THE LOST YEARS

by Oscar Lewis

Had the assassin’s mind dwelt on the enormity of the crime he -was contemplating, had his resolution jailed, or his hand wavered, the Nation might happily have been spared this overwhelming calamity…

DR. JONATHAN BAUERMANN APRIL 26, 1865

1865

Last evening while attending the theater, the President was attacked in his box by an unknown assailant, who then leaped to the stage, shouted some unintelligible words, and escaped in the confusion that followed. The wounded man was carried across the street to a lodging house and put to bed. His condition is said to be grave.

The Globe, Philadelphia, Pa., April 15

Shortly after two o’clock this afternoon, the physicians who have been in constant attendance at the President’s bedside issued this bulletin: “No marked change has occurred during the past 24 hours. The patient slept three hours this morning. At 12 o’clock noon his pulse and temperature remained high, his respiration was somewhat easier.”

The Times-Journal, Cincinnati, Ohio, April 17

The President’s’ physicians, while they continue to manifest deep concern, were noticeably less pessimistic this morning. For the first time in seven days the crowd before the roped-off area on Tenth Street was small. No bulletin was issued from the sickroom today.

The Star, Albany, N.Y., April 22

Copyright 1951 by Oscar Lewis. Reprinted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.

Alonzo Hammond, M.D., stated today that, weather permitting, the President would be moved tomorrow morning to the Executive Mansion, where rooms have been made ready for him and for the nurses who will attend him during his convalescence.

The Daily Advertiser, St. Louis, Mo., April 26

Now that the uncertainty and suspense of the last fortnight are past, and each day brings added assurance that the fanatical plot against the President’s life has failed, every citizen, whatever his political faith, will breathe a sigh of relief. But our jubilation at this happy outcome must not blind us to the fact that the nation faces numerous problems of the utmost urgency that call for prompt action by the executive branch of the government. The Gazette, therefore, warmly endorses the proposal made by the Hon. Thad-deus Stevens during his address at Baltimore on Tuesday last: that pending the Chief Executive’s recovery to a point where he can, with safety to himself and the union, reassume the duties of his office, the reins of authority be delegated to the cabinet, with full power to make decisions on such critical issues as cannot prudently be postponed until Congress reconvenes.

Editorial in The Gazette, Boston, Mass., April 30

FROM MEMORIES OF A WARTIME NURSE

BY ELIZABETH PALMER BANKE

PUBLISHED BY TICKNOR & FIELDS

BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS, 1867

ONE morning in late April [1865] an orderly came into the ward and told me I was wanted in the superintendent’s office. As soon as I was able to leave I went downstairs and across the courtyard, trying to guess the reason for this summons. When I entered, Doctor Wilmot picked up a paper from his desk and handed it to me. I glanced through it hastily. It was a letter from the Surgeon General of the Army directing the superintendent to select a female nurse from the hospital staff and have her report to him at once for special duty.

To my look of inquiry, Doctor Wilmot replied that he knew nothing of the nature of this assignment, but that judging from the channels through which it had come it must be of considerable importance. He then wrote a brief note, addressed it to the Surgeon General, and asked me to deliver it in person. I returned to the ward, where I spoke briefly with the nurse who was to take over my duties, then hurried to the dormitory, stopping there only long enough to change into my street clothes and to gather up a few belongings. Five minutes later, seated in Doctor Wilmot’s own carriage, which he had put at my disposal, I was hurrying across the city, little knowing that I had embarked on the most responsible assignment of my whole nursing career…

Next morning as we drove through the muddy streets Doctor Hammond explained that while the patient appeared to be making steady progress, his condition was such as to cause continued concern, and that every precaution must therefore be taken to assure him uninterrupted rest and quiet. When we arrived before the gates, there were soldiers on guard there, as there had been ever since the night of the attack, but the officer in charge passed Doctor Hammond’s carriage through without challenge. A moment later the coachman drew up before the entrance and we stepped down and entered the hallway, proceeding at once to the family living quarters on the second floor and on down the corridor to the extreme western end, where the sickroom was located. Adjoining the latter was a much smaller room that had been assigned to the nurses. For the next several weeks I shared this small chamber with my associate, an amiable, middle-aged woman named Margaret White, each of us serving on alternate shifts so that one or the other was constantly on call…

During the first week a vigilant watch was maintained night and day. Except for the nurse on duty, and the doctors themselves, everyone was excluded from the sickroom, the one exception to this rule being the patient’s wife, whose deep concern was evident to all, and who came and sat quietly at the bedside for an hour or more each afternoon…

As the days passed and the wounded man’s condition continued to improve, the strain and uncertainty that had gripped the household, and indeed the entire nation, gave place to a feeling of confidence which, cautious at first, daily grew more pronounced. Nowhere was this changing attitude more evident than in the sickroom itself. During the first few days after he was brought home the patient had seemed content to lie quietly in the darkened room, taking but little notice of what went on about him. As his strength returned, however, this enforced idleness daily grew more burdensome, and his protests against it, mild at first, presently became so insistent that the doctors were obliged to modify their order excluding all callers. The visitors were, however, limited to members of the immediate family: his wife of course and their two sons, the elder of whom was in his early twenties and the other a high-spirited lad of about twelve. The latter, who had long been allowed the run of the house, had found it hard to curb his normal habits during the days when the rule of silence was rigidly enforced. Now, however, no such restrictions were placed on his behavior during his daily visits to the bedside, and the result was that his boyish exuberance dispelled the gloom from the chamber and brought indulgent smiles to the wan face on the pillow…

As he continued to mend, the responsibilities of his high office came to occupy an ever larger place in his thoughts, and the doctors, facing appeals that daily grew more urgent, had no choice but to agree to a gradual resumption of his official duties, although they were at pains to point out the danger of overtaxing his still feeble strength. Thus by mid-May he was permitted to sit up in bed for a limited period each morning while he discussed with his secretaries—both of whom customarily addressed him as “the Shogun”—such matters as could not prudently be longer postponed. Presently, too, the rule against visitors was further relaxed, so that soon the injured man was following an increasingly active schedule, with half his mornings given over to official business and the afternoons to a succession of visitors: cabinet officers, members of the Congress, officers of the Army and Navy, and a variety of friends, advisers and well-wishers.

Despite this busy program, or perhaps because of it, his recovery continued apace. Soon he was strong enough to leave his bed afternoons and receive callers while seated in an armchair before the windows, from which he could look out toward the Potomac and, closer at hand, admire the trees in the President’s Park, the branches of which were now garlanded with the bright colors of spring. Then one day, toward the middle of the month, he asked that his clothing be brought in and proceeded to dress himself, rejecting all offers of assistance, whereupon, supported only by a cane, he made his way slowly down the hallway to his long-vacant study.

As it proved, this first visit to his study marked the virtual end of his illness, for he returned briefly to his study the next afternoon and again, for a much longer period, on the day following. That evening, it having grown clear that my services were no longer needed, Doctor Hammond stated that I was free to report back to my regular duties at the hospital. This I did the next day, much pleased that my special assignment had had so happy an outcome…

SUMMER AT AUBURN, 1869: BEING EX-CERPTS FROM THE DIARY OF MATTHEW BOSLEY, WITH ADDITIONS FROM VARI-OUS SOURCES. COMPILED AND EDITED BY SYLVANUS SLADE

A NOTE ON THE EDITOR: Sylvanus Slade was born at Auburn, California, on December 4, 1879, and died at Sacramento, August 19, 1949. For more than forty years he taught in the various California schools, attaining the rank of vice-principal of a Sacramento junior high school shortly before he retired in 1943. Throughout his long career he had an abiding interest in the history of his native state, an interest that was manifested not only by his membership in various California historical societies and his faithful attendance at their meetings (often in the role of speaker) but by his frequent contributions of historical studies to their publications.

Summer at Auburn, 1869 is the last of this series of papers he lived to complete, and, as he stated in a brief foreword to his manuscript, his interest in that now forgotten episode in California history was first engaged by a

reading of the Diary of Matthew Bosley, which was owned by a granddaughter of its writer. Using that faded, pen-written document as a. basis for his study, Slade, with characteristic industry and patience, searched through numerous books, newspapers, and periodicals of the period, located and interviewed the few then living who had personal knowledge of so remote a time, and, after two years of close application to his task, completed the carefully annotated, scholarly, and reasonably complete narrative that appears on the following pages.

