Chapter 12

_Answer_. The present indications are favorable to Judge Hoadly. It is an off year. The Ohio leaders on one side are not in perfect harmony. The Germans are afraid, and they generally vote the Democratic ticket when in doubt. The effort to enforce the Sunday law, to close the gardens, to make one day in the week desolate and doleful, will give the Republicans a great deal of hard work.

_Question_. How about Illinois?

_Answer_. Republican always. The Supreme Court of Illinois has just made a good decision. That Court decided that a contract made on Sunday can be enforced. In other words, that Sunday is not holy enough to sanctify fraud. You can rely on a State with a Court like that. There is very little rivalry in Illinois. I think that General Oglesby will be the next Governor. He is one of the best men in that State or any other.

_Question_. What about Indiana?

_Answer_. In that State I think General Gresham is the coming man. He was a brave soldier, an able, honest judge, and he will fill with honor any position he may be placed in. He is an excellent lawyer, and has as much will as was ever put in one man. McDonald is the most available man for the Democrats. He is safe and in every respect reliable. He is without doubt the most popular man in his party.

_Question_. Well, Colonel, what are you up to?

_Answer_. Nothing. I am surrounded by sand, sea and sky. I listen to music, bathe in the surf and enjoy myself. I am wondering why people take interest in politics; why anybody cares about anything; why everybody is not contented; why people want to climb the greased pole of office and then dodge the brickbats of enemies and rivals; why any man wishes to be President, or a member of Congress, or in the Cabinet, or do anything except to live with the ones he loves, and enjoy twenty-four hours every day. I wonder why all New York does not come to Long Beach and hear Schreiner's Band play the music of Wagner, the greatest of all composers. Finally, in the language of Walt Whitman, "I loaf and invite my soul."

--_The Herald_, New York, July 1, 1883.

THE INTERVIEWER.

_Question_. What do you think of newspaper interviewing?

_Answer_. I believe that James Redpath claims to have invented the "interview." This system opens all doors, does away with political pretence, batters down the fortifications of dignity and official importance, pulls masks from solemn faces, compels everybody to show his hand. The interviewer seems to be omnipresent. He is the next man after the accident. If a man should be blown up he would likely fall on an interviewer. He is the universal interrogation point. He asks questions for a living. If the interviewer is fair and honest he is useful, if the other way, he is still interesting. On the whole, I regard the interviewer as an exceedingly important person. But whether he is good or bad, he has come to stay. He will interview us until we die, and then ask the "friends" a few questions just to round the subject off.

_Question_. What do you think of the tendency of newspapers is at present?

_Answer_. The papers of the future, I think, will be "news" papers. The editorial is getting shorter and shorter. The paragraphist is taking the place of the heavy man. People rather form their own opinions from the facts. Of course good articles will always find readers, but the dreary, doleful, philosophical dissertation has had its day. The magazines will fall heir to such articles; then religious weeklies will take them up, and then they will cease altogether.

_Question_. Do you think the people lead the newspapers, or do the newspapers lead them?

_Answer_. The papers lead and are led. Most papers have for sale what people want to buy. As a rule the people who buy determine the character of the thing sold. The reading public grow more discriminating every year, and, as a result, are less and less "led." Violent papers--those that most freely attack private character--are becoming less hurtful, because they are losing their own reputations. Evil tends to correct itself. People do not believe all they read, and there is a growing tendency to wait and hear from the other side.

_Question_. Do newspapers to-day exercise as much influence as they did twenty-five years ago?

_Answer_. More, by the facts published, and less, by editorials. As we become more civilized we are governed less by persons and more by principles--less by faith and more by fact. The best of all leaders is the man who teaches people to lead themselves.

_Question_. What would you define public opinion to be?

_Answer_. First, in the widest sense, the opinion of the majority, including all kinds of people. Second, in a narrower sense, the opinion of the majority of the intellectual. Third, in actual practice, the opinion of those who make the most noise. Fourth, public opinion is generally a mistake, which history records and posterity repeats.

_Question_. What do you regard as the result of your lectures?

_Answer_. In the last fifteen years I have delivered several hundred lectures. The world is growing more and more liberal every day. The man who is now considered orthodox, a few years ago would have been denounced as an Infidel. People are thinking more and believing less. The pulpit is losing influence. In the light of modern discovery the creeds are growing laughable. A theologian is an intellectual mummy, and excites attention only as a curiosity. Supernatural religion has outlived its usefulness. The miracles and wonders of the ancients will soon occupy the same tent. Jonah and Jack the Giant Killer, Joshua and Red Riding Hood, Noah and Neptune, will all go into the collection of the famous Mother Hubbard.

