. 
 
 My dear Reid: 
 
 I have been thinking of something for several days which I will 
 write to you and get off my mind. It has been suggested that you 
 might take a foreign appointment under the incoming administration. 
 I would urge you in the strongest possible terms to do so. There is 
 no reason why you should not, so far as I can see. You have done 
 enough to claim it. You would fill such a place as well as anybody 
 who could get it. It would be a decent thing for Hayes to offer and 
 for you to accept — ail right all round. 
 
 The reasons why you should do it are too numerous to mention. 
 Your health absolutely requires it. If you intend to live to be an 
 old man, it is the best thing to that end. Then, the experience of a 
 certain world you would get, is invaluable to one whose hfe is sure 
 to be passed in pubhc as yours is. You will lose nothing by the 
 temporary absence. No man of any force ever does. He gains 
 rather by the subsidence of vivid envies and hates. 
 
 Then there are two chances to one that you would come back home 
 married. You have no time for such things here. Abroad you 
 would have lots of leisure and lots of lovely Americaines on your 
 hands. In amusing them you would be very apt to get amused 
 yourself. 
 
 It is a thing a man ought to do, once at least in his life, if it is 
 possible. It is infinitely better that he should do it while he is 
 young and handsome. You have not many years to fool away. If 
 you do it now, you will never regret it. I will go bail for that. 
 
 If you get a nomination and have any doubts about the Senate, 
 let me know and I will do all I can. But I don't imagine you would 
 have any trouble. ^ 
 
 ' John Hay. 
 
THE DISPUTED ELECTION 365 
 
 It was a sound philosophy. Coming from Hay, who 
 had tested it in his own experience, and who added to his 
 worldly wisdom the affectionate interest of Reid's closest 
 friend, it would have moved him in this matter if any- 
 thing could have done so. He put the idea from him, 
 however, and thought he had heard the last of it. Least 
 of all was he inclined to think of a foreign mission for 
 himself when his colleague. Bayard Taylor, was made 
 minister to Germany in the spring of 1878. Rejoicing in 
 that appointment, taking a leading part in the demon- 
 strations of good-will with which the poet was speeded 
 on his way to Berlin, he could not but reflect with sat- 
 isfaction that the very fact of Taylor's being a Tribune 
 man tended to put a quietus upon any further gossip 
 about his own intentions. The general assumption 
 would naturally be that no more diplomatic timber 
 would be sought in his neighborhood, an assumption 
 exactly to his mind. It was a good summer to go 
 abroad. The Universal Exposition was just opening in 
 Paris. Edmond About, writing in the name of the 
 Societe des Gens de Lettres, invited him to come as a 
 delegate to the international congress then launched 
 under the presidency of Victor Hugo. Undoubtedly, as 
 Hay suggested, he could have found amusement in Eu- 
 rope, the blithest solace for "vivid envies and hates." 
 But afi"airs at home were a little more than amusing and 
 he preferred to stay there. Then, in December, Taylor 
 died at his post. Reid had hardly read the bitter news 
 when fast on the heels of it came this surprising proposal: 
 
 Department of State, 
 Washington, 
 
 _, December 23rd, 1878. 
 
 My dear Mr. Reid: 
 
 The President has desired, as far as it was in his power, in making 
 his choice of Ministers to represent us abroad, to attach more im- 
 portance to the public position and public service of eminent mem- 
 
366 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 bers of the Republican party than to their mere relation to any 
 political or personal interests, within the party, how prominent 
 soever these latter might be. 
 
 In accordance with this desire, I am directed by the President to 
 ask your acceptance of the German Mission made vacant by the 
 death of Mr. Bayard Taylor. 
 
 It gives me, personally, great pleasure to convey to you this wish 
 of the President, and to express the hope that you may find it to 
 accord with your inclination, and to be not inconsistent with other 
 obligations, to undertake the public service which the President asks 
 from you. 
 
 I am, my dear Mr. Reid, 
 
 Yours very truly, 
 
 Wm. M. Evarts. 
 
 The issue in concrete form w^as, indeed, a little more 
 
 difficult to deal with than it had been when hypotheti- 
 
 cally presented by Hay. He was not indifferent to the 
 
 attractiveness of this offer. But his mind had already 
 
 been made up, and after the usual decent interval he 
 
 made this refusal: 
 
 New York, 
 
 ,, IV J T- December 30th, 1878. 
 
 My dear Mr. Iivarts: 
 
 I must tender to you, and beg you also to express to the President, 
 my best thanks for the unexpected mission to the German Empire. 
 Two considerations render this high honor peculiarly grateful. You 
 call me to a post last held by a near friend, and you do it solely on 
 the flattering estimate placed by yourself and the President upon 
 my public service. 
 
 I have always thought the citizen ought to attempt any task to 
 which his Government may summon him. But the work in which 
 I am now engaged, which is also a public duty, seems to give greater 
 opportunities — for me at least — for serving the country and advanc- 
 ing those views of public policy which we agree in thinking essential 
 to its prosperity, than any that could be afforded in the new field 
 you propose. 
 
 Nothing, therefore, but a sense of this duty induces me to ask that 
 you allow me to dechne the briUiant position you offer. 
 
 I am, my dear Mr. Evarts, 
 
 Always faithfully yours, 
 
 Whitelaw Reid. 
 
THE DISPUTED ELECTION 367 
 
 This correspondence was not published until the fol- 
 lowing spring, after Andrew D. White had been ap- 
 pointed to Berlin, but the press got wind of the subject, 
 and Hay, before he learned of the reply to Evarts, hast- 
 ened to return to the charge. Again there were a thou- 
 sand reasons why Reid should take the Administration's 
 offer. It was to be a dull year in politics. The people 
 in the office could easily carry on the paper. Indeed, 
 for the paper itself, as well as for Reid, there were ad- 
 vantages to be pointed out, if only Hay could talk for 
 half an hour with his obstinate friend. "It would be 
 a great thing for The Tribune," he declared. " It would 
 give it a new prestige and authority. If it is offered you 
 — don't decline without letting me know. I am sure I 
 could show you why you should not lose such a chance." 
 Reid showed him, instead, why he didn't want "such a 
 chance," and explaining at some length how he had 
 himself put it out of his power to act on Hay's advice, 
 some weeks before receiving it, he went on to this con- 
 clusion: "I see the force of every point you urged, and 
 I have never undergone such a pang as it cost me to 
 say No. But I still think it was, for me, the wisest thing 
 to do. I tried to persuade Mr. Evarts that he would 
 get a Minister of ideal fitness, if he should oflFer it to 
 you. You can't guess his answer. You had not been 
 active enough in political effort, and it would not be 
 recognized by the country as a political appointment! 
 Of course I combated this, but I soon saw the matter 
 was hopeless. Well, the men he has since been talking 
 of have been politicians enough to satisfy anybody; but 
 somehow he doesn't seem to succeed in satisfying him- 
 self." There was nothing more for Hay to say. Never- 
 theless, he was too ardent in the transaction to let it go 
 without once more opening his heart about it, and the 
 
368 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 letter in which he did this offers perhaps the best of 
 
 commentaries on the entire subject: 
 
 Cleveland, Ohio, 
 
 T,, „ March 30th, 1878. 
 
 My dear Reid: ^ ' 
 
 I arrived at home yesterday afternoon and found your letter of the 
 20th here. I need not tell you with what sympathetic interest I 
 read it. You have passed through one of the most important events 
 of your life in a manner that does you high honor — and I do not 
 imagine you will ever regret it. You have had the cake though you 
 did not eat it, and there is probably as much gratification in the self- 
 denial as there would have been in the indulgence. You have gained 
 the position you occupy by unceasing hard work, will and sagacity 
 — that is to say, by merit, and standing gained that way is never 
 lost. I give you my hearty and affectionate congratulations. 
 
 Of course you will not expect me to take back what I said in my 
 letter — but I will not repeat it. I want you to have some of the 
 good things of life, as well as the great ones — before the evil days 
 when we shall say " I have no pleasure in them." But perhaps you 
 enjoy your work — ^the splendid attitude of The Tribune — the power 
 and influence, more than you would anything different. 
 
 I thank you for what you said of me: but don't grin at this — Mr. 
 Evarts was right about it. I have not the pohtical standing neces- 
 sary for the place — neither had Taylor. His appointment was in 
 no sense a good one, and it was fatal to him. I tried to say a word 
 to Taylor about it when he was here, but he was deaf to any such 
 considerations. Now you may believe it or not — but I would not 
 accept the mission to Berlin, if it were offered to me. I know I am 
 not up to it in many respects. At the same time, I am free to say 
 I would like a second-class mission uncommonly well. . . . Good 
 bye, and all good wishes. If you get only what you have honestly 
 
 earned you will do well enough. ,, p • i i- it 
 
 •^ * Yours faithfully, , „ 
 
CHAPTER XXII 
 
 RUTHERFORD B. HAYES 
 
 In the letter concluding the preceding chapter, John 
 Hay touches upon a point which presents itself again 
 very naturally at the beginning of this one. Reluctantly 
 acquiescing in Reid's declination of the Berlin mission, 
 he says: "But perhaps you enjoy your work — the splen- 
 did attitude of The Tribune — ^the power and influence, 
 more than you would anything different." These words 
 express an idea that was held by all his friends. They 
 united in congratulating him on his decision, and invari- 
 ably their inference as to his motive took account of the 
 zest for leadership assumed to be implanted in the jour- 
 nalistic breast. Power and influence — these ■ have un- 
 doubtedly been the mainspring of editorial ambition in 
 the view of most commentators on the subject, and prac- 
 tically every scrap of available evidence confirnis the 
 universal opinion. Delane was hardly more than a 
 youth when he burst in upon his friend Blackwood with 
 his momentous news: "By Jove, John, what do you 
 think has happened? I am editor of the 'Times'!" 
 But he had, even then, the instincts which were to make 
 him the monitor, and sometimes the terror, of cabinets 
 and kings. Reid had those same instincts, and he 
 hadn't the smallest objection to their being attributed 
 to him by his friends. He never underestimated an 
 editor's chances to exert pressure upon public affairs, 
 nor did he forego any of the exhilaration to be got out 
 of the use of them. On the other hand, behind ambition 
 hes character, behind the exercise of power and influence 
 
 369 
 
370 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 lies a ruling passion, and this, in the case of Whitelaw 
 Reid, meant more than a relish for authority. 
 
 He had, like Delane, a genius for politics, and I mean 
 by that a disinterested love of the subject, a love of the 
 play of political ideas, a love of the political conflict for 
 its own sake. Something of this, I hope, has already 
 appeared in my narrative, but it should be even more 
 manifest presently. The turn in the tide of our national 
 Kfe which synchronized with the election of Hayes 
 brought also a turn in Reid's career. He was older — on 
 the verge of forty — and he entered upon a greater free- 
 dom. Through the war and during the first phases of 
 reconstruction he labored, as others did, under the con- 
 fused conditions of a transitional period calling for the 
 swift satisfaction of immediate needs. The campaign of 
 1876 cleared the air, steadied industrial progress, and 
 opened the way for a settlement of political problems in 
 a longer perspective. And, fortunately for Reid, the en- 
 suing period was one of prosperity for his paper, greatly 
 relieving him from the material anxieties which are a 
 bugbear to the man wanting all his thought for larger 
 issues. At the time of his correspondence with Hay, 
 over the Berlin affair, he wrote: "You'll be glad to know 
 that the office does well. We made $85,000 last year 
 and got everything into beautiful shape. . . . This year 
 we are today $32,500 ahead and have every dollar of it 
 in bank — with supplies purchased and paid for ahead 
 besides." Getting everything into beautiful shape in- 
 cluded the adoption of Robert Hoe's latest invention, his 
 new perfecting and folding press, a machine which printed 
 18,000 Tribunes in an hour and thrust them forth all 
 ready for mailing, thus giving the paper a better capacity 
 for production than was possessed at that moment by 
 any of its rivals anywhere in the world. Osgood, the 
 Boston pubfisher, wrote to commend The Tribune as a 
 
RUTHERFORD B. HAYES 371 
 
 model of good printing and proof-reading. "It is bet- 
 ter in those respects," he declared, "than some preten- 
 tious books." Save in 1861, when Greeley had brought 
 out a regular Sunday edition. The Tribune had appeared 
 on only six days of the week. In 1879 Reid revived the 
 Sunday issue, specializing in foreign despatches and lit- 
 erary matter, and it proved a solid success. It was in 
 that year that he was asked to speak before the editorial 
 associations of New York and Ohio, and in the circum- 
 stances the address he delivered, first at Rochester and 
 then at Cincinnati, was bound to breathe a cheerful, 
 optimistic spirit. 
 
 His friends were delighted with this address. "It is 
 the best thing on journalism in the abstract that I know 
 of," Bigelow told him. Hay was as enthusiastic: "It is 
 not only admirably written and thought, but it gives to 
 laymen the best view of real journalism that has ever 
 been put in print, and to newspaper men it is simply 
 invaluable." The press at large was no less cordial. 
 Reid was wearing down a good many of the animosities 
 that had been excited in the Greeley campaign. Ene- 
 mies he still had, political and journalistic, but he was 
 more strongly intrenched against them, and if his pri- 
 vate friends had increased in number, so had his well- 
 wishers in public life. Success had something to do with 
 these developments, an unfailing emollient, but if one 
 thing more than another explains them, it is the growth 
 of Reid's reputation for editorial squareness, for political 
 fair play. The sole illustration I cite here is chosen for 
 no other reason than that it involves Roscoe Conkling, as 
 thoroughgoing and persistent a foe as Reid ever had in 
 the field of politics. Upon an occasion when attempts 
 were made to wreak political malice upon Conkling by 
 dragging into print baseless implications as to his inti- 
 mate life, Reid made some comment on the crime. For 
 
372 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 fifty years, he observed, Conkling's private character 
 had stood in the fiercest light without a stain. With 
 stinging epithets he warned the scandal-mongers to de- 
 sist. Two days later he received the following: 
 
 Utica, New York. 
 Whitelaw Reid, Esq. August 21st, 1879. 
 