A BRIEF ACCOUNT OF THE CIRCUMSTANCES

LEADING TO THE SHOGUN’s VISIT TO

CALIFORNIA, TOGETHER WITH CERTAIN

HAPPENINGS EN ROUTE

SOON after the close of his second term, the Shogun received from an old California acquaintance, Brooke David, a new and urgent invitation to make his long-contemplated visit to the west coast. This time David had a forceful new argument to add to those he had employed earlier. The transcontinental railroad, begun during the early years of the Shogun’s administration, and the progress of which he had followed with close interest, had recently been completed, and the overland passage to California, once long and arduous, could now be made in comparative comfort. Perhaps that was the deciding factor, for the Shogun’s return to private life had failed to bring about the hoped-for improvement in his health, and it may be that his doctor had advised against his facing the heat and dust and jolt of so long a ride in the Concord stages.

In any event, only a day or two after Brooke David’s letter reached Springfield, he dispatched a reply accepting the Californian’s invitation to spend a few weeks at the latter’s summer home in the Sierra foothills, and stating that he planned to leave in about a fortnight. “One of the advantages of being on the shelf,” he added, “is that I have no commitments urgent enough to demand my presence anywhere. … I can be idle in California quite as well as here, and perhaps more pleasantly…”

He left home on June 2, traveling via the Illinois Central to Council Bluffs, where on the evening of the yd he. boarded the cars of the Overland for the four-day trip. He was accompanied by Matthew Bosley. These excerpts from Bosley’s diary tell something of the journey.

June 4 [1869]: The Shogun slept late and I, knowing that he rarely rests well in the sleeping cars, did not awaken him until, a few minutes before 8 o’clock, the conductor passed through and announced that we were due at North Platte in half an hour, where a zo-minute stop would be made for breakfast. When I carried the news to him, urging the need for haste, the Shogun, who had removed only his outer garments, sat up and began laboriously drawing on his pantaloons, complaining all the while that his bed was much too short and that he had been obliged to sleep doubled up like a jack-knife…

He finished dressing while the train was drawing to a stop and he was pulling on his rumpled coat as he joined the group in the aisle. His manner was bleak and morose as we followed in the wake of the headlong rush to the station eating-house. He brightened measurably, however, when, we having found places at one of the long tables, pitchers of coffee were placed before us and these were followed by platters of eggs and bacon and fragrant mounds of cornbread fresh from the oven.

To this he did full justice, having eaten but sparingly the evening before, then joined in the lively talk at our end of the table, entertaining the group with anecdotes of the boarding-house at Vandalia where he had lived while a member of the Illinois legislature. This continued pleasantly enough until blasts of the locomotive summoned us back to the cars. He was in good spirits when we returned to our seats, his melancholy forgotten…

June 5: News of the Shogun’s presence having traveled through the train, our car has become a congregating place where at most hours of the day seldom less than half a dozen men—and an occasional woman—stand about, blocking the passageway so trainmen have difficulty pushing through. Most of these are curious idlers; they stand and stare for a few moments, then return contented to their cars, and their places are taken by others. This continued all morning and well into the afternoon, the crowd melting away only when some object on the prairie outside draws the curious to the windows.

The Shogun bears this inspection with tolerant good humor. He spent much of the morning dozing or looking out at the passing scenery, getting up from time to time and, in his halting gait, walking the length of the car to stretch his legs, which grow cramped in the confined space between the seats. This afternoon he took from his satchel a book by Artemus Ward and read it for an hour, chuckling now and again at the late humorist’s drolleries and seemingly unaware of the group in the aisle. The latter were, therefore, taken aback when he suddenly closed the book and, looking musingly at his uninvited visitors, addressed them as follows:

“I’ve just been reading here,” he said gravely, “something that reminded me of a preacher they used to tell about back in Indiana. This fellow rode into our village one day on a broken-down horse and started preaching in the schoolhouse. But only a few came to hear his sermons and after a few Sundays he got downright discouraged. But before giving up entirely he decided to make one last try, so he wrote out a little notice on a sheet of paper and tacked it up in front of the village store. The notice announced that after his sermon on the following Sunday he was going to have on exhibit in the schoolyard a very remarkable animal known as a Bos domesticus. That of course caused a good deal of curiosity, and when Sunday came the schoolhouse was crowded. The preacher delivered a long and very dull sermon, then led the congregation outside and pointed out a very ordinary-looking cow he had borrowed from a neighbor, explaining that Bos domesticus was the critter’s Latin name. ‘But that cow’s no different from any other cow,’ said one of the onlookers. The preacher admitted that that was so. ‘Then why did you have us come out here and look at it?’ they wanted to know. ‘Well,’ said the preacher, ‘if you hadn’t come and seen it with your own eyes you might have thought you were missing something worth looking at.’”

The Shogun put on his glasses and resumed his reading, and soon the crowd, catching the point of his yarn and looking a bit shamefaced, drifted away. But they were soon replaced by others…

June 6: This morning we stopped at the village of Promontory, where the passengers were obliged to transfer, with their belongings, from the cars of the Union Pacific to those of the Central Pacific, which are to carry us on westward. There was a long delay while the west-bound train was being made ready to receive us. Meantime we stood about in shivering groups, exposed to a chill wind blowing off the Great Salt Lake, which lay before us, looking gray and cheerless in the dim sunlight.

The coaches of the western link of the road, when at length we were admitted to them, were distressingly cold, for the fires had not yet been kindled in the stoves. During the first hour or more after we left Promontory all sat bundled in coats and blankets, and a gloomy silence settled over the car, which was broken only when the half-frozen passengers voiced bitter complaints against the company’s indifference to the comfort of its patrons.

The Shogun sat wrapped in silence, taking no part in this demonstration. But when an official of the road, who chanced to be aboard, presently put in an appearance and affably introduced himself, the Shogun greeted him with marked reserve. Undeterred by the formality of his reception, the official spoke volubly of the other’s services to the railroad during the construction period, and expressed his regret that his superiors had not learned in advance that he was planning this trip. Had it been known, he declared, proper steps would have been taken to assure him a comfortable passage. One of the company’s private cars, he went on, was always available for the use of distinguished travelers, and it would have been a pleasure to place it at his disposal.

The Shogun listened patiently to this voluble visitor, and when the latter had finished he remarked dryly that since he no longer held any official position in the government, he neither wished nor expected any services that were not available to all the traveling public. Then he added mildly that he would be obliged if the other would grant him one small favor: on his way back to his car would he mind tossing a few sticks of firewood into the stove?

Somewhat deflated, the official departed on this errand, and presently the car grew tolerably warm.

June 7: One of our fellow passengers is a man named Llewellyn, an inspector for the Post Office Department, on his way to California and Oregon on official business. He sat with us for an hour this afternoon and spoke entertainingly of his experiences in the South after the war, when the postal service was being re-established. Llewellyn expressed his astonishment at the Shogun’s familiarity with this subject, saying that he seemed to have a complete knowledge of the inner workings of the department. The Shogun sighed. “During all the years I was in Washington,” he replied, “half the visitors to my office came to urge me to appoint some friend or relative to the postmastership at some town or village in their home districts. Yes, first and last, I learned a great deal about the postal service. Sometimes I used to wonder what the country considered most important: getting the mails delivered or putting down the Rebellion.”

During his conversation with Llewellyn, the Shogun revealed something I had not known before: that when he was a young man he had served for a time as postmaster at the frontier village where he lived. “It was my first government job,” he recalled, “and in many ways it was more satisfactory than any I’ve held since. I ran the office to suit myself, with nobody to tell me what I must or must not do, or to point out how badly I was performing the job and how much better it could have been done by almost anybody else. Out at New Salem I carried the mail about in my hat, and if I felt like taking a day off and going off visiting, the people who had business to transact didn’t mind waiting until I got back. I sometimes wonder if I shouldn’t have followed that plan after I went to Washington instead of placing myself at the beck and call of every Tom, Dick, and Harry who had an ax to grind and looked to me to furnish the grindstone.”

