Chapter 9

Lawrence died in his beautiful house on Russell Square in London, surrounded by rare works of art which he had collected, on January 7, 1830. Nine years later Sir William Beechey, born at Burford in Oxfordshire in 1753, died in London at the age of eighty-six. He had come to London in 1772; and in 1798, having acquired consideration and a lucrative practice as a portrait painter, and after having painted a picture, now at Hampton Court, representing the king, George III., the Prince of Wales, and the Duke of York at a review, he was knighted. The same year saw his election to the Academy, of which he had been an associate since 1793.

One of Beechey's distinctions is to have outnumbered even Lawrence in his contributions to the Academy, as three hundred and sixty-two of his works appeared on its walls. Of hasty execution or too great dependence on a dangerous facility, there is, however, little trace in his work. He was occupied exclusively with painting; he lived more than twenty years longer than Lawrence, and was never diverted by the claims of society upon his time. With his healthy, English color, recalling Reynolds, a sober style not devoid of charm, he is fairly typical of his time; and may fitly close this brief review of the earlier English portraitists. Their task has never been taken up by their successors in art, English portraiture to-day having much the same qualities and defects which mark the contemporaneous painters of all nations.

The exclusive choice of feminine portraits in this article has been dictated by a desire to show, in the space at command, the painting most typical of the time and people. While all these painters produced portraits of men, their work in this field was, as a rule, inferior to the art of France. Lawrence is perhaps an exception; as it would seem that occasionally in the presence of a masculine sitter he rose superior to his manner and, painting with all sincerity, gave his remarkable gifts full play. The lack, however, of serious training in drawing, the over-reliance on charm of color and sentiment, give to the English work a degree of weakness as compared with the thorough command of form and austere fidelity to resemblance that was preached to the French with "drawing is the probity of art" for a text.

THE TRAGEDY OF GARFIELD'S ADMINISTRATION.

PERSONAL REMINISCENCES AND RECORDS OF CONVERSATIONS.

BY MURAT HALSTEAD.

James A. Garfield, twentieth President of the United States, had the good fortune to be a boy long after he reached the years of manhood. This fact is the key to his character and the explanation of his career. His boyishness was not lack of manhood; it was a lingering youthfulness of spirit, a keen susceptibility of impression, an elasticity of mind, a hearty enjoyment of his strong life, a tenderness and freshness of heart, an openness to friend and foe, something of deference to others, and of diffidence, not without understanding of and confidence in his own powers. He was youthful with the noble youth of the fields and schools and churches, of the farms and villages of the West, when he became a member of the legislature of Ohio, from which he passed into the army, that was like a university to him. As a soldier he was typically a big, brave boy, powerful, ardent, amiable, rejoicing in his strength. In eastern Kentucky he led his regiment in its first fight. He found out where the enemy were, and pulling off his coat--the regulation country style of preparing for battle--headed a foot-race straight for "the rebs," and routed them. It was literally a case of "come on, boys." Those opposed, so to speak, thought the devil possessed the robust young man in his shirt-sleeves.

When Garfield was President, he was asked whether he ever thought, before his nomination for the office, that he was likely to fill it, and his answer was curious and characteristic of his manner of expression. He said he supposed all American young men reflected on that subject, and he had done so--not with any serious concern, but as a remote possibility. And he added, "I have fancied the great public personified and looking with an immense, a rolling, intense eye, over the millions of the nation, to pick out future Presidents, and thought as it swept along the ranks the eye might give me a glance, and that perhaps the meaning of it was: I may want you--some time."

It was my theory, as the editor of an important journal in Ohio during the time General Garfield served in Congress, that he needed a good deal of admonition; that he had a tendency to sentimentalism in politics that called for correction; that he required paragraphs to brace him up in various affairs; that he lacked a little in worldly wisdom, and maybe had a dangerous tendency to giving and taking too much confidence; and that he was disposed to dwell upon a mountain, and would be the better off for an occasional taking-down with a shade of good-humored sarcasm. He was still boyish about some things, and the speculative men in public life sought to beguile him. He was growing all the time, though. He was a student, and was brainy and generous, and laughed at "able articles" even if they had stings in them.

Cincinnati knew him best as the Christian orator--follower of Alexander Campbell--who preached with a big voice and great earnestness at the corner of Walnut and Eighth Streets. This was when he was a grand young man, sure enough. Some time after, Congress found it out. After a while the public knew Garfield as one of the half dozen strongest men in the country. Next to John Sherman he stood the most commanding figure in Ohio politics, and was elected Senator of the United States, his term commencing on the day on which, as it happened, he was inaugurated President. He was just realizing his ability, having had it measured for him in the House of Representatives, and knew he was a force in affairs. He enjoyed his dinners and dressed well, and was of imposing presence: a good-natured giant--no posing--no troublesome sense of grandeur--none of the pomp affected by public men too conscious of importance.

