Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs/Chapter 14
XIV
THE LEGISLATURE OF 1849
IN the year 1849, two men were elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives who have had conspicuous careers in the State and nation,—General Nathaniel P. Banks and Henry L. Dawes. General Banks had genius for politics and the generalities of public affairs. As an orator he was peculiar and attractive to an unusual degree. For a long period his popularity was great in his town and district, and finally in the State. A long life was the possession of General Banks, and I have only to consider how its opportunities were treated, and its duties performed. The beginnings of his life were humble enough, but the beginnings of life, whether humble or otherwise, are of no considerable consequence to strong characters.
General Banks’ public career began with his election to the Massachusetts House of Representatives, when he was far along in his thirty-third year. His eminence as a debater and his pre-eminence as a parliamentarian, were established without much delay, and in 1851 he was raised to the speaker’s chair. In 1852, he was again elected speaker of the house, and in 1853, and without debate, he was chosen to preside over the Constitutional Convention. He was then elected to Congress, and thenceforward he was a conspicuous personality in the great events of the war; both on the civil and military side of affairs. He achieved distinction in the Thirty-third Congress, and after a long and bitter contest in the Thirty-fourth Congress, he was elected speaker of the House of Representatives. His associates in that House gave him rank next to Mr. Clay, and through tradition that rank is still accorded to him.
During his administration as Governor of the State, from 1858 to 1861, he made military preparations for that contest of arms, which even then was thought by some not to be improbable and by a few thought to be inevitable. It was during that period that he delivered the address at the dedication of the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Cambridge. The address met most fully the expectations of the authorities at Cambridge, and it gave General Banks standing as an orator when Massachusetts had orators—Everett, Choate, Phillips, Hillard—and when Harrison Gray Otis and Webster had not been forgotten.
At the opening of the war Mr. Lincoln tendered to General Banks a commission of the first rank, and a command of corresponding importance. He had not received a military education, and he was without experience in military life. His selection was due to a general and well founded opinion that he possessed military qualities, courage and decision, and that he was inspired by a deep devotion to the Union. General Banks was a firm believer in the justice of our cause, and he was animated by an unbounded confidence in our success,—a confidence which was not impaired in the darkest days of the Civil War. After the passing of a third of a century, a review of the entire field on the Civil side does not reveal a character more worthy than General Banks of high military command. In all the vicissitudes of his military career, and success did not always wait upon his undertakings, he never lost the confidence of Mr. Lincoln, nor Mr. Stanton, who was the most exacting of men, whenever an officer failed in his duties.
General Banks’ military career may be considered in three parts. As to the campaigns of 1861 and 1862, on the Potomac, and in the valley of the Shenandoah, it is to be said that his fortunes were in the main the fortunes of McDowell, McClellan, and Pope, yet even in the presence of general disaster, he gained distinction by his courage, resolution, and equanimity of temper. The capture of Port Hudson, undertaken and accomplished under his command, opened the Mississippi River below Vicksburg to military operations and to business intercourse. The event was second only in importance to the surrender of Vicksburg.
The Red River campaign was an ill advised undertaking, for which General Banks was in no degree responsible. Indeed, he advised against the movement. This I say upon his specific statement made to me. The undertaking was a great error. There never was a day after April, 1861, when it was not apparent that the south-western portion of the union, beyond the Mississippi River, would yield whenever that river was opened to the Gulf, and the army of Lee had capitulated. Hence the unwisdom of the undertaking. It is sufficient to say that nothing occurred in that campaign which was discreditable to General Banks. The obstacles were too great to have been overcome, and nothing in the nature of success could have been attained by Sherman or Grant. I turn again to the aspect of General Banks’ career on the civil side.
In knowledge of parliamentary law and in ability to administer that law it may be claimed justly that General Banks had no rival in his generation. As a speaker he approached the rank of an orator, if he did not attain to it. His presence was stately and attractive, his voice was agreeable, far reaching and commanding, and his control of an audience was absolute, for the time being. That his auditors may at times have differed from his conclusions but only when the speech was ended, and the spell was broken, is evidence of his power as a speaker.
That he came into public life as the associate and rival of Sumner, Wilson, and Burlingame, and that in his whole career as a public man he kept his equal place to the end, and that in Congress he suffered nothing when compared with the able men who occupied seats in the lower House between the year 1850 and the year 1870, give him rank as one of the foremost statesmen of his time. If it be said that his name is not identified with any important measure of the government the same may be said of Mr. Sumner, of Mr. Wilson, of Mr. Conkling, and others, whose speeches and opinions have had large influence upon the policy of the country. A great measure is the result of many causes and in its promulgation it may bear the name of a person whose contribution has been insignificant relatively.