After Llewellyn had gone back to his car, the Shogun’s thoughts continued to dwell on his frontier youth. He spoke of the wooded hills and valleys of Indiana and Illinois, so different from the barren plains through which we were passing. At one station where the train stopped for wood and water he looked out at a cattle-loading corral beside the track. Its high sides were made of boards.

“We seldom saw fences like that back home,” he remarked. “Ours were all made out of rails that had to be cut and split by hand. It took us days of the hardest sort of work to do what the rudest of sawmills could have done in half an hour. For years I haven’t been able to look at a rail fence without reflecting on all the toil and sweat that went into making it. And all because none of us had the enterprise, or the skill, to throw a dam across one of the brooks and rig up a water-operated mill.”

“It seems odd, sir,” I observed, “to hear you speak slightingly of fence-rails.”

He smiled a bit sadly. “I know, Matt, I know,” he replied. “I don’t expect I’ll ever live that story down. Perhaps it was wise politics that day in Chicago to carry those rails into the convention hall, although I’d hate to have to take an oath that they were the identical rails I once split. But I’ve never been altogether proud of that symbol. It’s no great satisfaction to reflect that you’re going to be remembered—as long as you’re remembered at all—be-cause you wasted your youth doing by hand a job that could have been done faster and better and far, far easier with the help of a simple piece of machinery.”

A RETROSPECTIVE CHAPTER, DRAWN LARGELY FROM THE BOSLEY DIARY, BEARING ON EVENTS PRIOR TO THE SHOGUN’S COMING TO AUBURN

MATTHEW BOSLEY was born, on September 23, 1844, near the village of Newark Valley, in southern New York State, close to the Pennsylvania border. At the outbreak of the Civil War he enlisted in an infantry company being recruited in that area, and took part in the Peninsula Campaign and in the Second Battle of Bull Run. By the summer of 1862 he was a mounted orderly attached to the staff of General Burnside, and in December of that year, as he was returning from carrying a dispatch to an advanced position during the Battle of Fredericksburg, his horse was struck by a Rebel shell.

Bosley’s left leg was caught beneath the animal as it fell, and broken in two places. He managed, however, to crawl to a dressing station, where he was placed in a mule-drawn ambulance and taken to a field hospital. Because of the congested roads, this short trip consumed many hours, and after his arrival he lay for a full day in the rain before the overburdened staff could give him attention. When at length he was lifted on the operating table, he was delirious with fever, and his leg was so badly infected that the surgeon had no choice but to amputate it.

His chances of recovery seemed remote, but after a few days, during which the issue remained in doubt, he began to mend. Early in 1863 he was transferred to the old Union Hotel in Georgetown, which had been converted into a military hospital. There he was presently fitted with a wooden leg, and it was there, in the early summer of the same year, that there took place a chance meeting that profoundly influenced his future.

The President, who as often as he could spare the time visited the military hospitals in and about Washington, rode up one morning while a group of convalescent soldiers was playing bsaeball in an adjacent field. He reined his horse beside the fence and looked on for a few minutes, then continued on to the hospital and made a tour of the wards, stopping from time to time to exchange a few words with the patients. But he had not forgotten the baseball game in the near-by field, and when he returned to the Chief Surgeon’s office he asked to have brought in the patient who had been playing with so much agility despite the handicap of a peg leg.

Young Bosley was summoned, and after being questioned about how

he had received his injury, he was asked his plans for the future. The youth replied that he was soon to be discharged from the hospital and returned to civilian life, but that he was hopeful of finding something that a one-legged man could do to help put down the Rebellion. At the end of the interview the President shook hands and complimented him on his pluck. But—as Bosley later recorded in his diary—no promises were made, and he was therefore surprised and mystified when, on receiving his discharge a few days later, he was handed a letter from one of the Presidential secretaries asking that he report next morning at the Executive Mansion.

The result was that Bosley became a White House messenger, a post he continued to occupy for three years. He was clearly a young man of ambition, for in the intervals when he was not carrying messages to and from the various governmental bureaus he mapped out a course of study designed to fill in the gaps in his education. He applied himself to such good purpose that when, in the spring of 1867, another clerk was added to the White House staff, he was chosen to fill the post.

Young Bosley did not begin keeping his diary until almost two years later —its first entry is dated January i, 1869—and it is only by occasional reminiscent passages that he makes reference to events during the period that followed the close of the Rebellion. Once started, however, he kept his journal faithfully, rarely missing a day. During the first few weeks his entries are brief and perfunctory, being mainly concerned with the work of winding up the affairs of the outgoing administration and with preparations for turning over the White House to its new occupant in early March. As time went on, however, his daily stints grow longer, sometimes taking on a philosophical tone, and thus it grows clear that he came to look on his diary as a place not only to record each day’s happenings but to reflect on their possible significance.

The document does not state precisely when and under what circumstances young Bosley agreed to enter the employ of his admired chief after the latter returned to private life. The arrangement must have been concluded before the beginning of February 1869, however, for on the 6th of that month the diary contains this extended passage:

This afternoon the Shogun called me into his study and, indicating an open drawer in the cabinet that stands behind his desk, asked me to run through the papers it contained, putting aside what might be worth preserving and sending what remained down to the basement to be burned.

When, an hour or two later, he got back from his drive, he returned, as is his custom, to his study for another period of work. In passing through the anteroom he seemed surprised to find me still at my task. He stood beside the table for a few moments, silently looking on. I was far from finished, for the drawer had been filled to the top with papers: drafts of speeches and messages, letters bearing on personal matters, odds and ends of notes, memoranda, and the like, all tossed together in a confused mass. The material that seemed to me of no particular value—mostly hastily scrib-bled notations on matters long since disposed of—I had thrown on the floor, placing the rest, according to its subject-matter, on one or another of several piles on the table.

He looked at these bulky stacks, then at the comparatively small number of discarded papers on the floor, and his face showed a half-humorous concern as he asked if I had any idea how much the railroads were going to charge to carry all his belongings out to Springfield. I replied that I supposed the expense would be considerable, but that many of the papers seemed to me worth preserving and that I would hate to be responsible for destroying them. At some future time, I added, it might be that someone would undertake to write a history of his administration and, if so, documents of that sort would come in very handy. This must have seemed to him a highly unlikely possibility, for his only answer was a sort of mirthless chuckle. But I could see that he was not displeased. “If that’s the way you feel about it, Matt,” he said, “go ahead and pack up whatever you like. No doubt we can find some corner out in Springfield where it can be stowed away. I don’t suppose there’s any harm in letting it gather dust for a few years before someone carries it outside and builds a bonfire.”

I replied that I was sure the time would come when many of these writings would be looked on as valuable historical documents.

He put a hand on my shoulder and from the quizzical expression on his face I guessed that he was about to tell another of his stories. I was not disappointed.

“Matt,” he said, “many years ago out in Illinois they used to tell about an old fellow named Jeff Presley. Presley had a hog farm and for years he worked hard trying to make a go of it. But no matter how much he tried, something always happened to spoil his plans. His hogs would get sick and die, or they would break through the fences and stray away into the woods, and whenever he took a load of them in to market, the prices were so low he could hardly give them away. Well, that went on for a long time and at last he lost his farm and had to move into a cabin on the edge of town, where he supported himself by doing whatever odd jobs he could find. One day a friend went out to visit him, and as he came up to the cabin, he was surprised to see a pen in the yard with a pig inside. ‘Jeff, you’ve had nothing but bad luck with them critters,’ his friend said. ‘I should think you’d never want to lay eyes on one again.’ ‘Well,’ said Jeff, Til tell you how it is. I keep this animal around to remind myself that I’m no great shakes as a hog-farmer and that I’ll be well advised to steer clear of that business in the future.‘”

The Shogun chuckled at the memory and continued on to his study. But when he reached the door he paused and added gravely: “Matt, maybe it will be a good idea after all to send a few boxes of those papers out to Springfield.”

Subsequent diary entries make it clear that during the final weeks in Washington, Bosley devoted several hours each day to this task, sorting out the official letters and documents, to be deposited in the national archives,

destroying those personal papers that seemed of no importance, and putting what remained aside to be shipped out to Illinois.

