Book >/ 'S&Wy ^E€.^ -e^^ A CONTRIBUTION TO HISTORY. EDWIN M.STANTON: His Character and Public Services on the Eve of the Rebellion, AS PRESENTED IN A SERIES OF PAPERS y Hox. HENRY WILSOl!^, Senator from Massachusetts, AND THE Hon. J. S. BLACK, or Pennsylvania. rUBLISIIKD BY COLE, M O R W I T Z & CO., EASTON weekly ARGUS, 1^71. \Cp5 ^^ A CONTBIBUTION TO HISTORY, EDWIN M. STANTON: v^-7 ^3 / o HIS CHARACTER AND PUBLIC SERVICES ON THE EYE OF THE REBELLION, PKESENTED IN A SERIES OF PAPERS BY THE <"'' Hon. henry WILSON, Senator from Massachusetts, AND THE Hon. J. S. BLACK, of Pennsylvania. PUBLISHED BY COLE, MORWITZ & CO., easton weekly argus, easton, pa. isn. PKEFATORY I^OTE. The papers which follow have been copied, without abridgment or alteration, from the journals in which they were first published — to wit, the articles of Mr. Wilson, from the Atlantic Monthly, and those of Judge Black, with the exception of his letter to Mr. Hoar, from the Galaxy. The passage of the sheets through the press has been watched with great care, and it is believed the pamphlet will be found to contain no material errors. •^^^^c. EDWIN M. STAXTOISr. 7 tlie camp, in the battle-field, or in the Rebel prison. And wlien, on the 27th of December, he was borne throngh the streets of the capital to his last resting-place in Oak Hill Cemetery, the people felt they were follow- ing a martyr to his tomb no less than when Sedgwick, Wadsworth, and Lincoln were carried through the same streets to their bnrial. When time shall have elapsed, and the passions and prejudices engen- dered by the strife shall have subsided, when the records of events and acts shall have come to light, and the philosophic historian shall, with those records, lay bare the motives and purposes of the actors in that con- flict, Edwin M. Stanton will stand forth conspicuous among the illustri- ous characters of the era. It will then be seen that he wielded vast power, and largely influenced results. I now propose simply to speak of Mr. Stanton as I knew him, of his services as I saw them, and of his cljaracteristics as they revealed themselves to me in the varying phases of the struggle. While he was in the cabinets of Lincoln and Johnson, it was my privilege to occupy the position of chairman of the Military Com- mittee of the Senate, and our official relations were necessarily intimate and confidential. The legislation requisite for raising, equipping, and gov- erningthe armies, and the twenty-five thousand nominations of officers, from the second lieutenants up to the General-in-Chief, which passed through my committee while he was in the War Department, were often the subject of conference and consideration between us. His office was open to me at all times by day and night. I saw him in every circumstance and con- dition of the war, in the glow of victory and in the gloom of defeat. Of course his modes of thought, his methods of business, and his moods of feeling were open to my close observation and careful scrutiny. I came to understand, I think, his motives and purposes, to comprehend his plans, and to realize something of the value of his public services. I first knew Mr. Stanton during the closing hours of Mr. Buchanan's weak and wicked administration. On the election of Mr. Lincoln, South Carolina, trained for thirty years in the school of treason, leaped headlong into rebellion. Other States followed her example. Southern senators and representatives came to Congress, and, with official oaths on their perjured lips, plotted against the peace and unity of their country. Con- spiracies were rife in the Cabinet, in Congress, in the departments, in the army, in the navy, and among the citizens of the capital, for the over- throw of the government and the dismemberment of the Union. Day by day, during that terrible winter, loyal men in Congress saw with profound sorrow their riven and shattered country sinking into the fathomless abyss of disunion. The President and the Attorney-General surrendered the government's rights of self-preservation by assuring the conspirators that " no power had been delegated to Congress to coerce into submission a State which is attempting to withdraw, or which has entirely withdrawn from the confederacy." The Secretary of the Trea- sury was deranging the finances and sinking the national credit. The Sec- retary of War was scattering the little array, and sending muskets, can- non, and munitions of war where they could be clutched by the conspira- tors. The Secretary of the Interior was permitting the robbery of trust funds, and revealing to traitors the action of his government. A New England Secretary of the Navy waa rendering that arm of the service powerless for the national defence. Northern politicians were ostenta- tiously giving pledges "never to vote a man or a dollar for coercion," and assuring the conspirators, who were seizing forts, arsenals, and arms, 8 EDWIN M. STAXTOX. and raising batteries for assault or defence, that troops, raised for the sub- jugation of the South, " must pass over their dead bodies." Officers of the Senate and of the executive departments were members of secret or- ganizations that nightly plotted treason in the national capital. It was a time of peril, anxiety, and gloom. Patriotic men can hardly recall those days of apostasy without a shudder. President Buchanan was weak and wavering. Mr. Stanton, whom he had consulted before the meeting of Congress, had advised him to incorporate into his message the doctrine that the Federal government had the power, and that it was its duty, to coerce seceding States. But timid and treasonable counsels pre- vailed, and the patriotic and vigorous advice of Mr. Stanton was rejected. The plottings and intrigues of the secessionists and the fatal weakness of the President alarmed the veteran Secretary of State. With large intel- ligence and experience, General Cass had little strength of will or tena- city of purpose. But whatever may have been his faults and shortcom- ings, he was a true patriot, and ardently loved his native land. The threat- ening aspect of public affairs greatly excited the aged statesman. The secession leaders sought to impress on the mind of the President the idea that his Secretary of State was losing his mind ; but a loyal Democrat, to whom the President communicated his apprehensions, aptly replied that General Cass was the only sane man in his Cabinet. Feeling that he could no longer serve his country by continuing in the Cabinet, the Sec- retary retired, leaving to Joseph Holt, then Postmaster- General, the press- ing injunction to remain, and, if possible, save the endangered nation. On his retirement, Attorney- General Black, who had pronounced against the power of the government to coerce a seceding State, and who maintained that the attempt to do so " would be the expulsion of such State from the Union," and would absolve all the States "from their fed- eral obligations," and the people from contributing " their, money or their blood to carry on a contest like that," was made Secretary of State. In the terrible conflict through which the nation has passed, there has been a general recognition, by men not given to superstition, of the hand of God in its progress. And in that eventful history nowhere did the Di- vine interposition appear more evident than in the appointment of Mr. Stanton as Attorney-General. That the vacillating President, at such a crisis, with his disloyal Cabinet and traitorous associates, should have offered the vacant Cabinet office to that strong, rugged, downright, patri- otic man, was strikingly providential. On the evening of the day when he took the oath of ofiBce, he said to a friend that he had taken the oath to support the Constitution of his country, and that he would keep that oath in letter and in spirit. Faith- fully did he keep his pledge amid the apostasies that followed. He was a marvel of resolution and vigor, of industry and vigilance. His words and acts were instinct with the loyalty which glowed in his bosom. His soul seemed on 6re. He saw treason in every part of the government, and sought to unmask those who were plotting its overthrow. He set his face sternly against the conspirators, and showered upon their heads his withering rebukes. Rising in that crisis above the claims of partisan- ship, he consecrated himself to the lofty duties of an exalted patriotism. In the Cabinet he urged bold and decisive action. He counselled often with the aged veteran. General Scott, and with leading statesmen, and be gave patriotic advice to the meml)ers of the Peace Congress. He went even farther. He put himself in communication with the EDWIN M. STANTON. 9 Republicans in Congress, and kept them well informed of what was going on in the councils of the administration directly relating to the dangers of the country. The House of Representatives had raised a conimittee to investigate treasonable machinations and conspiracies. Howard of Michigan and Dawes of Massachusetts, zealous Republicans, were upon it. So was Reynolds, an earnest and patriotic member from New York ; Cochrane from the same State, then much of a Democratic partisan ; and Branch, who was killed fighting in the ranks of the Rebels. Mr. Stanton was so anxious to baffle the conspirators, that he made an ar- rangement by which Messrs. Howard and Dawes were informed of what- ever occurred tending to endanger the country, and which he desired should be thwarted by the friends of the incoming administration. He believed that Mr. Toucey, Secretary of the Navy, was false to his country, and that he ought to be arrested. Tlie resolution concerning him, intro- duced into the House by Mr. Dawes, was inspired by Mr. Stanton. A committee of vigilance was organized by the more active Republican members of Congress. I was a member of that committee, as was also Mr. Colfax. It was in that time of intense anxiety and trial that I be- came acquainted with Mr. Stanton, and consulted with him, and received from him warnings and suggestions. He was in almost daily consultation, too, with members of both Houses. In one of the most critical periods, Mr. Sumner, who made his acquaintance soon after entering Congress, visited Mr. Stanton at the Attorney-General's office. Being surrounded by false and treacherous men who watched his every word and act, he led Mr. Sumner from his office, told him that he did not dare to hold con- versation with him there, and made an appointment to call upon him at one o'clock in the morning. At that hour, he made the promised call, and explained to him the perilous condition of the country, and suggested plans of action for the loyal men in Congress. Of course such intense patriotism, sleepless vigilance, and tireless activity brought him in conflict with disloyal men both in the Cabinet and in Congress. Scenes of thrilling interest were sometimes enacted in the Cabinet. Floyd, who had administered the War Department so as to disarm the nation and weapon the rising Rebellion, had expected that Colonel Anderson, a Southern man, would carry out the Secretary's pur- poses in the interest of treason. When that officer abandoned Fort Moultrie, which he could not hold, and threw his little force into Fort Sumter, which he hoped to hold, Floyd, whose corruptions were coming to light, appeared in the Cabinet, raging and storming like the baffled conspirator he was. He arraigned the President and Cabinet, and charged them with violating their pledges to the secessionists. The President — poor, weak old man — trembled and grew pale. Then it was that Stanton met the baffled traitor and his fellow-conspirators with a storm of fierce and fiery denunciation. His words, voice, and bearing are said to have been in the highest degree impressive, and those who knew the man can well imagine the thrilling moment when treason and loyalty grappled in the persons of such representatives. Floyd at once resigned his commission, slunk away from the office he had so prostituted into the rebellion, where he achieved neither credit nor success, and soon sank into an obscure and dishonored grave. Some time afterwards Mr. Stanton drew up a full and detailed account of that Cabinet scene. It was read to Mr. Holt, and pronounced by that gentleman to be truthful and accurate. It was in the form of a letter to a leaamg Democratic 10 EDWIN M. STANTON". politician of the city of Xew York, but it was never sent. It is hoped, however, that for the sake of history, it may soon be placed before the public eye. To this noble fidelity of Edwin M. Stanton, sustained as it was by the patriotism and courage of Joseph Holt and John A. Dix, the country is largely indebted for its preservation from the perils which then environed it, and for the transmission of the government into the hands of the incoming administration. After weary months the Fourth of March gladdened the longing hearts of patriotic men who had clung to their country when darkness was set- tling npon it. The riven and shattered government passed from the nerveless hand of that weakness which betrayed like treason, into the strong and faithful grasp of Abraham Lincoln. His stainless record, and the records of those who gathered about him, gave assurance to all the world that, in accepting the guardianship of their imperilled country, they would cherish and defend it with all their hearts. The administra- tion was quickly forced by the Rebels, who held in their hands, as they were solemnly assured by Mr. Lincoln in his Inaugural, "the momentous issues of civil war," to summon troops into the tield for national defence. Large armies were created and vast quantities of arms and munitions were provided. But vigorous as was this action of the government, and prompt as were the responses of the people, the military movements did not fully answer the public expectation. Mr. Stanton, then pursuing his profes- sion in Washington, deeply sympathized in this general feeling. His knowledge of the public dangers and his earnest and impulsive nature made him impatient of delays. To ardent friends who, like him, chafed at what seemed to them inaction, he expressed his profound anxieties, and he joined them in demanding a more vigorous and aggressive policy. More fully than most public men, he comprehended the magnitude of the struggle on which the nation had entered, and fathomed, perhaps, more deeply its causes. His position in Mr. Buchanan's Cabinet had revealed to him the purposes of the Rebel leaders and the spirit of the Rebellion, and he knew that slavery was its inspiration. Mr. Cameron, Secretary of War, was in advance of the President on the slavery question, not perhaps in sentiment and feeling, but in the matter of policy. In his first annual report he recommended freeing and arming the slaves. Deeming this, however, a delicate matter, he sub- mitted the important passage to several of his friends, all of whom, ex- cept Mr. Stanton, disapproved of the policy proposed. He cordially indorsed it, and, taking his pen, modified one or two sentences, remark- ing that he would " fix it so that the lawyers would not carp at it.'' This portion of the Secretary's report, it will be remembered, did not meet the views of Mr. Lincoln, and he required its suppression. The impatience of the public mind at the delays found expression in harsh and generally undeserved criticisms upon the War Department. Mr. Cameron felt the pressure of the multiplied labors crowded upon him, and he was not insensible to adverse criticisms. He proposed to resign, provided some one should be appointed not unfriendly to his policy. He suggested the appointment of Mr. Stanton. The President acted iipon his suggestion, accepted his resignation, and tendered him the mission to Russia. Mr. Stanton was then named Secretary of War, EDWIN M. STANTON. 11 with the hearty concurrence of every member of the Cabinet, excepting Montgomery Blair, who bitterly opposed the appointment. When Mr. Stanton entered the Cabinet he was in the maturity of his physical and intellectual powers. Without fancy or imagination, or any of the lighter graces, he had been distinguished, as a lawyer, for his im- mense industry, for the thoroughness of his preparation, and the mastery, both of law and facts, he exhibited in his treatment of the causes in- trusted to his care. He carried into the War Department great capacity for labor, almost incredible powers of endurance, rapidity of decision, promptitude of action, and inflexibility of purpose, all inspired and im- pelled by a vehement and absorbing patriotism. He entered at once upon an exhaustive examination of the numbers and condition of the military forces, and of the amount of war materials necessary for arming, equipping, feeding, clothing, and transporting them. He then vigorously engaged in the work of rendering these means avail- able for the spring campaign. He met, by appointment, the Military Committee of the Senate, in their room at the Capitol, and, in the strictest confidence, made to them a full exhibit of the number of troops, and the condition of the armies, of the amount of arms and munitions of war on hand and required. He then explained his purposes and plans. He had found more than a hundred and fifty regiments scattered over the country, only partially filled, and but slowly filling up. For the sake of economy, and for the purpose of bringing these bodies early into the field, he pro- posed their consolidation. He was convinced, however, that this task would be a difficult one. Many persons who were engaged in recruiting, and who hoped to be officers, would be disappointed. They and the State authorities would strenuously oppose consolidation. To husband resources of money and men, and to make the troops already enlisted available at the earliest possible moment, he proposed to suspend enlist- ments, though only for a few weeks. Thinking it might lead to some misunderstanding in Congress, he desired to explain his reasons for the measure, and to solicit the support of the committee in carrying it into effect. The promised support was promptly given. The ordei* was is- sued, and, though it was misunderstood and sharply criticized, it unques- tionably added much to the efficiency of the army. In this, as in all other matters during the war, the Secretary and the committee were in accord, and their relations were perfectly amicable. Though composed of men of differing political sentiments, the committee never divided poli- tically, either on nominations or measures. When the strife had ended, it was a source of great gratification to its members that they had always complied with the Secretary's wishes, and promptly seconded his efforts. To me it has been, and will ever be, among the cherished recollections of my life, that I gave to the great War Secretary an unstinted support, and that there was never misunderstanding or unkindness between us. Having mastered the details of his department, Mr. Stanton pressed, vrith great vigor, the preparations for the active campaign of 1862. He strove to enforce an active prosecution of hostilities, and urged forward the work of suppressing the Rebellion by every practicable means in his power. Early and late, often through the entire night, he was at his post, receiving reports, information, requests, and suggestions, by tele- graph and mail, holding personal consultations with the military and civil officers of the government, and others having business with his de- partment, and in issuing orders and directions. As he did not spare 12 EDWIN M. STANTON. himself, he was exacting in his demands upon others. He tolerated no laggards or sliirks about him. He infused into the chiefs of the bureajas and their clerks something of his own industry and devotion; and his became a department of intense activity and unceasing toil, continuing thus throughout the war. But all did not possess Mr. Stanton's iron will, capacity for labor, and powers of endurance, and many sank beneath these exactions and accumulated labors. He brought into his office, as Assistant Secretary of War, Mr. Watson, a devoted personal friend, a lawyer of eminence, and a man of strong constitntion and large capacity for work. Mr. Watson zealously seconded Mr. Stanton's efforts, but was soon forced to leave office, worn out by the demands made upon him. Mr. Walcott, who had been Attorney-General of Ohio, took Mr. Watson's place. But he, too, after a few months, left the Office, and went home to die. The vacant place was then taken by Mr. Dana, a gentleman accustomed to the exacting toil of a leading daily journal, and possessing great execu- tive force, who rendered his chief most valuable service. His labors were lightened by the establishment of the office of Solicitor of the War Department, to which the innumerable legal questions constantly arising were referred. The duties of that office were ably performed by Mr. Whiting, of Massachusetts, who sacrificed the income of a lucrative pro- fession without other reward than the consciousness of serving his coun- try in her time of peril. It is not my purpose to recount the acts of Mr. Stanton's administration of the War Department during the Rebellion. This must be the task of the historian. When this is faithfully and fully accomplished, it will be seen that he performed an amount of organizing and administrative labor as far exceeding the achievements of Carnot and other war ministers, as the gigantic proportions of the Rebellion exceeded those of the military events with which their names are associated. Mr. Stanton was moreover compelled to organize the forces of a people unaccustomed to war, and unskilled in military affairs. Vast armies were to be raised from peace- ful communities, large amounts of war material were to be provided, great distances were to be traversed, and an impassioned and brave peo- ple were to be subdued. The work which the soldiers and statesmen of Europe pronounced impossible was done, and well done. I shall not at- tempt to describe that work. I only propose to delineate some of Mr. Stanton's leading characteristics as they appeared to me, and as they were illustrated by some of the acts of his administration. His official position, his vigilance, his industry, his mastery of details, and his almost intuitive perceptions, gave him, perhaps, a clearer insight into the characters and services of men in the army, in the national coun- cils, and in State governments, than that possessed by any other public man. With the impulsiveness of his nature, he distrusted and condemned perhaps too hastily, and sometimes unjustly, but never, I am sure, from interest or prejudice. Swift in his judgments, often doubting when others confided, he sometimes made mistakes, though events commonly vindicated the correctness of his estimates. He had no favorites, and he measured men according to his idea of their value to the public service. Singularly unselfish in his purposes, careless of his own reputation, and intensely devoted to the success of his country, he was ever ready to as- sume, especially in critical moments, the gravest responsibilities. Neither the interests of political friends, nor the wishes of army officials, could EDWIN M. STANTON. 