USA > Washington DC > Washington DC > Historic homes in Washington : its noted men and women and a century in the White House > Part 26
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the money, as the donor supposed he would, adroitly slipped it into his pocket, exclaiming: "God moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform."
. The day before the Chicago Convention, permission was asked by the Telegraph Company to run a wire into an upper room of the Strathmore Arms, in which the General Lived. Consent was given, and when the General re- turned from the Capitol he was told what had been done. With an amusing twinkle in his eye he said: "You and that company have been putting a job upon me." When asked, "Do you object?" he answered: "Well, I would not have done it myself." But before the convention was over it proved to be the right thing in the right place.
The Sunday previous to the convention, James G. Blaine called on General Logan. During the forenoon they were in secret session in an upper room. What the out- come of the conference was cannot be known except by the events that followed. It at least made one room in this house historic. Without doubt that Sunday's agreement as to the political strength proved the defeat of Mr. Arthur, with the consequent but wholly unexpected result of mak- ing Grover Cleveland President of the United States. "There are occasions and causes, why and wherefore in all things."
When the moment in the convention came that Logan's following would turn the vote to James G. Blaine, the order to do so was given. There was never shown greater magnanimity by any man than by him on this occasion, when he consented to take the second place on the ticket. His friends know the true inwardness of the whole trans- action, that it was against his wishes and judgment, but he yielded to their earnest appeals.
After the nomination of Mr. Blaine, an adjournment was taken till eight o'clock p. m. Then the telegrams came pouring in from all over the land, urging consent for his name to be run; still he did not yield; one after another who felt that the fate of the ticket rested largely upon his acceptance, called in person to urge it. Ex- Governor George S. Boutwell, who was a guest in the same house, left the dinner table and was closeted for
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some time with the General. When he left the room many were anxiously awaiting the decision. When he was asked what was the final conclusion of the whole matter, he answered: "We shall see what we shall see."
When the final hour came, bringing the message from the convention for his answer, the General sat there more composed than any one in the room, holding in his hand a piece of paper folded; he handed it to the operator, who turned pale as he read it. No one in the room knew the decision. Tick, tick went the machine; onto the con- vention went the message, "My friends can do what they think best for the party," and in less time than it has taken to write this, a sea of heads could be seen moving up Twelfth street on double-quick to his residence, while cries for General Logan and cheers for "Black Jack" filled the air. Before many in the house knew that the message had gone, the General was nominated Vice-President by acclamation, and the multitude in front was doing him enthusiastic homage.
General Logan had good reasons for making the quota- tion he did at the decoration of the tomb of General Grant:
"Blow, blow, thou Winter wind, Thou art not so unkind As man's ingratitude."
There probably was no one who had oftener proved this; for no man in public life was so frequently appealed to for help and influence. His friendship was the stepping- stone to higher possibilities to many of his fellow-men; his kindly hand was ever held out to help those who came to him; but so many times they proved to be those who had fawned at fortune's dawn while the breezes and the tide wafted steadily on; but let the tide in the affairs of men and politics change, then what? They would leave him to sink or to struggle alone. This the General felt most keenly, and it had a greater influence over him in shaking his confidence in mankind than all things else combined.
There was a silent sarcasm in an invitation he gave to one of these Summer friends. The time had been when
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this man was omnipresent in the General's house; he held a lucrative place under the Government, and the General's influence had put him there. But there came a day when a new king reigned in Israel not of the house of Jacob, and days and months passed ere this quondam friend dare make his appearance at Calumet Place, At last he ventured. When he arose to take leave the General quietly remarked: "Mr. Blank, call again some dark night."
Yet the General was the most unsuspicious of men. He would never believe in the treachery of a friend until un- mistakable evidence was in his hand. His fidelity to his friends, his attachment to his old associations, has made us marvel that any one could play him false.
If he made a friend, it was for all time, if he proved him- self worthy. His local attachments were as strong as his nature.
After he purchased Calumet Place as a home, his home at the Strathmore Arms, where he had lived so many years, had ties for him that never were effaced; he would often drop in for a short rest or chat with some of his old friends, in going to or coming from the Capitol. No . guest was more welcome; his friends were always glad to grasp the hand of a man they knew well to be so true, so noble. The day he was taken ill he made a call at his old home. A peculiar sadness had settled upon him. At last he said: "I begin to feel, with President Arthur, that if this is all there is to live for, if there is no hope of a future life, this life is not worth living." The General was rich in friends, those who liked him for what he was. Those who knew him best respected him most. Those who had no favors to ask liked him for his integrity, his loyalty, his nobleness of soul. There is not a soldier who was ever in his command but learned to love his com- mander. More than friends, or home, or life, did he love his country. He was brave, daring, courageous. He did not know the word fear, yet he was tender and con- siderate of his men. We heard him say he never knew- what fear was when the battle raged; but with quiv- ering lips he added, "I never saw a man dead on the
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battlefield, friend or foe, when the conflict was over, that tears did not run down my cheeks."