The material that fell into this last category must have been a considerable bulk, for on February 12 Bosley writes that he had already fitted three large wooden cases and that the job was far from finished. The diary entry of that date contains this passage:

Today is the Shogun’s sixtieth birthday, but the event was little noticed by the public at large, although in late afternoon the members of the White House staff presented him with a stout walking-stick with a suitable inscription engraved on its silver head. He was much touched by this small gift and had a few words for each of us, saying that he would remember always the loyalty of our little group during the trying times we had all been through…

Then the diarist adds this philosophical comment:

Those of us who see him daily cannot but observe how deeply he feels his present unpopularity, an unpopularity brought about by the jealousies and misrepresentations of his political enemies, many of them members of his own party. It is tragic but true that the Shogun prepares to leave office believing that his final term has been four years of failure, for he has about him constantly an air of melancholy and defeat. It is not that he regrets the policies he has advocated from the beginning and to which he has adhered despite the abuses of those who regard his leniency toward the vanquished as a sign of weakness and indecision. Rather, he feels that where he has erred was in his failure to convince the opposition that the harsh measures they advocated, and have so largely put into effect, have served only to prolong the strife that would otherwise have ended when the war itself drew to a close…

The frequency with which the Shogun’s simplest acts were distorted by his opponents was a constant annoyance to his hot-tempered young aide. The following excerpt from his diary of February 20 [1869] is typical of numerous similar outbursts:

The New York newspapers of yesterday carry accounts of a speech delivered at the Cooper Union Hall in that city on Thursday last, in which the speaker, a figure high in the counsels of the Radical Republicans, won the applause of his listeners by repeating the old charge that the Shogun’s act in granting clemency to certain associates of the actor Booth was a deliberate and unjustified affront to the courts that had duly tried and convicted them. In particular this demagogue professed to deplore his intercession on behalf of Mrs. Surratt, ignoring the fact that but for his executive order the nation would have been under the painful necessity of sending that misguided woman to the gallows.

The last weeks in Washington, already gloomy enough, were further darkened by an episode that was widely heralded in the press, thus adding to the already heavy cares of the outgoing executive.

In mid-February the President’s wife returned to Springfield to prepare the family home for occupancy, for it was felt that the excitement and confusion of the final leave-taking would aggravate her already highly nervous state. Bosley records that much difficulty was encountered in persuading her to leave, and that although the date of her departure was several times fixed, she each time changed her mind and insisted on remaining until March 4 in order to ride in the inaugural parade.

On February 25, however, the President drove with her to the depot and put her on the train. She was accompanied by their younger son, then fifteen, and by her personal maid, Harriet Slide, and arrangements were made to have her met at Chicago by her sister, Mrs. Edwards, who would continue on with her to Springfield.

On the morning she reached Chicago, however, Mrs. Edwards was delayed and did not reach the depot until some fifteen minutes after the train had arrived. This slight miscarriage of the carefully laid plans had an unfortunate result. The President’s wife, finding no one to meet her, went to the station master’s office and, in a state of high excitement, charged that she had been made the victim of a plot on the part of her enemies to spirit her out of Washington, and demanded that he provide means for her immediate return.

Mrs. Edwards, who had meantime arrived, managed to calm the overwrought woman and, with some difficulty, persuaded her to give up her plan of hurrying back to the capital. But the commotion had caused a crowd to gather outside the station master’s office, and the result was that highly colored accounts of the episode were published in several Chicago journals and widely copied by antiadministration papers throughout the nation.

In his entry for February 28, Bosley gives a full account of that unhappy affair and ends with this comment:

The Shogun, who usually accepts with equanimity the slanders of the opposition press, was stirred to a mighty anger by this needless and ungallant action in heralding to the world the outbreak of a woman too harassed to be held responsible for her behavior. The dispatches filled him with rage, and he relieved his feelings by expressing in the strongest terms, liberally studded with frontier epithets, his abhorrence of those editors who stooped to make political capital by such means. He quickly regained his composure, however, although when I encountered him later in the day his air of dejection, which has been evident enough in recent months, had deepened measurably. I think, though, that he was aware of the unspoken sympathy of all of us, for he had a worn smile and a kindly word for each.

Young Bosley’s desire for what he termed the vindication of his employer’s policies did not grow less with the passage of time, and after the

move to Springfield his diary often touches on that theme. The following passage was written on March 24:

In the mail this morning was a letter from the editor of Harper’s Monthly Magazine suggesting a paper, or, should the length of the manuscript justify it, several papers, telling the story of the war years, “not from the viewpoint of the soldier in the field, but from the pen of one who, as Commander-in-Chief, had formulated those broad policies that led to victory for the Union forces.”

It was a long letter, presenting what seemed to me unanswerable arguments in favor of writing such a narrative and pointing out both its present interest and its future value. I confess that I was elated at the proposal, and when I had finished reading it,1 some of my eagerness must have shown in my face, for the Shogun regarded me quizzically for a moment before he motioned me to go on to the next letter.

I realized then that this offer, like many others, was to be rejected, and that another opportunity to see justice done would be lost. I knew it was futile to protest, but I could not forbear bursting out:

“Isn’t it high time, sir, that you said a few words in your own defense?”

He shook his head. “No, Matt,” he replied gravely. “Far too much has already been said. Let the others occupy themselves with trying to explain and justify their acts.” Then he added with a wry smile: “Some of them have a good deal that needs explaining.”

The Shogun’s failure to take advantage of such opportunities as that offered by the Harper’s editor to set before the public the true story of his services during the years of crisis was a constant source of disappointment to his young secretary, as it was to the generality of his friends. In his frequent references to the subject Bosley does not always conceal his impatience at his chiefs docile acceptance of his lot and at his seeming content with the neglect and obscurity to which he had been consigned by the forgetful public.

One seldom picks up a magazine or newspaper [wrote Bosley on March 30] without being confronted with one or more articles dealing with the war and its blundering aftermath. Sometimes it seems that every general, and every politician, who had a part in the conflict, however brief or inconsequential, has hurried into print to tell the nation how, by his own unaided efforts, he saved the Union, or to air his wrong-headed opinions and belittle the accomplishments of his betters. Yet in the face of this barrage of egoism and rancor, the Shogun remains silent week after week, deep sunk in lethargy

1 The Shogun’s head-wound, as many know, affected the vision of his left eye, and to spare him needless strain on the other, Bosley was in the habit of reading his correspondence aloud to him. Once he remarked humorously to his one-legged secretary: “Matt, when your good eyes and my good legs are totaled up, the result is one sound man, with half a man left overl” and indifference, lacking the spirit to speak out and deny the most blatant falsehoods…

In conversation here last evening in the office he shares with his former law partner, someone spoke of the flood of war reminiscences now being thrust on the public, most of them from the pens of the Union military leaders. At length the Shogun, who had been listening in moody silence, remarked dryly: “If only the generals could have been made to fight then half as hard as they are writing now, the war might have been over in a matter of weeks.”

A few days later [April 2} Bosley returns to the same subject, although this time his tone is less vehement.

The mail this morning had the usual quota of letters from strangers, the writers of which all have favors to ask. Most of them couch their pleas, not as requests, but in the form of commands, they seeming to be under the impression that because he once occupied the White House he has a moral obligation to accede to their demands, no matter how absurd they are.

Each letter receives an answer, although the task makes heavy demands on his time and strength—and on his finances, too, for he rarely disregards the pleas of former soldiers, or their dependents, who write of poverty and illness and state that they know of no one else to whom to turn.

It is useless to remind him that he is often imposed on, that some of the supplicants are professional beggars. Once when I made bold to point that out he shrugged good-naturedly and replied: “If their letters are not genuine, then the rascals deserve some reward for inventing such heart-rending yarns. As you grow older, Matt, you’ll come to realize that the man who does his job well is mighty rare, so much so that he deserves to be encouraged regardless of how he chooses to use his talents. In a world so full of blunderers, it’s almost a pleasure to be imposed on by experts.”

Some of the letters are full of spleen, and these too the Shogun listens to with equanimity and answers with forbearance. In one of those received a few days ago, from a mill town in Massachusetts, the writer complained bitterly that the influx of liberated Negroes had so overrun the labor market that scores of whites were tramping the streets with empty pockets. For this situation he held the Shogun responsible, citing once more the old canard that his reason for freeing the slaves—and thus betraying the laboring classes —was the Negro blood in his veins.