13 swerve him from his purpose. He said no to the President quite as often and quite as emphatically as he did to the people, to members of Con- gress, or to officers of the army seeking undeserved preferment or safe places at the rear. He knew Mr. Lincoln's yielding nature and kindness of heart; and even the President's requests, though amounting almost to positive orders, and borne by governors of States, members of Congress, and even by associates in the Cabinet, were frequently laid aside, and some- times promptly and peremptorily refused. There were many signal illustrations of this characteristic. Shortly after the disastrous battle of Chickamauga, a dispatch stating the perilous condition of the army, and the pressing need of immediate reinforcements, was received at the War Office from General Garfield. After the hour of midnight, the President, Mr. Chase, and Mr. Seward were summoned by Mr. Stanton. It was a most critical and trying moment. In answer to questions. General Halleck revealed the fact that few troops operating in the West could be sent in season to the relief of Roseerans. The facts disclosed perplexed, if they did not dishearten, all but Mr. Stanton, who was never downcast, who never doubted the success of the loyal cause, who seemed to take heart as dangers thickened, and who now sur- prised his listeners by proposing to take thirty thousand men from the Army of the Potomac and place them in Tennessee within five days. The President and General Halleck doubted, hesitated, and opposed. But Mr, Stanton, sustained by Mr. Chase and Mr. Seward, carried his point. Telegrams were at once sent to General Meade and to railroad- managers, and in a few days. General Hooker, with more than fifteen thousand men, was thrown into Tennessee. When he arrived within sup- porting distance of Roseerans, Bragg was making movements which he believed would result in the utter destruction or defeat of that general's army. Chief Justice Chase, who has recorded in his diary the doings of that midnight council, and who has, since the war, spoken of it with offi- cers of the Rebel army, expresses the opinion that Mr. Stanton's bold counsels and decisive action saved the array of Roseerans, and that he then rendered greater service to the country than was rendered by any civilian during the war. On the eve of his second inauguration, Mr. Lincoln expressed to members of his Cabinet his purpose, in case General Grant should be victorious at Richmond, to allow him to negotiate terms of peace with the Rebel leaders. From this Mr. Stanton strongly dissented, and in explicit and unequivocal terms declared that no peace ought to be nego- tiated by generals in the field, or by any one other than the President himself; and he pretty distinctly intimated that, if the President per- mitted any one to enter into such negotiations, it was hardly necessary for him to be inaugurated, Mr. Lincoln at once assented to the views of his faithful and far-seeing Secretary, and orders were immediately transmitted to General Grant to hold no conferences with General Lee on any questions not of a purely military character. The sagacity of Mr, Stanton was soon again put to the test. After the surrender of Richmond, President Lincoln visited that city, and, while there, assented to the assembling of the Rebel Legislature of Virginia by General Weit- zel, Mr. Stanton, who had no confidence in the good faith of the Rebels, held that they should not have any voice in fixing the terms of peace and reconciliation, and should not be permitted to meet at all. 14 EDWIN M. STANTON. His earnest protests were heeded, his counsels prevailed, and the impoli- tic and dangerous scheme vvas abandoned. Mr. Stanton's course touching the arrangements between General Sherman and the Rebel General Johnston afforded another signal illus- tration of his readiness to assume responsibility when the safety and honor of the nation were at stake. He gave that arrangement a prompt, peremptory, and emphatic disapproval. While he held General Sherman in high esteem for his brilliant services in the tield, he felt constrained to advise President Johnson to set aside that oflScer's unfortunate diplomacy, and to declare to the conntry the reasons for so doing. Although Gene- ral Grant was sent to North Carolina to announce the action of the government. General Sherman and several of his generals took umbrage, and on the arrival of their army at Washington indulged in severe de- nunciations of the Secretary of War. But the indomitable Secretary, conscious of the integrity of his purpose, bore in silence these criticisms, and the denunciations directed against him by a portion of the press. In the light of subsequent events, few loyal men will question the wisdom of his action, or distrust the motives that prompted it. Innumerable instances of a similar kind might be adduced. A single additional example will be mentioned. When in the winter of 1863 the faithless Legislature of Indiana was dissolved, no appropriations had been made to carry on the State government or aid in putting soldiers in the field ; and General Morton was obliged, without the authority of law, to raise more than a million and a quarter of dollars. In his need he looked to Washington for assistance. President Lincoln wished to aid him, but saw no way to do it, as no money could be taken from the treasury without appropriation. He was referred to Mr. Stanton. The Secretary saw at a glance the critical condition in which the patriotic Governor, who had shown such vigor in raising and organizing troops, had been placed. A quarter of a million dollars were needed, and Mr. Stanton took upon himself the responsibility, and drew his warrant upon the treasury for that amount, to be ])aid from an unexpended appropria- tion made, nearly two years before, for raising troops in States in in- surrection. As he placed this warrant in Governor ^lorton's hands, the latter remarked : " If the cause fails, you and I will be covered with pro- secutions, and probably imprisoned or driven from the country." Mr. Stantou replied : " If the cause fails, I do not wish to live." The money thus advanced to the Governor of Indiana was accounted for by that State in its final settlement with the government. The remark just cited illustrates another prominent trait in Mr. Stan- ton's character — his intense and abounding patriotism. It was this which emboldened him in his early struggle with treason in Mr. Buchanan's cabinet, upheld him in his superhuman labors through the weary years of war, and kei)t him in Mr. Johnson's cabinet when not only was the President seeking his removal, but the tortures of disease were admo- nishing him that every day's continuance was imperilling his life. It was this patriotism which invested the Kebellion, in his view, with its tran- scendent enormity, and made him regard its guilty leaders and their sym- pathizers and apologists at the North with such intense abhorrence. It "also made him fear the success of a party of which he was once a mem- ber, and which now embraces so many who participated in the l-tebellion or were in sympathy with it; and he was loath to remove the disabilities of unrepentant rebels, or to allow them a voice in shaping the policy of EDWIN M, STANTON. 15 States lately in insurrection. This feeling he retained till the close of his life. On the Saturday before his death, he expressed to me the opinion that it was more important that the freedraen and the Union men of the South should be protected in their rights, than that those w ho were still disloyal should be relieved of their disabilities and clothed with power. This patriotism, conjoined with his energy, industry, and high sense of public duty, made him exacting, severe, and often rough in his treatment of those, in the military or civil service, who seemed to be more intent on personal ease, promotion, and emolument than upon the faithful dis- charge of public duty. It led him, also, warmly to appreciate and ap- plaud fidelity and devotion, wherever and however manifested. Honest himself, he, of course, abhorred everything like dishonesty in others ; but his patriotism intensified that feeling of detestation in cases of pecula- tion or fraud upon the government. He laid a strong hand upon offend- ers, and no doubt saved millions of dollars to the nation, by thus re- straining, through fear, those who would otherwise have enriched them- selves at their country's expense. This spirit of patriotic devotion indeed often inspired measures which brought upon him great and un- deserved censure- The people were anxious for war news. The press were anxious to provide it. Mr. Stanton knew that the enemy largely profited by the premature publication of such intelligence, and he was anxious to prevent this. Consequently he made regulations which were often embarrassing to newspaper correspondents, and sometimes he roughly and rudely repelled those seeking information or favors. Towards the close of the war his intense application began to tell on even his robust constitution, developing a tendency to asthma, which was exceedingly distressing to him and alarming to his friends. Consequently he looked forward to the cessation of hostilities, anxious not only that his country might be saved from the further horrors and dangers of civil war, but that he might be released from the burdensome cares of office. After the election of Mr. Lincoln and a Republican Congress, in 1864, which he justly regarded as fatal to the Rebellion, he often avowed his purpose to resign at the moment hostilities should cease. When, therefore, the news of Lee's surrender reached Washington, he at once placed his resig- nation in the President's hands, on the ground that the work which had induced him to take office was done. But his great chief, whom he had so faithfully and efficiently served, and who, in the trials they bad expe- rienced together, had learned to appreciate, honor, and love him, threw his arms around his neck, and tenderly and tearfully said : " Stanton, you have been a good friend and a faithful public servant; and it is not for you to say when you will no longer be needed here." Bowing to the will of the President so affectionately expressed, he remained at his post. Little did he then imagine that, within a few hours, his chief would fall by the assassin's hand, and the Secretary of State lie maimed and help- less, and that the country, in that perilous hour, would instinctively turn to him as its main reliance and hope. Andrew Johnson, too, who then intended to make treason odious and punish traitors, leaned on the strong man for support. Mr. Stanton now resolved to remain in the War Office till the army should be disbanded ; and that great work was accomplished with an ease and celerity which surprised and gratified the country and astonished the world. It was indeed one of the most marvellous achievements of the 16 EDWIN M. STANTON. war. That was hardly accomplished, when the work of reconstruction began to loom up in all its vast proportions. Indications, too, of the President's apostasy began to appear. Mr. Johnson had been smitten with the idea of a re-election by means of the reorganization of parties, in which, to use his own words, "the extremes should be sloughed ofl",'' and a new conservative party be formed which should accept him as its leader. Mr. Stanton was a just and humane as well as a patriotic man. He had earnestly pressed upon Mr. Lincoln the policy of emancipation, had applauded his Proclamation, approved the enlistment of colored troops, and was a warm supporter of the Thirteenth Amendment, forever pro- hibiting slavery. Although he had never, before the war, acted with antislavery men, yet he had early imbibed antislavery sentiments. He was of Quaker descent. His grandparents were from New England, and his grandfather provided in his will for the emancipation of his slaves whenever the laws of his adopted State would permit it. Benjamin Lundy, the early Abolitionist, was a frequent visitor at his father's house ; and Mr. Stanton once told me that he had often sat upon that devoted phi- lanthropist's knee when a child, and listened to his words. Nearly thirty years ago, in the streets of Columbus, Ohio, he familiarly accosted Mr. Chase and said to him, referring to antislavery sentiments the latter had just put forth, that he was in entire agreement with him, and hoped he should soon be able to take his place by his side. Though he never did so, but continued to act with the Democratic party, yet he always main- tained his intimacy with Mr. Chase, and after he came to Washington was a frequent visitor at the house of Dr. Bailey, editor of the " National Era," where he met antislavery men and members of the Republican party. The Rebellion of course absolved him from all allegiance to the Demo- cratic party, and then his early impressions were revived. The events of the war intensified them, and he became a consistent and persistent sup- porter of the rights of the colored race. He saw that Mr. Johnson's reactionary policy was imperilling the interests of the freedmen as well as the safety of the nation, and he resolved to remain in the Cabinet and save, as he once said to me, what he could of " the fruits of the war." It was, indeed, a critical period, and he wisely counselled moderation. Premature action would have been disastrous. To break with the I'resi- dent before he had fully revealed his purposes would, he thought, place the Republicans in a false position before the people, and inure solely to the advantage of Mr. Johnson. At the same time he did all he could to secure, in the elections, the success of those who had loyally stood to- gether during the war. This policy, of combining and keeping intact the Republican party, and of giving the President an opportunity to con- vince the people, as he did in his speech of the 22d of February, of his premeditated treachery, subjected Mr. Stanton and those who concurred with him in that policy to the sharp criticism of more hasty and less dis- cerning men. It was, however, a complete success, and subsequent events vindicated its wisdom. By such firmness, fidelity, and sagacity, Mr. Stanton incurred the dis- like of the President, who determined, if possible, to eject him from the Cabinet. The more clearly this purpose appeared, the more determined was the Secretary to retain his position ; not from a love of office, — for he longed to escape from its thraldom, — but from a sense of duty. If need be, he was ready to bear, not only the burdens which his failing EDWIN M. STANTON. 17 Rtreng:th made more tryinor, but personal insults and indiitants of every State in which an or- dinance of secession had been or should be passed. Now, mark how ]ilain a tale will put you down. Mr. Stanton never was consulted on that snl)ject by the President until after he was Attorney-General ; and he never at any time gave such advice as you put into his mouth. He never entertained any opinion of that kind, for he was a lawyer of large capacity and could not believe an absurdity. He had too much regard for his professional character to maintain a legal proposition which he knew to be false. He certainly would not have so debased himself in the eyes of the administration with whom he was particularly desirous, at that time, to stand well. On this point I wish to be very distinct. I aver that Mr. Stanton thoroughly, cordially, and constantly approved of and concurred in the constitutional doctrines which you denounce as timid and treasonable. He endorsed the opinion of his predecessor with extravagant and unde- served laudation; he gave his adhesion to the annual message in many ways; and the special message of 8th January, 1861, which expressed the same principles with added emphasis, was carefully read over to him before it was sent to Congress, and it received his unqualified assent. The existing'evidence of this can be easily adduced ; it is direct as well as circumstantial, oral as well as documentary, and some of it is in the handwriting of Mr. Stanton himself. If you are willing to put the question into a proper form for judicial investigation, I will aid you in doing so, and give you an opportunity to make out your case before an impartial tribunal. If your statement be true that Mr. Stanton disbelieved in the princi- ples to which the administration was unchangeably pledged, how did he come to take office under it ? Was he so anxious for public employment that he consented to give up his own convictions and assist in carrying out measures which his judgment condemned as the offspring of timidity and treason ? Or, did he accept the confidence of the President and the Cabinet with a predetermined intent to betray it ? Either way you make him guilty of unspeakable baseness. But conceding that he would accept, why did the President, with the consent of his advisers, give the appointment to a man whom they knew to be hostile to them upon points so vital not only to the public interests but their own characters ? That at such a time they would invite an un- disguised enemy into their counsels, is a tale as wildly improbable as any ever swallowed by the credulity of the Salem witch-finders. Your own cotisciousness of this com[)els you to exi>lain by attributing it to a spe- cial intervention of Divine Providence. Your impious theory is that Almighty God procured this appointment miraculously, in order that you, the enemies of the American Constitution, might have a spy in the camp SENATOR WILSON" AND EDWIN M. STANTON. 27 of its friends. This will not serve your turn. Reason never refers a human event to supernatural af?ency, unless it be impossible to account for it in any other way. The mystery of this case is easily cleared up by the hypothesis that you have misrepresented it from bej?inning to end ; which is no miracle at all, but quite in the natural order of things. The truth is, Mr. Stanton was in perfect accord with the administra- tion, before and after he became a part of it, on every question of funda- mental principle. He had unlimited confidence in the men with whom he was acting, and they confided in him. For his chief and some of his colleagues he professed an attachment literally boundless ; for all of them who stayed during the term, and for Thompson, who did not stay, he was warm in his friendship. You would now have us believe that these were merely the arts of an accomplished impostor ; that while he was, in appearance, zealously co-operating with us, he was reporting to you that " he saw treason in every part of the government ;" and that he was se- cretly using all the means in his power to stir up the vilest passions against us. Some overt acts of the treachery you ascribe to him are curious ; for in- stance, the Sumner story, which you tell with singular brevity and cool- ness. Mr. Sumner called on him at his office, for what purpose you do not disclose. Mr. Stanton did not receive his visitor either with the politeness of a gentleman or the courtesy due to a Senator, much less with the cordiality of a friend ; but hustled him out of the building as if ashamed to be seen with him in daylight. He told him expressly that he did not dare to converse with him ihere, but would see him at one o'clock that night. The hour came, and then, when the city was wrapped in sleep, he skulked away to the meeting place, where, under the cover of dark- ness, he whispered the tales which he did not dare to utter in the hearing of the parties they were intended to ruin. And those parties were his friends and benefactors! Into what unfathomed gulfs of moral degradation must the man have fallen who would be guilty of this 1 But remember, this is another second-hand story, and you are not a competent witness. We will trouble you to call Mr. Sumner, if you please. Let him testify what treason Stanton disclosed, and e.xplain, if he can, how this midnight and secret information against men whom he was afraid to confront is consistent with Mr. Stanton's character as a courageous, outspoken, and honest man. He said nothing whatever to us about the treason which he saw in every part of the government. He made no report of his discoveries to the President. He maintained unbroken his fraternal relations with his colleagues. By your own account, he admitted to Mr. Sumner that he did not dare to speak of such a thing even in his own office, lest it might reach the ears of his associates in the administration. Among the mem- bers of Congress whom you name as the recipients of his secret commu- nications, not one man of moderate views is included ; much less did he speak to any friend of the parties accused. He cautiously selected their bitterest enemies, and poured his venom into hearts already festering with spite. The House raised a committee " to investigate treasonable machi- nations and conspiracies," upon which there were members of both parties. Stanton did not go before it and tell his story ; nor did he mention the subject to Cochrane, Reynolds, or Branch ; Ijut he " made an arrange- ment by which Messrs. Howard and Dawes were informed" of whatever they wanted to know. It appears, too, that a committee of vigilance was organized by the more active Republican members of Congress ; in other 28 SENATOR WILSON AND EDWIN M. STANTON. words, the extreme partisans of both Houses got up a secret body of their own, not to perform any legal duty pertaining to their offices, not to de- vise public measures for averting the ruin which threatened the country, but to prowl about in the dark for something to gratify personal malice or make a little capital for their party. You were a member of that com- mittee, as it was fit you should be, and Mr. Stanton gave you " warnings and suggestions" how to proceed. This is what you call "rising in that crisis above the claims of partisanship." At night he assisted you to rake the sewers in search of materials to bespatter his colleagues, and every morning he appeared before them to " renew the assurances of his distin- guished consideration." It was thus that, in your estimation, "he con- secrated himself to the lofty duties of an exalted patriotism." What cargoes of defamatory falsehood he must have consigned to your keeping ! You do not break the foul bulk, but you have given us some samples which deserve examination. He denounced Mr. Toucey as false to his country, inspired Dawes's resolution against him, and expressed the belief that he ought to be arrested. Let us look at this a moment. To Mr. Toucey's face Mr. Stanton breathed no syllable of censure upon his official conduct as head of the Navy Department. To the President or Cabinet he expressed no doubt of his wisdom, much less of his honesty. He met him every day with a face of smiling friendship. Toucey certainly had not the remotest idea that Stanton was defaming him behind his back, or conspiring with abolitionists to destroy his reputation. He would as soon have suspected him of an intent to poison his food or stab him ia his sleep. Can it be possible that Stanton was the author of the Dawes resolution ? That resolution is found in the " Congressional Globe," Second Session, Thirty-sixth Congress, 1860-61, part second, pp. 1423-24. The pro- ceeding was begun, no doubt, in the hope of finding something on which the charge could be founded of scattering the navy to prevent it being used against the South. But that failed miserably; and the committee reported nothing worse than " a grave error" of the Secretary in accept- ing without delay or inquiry the resignation of certain naval officers. Even this had no foundation in law or fact. Its truth was denied and the evidence called for; none was produced. The right to explain and de- fend was demanded, but the gag of the previous question was applied be- fore a word could be said. The accusers knew very well that it would not bear the slightest investigation. Mr. Sickles said truly (amid cries of "Order") that censure without evidence disgraces only those who pro- nounce it. Mr. Toucey's reputation was never injuriously affected by it in the estimation of any fair-minded man. But you fish it up from the oblivion to which it has been consigned, and try to give it decency and dignity by saying that Stanton inspired it. You do not appear to per- ceive the hideous depth to which your assertion, if true, would drag him down. It is not true; the whole business bears the impress of a different mijid. Mr. Stanton also suggested that his colleague and friend Toucey ought to he arrested. This could not have been a proposition to take him into legal custody on a criminal charge regularly made. That would have been utterly impossible and absurd. The Dawes committee itself could find nothing against him butan error of judgmeut. The suggestion must hiive been to kidnap him, without an accusation or proof of probable cause, and consign him to some dungeon without trial or hope of other SENATOR WILSON AND EDWIN M. STANTON. 