Chapter XXIII (1)

In after time Herold’s memory of that disastrous night and the succeeding days was that of a peculiarly lucid nightmare in which he seemed to have acted without volition or consciousness of motive. He ate, dressed, drove through the streets on unhappy missions, gave orders, directions, consoled, like an automaton, and sometimes slept exhaustedly. So it seemed to him, looking back. He spared John the first night of misery. The man with his bandaged head slept like a log, and Herold did not wake him. All that could be done he himself had done. It was better for John to gather strength in sleep to face the tragedy on the morrow. And when the morrow came, and Herold broke the news to him, the big man gave way under the shock, and became gentle, and obeyed Herold like a child. Thereafter, for many days, he sat for the hour together with his old aunt, curiously dependent on her; and she, through her deep affection for him, grew singularly silent and practical.

In her unimaginative placidity lay her strength. She mourned for Unity as for her own flesh and blood; but the catastrophe did not shake her even mind, and when John laid his head in her lap and sobbed, all that was beautiful in the woman flowed through the comforting tips of her helpless fingers.

From Herold he learned the unsuspected reason of Unity’s crime and sacrifice; and from Unity, too, for a poor little pencil scrawl found in her pocket and addressed to him told him of her love and of her intention to clear the way for his happiness. And when the inquest was over and Unity’s body was brought to Kilburn and laid in its coffin in her little room, he watched by it in dumb stupor of anguish.

Herold roused him now and then. Action--nominal action at least--had to be taken by him as surviving protagonist of the tragedy. The morning after the deed the newspapers shrieked the news, giving names in full, raking up memories of the hideous case. They dug, not deep, for motive, and found long-smoldering vengeance. Unity was blackened. John responded to Herold’s lash. This must not be. Unity must not go to her grave in public dishonor; truth must be told. So at the inquest, John, wild, uncouth, with great strips of sticking-plaster on his head, told truth, and gave a romantic story to a hungry press. It was hateful to lay bare the inmost sacredness and the inmost suffering of his soul to the world’s cold and curious gaze, but it had to be done. Unity’s name was cleared. When he sat down by Herold’s side, the latter grasped his hand, and it was clammy and cold, and he shook throughout his great frame.

Then Herold, driven to mechanical action, as it seemed to him afterward, by a compelling force, dragged John to an inquiry into the evil woman’s life. It was Mrs. Oscraft, the full-blown, blowzy bookmaker’s wife, the woman’s intimate associate for many years, who gave the necessary clue. Horrified by the discovery of the identity of her friend and by the revelation of further iniquities, she lost her head when the men sternly questioned her. She had used her intimacy with Mrs. Risca to cover from her own husband an intrigue of many years’ standing. In return, Mrs. Risca had confessed to an intrigue of her own, and demanded, and readily obtained, Mrs. Oscraft’s protection. The women worked together. They were inseparable in their outgoings and incomings, but abroad each went her separate way. That was why, ignorant of the truth, Mrs. Oscraft had lied loyally when John Risca had burst into her flat long ago. She had thought she was merely shielding her fellow-sinner from the wrath of a jealous husband. Thus for years, with her cunning, Mrs. Risca had thrown dust in the eyes both of her friend and of the feared and hated wardress whom John had set over her. Under the double cloak she had used her hours of liberty to carry out the set, relentless purpose of her life. To spy on him with exquisite craft had been her secret passion, to strike when the time came the very meaning of her criminal existence.

“And for the last two or three years she gave no trouble and was as gentle as a lamb, so how could I suspect?” Mrs. Bence lamented.

“It’s all over,” said John, stupidly; “it’s all over. Nothing matters now.”

To Herold, in after time, the memories of these days were as those of the doings of another man in his outer semblance. His essential self had been the crazy being who had marched through the mellow Kensington streets with fantastic dreams of murder in his head. At the sight of Unity and the woman lying ghastly on the floor something seemed to snap in his brain, and all the cloudy essence that was he vanished, and a perfect mechanism took its place. When John with wearisome reiteration said: “God bless you, Wallie! God knows what I should have done without you,” it was hard to realize that he had done anything deserving thanks. He was inclined to regard himself--when he had a fugitive moment to regard himself--with abhorrence. He had talked; Unity had acted. And deep down in his soul, only once afterward in his life to be confessed, dwelt an awful remorse for his responsibility in the matter of Unity’s death. But in simple fact no man in times of great convulsion knows himself. He looks back on the man who acted and wonders. The man, surviving the wreck of earthquake, if he be weak, lies prone and calls on God and man to help him; if he be strong, he devotes the intensity of his faculties to the work of rescue, of clearing up debris, of temporary reconstruction, and has no time for self-analysis. It is in reality the essential man in his vigor and courage and nobility and disdain who acts, and the bruised and shattered about him who profit by his help look rightly upon him as a god.

It was only after John had visited the house of death, where, according to law, the bodies both of slayer and slain had to lie, and had seen the pinched, common face, swathed in decent linen, of the girl who for his sake had charged her soul with murder and taken her own life, and after he had driven away, stunned with grief and carrying with him, at his feet in the taxicab, the useless kit-bag packed by the poor child with Heaven knows what idea of its getting to its destination, and had staggered to the comfort of the foolish old lady’s outstretched arms and received her benediction, futilely spoken, divinely unspoken--it was only then that, raising haggard eyes, all the more haggard under the brow-reaching bandage he still wore, he asked the question:

“What about Stella? She is bound to learn.”