He suffered under the petty charge that he had been influenced by a scrap of stock whose value might be affected by Congressional action; and those who knew him well were aware that his innocence of knowledge to do what he was charged with doing, was absurd and itself proof that he was sound. He was, by virtue of superior capacity, at the head of the Ohio delegation to the Republican National Convention of 1880, and was charged with the management of the candidacy of John Sherman, Secretary of the Treasury, for the Presidency--the most competent man in the country for the office.

It had been thought for a time that the combination of important men for a third term of General Grant would succeed, as the glory of the General was very great and those who wanted him for President again were able and resolute. Blaine had hesitated for a moment whether to take the field; but learning that Sherman would be in the race whether there was or was not any other man a candidate in opposition to Grant, he made the fight, and he and Sherman were the representative leaders against the third term.

Their feeling was that they were not making war upon General Grant, but upon those who sought to use his fame for their own purpose, and they meant particularly Senator Conkling. General Grant, at Galena, wrote a letter to Senator Cameron, and gave it to John Russell Young, who handed it to Mr. Cameron, and it disappeared. This letter was a frank and serious statement that he desired not to be considered a candidate, and no doubt his preference was the nomination of Mr. Conkling.

The interest of the great convention early centred in the two tall men on the floor, the undoubted champions of the contending forces, Conkling and Garfield; and the latter got the first decided advantage in breaking the third term line when Conkling demanded that the majority of the delegation of a State should cast the entire vote. This was the famous unit rule, the defeat of which was the first event of the convention. Garfield and Conkling were foremost in the fray because they were the most masterful men of the vast assembly--nearly twenty thousand people under the roof.

The advocates of the Old Commander for a third term were in heavy force, and knew exactly what they wanted; and whenever the convention met, as Senator Conkling usually walked in late, he had a tumultuous reception. The opposition saw it was necessary to counteract this personal demonstration, and managed to hold Garfield back so that he should be later than Conkling, and then they gave him salutations of unheard-of exuberance far resounding; and this was the beginning of the end. Garfield, because he was in person, position, and transcending talent a leader, was transformed into a colossus before the eyes of the convention, and was an appeal to the imagination. When the nominating addresses were made, none was heard by the whole multitude but those by Conkling and Garfield. They stood on tables of reporters, and their voices rang clear, through their splendid speeches, carrying every word to the remotest corners; and the rivalry between the two men became emphasized. Each had the sense to admire the effort of the other, Conkling saying to the delegate by his side: "It is bright in Garfield to speak from that place," and it was a good deal for him to say. More and more Garfield loomed as the man who stood against Grant.

There had been a good many persons meantime saying that neither Blaine nor Sherman could beat Grant, and that Garfield was the man to do it. All who are familiar with our political methods are aware of the frantic desire of the average office-seeker, or practical politician, no matter what he wants, to find out early all the possibilities of the next Presidency; and it is esteemed a superb achievement to be among the first to pick the man. The number of far-sighted citizens on the subject of the eligibility of Garfield, as the convention progressed, grew large. Governor Foster of Ohio did not conceal his impression that the nomination of Garfield was certain. In his opinion Sherman was not in the race, and perhaps his judgment to that effect assisted the formation of the current that finally flooded the convention. One man, a delegate from Pennsylvania, voted for Garfield on every ballot, and kept him before the people. I had telegrams from correspondents of the Cincinnati "Commercial," at Chicago, several days before the nomination, evidently reflecting Governor Foster's opinions, and frequently repeated, until the event justified them, saying Garfield would be the nominee. I was that time slow to understand the situation, and protested, against putting the "nonsense" on the wires, in telegrams that after the event were held to signify lack of sagacity about Garfield.

The first man who held decidedly Garfield would be nominated was Mr. Starin of New York, who travelled with Senator Conkling in a special car from the national capital to the convention, and said on the way the nomination of Grant was not to be, and that Blaine and Sherman could not carry off the prize, and that therefore Garfield was to be the man. He made this point to the Hon. Thomas L. James, the Postmaster-General in Garfield's cabinet, between Harrisburg and Chicago. Mr. Blaine regarded beating Grant at Chicago as no loss to the General and no reflection on him, but rather as the best thing for him; and that the true policy and purpose was to beat Conkling, who committed the error in strategy, however gallant the sentiment that inspired him, of committing himself irretrievably to Grant--and though the contested votes were all against him, he was unchangeable. "No angle-worm nomination will take place to-day"--meaning nothing feeble--was Mr. Conkling's oracular remark the morning of the day when the Presidential destiny of the occasion was determined.