29 relief. If Stanton attempted to get this done, he was guilty of snch per- fidy as would have shocked the basest pander in the court of Louis XV. But to confute your libel upon Toucey and Stanton both, it is only neces- sary to recollect the fact that kidnapping of American citizens was at that time wholly unknown and absolutely impossible. We were living under a Democratic administration, the country was free, and law was supreme. Tyranny had not yet sunk its bloody fangs into the vitals of the national liberty. The systematic perjury which afterward made the Constitution a dead letter was not then established as a rule of political morality. Your whole account of the " Cabinet scene" at which Floyd, " raging and storming, arraigned the President and Cabinet," and "the President trembled and grew pale," and " Stanton met the baffled traitor and his fellow conspirators with a storm of fierce and fiery denunciation," is a ]iure and perfectly baseless fabrication. It is absurd to boot. What was Floyd's arraignment of the President and the Cabinet for ? You say for violating their pledges to the secessionists ; and the charge against the President and Cabinet of violating their pledges was predicated solely on the fact that Colonel Anderson had removed from Fort Moultrie to Fort Sumter ; and Floyd was disappointed in Colonel Anderson, whom he " had expected," as a Southern man, to " carry out his purposes in the interest of treason." This is mere drivelling at best, and it is completely exploded by the record, which shows that Colonel Anderson's transfer of his force from Fort Moultrie to Port Sumter was in literal obedience to orders from the President, which Floyd himself had drawn up, signed, and transmitted. Moreover, Floyd at that time was not in a condition to ar- raigu anybody. He himself had just before that been not only arraigned but condemned, and the President had notified him that he would be re- moved if he did not resign. Was it this broken-down and powerless man who made the President tremble and grow pale by complaining that a sub- ordinate had unexpectedly obeyed his own orders ? You are not silly enough to say so. Was it Stanton's " storm of fierce and fiery denun- ciation" ? Stanton was no stormer in the presence of such men as he then had to deal with. His language was habitually deferential, his whole bearing decent, and his behavior at the council board was entirely free from the insolence yoh impute to it. Your tales do not hang together. No one can give credence to your report of bold and stormy denunciation by Stanton in the presence of his chief and his colleagues, and at the same time believe what you say of him at another place, where you de- scribe him as a dastard, skulking about in the dead of night to find a place of concealment remote enough to make him safe, and confessing that he did not dare to breathe his accusation in the face of day. The crawling sycophant — the stealthy spy — who bargained so carefully for darkness and secrecy when he made his reports, must have been wholly unfitted to play the part of Jupiter Tonans in a square and open con- flict. It is not possible that the fearless Stanton of your " Cabinet scene" could be the same Stanton who, at one o'clock in the night, was " squat like a toad" at the ear of Sumner, Essaying by his devilish arts to reach The organs of his fancy. I take it upon me to deny most emphatically that Mr. Stanton ever "wrote a full and detailed account of that Cabinet scene" by which you can have the least hope of being corroborated. I cannot prove a nega- 30 SENATOR WILSON AND EDWIN M. STANTON. tive ; but I can show that yonr assertion is incredible. That he should have coolly indited a letter, even though he never sent it, filled with foolish brags of his own prowess, which half a dozen men then living could prove to be false, was not consistent either with his prudence, veracity, or taste. Besides, he often spoke with me about the events of that period, and never in my hearing did he manifest the slightest disposition to misunder- stand or misrepresent them. On the contrary, when a statement resem- bling yours about a Cabinet scene was published in a London paper, I suggested that he ought to contradict it ; and he replied, explaining how and by whom it had been fabricated, but said it was not worth a contra- diction, for every man of common intelligence would know it to be a mere tissue of lies. You cannot destroy Stanton's character for sense and decency by citing his own authority against himself. Nor can you find any other proof to sustain the story. It is the weak invention of some scurvy politician, who sought to win the patronage of one administration by maligning another. Some busy and insinuating rogue, Some cogging, cozeiiiug slave, to get some office, Hath devised this slander. Your history of his appointment to the War Department is as erro- neous as that which you have given of his conduct while Attorney- General. You say that he cordially indorsed Mr. Cameron's recommen- dation to arm the negroes against the white people of the South ; that Mr. Lincoln disapproved this and required it to be suppressed ; that afterward, when Cameron "felt the pressure of the multiplied labor," he proposed to resign, but coupled his offer with a condition tliat " some one should be appointed not unfriendly to his policy," namely, the policy of arming negroes, to which Mr. Lincoln was himself opposed; that Cameron did resign upon these terms, and used the privilege conceded to him by suggesting the name of Stanton. Everybody who knows Simon Came- ron will understand the object of dragging this thing by the head and shoulders into your article. In fact and in truth, there was no kind of connection between these two men — no sympathy nor mutual respect. Cameron did not resign ; he was removed for good cayse. He had no lot nor part in naming his successor. The removal and appointment were both made before Mr. Cameron knew of either, and they were made because the President saw the necessity of having a man at the head of that department who was competent and incorruptible. The correspon- dence afterward published under the names of Messrs. Lincoln and Cameron was fictitious, and got up at the instance of the latter to give the affair a false appearance. It is morally impossible that Stanton could have given his approval to Cameron's abortive report on the negroes ; for he was at that time a while man every inch of him, proud of the great race he sprang from, and full of faith in its capacity to fight its own battles and govern itself. Nothing would have humiliated him more than to see the American ])eople relinquish their rightful place in the front rank of the world, surrender their inheritance of free government, and sneak back behind the African for protection in war or in peace. Long after he was Secretary of War he told Mr. Mallory, of Kentucky, that he had not only refused to sanction the enlistment of a negro regiment, but had punished an officer for merely proposing it. I understand that you have promised to contradict yourself on this subject, and I hope you will keep your word. SENATOR WILSON AND EDWIN M. STANTON. 31 Your account of his raid upon the Treasury, in company with Gover- nor Morton, would look very strange in a panegyric made by anybody else but you. I will restate the facts you have given, but without the drapery by which you conceal from yourself the view of them which must unavoidably be taken by all men who believe in the obligation of any law, human or divine. In the winter of 1863, the Legislature of Indiana was dissolved before the appropriations had been made to carry on the State government or aid in putting troops in the field. Of course. Congress did not, and could not, make appropriations for carrying on' the State government or putting troops in the field, which the State was bound to raise at her own expense. But the Governor determined to get what money he wanted without authority of law, and he looked to Washington for assistance. President Lincoln declined to aid him, because no money could be taken from the Treasury without appropriation. Mr. Stanton, being applied to, saw the critical condition of the Governor, and, without scruple, joined him in his financial enterprise. He drew a warrant for a quarter of a million of dollars, and gave it to the Governor to spend as he pleased, not only without being authorized by any appropriation for that purpose, but iu defiance of express law appropriating the same money to another and a totally different object. If this be true, the guilt of the parties can hardly be overcharged by any words which the English lan- guage will supply. It was getting money out of the public treasury, not only unlawfully, but by a process as dishonest as larceny. It involved the making of a fraudulent warrant, of which the moral turpitude was no less than that committed by a private individual when he fabricates and utters a false paper. It was a gross and palpable violation of the oaths which the Governor and Secretary had both taken. It was, by the statute of 1846, a felonious embezzlement of the money thus obtained, punishable by fine and ten years' imprisonment in the penitentiary. The parties, according to your version, were both conscious of the high crime they were perpetrating, for you make one say to the other, " If the cause fails, you and I will be co.vered with prosecutions, and probably imprisoned or driven from the country," You do not diminish or mitigate the of- fence one whit by saying that the money was afterward accounted for. A felony cannot be compounded or condoned by a simple restitution of the spoils ; and the law I have cited was made expressly to prevent offi- cers charged with the safe-keeping, transfer, or disbursement of public money from using it to accommodate friends in a "critical condition." But what will be said of your trustworthiness as a contributor to history when the public comes to learn that this whole story is bogus? I pro- nounce it untrue in the aggregate and in the detail— in the sum total and in every item. The truth is this: In 1863 the Democratic majority of the Indiana Legislature were ready and willing to pass their proper and usual appropriation bills, but were prevented by the Republican minority who •' bolted" and left the house without a quorum until the constitu- tional limit of their session expired. The Governor refused to reconvene them, and thus, by his own fault and that of his friends, he was without the ways and means to pay the current expenses of the State. He was wrong, but his error was that of a violent partisan, not the crime of a corrupt magistrate. He did not come to Washington with any intention to relieve his necessities by plundering the Federal Treasury. He made no proposition either to Mr. Lincoln or Mr. Stanton, that they or either of them should become his accomplices in any such infamous crime. His 32 SENATOR WILSON AND EDWIN M. STANTON. purpose was to demand payment of a debt due, and acknowledged to be due, from the United States to the State of Indiana. The money had been appropriated by Congress to })iiy it, and it vms paid according to law! 1 know not how Mr. Morton may like to see himself held up as a felon confessing his guilt, but I can say with some confidence, that if Mr, Stanton were alive he would call you to a very severe reckoning. What must amaze the readers of your article more than anything else is the perfect sincerity of the belief which you express, directly or indi- rectly, in every line of it, that the base misconduct you attribute to Mr. Stanton is eminently praiseworthy. You seem to be wholly unconscious of defaming the man you meant to eulogize. But, if your facts be ac- cepted, the honor and honesty of them will not be measured by your standards. It may be true that public opinion has of late been sadly del)auched ; but the American people have not permanently changed their code of morality. Good faith between man and man, personal in- tegrity, social fidelity, observance of oaths, and obedience to the laws which hold society together, have heretofore been numbered among the virtues, and they will be again. The government of God has not been reconstructed. Fraud or force may abolish the Constitution, but the Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule are beyond your reach ; some persons have faith enough to believe that even " the gates of hell shall not ])revail against them." The odious character you have given Mr. Stanton is not merely unjust in itself, but, if uncontradicted, it must lead to other misconceptions of him. Besides the offences against law, justice, humanity, and truth which you have enumerated and assigned to him for his glorification, he has been charged with others which, if established, must expose him to uni- versal execration. For instance, it is asserted that, in the winter of 1861, when he was a member of the Cabinet, he gave to Governor Brown, of Mississippi, the most emphatic assurance of his conviction that secession was right, and urged him to "go on" with it; that in 18G2, while he was writing the most affectionate letters to General McClellan, he not only maligned him at Washington, but maliciously plotted his defeat and the destruction of his army before Richmond ; that he refused in 1804 to re- ceive the Andersonville ])risoners when offered freely without ransom, exchange, or other equivalent, though he knew if left there they must perish miserably for want of the medicine and food which their captors had not the means to give them. These accusations, you are aware, have often been made with horrible aggravations which I need not repeat. His friends have denied and discredited them, mainly on the ground that his character was wholly above such im|)utations. But you have done your full best to make this defence wortliless. If he wore the cloak of constitutional democracy with us, and put on the livery of abolitionism with you, why should he not assume the garb of a secessionist with men of the South ? If he tried to get his friend Toucey kidnapped, what moral principle could hinder him from contriving the ruin of his friend McClel- lan ? If he craftily exerted himself at your end of the avenue to bring on a bloody civil war, wldch according to his own declarations at our end was unlawful and causeless, what crime against human life was he not ca- palile of committing? If he wilfully left our i>risoners to certain star- vation, and then managed falsely to throw the odium of their death upon tlie political enemies of the party in power, and thus contributed very largely to the enslavement of the Southern Slates, was not that an act of SENATOR WILSON AND EDWIN M. STANTON. ' 33 "intense and abounding patriotism," as well worthy of your praise as some others for which you have bestowed it? Those who give credit to you will find it perfectly logical to believe the worst that has ever been said of him. Sejanus has passed for about the worst specimen of ministerial depra- vity whom we have any account of; but nothing is recorded of him which might not be believed of Stanton, if you are regarded as credible authority ; for you have made it a labor of love to paint him as a master in the loathsome arts of treachery, dissimulation, and falsehood — unfaith- ful alike to private friendship and to public duty. With the talents he possessed and the principles you ascribe to him, he might have made an invaluable Grand Vizier to a Turkish Sultan — provided the Sultan were in the prime of life and had no powerful brother near the throne ; but in a free country such a character canuot be thought of without disgust and abhorrence. In your eyes the "intense and abounding patriotism" of Stanton is sufficient to atone not only for all the faults he had, but for all the offences against law and morals which the utmost fertility of your imagination can lay to his charge ; and patriotism in your vocabulary means devotion to the interests of that political sect which has you for one of its priests. This will not suffice. You cannot safely blacken a man with one hand and neutralize the effect by daubing on the whitewash of patriotism with the other. Patriotism, in its true sense, does indeed dignify and adorn human nature. It is an exhalted and comprehensive species of charity, which hides a multitude of sins. The patriotism of Washington, which laid broad and deep the foundation of free institutions and set the noble example of implicit obedience to the laws ; the patriotism of John Hamp- den, who voluntarily devoted his fortune and his life to the maintenance of legal justice ; the patriotism of Cato, who resisted the destructive madness of his countrymen and greatly fell with a falling State; the pa- triotism of Daniel O'Connell, who spent his time and talents in constant efforts to relieve his people from the galling yoke of clerical oppression ; the patriotism of the elder Pitt, who, speaking in the cause of universal liberty, loudly rejoiced that America had resisted the exactions of a ty- rannical Parliament — to such patriotism some errors may be pardoned. When men like these are found to have committed a fault, it is well that history should deal with it tenderly, And, sad as angels for the good man's sin, Weep to record and blush to give it in. But the loyalty that tramples on law — the fidelity which stabs the lib- erties it ought to protect — the public zeal which expends itself in grati- fying the vindicitive or mercenary passions of one party by the unjust oppression of another — this kind of patriotism has less claim to the ad- miration of the world. It is a cheap thing, readily supplied to any fac- tion unprincipled enough to pay for it. It is entirely too " intense and abounding;" and its intensity and abundance are always greatest in the worst times. It does not sanctify evil deeds. If it be not a sin in itself, it certainly deserves to be ranked among what Dr. Johnson calls "the rascally virtues." Mr. Stanton's reputation is just now in a critical condition. He took no care of it while he lived, and- he died, like Bacon, leaving a vulnera- ble name "to men's charitable speeches." He needs a more discriminat- 3 34 JEREMIAH S. BLACK AND EDWIN M. STANTON. ing eulogist than you, and a far better defence than I am able to make. I have not attempted to portray his good qualities; I intended only to protest against your shameless parade of vices to which he was not addicted, and crimes which he never committed ; and this I have done, not only because it is just to him but necessary for the vindication of others. JEREMIAH S. BLACK AND EDWIN M. STANTON. BY HON. HEXRY AVILSON. A few days after the death of Mr. Stanton, at the request of the pub- lishers of " The Atlantic," I prepared an article on some of the character- istics of the great Secretary as they revealed themselves to me in the varying phases of the Rebellion. It was not history or biography, nor was it intended to be. It spoke of his tireless industry, indomitable courage, promptness of decision, readiness to assume responsibilities, inteii.se patriotism, and a self-sacrificing devotion to his imperilled country. In illustration of these characteristics, I cited a few of the many facts that had come to my knowledge, either by personal observation or the authentic testimony of others. Mr. Jeremiah S. Black does not like my portraiture of Mr. Stanton, or my statement of facts. He appears in the June number of "The Galaxy" in a communication addressed to myself, in which my statements are questioned and my conclusions are denied. The article is charac- teristic of the man ; and I am not surprised at the manner or the matter of it. Mr. Black seems to belong to a class of public men who are lingering behind their age, soured, disappointed, and vindictive. He seems Ki)ecialiy conscious — and his consciousness is apparently strength- ening with time — that there are few lawyers, fewer statesmen, and no patriots, who this day approve the advice he gave the President, on the 20th of November, 1860, in the only act which will carry his name to posterity. Contemporaneous history has already pronounced that "his argument gave much aid and comfort to the conspirators," that he "virtually counselled the President to suffer this glorious concrete Re- public to become disintegrated by the Gres of faction or the blows of actual rebellion, rather than use the force legitimately at his service for preservation of its integrity." Nor is posterity likely to reverse this judgment. Loyal men, whose words and acts are instinct with patriotism, may perhaps afford to pardon the utterance of one who is passing into history under the irreversible condemnation already pronounced of a people saved in spite of his imbecile counsels and perilous theories. As vulgar as vituperative, as ill-mannered as ill-tempered, with an ef- frontery as strange and fatuous as it was brazen, his article falsifies history and defames the dead, though the writer must have known that both the living witnesses and the documentary evidence are at hand to rectify the one and vindicate the other. It is not now my purpose to reply to his laudation of President Buchanan ; or to his denial that Howell Cobb, while Secretary of the Treasury, by his treasonable utter- ances at Washington and among the money-lenders of Wall Street, JEREMIAH S. BLACK AND EDWIN M. STANTON. 