“I wrote to her last night,” said Herold. “I prepared her for the shock as best I could.”

A gleam of rational thought flitted across John Risca’s mind.

“You remembered her at such a time, with all you had to do? You’re a wonderful man, Wallie. No one else would have done it.”

“Are you in a fit state of mind,” said Herold, “to understand what has happened? I tried to tell you this morning,”--as he had done fitfully,--“but it was no use. You grasped nothing.”

“Go on now,” said John. “I’m listening.”

So Herold, amid the fripperies of Miss Lindon’s drawing-room, told the story of his summons to the Channel House some time ago--Good God!--He caught himself up sharply--it was only yesterday! and of his talk with Stellamaris in the garden, and of her encounter with the evil woman, and of the poison that had crept to the roots of Stella’s being.

John shivered, and clenched impotent fists. Stella left alone on the cliff-edge with that murderous hag! Stella’s ears polluted by that infamous tale! If only he had known it! Why did she hide it from him? It was well the murderess was dead, but, merciful Heaven, at what a price!

“Listen,” said Herold, gravely, checking his outburst; and he told of his meetings with Unity,--it was essential that John should know,--of her almost mystical worship of Stellamaris, of their discovery of the revolver--

“Poor child!” cried John, “I bought it soon after I went to Kilburn. I took it out the other day and played with a temptation I knew I shouldn’t succumb to. I should never have had the pluck.”

Herold continued, telling him all he knew--all save that of which he stood self-accused, and which for the present was a matter between him and his Maker. And Miss Lindon, fondling on her lap a wheezy pug, the successor to the Dandy of former days, who had been gathered to his fathers long ago, listened in placid bewilderment to the strange story of love and crime.

“I’m sure I don’t understand how people think of such things, let alone do them,” she sighed.

“You must accept the fact, dear Miss Lindon,” said Herold, gently.

“God’s will be done,” she murmured, which in the circumstances was as relevant a thing as the poor lady could have uttered. But John sat hunched up in a bamboo chair that creaked under his weight, and scarcely spoke a word. He felt very unimportant by the side of Unity--Unity with whose strong, passionate soul he had dwelt in blind ignorance. And Unity was dead, lying stark and white in the alien house.

After a long silence he roused himself.

“You wrote to Stella, you said?”

“Yes,” replied Herold.

“What will happen to her?”

“I don’t know.”

John groaned. “If only I had protected her as I ought to have done! If only I had protected both of them!”

He relapsed again into silence, burying his face in his hands. Presently Miss Lindon put the pug tenderly on the ground, rose, and stood by his chair.

“My poor boy,” she said, “do you love her so much?”

“She’s dead,” said John.

Herold shook him by the shoulder. “Nonsense, man. Pull yourself together.”

John raised a drawn face.

“What did you ask? I was thinking about Unity.”

* * * * *

That day, the day after the tragedy, Stellamaris faced life in its nakedness, stripped, so it appeared to her, of every rag of mystery.

She had breakfasted as usual in her room, bathed and dressed, and looked wistfully over her disowning sea. Then, as she was preparing to go down-stairs, Morris had brought in Herold’s letter, scribbled so nervously and shakenly that at first she was at a loss to decipher it. Gradually it became terribly clear: Unity was dead; the woman was dead; Unity had killed the woman and then killed herself.

“Details of everything but the truth will be given in the morning papers,” Herold wrote; “but you must know the truth from the first--as I know it. Unity has given her life to save those she loved--you and John--from the woman. She has laid down her life for you. Never forget that as long as you live.”

She sat for some moments quite still, paralyzed by the new horror that had sprung from this false, flower-decked earth to shake her by the throat. The world was terrifyingly relentless. She read the awful words again. Bit by bit feeling returned. Her flesh was constricted in a cold and finely wrought net. She grew faint, put her hand to her brow and found it damp. She stumbled to her bed by the great west window and threw herself down. Constable, lying on the hearth-rug, staggered to his feet and thrust his old head on her bosom and regarded her with mournful and inquiring eyes. She caressed him mechanically. Suddenly she sprang up as a swift memory smote her. Once she lay there by the window, and the dog was there by the bed, and there by the door stood the ungainly figure of a girl of her own age. Was it possible that that ungainly child whom she had seen and talked to then, whom a few weeks ago she had kissed, could have committed this deed of blood? She rose again to her feet, pushed the old dog aside blindly, and hid her eyes from the light of day. The girl was human, utterly human, at those two meetings. Of what unknown, devastating forces were human beings, then, composed?

She took up the letter again. “Unity has given her life to save those she loved--you and John--from the woman. She has laid down her life for you. Never forget that as long as you live.”

Walter Herold said that. It must be true. Through all of yesterday’s welter of misery, after he had left her, she had clung despairingly to him. There was no God, but there was Walter Herold. Her pride had dismissed him with profession of disbelief, but in her heart she had believed him. Not that she had pardoned John Risca, not that she had recovered her faith in him, not that she had believed in Unity. Her virginal soul, tainted by the woman, had shrunk from thoughts of the pair; but despite her fierce determination to believe in neither God nor man, she had been compelled to believe in Herold. She had stood up against him and fought with him and had bitten and rent him, and he had conquered, and she had felt maddenedly angered, triumphantly glad. The whole world could be as false as hell, but in it there was one clear spirit speaking truth.

