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A COREESPONfifflCE ^£i_! 
 
 BETWEEN THE! 
 
 HON. JAMES BROOKS, 
 
 OF nSIE'W" ■YORK:, 
 
 AND THE 
 
 HON. REVERDY JOHNSON, 
 
 OF B-A.LXII^OR,E, 
 
 ^tkte of tl|e CotLqtf y 
 
 J/ie TFa?/ ^0 Avert the Peril which threatens it. 
 
 BALTIMORE: 
 
 Printed at The Sln Book and Job Office. 
 
 1 873 
 
A CORRESPONDENCE 
 
 BEIWEEN THE 
 
 HON. JAMES BROOKS, 
 
 OF UE-W -YOIiK:, 
 
 HON. REVERDY JOHNSON, 
 
 OF B-A.LTI]S/rOR.E, 
 
 :^tkte of tl)e Country 
 
 The Way to Avert the Peril which threatens it. 
 
 BALTIMORE: 
 Printed at the Si'n Book anu Joh Office 
 
 1873. 
 
^, 
 
 
New York, Jtme \8th, 1872. 
 
 My Dear Sir — It is a o;ood old custom, as old as the days 
 of the Roman Republic, to ask from men, distinguished in 
 public life, as you have been, and are, what is best for the 
 Republic, or, what it is best to do to guard it from detri- 
 ment ? You and I were so long in public life together, 
 and have so often acted together, that I feel anxious to 
 know where you are now in the apparently novel position 
 that the forthcoming nomination of Greeley and Brown at 
 Baltimore will place us ; and I am the more anxio.us, be- 
 cause I have already published my own opinion, which will 
 be strengthened if fortified by yours. 
 
 Yours, truly, 
 
 JAMES BROOKS. 
 
Baltimore, July 15, 1872. 
 
 My Dear Sir— Yonr letter of the 18th of June was duly 
 received. The delay in answering it I do not now regret, 
 as what has since occurred will enable me to do so proba- 
 bly to more advantage than I could have done before. 
 The question with the people now is — which of the two will 
 they have for their next President, U. S. Grant or Horace 
 Greeley? The former, during the past three years, in the 
 judgment of all impartial men, has proved his utter unfit- 
 ness for the office ; the latter, during a period of more 
 than thirty years, as the editor of a leading journal, has 
 proved himself, in the judgment of all impartial and com- 
 petent men, to be a man of extraordinary ability, perfect 
 patriotism, and incorruptible integrity. 
 
 Has not General Grant demonstrated his unfitness for the 
 Presidency? His election to it in '68 was owing to the 
 confidence the people reposed in him for what they believed 
 he possessed — good sense — and because of their gratitude 
 for his military services during the war. In his good 
 sense, with the experience of the last three years, it seems 
 to me impossible that confidence can now be placed. His 
 whole career as President has been full of blunders, to use 
 no milder term. A few instances will establish this state- 
 ment : 
 
 1. His selection of his first Cabinet was made without 
 consultation with any honest and experienced friend, and 
 without regard to merit. He nominated as the head of the 
 Treasury a highly respectable merchant of New York, in 
 ignorance of the fact that by the 8th section of the Act of the 
 2d of September, 1789, such an appointment is expressly pro- 
 hibited, and this upon grounds of the clearest policy — the 
 provision being that no person concerned in trade, directly 
 or indirectly, is eligible to any office created by that Act ; 
 
6 
 
 ami after finding his error, he foolishly requested Congress 
 to modify the provision so as to enable him to make the 
 appointment. In this he was properly foiled, although 
 his friends constituted a large majority of both Houses. 
 In the appointments he actually made, he seems not to 
 have been influenced by any regard to the fitness of his 
 appointees, but, in many instances, by a wish to show his 
 gratitude for valuable presents received. 
 
 2. His selection of his relatives for high* and important 
 trusts, at home and abroad, obviously without ascertain- 
 ing whether they were fit, and his refusal to remove many 
 of them, after their unfitness had been pa,infully exhibited. 
 
 3. His negotiation for the annexation of the Dominican 
 Republic, through no Minister selecttd with the approval 
 of the Senate, and his undignified lobbying with Senators 
 to procure its ratification ; and his impertinent and insult- 
 ing message to Congress, after the treaty was rejected, in 
 which he designated the rejection as an act of '■' foUijJ" 
 His usurpation of the war power in threatening Hayti, 
 having the means at hand of making good his threat if they 
 continued their hostilities against Dominica, and doing 
 this not only whilst the treaty was under consideration by 
 the Senate, but after they had rejected it. 
 