General Banks had aptitude for public affairs—an aptitude which approached genius. His mind dwelt upon great projects, and never upon petty schemes, nor upon intrigues as a means of success. His warfare was a bold one, and in the open field. In politics he was deficient in organizing qualities, but he had unbounded confidence in his own ability and in the ability of his associates and friends to command and to retain popular support. As to himself, that confidence rested upon an adequate basis. In the last fifty years there has been no other man in Massachusetts who was as generously supported, and by people of all classes. For the masses, who saw him and who knew him, only as he appeared on the platform, there was an inspiration in his presence and in his speeches, and for his associates and friends there was a generous companionship which none could resist—which none wished to resist. In his private life there was no malice in his intercourse with men; in the strife of war there was no vindictiveness in spirit nor in the means of prosecuting war.
A patriotic man, who trusted the people, and a man whom the people trusted; a brave soldier, who retained the confidence of his troops, and of his superiors in all the vicissitudes of war; a friend whose friendship was not changed nor tempered by the changing events of life. Such was General Banks to many and to myself, his companion, and often coworker, and always friend through a lengthened half century.
Mr. Dawes was not a leader in the Massachusetts House of Representatives and no one could then have predicted his success in public life. Something of what the world calls fortune has attended him. He possessed the quality or faculty of industry, but his studies did not extend beyond the current demands of his situation. As a lawyer he was not distinguished. He had none of the qualities of an orator, indeed, it was not always a pleasure to listen to his speeches. His manners were not attractive, and of genial wit he was wholly innocent. He had a power of sarcasm, and in his speeches he presented himself in the phase of umpire often, although at times he appeared in the aspect of a contestant. Indeed, this was in his nature. He was a thorough partisan who seemed unwilling to own the fact. His friends could not claim for him any of the qualities for which successful men are commonly distinguished, and yet he has been one of the most successful men that the State has produced. Such success must rest on a substantial basis of merit.
For a single term, between 1846 and 1850 Benjamin R. Curtis was a member of the House. He had already acquired fame as a jurist. His speeches in the House were the speeches that he made to courts and juries. He was destitute of genius, and his speeches exhibited no variety of talent. They were adapted to the argument of questions of law before a court; hence he was not successful as a jury lawyer, and his speeches in the House were usually convincing, although they were never attractive. Judge Curtis’ intellectual faculties matured early. Mr. Wilde, for many years the clerk of the court of Suffolk, expressed to me the opinion that Judge Curtis’ first argument was as good as his last argument. There can be no doubt, however, that his legal arguments were unrivalled in recent times. He was equipped with all the legal learning that could be required in any case. He had the capacity to see the points on which a case must turn, and he had the courage to pass over the immaterial facts, and points in which other men often lay stress to the injury of their arguments, and to the annoyance of the courts. In his arguments in the impeachment case of President Johnson, he furnished the only ground on which the Senate could stand in rendering a verdict of not guilty.
During his service in the House he introduced an extraordinary bill which received little or no support from the members. By that bill it was made a misdemeanor to flow the land of another for any purpose whatsoever, thus changing the ancient Mill Act of the State; provided, however, that it should not apply to any citizen of Massachusetts. It was said that Curtis had a client whose land had been flowed by a Rhode Island man, and not being willing to pursue him in the courts of the United States, he framed the bill in question. Of course the bill failed. Again in 1851 he gave an opinion that Sumner, Wilson, myself and perhaps some others, could be indicted for the coalition by which the Whig Party was driven from power in Massachusetts. The opinion was printed secretly and read in the Whig caucus, where it received so little support that it was suppressed. When the old parties had disappeared, I read a copy that had been preserved in the office of the Boston Journal.
Judge Curtis was a jurist, and that only. He had no literary taste in the true sense, although the statement has been made that he was a constant reader of novels. However that may have been, his speeches were seldom if ever adorned or burdened by illustrations or references outside of the books of the profession.
George T. Curtis a brother of Benjamin R. was a member of the House for several years, between 1840 and 1850. With the overthrow of the Whig Party in 1851, he disappeared from the politics of the State, and at about the same time he removed to New York. As a writer he is clear and methodical, but from choice or fortune many of his subjects have not been acceptable, and his treatment of his subjects has been counter usually to the general opinion of the country. As the son-in-law of Judge Story and the brother of Judge Curtis, there was a general expectation that his career would be distinguished. That expectation was not realized. His self-conceit was unbounded. That defect made him unpopular with his professional brethren, and at last it alienated his clients. Even Mr. Choate the gentlest of men, could not endure Mr. Curtis. Of him he said, “Some men we hate for cause, but George T. Curtis we hate peremptorily.”
Charles P. Curtis was also a member of the House for many years. He was a more genial man than either the Judge or George T. The three constituted the fraternity known as the Curtii. Chief Justice Shaw, who had married a Curtis, was also included in the brotherhood.