She went to the southern window, rested her elbows on the sill, and pressed the finger-tips of both hands against her forehead. The soft southwest wind, bringing the salt from the dancing sea, played about her hair. Unity had laid down her life to save those she loved. So had Christ done--given his life for humanity. But Christ had not killed a human being, no matter how murderous, and had not taken his own life. No, no; she must not mix up things irreconcilable. She faced the room again. What did people do when they killed? What were the common, practical steps that they took to gain their ends? Her mind suddenly grew vague. Herold had spoken of newspapers. She must see them; she must know everything. Life was a deadly conflict, and knowledge the only weapon. For a few seconds she stood in the middle of the room, her young bosom heaving, her dark eyes wide with the diamond glints in their depths. Life was a deadly conflict. She would fight, she would conquer. Others miserably weaker than herself survived. Pride and race and splendid purity of soul sheathed her in cold armor. A jingle, separated from context, came into her mind, and in many ways it was a child’s mind:

Then spake Sir Thomas Howard,
“’Fore God, I am no coward,”

“‘’Fore God, I am no coward,’” she repeated, and with her delicate head erect she went out and down the stairs and entered the dining-room.

There she found Sir Oliver and Lady Blount sitting at a neglected breakfast. The old faces strove pitifully to smile. Stella kissed them in turn, and with her hand lingering on the old man’s arm, she gave him Herold’s letter.

“Is it in the newspapers?” she asked.

“What, what, my dear?” said Sir Oliver, adjusting his glasses on his nose with fumbling fingers.

She looked from one to the other. Then her eyes fell on the morning papers lying on the table. They were folded so that a great head-line stared hideously.

“Oh, darling, don’t read it--for Heaven’s sake don’t read it!” cried Lady Blount, clutching the nearer newspaper.

But Stella took up the other. “I must, dearest,” she said very gently. “Walter has written to me; but he could not tell me everything.”

She moved to the window that overlooked the pleasant garden, and with steady eyes read the vulgar and soul-withering report, while the two old people, head to head, puzzled out Herold’s scrawl.

When she had finished, she laid the paper quietly at the foot of the table and came and stood between them, revolted by the callous publication of names, almost physically sickened by the realistic picture of the scene, her head whirling. She caught hold of the back of Sir Oliver’s chair.

“The newspaper lies,” she said, “but it doesn’t know any better. Walter tells us why she did it.”

Sir Oliver, elbow on table, held the letter in his shaking grasp. It dropped, and his head sank on his hand.

“It’s too horrible!” he said in a weak voice. “I don’t understand anything at all about it. I don’t understand what Walter means. And all that old beastly story revived! It’s damnable!”

He looked quite broken, his querulous self-assertion gone. Lady Blount, too, gave way, and stretched out an imploring and pathetic arm, which, as Stella moved a step or two toward her, fell around the slim, standing figure. She laid her cheek against Stella and cried miserably.

“O my darling, my precious one, if we could only spare you all this! Walter shouldn’t have written. O my darling, what are we to do! What are we to do!”

And then Stellamaris saw once more that Great High Excellency and Most Exquisite Auntship, for all their love of her, were of the weak ones of the world, and she looked down with a new and life-giving feeling of pity upon the bowed gray heads. Once,--was it yesterday or weeks or months or years ago? She could not tell,--but once, to her later pain and remorse, she had commanded, and they had obeyed; now she knew that she had to comfort, protect, determine. And in a bewildering flash came the revelation that knowledge was a weapon not only to fight her own way through the evil of the world, but to defend the defenseless.

“I wish Walter was here,” she whispered, her hand against the withered, wet cheek.

“Why Walter, dear?”

“He is strong and true,” said Stellamaris.

“Why not John, darling?”

Yes, why not John? Stella drew a sharp breath. Sir Oliver saved her an answer.

“John has enough to look to, poor chap. He has got everything about his ears. Stella’s right. We want Walter. He’s young. He’s a good fellow is Walter. I must be getting old, my dear,--” He raised his face, and, with a sudden forlorn hope of dignity, twirled his white mustache,--“A year ago I shouldn’t have wanted Walter or anybody. It’s only you, my child, that your aunt and I are thinking of. We’ve tried to do our duty by you, haven’t we, Julia? And God knows we love you. You’re the only thing in the world left to us. It isn’t our fault that you are drawn into this ghastliness. It isn’t, God knows it isn’t. Only, my dear,”--there was a catch in his voice,--“you’re not able to bear it. For us old folks who have knocked about the world--well, we’re used to--to this sort of thing. I’ve had to send men to the gallows in my time--once twenty men to be shot. The paltry fellows at the Colonial Office didn’t see things as I did, but that’s another matter. We’re used to these things, dear; we’re hardened--”

“If I have got to live in the world, dear Excellency,” said Stella, feeling that there were some sort of flood-gates between the tumultuous flow of her being and the still waters of pity in which for the moment her consciousness acted, “it seems that I’ve got to get used to it, like every one else.”

“But what shall we do, darling?” cried Lady Blount, clinging pathetically to the child of sea-foam, from whom all knowledge of the perilous world had been hidden.

“Anything but worry Walter to come down here.”

“I thought you wanted him?”

“I do,” said Stella, with her hand on her bosom; “but that is only selfishness. He is needed more in London. I think we ought to go up and see if we can help in any way.”

“Go up to London!” echoed Sir Oliver.

“Yes, if you’ll take me, Uncle dear.”