He was charming in conversation, full of anecdote and story and interesting reminiscences of the war.
The country will not forget, in the morning of the war, when the General was a Colonel and was stationed at Cairo with his regiment, many of his soldiers were sick. Six hundred of them lay ill at one time with the measles and eight had already died. The General in his dire distress thought of the wife he had left, and, as was his habit in moments of greatest perplexity, turned to her. "Mary, my boys are sick and dying for want of care; what can you do?" She took the first train, and found them quartered in an old inn, stretched on the floor, without a pillow for their heads, or a blanket to cover them. She returned and visited every home that had sent a boy to the front, and on her way back she had a car load, and a bundle marked for every boy-for Jim, for Joe, or Dick. Within forty-eight hours the improvised hospital had six hundred comfortable cots and every sick boy had a bed. And this hospital was known as the "Striped Hos- pital," from the homespun blankets of bright colors made by the wives, mothers and sisters of the brave boys that composed the regiment. The stock of fruits and deli- cacies sent by these women was the beginning of the great Sanitary movement in the West.
It is for what she has done in such emergencies as this, and for the help given to the suffering left behind, that she has endeared herself to the people and made her name as one with John A. Logan's.
When the night closed down upon his earthly career, when his work was finished, for his own, his friends and his country, he left for the first an honored name, which is riches indeed; to his friends the memory of a pure and good man, but for his country-who has he left to fill his place? The years will go by, men will come and go, but his comrades will say, with the Ithacans of old, "Ulysses has gone upon his wanderings and there is none left in all Ithaca to bend his bow."
Here, too, ex-Governor George S. Boutwell lived for
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several years. He was chosen by President Grant to be Secretary of the Treasury. He had previously been Com- missioner of Internal Revenue. When the portfolio of the Treasury came into his hands, it also brought with it greater responsibilities than had befallen any financial minister, not excepting Alexander Hamilton: that of reduc- ing the high import and revenue tax, created as a war measure, and avoid crippling the National income, for the war debt must be reduced and the interest met; in fact, he was expected to find the golden way to National pros- perity and to pay the country's debts besides. How ably he met the requirements reference to the monthly statements will show. Had the reduction of revenue taxation gone on in the same ratio up to the present time, no cry of an alarming surplus would have been heard in the land.
For some reason not vet divined, there seems to be but little of the spirit of "Civil Service Reform" in the rank and file of statesmen. A few of the best of men's lives are given to the country and its needs, and when some great imperilled crisis is past, parties, without distinction, try timber whose strength has never been tested and whose power they know naught of; and so Governor Boutwell has the chance of making a lucrative living in Washing- ton at his profession, the law, with the time, now and then, to give to the country some literary work for which his ripe scholarship and keen intuition have eminently fitted him, while the country is reaching out its feelers to find others that would serve it as well as has George S. Bout- well.
Another who would equally be numbered in the same category; one who was never known to falter when his country called, one who stood manfully by the old Ship of State when she was rocked by adverse waters; one who ·was Governor of his State and Senator of the United States, was the late Reuben E. Fenton, of New York.
Several Winters he spent in this house, and the ques- tion was more then once asked; "How is it that our country can afford to les afde such men, those whose dignity and high-bred courtesy, whose knowledge and experience of
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affairs would do the country honor at home and abroad, and whose sound judgment and watchful vigilance saved us when we were perishing?"
The swift current of events will rush on and seem- ingly cover the break when such men drop out, but it is not so; the lost strength of the missing link has yet to be measured.
The late Senator Hale, of Vermont, was another repre- sentative man who was at one time a member of this household. Mr. Hale took occasion at one time to scathe President Pierce from his seat in the Senate, and after- wards attended a levee. As he approached President Pierce with a lady on his arm, the President received the lady with grace, and then turned his back upon the Senator. President Pierce was a small man and did not cast much of a shadow over the Senator; notwithstanding, it created no little amusement among the bystanders.
Another person who has been a familiar figure in this home was the late Judge Thomas Hood. His striking physique, noble features, faultless dress, ruffled shirts, spotless broadcloth and dignified manner stamped him as a rare specimen of the old-school gentleman. He was a man tender of heart and sympathetic in his nature, a better friend to the world than to himself, a man who never left a duty undone to serve a friend. He was often summoned for counselby hisfriend, Edwin M. Stanton, when darkness hung over the Nation. Manfully would he work to see his friends provided for, while he barely got the crumbs from the Nation's table.
Who that has heard him recite in his pathetic way, "I have Ships at Sea," does not regret that after a life spent in helping others, without the talent for making a selfish stroke for himself, he could not have lived to see the long-looked-for ship that had been sighted, enter port? His appointment for a judgeship was in his hands; but ere he could qualify, when on the threshold of an earthly future, full of hope and honor, he was suddenly called into the inysteries of another world. His genial nature, his brilliant conversation, his retentive memory
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made him to his friends an agreeable companion, and his memory will long be cherished.