When I protested that a letter so full of venom did not deserve an answer, he shook his head patiently. “No,” he replied mildly, “you can’t expect a man whose belly is empty to make distinctions between what’s true and what’s false. Perhaps nothing I can say will convince him of his error, but he’ll like to have someone try to reason with him.”

His reply consumed the greater part of an hour and occupied three pages. I remarked that I hoped the Massachusetts man would have the good sense to keep the letter, because someday it might have a value. This thought seemed to amuse him. “Have you got any idea, Matt,” he asked, “how many letters I’ve written during the past forty years? When I think of their number it’s hard to understand why the whole country’s not suffering from a shortage of paper and ink and quill pens. No, Matt, anybody who tries to peddle my letters will have to bind them into bales and sell them by the hundredweight.”

That young Bosley never expected his diary to be seen by others is evident from even a casual reading of its pages. Because his daily jottings were intended exclusively for his own eyes, it is not surprising that he sometimes recorded certain incidents and conversations he would otherwise have hesitated to commit to paper. Needless to say, it is not the intention to bring to light here any material that its writer would have wished to remain secret and confidential. Certain passages are so informative, however, and afford such candid glimpses of his chief’s personal life that there seems no reason at this late date for withholding them from the restricted circulation they will receive from readers of this memoir. I have therefore elected to include, and thus make available to present and future scholars, a few excerpts from the diary that its author might have preferred to pass over in silence. The first was written in Springfield on May 26, less than a week before Bosley and his chief set off for Auburn.

The Shogun accompanied his wife to the depot this afternoon and saw her off on the 3 o’clock train, she having decided to visit relatives in Kentucky while he is absent in California. From the station he walked back to the office, and the sound of his footsteps as he came up the stairs caused his old-time partner, who was writing at his desk, to put down his pen and listen closely. When the Shogun appeared in the doorway, the other looked at him in unbelief. “Godalmighty, sir!” he exclaimed, “I couldn’t believe my ears when I heard you skipping upstairs. It was almost like listening to a ghost. It must be ten years since you’ve taken those steps two at a time. It does my heart good, sir, to see you so spry again!”

The Shogun looked a bit abashed at the exuberance of this greeting. “Well, Billy,” he said mildly, “I’ve just seen Mary off, and I confess I’m a bit relieved in my mind to know she’ll be among friends in Lexington while I go gadding off to California. I didn’t feel altogether happy about leaving her behind for so long, but she refused to consider venturing out into that heathen country and running the risk of being scalped by wild Indians.”

The Shogun was carefree and buoyant all the rest of the afternoon, pausing from time to time as we worked on his mail to joke with Billy Herndon or to exchange pleasantries with visitors. We were all much heartened at his new-found lightness of spirit, the reason for which was clear enough, although of course we refrained from commenting on it. Once when someone mentioned his high good humor he grew silent and a look of guilt passed over his face. “Poor Mary,” he mused pensively, “I do hope she enjoys her little outing.”

The following entry is dated three days later:

There was another gathering last night in the office facing the Court House Square, as there has been each evening since the Shogun’s lady set off for Kentucky. In these familiar surroundings, in the company of boon companions of other days, he seems to have recaptured the carefree gaiety of youth, shunting off the melancholy that has recently rested so heavily on his shoulders. The little room nightly grows thick with tobacco smoke as one by one these old-time cronies recall happenings out of the past, each story bringing forth shouts of laughter, in which the chief joins no less heartily than the others.

At one point last evening the conversation turned, as it often does at such gatherings, to youthful love affairs, and Billy Herndon, who had been taking frequent nips at the bottle that stood within reach on his desk, returned to his oft-mentioned plan of someday putting on paper his recollections of the Shogun’s career. He now stated in a tone of exaggerated solemnity that in it he intended to bring to light a long-forgotten episode of the Shogun’s youth: his romantic attachment for a New Salem maiden, the beauteous and charming Miss Rutledge. The name appeared to mean nothing to the others, and all turned to the chief, curious to see what his response might be. The latter’s face was blank. “Rutledge?” he repeated, clearly puzzled. “Rutledge? I don’t seem to recall anyone of that name. I’m afraid, Billy,” he added mildly, “that someone has been taking advantage of your innocence by supplying you with false information.” Then he added with a reminiscent chuckle: “Now, if you had been referring to Vandalia you would have been much closer to the truth. There was a young woman there who waited on table at the boarding-house where a group of us stayed, and we all took a tremendous shine to her. But she was a very cultured miss and she put such great store in refined behavior that she would have nothing to do with us rough backwoodsmen, whose talk and manners at table must have jarred her sensibilities. Anyhow, one day she ran off to Chicago with a handsome law clerk who wore store clothes and a gold stickpin. You should have seen our table the day we heard the news. Our cries of anguish were heartbreaking to hear.” The chief joined in the laugh that greeted this tale, and presently the talk drifted into other channels…

After the gathering broke up, I walked home with the Shogun, for the cottage where I had taken lodgings was a few squares beyond his house at Eighth and Jackson streets. Bill Hcrndon’s latest reference to his contemplated memoir had remained in my mind and I ventured to inquire if the Shogun thought his remark had been seriously intended. He walked for a few paces in silence; then he laughed indulgently. “Yes, I suppose he meant it at the time,” he replied dryly. “After a few drinks Billy can be counted on to think up a dozen such schemes, each one more outlandish than the one before. Fortunately for him, he forgets all about them the next morning.”

“Then,” said I, unable to conceal my disappointment, “the life he talks about so often will never be written?”

We had reached the Shogun’s corner and he paused before the gate, re-garding me musingly for a few moments before he answered. “Matt,” he said gravely, “you can bank on this: no such work is ever going to be written, not by Billy Herndon or by anyone else.” I started to protest, but he motioned me silent. “The odd part of it is,” he added musingly, “that one might have been written—or perhaps even more than one—if one small happening had had a different ending.”

“And what, sir, was that?” I asked, mystified. “If only that fool actor had been a bit more accurate,” he replied. “D’you know, Matt,” he added, his tone half-comic, half-grim, “I’ve never really forgiven him for being such a bad shot.”

In his entry for the next day, that of May 30, Bosley thus comments on his employer’s singular remark of the evening before:

This is not the first time the Shogun has made reference to what he terms the lamentably poor marksmanship of his assailant, and although he speaks in a tone of grim humor, it is evident that he truly believes that the nation’s welfare, to say nothing of his own place in the regard of the people, would have been more secure had the attack had the tragic outcome that was so narrowly averted.

In his thorough and orderly way the diarist then goes on to state the reasons why he believes this theory to be false. While he grants that his chief’s last four years in office saw a marked decline in the support and personal esteem the great majority had accorded him throughout the war years, he contends that this was but a passing phase, one that was to be expected during the period of difficult readjustment to a peacetime footing. Bosley argues that once these bitter controversies were forgotten and partisan passions had cooled, the Shogun’s policy of patience and moderation would be seen in its true light and that his countrymen would elevate him again to his rightful place in the public regard. He continues:

Had the Shogun died in 1865, leaving so much of his great task unfinished, who can doubt that his memory would have faded rapidly from the minds of the unheeding public, or that future generations, when they recalled him at all, would have assigned him but a minor place in the nation’s annals? For although it would have been admitted that he served ably throughout the war years, there would ever have remained a reasonable doubt as to whether he would have adhered steadfastly to his principles during the violent quarrels of the reconstruction period, or if, yielding to the pressures brought to bear from so many quarters, he might have taken the easy road to popularity by following the dictates of political expediency. Because the assault of the would-be assassin failed of its purpose, that question has happily been answered, and the Shogun’s place in history is consequently far more secure than it otherwise could have been.

Young Bosley concludes this well-reasoned—and clearly sound—argument with these prophetic words:

148

With the passage of the years the animosities that were abroad during so much of the Shogun’s second term will fade from memory, and future historians will examine his record dispassionately and render this impartial verdict: that he served courageously and unselfishly what he conceived to be the best interests of all the people, knowing full well that his policies would visit on him the malice and scorn of the short-sighted majority. But the very qualities he then revealed are the ones that will win for him in the end a secure place as one who, while never quite reaching the front among our national leaders, yet during one of the most troubled periods in our nation’s history conducted himself in a way that brought discredit neither to himself nor to the high office he was called on to occupy.