The old man looked at his wife, who looked helplessly at him. Through the open window came the late, mellow notes of a thrush and the sunshine that flooded the summer garden.

“I am going to send Walter a telegram,” said Stella, moving gently away.

She left the room with the newly awakened consciousness that she was absolute mistress of her destiny. Love, devotion, service, anything she might require from the two old people, were hers for the claiming--anything in the world but guidance and help. She stood alone before the dragons of a world, no longer the vague Threatening Land, but a world of fierce passions and bloody deeds. Herold’s words flamed before her: “Unity has given her life for those she loved.” Had she, Stellamaris, a spirit so much weaker than Unity’s?

She advanced an eager step or two along the garden walk, clenching her delicate fists, and the fiery dragons retreated backward. She could give, too, as well as Unity, her life if need be. If that was not required, at least whatever could be demanded of her for those she loved. Again she read the letter. Underlying it was tenderest anxiety lest she should be stricken down by the ghastly knowledge. With the personal motive, the intense and omnipotent motive of her sex, unconsciously dominating her, she murmured half articulately:

“He thinks I’m a weak child. I’ll show him that I am a woman. He shall see that I’m not afraid of life.”

* * * * *

So when Walter Herold went home late that night,--the theater being out of the question, he had stayed at Kilburn until John had been persuaded to go to bed,--he found a telegram from Stellamaris.

“Coming to London to see if I can be of any help. My dear love to John in his terrible trouble. Tell me when I had better come.”

The next day, when they met before the inquest, he showed the telegram to John, who, after glancing at it, thrust it back into his hand with a deprecating gesture.

“No; let her stay there. What is she to do in this wilderness of horror?”

“I have already written,” said Herold.

“To keep away?”

“To come.”

“You know best,” said John, hopelessly. “At any rate the news hasn’t killed her. I feared it would. I had long letters from Oliver and Julia this morning.”

“What do they say?”

John put his hand to his head. “I forget,” said he.

(To be concluded)

“SHE LOOKED DOWN WITH A NEW AND LIFE-GIVING FEELING OF PITY UPON THE BOWED GRAY HEADS”]

THE CENTURY’S AFTER-THE-WAR SERIES

GREAT EVENTS IN AMERICAN PROGRESS

DURING THE HALF-CENTURY FOLLOWING THE CIVIL WAR

DESCRIBED BY AMERICAN JOURNALISTS AND BY WRITERS HAVING PERSONAL AND SPECIAL KNOWLEDGE OF IMPORTANT INCIDENTS

PREFATORY EDITORIAL NOTE

Two generations of readers have entered on the field of action since the Civil War marked the end of what may be called the formative era of American life. Twenty-eight years ago ~The Century~ began its memorable Civil War Series, which gave the surviving leaders, Joseph E. Johnston, Beauregard, Longstreet, and their valiant colleagues on the Confederate side, a chance to be read with calm appreciation by the people of the North, and brought to the reviving people of the South dispassionate accounts by Grant, Sherman, McClellan, Porter, and their fighting coadjutors on land and sea, of the motives and deeds which shaped the heroic contest and resulted in a reunited country. Through the medium of personal recollection, with fairness and without feeling, the brave men of both sides fought their battles over again before an open-minded audience of all the people, and for the first time since slavery became the cause of strife, both parts of the country shook hands over “the bloody chasm” in mutual admiration and respect.

The forty-seven years which have elapsed since Appomattox have also had their conflicts, though most of them have been waged in the ways of peace. They have resulted, however, in forcing the republic, shaped by the aims of the fathers, into the wider domain of empire required by the expanding purposes of the sons. In order to bring the great happenings of this period vividly before the new generations of readers, ~The Century~ has organized an After-the-War Series. It will treat of such compelling and lasting influences as the attempt to “recall” Andrew Johnson, seventeenth President, by impeachment; the acquisition of Alaska, with its great promise for the future; the settlement of the Alabama Claims, which brought about a new status for the United States with Europe; the memorable attempt to make Horace Greeley President, which in a way may be compared to the present campaign of the “Progressives”; the near ship-wreck of the Hayes-Tilden contest; the chain of measures and financial disasters from “Black Friday” and the Crédit Mobilier to the time when the nation kept its faith by the resumption of specie payments; the large features of Reconstruction, still being worked out in the South; the victory of civil-service reform, beginning with Cleveland’s election over Blaine; the solidifying of the Monroe Doctrine in the Venezuelan dispute, which prepared the way for the Panama Canal; the diplomacy of the war with Spain, by which the republic became an empire; and also articles describing the remarkable Bryan conventions, the progress of conservation, the battle with the trusts, and the gigantic problem of organized labor. In its total effect the series will reveal the drift of life in the United States.

Each of these commanding subjects will be treated by a prominent American journalist having particular acquaintance with the theme, and also, where supplemental articles are necessary, by writers having special knowledge of these historic dramas of American progress and personal contact with the actors. In this year of political conflict Colonel Watterson’s article, which begins the series, has a timely as well as a distinct personal interest.

THE HUMOR AND TRAGEDY OF THE GREELEY CAMPAIGN

BY HENRY WATTERSON

I

Among the many misconceptions and mischances which befell the slavery agitation in the United States and finally led a kindred people into actual war, the idea that got afloat after this war, that every Confederate was a Secessionist, best served the ends of the radicalism which sought to reduce the South to a conquered province, and as such to reconstruct it by hostile legislation supported, wherever needed, by force.