 4. His open and shameless use of his power of patronage 
 to support his personal administration and to secure a re- 
 election. And with this view, not content with his first 
 appointments, removing them and making others, not be- 
 cause the legal duties of the first were not properly perr 
 formed, but because they had not proved themselves as 
 able to serve him as fully as he desired. 
 
 5. His compelling Secretary Cox, a gentleman of abil- 
 ity, who faithfully served his country during the war as a 
 general ofiicer, and who was administering the Interior 
 Department to the satisfaction of the country, to resign, 
 because he had refused to tolerate the assessment upon the 
 salaries of his clerks for party purposes, thereby counten- 
 
aiicing the legality and propriety of such assessments. 
 No greater violation of duty could be perpetrated. The 
 official salaries are of course paid out of the public trea- 
 sury. To compel the officer to give a portion of it as a 
 fund for electioneering purposes is, in fact, using the pub- 
 lic funds to that end. And in this instance the object of 
 these assessments was, and continues to be, to secure the 
 re-election of General Grant, and the election of his party 
 friends to Congress. 
 
 6. His not only permitting, but virtually ordering, the 
 members of his Cabinet, and the Bureau officers to canvas 
 the States where elections have been or may be depending, 
 in his behalf — thus seriously interfering with the public 
 business which they alone were appointed to attend to, 
 and for which alone they are paid. 
 
 7. In not only not disapproving of the Acts of Congress 
 known as the Enforcement Acts of 1870-'71, but in reck- 
 lessly carrying them out by means of the military. And, 
 although the condition of things alleged as an excuse for 
 these laws no longer existed, and quiet prevailed in the 
 two Carolinas, not an arm being raised against the autho- 
 rity of the General Government or of either of the State 
 Governments, and the like quiet existing in the other 
 Southern States, his attempt to obtain, through Congress, 
 until after the coming Presidential election, the continu- 
 ance of those laws. No sensible man can doubt his mo- 
 tives in this attempt. It was evidently to secure the 
 electoral votes of those States, either by alarming the 
 voters with the dread of military interference, or by 
 resorting to such interference, if that should be found 
 necessary. 
 
 8. By his utter disregard of the rights of the States and 
 of the people. By holding the latter still as enemies, and 
 under this pretence continuing the military occupation of 
 some of the States, and not interfering in any degree with 
 the unconstitutional, reckless and corrupt governments 
 
8 
 
 which from the first to the present time have plundered 
 those States, involving them in almost hopeless bank- 
 ruptcy. 
 
 9. His management of our Foreign Relations. He has, 
 it is gaid, converted the Russian Government from a warm 
 friend to a cold one by the manner in which he treated the 
 eldest son of the Emperor whilst, by the order of his father, 
 as a mark of the latter's esteem and regard, he visited the 
 President. His continuing, as our representative at Den- 
 mark, a brother-in-law who read a dispatch relative to the 
 same Government in the presence of its Minister which 
 was so oifonsive as to force that gentleman to leave the 
 room ; and his having failed not only not to remove our 
 representative, but not even to reprimand him. His hav- 
 ing known or having failed to know that our Government 
 was selling arms to France during the late war between 
 that Government and Prussia, and, when the then Prus- 
 sian Minister, whose long residence in that capacity among 
 us, and whose steady friendship during our war so endeared 
 him to all who had a knowledge of his services and char- 
 acter, addressed a polite note of inquiry in regard to it to 
 the State Department, received, it is said, and I have- 
 reason to believe with truth, a very rude and offensive 
 reply from one of the assistant secretaries, and instead of 
 rebuking the latter, he has since conferred upon him a 
 most important trust in the discharge of which he is now in 
 Geneva. This having been discovered by the Emperor of 
 Germany, it has there arrested tliat current of friendly 
 feeling which did us so much service during our war. 
 