SOME SELECTIONS

FROM THE REMINISCENCES OF

HUBERT MCKNIGHT CANS,

PLACER COUNTY PIONEER

ONE of the few persons now living in Auburn who recall the summer of 1869 is Hubert M. Gems, who is now eighty-nine years old and for the past five years has been a patient at the Placer County Hospital. Gans’s father had a dairy on the outskirts of the town, and it was one of the boy’s jobs to deliver milk each morning to the David summer home, about a mile distant on the Truckee road. Young Cans made the trip on horseback, carrying two one-gallon cans, one on each side of his saddle. A few excerpts from his “Recollections,” dictated to the editor of this narration, are given below.

… I had to start on my regular route at six o’clock, and that meant that when old man David came up for the summer I had to get up an hour earlier to make the delivery to his place. But I enjoyed riding out into the country that early in the morning. The air was cool and fresh and I had the road to myself except for the squirrels and bluejays and cottontail rabbits. The David house was a bit off the road, on a knoll looking out over the valley. It was a two-story affair, painted white, with a slate roof, with some big oak trees in the yard and with the barn and stable in the back, down the hill a piece. I used to ride up and leave the milk outside the kitchen door and pick up the empties and hurry back to town.

Usually nobody was up yet when I got there, but one morning when I came into the yard I saw an old man sitting on one of the benches and looking at some gray squirrels playing in the big oak. They were racing round and round the trunk and jumping from limb to limb the way squirrels do, moving so fast you could hardly keep track of them. When I came closer my horse scared them and they ran away down the hill.

The stranger said good morning and I said good morning, and then he asked me what I was doing up so early and what I had in the cans. I told him I was from the Star Dairy and that I was delivering milk. He said it was very good milk and that he drank a glass at each meal. He wanted to know how many cows we kept and I told him sixteen, but that we were only milking eleven. Then I said I had to go because I still had my regular route and I didn’t want to be late for school. He asked me what grade I was in and I told him I would be in the fifth next term. He said that was fine, that he never got beyond the third grade himself and that he was always glad to meet someone who was better educated than he was.

After that I used to see him almost every morning. Once I asked him why he got up ahead of everybody else, and he said he liked to come out and watch the squirrels. He said I ought to watch them too because if I could learn to jump from one thing to another the way they did and always land on my feet it would be useful to me later on, especially if I went into politics and got to be President. I told him that when I grew up I intended to be a railroad engineer, but that if that didn’t work out I wouldn’t mind being President. He shook his head and said no, that I had better stick to my original plan.

We got to be pretty friendly and I was always polite, although I didn’t think very highly of him, especially his quitting school so early. I thought he was one of old man David’s hired hands, and one morning I asked him what time he went to work. He said he wasn’t working just then, that he had lost his job a few months before and hadn’t found anything else. I told him my dad was looking for someone to help with the milking, but that if he was a drinking man there wouldn’t be any use of his applying because Dad wouldn’t allow any whisky on the place. He said he had never been a heavy drinker, so that wouldn’t be any hardship, and he would think the matter over and let me know.

A day or two later I was walking down High Street on my way home from school and I saw old man David drive up and stop in front of the post office, and who was sitting in the buggy with him but my friend. I was surprised to see him riding into town with Mr. David because David was a rich man and I couldn’t understand why he would have anything to do with a fellow who didn’t have a job and had only got as far as the third grade. While old David went into the post office, my friend stayed in the buggy, sort of slumped down with his gray beard resting on his chest, and his hands on his knees. Pretty soon a man stopped and stood looking at him for a few minutes and then went over and introduced himself and the two shook hands. I moved closer and heard the man on the sidewalk say that he had fought at Shiloh and Chancellorsville, and that it was an honor to shake hands. My friend said no, that the honor was his, and then he asked what the other was doing out in California, and the man said he had a little farm out near Pilot Hill. Old man David came out then and my friend introduced him to the farmer and pretty soon they drove away…

I had a birthday about that time, and when my mother asked what I wanted for a present I told her I wanted an autograph album. One of the boys at school had got an album for his birthday and he had been getting his friends to write their names in it, and the rest of us wanted to follow suit, the way kids do. One morning I took my book out to the David place, and when I rode up, my friend was sitting on the porch with his feet on the rail looking out over the valley. After I had left the milk and picked up the empties I went up on the porch and took the album out of my pocket and took off the paper I had wrapped around it to keep it clean and told him I would like him to write his name in it.

He took the book and admired its red plush cover and said he would be glad to sign it, but that his pen and ink were upstairs and he didn’t like to go inside because it might disturb the others, who were all late sleepers. He asked if it would be all right for him to keep the book and sign it later, and I could pick it up the next morning. I told him that would be O.K. if he would promise not to get it dirty or smear the ink, and he said he would be careful about the ink and that he would be sure to wash his hands before he began. So I wrapped it up again and gave it to him, and I was halfway down the steps when I thought of something else and came back. I told him I’d rather he didn’t sign it too near the front because I was saving the first few pages for some names I hadn’t got yet. Some of the kids had been taking their albums down to the courthouse and getting the names of prominent people like the sheriff and the county clerk and the assessor, and I was planning to do the same and of course I wanted them up front where I could show them off. He said he understood how I felt and that he would remember to put his name well toward the back. He did, too, on the very last page, and he wrote it small and neat, just his initial and his last name, and underneath he wrote: “One candid friend is worth a bushel of flatterers.”

I’ve often wished I had kept that little book. But I soon lost interest in autographs and I remember trading it with another boy for an agate marble I wanted to use for a taw. Of course it wasn’t long until I lost the marble, but that’s the sort of thing that’s been happening to me all my life…

GLEANINGS FROM AN EDITOR S NOTE-BOOK,“ BEING AN INSTALLMENT OF THE RECOLLECTIONS OF C. E. HARGRAVES, REPRINTED FROM THE CALIFORNIA PLOWMAN OF OCTOBER 1J, IQOJ

DURING the summer of 1869 the editor of the Auburn Weekly Sentinel was C. E. Hargraves, then a young man in his middle twenties. Hargraves was later a well-known figure in California journalism, for many years the Sacramento political correspondent for several state papers, and subsequently

the owner and editor of a farm journal called The California Plowman, published at San Francisco.

In the early i goo’s Hargraves wrote a series of reminiscent sketches that were first printed on the editorial page of his paper and later issued in pamphlet form under the title: Gleanings from an Editor’s Notebook. Some of his papers have to do with happenings during the period, more than thirty years earlier, when he had edited the little Auburn weekly. The following is quoted from The California Plowman of October 17, 1903, in which he outlines Brooke David’s career and recalls his first meeting with David’s summer guest.

The town in those days was well known as a health resort, and there were a number of sanatoriums in the vicinity where sufferers from asthma and TB came to take the “cure.” One regular visitor was the San Francisco journalist Ambrose Bierce, who now [1903] represents the Examiner and other Hearst papers at Washington, D.C. Another asthma victim who benefited by Auburn’s salubrious climate was Brooke David. David, as old-timers will recall, was long a prominent figure in California politics, having espoused the newly formed Republican Party in 1856 and campaigned for Fremont on the national ticket and for Stanford for governor. Fr6mont was defeated by Buchanan in a close election, but Stanford was swept into office and David was rewarded by being appointed to the board that had supervision over the state’s prisons.

Four years later David was a delegate to the Republican Convention at Chicago, and before he returned home he traveled down to Springfield to offer his congratulations and support to the successful candidate. That was the beginning of a friendship that sprang up between the two men and lasted many years. Early in 1862 David was appointed collector of customs at San Francisco, and during the time he held that office he had a great deal to say about federal patronage within the state. For years it was said that no Californian who wanted to be appointed postmaster, or marshal, or even federal judge would hope for a hearing at Washington unless he first got Brooke David’s endorsement.

Of course David’s political influence ended when the administration changed in 1869. He promptly resigned and, the following year, established, with Lloyd Hammill, the still-existing importing firm of David & Hammill. About 1865 he built a house near Auburn, where each year he spent most of June, July, and August to escape the summer fogs about the bay, which were bad for his asthma.