Andrew Johnson perfectly understood that a great majority of the men who were arrayed on the Southern side had taken the field against their better judgment through pressure of circumstance. They were Union men who had opposed Secession and clung to the old order. Not merely in the Border States did this class rule, but in the Gulf States it held a respectable minority until the shot fired upon Sumter drew the call for troops from Lincoln. The Secession leaders who had staked their all upon the hazard knew that to save their movement from collapse it was necessary that blood be sprinkled in the faces of the people. Hence the message from Charleston,

With cannon, mortar, and petard,
We tender you our Beauregard,

with the response from Washington, precipitated the conflict of theories into a combat of arms for which neither party was prepared.

The debate ended, battle at hand, Southern men had to choose between the North and the South, between their convictions and predilections on one side and expatriation on the other side, resistance to invasion, not secession, the issue. But, four years later, when in 1865 all that they had believed and feared in 1861 had come to pass, these men required no drastic measures to bring them to terms. Events more potent than acts of Congress had already reconstructed them. Lincoln, with a forecast of this, had shaped his ends accordingly. Johnson, himself a Southern man, understood it even better than Lincoln, and backed by the legacy of Lincoln, he proceeded not very skilfully to build upon it.

The assassination of Lincoln, however, had played directly into the hands of the radicals, led by Ben Wade, in the Senate, and Thaddeus Stevens in the House. Prior to that baleful night they had fallen behind the marching van. The mad act of Booth put them upon their feet and brought them to the front. They were implacable men, politicians equally of resolution and ability. Events quickly succeeding favored them and their plans. It was not alone Johnson’s lack of temper and tact that gave them the whip-hand. His removal from office would have opened the door of the White House to Wade, so that strategically Johnson’s position was from the beginning beleaguered and, before the close, came perilously near to being untenable.

LYMAN TRUMBULL]

Grant, who, up to the time of his nomination for the Presidency, had had no partizan conviction, not Wade, the uncompromising extremist, came after, and inevitably four years of Grant had again divided the triumphant Republicans. This was the situation during the winter of 1871-72, when the approaching Presidential election brought the country face to face with an extraordinary state of affairs. The South was in irons. The North was growing restive. Thinking people everywhere felt that conditions so anomalous to our institutions could not last.

II

Johnson had made a bungling attempt to carry out the policies of Lincoln and had gone down in the strife. The Democratic party had reached the ebb-tide of its disastrous fortunes. It seemed the merest reactionary. A group of influential Republicans, for one cause or another dissatisfied with Grant, held a caucus and issued a call for what they described as a Liberal Republican Convention to assemble in Cincinnati, May 1, 1872.[1]

A Southern man and a Confederate soldier, a Democrat by inheritance and conviction, I had been making in Kentucky an unequal fight for the acceptance of the inevitable. The line of cleavage between the old and the new South I had placed upon the last three amendments to the Constitution, naming them the Treaty of Peace between the sections. The negro must be invested with the rights conferred upon him by these amendments, however mistaken and injudicious the South might think them. The obsolete black laws instituted during the slave régime must be removed from the statute-books. The negro, like Mohammed’s coffin, swung in mid-air. He was neither fish, flesh, nor fowl, nor good red herring. For our own sake we must habilitate him, educate and elevate him, make him, if possible, a contented and useful citizen. Failing of this, free government itself might be imperiled.

I had behind me the intelligence of the Confederate soldiers almost to a man. They, at least, were tired of futile fighting, and to them the war was over. But there was an element, especially in Kentucky, which wanted to fight when it was much too late--old Union Democrats and Union Whigs--who clung to the hull of slavery when the kernel was gone, and proposed to win in politics what had been lost in battle.

The leaders of this belated element were in complete control of the political machinery of the State. They regarded me as an impudent upstart, since I had come to Kentucky from Tennessee as little better than a carpet-bagger, and had done their uttermost to put me down and drive me out.

I was a young fellow of two and thirty, of boundless optimism and with my full share of self-confidence, no end of physical endurance and mental vitality, and having some political as well as newspaper experience. It never crossed my fancy that I could fail. I met resistance with aggression, answered attempts at bullying with scorn, generally irradiated by laughter. Yet I was not wholly blind to consequences and the admonitions of prudence, and when the call for a Liberal Republican Convention appeared, I realized that, interested as I was in what might come of it, if I expected to remain a Democrat in a Democratic community, and to influence and lead a Democratic following, I must proceed with caution. Though many of those proposing the new movement were familiar acquaintances, some of them personal friends, the scheme was, as it were, in the air. Its three newspaper bell-wethers, Samuel Bowles of the Springfield “Republican,” Horace White of the Chicago “Tribune,” and Murat Halstead of the Cincinnati “Commercial,” were specially well known to me; so were Horace Greeley, Carl Schurz, and Charles Sumner. Stanley Matthews was my kinsman; George Hoadley and Cassius M. Clay were next-door neighbors. But they were not the men I had trained with--not my “crowd,”--and it was a question how far I might be able to reconcile myself, not to mention my political associates, to such company, even conceding that they proceeded under good fortune with a good plan, offering the South extrication from its woes and the Democratic party an entering wedge into a solid and hitherto irresistible Republicanism.

CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS]

Nevertheless, I resolved to go a little in advance to Cincinnati, to have a look at the stalking-horse there to be offered, free to take it or leave it, as I liked, my bridges and lines of communication still open and intact.