 My dear Sir: 
 
 I beg you to receive my warm acknowledgments of the article in 
 yesterday's Tribune — all the more gratifying because I had no reason 
 to expect you to concern yourself in the least in my behalf in any 
 affair whatever. Your words are grateful also because adapted to 
 invoke just thought of the interests most wounded by the hideous 
 calumnies you protest against, I feel deeply obliged to you. 
 
 Your obedient servant, y, /^ 
 
 KOSCOE CONKLING. 
 
 Reid's philosophy in the matter of mud-shnging as he 
 suffered from that affliction himself comes out in a 
 characteristic episode of his comradeship with Watter- 
 son. One of the latter's subordinates took advantage of 
 his absence to slip into the "Courier-Journal" a squib at 
 Reid's expense. After giving the culprit a dressing- 
 down, Watterson wrote: "I'll abuse you, my dear Reid, 
 as much as I please, and whack-whaddle The Tribune, 
 for truly it was never so exasperating or effective. But 
 they shan't call you names in my presence, for I am now, 
 as always, sincerely your friend, H. W." Reid replied: 
 "You and I are both too old and too leathery skinned 
 (rather than thick skinned) to be much tortured by being 
 stroked the wrong way — save in the rare cases when it 
 seems to have been done with malice aforethought by a 
 friend." As a matter of fact, at about this time, the 
 general disposition in a good many quarters seems to 
 have been to stroke him the right way. There even 
 came to him, out of the blue, an opportunity in which 
 he found unalloyed contentment for years. This was his 
 election at Albany to the Board of Regents of the State 
 
RUTHERFORD B. HAYES 373 
 
 University, an election for life, enabling him to bear a 
 really constructive part in the development of New 
 York's educational system. "The millennium is near," 
 said Hay, "when Legislatures do such things." There 
 were, happily, no emoluments attached to the office, it 
 was exactly to his taste, and he accepted it with glad- 
 ness. His unanimous nomination in the Republican cau- 
 cus and the cordial spirit in which this was ratified by 
 the legislature left altogether perfect one of the happiest 
 episodes in his career. I shall have occasion to recur to 
 his work as a regent, work which culminated in his 
 designation as chancellor in 1904, but the subject must 
 here give way to the political motive. It does so in 
 these lines from the secretary of state : 
 
 Washington, 
 Dear Mr. Reid: J^^^^^^ 3oth, 1878. 
 
 I have always thought that next to being one of the wise men of 
 the East, it was a glory most desirable to be one of the Regents of 
 the University. The list of the former was short, and long since 
 made up, but of the latter there is no end, tho' it Hngers on your 
 name as its last. 
 
 I write for the purpose of congratulating you, and, besides, to 
 show that there is no danger of a war with Mexico or other grave 
 event in our foreign relations, or I should have neither time nor 
 heart for the minor affairs of life. 
 
 We expect to maintain the principles of the Message in the finan- 
 cial legislation of the country. That being done, what is there left 
 but the unending struggle to keep Government public and reputable? 
 
 Yours very truly. ^^ ^^ ^^^^^^ 
 
 The "unending struggle" was, as I have said, not 
 only Reid's task but his delight. My purpose in this 
 chapter is to exhibit the poKtical atmosphere of the 
 later seventies, and through the disclosure of Reid's atti- 
 tude toward the administration to show something of 
 what was thought of President Hayes by his contem- 
 poraries. Reid's ideas on the subject were shared by 
 
374 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 thousands throughout the country. They are histori- 
 cally representative. In recording them I may again 
 touch upon the precise nature of his political feeling, his 
 point of view and doctrine. His strongest characteristic 
 as a politician was his insistence upon the translation of 
 principles into action, his impatience with cloudy, imprac- 
 ticable theorists. The ideas enunciated in his "Scholar 
 in Politics" were all, as we have earlier seen, the ideas of 
 a determined realist. They rested upon a stanch ideal- 
 ism. To one who asked him for a "sentiment" in 1880 
 he wrote: "Americans should dignify, not degrade poli- 
 tics. They should realize that to go into politics is to 
 deal with the highest objects of human concern; and that 
 the pretended feeling of contempt for those who do, 
 merely because they do,' is the sure mark of a snob." 
 The moral of this saying lies, however, in the thoroughly 
 practical application of it which he always insisted upon. 
 A good pendant to the foregoing declaration of faith is 
 the piece of advice which Walter Phelps gave to a friend 
 who was going to the editor of The Tribune with a busi- 
 ness proposal. "Always trust to Reid's Scotch sense," 
 he said. 
 
 Like Socrates, in the "Protagoras," he hated to dis- 
 beheve the proud assertion that the art of pohtics is 
 capable of being taught, of being communicated by man 
 to man, yet he, like the philosopher, was tormented by 
 a doubt, and for much the same reason. When the 
 Athenians were about to build a ship they listened to the 
 shipwrights. "But when the question is an affair of 
 state, then everybody is free to have a say — carpenter, 
 tinker, cobbler, sailor, passenger; rich and poor, high and 
 low — anyone who likes gets up, and no one reproaches 
 him, as in the former case, with not having learned, and 
 having no teacher, and yet giving advice; evidently be- 
 cause they are under the impression that this sort of 
 
RUTHERFORD B. HAYES 375 
 
 knowledge cannot be taught." Reid noticed the exact 
 reproduction of this absurdity, the plague of the political 
 philosopher in all ages, in his own day and generation. 
 There are parts of an editorial published in The Tribune 
 early in 1878, when Hayes had been nearly a year in 
 office, which might almost have been inspired by the 
 Platonic dialogue as well as by the existing situation. I 
 cite them herewith: 
 
 This is the only part of the world where experience is not supposed 
 to be of any use in managing the affairs of a great Nation. With us 
 the pursuit of political advancement became long ago a demoralizing 
 occupation. So many thousands went into it for the most sordid 
 purposes, and followed it in the most disreputable methods, that 
 "politician" became a term of reproach. A place under govern- 
 ment, instead of reflecting lustre on the man who held it, rather 
 exposed him to suspicion. It is true that we can point to a few men, 
 in Congress and elsewhere, who have devoted their lives to public 
 aff^airs with an uprightness, dignity, and patriotic spirit which the 
 whole country recognizes. But they are brilliant exceptions. Office- 
 getting in the main is only a vulgar trade, and a man is hardly quali- 
 fied to succeed in it until he has rid himself of high ideas and fine 
 scruples. 
 
 But in the reaction against political corruption which has agitated 
 the country during the past six or seven years, we are in danger of 
 committing a mischievous piece of extravagance. We must not for- 
 get that governing the United States is an art, and a very difficult 
 art, and it cannot be fearned in a week or two by smart lawyers, mer- 
 chants, ministers, and authors, who have had no experience in the 
 management of men and parties. The reformers of our day are 
 too much inclined to consider it the highest recommendation of a 
 candidate for a political post that he is "no politician"; which is 
 much' as if they should undertake to correct the evil tendencies of 
 the stage by insisting that all plays should be performed by men 
 who are "no actors." It is not usual to value a doctor for his igno- 
 rance, or to select gentlemen who never practised law for elevation 
 to the bench, however highly they may be distinguished for general 
 intelligence and personal virtue. But the principles of common 
 sense which are so rigorously applied to the liberal professions are 
 too often forgotten when we come to deal with affairs of state. The 
 doctrinaire reformer believes that he can practise one of the most 
 delicate of arts without having learned how, and that the right way 
 
376 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 to govern a political party is to put it under the care of persons who 
 have no practical knowledge of the mechanism of politics. 
 
 This is pestilent nonsense. The country is governed by parties, 
 and probably always will be, and the management of parties requires 
 a certain tact, adroitness, and worldly wisdom which are only gained 
 by long experience. These qualities are perfectly consistent with 
 high moral principle, and they are essential to the first order of states- 
 manship. Mr. Lincoln possessed them. Mr. Hayes lacks them. 
 Some of the counsellors with whom Mr. Hayes has surrounded him- 
 self lack them still more wofully than he does. 
 
 The plea here advanced for a sounder administra- 
 tive technic constitutes the burthen of Reid's criticism 
 throughout this administration — and with criticism he 
 kept The Tribune plentifully supplied. He gave Hayes 
 loyal support, but, as he frankly said at the beginning, 
 he gave it vi^ith "no disposition to gush." He was equally 
 resolved to bestow praise when it was deserved and to 
 apply censure when it was due, and the record of the 
 four years discloses an open-minded independence as 
 marked as that of the paper when it was nominally at 
 odds with its historic party. The tone of The Tribune 
 may perhaps best be indicated by citation of the fact 
 that its weighty service to the RepubHcans through its 
 exposure of the Cipher Despatches was performed with- 
 out any abatement, at any time, of its attacks upon 
 Republican shortcomings. Reid's attitude was deter- 
 mined by that "Scotch sense" in which Walter Phelps 
 had such faith. Though he had as much liking as respect 
 for Hayes he estimated his abilities and temperament 
 too coolly to expect miracles at his hands. He looked 
 for prudence rather than brilliance in the new President, 
 and most historians will agree, I fancy, that in this he 
 was right. He had, also, a lively sense of the stubborn- 
 ness of some of the President's problems, and was espe- 
 cially inclined to give him the utmost possible time in 
 the settlement of the most trying of them all, the paci- 
 
RUTHERFORD B. HAYES 377 
 
 fication of the South. The trouble there was doubtless 
 too deep-seated, too wide-spread, too hopelessly entan- 
 gled with conditions engendered by the war, to be re- 
 moved in a twinkhng by any executive order; time alone 
 could work the desired appeasement of sullen passions. 
 But much could be accomphshed by putting an end to 
 Grant's policy of military intervention, and this Hayes 
 did. 
 
 When he withdrew the federal troops from South 
 Carohna, handing over that State to Democratic control, 
 he unquestionably went a long way toward consolidating 
 the solid South as a subversive factor in our politics. 
 Still, Reid was not one of those within his own party 
 who blamed him for choosing what was, indeed, the only 
 rational and decent path out of the imbroglio. How 
 Republican leaders differed on this subject I may show 
 through an interchange of notes between Blaine and 
 Reid. The former wrote as follows: 
 
 Augusta, Maine. 
 
 , , n* r. April 1 2th, 1877. 
 
 My dear Mr. Reid: ^ 
 
 I can't go the new pohcy. Every instinct of my nature rebels 
 against it, and I feel an intuition amounting to an inspiration that 
 the North in adopting it is but laying up wrath against the day of 
 wrath. In any event its success means the triumph of the Demo- 
 cratic party, against which I wage eternal war! Carthago delenda 
 est. One hundred years ago today Henry Clay was born, and now 
 none read him or think of him, and in the next generation as few will 
 know him as now know Fisher Ames — the most eloquent man that 
 ever spake in the H. R., except Winter Davis. When I remember 
 the engrossing enthusiasm with which as a college freshman in 1844 
 I ran and rushed and roared for Clay and see now that his centennial 
 is unheeded and unknown, I have a fresh appreciation of Solomon's 
 wisdom and of the "vanity of human wishes." "We all do fade as 
 
 ^ J^^f-" Hastily and truly. j ^ g^^^^ 
 
 Reid was no less perturbed than Blaine by the advan- 
 tages accruing to the Democrats through the new move. 
 
378 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 But in his reply he goes straight to the essential point, 
 necessarily sweeping aside all questions of party success 
 
 or defeat: 
 
 New York, 
 
 My dear Mr. Blaine: ^ 3 . 77- 
 
 I wish you did not feel bound to oppose the Southern policy of the 
 Administration. I have no sort of faith in a local government which 
 can only be propped up by foreign bayonets; and if negro suffrage 
 means that as a permanency then negro suffrage is itself a failure, 
 just as Irish suffrage has proved itself a failure in the City of New 
 
 Very truly yours, Whitelaw Reid. 
 
 Subsequent events did nothing to alter his view of the 
 matter. That the Hayes policy failed to placate its 
 beneficiaries, that it did not divide the soKd South, and 
 thereby justify itself in the eyes of the President's Repub- 
 Hcan critics, gave him no surprise at all, for he had never 
 imagined such results as possible. He knew the South 
 too well, and down to the end he insisted that belief in 
 government aid for internal improvements and the de- 
 velopment of material resources, protection of special 
 industries, and even toleration of dubious political meth- 
 ods, as steps toward real reconcihation, was only a pleas- 
 ant delusion. Nevertheless, he saw that the Repubhcan 
 policy was at bottom conciliatory, humane, and just, the 
 history of parties offering no parallel for "the magna- 
 nimity it extended and the generous confidence it reposed 
 in its vanquished enemies," and on that summing up of 
 the moral issues involved, the issues which he felt to be 
 paramount, his defense of Hayes in the South rested. 
 
