CHAPTER XXXIX

PRESIDENTS UNDER WHOM I SERVED

WHILE a law student in Harvard University, I made my first visit to Washington in 1855. A friend took me to the White House to call upon President Pierce. It was the first time I had been in the presence of the Chief Magistrate of my country, and I was much impressed with the greatness and dignity of the office. I little thought then that I should be brought into personal or official relations with a long line of Presidents throughout the next generation. With the exception of Andrew Johnson, I have been honored by a commission and served my country under every President of the United States beginning with Abraham Lincoln and ending with Theodore Roosevelt.

In July, 1861, I was appointed Major of the 25th Indiana Regiment, and received a commission as such signed by President Lincoln. I never had the good fortune to meet Mr. Lincoln, as I did not visit Washington during his term, my service in the army being entirely in the Ohio and Mississippi valleys. My father, however, was a near neighbor of his during his life in Indiana, and held considerable correspondence with him in the presidential campaign of 1860 and during the Civil War.

Andrew Johnson I never knew personally and could not have received or accepted a commission from him, as during his administration I was the editor of a newspaper which was strongly opposed to his policy and official conduct. It was my fortune, however, during the war to visit his home, and I recall an incident of that visit. After the occupation of Knoxville, East Tennessee, by the Union forces in 1863, I was

ordered by our commander, General Burnside, to take a locomotive and a few cars we had captured at Knoxville and make a military reconnaissance by the railroad up toward the Virginia line to ascertain the condition of the road. We traversed the railway in the night as far as the Watauga River near the Virginia border, where we encountered the enemy in fortified position, and we were compelled to return. We reached Greenville, the home of Andrew Johnson, early in the morning, where a short stop was made. Just as we were moving off a man rushed up and boarded the train dressed in a morning gown and slippers. It proved to be Mr. Patterson, Andrew Johnson's son-in-law, afterward a United States Senator from Tennessee. He had been a quasi-prisoner in his home since the opening of the war because of his Union sentiments, and embraced this his first opportunity to escape into the Federal lines.

My acquaintance with President Grant began early in the Civil War, and ripened later into a friendship that continued to the day of his death. I first saw General Grant at the battle of Fort Donelson. At the end of the last day's hard fighting on our right, when the enemy's attempt to break through our line had been frustrated, late in the afternoon an order came to our brigade, on the extreme left, to form in column of regiments and charge the redoubt on the hill which commanded Fort Donelson. It was the last struggle of the long battle and proved a complete success. We had hardly occupied the enemy's works before General Grant rode up and, in the flush of victory, we gave him a rousing welcome.

Near the end of the first day's battle of Shiloh I again came in contact with him, when he rode up to the remnant of our regiment and ordered me to put it in position to protect a battery of artillery in the last alignment of our forces on that dismal afternoon. Some months later he issued a special order detaching me from my regiment for an independent command in Kentucky; and at the close of the East Tennessee

campaign he recommended me for promotion as a brigadiergeneral. Doubtless our intercourse in the army made more easy my appointment by him to the Diplomatic Service, of which I have given an account in my opening chapter.

After taking leave of him in 1873, on my departure to Mexico to assume my mission, I had no personal intercourse with him until he visited Mexico in 1880 at the termination of his tour of the world, of which visit I have already given an account. I was constantly with him during his stay of several weeks in Mexico and returned with him to the United States. During this time I was much struck with the equanimity with which he received the attentions and encomiums which were showered upon him. They did not seem to affect in the least his simplicity of manner and even temper.

On my return home and retirement from the Diplomatic Service, I saw a good deal of General Grant in Washington and New York. He seldom failed to call on me when in Washington and I was often the recipient of his hospitality in New York. I recall with sadness my last visit and conversation with him, when he was struggling with the fatal disease which soon after ended his life.

He was always a warm friend of Mexico; and he rendered me valuable assistance in the long contest I had, as counsel of the Mexican Government, in defeating the fraudulent claims known as "La Abra" and "Weil," of which I give an account in a later chapter. An incident of that friendship is worth relating. During the Civil War he had formed the acquaintance of Señor Romero, then and for many years afterwards the faithful and accomplished Minister of Mexico in Washington. After the disastrous wreck of the business firm in New York with which the General had associated himself so unwisely, Señor Romero called upon his old friend and had confirmed from Mrs. Grant, what he had heard before, that they were actually suffering temporarily for the necessities of life; and when he went away, without making any reference to it, he

left on the mantel a note addressed to the General inclosing a check for fifteen hundred dollars, which the Minister had saved from his scanty salary. It was a timely aid, afterwards returned with full measure of gratitude.

The fame of Ulysses S. Grant will rest most securely upon his achievements as a soldier; but his administration of the Presidency undoubtedly added to his reputation. His want of experience in civil affairs led him into many mistakes which a more experienced statesman would have avoided, his administration was smirched by dishonest officials, and some of his most cherished policies were rejected by the country; but in the main his Presidency must be regarded as a successful one. The settlement of our difficulties with Great Britain growing out of the Civil War, through the Treaty of Washington of 1871 and the Geneva Arbitration, is enough in itself to make an administration famous. He rendered an estimable service in maintaining the public credit and the faith of our war debt, and in placing the country upon a sound financial basis, against a popular clamor which would have intimidated a weaker man.

His greatest mistake in political life was in consenting to the use of his name as a candidate before his party convention for a third term as President. I have good reason for saying that he gave his consent against his better judgment. It was Mrs. Grant's wishes and the ambitious plans of his influential partisans that brought about a reluctant assent on his part.

My acquaintance with President Hayes began in the campaign of 1876, which resulted in his election. In the campaign of 1872 I had been the Chairman of the Republican State Committee of Indiana, and my success at that time led Senator Morton and other of the party leaders to ask me to leave my post as Minister in Mexico, and to come home and assist in the electoral contest; to which I consented. I regard that act as one of the most serious mistakes of my diplomatic

career. A diplomatic officer more than any other should be a non-partisan representative, and it is unwise for him to leave his post to take part in a political contest at home. The notable speech of Daniel Webster on the confirmation of Mr. Van Buren as Minister to Great Britain may be read by diplomats with profit, in which he said: "He [the American Minister] is to have no objects in his eye but American objects, and no heart in his bosom but an American heart; he is to forget self, and forget party, to forget every sinister and narrow feeling, in his proud and lofty attachment to the Republic whose commission he bears."

During this campaign I met and conferred with Mr. Hayes about the political situation, and when he came to form his Cabinet he proposed, as he informed me afterwards, to make me Secretary of War; but on conferring with Senator Morton he found that it would probably require three weeks to communicate with and get me to Washington, and, owing to the critical state of affairs on the eve of his inauguration, it was decided to make another selection from Indiana for the Cabinet, and R. W. Thompson was made Secretary of the Navy.

In my chapter on Revolutionary Mexico, I have mentioned that I was summoned to Washington in 1878 to give the President, Secretary of State, and the Congressional Committee information on the disturbed condition of affairs between the two countries. During this visit I was often at the White House and had several afternoon drives with President Hayes, that being his favorite exercise. He did not impress me as either brilliant or possessed of superior ability, but he was a good conversationalist, a man of practical common sense, conscientious, and patriotic. The embarrassments which surrounded his administration were unusual. He entered on his high office with a challenged title, he had a Congress opposed to him politically throughout his term, and the country was passing through a crisis of the Reconstruction Period in the South. And yet his administration made a good