35 deranjred the finances and sunk the national credit; or to his denial that John B. Floyd while Secretary of War, sent oauskets where they could be "clutched" by the rising conspirators ; or to his apology for Toucey ; or to his canonization of Jacob Thompson, the smallest and basest of the Cabinet conspirators. I am mindful that Mr. Black was a mere lawyer when he entered the Cabinet, that he had little association or acquaint- ance with statesmen. Of course his associates in the Cabinet, who had some experience in public affairs, although they have left little evidence in the records of their country of learning, eloquence, or statesmanship, towered up before his inexperienced eyes. No wonder that to this poli- tical neophyte Jacob Thompson seemed a great and illustrious statesman, " so immeasurably far above" the range of ordinary mortals, that they "will never in this life be able to get a horizontal view of his character." My object now is to defend Mr. Stanton from his treacherous friendship and vindicate the truthfulness of my statements, so recklessly assailed, by testimonies which cannot be gainsaid, and which are beyond the reach of cavil and successful contradiction. In portraying the signal services rendered his country by Mr. Stanton, I referred to the fact that on entering Mr. Buchanan's Cabinet he put himself in communication with leading Republicans in Congress; that so anxious was he for the safety of the Republic, he visited by appointment Mr. Sumner at his lodgings after midnight, to impress upon him the danger which menaced the nation. These facts were stated to illustrate Mr. Stanton's exalted patriotism, which prompted him to rise above the claims and clamors of mere partisanship, and to invoke the aid of loyal men beyond the lines of his own party and outside of the administration of which he was a member, to serve his imperilled country menaced by a foul and wicked revolt. Such patriotism, however, Mr. Jeremiah S. Black does not comprehend. Such action he cannot applaud. He sees in it nothing but " overt acts of treachery." He doubts, questions, denies, and exclaims with holy horror : "Into what unfathomed gulfs of moral degradation must the man have fallen who could have been guilty of this !" Notwithstanding these doubts, denials, and exclamations, Mr. Stanton, nevertheless, did put himself in communication, while in Mr. Buchanan's Cabinet, with leading Republicans. Of this fact there is no lack of com- petent testimony. Mr. Seward — certainly not a biased witness — under date of June 6th writes : — " You recall the memories of 1860 and 1861 ; our anxieties for the 4th of March then to come ; the conferences we had, and the efforts we made. You ask me to give you ray understanding of the position of the lamented Mr. Stanton at that time, "When the election of 1860 closed, it left in the Executive Depart- ment President Buchanan, a Democrat, with an entire Democratic Cabinet, to remain in office until the 4th of March, when Abraham Lin- coln was to be inaugurated President with a Republican Cabinet. " Some of the then members of Mr. Buchanan's Cabinet were known to be disloyal. General Cass, eminently loyal, was understood to be dis- satisfied with the President. " The Democratic party had a majority in Congress, and that majority, like the President's Cabinet, included a number of persons who avowed themselves disloyal, and who ultimately joined the seceders in rebellion. "Many disloyal persons held executive and judicial ofiSces throughout 36 JEREMIAH S. BLACK AND EDWIN M. STANTON. the country, and many of the ministers who represented the United States in foreign countries were disloyal. The Rebels speedily effected an organization, and the administration was known to be holding con- ferences with their agents with regard to measures bearing upon disaffected States. " I was, with you, a member of the Senate, and it early became under- stood that I was to be appointed Secretary of State by Mr. Lincoln. In this manner it happened that I came to be regarded somewhat exten- sively as a person representing the incoming administration and the Re- publican party, upon which the preservation of the Union was so soon to be devolved. We apprehended the danger of a factious resistance by the Rebels at the seat of government, and an outbreak of the revolution in Congress ; probably on the occasion of counting the electoral votes, or at the inauguration. We were alarmed by plots for the assassination of the President on his way from Illinois. " There were many suspected officers in the army and the navy ; and both those arms of the executive power seemed inadequate to the crisis. "I arrived in Washington and took up my residence there immediately after the election, and devoted myself thenceforth exclusively to the pub- lic service. " If my memory serves me, I did not personally know Edwin M. Stan- ton until after he was appointed Attorney-General, in place of Hon. Jeremiah S. Black, who became Secretary of State on the resignation of General Cass. " Mr. Peter H. Watson, who during Mr. Lincoln's administration, be- came a very devoted and efficient Assistant Secretary of War, was an intimate personal friend of Mr. Stanton as well as of myself. Immedi- ately after Mr. Stanton took office, he put himself into indirect commu- nication with me at my house, employing Mr. Watson for that purpose. Every day thereafter, until the inauguration had passed, I conferred either in the morning or in the evening or both with ]Mr. Stanton through the same agency, and the question what either of us could or ought to do at the time for the pnplic welfare was discussed and settled. Mr. Watson often brought with him suggestions in writing from Mr. Stanton and returned to Mr. Stanton with mine. "During all that time I was not in social relations with President Bu- chanan, and I took care for that and other reasons not to compromise Mr. Stanton, or other loyal members of his Cabinet, by making public the conferences which were held between any of them and myself. In some cases peculiarly perplexing I had Mr. Stanton's permission to refer to him as authority for information I gave some of my Union associates. The holding of the consultations was made known by me, with Mr. Stanton's consent, to President Lincoln and some other political friends. With these exceptions, the consultations between Mr. Stanton and my- self were kept by me in entire confidence, and they have remained so. " One day, as I was riding through F Street from the Capitol, I met Mr. Stanton on foot. We recognized each other, and a hurried explana- tion concerning our relations, as they were being conducted through the agency of Mr. Watson, took place. We separated quickly, from the motive on my part, and I supposed on his, of avoiding public observation. This was the only occasion, as I remember, on which I met Mr. Stanton until after the expiration of Mr. Buchanan's Presidential term." While Mr. Seward forbears giving details of the consultations held ' JEREMIAH S. BLACK AND EDWIN M. STANTON. 37 with Mr. Stanton, he states that whenever they had occasion "to discuss measures, it was only the right, fitness, expediency, and suEBciency of these measures that came in question;" and that Mr. Stanton expressed " entire confidence in the loyalty of the President and of the heads of the departments who remained in association with him until the close of that administration." Concerning the midnight visit which so excites the incredulity and in- dignation of Mr. Black, Mr. Sumner himself writes : — " My acquaintance with Mr. Stanton goes back to ray first entrance into the Senate, as long ago as 1851, when Mr. Chase said to me one day, ' There is an Ohio friend of mine here who would be glad to know you,' and he introduced me to Mr. Stanton. I was busy in the Senate, and he was busy in court, so that we saw little of each other, but whenever we met it was as friends. I remember well how much he was excited, when, in the debate on the Boston petition for the repeal of the Fugitive Slave Bill, immediately after the surrender of Anthony Burns, June, 1854, I was set upon by the slave-masters of the Senate, Mr. Mason and Mr. Butler leading in the assault. Mr. Stanton was on the floor of the Senate while I was speaking, and afterwards spoke of the incident with much sympathy for me. On the evening of this debate he was at the house of our excellent friend Dr. Bailey, who did so much against slavery, and there dwelt on the conduct of certain Senators. " I always understood that Mr. Sibinton was a Democrat who hated slavery ; and when he went into the Cabinet of Mr. Buchanan, I felt that the national cause must derive strength from his presence there. Yon do not forget those anxious days. At last, in the month of January, 1861, while our troops were left to starve in Fort Sumter, I called on him at the Attorney-General's office, relying on his patriotism for information and counsel with regard to the state of the country. He was in the inner room, where he received me kindly, seeming glad to see me. Looking about and seeing somebody in the room, he whispered that we must be alone, and then passed into the anteroom, where was also somebody, and then into the next room, and then into the next, when, finding somebody in each room, he opened the door into the corridor, where he began an earnest conversation, saying that he must see me alone — that this was impossible at his office — that he was watched by the traitors of the South — that my visit would be made known to them at once — and he concluded by proposing to call on me at my lodgings at one o'clock that night, when he would tell me of the fearful condition of affairs as he saw them. I said in reply that I would expect him at the time named by him. " He came at one o'clock that night, and was alone with me for an hour. During this time he described to me the determination of the Southern leaders, and developed particularly their plan to obtain possession of the national capital and the national archives, so that they might substitute themselves for the existing government. I was struck, not only by the knowledge he showed of hostile movements, but by his instinctive insight into men and things. His particular object was to make us all watchful and prepared for the traitors. I saw nobody at the time who had so strong a grasp of the whole terrible case. The energies which he dis- played afterwards as Secretary of War, and which wore him to death, were already conspicuous ; nor can I doubt that, had his spirit prevailed in the beginning, the Rebellion would have been strangled at its birth. " In the summer that followed, especially during the July session of 33 JEREMtAH S. BLACK AXD EDWIN M. STANTON. Congress, I was in the habit of seeing Mr. Stanton at his house in the evening, and conferring with him freely. His standard was high, and he constantly spoke with all his accustomed power of our duties in the sup- pression of the Rebellion. Nobody was more earnest than himself. Com- pared with him the President and Congress seemed slow. " It was his burning patriotism and remarkable vigor of character which determined his selection as Secretary of War; but at this time he was very little known to Senators personally. You may remember that, on the receipt of his nomination by the Senate, I rose at onoe, and, after stating my acquaintance with him, declared that within my knowledge he •was one of us." This testimony of Mr. Sumner may satisfy Mr. Black that Mr. Stan- ton's midnight visit was actually made, and may give him some insiglit into that gentleman's associations and anti-slavery proclivities. It may perhaps lead him to modify somewhat his bald and unsupported declara- tion that "he had no affinities whatever with men of your [my] school in moral or politics," and that " his condemnations of the Abolitionists were unsparing for their hypocrisy, their corruption, their enmity to the Constitution, and their lawless disregard for the riglits of States and in- dividuals." Mr. William A. Howard, of Michigan, was for several years a member of the House, and a gentleman of large and commanding influence. In a letter to Attorney-General Hoai',">under date of the tth of February, from which I am permitted to quote, he says: — " And now commenced a series of efforts most strange, that lasted through two long and fearful months — so fearful, indeed, that even now at this late day, and when the Republic is safe — I shudder to think of them. If you will refer to the resolutions of the House early in January, 18G1, under which the special committee, of which I was chairman, was appointed, you will see that the committee was clothed with very ample powers. That committee was raised at the request of loyal members of the Cabinet. The resolutions came from them and were placed in my hands with a request that I would offer them, and thus become, if they should pass, chairman of the committee. At first I refused to assume so fearful a responsibility. But being urged to do so by members and Sen- ators, I at last consented to do so, on condition that the Speaker would allow me to nominate two members of the committee. I selected Mr. Dawes, of Massachusetts, and Mr. Reynolds, of New York. Mr. Rey- nolds was elected as a Democrat, but he was true as steel and a good lawyer. " I do not know that Mr. Stanton wrote the resolutions creating the committee. I did not see him write them. 1 never heard him say he wrote tliem. It would be easier, however, to persuade me that Mr. Jef- ferson did not write the Declaration of Independence than that Mr. Stan- ton did not write those resolutions. If he did write them, they are a sufficient answer to all that Mr. Black has said or can say. Whoever wrote them and requested the House of Representatives to adopt them would not have occupied any doubtful position. I do not think I saw Mr. Stanton at any time between the 1st of January and the 4th of JNLarch, 1861 ; but I think I heard from him more times than were days in those two months. The clearest statements of legal rights, defining the boundaries of treason, the most startling facts, when the evidences of treachery could be found, were furnished. JEREMIAH S. BLAOK AND EDWIN M. STANTON. 39 " One of the secretaries had accepted the resignation of officers who had joined the Rebellion, and had dated back the resignations, in one case two days, for the avowed purpose of protecting the scoundrel from trial by naval or military law, for leading the attack on the Pensacola Navy- Yard on the 12th day of January, 1861, while he still held his commission. The letter covering the resignation stated that the resigna- tion was written on the 13th, but dated back to the 11th, the day before the attack, and he wanted the acceptance to be dated from that day, so as to save him from military law. It boasted that they had smashed the civil courts in Florida. The resignation was received at the department on the 22d day of January, at eight o'clock in the afternoon ; but the ac- ceptance was dated on the Uth as requested. I state dates from memory, and may not be entirely accurate. We were put upon this inquiry by information brought to us by a ' bird' which flew directly from some Cabinet minister to the coramittee-room. I never suspected Mr. Black or Mr. Toucey of tiiis 'impropriety.' If I suspected Mr. Stanton or Mr. Dix or Mr. Holt, it was because they were 'suspicious characters.' " We were more than once told it would probably be necessary to arrest a certain member of the Cabinet for treason. Once we were told it would probably have to be within an hour, but to wait until we could hear a second time. W,ord came to hold on. Those messages certainly came from some member of the Cabinet. I always supposed something was going on there about that time. If so, probably Mr. Black did not know anything about it; and most likely Mr. Stanton's great modesty prevented liis doing or saying anything about it. Mr. Black informs us, too, that Mr. Stanton was at that time a ' Democrat;' perhaps that prevented his doing anything about these matters. For obvious reasons, personal interviews with Cabinet ministers were avoided during the labors of the committee ; but I do know I many times sent inquiries, and received an- swers with great promptness, conveying information of great importance. But these communications were indirect and anonymous." Equally explicit is the testimony of Mr. Dawes, another member of that committee. In an article written immediately after the death of Mr. S'tanton, and published in the " Congregationalist," of Boston, he stated that some of the most important and secret plans of the conspirators he- came known and were thwarted by means of communications from Mr. Stanton to the committee. " Once a member of tliat committee," said Mr. Dawes in this article, "read by the light of the street lamps these words : ' Secretary is a traitor, depend upon it. He declared in Cabinet to-day that he did twt want to deliver this govermnent intact into the hands of the black Republicans. Arrest him instantly, or all will be lost ' The paper went back to its hiding-place, but the Secretary, though he walked the streets unmolested, was watched from that hour." Who can question the truthfulness of these testimonies ? Who can doubt the fact that Mr. Stanton, in the extraordinary emergencies of that dark winter, did put himself in communication with Republican members of Congress ? Who can resist the belief that the motives which then ac- tuated him were as pure and lofty as ever glowed in a patriot's bosom ? Will the naked and unsupported assertions and imputations of Mr. Black, however vehemently and persistently made, shake the faith and confidence of the American people in the loyalty and honor of Edwin M. Stanton ? In my article, I stated, on what I deemed unquestionable authority, that Mr. Stanton had, before entering the Cabinet, advised Mr. Buchanan •iO JEREMIAH S. BLACK AND EDWIN M. STANTON. to incorporate into his message the doctrine that the Federal government had the power, and that it was its duty, to coerce seceding States. Mr. Black positively declares that Mr. Stanton never was consulted on that subject by the President, and that he never gave such advice. Mr. Dawes, in his article in the " Congregationalist," makes this statement in clear and emphatic language. " It was," he says, " while these plans for a coup d'etat before the 4th of March were being matured in the very Cabinet itself, and in the presence of a President too feeble to resist them and too blind even to see them, that Mr. Stanton was sent for by Mr. Buchanan, to answer the question, ' Can a State be coerced V For two hours lie battled, and finally scattered for the time being the heresies with which secession had tilled the head of that old broken-down man. He was requested to prepare an argument in support of the power, to be inserted in the forthcoming message. He did it in language that neither time nor argument has improved upon, and his statement of the power was adopted by the President and in- serted in the message. Had it remained as the doctrine of the adminis- tration, its whole attitude towards the Rebellion would have been changed, ^nd the result no one can now state. "Mr. Stanton left the city immediately, for the trial of an important cause in Pittsburg, and saw no more of the President or men in Wash- ington, until summoned by telegraph to a place in the crumbling Cabinet in the last days of December. Meantime the traitors had overborne the President and events were rapidly culminating. Two days before the meeting of Congress they had frightened him into expunging from his message the assertion of the power to coerce a State in rebellion, and to insert in its place the contrary doctrine." This statement was made on the authority of Mr. Stanton himself. In a letter written to me a few weeks since Mr. Dawes says: "When Mr. Washburne and I lived together on Fourteenth Street, near Mr. Stanton's, he used to call and see us occasionally. He stayed very late one night, telling us all about his connections with Mr. Buchanan's administration and the war. At that time he told us the story of Mr. Buchanan's send- ing for him before his last regular message, as I related it in the 'Con- gregationalist.' " Perhaps this positive assertion of Mr. Stanton himself to Mr. Dawes and Mr. Washburne will weigh quite as much with the American people as the merely negative statement of ^[r. Black. While admitting that Mr. Stanton had always been a Democrat till he took his place in the Republican party during the war, I stated in my article in the "Atlantic" that he had "early imbibed antisluvcry senti- ments. " I referred to his Quaker descent; to his grandfather's emanci- pation of his slaves ; to the fact, which he frequently referred to, that Benjamin Lundy was wont to visit his father's house, and that he had sat upon his knee and listened to his antislavery teachings ; to the state- ment made me by Mr. Chase himself, that Mr. Stanton accosted him in the streets, nearly thirty years before, and said that he was in entire accord with the antislavery sentiments he had just put forth ; and to the well-known fact that he was a frequent guest at Dr. Bailey's house, where he often met and associated with antislavery men. Mr. Black seems shocked at this statement. He emphatically declares that the Democrats gave ^[r. Stanton "office, honor, and fortune;" that if my statement be true, " he was the most marvellous impostor that ever lived or died." Perhaps a liberty-loving people will be more charitable towards Mr. JEREMIAH S. BLACK AND E'DWIN M. STANTON". 41 Stanton than Mr. Black is. They will hardly join hira in declaring it " cold-blooded and deliberate treachery" simply because, though a Demo- crat, he faintly cherished the antislavery teachings of his youth. They will rather respond to the words recently written to me by the veteran abolitionists Theodore D. Weld and Samuel May. " In the early spring of 1835," writes Mr. Weld, "I gave a course of lectures upon slavery in Steubenville, Ohio. In the announcement of the course objections and discussion were invited. Before going to the first lecture I was told that a young lawyer was to reply to me ; at the close I called for objections. None were made, and the audience dis- persed. At the next there was the same invitation and the same result. On the morning after, a young man, whom I had observed taking notes at the lectures, sought me at my lodgings and introduced himself as Mr. Stanton, saying in substance, 'I meant to fight you, but my guns are spiked, and I have come to say that I see, with you, that all men hold their rights by the same title-deed, that the slaveholder in picking flaws in the slave's title-deed picks the same in his own and in every man's.' A conversation of half an hour followed, during which he greatly impressed me with his hearty frankness, independence, moral insight, and keen mental force. Grod be thanked that, a quarter of a century later, the nation had such a man to lead its forlorn hope triumphant through its darkest hour." Mr. May, in a letter recently received, asks : " Did you ever hear Mr. Stanton speak of B. Lundy ? Do you remember taking me to his room when I went to Washington to get signatures to the testimonial circular letter for Garrison, and introducing me to hira with some words as to my errand ? After getting through with three or four persons who had pre- cedence, he, still standing behind his ' standing desk,' after a few words and inquiries about Mr. Garrison, began to speak of visits which Lundy made to his father's house, when he (E. M. S.) was a boy ; of the long talks always on slavery which Mr. Lundy and his father had together, and of the silent interest he took in them. He had evidently grown up with a ^reat reverence for Mr. Lundy. Who can tell how far these re- peated talks of Lundy in the humble farm-house in Ohio, so long ago, were a power in preparing the future Secretary of War, who was to grasp the entire strength and resources of the nation in his hand, and wield them for slavery's final destruction ? For myself, I was perfectly convinced, from the deep and earnest tone in which he spoke of Lundy, that he recognized a spirit which had controlled and shaped his own. And when in another (briefer) interview, two or three days later, I found him again leading the conversation to Lundy and those early visits to his father's house, I was made sure of my first impression, and I rejoiced in the Providential arrangement which had caused that early seed, sown in simple faith, to find a soil suited to it when, 'though buried long,' it should not 'deceive the hope.' Benjamin Lundy's ' soul was marching on,' when Stanton planned and directed the gigantic measures, before which even the seemingly unconquerable monster slavery was compelled to yield and die." And here I notice Mr. Black's denial that Mr. Stanton indorsed Mr. Cameron's proposition to arm the negroes. He afiirms with great posi- tiveness that it was " morally impossible" that Mr. Stanton should have done so, for the reason that " he was at that time a white man, every inch of him, proud of the great race he sprung from, and full of faith in 42 JEREMIAH S. BLACK AND EDWIN M. STANTON. its capacity to fight its own battles and govern itself;" and that "nothing could iiave humiliated him more than to see the American people relin- quish their rightful place in the front rank of the world, surrender their inheritance of free government, and sneak back behind the African for protection in war or in peace." This base utterance sufficiently reveals the animus of Jeremiah S. Black, but it does not prove that Edwin M, Stanton was not early in favor of arming l)lack men for the defence of the imperilled nation. That it does not prove it, is rendered certain by the testimony of Mr. Cameron himself. In a note recently received by me he says: "I submitted my report, when Secretary of War in 1861, to several gentlemen, chiefly from my own State, and many of them op- posed it. Wearied with objections to a measure on the adoption of which I was convinced the existence of the nation might ultimately depend, I sought out another counsellor — one of broad views, great courage, and of tremendous earnestness. It was Edwin M. Stanton. He read the report carefully, and after suggesting a few verbal alterations, calculated to make it stronger, he gave it his unequivocal and hearty support." By the act of July, 1862, the President was authorized to receive for military purposes persons of African descent. Some time afterwards Mr. Stanton referred to General Holt the question of the right and duty of the government to employ persons of African descent as soldiers. That gentleman made an elaborate, vigorous, and elo([iient report in favor of receiving into the armies persons irrespective of creed or color. Mr. Holt, in a note addressed to me under date of 18th of June, says : "Soon after this report had been received and read by Mr. Stanton, he warmly thanked me for it, and left the impression on my mind of his entire concurrence in its views. Some time afterwards, in one of those unre- served conversations which we occasionally had upon the al)Sorbing questions of the day, he declared substantially, and with the vehemence which often characterized him in the discussion of such topics, that the war could never he successfully closed for the government, without the em- ployment of colored troops in the field. The importance of this declara- tion at that juncture, added to the solemn earnestness with whick it was uttered, fixed it indelibly upon my memory. I could not have been mistaken in then regarding him as the decided and persistent advocate of this policy." Mr. Black, with reckless audacity, declares too that the scene in the Cabinet, when the intelligence was received that Colonel Anderson had removed from Fort Moultrie to Fort Sumter, " is a pure and perfectly baseless fabrication," "completely exploded by the record, which shows that Colonel Anderson's transfer of his forces from Fort Moultrie to Fort Sumter was in literal obedience to orders from the President, which Floyd himself had drawn up, signed and transmitted." This assertion is made in the face of their dispatches, now on file in the War Department, as cer- tified to by Adjutant-General Townsend, under date of 19th of July. War Department, December 27, 1860. To Major R. Anderson, U. S. A., Fort Moultrie, Charleston, S. C. Intelligence has reached here thfs morning that you have abandoned Fort Moultrie, spiked your guns, burnt the carriages, and gone to Fort Sumter. It is not believed, because there is no order for such movement. Exj)lain the meaning of this report. (Signed) J. B. FLOYD, Secretary of War. JEREMIAH S. BLACK AND EDWIN M. STANTON. 