--_The Morning Journal_, New York, July 3, 1883.

POLITICS AND PROHIBITION.

_Question_. What do you think of the result in Ohio?

_Answer_. In Ohio prohibition did more harm to the Republican chances than anything else. The Germans hold the Republicans responsible. The German people believe in personal liberty. They came to America to get it, and they regard any interference in the manner or quantity of their food and drink as an invasion of personal rights. They claim they are not questions to be regulated by law, and I agree with them. I believe that people will finally learn to use spirits temperately and without abuse, but teetotalism is intemperance in itself, which breeds resistance, and without destroying the rivulet of the appetite only dams it and makes it liable to break out at any moment. You can prevent a man from stealing by tying his hands behind him, but you cannot make him honest. Prohibition breeds too many spies and informers, and makes neighbors afraid of each other. It kills hospitality. Again, the Republican party in Ohio is endeavoring to have Sunday sanctified by the Legislature. The working people want freedom on Sunday. They wish to enjoy themselves, and all laws now making to prevent innocent amusement, beget a spirit of resentment among the common people. I feel like resenting all such laws, and unless the Republican party reforms in that particular, it ought to be defeated. I regard those two things as the principal causes of the Republican party's defeat in Ohio.

_Question_. Do you believe that the Democratic success was due to the possession of reverse principles?

_Answer_. I do not think that the Democratic party is in favor of liberty of thought and action in these two regards, from principle, but rather from policy. Finding the course pursued by the Republicans unpopular, they adopted the opposite mode, and their success is a proof of the truth of what I contend. One great trouble in the Republican party is bigotry. The pulpit is always trying to take charge. The same thing exists in the Democratic party to a less degree. The great trouble here is that its worst element--Catholicism --is endeavoring to get control.

_Question_. What causes operated for the Republican success in Iowa?

_Answer_. Iowa is a prohibition State and almost any law on earth as against anything to drink, can be carried there. There are no large cities in the State and it is much easier to govern, but even there the prohibition law is bound to be a failure. It will breed deceit and hypocrisy, and in the long run the influence will be bad.

_Question_. Will these two considerations cut any figure in the presidential campaign of 1884?

_Answer_. The party, as a party, will have nothing to do with these questions. These matters are local. Whether the Republicans are successful will depend more upon the country's prosperity. If things should be generally in pretty good shape in 1884, the people will allow the party to remain in power. Changes of administration depend a great deal on the feeling of the country. If crops are bad and money is tight, the people blame the administration, whether it is responsible or not. If a ship going down the river strikes a snag, or encounters a storm, a cry goes up against the captain. It may not have been his fault, but he is blamed, all the same, and the passengers at once clamor for another captain. So it is in politics.

If nothing interferes between this and 1884, the Republican party will continue. Otherwise it will be otherwise. But the principle of prosperity as applied to administrative change is strong. If the panic of 1873 had occurred in 1876 there would have been no occasion for a commission to sit on Tilden. If it had struck us in 1880, Hancock would have been elected. Neither result would have its occasion in the superiority of the Democratic party, but in the belief that the Republican party was in some vague way blamable for the condition of things, and there should be a change. The Republican party is not as strong as it used to be. The old leaders have dropped out and no persons have yet taken their places. Blaine has dropped out, and is now writing a book. Conkling dropped out and is now practicing law, and so I might go on enumerating leaders who have severed their connection with the party and are no longer identified with it.

_Question_. What is your opinion regarding the Republican nomination for President?

_Answer_. My belief is that the Republicans will have to nominate some man who has not been conspicuous in any faction, and upon whom all can unite. As a consequence he must be a new man. The Democrats must do the same. They must nominate a new man. The old ones have been defeated so often that they start handicapped with their own histories, and failure in the past is very poor raw material out of which to manufacture faith for the future. My own judgment is that for the Democrats, McDonald is as strong a man as they can get. He is a man of most excellent sense and would be regarded as a safe man. Tilden? He is dead, and he occupies no stronger place in the general heart than a graven image. With no magnetism, he has nothing save his smartness to recommend him.

_Question_. What are your views, generally expressed, on the tariff?

_Answer_. There are a great many Democrats for protection and a great many for so-called free trade. I think the large majority of American people favor a reasonable tariff for raising our revenue and protecting our manufactures. I do not believe in tariff for revenue only, but for revenue and protection. The Democrats would have carried the country had they combined revenue and incidental protection.

_Question_. Are they rectifying the error now?