 His management of the Alabama Claims under the 
 Washington Treaty ; his permitting a demand to be pre- 
 sented for consequential damages to the Board of Arbitra- 
 tors at Geneva when he must have known tdat the British 
 Commissioners in tlie negotiation of that Treaty never sup- 
 posed tliat such a claim was embraced by it ; and that 
 they had good reason for so supposing irrespective of the 
 
words of the Treaty. And when he found that, if perse- 
 vered in, the Treaty would be a failure, his ridiculous blun- 
 dering in his efforts to avert it, culminating in that most 
 ridiculous and absurd of all, his having the Arbitrators 
 informed that he never expected any pecuniary compensa- 
 tion, but only wanted the claim passed upon by them, 
 when, if he and his advisors had not been utterly stupid, 
 they would have known that the Board had no authority 
 to make any award in favor of the United States except an 
 award for money — thus accomplishing his object, the safety 
 of the Treaty, by being told by the Arbitrators that this 
 claim as thus explained was not within the Treaty or within 
 their jurisdiction. It is unfortunately but too true that his 
 conduct in this respect from the moment that the difficulty 
 presented itself, to the period when it was removed in the 
 way just stated, has but served to impair our character 
 abroad and mortify us at home in making the world, at 
 one time, believe that we were a nation of sharpers, and 
 at another, a nation of blockheads. 
 
 10. His conduct, and the conduct of the party in Con- 
 gress and out of it, by whom he is supported, in extending 
 the powers of the Greneral vTOvernment beyond those dele- 
 gated, in direct antagonism to rights and powers not only 
 inherent in the States and the people of the States, but 
 expressly reserved to them by the constitution itself. This 
 may be said with absolute confidence ; that the prevailing, 
 if not the unanimous opinion of every member of the Con- 
 vention by which the Constitution was framed, concurred 
 in the absolute necessity, if freedom was to be preserved 
 and the happiness of the people to be promoted, that the 
 State should have all powers except such as Irom their 
 nature they would not be capable to execute, so as to 
 accomplish the safety and prosperity of the whole. 
 
 This was illustrated in all the debates in the Convention. 
 The occasion will not justify a reference to more than one 
 of them. 
 2 
 
10 
 
 Oliver Ellsworth, second Chief Justice of the United 
 States, a member of the Convention, correctly stated " that 
 without the co-operation of the States, it would be impos- 
 sible to support a Republican government over so great an 
 extent of country ; an array could scarcely render it prac- 
 ticable." And upon another day he said, "What he 
 wanted was domestic happiness. The National Govern- 
 ment could not descend to the local objects on which this 
 depended. It could only embrace objects of a general 
 nature. He turned his eyes, therefore, for the preservation 
 of their rights, to the State Governments." — II. Madison 
 papers, p. 1014, 
 
 The course of the President and his party leads to the 
 reverse of all this. It necessarily results in centralizing 
 all powers in the General Government, and thereby making 
 it not a Federal, but a Consolidated Government. Not 
 only was this alleged in the Convention to be a result 
 which could not be produced if the powers of the General 
 Government were not overstepped, but in every one of the 
 State Conventions by which the Constitution was ratified 
 this opinion was also almost universally entertained. 
 Some members, however, in several of the State ConventioQS 
 expressed apprehensions on the point. This was especially 
 the case in the Virginia Convention, and amongst others 
 these apprehensions were entertained by Patrick Henry. 
 Mr, Madison, who was a member of that Convention, con- 
 sidered them as unwarranted. But to quiet all fears, he 
 and others agreed that certain amendments should be 
 proposed by the first Congress, and this was done on the 
 25lh September, 1789, by a proposition to the States that 
 tliey should adopt certain amendments, twelve in number. 
 Ten were adopted. Two of these are : 
 
 1. "The enumeration ia the Constitution of certain 
 rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others 
 retained by the people. 
 
 2. "The powers not delegated to the United States by 
 
11 
 
 the Constitution, nor prohibited b)^ it to the State, are 
 reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." 
 
 It is impossible to reconcile the conduct of the President 
 and his supporters with these limitations. 
 
 On the contrary, they have been directly violated, and 
 these violations would continue beyond the period of 
 the next Presidential election if the good sense and 
 patriotism of the Democrats in Congress and of many of 
 the Republicans had not prevented it. In this enumera- 
 tion of the objections to the election of General Grant, I 
 do not design to irapugoe his motives. I am willing to 
 concede that they are good, and that he believes them to 
 be patriotic, but my conviction is, and if I am capable of 
 judging, the facts which I have stated demonstrate its 
 soundness, that conceding his motives to be good, he does 
 not know what the Constitution is, and is entirely igno- 
 rant of the principles which should govern a Republic like 
 ours. 
 