43 This declaration of Floyd to Anderson, that " there is no order for any such movement," conclusively shows the construction he put upon pre- vious orders, and is a complete refutation of Black's assumption and as- sertions. The following despatch of Colonel Anderson shows, too, that he did not act upon any previous order, but upon his own responsi- bility : — Charleston, December 27, 1860. To Hon. J. B. Floyd, Secretary of War. The telegram is correct. I abandoned Fort Moultrie because I was certain that, if attacked, my men must have been sacrificed and the com- mand of the harbor lost. I spiked the guns and destroyed the carriages to keep the guns from being used against us. If attacked, the garrison would never have surrendered without a fight. (Signed) ROBERT ANDERSON, Major First Artillery. That Floyd was disappointed and exasperated beyond all bounds by the raoveraQ.nt of Colonel Anderson is abundantly proven. General Holt, at that time member of Buchanan's Cabinet, in his brilliant speech at the banquet in Charleston, on the evening of the 14th of April, 1865, after the flag-raising at Fort Sumter, thus referred to the mortification, anguish, and fury of the baffled traitor. " When intelligence reached the capital," says Mr. Holt, and it will be remembered that he spoke from personal knowledge, " that by a bold and dexterous movement this command had been transferred from Moultrie to Sumter, and was safe from the disabled guns left behind, the emotions of Floyd were absolutely uncontrollable — emotions of mingled mortification and anguish and rage and panic. His fury seemed that of some baffled fiend, who discovers suddenly opening at his own feet the gulf of ruin which he has been preparing for another. Over all the details of this passionate outburst of a conspirator, caught and entangled in his own toils, the veil of official secrecy still hangs, and it may be that history will never be privileged to transfer this memorable scene to its pages. There is one, however, whose absence to-day we have all deplored, and to whom the nation is grateful for the masterly ability and lion-like courage with which he has fought this Rebellion in all the vicissitudes of its career — your Secretary of War, who, were he here, could bear testimony to the truthfulness of my words. He looked upon that scene, and the country needs not now to be told that he looked upon it with scorn and defiance." This speech made the tour of the country, was published in pamphlet form, and Mr. Biack must have seen it. He, however, uttered no denial, and demanded no explanation, while Mr. Stanton lived. Now that the great Secretary's lips are closed in death, his for the first time are opened. But though Mr. Stanton shall never bear testimony again upon the point, there are those, now living, of unquestioned probity, who remember his description of the scene. Mr. Dawes, in the letter already quoted, states, in corroboration of his own and Mr. Washburn's recollections, that "Mrs. Dawes distinctly remembers hearing Mr. Stanton tell at our house the story of that terrible conflict in the Cabinet." Mr. Black's denial of that Cabinet scene is rather the argument of a tricky advocate than the unbiased testimony of an honest witness. His argument is that, because Mr. Stanton, when the eyes of traitorous spies were upon him, sought an interview with Mr. Sumner in the darkness of 44 JEREMIAH S. BLACK AND EDWIN M. STANTON. night, he was such "a dastard," "crawling sycophant," and "stealthy- spy," that he " must have been wholly unfitted to play the part of Jupiter Touans in a square and opeu conflict," and that it was " not possible that the fearless Stanton of your ' Cabinet scene' could be the same Stanton who, at one o'clock, was 'squat like a toad' at the ear of Sumner." Is such a shuffling and skulking mode of denial, made by one who manifestly feels himself to be on the defensive, to outweigh the declarations of Mr. Stanton made to credible witnesses, and the positive averments of Joseph Holt? Mr. Black, having denied, after a manner, that there was such a Cabinet controversy, in which Mr. Floyd and Mr. Stanton were actors, adds in a semi-heroic style : " I take upon me to deny most emphatically that Mr. Stanton ever 'wrote a full and detailed account of that Cabinet scene.'" " I can show that your assertion is incredible." He then pro- ceeds to make an argument in support of his denial, but the testimony of Judge Holt is conclusive. He writes : — " Several years ago, Mr. Stanton read to me, in the War Department, a letter addressed by him to Mr. Schell, of New York, in answer to one from that gentleman, wherein he set forth quite in denial wh^t was said and done at the meeting of Mr. Buchanan's Cabinet, which was followed at once, as I now remember it, by Mr. Floyd's resignation. The delibera- tions and discussions of that, as of other Cabinet meetings, being then and still held under the seals of official confidence, I cannot, of course, repeat what the statements of this letter were, but can only affirm that they accorded with my own recollection of the facts. I requested of Mr. Stanton a copy of this letter, which he promised to furnish me, but under the pressure of his official labors and engagements the matter was prob- ably lost sight of, as the copy never reached me. Subsequently he in- formed me that the letter had never been sent, he having, as I understood it, come to the conclusion that such disclosures would not be justified, unless made with the consent of the parties to the Cabinet meeting, and to the deliberations referred to." With his usual audacity and utter obliviousness of facts Mr. Black de- nies my statement that Floyd, while Secretary of War, sent arms " where they could be clutched by conspirators." This direct denial of a state- ment founded on documentary evidence is amazing. While sitting in the Cabinet, Floyd was in sympathy and co-operation with Southern leaders who were preparing for secession and rebellion. Arms by his orders were sent from Northern armories and arsenals to arsenals in the South. Ben- jamin Stanton, of Ohio, chairman of the Committee on Military Affairs of the House of Representatives, asked of the Secretary of War a state- ment, showing the number of arms sent from the armories and arsenals at the North to those at the South. In compliance with directions of Gene- ral Holt, Secretary of War, Colonel H. K. Craig, of the ordnance office, reported on the 15th of January, ISGl, that " on the 30th day of Decem- ber, 1859, an order was received from the War Department, directing the transfer of 115,000 arms from the Springfield Armory and the Watertown and Watervliet Arsenals to different arsenals at the South. Orders were given in obedience to those instructions on the 30th day of January, 1800, and the arms were removed during the past spring." He also added that these arms, which had been sent to South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, numbering 63,000, had already been seized by the Rebels. Colonel jSlagnadin, of the Ordnance Office, was examined by the House Committee on Military Affairs, and stated that, in obedience to JEREMIAH S. BLACK AND EDWIN" M. STANTON. 45 the " naked order" of Secretary Floyd, he ordered from Pittsburj? " forty colurabiads and four 32-pounders to the fort on Ship Island, and seventy cohimbiads and seven 32-pounders to the fort at Galveston." These heavy guns were ordered to be sent to forts where not one could be mounted. General Patten, in a report made to General Holt, Secretary of War, under date of 8th of January, 1861, stated that not a gun could be mounted at Ship Island; that only eighty thousand dollars had been appropriated to the fort at Galveston, which would cost nearly half a million ; that ground was not broken, and the foundation walls were not laid, and it would take five years to finish it. The patriotic people of Pittsburg protested against the removal of these guns ; and when General Holt entered the War Office he at once countermanded Floyd's treasonable order. Notwithstanding these facts, which are matters of record and within the reach of all, Mr. Black interposes his astounding denial. If, when verification is at hand, he is so reckless in his statements, what con- fidence can be placed upon his otherwise unsupported assertions ? In my article I incidentally referred to what I had understood to be the fact, that Mr. Cameron had proposed to resign his commission as Secre- tary of War, provided a successor could be appointed not unfriendly to him, and that he had suggested Mr. Stanton. Mr. Black avers that this was not so, that Mr. Cameron did not resign, was in fact removed, and had no part in naming a successor. I am content to rest the case upon the following testimonies. Mr. Cameron in a recent note to me, writes: — " I called on Mr. Lincoln, and suggested Edwin M. Stanton to him as my successor. He hesitated ; but after listening to me for a time, he yielded, and sent me to offer the place of Secretary of War to him, and added : ' Tell him, Cameron, if he accepts, I will send his nomination as Secretary, and yours as Minister to Russia, to the Senate together.'" Senator Chandler, in a recent note, writes : " Before Cameron resigned, lie invited me to breakfast at his house to meet Edwin M. Stanton, whom I had then never met, and told me that the gentleman I was to meet had been nominated for Secretary of War, at his request. At breakfast, the fact of Cameron's having recommended Mr. Stanton as his successor was not only mentioned, but the meeting was expressly for the purpose of enabling some one on whose friendship Mr. Cameron placed reliance to judge of the wisdom of his course, by actual contact with the coming Secretary." This statement of Mr. Chandler, concerning the meeting at the house of Mr. Cameron, is corroborated by the following extract from a letter addressed to me by Mr. Wade. " I recollect," he says, " very well, that Mr. Cameron made known to Mr. Chandler and myself his determina- tion to resign his position as Secretary of War, and recommend to Mr. Lincoln.Mr. Stanton as his successor in that department. From my long acquaintance with Mr. Stanton, and ray confidence in his ability, integ- rity, and fitness for the place, as well as his determined antislavery prin- ciples, I was much pleased with the suggestion, as was Mr. Chandler. Shortly after this we were invited to breakfast at Mr. Cameron's, to meet Mr. Stanton, at which meeting Mr. Cameron mentioned to Mr. Stanton the resolution he had come to, and that gentleman reluctantly gave us to understand that, if he was offered the appointment, he would accept." From Senator Ramsey I have received a note, in which he says: "I desire to relate a circumstance which carries with it the best attainable evidence of the truth of your statement — the words of Mr. Stanton him- 46 JEREMIAH S. BLACK AND EDWIN M. STANTON. self. I met Senator Cameron and Mr. Stanton at Mr. Chandler's house, in Washington, during the impeachment of President Johnson. In con- versation, Mr. Stanton, referring to the unpleasant and delicate situation in which he was placed, in seeming to cling to an office which the Presi- dent was determined to drive him from, said, half playfully, pointing to General Cameron : ' This gentleman is the man who has brought all this tronl)le upon me, by recommending me to Mr. Lincoln for Secretary of War, and then urging me to accept the place.'" Chief Justice Chase, in a letter written to Mr. Cameron, from which I am permitted to quote, is still more explicit and conclusive on the point at issue : " Senator Wilson is quite right in his statement that you re- signed the post of Secretary of War, and that you indicated Mr. Stanton as your successor. I supposed myself at the time, and still suppose, that I was well informed as to the circumstances. Some time before you resigned, you expressed to me your preference for the position of Minister to St. Petersburg, and I conversed with Mr. Lincoln on the subject under your sanction. No intimation of a thought on Mr. Lincoln's part that the resignation of the one post, and the acceptance of the other, were not purely voluntary acts on your part was received by me. Nor have I now any belief that it was not at the lime wholly at your option to remain in the Cabinet, or to leave it for the honorable and important position offered to you." In illustration of Mr. Stanton's readiness, in great emergencies, to take responsibilities, 1 cited the fact that he placed in the hands of Gov- ernor Morton, of Indiana, a quarter of a million of dollars, out of an un- expended appropriation, made nearly two years before, for raising troops in States in insurrection. Mr. Black takes up this simple statement of a fact, criticizes it at great length, declares that " the whole story is bogus," pronounces it " untrue in the aggregate and in detail, in the sum total and in every item." He declared Governor Morton's purpose in going to Washington to be " to demand payment of a debt due, and acknow- ledged to be due, from the United States to the State of Indiana ;" that " the money had been appropriated by Congress to pay it, and it was paid according to law." His whole statement touching this point is full of unconcealed, not to say ostentatious, malignity, and betrays either a reckless disregard of truth or an inexcusable ignorance. The simple facts are these : The Democratic party in 1862 carried Indiana. At once its presses announced that the military power would be taken from the Governor, and the Indiana Legion would be disbanded. The Legislature was opened by violent and inflammatory speeches. The House of Representatives returned Governor Morton's message to him, and passed a resolution accepting the message of Governor Seymour of New York. The threatened military measures were introduced, taking from the Governor all military power, and conferring it upon the State Auditor, Treasurer, Secretary of State, and Attorney-General. To de- feat such unconstitutional and revolutionary measures, the Republican members of the House withdrew from the Legislature, and it adjourned without the necessary legislation to defray the ordinary expenses of the State. Governor* Morton, believing it would be madness to do so, refused to call an extra session, appealed to the loyal people to stand by him ; and counties, banks, railroad com])anies, and private individuals promptly came forward and supplied him with money to meet pressing demands upon the treasury. JEREMIAH S. BLACK AND EDWIN M. STANTON, 47 Tn that eraergency Governor Morton went to Washington, not, as Bhick falsely says, to demand payment of a debt due, and acknowledged to be due, from the United States to Indiana, but, in the Governor's own words, to apply " for an advance under an appropriation made by Con- gress, July 31, 1861." That act appropriated two million dollars to be expended under the direction of the President in supplying and defray- ing the expenses of transporting and delivering such arms and munitions of war as in his judgment might be expedient " to place in the hands of any of the loyal citizens residing in any of the States of which the in- habitants are in rebellion against the government of the United States, or in which rebellion is or may be threatened." That appropriation most clearly had been made to supply arms and defray expenses only in States where the inhabitants were in rebellion, or where rebellion was or might be threatened. Were the inhabitants of Indiana in rebellion ? Did rebellion exist in that State ? Was rebellion " threatened ?" These were the questions to be answered. After full consideration of the con- dition of affairs in that State, the menaced action of the dominant party in the Legislature, and the lawless conduct of " The Knights of the Golden Circle" and the " Sons of Liberty," Mr. Stanton took the re- sponsibility, decided that Indiana ivas "threatened" with rebellion, and intrusted to Governor Morton, as disbursing oflQcer, two hundred and fifty thousand dollars out of that appropriation. And in so doing, instead of deserving the objurgatory epithets applied to him by Black, he merits and will ever receive the grateful admiration of his loyal countrymen. In his message to the Legislature, in January, 1865, Governor Morton, in giving an account of this proceeding, said : " It will be perceived that this money was not paid to me as a loan to the State or an advance to the State upon debts due to her by the general government, and creates no debt against the State whatever, but that in theory it is an expenditure made by the President through me as his disbursing agent." And yet, in face of this official declaration, Mr. Black has the effrontery to assert that this money, so placed in the Govern/Jr's hands, was in " payment of a debt due, and acknowledged to be due, from the United States to the State of Indiana," and that " the money had been appropriated by Con- gress to pay it, and it was paid according to law." I have thus noticed the assumptions and assertions of Mr. Black in the arraignment and criticisms of his article in " The Galaxy." In the light of this review an intelligent public will not be slow to note the wide dis- crepancies between his statements and the authentic facts as they now appear, on the authority of official records and the testimonies of unim- peachable witnesses. Nor will they fail to come to the conclusion that, either through lack of intelligence and needful research, or through natural perversities of mind or heart, he is eminently untrustworthy, and wholly unfitted to examine, criticize, or review the labors of others relating to the historic events of our times. 48 MR. BLACK TO MR, WILS02T. MR. BLACK TO MR. WILSON. BY HON. J. S. BLACK. To the Honorable Henry Wilson, Senator from Massaclntsetts. ) Contrary to my first intention, and not without reluctance, I lay aside other business of far greater importance while I take a brief re- view of your supplemental eulogy on Stanton. The occurrences which caused this change of mind might require explanation, but they are too entirely personal to occupy any space in these pages. Without more preface I give you my thought on your latest essay. You take violent exceptions to my former letter as being vituperative and ill-tempered. Let us see how the account stands between us on the score of mere manners, and then determine whether you have a right to set yourself as an arbiter elegantiartim. You wrote, or caused to be written, and published in a magazine of large circulation, an article in which you attacked the reputation of cer- tain persons in a style so scandalous that vitui)eration is no name for it. Without reserve or qualification you pronounced them guilty of the worst crimes known among men. The specific acts of which you accused them, and the opprobrious epithets you applied to them, were as insulting as you could make them. Most of the gentlemen thus assailed were dead ; but that made no difference to you ; your invective was not checked by any regard for the feelings of friends or relatives. The indecency of this was greatly aggravated by the fact that you put it in the form of a funeral panegyric upon a man whose recent and sudden death should have sobered your party rage and solemnized your heart, or at least operated as a temporary sedative upon your appetite for defamation. What was I to do? My first impulse was — no matter what; I did not obey it. But I concluded that all the purposes of a fair vindication might be accomplished by a simple contradiction of your statements, coupled with the plain reasons which would show them to be unworthy of belief. I did this, and I did no more. I did it in terms so free from unnecessary harshness that I am amazed this moment at my own mode- ration. But you affirm my denial to be an act of "reckless audacity;" in your eyes my (?e-fence is an o/'-fence. I really cannot understand this, unless you suppose that your political opponents have no rights, even of refutation, which you are bound to respect, and that slander, like other injuries, is consecrated by loyalty when a Democrat is the sufl'erer. You make no attempt to impugn the soundness or truth of the law as I gave it to the President on the 20th of November, 1860. That opinion was very simple as it stood upon the record ; and in my former letter I gave you the elementary principles, clarified by the most familiar illus- trations, and brought the whole subject down to the level of the lowest understanding. Besides, you had the aid of about a dozen Senators and members of Congress in getting up your reply. With all these helps you certainly might have specified some error in the opinion, if it be erroneous. But you content yourself with merely railing at it. I think I may say, with more confidence than ever, that "you cannot be so ignorant of the fundamental law as not to know that our exposition of it was perfectly sound and correct." MR. BLACK TO MR. WILSOlSr. 