The drift toward Garfield was in so many ways announced before the decisive hour that he could not be insensible of its existence, and he was greatly disturbed. He said he would "rather be shot with musketry than nominated" and have Sherman think he had been unfaithful to his obligations as leader of the forces for him. That Senator Sherman was offended is well known; but so far as he felt that Garfield had been to blame, it was due to the gossip, widely disseminated, that Garfield was personally concerned in working his own "boom." All that was well threshed out long ago, and there is nothing tangible in it to-day. The fact is, Garfield could not have worked a personal scheme. He must have been defeated if he had tried it. A movement on his part of that kind would have been fatal. On the other hand, if he had got up to decline to be a candidate, it would have been easy to say that he was making a nominating speech for himself. It was not particularly difficult to call Garfield a "traitor," and the temptation to do it was because he was so sensitive regarding that imputation in politics--whatever hurts goes. He had no idea of concealing anything, and told such queer stories as this:

The morning of his nomination--the fact that this was from Garfield himself is certain--one of his relatives from Michigan saw him and said: "Jim, you are going to be nominated to-day. I had a dream about you last night, and thought I was in the hall and there was something happening, I could not tell what, when suddenly on every side the standards of the States [names of the States on staffs locating the delegations] were pulled from their places, and men ran to where you were sitting, and waved them over your head." Garfield stated that this was certainly told him on the way to his breakfast; and after the nomination the dreamer reappeared and said: "What did I tell you, Jim? Why, the very thing I saw in my dream last night, I saw in the convention to-day."

The inside truth about the nomination was freely given by Mr. Blaine, who, as the convention progressed, was studying the proceedings with the surprisingly clear vision he possessed for the estimation of passing events. He soon made up his mind that his nomination could not happen, and that Sherman also was impossible. They could not unite forces without losses. Evidently there was a crisis at hand. There is something in a convention that always tells the competent observer, near or far, that decisive action is about to be taken. The evidence appears of an intolerant impatience. Mr. Conkling was relying upon the absolute solidity of his three hundred and five. Mr. Blaine was a wiser man about the force of a tempest in a convention, and would have preferred Sherman to Conkling. But Conkling was quite as bitter toward Sherman as regarding Blaine, even more so in his invective; and this grew out of the custom-house difficulty that ultimately so deeply affected General Arthur's fortunes. There had to be a break somewhere--to Grant from Sherman and Blaine, or from him to them, or a rush to Conkling, or to Garfield, whose conspicuity had constantly suggested it; and Blaine resolved that the chance to rout the third-termers was to sweep the convention by going for Garfield, and overwhelming him with the rest, thus winning a double victory over Conkling.

It is a fact, and the one that makes certain the proposition that Sherman could not have been nominated, that the majority of the Blaine men from New York, turned loose by breaking the unit rule--there were nineteen of them--preferred Grant to Sherman. If the break by Blaine from himself had been attempted, for Sherman, Grant would have been nominated if one ballot had been decisive. But Blaine was able to transfer every vote cast for him to Garfield, with the exception of that of a colored delegate from Virginia; and this movement was managed so as to overthrow all who strove to stand against it. Grant was in the lead for thirty-four ballots, but on the thirty-fourth there were seventeen votes for Garfield. On the thirty-fifth ballot Garfield had three hundred and ninety-nine votes, twenty-one majority over all. Blaine by telegraph had outgeneralled Conkling, present and commanding in person.

The course of the proceedings of the convention from the first was a preparation for the final scenes, the putting of Garfield against Conkling and working up a rivalry between them having a marked effect; and this was not so much for Garfield as against Conkling. Garfield grieved to think Sherman would misunderstand him, and was apprehensive as to the feeling of the New York delegation. "How do your people feel about this?" Garfield asked a New Yorker, when he had returned to his hotel the nominee.

"Well, they feel badly and bitterly," was the reply.

"Yes," said Garfield, "I suppose they do. It is as Wellington said, 'next to the sadness of defeat, the saddest moment is that of victory.'" This remark was quite in Garfield's method and manner.

Mr. Sherman's failure was made inevitable in this, as in other conventions, by the strange absence, always observable in New York, of appreciation of the unparalleled services to the country of his public labors culminating in the resumption of specie payments. That is the real secret and chief fault of the convention.