 His election to the Presidency in '68 was owing to a 
 grateful sense of his military services during the war, and 
 to the confidence which the people then had a right to feel, 
 that, with the aid of an able Cabinet, which it was not 
 doubted he would call around him, he would discharge 
 the important duties of the office with ability, and in 
 strict subordination to the Constitution. 
 
 In this expectation, a large majority of the people who 
 voted for him, I believe, are conscious of their disappoint- 
 ment, and are unwilling to renew the same trust in him. 
 This has been pretty well established by the proceedings at 
 the Cincinnati Convention, and by the apparent approval 
 of the nomination of Mr. Greely, made there in May last 
 and approved by the Democratic Convention in this city 
 on the 9th and 10th instant. 
 
 I proceed now to submit to you some observations ia 
 relation to Mr. Greeley. 
 
 In the first place, his love of country can not be doubted. 
 His ability displayed in the ardaous position of an editor 
 
12 
 
 of a leading journal for very many years, the thousands 
 and hundred of thousands who have been his constant 
 readers will readily admit. That he has, at times, incul- 
 cated doctrines which many good and able men have 
 thought unsound, is no doubt true. But what statesman 
 has not ? 
 
 His opinion on the doctrine of protection is now con- 
 tested by many men of ability and patriotism. .Whether his 
 policy is sound or not is a point upon which even able men 
 diiFer. But this is certain, that when Mr. Greeley adopted 
 it he had the support of some of the ablest of our statesmen, 
 having at their head Henry Clay, a name never mentioned 
 in the hearing of Americans without admiration and 
 gratitude. If Mr. Greeley has erred, it should be held to 
 be some extenuation that he erred in such company. That 
 his opinion is honestly entertained and has been maintained 
 with great ability must be conceded. But does General 
 Grant hold the opposite opinion? Or has he any opinion 
 on this nice problem of political economy? If he has one, 
 (I've no idea he has, his studies never having run on that 
 line,) he certainly never has expressed it, and from his 
 enforced reticence, if he was to do so, would nofc be able to 
 give his reasons. But why should Mr. Greeley's opinion 
 on this point be any objection to his election ? He has 
 accepted the nomination he received at Cincinnati, and 
 with an engagement to act U[)on the principles there 
 announced. One of them is, I quote it, that " recognising 
 that there are in our midst honest but irreconcilable dif- 
 ferences of opinion with regard to the respective systems 
 of protection and ffee trade, we remit the discussion of the 
 subject to the people in their Congressional Districts, and 
 to the decision of Congress thereon wholly free of Execu- 
 tive interference or dictation." 
 
 This gives to the friends of free trade an opportunity of 
 satisfying the people that their doctrine is the correct 
 one, and that if Congress shall so decide their decision 
 will not be disapproved of by Mr. Greeley. 
 
13 
 
 What more do these gentlemen want in their opposition to 
 Mr. Greeley? Did they desire the nomination of an avowed 
 Free Trader ? With this view did they wish for the nomi- 
 nation of Mr. Adams? And if they had succeeded, and 
 Mr. Adams had declared his adhesion to Free Trade, do 
 they believe they could have secured his election ? We 
 have had experiments enough of presenting to the people 
 for the Presidency a candidate whose opinions were not in 
 accopdance with those of tlie people generally. And to 
 this, and to this alone, was the election of Mr, Lincoln to 
 be referred, and the subsequent election of Greneral Grant. 
 Whether Free Trade or Protection is to receive the sanc- 
 tion of Congress will not depend upon the opinion of the 
 President, even if he has one, and is disposed to act upon 
 it. He can effect noching except as he may be able to in- 
 fluence Congress by his patronage, and this no man fit for 
 the office would attempt, because to do so would be a pal- 
 pable effort to corrupt that Department. That Mr. 
 Greeley would not take such a step is certain, because he 
 is honest, and because the platform upou which he agrees 
 to stand prohibits it. 
 