49 While you do not deny its truth, you think you annihilate it by the as- sertion that it is extensively disapproved. Do you really believe that an officer, dealing with questions of law, is bound to be popular rather than right? Will you never learn that "statesmen" and "patriots" of your school have notions about all the political virtues which a sound morality holds in utter detestation ? To flatter the passions and cajole the understanding of the people is not the highest object of any honest man's ambition. Mr. Jefferson thought he ought to "do them as much good as possible in spite of their teeth." But on your theory, to be " ever strong upon the stronger side" is not only good fortune, but high desert; while it is mere imbecility t-o offend the powerful by letting the countenance of the law shine upon the weak or the oppressed, who cannot reward you with office or money. If your theological opinions conform to your ideas of political duty, you esteem the luck of Barabbas as more meritorious than the fidelity of John, or the devotion of all the Marys. No doubt there was then, as there is now, a set of " small but fero- cious politicians," who became completely infuriated against me because I did not falsify the law, advise the President to violate the Constitution, and thus bring on an immediate dissolution of the Union. But you can hardly expect me to regret that I did not escape their censure. They were men who had been taught that enmity to the Constitution was the sura of all public and private virtue. There certainly is not an uncorrupted man in the country who will say that I was to blame for giving the law faithfully and truly. You declare that " contemporaneous history has already pronounced" against me, and you quote a few words of twaddle, apparently from the writings of some one whose name you are ashamed to mention. You call this a judgment upon me which posterity is not likely to reverse. Political power dishonestly wielded always has hacks to defend its excesses by maligning its opponents. A dozen books of that character have been printed within the last seven years. These productions come within the awkward description you have given of your own ; they are " not history or biography, nor intended to be ;" they are places of deposit for worn- out calumnies — mere sewers into which the filth of the party is drained off. I hope I am tolerably secure from the praises of this venal tribe ; and their abuse is prima facie evidence of a character at least negatively good. It is not worth while for you or me to trouble ourselves about ■posterity, for posterity will not probably take much account of us. No doubt you did all in your power to subvert the free institutions of our Eevolutionary fathers, and to debauch the political morals of the coun- try ; but the utmost exertion of your abilities has not sufficed to raise you above the common file of partisans who have engaged in the same evil work. On the other hand, the cause of liberty regulated by law has had a crowd of advocates so infinitely superior to me that my feeble efforts cannot be expected to attract the notice of future generations. You make no attempt to justify your abuse of Mr. Buchanan ; you do not repeat your charge against Mr. Toucey of scattering the ships of the navy to render that arm powerless ; nor do you now pretend to assert that Mr. Thompson was guilty of robbing the Indian trust funds. But you offer no reparation, nor even make an excuse, for the wanton and unpro- voked injury which you tried to commit upon the character of the Living and the memory of the dead. You sullenly permit judgment to be ren- dered against you by nil dicit. I mention this only to say, that it very 4 50 MR. BLACK TO MR, WILSON. serionsly afiFects your credibility upon the other points. Falsvs in tino, falsus in omnibus. You pervert my words and my meaning when yon say that I repre- sented Mr. Thompson as being above the range of ordinary mortals. I merely declared that his mental ability, good sense, and common honesty placed him very far beyond you, who had assailed him with a false charge of felonious robbery. You do not see the justice of this comparison, and you think that if I had not been a mere lawyer, having "little ac- quaintance or association with statesmen," I might have entertained a different notion. Although I consider my calling to be as reputable as any that you ever followed either before or after you took up the trade of a politician, you may make what deduction you please on that account from the value of my judgment ; but you must not interfere with my un- doubted right to believe (as I do most devoutly) that it would take a great many Wilsons to make one Thompson. It was not to be expected that Governor Floyd would escape your maledictions. No public man ever provoked such a storm of popular wrath as he did. The President, who had trusted him, withdrew his con- fidence, drove him from his counsels, and ordered him to be indicted for malversation in office. His colleagues left him to his fate, and there was nobody in all this land to take his part. He had some qualities which commanded the respect of folks like you as long as he lived and moved among yon. But absent, unfriended, defenceless, dead — fallen in a lost cause and buried in an obscure grave — he was the very man of all others, in or out of the world, whom your magnanimity would prompt you to attack. But why did you not charge him with misconduct in the financial management of his department ? That might have provoked a compari- son between him and Cameron, much to the disadvantage of the latter, whom you wished to court, to flatter, and whitewash. Therefore, you preferred to take up the exploded charge of sending guns and munitions to the South for the use of the secessionists in the war. Your first paper had nothing in it on this subject except the bald assertion, and I was content with a naked denial. But in your last you come back with a more extended averment and produce what you seem to suppose will be taken as evidence by at least some of your readers. Let us look at it. A committee was appointed by the House of Representatives in Jan- uary, 1801, to ascertain how the public arms distributed during the year 186U had been disposed of. Mr. Floyd was not present at the investiga- tion ; he had not a friend on the committee ; it was " organized to con- vict" him if it could. It reported the evidence, but gave no judgment criminating him with the offence you accuse him of. On the contrary, the opinion was expressed by the chairman that the charges were founded in "rumor, speculation, and misapprehension." But you take up the re- ported evidence and try to make out a case which the committee did not make out by carefully suppressing all the principal facts and misstating the others. Your charge of fraudulently sending arms to the South cannot be true of the heavy arras made at Pittsburgh for the forts in Louisiana and Texas, because they were not sent at ail. Floyd gave an order to ship them on the 20th of December, 1860, but it was revoked by the President before a gun wos started. It is, of course, possible that Floyd, in making the order, acted in bad faith ; but there is no proof of that. On the con- trary, Colonel Maynadier, an honest as well as a sharp man, and a most vigilant ofiBcer, who knew all the facts of the ease, and understood Floyd's MR. BLACK TO MR. WILSON. 51 attitude with regard to secession and union as well as anybody in the whole country, cheerfully set about the business of carrying out the order, though it \)'as not in writing, and testified that he had no suspicion of any improper object or motive in it. In fact and in truth, Floyd was not, in sentiment or in action, a secessionist until after he saw that the breach between himself and the President, which originated in other matters, was irreparable. Up to the time when he got notice that he must resign, he was steadily opposed to the Southern movement, and the bitterest ene- mies he had were the leading men of that section. Colonel Maynadier says that " he was regarded throughout the country as a strong advocate of the Union and opponent of secession ; and he adds, as a confirmation of this, that " he had recently published over his own signature in a Rich- mond paper a letter on this subject which gained him high credit in the North for his boldness in rebuking the pernicious views of many in his own State." After he found the whole Administration against him, he was driven by stress of necessity into the ranks of the party which he had previously opposed. The great and important fact to which the resolution of the House di- rected and confined the attention of the committee, and which is made perfectly clear by the evidence you do not refer to at all, but keep it care- fully out of sight from beginning to end of your statement. The question was and is, whether the Secretary of War under the Buchanan Adminis- tration did at any time subsequent to the first of January, 18(>0, treach- erously dispose of guns and munitions for the purpose of giving to the South the advantage in the war which the leaders in that section intended to make against the Federal Government. This was the "rumor, specula- tion, and misapprehension" to which the chairmanofthe committee alluded; this is substantially what the partisan newspapers and stump orators have asserted and reasserted over and over again, until thousands of persons in every part of the country have been made to believe it ; this is what you meant by your first article, and what you persist in and reaffirm by your last. Now examine the facts. There was a law almost coeval with the government for the distribution of arms among the different States according to their representation in Congress, for the use of their militia. Under this law the Ordnance Bureau, without any special order from the head of the department, gave to each State that applied for it her proper quota of muskets and rifles of the best pattern and make provided for the regular army. During the year 1860 the number of muskets so distri- buted was exactly 8423, of which the Southern States received 2091, while the Northern States got nearly three times that number, to wit, 6332. Some long-range riftes of the army calibre were distributed. Tbe aggregate number amounted to 1728, and they all went to Northern States except 758, about half enough for one regiment, which were divi- ded between Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, Mississippi, and Louisiana, the other States of the South receiving none. AVliy did you conceal these facts? You knew them, and you could not help but see their strict relevancy and great importance. Perhaps you did not know that the suppressio vert is as bad as the suggeslio falsi, and thought it fair to make out a criminal charge against a dead rebel by keeping back so much of the truth as did not suit your purpose. The fact that the Southern States neglected to take their proper and just quota, which they might have got for the asking, satisfied the com- mitteee, and no doubt fully convinced you, that there could have been no fraudulent combination in 1860 between them and the War Department 52 MR. BLACK TO MR. WILSON". to rob the Government of its arms for their benefit. That concluded the vhole case, since it was impossible for a sane man to believe that such a plot could have been formed and acted upon at a previous time and yet had no existence in the year immediately preceding the war. Neverthe- less, the committee went back, and it was proved that in 1859, before any war was apprehended — before the election of Lincoln was dreamed of — before the division of the Democracy, which made his election possible with a million majority against him — Floyd ordered a transfer of 115,000 muskets from Northern to Southern arsenals. Tliis you parade with a great flourish as evidence of a most wicked robbery. But here we find you again at the disingenuous business (is not that a soft phrase ?) of keeping back a truth which would have spoiled the face of your story. These arms were all worthless and unservicahle. We had 500,000 of them ; they cumbered the Norlhern arsenals, and could not be used ; a law had been passed to authorize the sale of them ; they were offered for years at two dollars and fifty cents apiece, about one-tenth the price of a good gun, and they could not be got off. Twice a considerable number were sold, but the purchasers upon further examination refused to take them. Of these 500,000 condemned muskets, the Secretary of War, in 1859, or- dered 115,000 to be sent to the South, doubtless for mere convenience of storage. To " weapon the rebellion" with arras like these would have in- sured its destruction the instant its forces came into the presence of troops having the improved modern gun in their hands. Floyd could not have done a greater injury to the Southern cause than this would have been. JSor is it possible to believe that Southern leaders would have conspired with him to purloin these useless arms in 1859, and then, in 1860, decline to take the share that legally belonged to them of the best muskets and rifles ever invented. All these facts appear in the evidence reported by the committee, from which you pretend to be making fair and candid ci- tations, and you say not a word about them. If you were " a mere lawyer," or any lawyer at all, and would go be- fore a judicial tribunal mutilating the truth after this fashion, you would immediately be expelled from the profession, and no judge would ever permit you to open your mouth in a court of justice again. If you would appear as a witness, and in that character testify to the contents of a writ- ten document in the way you have set out this report to your readers, it might be followed by very disagreeable consequences, which I will not shock your polite ears by mentioning. Mr. Cobb, while Secretary of the Treasury, performed his duties with singular purity, uprightness, and ability. No enemy has ever ventured to point out a single public act done in that department by him of which the wisdom, the lawfulness, or the honesty could be even doubted. The disjointed and loose accusation of your first paper imjilied that by some oflicial delinquency he had purposely disorganized the fiscal machinery of the Goveniuit'nt, or otherwise perpetrated some malicious mischief on the public credit. Now, however, you are reduced to the old and never-fail- ing resort of " treasonable utterances ;" something that he said in private conversation had the effect of injuring the credit of the United States. What was it? It is well known that the prices of all securities, public and private, began to go down immediately upon the Presidential election of l8Gv), and continued going down for years afterwards. Is this attribu- table to the treasonable utterances of Thomas, and Dix, and Chase ? But what is the use of pursuing such a sul)joet ? Mr. Cobb was dead, and you MR. BLACK TO MR. WILSON. 53 felt a sort of necessity for doinp; some despite upon his grave. Tliis fee- ble absurdity was all you could do. I considered myself bound to defend Mr. Stanton against the praise which described his character as infamous. Down to the time of his apos- tacy we were close and intimate friends, and I thought I knew him as well as one man could be known to another. I do not claim that he owed me anything; for I made no sacrifices of myself or anybody else to serve him. I advanced him in his profession and thereby improved his fortune, but he got nothing in that way for which he did not render equivalent services. I strove long, and at last successfully, to remove the prejudice of Mr. Buchanan and others against him, because I thought them unjust, and be- cause it was inconvenient for me that the President should not trust a man in whom I had unlimited confidence. I recommended him pressingly for Postmaster-General upon the death of Mr. Brown, solely for the rea- son that the exigencies of the public service in that department required a man of his great ability and industry. I caused him to be appointed Attorney-General, because I knew (or thought I knew) that he and I were in perfect accord on all questions, whether of law or policy, which he might have to deal with, and because I was sure that he would handle them not only with fidelity but with consummate skill. But though he was not in my debt, the apparent warmth of his nature impelled him to express his gratitude in most exaggerated language. After he took office under the Lincoln Administration our paths diverged so widely that I did not often see him. When I did, he sometimes overwhelmed me, as before, with hyperbolical demonstrations of thankfulness and friendship. If his feelings ever changed, he "died and made no sign" that was visible to me. Here let nie record my solemn declaration, that I never saw anything dishonorable in his conduct while I was associated with him. He never disappointed me while he was employed under me, or while we were col- leagues in office; and he never failed me in anything which I had a right to expect at his hands. His enemies spoke evil of him, but that is "the rough brake that virtue must go through," and I allowed no tale-bearer to shake my faith. My own personal knowledge does not enable me to accuse him of any mean or disgraceful act. How far you have succeeded, or may hereafter be able to succeed, in proving him a treacherous hypo- crite, is a question to be considered. But I am not one of your wit- nesses ; my testimony, as far as it goes, is directly against you. Under these circumstances it was impossible for me to be quite silent when I saw your publication in the "Atlantic," or to confine myself to a mere vindication of the other parties assaulted. It was plain to me that you had " wholly misunderstood the character of Mr. Stanton, and grossly injured him by what you supposed to be a panygeric." Your description of him, if accepted as true, would compel the belief that his whole political life was one long imposture ; that as a trusted member of the Buchanan Administration, he acted alternately the incompatible parts of a spy and a bully ; that while he was the chief law officer of the Gov- ernment, he was engaged in the foulest conspiracy that ever was hatched against the life, liberty, and honor of a colleague for whom he was at that very time professing unbounded friendship ; that he was the pro- tec/e and crony of Simon Cameron, and appointed Secretary of War to carry out his policy ; that being so appointed, he did loyally and feloni- ously embezzle public money to the amount of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars at one time. It is true that you were actuated by no malicious intent. You meant to do him honor. According to your moral 54 MR. BLACK TO MR. WILSON". apprehensions, all the evil you ascribed to him was good. When yoa wove for liim this disgusting "wreath of ulcers gone to seed," you thought you were decorating his coffin with a chaplet of the choicest flowers. You painted a monster of depravity, and you expected the American people to worship it with all the fervor of savages when they fall down to adore the image of some hideous demon. No doubt the votive offer- ing of your affection took this anomalous form because yon believed that duplicity and crime employed agaiust Democrats would give him the highest claim he could have on the admiration of the Abolitionists, and because it did greatly increase your own esteem and regard for him. But my interest in his reputation required that he should be properly appre- ciated by that honest portion of the people who still adhere to the moral creed of their fathers. I do not assert that your last paper proves nothing. I will give you the full benefit of every fact which you have established. So for as you have shown Mr. Stanton to be guilty of the baseness you impute to him, I will make no contest about it. But I will not yield one inch to any allegation of yours unsupported by evidence. I will try to save out of your hands as much of his character as you have not already destroyed by credible evidence. My effort was to take him down from the pillory to which you had nailed him by the ears as " a fix'd figure for scorn to point its finger at." You have done your strongest to oppose my rescue of him, and any partial success which may have rewarded your struggle must be a great comfort, of which I cannot justly deprive you. We will examine your evidence, and see upon what points you have made out your case, and wherein you have come short of your aim. I. You asserted that Mr. Stanton had been from his earliest youth an abolitionist in his secret heart; that to leading men of that party he declared himself in entire agreement with them, and hoped for the time to come when he could aid them. In other words, he gave in his perfect adhesion to them, concurred in their views of public morality, and was willing to promote their designs against the Federal and State governments whenever he could make himself most efficient to that end. At the same time he was in the Democratic party by virtue of his de- clared faith in exactly the opposite sentiments. To us he made himself appear a Democrat of the most ultra class. I do not say that he was an ac- tive propagandist ; but all Democrats with whom he spoke were impressed by the seeming strength of his attachment to those great principles, by the application of which they hoped to save the Union from dissolution, the country from civil war, and the liberties of the people from the destruc- tion with which your ascendancy threatened them. We took him on his word, believed him thoroughly, and gave him honor, office, and high trusts. Now, a man may be an honest Democrat or a sincere Abolitionist, but he cannot honestly and sincerely be both at the same time. Between those two parties the hostility was deadly. Each recognized the other as a mortal foe. They were as far asunder as the poles on every point of principle and policy. They differed not merely about rules for the interpretation of the organic law, but opposed each other on the broad question whether that law was entitled to any obedience at all. One of them respected and reverenced the Constitution as the best government the world ever saw, while the other denounced it as an agreement with death and a covenant with hell, which it was meritorious even for its sworn officers to violate. If we loved any portion of it more than an- other, it was that part which guurdt'd the iudi\ idual rights of the people MR. BLACK TO MR. WILSON. 55 by habeas corpus, jury trial, and other great judicial institutions, which our ancestors on both sides of the Atlantic had shed so much of their blood to establish; and it was precisely those provisions which had your bitterest enmity, and which you made the first use of your power to abol- ish, trample down, and destroy. Mr. Stanton could not have been truly on more than one side of such a controversy ; he could not serve God and Mammon both ; he could not be for the Constitution and against it too ; he could not at once believe and disbelieve in the sanctity of an oath to support it. He professed most fervently to be heart and soul with us. If he also professed to be with you, he was a wretched hypocrite. If he kept up this fraudulent deceit for thirty years, and thereby got the highest places in the gift of both parties, he was " the most marvellous impostor that ever lived or died." When your first article appeared, I did not believe that you had any ground for this shocking imputation upon his character. 