. For the past three years the Rev. Dr. Scott and daugh- ter, Mrs. Scott Lord, with her daughters, Mrs. Dimmick and Mrs. Lieutenant Parker, have been familiar figures in this household. When the Nation called Benjamin Harrison to be its Chief Executive, the reflex honor fell upon this family as father, sister and nieces of Mrs. Harrison.
It is as refreshing as it is unusual to see people called into the foremost rank of social precedence who preserve the same quiet, unaffected spirit, the same genial and warm-hearted manner toward everybody. Not by look or deed do they betray any change fortune may have brought. And, indeed, why should they, when you realize that for nearly ninety years the venerable head of this family has drunk deep from the eternal springs of inspira- tion that has moulded a character, that casts a halo over his presence, that brings all within his influence to feel that there is no Sovereign but One; no crown but the highest which is not in the gift of men?
To daily watch the tender solicitude of the daughters for their father, and the devotion of these sisters to each other, confirms the faith that lives that are guided and pervaded by the loftiest sense of duty and conscientious- ness, can be trusted implicitly to carry out all duties our country may impose.
Many literary people, who belong more or less to the public, have at different times found a home under this roof. We remember Oliver Johnson and his sweet-faced wife, the daughter of John S. C. Abbott. Mr. Johnson's name brings up a multitude of memories when his pen was the sword that cut into the "peculiar institution." We see arrayed such men as William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Gerrit Smith and a line of others whose sense of right and justice made them strong to do, and bear, and suffer for the right.
Later came C. C. Coffin, known as "Carleton," the war correspondent who never wrote a lie. He, with his wife, vere the first to make the tour of the world, and it was
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Mr. Coffin who laid out the line of travel for William H. Seward and his party when they took the same journey. He has made patriots of all the boys who have read his "Boys of '61."
He is a pleasant-faced, pleasant-voiced, agreeable gentleman, and never happier than when relating to others what the great world has revealed to him, and he can charmingly crowd his talk with the pictures of people he has seen.
Mr. Coffin brings to mind another versatile genius who has walked and talked with the constituents of the literati in this house, a man of cultivated literary tastes, a ready contributor and charming story writer, Junius Henri Browne.
And then the genial, whole-souled Bronson Howard, with his charming English wife, steps upon the scene. · With frankness, but extreme modesty, he will tell you how characters materialize in his brain and take their places in the drama, until some "Henrietta" with acts, and scenes, and setting fair appears. They have friends wherever they go.
Into this home George Kennan brought his intellectual wife as a bride. This was after he had written "Tent Life in Siberia," but before his later travels, which have inade him rich in Siberian lore. He has entertained audiences here by the hour, gossiping through the av- enues of his experience, many of them full of the flower and the fragrance of a cultivated life.
Of the newspaper fraternity there might be written a fascinating volume. The Washington correspondents, men and women, by virtue of their profession, by up- rightness and integrity, by judicious judgment of oppor- tunities and chances for information, have the open sesame to all official circles, and the opportunity is not limited to make acquaintanceship with people of national reputation. Socially they are always welcome in fashionable or in home life.
In the busy life of this fraternity many have been drawn together under this roof.
We remember Edmund Flemming, now editor of the
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Buffalo Courier; E. G. Dunnell, of the New York Times; William C. McBride, of the Cincinnati Enquirer; Charles Pepper, of the Chicago Tribune; Byron Andrews, of the Inter Ocean and National Tribune; Frank G. Carpenter, of the Associated Press, formerly "Carp" of the Cleveland Leader, who with their pleasant, intellectual wives formed a noble representation of the newspaper guild of this country, each in his own way exerting a wide and telling influence, which has brought its reward in professional preferment and advancement. Add to this number the generous-hearted, noble-souled Frank Palmer, now Public Printer; and another, Miss Jannette Jennings, a corre- spondent of marked ability, a writer who is always wel- come, one to whom the doors of officials are never closed, from the White House to the homes of Cabinet Ministers, Judges of Supreme Court, Senators, Congressmen and laymen-she is a faithful, conscientious delineator of time and its events; and Harriet Taylor Upton, who is now giving the world, through Wide-Awake, "The Chil- dren of the White House," and a more charming coterie of Knights of the Free Lance it would be difficult to find.
There are those whose Winters have waned and Summers come again within this circle, who have be- come so much a part of this home that it would seem like photographing one's father or mother, brother or sister for the public, to give aught of their personal life and ex- perience; those who in no sense but the general one be- long to the public, but have, each in his own way, become identified with this home.
Many of them are scattered over the earth's fair domain. Their memories are kindly cherished. These friendships made and welded will live until the portals of another life open. To them for sympathy when difficulties arose, for their encouragement when obstacles had to be overcome, for their friendships which never failed, we owe much for the beginning and carry- ing forward to completion this volume on the
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