 On the two other salient topics in the history of the 
 administration, the currency and civil service reform, he 
 was less at ease, despite the signal progress made in both 
 directions. The fact was, of course, that Hayes dis- 
 counted his good faith in these matters by his want of 
 political acumen. They needed political nursing, which 
 
RUTHERFORD B. HAYES 379 
 
 was the last by-product of statesmanship of which he 
 had any knowledge, or for which, to be sure, he had any 
 sympathy. He had an exaggerated confidence in the 
 power of the veto, or, if not that, a certain behef in its 
 consolatory function, as the outward and visible sign of 
 a duty done. Reid liked the vetoes, which he once de- 
 scribed as going like pistol-shots straight to the mark, 
 solid, compact, and irresistible. He found too frequent 
 recourse to them equally symptomatic of fidelity to prin- 
 ciple and inadequacy in dealing with the conditions pro- 
 moting them. It was the old story of the needed ounce 
 of prevention. If Hayes had been more sagacious in 
 co-ordinating the executive and legislative branches of 
 the government, there would have been fewer occasions 
 for those pistol-shots. It was very early in his adminis- 
 tration that the silver heresy raised its horrid head. 
 Within eight months of his inauguration, in fact, the 
 engineers of the Bland bill, which in effect gave the 
 market value of a dollar to a piece of metal worth ninety- 
 three cents, was rushed through the House, and while 
 that body was preponderantly Democratic, the measure 
 owed its passage also to some Republican support. In 
 other words, the President was not so far the leader of his 
 party as to keep it united at his back, a circumstance 
 which Reid found it increasingly difficult to accept with- 
 out complaint. 
 
 Through the Act of January 14th, 1875, resumption 
 was legally bound to be put into effect on January ist, 
 1879. Nevertheless, the inflationists in Congress could 
 be relied upon to intrigue for repeal down to the last 
 minute; in the meantime the silverites won enough suc- 
 cess still further to encourage loose thinking on financial 
 poficy; and as he went on with the fight, never knowing 
 what the next day might bring forth, Reid attributed a 
 good deal of the prevailing uncertainty to the President's 
 
38o THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 political ineptitude. No one could surpass Hayes in 
 his resolution to re-establish specie payment. Almost 
 any seasoned politician could have shown him how to 
 strengthen his campaign for it. Only he wouldn't be 
 shown. Congressmen complained that he was "unap- 
 proachable." It was not so much their grievance that 
 he wouldn't follow their advice as it was that they got 
 next to no chance to give him any. From the purest of 
 motives he kept them at a distance. "The President 
 and his Cabinet," said The Tribune, "think it well to 
 sit 'On the hills like Gods together, careless of mankind,' 
 convinced that a reforming Administration should not 
 seek to influence legislation, and that it should take pains 
 to divest itself of any relations with a party." John 
 Sherman himself was tinged with the spirit of aloofness 
 that characterized the cabinet, but he was, on the whole, 
 more encouraging to work with than was his chief. It 
 was to Sherman all along that Reid turned when he 
 looked toward Washington in the fight. If we remem- 
 ber all that that fight meant to him, the positively sacred 
 zeal which animated him in the campaign for what was, 
 indeed, the restoration of our good name as a people, we 
 shall find an emotion deeper than the mere words sug- 
 gest in this note to the secretary of the treasury: 
 
 New York, 
 My dear Mr. Sherman: J""^ '3th, 1877. 
 
 I want in a word to tell you — ^what you doubtless see from day to 
 day in The Tribune — how greatly I am delighted with your steady 
 steps toward resumption. It seems to me you have the game in 
 your own hands, but I am most anxious that you should be so 
 clearly within sight of success before next winter, that Congress may 
 have no excuse for interference. If you see any way in which we 
 can more effectively help you to this end, pray command me. 
 
 Very truly yours. ^hitelaw Reid. 
 
 P. S. I am afraid of the silver business, but in view of the greater 
 issues, want to put off quarrelhng with your shrewd compromise on 
 it as tong as possible. vy p 
 
RUTHERFORD B. HAYES 381 
 
 Sherman had nowhere sturdier or more constant back- 
 ing than that which he received in The Tribune. It was 
 critical backing. Reid saw dangers as well as advan- 
 tages in the famous issue of gold 4 per cents in 1877, and 
 candidly pointed them out. But he aided in assuring the 
 success of that bond flotation, which steadied the public 
 credit, and throughout the remaining period of spade 
 work for the coming of resumption the editorial page 
 resounded with "pistol-shots" of his own, arguments 
 following up the furthest intricacies of the subject with 
 minute logic and with a high moral passion. I empha- 
 size the latter point as significant of a trait. Reid's 
 paean on the final step is altogether one of satisfaction in 
 the national fibre that had, when all was said, made it 
 possible. To fix ourselves once and for all upon a gold 
 basis was infinitely more than to decide upon a sound 
 business measure; it was to close in triumph "the grand- 
 est page in the history of the United States." It was 
 that kind of a triumph because it redeemed a national 
 pledge, saved the national honor. The laurel was for 
 Sherman rather than for any other individual, but it was 
 to the people that the victory essentially belonged, a 
 people dedicating itself to the right in a matter of princi- 
 ple which sophistry had exhausted itself to obscure. 
 
 In a long talk that I once had with the late Henry 
 Adams, whose years of friendship with Reid had never 
 been in the smallest degree ruffled by their poHtical dif- 
 ferences, he spoke of The Tribune's influence upon public 
 measures with an appreciation at once cordial and humor- 
 ously rueful. It was sometimes, to his taste, a tanta- 
 lizing influence, but there was no denying its potency. 
 "I always told Whitelaw that I grudged him his success 
 against Tilden in 1876," he said, "for I wanted Tilden 
 elected — but the success was a great one. I wish White- 
 law had been on our side." He was emphatic on the 
 
382 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 political effectiveness of the paper under Reid's manage- 
 ment, an effectiveness which he attributed to his friend's 
 ability and "invincible squareness." They were of the 
 same generation. From different angles of political vision 
 they had dealt with the same events. When Adams 
 recalled for me Reid's way of leaving a definite mark 
 upon the controversies of his time he was recalling mat- 
 ters which he had himself observed at first hand, prob- 
 lems on which he had followed The Tribune's course 
 from day to day, as they came up. Resumption was one 
 of them. Beyond peradventure Reid left his mark upon 
 that, and considering the historical importance of the 
 subject, his up-hill fight for a stable currency must be 
 regarded as one of the major achievements of his career. 
 I have mentioned Reid's insistence upon the value of 
 the popular support upon which Sherman had carried 
 resumption through. It is his disposition to refer to the 
 more democratic aspects of public questions which ac- 
 counts for the growing restlessness in his comments, both 
 editorial and private, on the Hayes administration. 
 Though he was forever bearing witness to the President's 
 sincerity and never lost an opportunity to commend 
 such wisdom as he displayed, he was sometimes in posi- 
 tive despair over the indifference of the White House to 
 that "art of politics" to which we have aheady paid 
 some attention. To achieve beneficent measures you 
 had to know your public — and its representatives. To 
 move politicians you had to engage in politics. There is 
 a pathetic exclamation in one of Evarts's letters to him 
 at a time of party friction. " I do not despair," he says, 
 "of seeing a considerable warming up of real RepubKcan 
 spirit in New York State. God help a party whose agi- 
 tations are all about Customs officers!" To the latter 
 pious sentiment Reid could willingly say "Amen." But 
 in the process of warming up a real Republican spirit in 
 State or nation he believed in something more than the 
 
RUTHERFORD B. HAYES 383 
 
 enunciation of axioms, no matter how impeccable their 
 point. He had lashed the Republican party for running 
 a political poorhouse for carpetbaggers, and he was as 
 earnest in wielding the whip when on the exit of the 
 carpetbagger the office-beggar took his place. He could 
 not see, on the other hand, how a blundering application 
 of civil service reform, an application which made much 
 of the slogan without really going to the root of the 
 matter, was going actually to help the country. 
 
 What, precisely, was his point of view on this notori- 
 ously difficult subject, in the period when it was still 
 new and a source of the widest divergence between men 
 equally solicitous of good government? It is stated con- 
 cisely enough in the following extract from the editorial 
 page, dating from only a few weeks after the inaugura- 
 tion of Hayes : 
 
 What is civil service reform? Some suppose that it is nothing 
 more than a detection and suppression of corrupt practices. Others 
 think that it is merely the selection of better persons for official trust. 
 Others think of nothing but a reduction of salaries or in the number 
 of officials. On the other hand, there are many foes and some 
 friends of civil service reform who suppose that it involves the crea- 
 tion of an office-holding class, with appointments and promotions 
 governed bysome cast-iron rule of competitive examination. In all 
 these notions there is more or less of error. It is desirable to break 
 up corrupt rings, but that is not all. It is desirable to get faithful 
 and honorable men for office, to cut off sinecures, to reduce salaries 
 as far as the efficiency of the service will permit, and to stimulate 
 effort and fidelity by the hope of promotion. But a genuine reform 
 of the civil service means all these things and a great deal more. It 
 means, in a word, that public business should be transacted, like 
 private business, on business principles. Altogether the best epitome 
 of civil service reform was the angry criticism of the politician who 
 said of Postmaster-General Jewell, "Curse the fellow, he wants to 
 run his department exactly as if it were a factory." 
 
 In a phrase, common sense was his panacea for civil 
 service reform. It made him exacting, and at the same 
 time it kept him from asking too much. In printing 
 the long series of slashing articles on the subject by Gail 
 
384 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 Hamilton which made such a stir at the time, he was at 
 pains to point out that her sarcasms would have been 
 far less effective if it had not been for the twaddle of 
 superserviceable newspapers heralding every step of the 
 administration, and the unwise pomp of speeches and 
 pronunciamentos wherewith one or two members of the 
 cabinet were wont to sound the civil service trumpet 
 before it. "Is it reasonable to suppose," The Tribune 
 asked, "that every appointment by a new Administra- 
 tion shall be that of ideal civil service reformers ? ' I am 
 a Spiritualist,' said Ohver Johnson, 'but I am not a 
 damned fool.' We are civil service reformers, but we do 
 not expect impossibilities, and are sadly conscious that 
 the millennium has not arrived." He would not accept 
 civil service reform as a kind of mystical rite, automati- 
 cally cleansing and fortifying a candidate for office, and 
 neither was he prepared to ignore the superior claims of 
 a rival candidate simply because the latter had not suf- 
 fered the same laying on of hands. 
 
 I interpolate here a letter from Hamilton Fish, Grant's 
 former secretary of state, because it is germane to the 
 subject, and if incidentally it revives the name and fame 
 of a faithful pubKc servant, William Hunter, of Rhode 
 Island, that surely does no harm. He entered the gov- 
 ernment service on May 22d, 1829, as a lower-grade 
 clerk in the Department of State. Fifty years later he 
 was serving as second assistant secretary, and in recog- 
 nition of his uninterrupted labors Mr. Fish wrote a trib- 
 ute which Reid printed as an editorial, offering "a re- 
 freshing example of the difference between real and sham 
 civil service reform." The letter follows: 
 
 GlencIyfFe, 
 Garrison, N. Y. 
 
 Mv DEAR Mr. Reid: ^^^ '7th. 1879. 
 
 Can you give space in your issue of the 22nd to the accompanying 
 notice of a sort of "Golden Wedding"? Mr. Hunter deserves all 
 
RUTHERFORD B. HAYES 385 
 
 that I say of him. He is laborious, intelligent, accomplished, master 
 of several languages, faithful to all the requirements of his position. 
 He is a thorough " Index " of the Department. On one occasion the 
 Netherlands Minister called on me asking what he claimed as a 
 right under an old treaty of 1782. The treaty stood on our books 
 without any indication of abrogation or of its being obsolete. After 
 the interview with the Minister I mentioned its purport to Hunter, 
 who immediately replied, "Why, that treaty was denounced by Mr. 
 Adams, while Secretary of State." I requested him to bring me the 
 correspondence. Within half an hour he returned, bringing two or 
 more volumes of records, saying, "I was mistaken. It was not Mr. 
 Adams who denounced it; it was Mr. Monroe, while he was Secre- 
 tary." But there it was. The denunciation had occurred about 
 fifteen years before Hunter had entered the Department, but it was 
 familiar to him. This is only a "sample." The clue, thus given, on 
 the instant, led to a very interesting and somewhat protracted cor- 
 respondence, which resulted in the abandonment of the claim. 
 
 Hunter has enjoyed the confidence of such men as Van Buren, 
 Livingston, McLane, Forsyth, Webster, Clayton, Everett, Buchanan, 
 Cass, Marcy, Seward, and I doubt not he has that of Mr. Evarts. 
 It seems to me that fifty years of such service deserves some notice 
 and recognition. Those years have been passed in the closet of the 
 State Department, in quiet and in seclusion. Their labors have not 
 attracted the public eye or public recognition to him who sedulously 
 and ably performed them. Why should not such service be pen- 
 sioned as well as that of a few years in mihtary employ? 
 
 Hunter's advancement from post to post is not exceptional in the 
 Department of State. In fact, such is the rule, and has for years 
 been the practice in that Department. The Register of the Depart- 
 ment shows persons still employed whose appointment dates from 
 1840, 1849, 1852, and that nearly every Clerk has been introduced 
 into the lower grades (and after preliminary trial) and advanced 
 step by step. When I left the Department (and I think that the 
 same still is the case) every Head of a Bureau, and every one of the 
 Higher Clerks (with the exception of the Bureaux of Finance and 
 Translation, which are exceptional in their requirements) had been 
 gradually advanced from the lowest grades. But, somehow or 
 other, the fact of a very perfect system, which has long obtained in 
 that Department, of trial, examination, of promotion only on such 
 trial, has failed to attract the notice of the theoretical advocates of 
 "Civil Service Reform," who have written such beautiful essays and 
 reports, and who produce such stupendously insignificant results. 
 