_Answer_. I believe they are, already. They will do it next fall. If they do not put it in their platform they will embody it in their speeches. I do not regard the tariff as a local, but a national issue, notwithstanding Hancock inclined to the belief that it was the former.

--_The Times_, Chicago, Illinois, October 13, 1883.

THE REPUBLICAN DEFEAT IN OHIO.

_Question_. What is your explanation of the Republican disaster last Tuesday?

_Answer_. Too much praying and not enough paying, is my explanation of the Republican defeat.

_First_. I think the attempt to pass the Prohibition Amendment lost thousands of votes. The people of this country, no matter how much they may deplore the evils of intemperance, are not yet willing to set on foot a system of spying into each other's affairs. They know that prohibition would need thousands of officers--that it would breed informers and spies and peekers and skulkers by the hundred in every county. They know that laws do not of themselves make good people. Good people make good laws. Americans do not wish to be temperate upon compulsion. The spirit that resents interference in these matters is the same spirit that made and keeps this a free country. All this crusade and prayer-meeting business will not do in politics. We must depend upon the countless influences of civilization, upon science, art, music--upon the softening influences of kindness and argument. As life becomes valuable people will take care of it. Temperance upon compulsion destroys something more valuable than itself--liberty. I am for the largest liberty in all things.

_Second_. The Prohibitionists, in my opinion, traded with Democrats. The Democrats were smart enough to know that prohibition could not carry, and that they could safely trade. The Prohibitionists were insane enough to vote for their worst enemies, just for the sake of polling a large vote for prohibition, and were fooled as usual.

_Thirdly_. Certain personal hatreds of certain Republican politicians. These were the causes which led to Republican defeat in Ohio.

_Question_. Will it necessitate the nomination of an Ohio Republican next year?

_Answer_. I do not think so. Defeat is apt to breed dissension, and on account of that dissension the party will have to take a man from some other State. One politician will say to another, "You did it," and another will reply, "You are the man who ruined the party." I think we have given Ohio her share; certainly she has given us ours.

_Question_. Will this reverse seriously affect Republican chances next year?

_Answer_. If the country is prosperous next year, if the crops are good, if prices are fair, if Pittsburg is covered with smoke, if the song of the spindle is heard in Lowell, if stocks are healthy, the Republicans will again succeed. If the reverse as to crops and forges and spindles, then the Democrats will win. It is a question of "chich-bugs," and floods and drouths.

_Question_. Who, in your judgment, would be the strongest man the Republicans could put up?

_Answer_. Last year I thought General Sherman, but he has gone to Missouri, and now I am looking around. The first day I find out I will telegraph you.

--_The Democrat_, Dayton, Ohio, October 15, 1883.

THE CIVIL RIGHTS BILL.

_Question_. What do you think of the recent opinion of the Supreme Court touching the rights of the colored man?

_Answer_. I think it is all wrong. The intention of the framers of the amendment, by virtue of which the law was passed, was that no distinction should be made in inns, in hotels, cars, or in theatres; in short, in public places, on account of color, race, or previous condition. The object of the men who framed that amendment to the Constitution was perfectly clear, perfectly well known, perfectly understood. They intended to secure, by an amendment to the fundamental law, what had been fought for by hundreds of thousands of men. They knew that the institution of slavery had cost rebellion; the also knew that the spirit of caste was only slavery in another form. They intended to kill that spirit. Their object was that the law, like the sun, should shine upon all, and that no man keeping a hotel, no corporation running cars, no person managing a theatre should make any distinction on account of race or color. This amendment is above all praise. It was the result of a moral exaltation, such as the world never before had seen. There were years during the war, and after, when the American people were simply sublime; when their generosity was boundless; when they were willing to endure any hardship to make this an absolutely free country.

This decision of the Supreme Court puts the best people of the colored race at the mercy of the meanest portion of the white race. It allows a contemptible white man to trample upon a good colored man. I believe in drawing a line between good and bad, between clean and unclean, but I do not believe in drawing a color line which is as cruel as the lash of slavery.

I am willing to be on an equality in all hotels, in all cars, in all theatres, with colored people. I make no distinction of race. Those make the distinction who cannot afford not to. If nature has made no distinction between me and some others, I do not ask the aid of the Legislature. I am willing to associate with all good, clean persons, irrespective of complexion.

This decision virtually gives away one of the great principles for which the war was fought. It carries the doctrine of "State Rights" to the Democratic extreme, and renders necessary either another amendment or a new court.