As related in last week’s installment, I took over the Auburn Sentinel in the spring of ‘69, and I had been on the job only a short time when David came up as usual to spend the summer. Of course, the people of Auburn were interested to have so important a man living among them, and I made up my mind to go out to his place at the first opportunity and get an interview with him. But the job of getting out the paper on the antiquated press kept me busy, and several weeks passed before I found time to carry out that plan. Then, late one afternoon, I set out. It was hot walking up the dusty road, and when I turned in at the David place I saw a group sitting in the shade of a big oak tree, the ladies wearing white dresses and the men in their shirt-sleeves, all drinking glasses of lemonade.

David came forward to see what I wanted, and when I told him I was editor of the Auburn weekly he shook hands and took me over and introduced me to his wife and guests. Then he poured me a cool drink from the pitcher on the table and told me to sit down and make myself at home.

It was easy to see why Brooke David had been a success in politics, for he was a big, affable man with an easy flow of talk that inspired the confidence of strangers and put them at their ease. I was so much taken with him that I paid very little attention to the other members of the group. He asked me a few questions about the paper and inquired after certain friends in town, and when I had answered as best I could, the conversation became general.

It was then that I first noticed that most of the others’ remarks were addressed to the man on my right, who was sitting straddle-fashion on a wooden bench, with one leg on each side of it. The bench was low and his legs were so long that his knees came up to his chin, which gave him an awkward appearance that was almost laughable. Although, as I have said, it was a warm afternoon and the other men were in their shirt-sleeves, he was wearing a knitted shawl over his shoulders, and this added to his oddity.

Somehow I had failed to catch this stranger’s name when David introduced us, and although there seemed something very familiar about his long, homely face, as though I had met him somewhere, it was some time before I realized who he was. Then, when his identity became clear, my surprise was complete, and I was at a loss to know how a man so well known, who had been only a few months out of the White House, could have slipped into Auburn without anybody knowing about it. It was not until later that I learned that he had come two days earlier, arriving on the overland train that passed through Auburn in the early hours of the morning. That accounted for the fact that, except for David himself and the night telegraph operator, there had been no one at the depot who might have recognized him.

After that I paid far closer attention to David’s guest, and I must say that my first impression was disappointing. Although I had cast my first ballot for him in ‘64, and although one of the earliest editorials I had written for the Sentinel had been a defense of his policies and an indictment of the Congress that had defeated his every effort to deal fairly with the South, I must confess that now I felt my former enthusiasm slipping away.

It was the first time I had seen in the flesh a political figure of national importance, and I was young enough to feel a sort of shocked surprise that he bore so little likeness to the knight in shining armor my imagination had pictured. That experience was so often repeated in later years that it ceased to trouble me, but its effect then was one of disillusion, as though someone had taken advantage of rny confidence. Regarding the gangling figure on the bench, I told myself that he looked far less the statesman than the handsome and dignified Brooke David. Indeed, he seemed the least prepossessing member of the group, one who but for his odd clothes and grotesque posture would have passed unnoticed.

It was not long, however, before I found myself revising that first impression. The others addressed him as the Shogun, which, I subsequently learned, was a name conferred on him by one of his former secretaries, which had been brought out to Auburn by young Matt Bosley, who then occupied that post. The Shogun took little part in the conversation, contenting himself with following the talk of the others, and when he answered such questions as were put to him it was with a sort of indulgent and good-humored brevity.

But soon there came a change. This was brought about by the fact that Mrs. David, with a hostess’s concern for the comfort of her guests, suggested that he move from his bench to a near-by camp chair. He replied that he was well content where he was, and went on to explain that in the backwoods where he had grown up chairs had been scarce articles and that most of his youth had been spent sitting astride a log, much as he was doing then.

This remark seemingly put him in a reminiscent mood, for he went on to recall stories bearing on the austerities of frontier life as he had known it long ago in Kentucky and Indiana, one incident suggesting another until presently he was holding our undivided attention. As he talked, the lassitude seemed to lift from his shoulders, and his face, which in repose had been stolid and dull, became alert, his deep-set eyes beneath their bushy brows full of animation, and his features, recently grim and stern, transformed as they broke into frequent, droll smiles.

He continued thus for some time, talking in an easy, informal, self-effacing manner that I found most engaging. As I listened to his rambling monologue, to the homely force of his diction and his frequent flashes of humor (the latter the more amusing issuing as they did from so dolorous a countenance), the disappointment I had felt at my first sight of him slipped away. Gradually I came under the spell of his oddly appealing personality, and it was no longer a mystery to me why during his last contentious years in office he had retained the grudging respect of his enemies.

It was not until the supper bell rang that he broke off his seemingly inexhaustible store of frontier anecdotes, and even then the group stood up with a reluctance that I fully shared. Brooke David hospitably asked me to stay and take potluck, and when I declined, explaining that the paper had to go to press that night, he walked down the driveway with me and, as we parted, confided that he had a favor to ask. The Shogun, he explained, had been in poor health—which his bent figure and deeply lined face made obvious enough—and he had come out on this visit because David had promised him unlimited rest and quiet. David went on to say that he was anxious to carry out his part of the pact, and that meant he wished to protect his guest from the demands that would be made on him once his presence in California became known. Would I, therefore, keep word of his visit out of my paper?

Of course I promised to respect his wishes, but I pointed out that news of this sort had a way of leaking out and that he couldn’t hope to keep the secret for long. David replied that he was well aware of it; he merely wished to extend as much as possible the interval before his guest was again caught up in the activities that had been his lot for so many years. Then he added with a chuckle: “I haven’t much hope that he’ll allow us to keep him on the shelf indefinitely. The chances are he’ll be craving action before he’s here a fortnight. If nothing happens of its own accord, it won’t surprise me if he goes out and stirs it up himself!”

Events were to prove that, in this instance at least, Brooke David was a trustworthy prophet. Next week’s installment will deal with how Auburn’s famous guest got involved in the town’s Fourth of July celebration, and will tell something of the repercussions that followed.

Hargraves’s reminiscent articles in The California Plowman must have been closely read by the paper’s subscribers, for each installment brought forth a number of letters, which were printed on another page of the weekly in a department called “The People’s Forum.” The editor’s recollections of Auburn during the summer of 1869 had the usual response, and two weeks later, in the issue of October 31, 1903, a number of the letters in “The People’s Forum” bore on this subject. Several of these seem to have enough general interest to warrant preserving, and they are accordingly reprinted below.

Editor: Your article in this week’s Plowman about your visit to Brooke David’s house outside Auburn reminds me of the one and only time I laid eyes on David’s distinguished guest.

I was then attending high school in Oakland and was spending the summer working for my uncle, Lester Wilcox, who had a 3O-acre orchard, mostly Bartlett pears, some miles south of Auburn on the Placerville road.

One day I rode into town with my uncle, and after he had delivered his load of pears at the freight shed, we went into Lyman & Briggs’s store to do some shopping.

There were a number of men back toward the rear of the store, sitting about on boxes or on the counter. While my uncle was waiting for the grocer to fill his order, I wandered back and stood at the edge of the group.

Almost at once my attention was drawn to a curious-looking individual who was leaning against the counter near the coffee-mill. There was a big sack of walnuts beside him and from time to time he helped himself to one. While he talked or listened, he would crack the nut with his strong, bony fingers and, having clapped the meat into his mouth, would deposit the shells in a neat pile on the counter.

He seemed to be the center of interest and everybody paid attention when he talked. The conversation was about the Civil War, and one of the group, a youngish-looking man wearing steel-rimmed eyeglasses, was telling about having once read a speech the stranger had made. It had, he said, been printed in a newspaper that had found its way into the army camp where he was stationed, and he had been so taken with it that he had cut it out and stowed it away in his knapsack.

The man by the coffee-mill seemed interested and asked the other if he recalled what the speech had been about and where it had been delivered. The first speaker said he didn’t recollect just what the occasion had been, but he seemed to recall that it had had something to do with one of the battlefields. He was inclined to think that it might have been delivered at Antietam.

The old man picked up another walnut, and while he was cracking it he looked thoughtfully at the ceiling. Antietam? Yes, he said, he might have made some remarks at Antietam. He was expected to say a few words whenever he visited the soldiers in the field, but for the life of him he couldn’t recall what he had talked about. Then he chuckled and said that it was probably just as well that he had forgotten the occasion, because it was the nature of politicians to make speeches, and nobody was much interested in what they had to say on the battlefields where the actual fighting had taken place.