 Do not understand me as undervaluing the importance of a thor- 
 oughly practical Civil Service. But let it be practical, not poetical 
 or merely theoretic. The absolute right of appointment to office on 
 
386 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 a competitive examination may introduce into the public service 
 intelligent but sometimes very impracticable persons, and the same 
 rule, applied to promotions, will often saddle the Government with 
 some very inefficient if not improper officers. Something, which 
 mere "Competitive Examination" does not disclose, is needed, be- 
 side intelligence and education, to make a good Clerk. Excuse this 
 digression. Hunter was not appointed on a competitive examina- 
 tion, nor under the poetical theory of Civil Service. 
 
 Very truly yours, ^t t- 
 
 •^ ■' "^ Hamilton Fish. 
 
 There are practical as v^^ell as "poetical" elements in 
 the civil service record of President Hayes as it has passed 
 into history, a record w^hich I am not in any case con- 
 cerned to challenge. What Reid thought about it, how- 
 ever, is important here, not only as forming part of the 
 tale of his relation to the administration, but as reflect- 
 ing a large body of contemporary judgment. He w^as 
 not disposed to traverse it at all captiously when the 
 time came to look back upon it as a whole, and while it 
 was in the making he was frequently its defender as 
 well as its critic. He applauded the soundness — and the 
 promptitude — of the effort through which Hayes sought 
 to divorce government service from partisan committee 
 work, pitilessly depriving office-holders of the joys of 
 poHtical activity. He could not applaud when he saw 
 the very purpose of the President go awry because of 
 amateurish management, so that, as he said, the new 
 poKcy now outran the most visionary theorist, and then 
 halted, limped, and broke down utterly in the most 
 capricious and confusing manner. Moreover, he was 
 clearly aware of the fact that Hayes was not, after all, 
 a statuesque embodiment of the starchiest political pro- 
 prieties, but an ordinary man, like unto others in the 
 every-day world, who occasionally descended from the 
 empyrean and mingled in the dust and noise of terrestrial 
 fights. Did he really hold himself unyieldingly aloof 
 from meddhng with caucuses and conventions? Or did 
 
RUTHERFORD B. HAYES 387 
 
 he manipulate Ohio to get Mr. Stanley Matthews into 
 the Senate, and Pennsylvania to keep Mr. Kelley in the 
 House of Representatives? Old, more or less "local," 
 and thereby irrelevant, questions they may seem now, 
 but to renew them is to envisage an aspect of the time, 
 and to understand a httle better why Hayes didn't get 
 a second term. It was not in The Tribune alone that 
 they were posed. All manner of observers were asking 
 them, and asking them because they bore heavily on 
 the matter of party health. ' 
 
 Grant went to a vicious extreme when he plumped for 
 party discipline, party organization, at any cost. Hayes 
 went to another, which if not at all vicious was equally 
 maladroit, when, as in the once celebrated case of the 
 New York Custom House, he was more stubborn than 
 discreet, ran against the Tenure of Office Act, and got 
 himself more than ever at loggerheads with the Senate. 
 It was this latter type of trouble which Reid especially 
 deplored. He saw how contention between the White 
 House and Congress imperilled the welfare of important 
 measures. He saw also the harmful reaction of such dis- 
 cord upon national politics. Others saw it, as I have 
 said, including many of the most devoted Republicans. 
 Hayes looked on with what can only be described as a 
 kind of confident simplicity. His attitude is thus re- 
 ported by one of The Tribune's Washington correspon- 
 dents at the beginning of the administration: 
 
 Washington, 
 
 rx Tiir T, June 15th, 1877. 
 
 Dear Mr. Reid: 
 
 I had a long talk with the President last night in the course of 
 which I told him that there was danger that by occasional departures 
 from Civil Service ideas in his appointments he would lose the sup- 
 port of the class of men whose friendship was fessential to his success. 
 He replied that he apprehended more danger from the antagonism 
 of the other sort of men — the machine politicians — but that he was 
 not much troubled about the North. If his Southern pohcy worked 
 
388 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 right all would be well. His talk confirmed my impression that he 
 thinks the Civil Service Reformers will be his friends anyway, and 
 that he must conciliate the old party leaders by giving them a hberal 
 share of patronage. It is the policy that defeated Chase's ambition. 
 The President seemed surprised that there should be any dissatisfac- 
 tion with his course, and characterized it as the friction necessary 
 in the starting of a new Administration. He mentioned a number 
 of men who I know have been criticizing him sharply of late, as hav- 
 ing recently expressed delight at the way the Administration is 
 runnmg. ^^^ ^^^j^ ^^^^^^ ^^ ^^ ^^^^^^^^ 
 
 The task of diffusing political contentment turned out 
 to be not half so easy as it looked. Some of the severest 
 of his critics were to be found amongst his closest friends 
 and supporters. There was no stancher Hayes man in 
 the country than William Henry Smithy and he was 
 writing to Reid, in great anxiety for the fate of the 
 administration, almost as soon as the new regime was 
 established. Hayes was too much, he thought, in the 
 hands of injudicious advisers. Stanley Matthews was a 
 poor mentor, and there were one or two members of the 
 cabinet who were scarcely any better. "There is a 
 great lack of political sagacity there," said Smith, "and 
 the President in his uncertainty has adopted a mode best 
 described by the word 'drifting' — ^very sure to result in 
 disaster." Stanley Matthews and his influence made a 
 terribly sore spot for many good Republicans. He was 
 the Ohioan (later an associate justice of the United 
 States Supreme Court) who in 1877 was elected to the 
 Senate, taking the seat vacated by John Sherman on his 
 entry into the cabinet. Hayes had got him into the 
 Senate by persuading Garfield to stand aside from the 
 contest, and by other methods which, as we have seen. 
 The Tribune thought came under the head of "manipu- 
 lation." Gail Hamilton, in the satirical articles afore- 
 mentioned, was never wittier or more biting than when 
 
RUTHERFORD B. HAYES 389 
 
 she came to Stanley Matthews and all that his identifi- 
 cation with the White House implied. Incidentally she 
 paid some of her tartest compliments to Hayes. Their 
 tartness and their truth moved John Hay to glee. "Not 
 Pomeroy, or Butler, or Boss Tweed himself," he de- 
 clared, "ever attempted to run an administration in the 
 interest of his own crowd as this model reformer has 
 done." But it took the President's Olympian tendency 
 to stir Hay beyond the assuagements of humor. There 
 was an instance when Hayes disagreed with Governor 
 CuIIom, of Illinois, over the latter's action on certain 
 silver legislation, and was reported to have expressed 
 himself rather too dogmatically on the subject. "He is 
 not goddlemity and governor of Illinois both," wailed 
 Hay in his disgust. 
 
 Reid's own letters contain countless passages on the 
 political setbacks which he foresaw as the result of the 
 President's inexpert leadership. "The Administration is 
 in deep water," he wrote to his friend General Comly, 
 minister at Honolulu, "mainly because of the green- 
 horns in the Cabinet. The objects of the Administra- 
 tion are all right. I only hope it may have better luck 
 in getting hold of prominent men who know how to 
 accomplish them. It looks now as if the storm would 
 break first on Schurz — who certainly first deserves it." 
 That concluding remark contrasts a little unexpectedly 
 with Reid's old appreciation of Schurz when they had 
 worked together as campaigners. The truth is that 
 while he valued the famous orator on the stump he ques- 
 tioned his abilities as an executive, and came to have 
 many reasons for criticising him in that capacity. They 
 had a delightfully spirited correspondence over one or 
 two cabinet performances for which he was inclined to 
 assign some responsibility to the secretary of the interior. 
 It related to issues too long buried for me to revive them 
 
390 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 now, but I must detach a single fragment from a letter 
 of Reid's to show how his discontent led him to reason 
 with headquarters: "Only one word more. If you gen- 
 tlemen in Washington suppose that this administration 
 can afford such slips as the Butler business, the Schneider 
 business and half a dozen others, you are mistaken. To 
 us here it seems now in greater peril than at any moment 
 since Inauguration Day. The danger is not chiefly on 
 account of its Southern policy, its financial policy, or 
 any other honest fulfilment of its pledges. These will 
 bring hosts of enemies, but the real danger is that its own 
 acts may so cripple its defenders that they cannot up- 
 hold it against next winter's revolt." Even while refus- 
 ing, roundly and in detail, to accept Reid's strictures 
 as they applied to himself, Schurz could not but say: 
 "The dangers to the Administration you speak of I see 
 very clearly." If only the President and his counsellors 
 all together could have seen them ! 
 
 There is something almost comic about the effort 
 Hayes and Evarts made to combine their aims on an 
 appointment to the English mission with a diplomatic 
 excursion into Pennsylvania politics. They thought they 
 could sup with the clan Cameron, the dominant Repub- 
 lican faction in that commonwealth, and dispense with 
 the proverbial long spoon. Naturally, they were scorched 
 for their pains. Wayne MacVeagh was involved in the 
 mess, against his will. He didn't in the least like it, and 
 said so to Reid with his usual pungency, but his scorn- 
 fulest animadversions were for the "bad politics" of the 
 whole affair. The letter of sympathy he received con- 
 tains perhaps the gist of philosophic comment on the 
 character of the Hayes administration : 
 
 New York, 
 Dear MacVeagh: October 27th. 1877- 
 
 I think you are perfectly right in your criticism and complaint. 
 I have said the same things even more earnestly to the friends of the 
 
RUTHERFORD B. HAYES 391 
 
 Administration, and as occasion offered to its members. The trouble 
 
 in our politics is that we seem to be perpetually oscillating between 
 
 fellows who want to do wrong and know how, and the fellows who 
 
 want to do right and don't know how. Just now the latter chaps 
 
 have the ascendancy. If the good Lord would only send us men 
 
 who add to the innocence of the dove a little of the wisdom of the 
 
 serpent, what a blessed relief it would be. 
 
 Very truly yours, „, „ 
 
 ■' ■^ •' Whitelaw Reid. 
 
 The weakness of the administration thus good-na- 
 turedly, if a trifle sadly, diagnosed, requires little further 
 illustration or analysis. It explains the wide-spread dis- 
 satisfaction with Hayes to which I have referred, and the 
 ebbing of Republican confidence. I may turn now to 
 the eflForts made by Reid toward the strengthening of 
 party lines. He did what he could to stimulate the 
 leaders to repair the mischief done, and circumstances 
 presently enabled him to make a signal contribution to 
 the stiflFening of Republican morale. 
 
CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 THE CIPHER DESPATCHES 
 
 The secretary of state was one of Reid's intimates. 
 With him it was always possible to be outspoken on the 
 political situation. It was not so easy to spur him to 
 action. Evarts took large views, generalized in san- 
 guine fashion, and gave but superficial attention to de- 
 tails. The keeping of political fences in order, a duty 
 familiar to skilled party men the world over, figured in 
 his mind, I think, as vaguely akin to the mending of 
 barriers on his farm — a necessity which in the comforta- 
 ble nature of things would be looked after by underhngs 
 in charge. In the summer of 1877, when the President 
 was about to visit him in Vermont, Evarts asked Reid 
 to join them, and added: "I hope your forecast of the 
 future of the Republican party is as bright as mine. I 
 think it has the lead of politics in its hands once more 
 and I have no fear of its throwing itself out." Let the 
 reader imagine how this must have struck an observer 
 aheady beginning to wonder how the party was to be 
 saved from collapse ! The secretary's optimism would 
 have been decidedly less complacent if he could have 
 shared his correspondent's sense of the mutability of 
 State elections. Reid thus endeavored to give him an 
 admonitory hint: "I wish I could feel quite so hopeful 
 as you do about the immediate future. We need to 
 carry Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York, as it seems to 
 me, in order to prevent a good deal of a storm at Wash- 
 ington in the autumn. If we are to carry New York, 
 
 392 
 
THE CIPHER DESPATCHES 393 
 
 I don't just yet see how, and shall be delighted if when 
 I get up to Windsor, you can tell me," Evarts didn't 
 wait until the visit to enKghten him. By return mail 
 he hastened to reply: "While you are here I will give 
 you the process by which New York can be carried, but 
 for general method I may now say that it is to be carried 
 as Vermont always is, by having votes enough." Could 
 colder comfort be offered to a planner for party rejuvena- 
 tion? Such playful conversation was, of course, amus- 
 ing. It gave no lift to the practitioner of the art of 
 politics. 
 
 Reid's anxiety over the fall elections is easily under- 
 standable. Though the first year of the Hayes adminis- 
 tration was an "off year," with no congress to be elected 
 and nothing really at stake in the national field, it was 
 never too early to look ahead for the conservation of 
 Repubhcan prestige. Business was settKng, the country 
 was slowly resuming its prosperous stride. But labor 
 troubles were brewing and even coming to a boil, the 
 strike menace was increasing, and the organization of 
 working men, not only industrially but politically, was 
 pointing the way for that hberahzing of party thought 
 which has been going on ever since. The time was ripe 
 for a new cultivation of poKtical ideas, a new orienta- 
 tion of poKtical forces — in Reid's opinion, of Republican 
 forces and ideas. He knew well enough, without any 
 aid from Evarts, how a State was to be carried. It was 
 by the simple process of showing the electorate why it 
 should "go Republican." The real difficulty resided in 
 bringing that process to bear upon the voter, in getting 
 the Republican leaders to compose their little private 
 enmities and to work together for the common good. 
 When the academic strain in Evarts's temperament 
 offered him but little hope, he sought in other quarters 
 also the needed practical co-operation. Garfield was an 
 
394 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 old political hand, steadily rising in influence. He wrote 
 to him: 
 
 New York, 
 
 -, -, March i6th, 1878. 
 