III

A livelier and more variegated omnium-gatherum was never assembled. They had already begun to pour in when I arrived. There were long-haired and spectacled doctrinaires from New England, and short-haired and blatant emissaries from New York, mostly, as it turned out, friends of Horace Greeley. There were brisk Westerners from Chicago and St. Louis. If Whitelaw Reid, who had come as Greeley’s personal representative, had his retinue, so had Horace White and Carl Schurz. There were a few rather overdressed persons from New Orleans brought up by Governor Warmouth, and a motley array of Southerners of every sort, who were ready to clutch at any straw that promised relief to intolerable conditions. The full contingent of Washington correspondents was there, of course, with sharpened eyes and pencils, to make the most of what they had already begun to christen a conclave of cranks.

HENRY WATTERSON]

Bowles and Halstead met me at the station, and we drove to the St. Nicholas Hotel, where White and Schurz were awaiting us. Then and there was organized a fellowship of the first three and myself which in the succeeding campaign went by the name of the Quadrilateral. We resolved to limit the Presidential nomination of the convention to Charles Francis Adams, Bowles’s candidate, and Lyman Trumbull, White’s candidate, omitting altogether, because of specific reasons urged by White, the candidacy of B. Gratz Brown, who, because of his Kentucky connections, had better served my purpose. The very next day the secret was abroad, and Whitelaw Reid came to me to ask why, in a newspaper combine of this sort, the “New York Tribune” had been left out.

HORACE WHITE]

To my mind it seemed preposterous that it had been, or should be, and I stated as much to my new colleagues. They offered objection which to me appeared perverse, if not childish. To begin with, they did not like Reid. He was not a principal, like the rest of us, but a subordinate. Greeley was this, that, and the other; he could never be relied upon in any coherent, practical plan of campaign; to talk about him as a candidate was ridiculous. I listened rather impatiently, and finally I said: “Now, gentlemen, in this movement we shall need the ‘New York Tribune.’ If we admit Reid, we clinch it. You will all agree that Greeley has no chance of a nomination, and so, by taking him in, we both eat our cake and have it.” On this view of the case Reid was invited to join us, and that very night he sat with us at the St. Nicholas, where from night to night until the end we convened and went over the performances and developments of the day and concerted plans for the morrow.

As I recall these symposiums, amusing and plaintive memories rise before me.

The first serious business that engaged us was the killing of the boom for Judge David Davis of the Supreme Court, which was assuming definite and formidable proportions. The preceding winter it had been organizing at Washington under the ministration of some of the most astute politicians of the time, mainly, however, Democratic members of Congress. A party of these had brought the boom to Cincinnati, opening headquarters well provided with the requisite commissaries. Every delegate who came in that could be reached was laid hold of and conducted here.

SAMUEL BOWLES]

We considered this flat burglary. It was a gross infringement upon our preserve. What business had the professional politicians with a great reform movement? The influence and dignity of journalism were involved and imperiled. We, its custodians, could brook no such defiance from intermeddling office-seekers, especially from brokendown Democratic office-seekers.

The inner sanctuary of our proceedings was a common drawing-room between two bedchambers shared by Schurz and me. Here we repaired after supper to smoke the pipe of fraternity and reform and to save the country. What could be done to kill off “D. Davis,” as we irreverently called the eminent and learned jurist, the friend of Lincoln, and the only aspirant having a “bar’l”? That was the question. We addressed ourselves to the task with earnest purpose, but characteristically. The power of the press must be invoked. It was our chief, if not our only, weapon. Each of us indited a leading editorial for his paper, to be wired to its destination and printed next morning, striking “D. Davis” at a prearranged and varying angle. Copies of these were made for Halstead, who, having with the rest of us read and compared the different screeds, indited one of his own in general comment and review for Cincinnati consumption. In next day’s “Commercial,” blazing under vivid head-lines, these leading editorials, dated “Chicago,” “New York,” “Springfield, Mass.,” and “Louisville, Ky.,” appeared with the explaining line, “‘The Tribune’ of to-morrow morning [or the ‘Courier-Journal’ or ‘Republican’] will say,” etc.

Wondrous consensus of public opinion! The Davis boom went down before it. The Davis boomers were paralyzed. The earth seemed to have arisen and hit them amidships. The incoming delegates were stopped and forewarned. Six months of adroit scheming was set at naught, and little more was heard of “D. Davis.”

ALEXANDER K. McCLURE]

Like the Mousquetaires, we were equally in for fighting and foot-racing; the point with us being to “get there,” no matter how; the end--the defeat of the rascally machine politicians and the reform of the public service--being relied upon to justify the means. I am writing this forty years after the event, and must be forgiven the fling of my wisdom at my own expense and that of my associates in harmless crime. Reid and White and I are the sole survivors. We were wholly serious, maybe a trifle visionary, but as upright and patriotic in our intentions and as loyal to our engagements as it was possible for older, and maybe worse, men to be. For my part, I must say that if I have never anything on my conscience heavier than the massacre of that not very edifying, yet promising Davis “combine,” I shall be troubled by no remorse, but to the end shall sleep soundly and well.