Ex-Governor Dennison of Ohio appeared at the headquarters of the New York delegation after the Garfield nomination, and Senator Conkling greeted him cordially. There Dennison said, so that the whole delegation heard, that he was the bearer of a message from the delegation of Ohio, that they would give a solid vote for any man New York would be pleased to name for Vice-President. "Even," said Senator Conkling promptly, in his finest cynical way, "if that man should be Chester A. Arthur?"

Dennison's answer was, after a moment, "Yes;" and Conkling put the question of supporting Arthur to a vote, making a motion that he was the choice of the delegation for the Vice-Presidency, and it was carried immediately. This was understood to be pretty hard on the Ohio people, including especially Sherman and Garfield. Of course, under the lead of New York and Ohio, the convention ratified the motion of Conkling, and the ticket was Garfield and Arthur. And so ample preparation was made for the bitterness of the coming time--for the troubled administration of Garfield and its tragic close.

GARFIELD'S ADMINISTRATION.

There have been limitations upon the candor of all persons who have undertaken to write the story of the tragedy of the administration of Garfield, and partisanism in personalities has had too much attention. Mr. Conkling seemed to be the storm centre, and it was difficult to deal with him and not to offend him. It is well remembered that in his speech placing Grant in nomination he quoted Miles O'Reilly:

If asked what State he hails from, Our sole reply shall be-- He comes from Appomattox And the famous apple tree.

On the way home, Governor Foster of Ohio, called out at Fort Wayne, paraphrased the Senator thus:

If asked what State he hails from, Our sole reply shall be-- He comes from old Ohio And his name is General G.

This was not startling in any way, but Mr. Conkling had the reputation of being very much offended by the parody.

It happens often in war, and sometimes in peace, that newspaper correspondents send the real news privately to the editor in charge, and give things as they ought to be in "copy" for the printers. There are before me private letters written by one well informed of that which was going on in the capital city of Ohio immediately after the nomination of Garfield, and a few extracts will turn the light on the inside of the affairs of the Republicans of the nominee's State at that time--the news then being too strong for newspapers.

"July 10.--The plan to have Garfield go through New York to Saratoga with Logan, Foster, and others has been given up.... Logan and Cameron are all right, but Conkling refuses to be pacified or conciliated, unless Garfield will make promises; and that he refuses to do. Conkling said he'd 'rather had to support Blaine.' Conkling never called upon Garfield, or returned Garfield's call, or answered Garfield's note. Sherman has been in cordial consultation with the committee, and promised to do all he can honorably in his position [Secretary of the Treasury]. Garfield appears well under fire, and is a more manly character than ever before. He says no man could be in a better position for defeat, if he has to get it. His behavior has won the respect of the workers since the convention."

"July 11.--They all stand around and watch Conkling as little dogs watch their master when he is in a bad mood--waiting for him to graciously smile, and they will jump about with effusive joy. A strong letter was written urging Conkling, in the most flattering way, and appealing to him in the most humble manner, to come to Ohio and deliver a speech in the Cincinnati Music Hall, and promising no end of thousands of people and bands and guns and things, till you couldn't rest. I opposed sending such a missive, advocating such a simple and cordial invitation as it is customary to extend to a leader and honest, earnest party man. But they looked upon me (probably rightly, too) as a fool who would rush in where angels fear to tread. And now Jewell writes that he has not dared to give the letter to Conkling yet, as he has not 'deemed any moment yet as opportune.' Meanwhile Conkling and Arthur have gone off on a two or three weeks' fishing trip. Dorsey humbly and piously hopes Conkling can be induced to make a speech in Vermont, and if the Almighty happens to take the right course with him, he may condescend to come to Ohio."

This is a true picture of the way the campaign opened. Mr. Sherman said something in an interview that was less cordial than was expected and caused some temper, but the fault found was not that he was accusative but reserved. Colonel Dick Thompson made a ringing speech pledging the Hayes administration without reserve; and that gave encouragement, and was said to be for a time the only inspiration the Republicans got to go for Garfield with good will and confidence.

It was arranged to have General Garfield appear in New York City, and it was expected that he would there meet Mr. Conkling. There was to be a consultation of Republicans, and the plan of the campaign perfected. The question of special exertion in the Southern States was up. The conference came off, and Mr. Conkling did not attend it. Mr. Arthur seemed very much grieved about that. Mr. Logan was unwilling to speak in the presence of reporters, and Mr. Blaine said he would be very much disappointed if his speech was not reported. Thurlow Weed made the speech of the occasion. The real object of the meeting was to bring Garfield and Conkling together without making the fact too obvious; and the disturbance of the candidate was manifest in his references to the absent Senator as "my Lord Roscoe."