 My dear General: 
 
 I was sorry to miss you the other day when you were here — espe- 
 cially because I wanted to have a httle frank talk about the Repub- 
 lican prospects in this State. You and I agree in believing that the 
 Administration really wishes for the success of the Republican party, 
 because it really believes in Republicanism. Many of our New 
 York pohticians, you know, take a different view. 
 
 Now the truth is that partly because they take a different view, 
 and partly because the Administration thus far has done little except 
 disorganize, the Republican party in this State is drifting terribly. 
 There is at this moment imminent danger that the new greenback 
 organization may draw to it odds and ends enough to give it control 
 of the next Senatorial election. I can't conceive of any single elec- 
 tion result more disastrous to all the good things of Republicanism 
 — honest finance, honest payment of our debts, and, in order that 
 these may be possible, sturdy resistance to the devouring demands 
 of the soHd South. 
 
 I have no candidate for Senator, and care far less who is to be the 
 man than that he should at all events be a Republican — and be a 
 Repubhcan because he believes that the above is Republicanism. 
 The talk about my being at work for Conkling is sheer bosh. I have 
 not even spoken to Mr. Conkling in seven years, nor exchanged mes- 
 sages with him directly or indirectly. But we dreadfully want some- 
 body here in New York — either in official position or understood in 
 some way to have the backing, of the Administration — who has the 
 capacity to organize and pull together our factions. If this be done 
 I really think we can save a number of Congressmen in this State 
 next fall, save the Senator, and have a fighting chance for the "elec- 
 toral vote in 1880. 
 
 Last summer at Windsor I tried my best to impress upon Mr. 
 Evarts that some such man as Gov. Fenton ought to be called in to 
 get up our organization again. I don't insist upon him, or upon any 
 one man, and don't urge that any office need necessarily be given to 
 anybody in order to get the work done. But somehow or another 
 the work ought to be done, and done soon, or we shall be worse off 
 in this State next fall than we are now. 
 
 It seems to me the great duty of the hour for Republicans is to 
 quit quarrelfing, and try to get together. I don't believe either the 
 Administration or the Congressional side entirely free from blame, 
 and I don't believe any good can result from postponing work until 
 
THE CIPHER DESPATCHES 395 
 
 factions can fight out the question which side is the more blame- 
 worthy. 
 
 I wanted to talk this over with you, because I thought you would 
 see with me the vital importance of having something practical 
 done. ^ 
 
 ' Whitelaw Reid. 
 
 There is a touch of humor in what followed. Appeal 
 from the secretary of state to the congressman from 
 Ohio brought the problem neatly back — to the secretary 
 of state. "I have had a long talk with Evarts," Gar- 
 field repKed, "and showed him your letter." However, 
 the carrying of coals to Newcastle was not altogether 
 without its effect. Under reiteration of the cry of alarm 
 Evarts began to reaKze that action of some sort was im- 
 perative. "He seems to be more alive," said Garfield, 
 "to the necessity of organizing the party in New York 
 than I expected to find him. I have been greatly dis- 
 couraged by the conduct of the Administration — in refer- 
 ence to the future of our party — and am now only a little 
 less so than I was a fortnight ago. Evarts said he ex- 
 pected to see you soon, and I hope something can be 
 done in the matter of which you write." It was impos- 
 sible, in the circumstances, to subsist on "hope" alone, 
 and whatever Evarts may have had to say at the meeting 
 foreshadowed in Garfield's letter, it left Reid unappeased 
 as to the shortcomings of the administration. His fears 
 for the future deepened daily. Early in March of this 
 year he had been warning the party that a day of reckon- 
 ing would come. A few days later The Tribune was 
 telhng Hayes, with chapter and verse to prove it, that 
 thus far his administration had been a failure; and in 
 April an editorial on the political disorder of the time 
 opened with the chilly remark that the death of the 
 Republican party was considered fairly certain, not only 
 by many of its foes but by some of its friends. The 
 
396 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 reorganization of the Republican congressional committee 
 shortly afterward, and talk of tendering the party lead- 
 ership to Hayes, did nothing to alter Reid's pessimistic 
 frame of mind. He still found the outlook gloomy, still 
 held to the opinion that only an heroic purgation would 
 repair the damage done by administrative folly. "The 
 Republican party would be very much improved by 
 experience of defeat," he said, and he was only rather 
 bitterly amused when as the result of observations in 
 this vein he heard from Washington that divers people 
 in that city had been made "unhappy" by the tone of 
 The Tribune. Merely to make them unhappy was not 
 enough. He wanted action. And just as it seemed next 
 to impossible to get that, the opportunity arrived for 
 him to take, himself, a decisive hand in the favorable 
 transformation of affairs. It came with the reopening of 
 the controversy over the election of Hayes. 
 
 The head of King Charles the First was a no more per- 
 sistent intruder upon the flow of Mr. Dick's narrative 
 than Tilden was upon the tenor of national politics fol- 
 lowing the verdict of the electoral commission. That 
 verdict gave him, in his own eyes and in those of thou- 
 sands of ardent supporters, the status of a claimant whose 
 case might at any moment be profitably revived, and as 
 the event proved he was disposed to enforce to the utter- 
 most his fancied lien upon the Democratic party. His 
 tenacity was generally understood. Yet the distance to 
 which it might carry him was a question on which light 
 was a little slow in forthcoming. One of the interesting 
 aspects of the matter is supplied by the atmosphere 
 characterizing certain of his personal relations. These 
 had not been seriously shaken by the acerbities of the 
 campaign. Political antagonism was one thing, private 
 friendship another, and those of Tilden's opponents who 
 knew him well were disinclined to infer, from even the 
 
THE CIPHER DESPATCHES 397 
 
 murkiest of election mysteries, anything like the scandal 
 which these really foreshadowed. While everybody ex- 
 pected the Democrats to take time to get over their cha- 
 grin, and allowed the fullest possible margin of that con- 
 soling element to their leader, nobody, meanwhile, re- 
 garded the latter with any very grave suspicions. The 
 attitude reflected in Reid's correspondence is on the 
 whole one of good-humored understanding. Naturally, 
 Tilden was irreconcilable. But he would get over that 
 and acquiesce in an apparently closed decision. Who 
 could blame him for not being in a hurry to do so? Nev- 
 ertheless, his conduct in the future was bound to be a 
 matter of interested speculation. "How well Hayes is 
 doing," wrote Godkin to Reid, shortly after the inaugu- 
 ration. "What will Tilden now do with the Green Seal 
 Johannisberger?" We have heard of that ambrosial 
 fluid before, and Godkin's slightly malin query raises a 
 veritable cloud of surmise. 
 
 With whom, indeed, of the old circle, was Tilden to 
 pour his delectable libations? With Evarts, as of yore? 
 With Reid? From the latter's reply it might seem that 
 he, too, doubted a continuance of the good-fellowship of 
 former days. "I cannot answer your conundrum as to 
 what Mr. Tilden wiH do now with his Green Seal," he 
 says, "but the malicious gossips here have an answer of 
 their own to it. They say he wiH drink it." He him- 
 self had handled the Democratic candidate without 
 gloves. There was smaH prospect of their ever fore- 
 gathering again in the ancient spirit, and, in fact, I can- 
 not discover that they ever did. Stifl, their friendly 
 intercourse was not altogether dropped. When Reid 
 gave a dinner to Bayard Taylor, the night before the 
 new minister to Berlin sailed for his post, he invited 
 Tilden, and the latter postponed an important business 
 trip to the West in order to accept. Evarts, detained in 
 
398 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 Washington by the public business, politely regretted 
 that he could not join the distinguished company assem- 
 bled to do honor to the poet. "Though," he wittily 
 added, "no doubt Gov. Tilden's presence will even any 
 amount of absence." It is permissible, I fancy, to sur- 
 mise that when the former advocate of the Republican 
 party before the electoral commission indited that Ches- 
 terfieldian allusion he emitted a thoughtful chuckle. 
 Evarts had ever a delicate sense of comedy, as he had 
 of the amenities. But six months later the secretary of 
 state writes another note to Reid, which in all that it 
 implies offers a good measure of the distance then sep- 
 arating Republican leaders from the Tilden of the Taylor 
 dinner: 
 
 Windsor, Vermont. 
 
 ,, A* T> October loth, 1878. 
 
 My dear Mr. Reid: 
 
 Your telegrams are splendid! Even the Ohio election [which 
 gave nine Congressmen, out of twenty, to the Republican party, and 
 greatly strengthened the cause of hard money in the state] cannot 
 ecHpse them. I expect to spend Saturday in New York and shall be 
 at the Brevoort House. I am very desirous of seeing you, as the 
 time is now ripe for the politics of "good government," which is all 
 the people care for and all the circumstances of the country need. 
 If the Republican party is but half wise and half honest it will dis- 
 tance its rival in both competitions, and hold the Government till 
 it becomes weary of well-doing. 
 
 Everybody owes The Tribune gratitude and applause in so great 
 measure that we shall have to fund the debt. 
 
 Yours very truly. ^^ ^ ^^^^^^ 
 
 The "splendid" telegrams were, of course, the famous 
 cipher despatches, translations of which developed that 
 the Democrats had sought the purchase of electoral 
 votes in the campaign of 1876. 
 
 "It is a matter," Reid once pithily wrote to me, "in 
 which The Tribune played a great role, which neither 
 rival newspapers nor Democratic historians have ever 
 
THE CIPHER DESPATCHES 399 
 
 been ready to recognize." That partisan commentators 
 should have taken pains to understate the facts is not 
 surprising. It is not so easy to understand why those 
 facts have aot received more appreciative notice in dis- 
 interested quarters. I suppose it has been due in part to 
 a conventional view of the central point at issue. The 
 narrowness of the contest between Hayes and Tilden has 
 by itself absorbed attention. The bald fact that the 
 election was disputed has overshadowed collateral events. 
 But the election of 1876 differs from that of 1800, which 
 was thrown into the House, and from that of 1824, which 
 was submitted to a like course, in this — ^that it had a 
 sequel, bringing out circumstances unprecedented by any- 
 thing in the seating of either Jefferson or John Quincy 
 Adams. Once they had entered the White House the 
 manner of their translation thither relapsed into the 
 limbo of purely academic discussion; it could have no 
 aftermath. With Hayes the aftermath was everything. 
 Consider what, as a moral certainty, would have hap- 
 pened if the cipher despatches had not been turned in- 
 side out in The Tribune. Is it not altogether probable 
 that the shortcomings of the administration would have 
 paved the way for the success of a Democratic ticket, 
 with Tilden at its head? And in such an event does not 
 the ordinary trend of human experience suggest that 
 men's minds would gradually have been adjusted to the 
 idea that he had indeed been honestly entitled to the 
 presidency in 1876? He himself, we know, would have 
 reckoned election in 1 880 as a vindication of the Democ- 
 racy in the previous campaign. But because the cipher 
 despatches were turned inside out in The Tribune, the 
 course of political events was tided over an ugly crisis, 
 and history, instead of being falsified, was everlastingly 
 set straight. Evarts could see that, as we have learned 
 from his estimate of the debt of gratitude owing to The 
 
400 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 Tribune. That is all which I am concerned to show 
 to my readers. This is not the place for an outline of 
 the cipher investigations which would follow all their 
 ramifications, through Congress and elsewhere. It is 
 the place for description of a great journalistic feat and 
 some analysis of its consequences. 
 
 The story automatically divides itself into two parts. 
 In the first suspicion is roused and confirmed, but by 
 evidence as yet too tangled to be made a weapon of con- 
 viction, and the real clew to the drama eludes all search. 
 It embraces the period of the election and drifts incon- 
 clusively through the following year. I shall note only 
 those episodes which mark the spinning of subsequently 
 important threads. Charges of fraud in the South were 
 in the air as the counts came in, early in November, but 
 several weeks elapsed before action in the Senate pro- 
 duced the first cipher. There was from the start some 
 difficulty in extorting telegraphic documents from their 
 custodians. The Western Union objected to giving up 
 the originals in its possession, and Democrats in Con- 
 gress presently showed a disposition to oppose their 
 production from any source. Meanwhile, in the case of 
 Oregon, the committee on privileges and elections felt 
 that it was on the scent of a dark secret, but could not 
 run it to earth. The Republicans of Oregon believed 
 that some $25,000 or $30,000 had been raised in New 
 York to carry out a scheme for stealing the electoral 
 vote in their State, and that Governor Tilden's intimate 
 advisers had procured the funds and started them West. 
 The committee went on, doing the best it could with the 
 testimony of its witnesses to discover the truth, testi- 
 mony offered in the ordinary way, in normal terms. 
 Then, late in January, 1877, the subject took on the 
 complications proper to a novel of Gaboriau's or a story 
 by Poe, with the appearance, in a batch of Oregon tele- 
 
THE CIPHER DESPATCHES 401 
 
 grams that had at last been forced into the light, of this 
 scintillant jewel: 
 
 Portland, 
 Samuel J. Tilden, December ist, 1876. 
 
 15 Gramercy Park, New York: 
 Heed scantiness cramp emerge peroration hot-house survivor 
 browze of pia mater doltish hot-house exactness of survivor highest 
 cunning doltish afar galvanic survivor by accordingly neglectful 
 
 merciless of senator incongruent coalesce. „ 
 
 Gabble. 
 
 The reduction of this gibberish to sense involved a 
 very simple process. The despatch was written in a 
 "Dictionary Cipher," in this case the book employed 
 being a little "Household Enghsh Dictionary" published 
 in London. As The Tribune came by and by to explain, 
 the first word of the message to be sent was sought in a 
 dictionary previously agreed upon, and the sender sub- 
 stituted for it the word which occupied the correspond- 
 ing line a certain number of pages forward or back. 
 The second word was treated in the same way, and so 
 on until the whole message had been turned into cipher. 
 The person who received it got at the translation by 
 reversing this process, and in the case of the despatch 
 just cited arrived at this result: 
 
 I shall decide every point in the case of post office elector in favor 
 of the highest Democratic elector, and grant the certificate accord- 
 ingly on morning of 6th instant. Confidential. Governor. 
 