In that immediate connection an amusing incident throwing some light upon the period thrusts itself upon my memory. The Quadrilateral, with Reid added, had finished its consolidation of public opinion just related, when the cards of Judge Craddock, Chairman of the Kentucky Democratic Committee, and of Colonel J. Stoddart Johnston, editor of the “Frankfort Yeoman,” the organ of the Kentucky Democracy, were brought from below. They had come to look after me, that was evident. By no chance could they have found me in more equivocal company. In addition to ourselves, bad enough from the Kentucky point of view, they found in the room Theodore Tilton and David A. Wells. When they crossed the threshold and were presented _seriatim_, the face of each was a study. Even an immediate application of whisky and water did not suffice to restore their lost equilibrium and bring them to their usual state of convivial self-possession. Colonel Johnston told me years after that when they went away they walked in silence a block or two, when the old judge, a model of the learned and sedate school of Kentucky politicians and jurists, turned to him and said: “It is no use, Stoddart. We cannot keep up with that young man or with these times. Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace!”

CARL SCHURZ]

The Jupiter Tonans of reform in attendance upon the convention was Colonel Alexander K. McClure of the Philadelphia “Times.” He was one of the handsomest and most imposing of men; Halstead himself was scarcely more so. McClure was personally unknown to the Quadrilateral, but this did not stand in the way of our asking him to dine with us as soon as his claims to fellowship in the good cause of reform began to make themselves apparent through the need of bringing the Pennsylvania delegation to “a realizing sense.”

As he entered the room, he looked like a god, nay, he acted like one. Schurz first took him in hand. With a lofty courtesy that I have never seen equaled, he tossed his inquisitor into the air. Halstead came next, trying him upon another tack, but fared no better than Schurz. Then I hurried to the rescue of my friends. McClure, now looking a bit bored and resentful, landed me somewhere near the ceiling.

It would have been laughable if it had not been ignominious. I took my discomfiture with the bad grace of silence throughout the brief, stiff, and formal meal which followed. But when it was over, and the party had risen from the table and was about to disperse, I collected my energies and resources for a final forlorn hope. I was not willing to remain so crushed or to confess myself so beaten, though I could not disguise from myself a feeling that all of us had been overmatched.

“McClure,” said I, with the cool and quiet resolution of despair, drawing him aside, “what in the ---- do you want, anyhow?”

He looked at me with swift intelligence and a sudden show of sympathy, and then over at the others with a withering glance.

“What? With those cranks? Nothing.”

Jupiter descended to earth. I am afraid we actually took a glass of wine together. Anyhow, from that moment to the hour of his death we were the best of friends.

Without the inner circle of the Quadrilateral, which had taken matters into its own hands, were a number of persons, some of them disinterested and others simple curiosity- and excitement-seekers, who might be described as merely “lookers-on in Vienna.” The Sunday afternoon before the convention was to meet, we, the self-elect, fell in with a party of these in a garden “over the Rhine,” as the German quarter of Cincinnati is called. There was first general and rather aimless talk, then came a great deal of speech-making. Schurz started it with a few pungent observations intended to suggest and inspire some common ground of public opinion and sentiment. Nobody was inclined to dispute his leadership, but everybody was prone to assert his own. It turned out that each regarded himself, and wished to be regarded, as a man with a mission, having a clear idea how things were not to be done. There were civil-service reform protectionists and civil-service reform free traders. There were a few politicians, who were discovered to be spoilsmen, the unforgivable sin, and as such were quickly dismissed. The missing ingredient was coherence of belief and united action. Not a man of them was willing to commit or bind himself to anything. Edward Atkinson pulled one way, and William Dorsheimer exactly the opposite way. David A. Wells sought to get the two together; it was not possible. Sam Bowles shook his head in diplomatic warning. Horace White threw in a chink or so of a rather agitating newspaper independence, while Halstead, to the more serious-minded, was in an inflamed state of jocosity.

MURAT HALSTEAD]

All this was grist to the mill of the Washington correspondents, chiefly “story” writers and satirists, who were there to make the most out of an occasion in which the bizarre was much in excess of the conventional, with George Alfred Townsend and Donn Piatt to set the pace. Hyde of the “Republican” had come from St. Louis to keep special tab on Grosvenor of the “Democrat.” Though rival editors facing our way, they had not been admitted to the Quadrilateral. McCullagh and Nixon were among the earliest arrivals from Chicago. The lesser lights of the gild were innumerable. One might have mistaken it for an annual meeting of the Associated Press.

IV

The convention assembled. It was in Cincinnati’s great music-hall. Schurz presided. Who that was there will never forget his opening words, “This is moving day.” He was just turned forty-two; in his physiognomy a scholarly Herr Doktor; in his trim, lithe figure a graceful athlete; in the tones of his voice an orator.

Even the bespectacled doctrinaires of the East, whence, since the days the Star of Bethlehem shone over the desert, wisdom and wise men have had their emanation, were moved to something like enthusiasm. The rest of us were fervid. Two days and a night and a half the Quadrilateral had the world in a sling and things its own way. It had been agreed, as I have said, to limit the field to Adams, Trumbull, and Greeley, and Greeley being out of it as having no chance whatever, the list was still further abridged to Adams and Trumbull. Trumbull not developing very strong, Bowles, Halstead, and I, even White, began to be sure that it would require only one ballot to nominate Adams--Adams the indifferent, who had sailed away for Europe, observing that he was not a candidate for the nomination, and otherwise intimating his disdain of it and us.

Matters being thus apparently cocked and primed, the convention adjourned over the first night of its session with everybody happy except the “D. Davis” contingent, which lingered, but knew its “cake was dough.” If we had forced a vote that night, as we might have done, we should have nominated Adams. But, inspired by the bravery of youth and inexperience, we let the golden opportunity slip. The throng of delegates and the vast audience dispersed.