1 was compelled to disbelieve and contradict it, for reasons which were then given and need not now be repeated. But I said the testimony of the Chief Jus- tice would silence my denial. The Chief Justice has spoken out and sustained your assertion. You do prove by him a declaration from the lips of Mr. Stanton, made nearly thirty years ago, from which the infer- ence is a fair one that he was in the Democratic party with intent " to betray the Constitution and its friends into the cruel clutches of their enemies" whenever he could find an opportunity. But you are not satisfied with this. To make the brand ineffaceable, you show that several years after his declaration to Mr. Chase, he, being an avowed advocate and champion of Democratic principles, was either appointed by his political brethren, or else volunteered, to answer an abolition lecture delivered at Steubenville by a man named Weld. He disappointed all parties, including the lecturer himself, by declining to come forward, though very pointedly called for. He made no excuse at the time for deserting the cause he had undertaken, but afterwards he slipped round secretly and alone to the private room of the lecturer and gave himself in as a convert. " I meant," said he, " to fight you, but my guns are spiked, and I came to say that I now see with you," &c. It never struck Mr. Weld that there was anything sneaking or shabby about this transaction. With the obliquity of vision peculiar to his political sect, he saw nothing but " hearty frankness, independence, moral insight, and keen mental force" in the conduct of a man who pri- vately denounced the opinions and principles which he publicly supported; and twenty-five years afterwards Mi*. Weld piously thanks God on paper for such an artful dodger to serve as a leader of his party. The next place you find him after the Steubenville affair is in the van of the Ohio Democracy. They, too, believed in the " hearty frankness and independence" of the declaration he made to them. They showed their faith by their works ; the Legislature, by a strict party vote, elected him Law Reporter, an office which he sought eagerly, and received with many thanks. In all the conflicts of the Buchanan Administration with the abolition- ists and their allies, he was an open-mouthed opponent of the latter. He was always sound on the Kansas question, and faithful among the faith- less on the Lecompton Constitution. So far as we, his Democratic asso- ciates, were permitted to know him, no man detested more than he did the knavish trick of the abolitionists in preventing a vote on slavery, by which it would have been expelled from Kansas, and the whole trouble 56 MR, BLACK TO MR. WILSON. settled in the way they pretended to wish. He was out and out for Breckinridge in 1860, and regarded the salvation of the country as hang- ing on the forlorn hope of his election. To Mr. Buchanan himself, and to the members of his Cabinet, he paid the most assiduous court, was always ready for an occasion to serve them, and showed bis devotion in ways which sometimes went rather too close to the verge of obsequious- ness. While we were looking at this side of his character, and supposing it had no other, he was, according to your understanding of his history, in " entire agreement" with the deadly enemies of every principle we be- lieved in. The mere fact that he paid visits to Dr. Bailey is nothing. It is nothing that he there met abolition people. All that might happen, and his fidelity to the Constitution would moult no feather. But you mention it as a remarkable circumstance, and it was remarkable, because abolitionists exclusively were in the habit of assembling there to talk over their plans, to concoct their slanders against the Administration, and to lay their plots for the overthrow of the Government and laws. It was a place were men congregated for political, not merely for social purposes, and Mr. Stanton knew he would be de Irop unless he was one of them. He accordingly made himself not only acceptable, but interest- ing, by telling them that he was of Quaker blood, and got his abolition- ism by inheritance ; his grandfather liberated his slaves — he did — and purged the family of that sin ; and Benjamin Lunday took him on his knee when he was a little boy and taught him the political doctrine which he had never forgotten, but which he had opposed by every open act of his life. He was probably fresh from one of these symposia when he went into court in the Sickles case, and loudly bragged that he was the son of slave-holding parents; his father was a North Carolinian, and his mother a Virginian. You may see that part of his speech on page 51 of the printed trial. It is hard to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds, but Stanton seems to have mastered the difficulty. Mr. Sumner's testimony to the early and thorough-going abolitionism of Mr. Stanton is entitled to great weight, because it is coupled with an act which attests its entire sincerity. It is a part of his certificate that when Mr. Stanton's nomination as Secretary of War was sent to the Senate, he (Sumner) immediately rose to urge the confirmation, stated hi.s acquaintance with the nominee, and said emphatically, " Within my knowledge, he is one of us." Mr. Sumner certainly would not have made such a declaration at such a time, and for such a purpose, unless he had the clearest conviction, based upon personal knowledge, that Mr. Stanton was an abolitionist of the most virulent type, prepared to tread the Constitution and the statute book under his feet, and ready to go all lengths for the subversion of liberty and justice. There is another fact corroborating your view, which you have not mentioned, but of which you are fairly entitled to the benefit. When Mr. Stanton went into the War Department, he immediately began to act with reckless disregard of his sworn duty. He surrounded himself with the most loathsome miscreants, and used them for the foulest purposes. Law, justice, and humanity were utterly outraged. Those who knew him as I did, and had heard him curse the perpetrators of such crimes only a month or two before, exercised the charity which believeth all things, and concluded that he was moved by some headlong impulse which had sud- denly revolutionized all this thoughts, feelings, and principles of action. MR. BLACK TO MR. WILSON. 57 But yonr proofs show that in the kindness of onr construction we did not give heed enough to the maxim, Nemo repente fuit turpissimus. Such a depth could not be reached by a single plunge. Tbe integrity of his moral nature must have previously undergone that gradual process of de- composition which could result only from long and sympathetic associa- tion with the enemies of the Constitution. On the whole, it must be admitted that you have made out this part of your case. With Democrats he was a Democrat, enjoying their confidence and taking their favors, while he caused it to be well understood among " men of your school in morals and politics" that his devotion to the De- mocracy was entirely simulated. It is now also clear, beyond doubt, that to Southern men he avowed himself a full-blooded secessionist. The testimony of Governor Brown to that eflect is as good as any that you have produced to prove him an abolitionist, and you have made the fact so probable in itself that very slight proof would be sufficient to esta- blish it. Is not my conclusion a fair one from the premises that this is the most " marvellous" imposture upon record ? Does the history of the world hold on all its pages of wonders another case in which a man has raised him- self to the highest public employments under two different parties of dia- metrically opposite and hostile principles, by making simultaneous pro- fessions of fidelity to both of them ? Do not mention Sunderland, for his hypocrisy gained him nothing ; nor Talleyrand, for he was merely a trimmer ; nor Benedict Arnold, for he acted his double part only during a few months, and closed it with ignominious failure. To find a parallel, you must go to another scene of action, and a far lower line of life. Jona- than Wild for twenty years imposed himself on the London police as an honest man and a most zealous friend of Justice, pretended to assist the officers in their business, and shared richly in their rewards ; but during all that time he was the adviser, the "guide, philosopher, and friend" of the principal thieves in the city, and to them he constantly betrayed the measures taken by the public authorities for the preservation of order and law. II. We are directly at issue upon the question whether or not Mr. Stanton advised President Buchanan, before his appointment as Attorney- General, that war might be legally made against the States, and th.e peo- ple thereof, in which ordinances of secession had been passed, by way of coercing them to remain in the Union. You say he was sent for by the President, and gave him that advice, accompanied by an argument in writing, which was so convincing that it was inserted in the first draft of the message, but afterwards stricken out. No such paper being in ex- istence, and Mr. Buchanan as well as Mr. Stanton being dead, your alle- gation is easily made ; if it be true, it is hard to prove, and though false, it is harder still to disprove. The evidence you produce is Mr. Dawes's statement that Mr. Stanton told him so. I say nothing about the danger of relying on the accuracy of a conversation reproduced from mere recol- lection, after so long a time ; but I answer that it is not true for the fol- lowing reasons : — 1. Mr. Buchanan made it a rule never to seek advice from outsiders on legal questions. When he was in doubt, he took the opinions of those who were officially responsible for their correctness. He had no kitchen cabinet. 2. If he had made this an exceptional case, and taken Mr. Stanton into his counsels by the back stairs, and if Mr. Stanton had furnished him 58 MR. BLACK TO MR. WILSON. with a paper which produced conviction on his mind that all his consti- tutional advisers were wrong, he would most certainly have shown it to them, or told them of it. 8. Mr. Stanton was a lawyer of undoubted ability, and the absurd opinion which you attribute to him could not have found a lodgment in his mind, even for one moment. 4. If he had really entertained such a notion, and desired in good faith to impress it upon the Administration, he would not (I think he could not) have concealed it from me. It would have been contrary to the whole tenor of his behavior in those days, and what is more, very much against his own interests. 5. He did e.'^press views exactly the opposite of those which you say he urged upon the President. He endorsed the opinion which I gave on the 20th of Xoveraber, 1860, in extravagd^it terras of approbation, adhered steadily to the doctrines of the annual message, and when re- quired officially to pronounce upon the special message of January, 1861, he gave his concurrence heartily, strongly, and unequivocally. In all the discussions upon the subject, he did not once intimate that there was, or ever had been, the slightest difference between him and the other mem- bers of the Administration. Do you mean to say that this was mere sham ? Was he so utterly devoid of all sincerity, honor, and truth, that he gave the whole weight of his influence and power to the support of a doctrine which he believed to be not only false, but pernicious ? If he was such a knave as that, then tell me what reliance can be placed on any statement he may have made to Mr. Dawes. III. Did he betray the Buchanan Administration while he was a mem- ber of it? Was he false to the principles that he pretended to believe in ? Was he treacherously engaged with you in trying to defeat the mea- sures he was trusted to support? Did he aid, and strengthen, and assist you in your efiforts to blacken the reputation of his associates and friends? Before these questions are answered, let us look for a moment at the situ- ation we were in. Mr. Buchanan was compassed round on all sides with more difficulties and dangers than any other public man in this country ever encountered. The party which elected him was perfectly routed ; its force wasted by division, its heart broken by defeat. Every Northern State was in the hands of enemies, flushed with the insolence of newly acquired power ; and after his official condemnation of secession, the South fell away from his side in a body. With bitter, remorseless, unrelenting foes in front, and flank, and rear, he was literally unsupported by any political organi- zation capable of making itself felt. But he was " shielded, and helmed, and weaponed with the truth," and he went right onward in the path made sacred by the footsteps of his great predecessors. He declared the secession ordinances mere nullities; the Union was not for a day, but for all time ; a State could not interpose itself between the Federal Govern- ment and individual citizens who violated Federal laws ; the coercive power did not apply to a State, and could not be used for purposes of indiscriminate carnage in wl'.ich the innocent and the guilty would be mingled together; but the laws must be executed, and the just rights of the Federal Government maintained in every part of the country against all opposers. The whole theory of the Constitution, as expounded by the men that made it, and all their successors down to that time, justice, humanity, patriotism, honor, and conscience, required him to announce and maintain these principles. They were not only true, but were either MR. BLACK TO MR, WILSON. 59 expressly or impliedly admitted to be true by all except the open avowed enemiesof the Union. The secessionists, of course, hud trained them- selves to a different way of thinking, and they immediately assumed an attitude of pronounced hostility to the Administration. The foremost of the abolition orators and the leading newspaper organ of the so-called Republican party took the high ground that the Southern States had a right to break up the Union if they pleased, and could not justly be opposed. But though they "drew much people after them," and gave great encouragement to the insurrectionary moveriient, no man who was at once honest, intelligent, and true to the country, failed to see the wis- dom of the President's views. The President elect endorsed them fully on his way to the capital, as he did afterwards by his official action. From all quarters addresses and petitions came up, which showed the popular appreciation of thera. Even the Massachusetts Legislature, without one dissenting voice in its more numerous branch, and by an overwhelming majority in the other House, passed a solemn resolution approving them in the strongest language, and offering to aid in carrying them out. But everything depended on Congress ; and what did Con- gress do ? Both Houses were completely in the hands of shallow par- tisans, who were either too stupid to understand their duty, or too dis- honest to perform it. The men of most ability and integrity whom Republican constituents had sent there — such men, for instance, as Charles Francis Adams— were heard but not heeded. The President, thoroughly informed on the whole subject, communicated all the facts in a special message, told Congress that the powers confided to him were wholly in- adequate to the occasion, demonstrated the absolute necessity of further legislation, and implored them not to postpone it, for the danger, immi- nent then, was increasing with every moment of delay. To all this they were as deaf as adders. They could be reached by no appeal to their hearts or consciences. They neither adopted the executive recommenda- tion, nor gave a reason for refusing. If any measure, having the least tendency either to restore peace or prepare for war, got so far as to be proposed, it was uniformly referred to a committee, where it was sure to be quietly strangled. The issues of life and death to the nation hung upon their action, and they would not lift a finger to save it. No legis- lative body, since the beginning of the world, ever behaved in a great crisis with such scandalous disregard of its duty. But if there were no statesmen among the managers of that Congress, there were plenty of demagogues ; if they were indifferent to the fate of the nation, they were intensely alive to the interests of their faction ; if the regular committees slept supinely on the great public questions sub- mitted to them, the secret committee, spawned by a caucus, went prowl- ing about with activity as incessant as it was stealthy and malignant. You could not gainsay the views which the Administration took of their own duty or yours, nor deny the wisdom of the recommendations they made ; but you could, and did, answer thera with a storm of personal i detraction. The air was filled with falsehood ; the atmosphere was satu- I rated with slander; the voice of truth was drowned in "the loud roar of foaming calumny," This crusade was conducted with so much vigor and success that some members of the Administration were pursued into private life by the rage of the partisan mob, and thousands of the wor- thiest men in the land were actually imprisoned and persecuted almost to death, for nothing worse than expressing a friendly opinion of them. The messages of the President will stand forever a monument to the wisdom, 60 MR. BLACK TO MR. WILSON. foresight, and honest i>atriotisin of the executive Administration, while history will proclaim tliroujrh all time the dishonor of that Congress which could answer such appeals with nothing but vituperation and insult. It was at such a juncture that Mr. Stanton was appointed to take a high and most confidential place in the Administration. His language glowed with gratitude, his words spoke all the fervor of personal devo- tion to his chief and his colleagues; he gave his thorough approval to the measures which they thought necessary to preserve the unity of the na- tion in the bonds of peace. Yet you inform us that he did immediately put himself in communication with the opposition ; sought out you and others whom he had never known before, and sought you solely because you were enemies of the Administration; offered himself as your spy, and did act for you in the capacity of a false delator; went skulking about at midnight to aid you in defeating the measures which with us he pretended to support; forgathered with your secret committee, and gave you assistance in carrying on your personal warfare against his benefac- tors ; nay, worse than all that, he helped you to trump up a charge of treason against one of his colleagues — a charge which he knew to \)e false — a charge for which, if it had been true, that trusting friend might lawfully, and would deservedly, have been hanged by the neck till he was dead. Oh I it was too foul ; it was base beyond the lowest reach of comparison. If your story be unfounded — if Stanton after all was a true and honorable man — how will you answer in the judgment day for this horrible outrage on his memory and on the feelings of his friends ? If thou dost slander him and torture us, Never pray more ; abandon all remorse ; On horror's head horrors accumulate ; For nothing canst thou to damnation add Deeper than that. But let justice be done though the heavens should fall. Some, at least, of your statements are true, unless Mr. Dawes, Mr. Howard, Mr. Seward, and Mr. Sumner have volunteered to help you by sacrificing the charac- ter of " the great Secretary." I will not waste time upon the details which your witnesses have given of his treachery. It appears to have been a free-will offering of his own, induced by no solicitation of yours, but tendered by himself ex mero motit. The moment he was inducted into office he looked about to ascertain who were the bitterest and most malignant enemies of the men to whom he owed all his public importance and much of his private prosperity. He found them quickly, and though they were entire strangers to him, he put himself immediately into secret communication with them, took service under them as their regular spy, and exercised himself diligently in that base vocation, making reports to them daily, and sometimes twice a day, until the close of his official term, when his occupation necessarily ceased. This mean employment must have taken up most of the time which should have been devoted to the duties of an office on which the public busi- ness, always heavy, was then pressing with unusual weight. He did not communicate any knowledge which was necessary to guide you in the discharge of your duties, for every fact of that kind was as accessible to you as to him ; the Administration kept nothing back ; the President volunteered to give all he knew concerning the state of the Union ; no department was closed against your investigations ; every call fur informatiou was promptly and fully answered. If that had not been MR. BLACK TO MR. WILSON. 61 enough, every member of the Cabinet would have been perfectly free to speak with any member of Congress, or to go in person before any committee. Mr. Seward did confer with me fully at the State Depart- ment in open daylight, without any dodging about it; and he was always welcome, as he is now, to tell everything that passed, for he neither asked nor could have asked any question, if the country had an interest in it, which I was not willing to answer. With all the channels of truthful in- formation thus open and unobstructed, you preferred to get what you wanted from a spy. Mr. Howard has the cheek to proclaim that during the " labors" of his committee, instead of acting upon honest and legitimate evidence, he sent inquiries to this secret informer, who answered by giv- ing information of " great importance," but his communications " were always indirect and anonymous !" If there be one sentence in your whole article which is marked more than another with your characteristic hardihood of assertion, it is that in which you try to make a merit of Stanton's treachery. It is curiously reck- less, and for that reason worth giving in your very words, " These facts," gay you, " were stated to illustrate Mr. Stanton's exalted patriotism, which prompted him to rise above the claims and clamors of partisanship, and to invoke the aid of loyal men beyond the lines of his own party, and 07it- side of the Administration of which he was a member to serve his imper- illed country, menaced with a foul and wicked revolt." AVhy, this is pre- cisely what the President and all the honest men of his Cabinet were do- ing openly and above board. They had no legal power which could avail to serve the "imperilled country" without the co-operation of Congress, which was wholly ruled by the opposition. They invoked "the aid of loyal men beyond the lines of their own party and outside of the Admin- istration," because it was from thence only that aid could come. But with you and your associates the " claims and clamors of partnership" were so much higher than considerations of public duty, that you not only refused all aid to the country, but you insulted, and abused, and vili- fied the President and his friends for asking it. Was Stanton, like the other members of the Administration, invoking aid for the imperilled country ? Did he skulk about in secret to effect in that way what his brethren were trying to accomplish by an open appeal to the reason and conscience of their political opponents ? If so, how did he succeed ? Did his secret, anonymous, and indirect communications ever produce the slightest symp- tom of patriotic emotion in the minds of those who received them ? What did you, or Mr. Sumner, or Mr. Dawes, or Mr. Howard, or Mr. Seward, do to avert the great calamity of civil war ? What measures did any of you bring forward to serve the country ? In that hour of peril what man among you acted like a man ? Which of you " rose to the height of that great argument, or showed himself fit in mind or heart to meet the re- sponsibilities of the time ? The Union was indeed " menaced with a foul and wicked revolt," and all you did was to " let the Union slide." The public danger excited no anxiety in your minds; public affairs received no attention at your hands ; but you were all the while mousing about after some personal calumny by which you hoped to stir up the popular passions against the true friends of the country; and Stanton, unless you slander him, made love to the imfamous business of helping you. You have given us but small samples of the " indirect and anomymous communications" which Stanton made to you and your associates. The bulk of them must be enormous. He was engaged for two or three months fabricating at least one tale every day for Mr. Seward, and another 62 ME. BLACK TO JIR. WILSON". consisting of " the most startling facts" to. suit the needs of Mr. Howard, while you and Mr. Dawes were gratified