 The "Gabble" despatch was first translated by Mr. 
 A. W. Shaw, of the Detroit "Post," and pubKshed in 
 that paper. Also, it happened that a firm in his city 
 which had had many dealings in mining stock with 
 J. H. N. Patrick, Mr. Tilden's secret agent in Oregon, 
 discovered that the telegrams bearing his signature and 
 brought out by the Senate committee were in the very 
 cipher which it had used with him. This firm revealed. 
 
402 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 under oath, to the committee, the nature of the cipher, 
 and promptly the true inwardness of a rich handful of 
 cryptic telegrams was disclosed. It told much, but not 
 by any means the whole story. That was to be post- 
 poned until The Tribune made its decisive exposures in 
 the early fall of 1878, and what I have now to relate is 
 the manner in which the groundwork for the final coup 
 was laid — Tilden himself, by the irony of fate, curiously 
 assisting in the task. 
 
 Reid took the revelations of the Oregon despatches 
 when they were first deciphered at their face value, which 
 was damning enough. They pointed irrefutably to at- 
 tempts at the purchase of an electoral vote, and he was 
 witheringly sarcastic in his editorial page on the denials 
 of those "eminent Democrats" who were suspected of 
 complicity in the plot. On Tilden in particular, how- 
 ever, his comment was necessarily modified by the states- 
 man's public repudiation of all knowledge of the use of 
 money in Oregon. "The late Democratic candidate for 
 the Presidency," he said, "has avowed his innocence; we 
 are all glad to believe him; and if he finds that he has 
 been deceived by an unworthy nephew; if bribery, and 
 cipher despatches, and all sorts of sinful games have 
 been going on in his own house without his knowledge; if 
 his telegraphic correspondence has been intercepted and 
 his dictionary purloined; if he has nourished, so to speak, 
 a viper at his dinner-table, far be it from us to gloat over 
 his family misfortunes and point them out to an unfeel- 
 ing world." If, in short, Tilden was willing to unload 
 the whole business upon the shoulders of his nephew 
 and political representative, William T. Pelton, leaving 
 the world to assume that that more zealous than scrupu- 
 lous individual had been playing naughty tricks, without 
 authority, and keeping them to himself, there was no 
 more to be said — just then. But Tilden wasn't willing 
 
THE CIPHER DESPATCHES 403 
 
 to have done with the mess, and thereby he made one of 
 his cardinal errors. The humor of this painful comedy 
 lies in his inabihty to know when he was well oflF, to stop 
 crying "Fraud!" when that was the one battle-cry cer- 
 tain to lead the Democrats to disaster. He harped on 
 the hollow theme early and late, before the inauguration 
 of Hayes and after. It adorned his address of thanks to 
 the faithful at the Manhattan Club, prior to his depar- 
 ture for Europe in the summer of 1877, and he took it up 
 again on his return. An edifying picture was that which 
 The Tribune drew of him, "with a table of figures and 
 cipher despatches in his hand, and a Little Dictionary 
 in his pocket, perpetually piping 'Fraud! Fraud!'" He 
 piped not wisely but too well. He piped so indefatigably 
 that it looked, at last, as if he were to have his day in 
 court, the worst thing that could befall him. In Janu- 
 ary, 1878, Montgomery Blair rose in the Maryland House 
 of Delegates with a memorial addressed to Congress, im- 
 pugning Hayes's title to the presidency and urging pur- 
 suit of a new judicial decision. This was followed, in 
 May, by passage through the House of Clarkson N. Pot- 
 ter's resolution calHng for investigation of alleged Repub- 
 lican ( ! ) frauds in Florida and Louisiana. By that sum- 
 mer the row was on. 
 
 Reid viewed the promotion of it with mingled disgust 
 and sktisfaction. In common with all shrewd Republi- 
 cans he was entirely willing to have the election investi- 
 gated all over again. He was convinced that his party 
 would emerge unscathed. There were even some plea- 
 surable anticipations in which it was permissible to in- 
 dulge. The Democrats, he was sure, had made a fatal 
 blunder, cooking up for themselves a petard of almost 
 immeasurable hoisting power. The "justice" they were 
 forever prating about would infallibly react upon them- 
 selves, if only it could be made to function. But justice 
 
404 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 hardly seemed the probable outcome of their too ingenious 
 preparations. The committee as constituted by Speaker 
 Randall was perfectly calculated to botch a job hypo- 
 critically conceived. The Tribune's private bard thus 
 sang its malign absurdity: 
 
 There was a young statesman named Potter, 
 Who said, "Let us now make it hotter 
 For President Hayes, and endeavor to raise 
 From the White House that impudent squatter." 
 
 So he went and consulted with Randall, 
 
 Who said, "That's not easy to handle. 
 
 For I fear we'll be building a house for Sam. Tilden, 
 
 And that game is not worth the candle." 
 
 But, says Potter, "The session's most over. 
 
 And we've all been so damaged by Grover,* 
 
 That the only thing left is to charge Hayes with theft, 
 
 Or bring suit in an action for trover." 
 
 Then they got all their workers and talkers 
 Assembled together in caucus. 
 
 And gave the Fraud yell, and said "We'll raise — well 
 Anything — so they shan't baulk us." 
 
 Then the caucus rose up and applauded 
 
 The vote that had just been recorded, 
 
 Till some one said, "Hark! comes from Gramercy Park, 
 
 A voice, saying 'I'm the Defrauded.'" 
 
 These be not precisely Miltonic numbers, but they 
 cover the case. The Potter committee unquestionably 
 got together in the sweet spirit here denoted, and it per- 
 formed its duties about as fairly, and as fruitfully, as the 
 poet led his readers to expect. From expressions of dis- 
 gust over their bad faith, and taunts of their inefficiency, 
 The Tribune presently passed to the congenial task of 
 showing the gentlemen at Washington just how the 
 
 * Governor Grover, of Oregon, the " Gabble " of the ciphers. 
 
THE CIPHER DESPATCHES 405 
 
 affair might be made to yield its clinching lesson. The 
 story of the cipher despatches here enters upon its second 
 phase, starting in midsummer, 1878, and appropriately 
 reaching its climax around the November elections. 
 
CHAPTER XXIV 
 A TRIUMPH OF JOURNALISM 
 
 The manner in which the cipher despatches were 
 brought back upon the scene, to plague their originators, 
 bears a close resemblance to some of the fortuitous proc- 
 esses of "detective" fiction. When the Senate commit- 
 tee of 1877 had finished its investigation of the election, 
 the mass of telegrams which it had compelled the West- 
 ern Union to disgorge was supposed to have gone back 
 intact to the company, for destruction. But for some 
 reason which has never been cleared up, a collection em- 
 bracing hundreds of pieces was tied up in a wrapper and 
 left lying in the committee room. There it remained 
 neglected, like a camouflaged stick of dynamite, and 
 yet not altogether forgotten. It was kept in mind all 
 along by one Bullock, a committee messenger, and he 
 remembered it especially about the time that he secured 
 an appointment to the consulate at Cologne. In fact, 
 on the eve of his departure for that bourne, he appears 
 to have had serious searchings of heart over his dubious 
 bit of salvage. He handed it over to his friend Con- 
 gressman Evans, to safeguard, and as he did so he made 
 this oracular saying: "The day may be that they will be 
 needed." The guileless Evans had no idea of what 
 "they" might be, but he was sensitive to the subtly dis- 
 reputable air of the parcel. Its fastenings had gone a 
 little loose by this time. It looked like a bundle of 
 clothes, rolled up in a newspaper and tied with twine, 
 "evidence," beyond peradventure, which seemed to say, 
 for all its harmless appearance: "Yet have I something 
 
 406 
 
A TRIUMPH OF JOURNALISM 407 
 
 in me dangerous." Evans shuddered and passed the 
 burden on to General Thomas J. Brady, second assistant 
 postmaster-general. Now, General Brady had himself 
 dabbled in electioneering waters. He was one of the 
 "visiting statesmen" whose travels into the disputed 
 States in 1876 had made that designation a household 
 term. He had been sent down to Florida by Grant, "to 
 see a fair count." Brooding over his bundle, and sniffing 
 the presence of telegrams, he finally yielded to curiosity 
 and cut the fateful twine. 
 
 He did this in 1878, while the Potter committee was 
 looking into the Florida matter. It was the psychologi- 
 cal moment for him to develop the emotion to which he 
 afterward testified. "I had discovered," he then said, 
 "that I had a large lot of Florida telegrams. I went 
 through them, and from their character I presumed that 
 there was a good deal in them. It looked as if there was 
 an immense amount of latent rascality there." Soon 
 after this, rumors of his find reached Eugene Hale, con- 
 gressman from Maine, and he mentioned them to Wil- 
 liam E. Chandler, at that time secretary of the RepubK- 
 can National Committee, later senator from New Hamp- 
 shire. Chandler had been conspicuously active in the 
 investigation of Southern fraud, and over his signature 
 had suppKed The Tribune with daily telegraphic corre- 
 spondence on the inquest in Florida. He had all along 
 deplored the return of the telegrams to the Western 
 Union, and the destruction which was understood to 
 have overtaken them. That some of the lot had escaped 
 the flames filled him with the livefiest hopes that "the 
 bonanza," the story that would be most worth the tell- 
 ing, had not been lost. When he heard Hale's news he 
 hastened to Brady's house, and from that moment the 
 fat was in the fire, its transition thence, in the usual 
 comic fashion, being aptly expedited by Democratic 
 
4o8 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 blundering. Here enters, in fact, the most maladroit of 
 all gods from the machine, the "Moses" of the ciphers, 
 or, in his own proper person, Mr. Manton Marble. 
 
 He had retired from the editorship of the "World" in 
 1876, and had become one of Tilden's closest political 
 advisers and henchmen. He was a loquacious retainer, 
 and in August, 1878, when the electoral controversy was 
 on again, he printed on the subject the most unfortunate 
 observations he ever penned. In them he appeared as 
 a pious celebrant of "the ark and shechinah of self- 
 government." There was no one like him to "provide 
 arsenals of ammunition and fashion lethal weapons to 
 the hand of every hater of fraud." Only he didn't look 
 ahead far enough to see how such weapons might haply 
 be turned against himself. He was too sure, too terribly 
 sure, of his man and his cause. Both were impregnable, 
 "always standing fast in the final citadel of Power, the 
 keen, bright sunlight of publicity." That was where 
 they presently stood, indeed, but with results of which 
 "Moses" had hardly dreamed. He hadn't the smallest 
 inkling of what Chandler was doing in Washington. 
 That gleeful Vidocq had had a most interesting session 
 with Brady over the telegrams in the latter's possession. 
 What did they decide to do? Nothing very definite. 
 They made a stout parcel of the bulk of the despatches, 
 and this Chandler disposed of in the simplest and quaint- 
 est manner. He left it on a desk in the office of General 
 Butler, the member of the Potter committee in whom 
 he had the greatest confidence. Butler was out. No 
 one else was present at the moment. But. Chandler said 
 nothing to him about it when next they met, and one of 
 the funniest passages in the subsequent inquiry as to 
 how the ciphers "got out" relates to this amiably mis- 
 chievous episode. Meanwhile Chandler, leaving the bun- 
 dle on Butler's desk, to reach the committee as the gods 
 
A TRIUMPH OF JOURNALISM 409 
 
 might direct, was supplied with a few documents — as 
 was Brady — which if used at all were likely to be used 
 at the dictation of humorously human judgment. They 
 came into play as though in pat response to Marble's 
 noble sentiment on "the keen, bright sunlight of pub- 
 licity." Chandler wrote the following letter, dating it 
 from a little town whose name, could he have seen it, 
 must have given "Moses" a premonitory thrill: 
 
 Waterloo, N. H. 
 My dear Mr. Reid: ^"S"^* 7th. 1878. 
 
 I have not seen Mr. M. Marble's last revelations; but I think it 
 would be a good time for you to ask him to explain some of the tele- 
 grams which are among those which General Butler laid before the 
 Potter committee at Washington the other day; (with multitudes of 
 others — of C. W. WooIIey's, J. F. Coyle's et id omne genus). 
 
 I send you herewith copies of some, which you may have copied, 
 and return to me those which I send you (17 pieces of paper embrac- 
 ing 29 despatches). If I were you I would not pubhsh them all, as 
 news items, but work them into an editorial or editorials on Marble's 
 letter; calling on him, as he is explaining, to explain these. By alter- 
 nately giving one not in cipher and then one in cipher much amuse- 
 ment might be created. 
 
 One serious matter. Marble may be made, and I think is, respon- 
 sible for the Cronin-Oregon fraud. He was in constant telegraphic 
 communication with Pelton on the subject and tried to make us 
 miserable on the way home from Florida by showing us his despatches. 
 I interpret the cipher despatch to him from K., Dec. 6th, as announc- 
 ing the success of the Oregon job. 
 
 Yours truly, „, 1- /^ 
 
 Wm. h. Chandler. 
 
 Starting with this gift, The Tribune's collection of 
 ciphers was rapidly increased. Chandler sent more, 
 Brady made contributions — mailing them anonymously 
 — and others came from Congressman Frank Hiscock, 
 the leading representative of the Republican case on the 
 Potter committee. With the five or six hundred de- 
 spatches received from these sources, and the numerous 
 others which publication had made available to all men, 
 
410 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 Reid was in a position to give "Moses" all the publicity 
 he wanted — if the messages could be deciphered. 
 