In those days it being the business of my life to turn day into night and night into day, it was not my habit to go to bed much before the presses began to thunder below. This night proved no exception: being tempted by a party of Kentuckians, some of whom had come to back me and some to watch me, I did not quit their agreeable society until the “wee sma’ hours ayant the twal.”

HORACE GREELEY

This portrait, unusual for the absence of spectacles, is owned by his daughter, Mrs. F. M. Clendenin.]

Before turning in, I glanced at the early edition of the “Commercial” to see that something--I was too tired to decipher precisely what--had happened. It was, in point of fact, the arrival about midnight of General Frank P. Blair and Governor B. Gratz Brown of Missouri. I had in my possession documents which would have induced at least one of them to pause before making himself too conspicuous. The Quadrilateral, excepting Reid, knew this. We had separated upon the adjournment of the convention. I, being across the river in Covington, their search for me was unavailing. They were in despair. When, having had a few hours of rest, I reached the convention hall toward noon, it was too late.

From a photograph taken in the editorial rooms of “The Tribune” shortly before the opening of the Greeley Campaign.]

NAST’S CARTOON, “‘THE PIRATES’ UNDER FALSE COLORS--CAN THEY CAPTURE THE ‘SHIP OF STATE’?”

At the left Sumner is reading a book; Andrew Johnson is behind the
capstan; August Belmont in the gangway with a knife in his mouth;
Fenton in the background; Whitelaw Reid on a keg of powder playing
a violin tagged, “This is not an organ”; David Davis is behind
Archbishop Hughes with the cross; Manton Marble is hiding behind his
newspaper “The World”; Senator Tipton is bawling near Greeley; Carl
Schurz is waving his hat to friends on the _Ship of State_ and
Theodore Tilton is embracing him; Governor Hoffman holds a parasol;
Horatio Seymour kneels to Jeff Davis lying on the Confederate flag,
behind him a group of Confederates with Wade Hampton standing near
Greeley; John Kelly holds the Tammany knife, and above his head are
faces of Tweed, and Mayor Oakey Hall with eye-glasses.
]

I got into the thick of the session in time to see the close, not without an angry collision with that one of the newly arrived actors whose coming had changed the course of events, and with whom I had lifelong relations of affectionate intimacy. Recently, when I was sailing in Mediterranean waters with Joseph Pulitzer, who, then a mere youth, was yet the secretary of the convention, he recalled the scene: the unexpected and not over-attractive appearance of B. Gratz Brown, the Governor of Missouri; his not very pleasing yet ingenious speech in favor of the nomination of Greeley; the stoical, almost lethargic indifference of Schurz. “Carl Schurz,” said Pulitzer, “was the most industrious and the least energetic man I have ever known and worked with. A word from him at that crisis would have completely routed Blair and squelched Brown. It was simply not in him to speak it.”

THOMAS NAST]

The result was that Greeley was nominated amid a whirl of enthusiasm, his workers, with Whitelaw Reid at their head, having maintained an admirable and effective organization, and being thoroughly prepared to take advantage of the opportune moment. It was the logic of the event that B. Gratz Brown should be placed on the ticket with him.

The Quadrilateral was “nowhere.” It was done for. The impossible had come to pass. There arose thereafter a friendly issue of veracity between Schurz and me, which illustrates our state of mind. My version is that we left the convention hall together, with an immaterial train of after incidents; his that we did not meet after the adjournment. He was quite sure of this because he had ineffectually sought me. “Schurz was right,” said Joseph Pulitzer, upon the occasion of our yachting cruise just mentioned, “because he and I went directly from the hall with Judge Stallo to his home on Walnut Hills, where we dined and passed the afternoon.”

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 to-night. 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 coaxing and partly by insisting, though it was uphill work.

Frostier conviviality I have never sat down to than Reid’s dinner. Horace White looked more than ever like an iceberg; Sam Bowles was diplomatic, 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 none of us, nor it, and we separated early and sadly, reformers hoist by their own petard.

From a cartoon by Thomas Nast in “Harper’s Weekly”

NAST’S CARTOON OF WHITELAW REID OF “THE TRIBUNE” AND MANTON MARBLE OF “THE WORLD” PLAYING IN CONCERT]

V

The reception by the country of the nomination of Horace Greeley was as inexplicable to the politicians as the nomination itself had been unexpected by the Quadrilateral. The people rose to it. The sentimental, the fantastic, and the paradoxical in human nature had to do with this. At the South an ebullition of pleased surprise grew into positive enthusiasm. Peace was the need, if not the longing, of the Southern heart, and Greeley’s had been the first hand stretched out to the South from the enemy’s camp,--very bravely, too, for he had signed the bail-bond of Jefferson Davis,--and quick upon the news flashed the response from generous men eager for the chance to pay something on a recognized debt of gratitude.

Except for this spontaneous uprising, which continued unabated in July, the Democratic party could not have been induced at its convention at Baltimore to ratify the proceedings at Cincinnati and formally to make Greeley its candidate. The leaders dared not resist it. Some of them halted, a few held out, but by midsummer the great body of them came to the front to head the procession.

Horace Greeley was a queer old man, a very medley of contradictions, shrewd and simple, credulous and penetrating, a master penman of the school of Swift and Cobbett, even in his odd, picturesque personality whimsically attractive and, as Seward learned to his cost, a man to be reckoned with where he chose to put his powers forth.