 Before the war, and occasionally during its continuance, 
 his treatment of the South was believed by many to have been 
 unnecessarily harsh. But in this no one seriouslyquestioued 
 his motives They were iu no respect personal or other 
 than patriotic. The war over, what has been his course? 
 From the first m omeut to the present hour he has earnestly 
 desired, and has done all in his power to effect it, to re- 
 store peace and prosperity to the South. A constant and 
 ardent friend of general amnesty and of universal suffrage, 
 he cannot but have commended himself to the good oj)in- 
 ion of the white and colored citizens of that region. The 
 latter, perhaps, are more indebted to him and the Hon. 
 Charles Sumner for the rights now secured to them than 
 to any other two men in the country. 
 
 His generosity and kind regard for Southern men was 
 strongly illustrated by his becoming one of the bail of Mr. 
 
14 
 
 Jefferson Davis, which terminated his cruelly protracted 
 imprisonment. For this step he was denounced by the 
 radicals of his party, and particularly by such of them as 
 belonj^ to the Union League Club of New York. They 
 proposed his expulsion, and who can forget, who has ever 
 read it, the proud letter of defiance which he addressed to 
 the League on the 23d of May, 1867 ? In that letter he 
 quoted extracts from the Tribune to show how decided his 
 opinion was that those who had been engaged in the insur- 
 rection should be enfranchised, and their estates exempted 
 from confiscation. He justified having become security for 
 Mr. Davis, and in his letter, among other things, said : 
 " Your attempt to base a great, enduring party on the 
 hate and wrath necessarily engendered by a bloody, civil 
 war, is as though you should plant a colony on an iceberg 
 which had somehow drifted into a tropical ocean. [ tell 
 you here that out of a life earnestly devoted to the good of 
 human kind, your children will select my going to Rich- 
 mond and signing that bail bond as the wisest act, and 
 will fieel that it did more for freedom and humanity 
 than all of you were competent to do, though you had 
 lived to the age of Methusaleh." 
 
 You will have thus seen what I think of the present 
 political condition of the country. Unless I am greatly 
 mistaken, it must give to every unprejudiced, intelligent 
 and patriotic man much anxiety and alarm. How is 
 this anxiety and alarm to be removed? By removing 
 the cause oi it. By refusing a re-election to Gen. Grant, 
 to whom in a great measure, if not exclusively, it 
 is owing, and by placing in the Presidential office Mr. 
 Greeley, whose entire life has exhibited his generous qual- 
 ities, his great ability, his pure patriotism, and his unsus- 
 pected integrity. To be rich he will accept no presents, 
 but would scornfully reject them if offered. He has not 
 scores of relatives to provide for out of the public funds, by 
 placing them in offices for which they are grossly incompe- 
 tent, and, if he had, he would not so place them. He will not 
 
15 
 
 exert his patronage to influence State elections, or to secure 
 a re-election for himself. He will not permit the public 
 funds, by means of a tax upon the salaries of his officials, to 
 be used for party purposes. He will not suffer his Secreta- 
 ries or their subordinates to abandon their posts of duty 
 and their attention to the public business, to traverse State 
 after State on electioneering visits, so as to bring the influ- 
 ence of office in conflict with freedom of elections. He will 
 see that our foreign relations are so managed as to give 
 honor and not disgrace to the nation. He will not tolerate 
 the use of the military for the control of the elective fran- 
 chise. He will not trample upon the rights ot the States 
 or the people by declaring States to be in rebellion when 
 they are not. And my hope is to live to see the day when 
 these vital changes will be made ; when all solicitude 
 about the fate of our country will be quieted ; when peace 
 and prosperity will be secured to the entire nation ; when 
 the guaranteed rights of the citizen will be protected, the 
 legitimate powers of the States maintained, and the au- 
 thority of the General Government exerted only under the 
 restrictions of the Constitution. In a word, when the 
 Constitution bequeathed to us by our fathers shall in all 
 things be observed, and when we will have a President 
 intelligent and patriotic enough to keep his official oath 
 to "preserve, protect and defend it." 
 
 When all these things shall occur, and not until then, 
 will our prosperity and power be renewed, and our coun- 
 try become, as it was in former days, the wonder and 
 admiration of the world. 
 
 I remain, with great regard. 
 
 Your friend and obedient servant, 
 
 REVERDY JOHNSON. 
 
 To THE Hon. James Brooks, 
 
 New York. 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
 013 789 091 4