in a similar way at the same time. Are these "startling facts" held back for some other funeral occasion ? Take notice yourself, and tell your friends, that while their stories are hid away from the light, the presumption that they are not only false, but known to be false, is growing stronger and stronger every day. You had better open your budgets at once. There is a point or two here on which I would like to draw you out. Mr. Seward says that he and Mr. Stanton discussed and settled measures. The topic which absorbed the attention of all minds at that time was Fort Sumter. Compared to that, all others were insignificant ; and of course the measures relating to it were not overlooked. It is known, from the published statements of Mr. Welles, Judge Campbell, and others, that Mr. Seward was deeply engaged in a plot to surrender that fort, which plot he afterwards brought to a head, and by sundry tricks nearly made it successful. Stanton professed to agree with us that the fort ought to be kept; but you have shown that his professions in the Cabinet were not very reliable, and Governor Brown has proved that he could be a seces- sionist as well as anything else, if occasion required it. Now, what did they settle upon about Fort Sumter ? They were engaged in something which both knew to be disreputable if not criminal ; their secrecy, their employ- ment of a medium, their quick dodge when they met on the street, the mortal terror of detection which they manifested throughout, all show plainly enough that they had no honest object. Tell us if they were con- triving a plan to put the strongest military fortress of the Government into the hands of its enemies. The midnight meeting between Messrs. Sumner and Stanton is in all its aspects the most astounding of historical revelations. If you recall Mr. Sumner to the stand, it is hoped that he will see the uecessity of be- ing much more explicit than he has yet been. From what he has said, it appears that Stanton " described to him the determination of the South- ern leaders, and developed particularly their plan to get possession of the national capital and the national archives, so that they might substitute themselves for the existing Government." This is so extremely interest- ing that it would be a sin against the public not to examine it further. Early in the winter somebody started the sensational rumor that on or before the 4th of March a riot would be got up in Washington, which might seriously endanger the peace of the city. It was discussed and talked about, and blown upon in various ways, but no tangible evidence of its reality could ever be found. The President referred to it in a message to Congress, and said he did not share in such apprehensions ; but he pledged himself in any event to preserve the peace. When the midnight meeting took place, the rumor had lived its life out — had paid its breath to time, and the mortal custom of such things at Washington ; it was a dead canard which had ceased to alarm even women or children. This was certainly not the subject of the communication made that night at one o'clock. Stanton did not surround himself with all the adjuncts of secrecy, darkness, and terror, to tell an old story which had been in everybody's mouth for weeks before, of an impossible street riot by the populace of Washington. What he imparted was a secret not only new, but deep and dangerous, fit for the occasion, and worthy to be whispered confidentially at midnight. He disclosed a ''plan of the Southern leaders to get possession of the capital and the archives, and to suhstilnte them- selves for the existing Government.''^ It was a coup d'etat of the first mag- MR. BLACK TO MR. WILSON. 63 nitude — a most stupendous treason. This plan Mr. Stanton " developed particularly,'''' that is to say, gave all the details at length. Mr. Sumner manifestly believed what he heard ; he received the revelation into his heart with perfect faith ; and he did not underestimate the public danger ; but he did nothing to defeat the treason, or even to expose it. He was thoroughly and minutely informed of a plan prepared by Southern lead- ers to revolutionize the Government, and he kept their counsel as faith- fully as if he had been one of themselves. He took Stanton's frightful communication as quietly as he took the President's message. Nothing could stir his sluggish loyalty to any act which might tend to save his " imperilled country." Mr. Sumuer says that when Mr. Stanton made these statements to him he was struck " by the knowledge he showed of hostile movements y That is precisely what strikes me also with wonder and amazement, ^here in the world did he learn " the determination of the Southern leaders " ? Where did he get an account of the intended coup d'etat so detailed that he was able to develop it particularly? This knowledge becomes astound- ing when we recollect that, so far as now appears, nobody else outside of the " Southern leaders" had the least inkling of it. It is possible that his connection with the secessionists, and his professed devotion to their cause, went so far that they took him into their confidence, and told him what " hostile movements" they intended to make on the Government ? How did he get these secrets if not from them ? Or must we be driven • at last to the conclusion that the whole thing was a mere invention, im- posed on Mr. Sumner to delude him ? But Mr. Sumner owes it to the truth to make a fuller statement. Let us have the particulars which Mr. Stanton developed to him. We have a right to know not only who were the Southern traitors engaged in this plan, but who were confederated with them in Washington. I suppose Mr. Sumner, as well as Mr. Stanton, had "instinctive insight into men and things" enough to know that no government was ever substituted for another by a sudden movement, without some co-operation or connivance of ofiQcers in possession. Who among Stanton's colleagues did he say was engaged in this affair ? Did he charge the President with any con- cern in it ? If he declared all or any of them to be innocent, does not Mr. Sumner see the injustice of keeping back the truth ? Did Stanton tell him that he had communicated the facts to the President and Cabinet? If no, did he give a reason for withholding them ? And what was the reason ? JVas the guilty secret confined to his own breast, or did any other member of the Administration share his knowledge of it ? If yes, who ? Mr. Sumner has struck so rich a vein of historical fact (or fiction), that he is bound to give it some further exploitation. The following passage in Mr. Sumner's letter to you excites the live- liest desire for more information. After describing his visit to the At- torney-General's office, and Mr. Stanton's reception of him, he goes on thus : " He began an earnest conversation, saying he must see me alone — that this was impossible at his office — that he was watched by the traitors of the South — that my visit would be made known to them at once; and he concluded by proposing to call on me at my lodgings at one o'clock that night," etc. etc. Why was Mr. Stanton afraid of the Southern traitors? Why did they set a special watch over him ? No other mem- ber of the Administration was tormented with a fear like that. All of Mr. Stanton's colleagues felt at perfect liberty to speak out their oppo- sition to the hostile movements of the South, and they all did it without 64 MR. BLACK TO ilR. WILSON. concealment or hesitation. But Stanton was put by the Southern traitors under a surveillance so strict, that he could not speak with a Senator except at midnight, by stealth, and in secrecy. At his own ofiBce it was impossible to see such visitors ; the Southern eye was always on him. How did those traitors of the South manage to control /r/or« for disbelieving this fact are overwhelmingly strong. All presumptions are against the idea that a man who dodged about among the abolitionists as their spy, and vowed himself to the secessionists as their ally, and all the time manifested a MR. BLACK TO MR. WILSON. 69 dastardly dread of being discovered, would openly insult the President, or do anything else that was bold and violent. But you have taken the task of proving it ; and how have you done it ? I certainly need not say that Mr. Holt proves nothing by writing a letter in which he declines to tell what he knows. His expressive silence, on the contrary, is very convincing that he knew the truth to be against you. As little, nay less, if less were possible, do you make out of his speech at Charleston. He deals there in glittering generalities, sonorous periods, and obscure allusions to some transaction of which he gives no definite idea, except that Stanton was not an actor in it, but a spectator ; for he mentions him only to say that " he looked upon that scene." What the scene was he declared to be a secret, which history will perhaps never get a chance to record. Failing wholly to get anything out of Mr, Holt, you naturally enough resorted to Mr. Dawes ; and Mr. Dawes, willing, but unable to help you, called in the aid and comfort of his wife. " She," her husband says, " dis- tinctly remembers hearing Stanton tell at our house the story of that ter- rible conflict in the Cabinet." That is the length and breadth of her testimony. She remembers that Mr. Stanton told the story, but not the story itself. It was about a terrible conflict ; but we do not learn who were engaged in it, who fell, or who was victorious — how the fray began, or how it ended — only it was terrible. Was Mr. Stanton the hero of his own story, or was he relating the adventures of somebody else to amuse or frighten the company? Mrs. Dawes is undoubtedly a lady of the very highest respectability ; but with all that, you will find it hard to convert the idle conversations at her house into history; and the difficulty is much increased by the fact that neither she nor anybody else is able to tell what they were. The declaration of Mr. Holt that he would not reveal what he knew on this subject, and Mr. Dawes's statement that Mrs. Dawes told him that she heard Stanton tell something about it which she does not repeat, is all the evidence you offer on the point. Yet you affirm that this most im- probable and slanderous story is not only true, but sustained by the " declarations of Mr. Stanton to credible witnesses, and the positive aver- ments of Joseph Holt." Can this be mere ignorance ? I am tempted to believe that you have gone about the business with a set purpose to make yourself ridiculous. I fear very much that on this question, as on so many others, you have been guilty of a wilful suppressio veri. Did you not know that Mr. Holt's testimony would be against you, when you took advantage of his scru- ples about giving it ? Did not Mrs. Dawes recollect more than you have quoted ? I may be wrong in this suspicion ; but a man who mangles a public record must not complain if his good faith is doubted when he pre- sents private evidence. Mr. Attorney-General Hoar, believing this scandal to be true, tried in good faith to get the evidence which would prove it. When he found it to be false he passed over to you the letters which he had got in the course of his search, and you printed them. The lawyer was too honest to reassert a tale which he discovered to be unfounded ; but the politician had not magnanimity enough to retract it; and therefore he let you burn your fingers where he would not put his own. The story of a " Cabinet Scene," as it floated about among irrespon- sible newsmongers, seemed for a while like a formidable slander ; but you have made it utterly contemptible. YI. Your account of Mr. Cameron's retirement from the War De- 70 MR. BLACK TO ME, WILSOX. pavtraent and Stanton's appointment on his suggestion demanded refuta- tion, because it not only perverted and misrepresented a fact of some general importance, but was a serious injury to Mr. Stanton's character as it then stood. Between these two men it did not seem as if there could be any relation which implied confidence or friendship. If Stanton him- L^ self was any authority for his own sentiments, he had no respect either for the horse contracts or the "nigger arming" (as he called it) of his predecessor, and Mr. Lincoln had just as little. Stanton was appointed not to carry out but to j)^^ «" ^"^ to Cameron's policy with all its cor- ruptions. I admit that since the evidence you have furnished of Mr. Stanton's duplicity in other matters, it becomes possible to believe he may have been insincere about this also. Still your attempt to deceive the public was inexcusable. Of my own knowledge I know nothing about Mr. Cameron's appoint- ment or removal ; but 1 will give you the main facts briefly and without the alia enormia, as I have them on undoubted authority, and as I firmly believe them. A bargain was made at the Chicago Convention in 1860, that in case of Lincoln's nomination and election, Cameron should re- ceive a Cabinet appointment. Mr. Lincoln was no party to this contract ; but after much persuasion and pressure he oonsanted to ratify it by try- ing Cameron as Secretary of War. Before the end of nine months the experiment ended, as you know, and as everybody else knows, in a com- plete and total failure. Mr. Lincoln, seeing this, determined to get rid of him, and expressed his resolution in a letter addressed to Mr. Came- ron, and carried by Mi*. Chase, then Secretary of the Treasury. That letter is not now in existence, but Mr. Chase described it as curt — that . . is to say, plain, short, and direct. Mr. Cameron understood and felt it as '^ an abrupt dismissal. He afterwards got it suppressed, and a correspon- dence different in its whole tenor and effect substituted in its place. Ever since then he has been trying to create the opinion that he retired from a Department full. of rich jobs, not only without compulsion, but in spite of the President's affectionate desire that he should remain and manage them as he had done before ; and he makes it a part of the story that he was permitted to designate his successor. He contrived to produce some be- lief of this on the mind of Mr. Chase; but if Mr. Chase had known more of Mr. Cameron's character and previous history, he might have been less credulous. Of the fact that Stanton was appointed on Cameron's suggestion we have not a spark of direct evidence except Cameron's own statement, and all the circumstances make that improbable. If the President made up his mind to remove the incumbent, he certainly would not have proceeded to execute his resolution by writing him a curt letter of dismissal without having settled upon somebody to succeed him ; for at such a time as that he could not mean to leave the War Department acephalous while he would be hunting a head for it. But concede that no thought was taken for the new oflScer before the removal of the old one, can it be that the President decided the whole questiou in favor of a man tiever mentioned before, on the mere suggestion of the officer he was discarding, and with- out seeking advice from those members of the Cabinet who still retained his favor? The suppressed letter is, "therefore, not only an important fact in itself, but it has the gravest influence on the credibility of Mr. Cameron's whole tale. Other questions signify but little in comparison to that. If the correspondence afterwards published was not that which ac- tually took place, we must presume everything against the party for whom, or at whose instance, the spoliation was committed. The short, plain, MR. BLACK TO MR. WILSON. 71 direct, curt note, with which Mr. Lincoln opened the business, would have explained everything, if it had been permitted to see the light ; and it could not have been destroyed except for the purpose of making a false impression. This compels me to show that your conduct in the affair has been such as admits of no justification except that burning loyalty and in- tense patriotism which converts all vice into virtue. After your first article appeared, and before my answer to it, a leading and very distinguished member of the Republican party in this State told you that you had misstated the facts concerning Mr. Cameron's retirement and especially the important and principal fact of the suppressed note from the President ; and he referred to the Chief Justice, who, upon be- ing interrogated, gave you the authentic information that such a note had been written, delivered, and suppressed. Thereupon you solemnly pro- mised that if you ever had occasion to refer to the subject again, you would tell the lohole truth. Besides, Judge Chase, after my review of you wrote me a letter from Sandusky, Ohio, in which he said that he bore the note in question, and mentioned that he had also written to you. What he wrote you of course I do not know, but he certainly did not give you one ' version and me another. You had, therefore, the written statement of the Chief Justice, in addition to his verbal assurance. With all these lights before you, and with all the obligations of common veracity, strengthened by an express promise to tell the truth, what do you do in your second article ? Why, you simply stick to your first story. Nay you take great trouble to smuggle the truth away, and bury it out of sight ; for, instead of producing Judge Chase's letter to yourself, in which the fact, no doubt, is fairly stated, you give us an extract from another letter written by him to Cameron, from which you are " permitted to quote"— nothing whatever on the subject of that important letter. I for- bear to say much that ought to be said about this part of your behavior, because the distinguished gentleman before spoken of has taken you in hand, and will doubtless jerk an acknowledgment of the facts out of you in spite of all your shuffling. ' VII. A wor^ before we part about the two hundred and fifty thou- sand dollars raised ouf of the Treasury for Governor Morton. Taking your account of that business as correct, I proved in my former lette? that It was in the highest degree criminal. You left no escape from the conclusion that the parties were guilty of embezzlement under the act of 1846. Your narrative of the transaction impressed it with all the marks of what IS called in the flash language of Washington "a big steal." lou showed that the parties themselves so understood it at the time, for you put a conversation into their mouths by which they are made to admit their liability to prosecution and imprisonment. I saw plainly that this could not be true. Mr. Stanton's worst enemies never charged him with that kind of dishonesty, and Governor Morton had a reputation which placed him far above the suspicion of such base- ness. Both of them may have had serious faults, but they would not / rob the Treasury under any circumstances, or for any purpose. I asked / three members of the Indiana delegation whether there was any founda- tion for your assertion ; they all answered no, and gave me the explana- tion which I used in my published letter. Your replication to this point is one of the most astonishing parts of all your wonderful production. I denied that Messrs. Stanton and Mor- ton had committed a felony, and gave a version of the affair which showed them both to be perfectly innocent. You grow ill-tempered and vituperative upon this, and charge me with " unconcealed, not to say 72 MR. BLACK TO MR. WILSON. ostentatious, malignity." I confess this is turning the tables upon me in a way I could not have expected. In. general, the malignity is presumed against the party who makes an injurious charge, not against him who repels it. There might have been some hope for you yet, if you had recanted your first assertion, or admitted the errors of your statement, or made some effort to explain away the effect of it, by showing that you did not mean what you said. But you hold fast to every word of it ; not a pliable do you retract. ■ On the contrary, you insist that it is effrontery in me to affirm that a debt was due to the State, and that it was paid according to law. What you say in your last, in addition to your first statement, makes the case look worse than it did before. But it is not true. The payment was not made on account of arms furnished to loyal citizens in rebellious States, nor was the money given to the Governor, to be dis- bursed by him on his own responsibility, as agent of the President. That much I can say on the official authority of the present Secretary of War, who wrote me on the 27th of last month that " the transaction appears to be based upon the claims of the State of Indiana for expenses inciirred'xn raising volunteers." But Governor Morton is still above ground, and can take care of him- self. If he made a raise out of the public Treasury without authority of law, and in defiance of the penal statutes in such case made and provided, he owes it to you to confess his guilt fully and freely. If he is innocent (as I believe him to be), it is due to himself and the memory of Mr. Stan- ton that he deny your allegations, and exhibit the true state of the facts, without delay. The sum of the case, as it now stands, is this: Mr. Stanton put into the hands of Governor Morton, not a warrant as yoa say, but a requisi- tion, on which the (Governor got out of the Treasury two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. If this requisition was based on a just claim, and drawn against a fund appropriated to ihe payment of it, the whole trans- action was perfectly honest, exceedingly commonplace, and precisely similar to other acts done every day, before and since, by all the Secre- taries — a simple discharge of routine duty, involving no responsibility whatever, no honor, and no blame. But it suited your ideas to glorify Stanton by declaring that he took the great responsibility of helping Mr. Morton to the money contrary to law, against the principles of common honesty, and in violation of his oath, thereby exposing both himself and his accomplice to the danger of prosecution and imprisonment in the penitentiary. This was the feather you stuck in his cap; for this you think him entitled to the "grateful admiration of his /oy«^ countrymen." I sought to deprive him of the decoration you bestowed on him, by showing that the money was paid according to law on a claim satisfac- torily established, out of money regularly appropriated to that purpose. I tried to prove that it was not an embezzlement, and that there was nothing criminal in it. But this took the loyalty out of it, and left it without any merit in your eyes. Thereupon you fly iuto a passion and become abusive, which shows that your moral perceptions are very much distorted, and makes me fear, indeed, that you are altogether incor- rigible. This paper has grown much longer than I intended to make it, and I have no space for tiie exhortations I meant to give you in conclusion. I leave you, therefore, to your own reflections. THE END. Rn'u o THE At. 4 Ay ^4t A. M^ ^•V'^ At -\ h ^r% mim iWlll mUh JAMES F. SHUNK, Editor, is puhlished every Thursdaij at Easton, Pa., by COLE, 1^(D1EI,-\^XTZ & CO., at Two Dollars per Annum. As a political' and news Journal the Argus is not surpassed by any country pai)er in Pennsylvania. It circuliites lar,i>ely in every county ol the rendwned "T^nth I^egioii," is tlie ollicial paper of Northampton Comity, and as an advertisini;- medium is niuc sought for. Advertisements inserted at liberal rates. Address the publishers, COLE, MORWITZ & CO., Easton, Pa. THE A DEMOCRATIC GERMAN NEWSPAPER, iiuhlished weekly at Easton, Pa., by Tlie CoRRKsroxDKXT & Demokiiat lias been publislied for near seventy-five vears, and ;is a larger circulation in Nortiiamp- ton County'tlian any other paper. It is the only (ieiinan news- paper printed in the "Eleventh Congressional District of PeivisyJ- ; , vania, and is ranked among tiie lu'st advertising mediums; Rates k j for advertising fuviiislit-d nimn ;n>i.Hc;ilion to the imlilishers. • J ■ \b^ ^^ !■