 Publicly he asked Marble to explain, as Chandler had 
 suggested, and when the prodding of "Moses" failed to 
 bring any response he twitted the Potter committee to 
 take steps that might yield results. That illustrious 
 body had made no progress whatever toward the osten- 
 sible object of its inquiry. It could do so, in all prob- 
 ability, if it called Pelton and Marble. What in the 
 world did the ex-editor mean when he telegraphed to the 
 claimant's nephew: "Calibre fetid geodesy linguist ket- 
 tledrum neat cattle?" Mankind wanted to know. It 
 wanted to know who "Moses" was, and who "Brazil," 
 and why "Russia" should be advised by wire to "saddle 
 Blackstone." It was plain that if the investigation failed 
 to get at the key to these cipher despatches it would be 
 a ridiculous farce. Reid tried to extract the secret from 
 Tilden himself. They met at Saratoga that summer, in 
 August, just as the pursuit was growing hotter, and long 
 afterward Reid thus related what happened: "I told 
 him that we had all the cipher despatches that went be- 
 tween his house and Florida, and asked him, laughingly, 
 for the key. I told him we couldn't make head or tail 
 to them, and wanted him to help us. He smiled and 
 blushed, innocent as a baby, and passed on." The next 
 day, however, they had a more serious conversation, 
 one which Tilden sought. "He said to me," Reid sub- 
 sequently explained, "that he did not receive any of the 
 ciphers, did not believe they had been delivered at his 
 house, and that up to that time [the time of the Sara- 
 toga encounter] he had never seen any of them." At 
 the inquiry which brought out this testimony Reid spoke 
 of Tilden's having used a jocular tone, and he was asked 
 if his own request had not been jocularly made. "It 
 was good-humored," he replied, "At the same time I 
 
A TRIUMPH OF JOURNALISM 411 
 
 meant it; and should have been very glad to get the 
 key." It was at this period that he received from Ed- 
 mond About the invitation to Paris which I have men- 
 tioned. Topics de la traduction were amongst those set 
 down for discussion at the international literary con- 
 gress in the French capital. The occasion promised to 
 be delightful. But nothing belonging to it could have 
 equalled in fascination the topics de la traduction which 
 Reid had at home. When he said "I meant it," he sig- 
 nified that all his determination was engaged upon the 
 search for the missing key. 
 
 In this search he was disappointed by the numerous 
 readers of The Tribune, who were prompted by the ten- 
 tative cipher editorials, as it was hoped they would be, 
 to proffer suggestions. They sent in nothing that was 
 helpful. Schuyler Colfax, deeply interested in the sub- 
 ject, gave a clew to some magazine articles twenty or 
 thirty years old, in the light of which 99-iooths of the 
 ciphers could be unlocked. They failed to provide any 
 assistance whatever. Evarts alone, amongst the friends 
 of the paper, had a promising idea. He thought a 
 student of pure mathematics might unearth the law on 
 which the ciphers were constructed. Such a specialist 
 happened at the moment to present himself with offers 
 of help, Professor E. S. Holden, astronomer and mathe- 
 matical computer of the Naval Observatory at Washing- 
 ton. He had some success with the few despatches in- 
 trusted to him, but his work was useful chiefly in a cor- 
 roborative way. It was written in the book of fate that 
 this exposure should be a Tribune achievement, and it 
 was brought to a successful completion by two Tribune 
 men, members of the editorial staff, John R. G. Hassard 
 and William M. Grosvenor. 
 
 When Reid realized that no outside aid was forthcom- 
 ing he set Hassard seriously to work upon the despatches. 
 
412 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 and it was Hassard who prepared the first broadside in 
 the campaign. This was the one, fired on September 
 4th, 1878, which in exhaustive detail disposed of the 
 Oregon case. The Potter committee having failed to 
 get anywhere. The Tribune contemptuously flung it 
 aside. "Rather than that the inquiry should be alto- 
 gether fruitless," it remarked, with fine sarcasm, "we 
 have volunteered to show that frauds were attempted in 
 order to secure various States for Mr. Tilden, and that 
 in the State of Oregon especially, which was not at all 
 doubtful but confessedly Republican, a sum of money 
 was appropriated to 'purchase* an electoral vote that 
 would have made Mr. Tilden President." Hassard's 
 three and a half columns of ciphers and translations, fac- 
 ing this pronouncement from the opposite page, supplied 
 the deadly proof. But, as the reader will remember, the 
 Oregon despatches that needed translation were mostly 
 in the cipher for which the "Little Dictionary" provided 
 the key, and the importance of this exposure resided in 
 its special fulness; it gathered up loose ends, corrected 
 errors, and cleared up many cipher messages which had 
 never before been explained. Some use of a dictionary 
 cipher was made in the South CaroKna and Florida 
 despatches, but in those States a double, transpositional 
 cipher was employed, with changing details and modes 
 of application. This it was that proved the real nut to 
 crack and that brought Hassard and Grosvenor into 
 friendly rivahy. They kept pace with one another so 
 well that repeatedly they made a discovery at the same 
 moment. In after years some commentators were dis- 
 posed to argue as to which of the two men was entitled 
 to the greater honor. Reid, knowing more about it than 
 any one else, would never make invidious distinctions in 
 the matter. In the pamphlet he made of the despatches 
 he stated that the credit of translation belonged abso- 
 
A TRIUMPH OF JOURNALISM 413 
 
 lutely to Hassard and Grosvenor, adding that they re- 
 ceived no assistance from any outside quarter, excepting 
 from Professor Holden, and that they received from him 
 no translation whatever, and no important clew, until 
 after they had discovered it themselves. To this state- 
 ment I may append the reply he made to an inquiry of 
 my own on this subject: "You are right in thinking that 
 Hassard deserved more credit than he has received. For 
 that matter Grosvenor did also. They both did ex- 
 tremely well, worked independently, compared notes loy- 
 ally and altogether co-operated in a charming way in a 
 highly important piece of work. Hassard was a little 
 earlier in the field, and to that extent deserves special 
 credit; but Grosvenor was equally keen, and as well as I 
 can now remember it, about equally successful. Some- 
 times he and Hassard would attack the same despatch 
 on different lines, and after being foiled again and again, 
 would finally reach the solution the same evening, Has- 
 sard in Eighteenth Street and Grosvenor out at Engle- 
 wood." 
 
 The labyrinth of codes and keys into which the two 
 "locksmiths," as Holden called them, forced their way, 
 was thornier than an African jungle. It required half a 
 dozen of The Tribune's broad columns merely to expose 
 the foundation of the ciphers, the relation to it of "nulls" 
 or "dumb words" — ^that is, words thrown in only to con- 
 fuse — and all the other sinuosities of a scaly scheme. 
 There was a special vocabulary for the identification of 
 persons. Tilden figured as "Russia," his nephew, Pelton, 
 as "Denmark." Place names were also drawn upon for 
 things as well as persons. "Copenhagen," for example, 
 was often cropping out, and quite naturally, since it 
 stood for dollars. Manton Marble's labels, with sub- 
 lime appropriateness, were of Scriptural origin. He was 
 known sometimes as "Israel," but perhaps as a sign of 
 
414 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 the confident belief of his colleagues that he would lead 
 them into the promised land, flowing with Democratic 
 votes, he was reckoned with more often as "Moses." 
 Nor was this the only totich unconsciously vouchsafed 
 to amuse the laborious decipherers, even while they ac- 
 quired racking headaches over their job. "On the whole, 
 the business is immensely interesting," said Grosvenor 
 in one of his reports to Reid. " Especially as despatches 
 of stupendous virtue are sandwiched in, telKng how 
 there were awful Republican frauds, and no frauds what- 
 ever by Democrats." I may mention in passing that 
 the countercharges of the Democrats never embarrassed 
 their opponents, who had, in fact, nothing to fear from 
 investigation. The locksmiths could afford to laugh, as 
 they did, without stint, while smiting the enemy. Their 
 editorials, particularly, were as entertaining as they were 
 destructive. Even the exposures proper, the long arti- 
 cles arraying the ciphers one by one, and teUing the full 
 tale, were tinctured with a savage humor. That it is 
 which I most regret to forego in here reducing the famous 
 indictments to the briefest possible terms. 
 
 The emprise in Florida began with several fervent 
 appeals from the Democratic managers in that State, 
 addressed to those gentlemen in New York whom The 
 Tribune was wont to designate "the ciphering co-par- 
 ceners." What was wanted was money, and with it 
 "a good man with an understood cipher." The good 
 man forthwith projected into the State was the "Max" 
 of the vocabulary aforementioned, John F. Coyle, a 
 notorious Washington lobbyist. His first care was to 
 arrange for the telegraphic transfer of funds. Then he 
 hied him to Tallahassee, where he joined Marble and 
 C. W. WooIIey ("Fox"), who thereafter used the cipher 
 he had brought with him in daily communication with 
 15 Gramercy Park, Tilden's residence. At first the 
 
A TRIUMPH OF JOURNALISM 415 
 
 labors of this trio were directed solely to the perfecting of 
 the Democratic returns and proofs of the correctness of 
 their belief that their candidate had a majority of the 
 votes. But there were hitches in the realization of their 
 hopes, and in the flood of despatches pouring to New 
 York there appeared in due course this sinister message: 
 
 ^ r> Tallahassee, December and, 1878. 
 
 Colonel Pelton, 
 
 15 Gramercy Park: 
 
 Have just received a proposition to hand over at any hour required 
 
 Tilden decision of Board and certificate of Governor for 200,000. 
 
 Marble. 
 
 It was asserted by the austere "Moses" that when he 
 sent this despatch he was merely transmitting an offer 
 as a matter of news, an off"er which he had indignantly 
 repelled on the spot; but unfortunately the reply to his 
 telegram was of a nature suggesting an entirely different 
 interpretation of the "news" in Gramercy Park, where 
 the last law of interpretation rested. "Warsaw here," 
 the reply ran. "Bolivia Brazil." And this, being de- 
 ciphered, meant, quite simply: "Despatch here. Propo- 
 sition too high." Thereupon ensued a situation which a 
 playwright framing a farce could hardly have bettered. 
 "Moses" and "Fox" both took a hand in the dicker, 
 but acted separately, and so got the recipients of their 
 despatches to New York all at sea. The vote was in 
 sight at a much lower figure. It could be had for "half 
 hundred best United States documents," or, to be plain, 
 for fifty thousand dollars in United States notes. But 
 divided counsels had bemused the arbiters of the prob- 
 lem. "Proposition accepted," they wired, "if done only 
 once." "Moses" and "Fox" had sent the same propo- 
 sition, and, as The Tribune commented in blasting 
 italics: "Gramercy Park did not want to pay twice for 
 the same vote!" Though the misunderstanding was 
 
4i6 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 vexatious to everybody concerned, vvorse ■ remained be- 
 hind. In the transmission of the despatch authorizing 
 the deal four words had been dropped out, rendering it 
 unintelligible. "Moses" demanded a repetition and the 
 delay was just long enough to dish the whole affair. 
 "Power secured too late," the wily "Fox" reported. 
 "Proposition failed," mournfully telegraphed "Moses"; 
 "tell Tilden to saddle Blackstone," in which cryptic 
 counsel he offered the Democratic candidate the dubious 
 consolation that he might at least have recourse to the 
 law. Thus did Mr. Marble, after a fortnight's heroic 
 effort, himself prick the bladder of his boasting in a 
 despatch to Senator Gordon on November 21st: "We 
 shall put Uncle Sammy through." 
 
 The attempts at fraud in South Carolina were regarded 
 at the time of The Tribune's exposures as grosser than 
 those in Florida, because made with more brutal direct- 
 ness. The secret agent active in this case was a stalwart 
 leader in the Tilden Democracy, Smith M. Weed, a poli- 
 tician of altogether expeditious and resolute methods. 
 On the very morning of his arrival at Columbia he made 
 by wire the crisp inquiry: "If a few dollars can be placed 
 in Returning Board [to] insure, what say you?" His 
 negotiations must have been pressed with extraordinary 
 celerity, for a despatch of the same date carries matters 
 well forward, after this fashion: "If Returning Board 
 can be procured absolutely, will you deposit 30,000 dol- 
 lars? May take less. Must be prompt." "Denmark" 
 was middling prompt, but it couldn't "take less." In- 
 deed, at the end of six days of chaffering the price was 
 fixed at eighty thousand dollars, to be sent in three par- 
 cels of five hundred or one thousand dollar notes. These 
 were to be forwarded by a trusty messenger to Baltimore 
 — and a piquant "cipher" document in my possession is 
 a memorandum of the researches made in that city. 
 