I agree with Justice Harlan. He has taken a noble and patriotic stand. Kentucky rebukes Massachusetts! I am waiting with some impatience--impatient because I anticipate a pleasure--for his dissenting opinion. Only a little while ago Justice Harlan took a very noble stand on the Virginia Coupon cases, in which was involved the right of a State to repudiate its debts. Now he has taken a stand in favor of the civil rights of the colored man; and in both instances I think he is right.

This decision may, after all, help the Republican party. A decision of the Supreme Court aroused the indignation of the entire North, and I hope the present decision will have a like effect. The good people of this country will not be satisfied until every man beneath the flag, without the slightest respect to his complexion, stands on a perfect equality before the law with every other. Any government that makes a distinction on account of color, is a disgrace to the age in which we live. The idea that a man like Frederick Douglass can be denied entrance to a car, that the doors of a hotel can be shut in his face; that he may be prevented from entering a theatre; the idea that there shall be some ignominious corner into which such a man can be thrown simply by a decision of the Supreme Court! This idea is simply absurd.

_Question_. What remains to be done now, and who is going to do it?

_Answer_. For a good while people have been saying that the Republican party has outlived its usefulness; that there is very little difference now between the parties; that there is hardly enough left to talk about. This decision opens the whole question. This decision says to the Republican party, "Your mission is not yet ended. This is not a free country. Our flag does not protect the rights of a human being." This decision is the tap of a drum. The old veterans will fall into line. This decision gives the issue for the next campaign, and it may be that the Supreme Court has builded wiser than it knew. This is a greater question than the tariff or free trade. It is a question of freedom, of human rights, of the sacredness of humanity.

The real Americans, the real believers in Liberty, will give three cheers for Judge Harlan.

One word more. The Government is bound to protect its citizens, not only when they are away from home, but when they are under the flag. In time of war the Government has a right to draft any citizen; to put that citizen in the line of battle, and compel him to fight for the nation. If the Government when imperiled has the right to compel a citizen, whether white or black, to defend with his blood the flag, that citizen, when imperiled, has the right to demand protection from the Nation. The Nation cannot then say, "You must appeal to your State." If the citizen must appeal to the State for redress, then the citizen should defend the State and not the General Government, and the doctrine of State Rights then becomes complete.

--_The National Republican_, Washington, D. C., October 17, 1883.

JUSTICE HARLAN AND THE CIVIL RIGHTS BILL.

_Question_. What do you think of Justice Harlan's dissenting opinion in the Civil Rights case?

_Answer_. I have just read it and think it admirable in every respect. It is unanswerable. He has given to words their natural meaning. He has recognized the intention of the framers of the recent amendments. There is nothing in this opinion that is strained, insincere, or artificial. It is frank and manly. It is solid masonry, without crack or flaw. He does not resort to legal paint or putty, or to verbal varnish or veneer. He states the position of his brethren of the bench with perfect fairness, and overturns it with perfect ease. He has drawn an instructive parallel between the decisions of the olden time, upholding the power of Congress to deal with individuals in the interests of slavery, and the power conferred on Congress by the recent amendments. He has shown by the old decisions, that when a duty is enjoined upon Congress, ability to perform it is given; that when a certain end is required, all necessary means are granted. He also shows that the Fugitive Slave Acts of 1793 and of 1850, rested entirely upon the implied power of Congress to enforce a master's rights; and that power was once implied in favor of slavery against human rights, and implied from language shadowy, feeble and uncertain when compared with the language of the recent amendments. He has shown, too, that Congress exercised the utmost ingenuity in devising laws to enforce the master's claim. Implication was held ample to deprive a human being of his liberty, but to secure freedom, the doctrine of implication is abandoned. As a foundation for wrong, implication was their rock. As a foundation for right, it is now sand. Implied power then was sufficient to enslave, while power expressly given is now impotent to protect.

_Question_. What do you think of the use he has made of the Dred Scott decision?

_Answer_. Well, I think he has shown conclusively that the present decision, under the present circumstances, is far worse than the Dred Scott decision was under the then circumstances. The Dred Scott decision was a libel upon the best men of the Revolutionary period. That decision asserted broadly that our forefathers regarded the negroes as having no rights which white men were bound to respect; that the negroes were merely merchandise, and that that opinion was fixed and universal in the civilized portion of the white race, and that no one thought of disputing it. Yet Franklin contended that slavery might be abolished under the preamble of the Constitution. Thomas Jefferson said that if the slave should rise to cut the throat of his master, God had no attribute that would side against the slave. Thomas Paine attacked the institution with all the intensity and passion of his nature. John Adams regarded the institution with horror. So did every civilized man, South and North.