A TRIUMPH OF JOURNALISM 417 
 
 "once upon a time," by the Sherlock Holmes of The 
 Tribune staff told off to trace the history of the famous 
 parcel. In a work of fiction the chapter on this phase 
 of the drama would be called "The Tell-Tale Dates." 
 On November i8th the eighty-thousand-dollar despatch, 
 signed "W," was sent from Columbia. On November 
 19th the New York papers contained a despatch from 
 that city, saying: "Smith Weed, who has been here since 
 Tuesday, looking after Tilden's interests, leaves tonight 
 for the North." On November 20th, as The Tribune in- 
 vestigator was so easily to discover, in the true manner 
 of Sherlock Holmes, by simply inspecting the registers, 
 Mr. Smith M. Weed put up at Barnum's Hotel, in Balti- 
 more, and Mr. William T. Pelton, accompanied by a 
 friend, arrived bright and early at the Mount Vernon 
 House. Was this a fantastic coincidence? Or are we 
 to connect these simultaneous visitations with sentences 
 from two of "W's" telegrams, dated November i8th? 
 One of them runs: "You must have the money at Bar- 
 num's in Baltimore early Monday morning." The other: 
 "Meet me yourself, if prudent." Neither promptitude 
 nor prudence availed. There was once more "a little 
 delay," and this Returning Board, like the other one in 
 Florida, suddenly upset the plans of mice and men by 
 counting the votes and declaring the result for Hayes. 
 Hope was not utterly abandoned. The "co-parceners" 
 developed a new scheme, one for tampering with the 
 State legislature, but the contemplated purchase of four 
 senators for twenty thousand dollars fell through, as did 
 the collateral plan for jockeying the Hayes electors into 
 committing a contempt of court, so that they could be 
 jailed while the political situation was being subjected to 
 sleight-of-hand treatment. The cream of this latter epi- 
 sode was supplied in a passage in the last of the New 
 York despatches, a touching testimonial to Pelton's pos- 
 
4i8 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 session of a heart. Blandly looking to the personal com- 
 fort of the electors, this message ran: "It would be hu- 
 mane to imprison them separately during Wednesday." 
 Yes, it would have been delicately humane to have 
 tucked them away "separately," and besides that it 
 would have been "prudent." For, as The Tribune in- 
 humanely girded, otherwise they might have organized 
 an electoral college in jail ! 
 
 A shabbier business never got itself organized to the 
 verge of transaction, and from The Tribune's handling of 
 it, which rigidly subordinated conjecture and partisan 
 feeling to the statement of fact, it seemed impossible that 
 the Tilden managers could escape the brand of guilt. A 
 remark of Grosvenor's, made as the first of the Southern 
 exposures was going to press, well indicates the judicial 
 point of view held by the decipherers, and the irresistible 
 nature of the evidence as they saw it. "My part of the 
 story," he writes, "is painfully stripped of the sensa- 
 tional features, but I should hate to be tried for my life 
 with such proofs against me." On the other hand, the 
 business, as I have said, was carried only to the verge of 
 transaction, it was not consummated, and that The 
 Tribune's disclosures would have chiefly a moral eff'ect 
 was foreseen by the man whose observations on the 
 scene in Florida peculiarly qualified him to judge. This 
 was Chandler, who followed carefully the editorials pre- 
 paring the way for the final exposures, and thus wrote as 
 the latter drew near: 
 
 Waterloo, N. H. 
 My dear Sir: September 28th, 1878. 
 
 I am delighted at the discovery of the translation of the despatches. 
 I felt sure there was talk about money in them which would crush 
 the authors. But I am not sanguine that any overt acts will be 
 proved; all will turn out to be the artifices of thieving shysters 
 anxious to make money out of Tilden or Marble. In other words, 
 there was more talk of money than actual handling of it. But there 
 
A TRIUMPH OF JOURNALISM 419 
 
 is no doubt they thought they could buy victory for $80,000 and so 
 telegraphed and sent for the money. They were only fooled; but 
 how can they explain? Your true course is to handle the subject 
 as heretofore; as long as they don't explain we have them; when they 
 attempt to explain, to confess an attempt or willingness to bribe is 
 fatal. -^ , 
 
 Yours truly, ,,, ^ ^ 
 
 ^ W. E. C. 
 
 Of the paralyzing effect of The Tribune's revelations 
 he had no doubt at all, as repeated expressions in his let- 
 ters clearly show. "What a squelcher for Marble and 
 Tilden those telegrams are," he exclaims on one occa- 
 sion, and all his comments are in the same exultant vein. 
 But you may squelch a man without necessarily finish- 
 ing him oflF, and Chandler knew this. Full exposition of 
 the Democratic adventures in the South might discomfort 
 and abash those whom he pleasantly denominated "cor- 
 rupt and cowardly whelps," but it could do no more. He 
 held throughout to the conviction disclosed in the fore- 
 going letter that the "co-parceners" would wriggle out 
 of legal danger. "The situation is quite spicy, owing to 
 the telegrams," he writes between the Florida and South 
 Carolina exposures. "What excuse can Tilden and Mar- 
 ble be preparing? The first will say he didn't know any- 
 thing; the second must concoct something." That is 
 precisely what happened, and it is unnecessary for me 
 to rehearse in detail the subsequent developments bear- 
 ing upon the question as to what, if anything, could be 
 done to avenge the attempted perpetration of a great 
 public wrong. The Tribune pressed for further congres- 
 sional inquiry — translating more ciphers, provocatively, 
 the while — and got it. Once more the Potter committee 
 stepped reluctantly into the breach, and once more the 
 mountain in labor brought forth the mouse expected by 
 cynical observers. Brady and Chandler testified as to 
 what they had done to bring the ciphers into Reid's 
 hands, and he, too, had his day as a witness in Washing- 
 
420 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 ton, a day of enjoyment unalloyed. The co-parceners 
 were examined by a subcommittee which came on to 
 New York for the purpose. Weed, Pelton, and Marble 
 faced the music in the order named. The net result of 
 their testimony, as exhaustively reported and pitilessly 
 analyzed in The Tribune, was, in the opinion of that 
 journal, essential admission of the accuracy of its work 
 on the cipher despatches, and, in consequence, confirma- 
 tion of its worst conclusions. Then Tilden went on the 
 stand. 
 
 His predecessors of the ciphering coterie, whatever they 
 had to say for themselves, were united as to his innocence, 
 and thus prepared the public for his denial of all knowl- 
 edge of their secret proceedings in the campaign. How 
 he made it, and what it amounted to. The Tribune thus 
 related in an editorial summing up his testimony: 
 
 In a low, dark room, excessively hot and densely packed, the whole 
 world sat at the reporters' tables, or crowded close with note-book 
 in hand, to catch the faint whispers that fell from a worn and hag- 
 gard old man. With the look of a corpse except in moments of ex- 
 citement, with slow, far-away voice, and slow, painful movements, 
 drooping left eye-lid, parchment-like cheeks, and quivering hand, 
 Mr. Tilden repeated his statement, evidently prepared with great 
 care, in a voice much of the time hardly audible four feet away. 
 His manner showed intense and increasing nervous excitement, by 
 great effort restrained; the body rose and fell in the seat incessantly, 
 as if he were trying in vain to rise, and the seemingly half-useless left 
 arm shook Hke a leaf. Then the excitement burst restraint, the face 
 flushed almost purple, the lip quivered, the right arm repeatedly 
 smote the table with great force and passion, and the voice rang 
 through the room with painful intensity, like the shriek of a drown- 
 ing man. After every such eifort, the sentence died away, as if the 
 voice were stopped by closing waters. The effect was almost that 
 of a death-bed declaration. Had the matter thereof equalled in 
 force the solemnity of manner, this declaration would have had a 
 great efl"ect. . . . 
 
 Mr. Tilden's declaration of his ignorance of corrupt negotiations 
 seems as broad, full and emphatic as it could be. If there were men- 
 tal reservations, as it now appears there were in his published card 
 of October last, of such character that an exact statement of truth 
 
A TRIUMPH OF JOURNALISM 421 
 
 had the public effect of a statement that was false, they do not yet 
 appear. He claims to have had no knowledge that Pelton was com- 
 municating in cipher with the Democratic agents at the South; no 
 knowledge that Weed had gone to South Carolina, until he returned; 
 no knowledge that Woolley had gone to Florida, or Patrick to Ore- 
 gon; no knowledge of any corrupt proposal as to South Carolina, 
 until it was arrested by Mayor Cooper's refusal to provide money 
 for it, and no knowledge even then or afterward of the true nature 
 of the negotiations in that State or the others. 
 
 The Democratic press hailed Tilden's testimony as 
 constituting his vindication. The Tribune traversed it, of 
 course, from a very different point of view, asking some 
 cruelly embarrassing questions, and altogether declining 
 to accept the plea of ignorance as final. Reid had not 
 gone through two State canvasses with Tilden for noth- 
 ing. The reader will recall his saying, in an earlier chap- 
 ter of this book: "In New York, of all the poKticians I 
 have ever seen, he is the supreme organizer." It was 
 incredible that such a man could have remained blind 
 to what his nephew was doing in support of his presiden- 
 tial candidacy, unless he shut his eyes in order not to 
 see ! While the Democrats were rejoicing over what 
 they were pleased to consider the rehabilitation of their 
 chief, Reid jeeringly suggested that they uphold the faith 
 that was in them by renominating Tilden for the presi- 
 dency. To offer such counsel at such a moment was 
 surely to turn the knife in the wound. Also, like much 
 else in The Tribune's management of the cipher busi- 
 ness, it was a diabolically exasperating strategical touch. 
 Translating and publishing the despatches was not by 
 any means all of the battle. The generalship which de- 
 termined when and how this or that body of ciphers 
 should be thrown into the field was an equally important 
 element in the winning of victory. 
 
 It was at the time of this affair that Reid had one or 
 two reminders of his old days as a planter. He nego- 
 tiated for the sale in Mobile of the last relics of that 
 
422 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 experience of his, "one 80 saw cotton gin," and divers 
 other instruments. Subsequently a correspondent wrote 
 from New Orleans of having met some former friends of 
 his from Concordia Parish. "They all say you were a 
 'perfect gentleman,' but did not know how to make cot- 
 ton." He could laugh over their jest, for he could see, 
 at least, how well advised he had been to return from the 
 cotton-gin to the pen. He knew how to make a news- 
 paper. I began my survey of the cipher exposures as a 
 record of newspaper administration, and as such I bring 
 it to a close. "I have not congratulated you on your 
 great coup," wrote Hay, shortly after the South Caro- 
 lina chapter had been published. " It is the biggest piece 
 of intelligent journalism, as distinguished from mere en- 
 terprise, that has ever been done in the country. The 
 leader writing about it has been as good as the cipher 
 work, — can't say better, for obvious reasons." How pre- 
 eminently intelligent was the coup, how sagaciously it 
 was controlled from the first playful prelude to the last 
 overwhelming crescendo, in such wise as to produce — in 
 the Democratic camp — the most excruciating possible 
 discord, is made delightfully clear in a note written by 
 "ChampoIIion" Hassard, as Hay brevetted him. He 
 was going off to Litchfield for a few days of rest, just 
 before the Florida despatches were to be published, and 
 he pleaded for a little delay, as follows: 
 
 New York, 
 Dear Mr. Reid: September 28th. 1878. 
 
 I hope the cipher explosion can be kept back till my return, as I 
 should immensely enjoy working up a dramatic narrative, and bring- 
 ing out the translations as the climax of it. Mr. Grosvenor's work 
 in getting at the translations is splendid. The funniest of all the 
 spectacles of the day is Marble and Tilden tied helpless to the stake 
 while The Tribune dances around them, enjoying the protraction of 
 their torture, before putting an end to them. 
 
 Yours truly. j_ j^_ ^_ ^_ 
 
A TRIUMPH OF JOURNALISM 423 
 
 The suspense, the exposition from day to day of tele- 
 grams obviously incriminating, yet leaving their ultimate 
 import in the air, the skilful obscuration of the wrath 
 to come which went with the perfectly plain implication 
 that it was only around the corner and would be impla- 
 cable when it arrived — all this, indeed, was what the 
 "co-parceners" found it hardest to bear. Also it was 
 what was best calculated to prepare public opinion for 
 the crucial disclosures. "He looked," says Mrs. Craigie, 
 in one of her witty novels, speaking of a politely resigned 
 sufferer, "he looked like St. Laurence on his gridiron, 
 saying to his tormentors, 'Turn me. This side is done.'" 
 The "co-parceners" were turned, over and over, before 
 either side was really "done." And the finishing turns 
 were given just when they were certain to do the most 
 public good. The gridiron was put seriously on the 
 coals, as I have shown, in August. It was red-hot 
 and all ready for the Oregon case early in September. 
 Brought to a white heat late in that month, it served up 
 Florida on October 8th, an ideal date for the States which 
 held early elections. It was, perhaps, only a coincidence 
 that Ohio "went Republican." South Carolina had its 
 "turn" on October i6th, with election day for most 
 voters a good three weeks oflF, thus giving the lesson 
 plenty of time in which to sink in. It sank. The No- 
 vember verdict registered numerous Republican victories. 
 New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and Connecti- 
 cut voted, as The Tribune put it with pardonable infer- 
 ence, to rebuke the cipher fraud. Tammany Hall was 
 badly beaten in New York City. There were, in short, 
 emphatic Republican gains in all parts of the Union save 
 the solid South. It was a triumph all along the line, and 
 though the next Congress was to meet with the Demo- 
 crats in control of both Houses, their majorities were 
 warningly reduced. What was even more important, the 
 
424 THE LIFE OF WHITELAW REID 
 
 elections "ended the apprehensions of those who feared 
 the Repubhcan party was going to pieces." 
 
 Reid had not only entertained these fears and appre- 
 hensions, but had wrestled with leaders of his party, 
 urging them to save it from dissolution. There was 
 pride for him in the reflection that it was his own inter- 
 vention that had exerted a preservative influence upon 
 the crisis, and, indeed, he could congratulate himself 
 upon something more. The cipher exposures shook the 
 country from coast to coast. Their political eff"ect was 
 as extensive as it was drastic. This was the really im- 
 portant point. The debt of public gratitude which 
 Evarts thought so great that it would have to be funded 
 was not, after all, so much Republican as national. 
 "Everybody," to use his word, was bound to recognize 
 the service that had been rendered. For it had not 
 merely given aid and comfort to the party in power. It 
 had pilloried once and for all the single manifestation in 
 our annals of the idea that the presidency was a pur- 
 chasable honor.