I wanted to hear more, but my uncle had finished his shopping and I had to help carry the groceries back to the wagon. It wasn’t until later that I learned who that peculiar-looking old man was.

After that whenever I went to town I made a point of going around to Lyman & Briggs’s, but I never saw him there again. Then one day I read in the Auburn paper that he had gone back to his home in the East…

Red Bluff, Cal. —Wm. S. Hicks

October 22, 1903

Editor:… Califomians who are familiar with the high-handed methods of boss Brooke David were not surprised at his action in inviting to California and receiving as an honored guest the politician who, more than any other, was responsible for the abuse and humiliation meted out to the helpless people of the South…

The record is clear, and only those whose vision is distorted by prejudice and blind partisanship can fail to read it. If, during those hapless years, the occupant of the White House had been possessed of even moderate firmness the nation would have been reunited and the wounds of war quickly healed… It was a time when the country desperately needed a leader strong enough to curb the malice and greed of the party that, to the lasting shame of the nation, twice elected him to office. Instead, we had for eight long years a policy of weakness and vacillation that reached its climax when the so-called radical wing of the party gained control in 1866…

The public at large has forgotten much of the misery that resulted from that catastrophe… but those who, like this writer, have personal knowledge of conditions in the South under the cynical rule of the Republicans will not soon forget, nor will we fail to register our resentment at the polls on November next…

Petaluma, Cal. —A. L. Everett

October 19, 1903

Editor: It was a privilege to read, in the current issue, your memoir of Auburn during the summer of 1869, when that town played host to one of the least appreciated of the nation’s public servants, a man who during his lifetime was so bitterly maligned that few today recognize the soundness of many of the measures he advocated toward the vanquished people of the South.

But it is one of the weaknesses of a democracy that, having first made national heroes of our leaders, we take delight in going to the other extreme and, having consigned them to obscurity and neglect, we attribute to them follies that they deserve even less than the uncritical adulation we once bestowed on them…

It is a tribute to the stature of the man that, when you met him that summer at Auburn, he bore himself with fortitude, accepting his unpopularity with unconcern and showing no evidence of the bitterness and disillusion that might have been expected in a nature less generous.

His services to his country—and they were considerable—have been too long obscured by the prejudices of the postwar era. But few can doubt that in the end he will be assigned a modest but honorable place in the nation’s history as a man of courage and integrity, as a reasonably able administrator, and as a leader whose humane policies time will doubtless vindicate.

Morgan Hill, Gal. —Richard R. Dixon

October 24, 1903

Editor:… It was my good fortune to be in Washington, D.C., when Edwin Booth opened his engagement at Grover’s Theater on E Street in the spring of 1867. Probably there are few now living who recall the furor his coming aroused not only in the city itself but throughout the country.

That the actor would dare make a public appearance in the capital at such a time (for less than two years had passed since the irrational act that had brought disgrace on the entire Booth family) was denounced by some as brazen effrontery, while others professed to see in it a courageous gesture on the tragedian’s part to make amends for his brother’s folly.

At any rate, feeling was high for weeks in advance, and all over town posters announcing his coming were torn from walls and fences or scrawled over with abusive comments. I remember standing in line for several hours to gain admittance on the opening night, and from my seat in the gallery I listened to the whistles and catcalls from the predominantly hostile audience.

The curtain was late going up, and although the orchestra played patriotic airs during the interval, the crowd, further angered by the delay, grew steadily more restive. Then, when the situation seemed about to get completely out of hand, the musicians struck up “Hail to the Chief” and the curtain at the rear of the box on the left parted and the President and his guests entered and took their seats.

In an instant the temper of the audience changed. The shouts of derision died and were succeeded by a spontaneous burst of applause, for even the dullest-witted among them realized the significance and magnanimity of that moment.

The famous star excelled himself that night, and I observed that the President’s applause was as prolonged and hearty as that of the others. The play was Othello (which in view of all the circumstances was not the happiest choice that might have been made), but all agreed that Booth’s lago was magnificent.

—R. Harrington

Stockton, Cal. October 20, 1903

JULY 4, 1869:

BEING THE RECORD OF A LONG-FORGOTTEN INCIDENT THAT BRIEFLY DREW NATIONAL ATTENTION TO THE TOWN OF AUBURN

WHEN he urged his friend to visit him in California, Brooke David held forth a promise that he -would find his stay in the little foothill town serene and restful, where he could take his ease in peaceful surroundings and forget the cares that had long been his lot.

During the greater part of his stay that promise was fulfilled. Ever the considerate host, David was at pains to see that his guest enjoyed uninterrupted repose. Although, like most men who have long been in public life, David liked nothing better than to surround himself with companions, during the Shogun’s stay he limited visitors to a few friends of long standing, men whom he knew could be relied on to respect the privacy of the honored guest.

The result of his careful planning must have been all Brooke David had envisioned. The Shogun had of course been in feeble health before he set off for California, and the long journey had made further inroads on his slender reserves of strength. But a few days of rest and quiet brought about a heartening change. Nights of tranquil sleep in the big corner room, its windows open to the cool breezes that swept down from the mountains, had a beneficent effect, as did also the simple meals and the hours he spent each afternoon sitting beneath the oaks overlooking the canyon while the faithful Bosley read aloud from a favorite book, closing it quietly whenever his listener’s head inclined forward in sleep, his gray beard touching his chest.

After less than a week of that placid routine it became clear to all that the Shogun was on the mend. In his diary Bosley makes daily note of his progress, although his gratitude at his chief’s reviving strength and spirits is tempered by his concern that the old man’s impatience with the role of invalid might

lead him to resume too quickly his normal activities and thus cancel his physical gains. The Shogun’s resiliency, often before demonstrated, -was such, however, that he was presently following again his accustomed active schedule, with few signs of undue fatigue.

He resumed his lifelong habit of rising early, getting up before the rest of the household was astir and making his way downstairs into the cool freshness of the morning. There one can imagine him wandering slowly about the grounds, a tall, gaunt figure with bent shoulders and lined face, standing for long periods while he gazed out over the successive ridges of the hills into the haze-filled valley, or regarding with contemplative interest the colony of squirrels that, rarely visible at other hours of the day, then ventured down out of the oaks and playfully scurried along the paths, displaying no fear of the attentive watcher.

Bosley reports that the Shogun spoke often of these quiet interludes, saying that the solitude of early morning had a healing quality superior to any tonic known to the doctors, and saying too that these strolls beneath the trees awakened memories of his long-distant youth.

Since coming to this quiet retreat [wrote Bosley in late June] the Shogun’s thoughts often turn toward times long past. It is as though the burdens of later years have been eased from his shoulders, leaving his mind free to range backward to the time when, a carefree backwoods youth, he had known the forests and villages of the frontier.

When he speaks of that period, as he often does, the signs of weariness disappear from his face, and his spirit grows buoyant and almost gay. This morning when he came in from his stroll he opened the door of my room and, finding me awake, came and sat at the foot of my bed. He remained silent for some moments while I waited quietly, knowing from the cast of his countenance that he had something he wished to say. At last he began, speaking in a half-humorous tone that presently grew quite serious.

“Matt,” he said, “when I was a boy they used to tell about an old schoolmaster who lived down in Kentucky. He was a simple backwoodsman without much book learning, but he got along well enough as long as he confined himself to teaching his scholars how to read and write and cipher. But one day the members of the school board got the idea that he ought to branch out, so they ordered him to add another subject—geography—to the curriculum.

“The old teacher had no textbooks to consult, but he did the best he could under the circumstances. He had once made a trip down the Ohio, so every day for the next four months when it came time for the geography lesson he told them what he could recollect about the town of Louisville. By the time the term was over, his students had heard all they ever wanted to hear about that place. So on the last day the schoolmaster made an announcement. ‘Next term,’ he said, ‘we’re going to broaden out and take up the study of foreign geography, beginning with St. Louis.’”

He paused, chuckling at the memory, then after a moment he continued: “I’ve been thinking this morning that sometimes we’re all inclined to take the view of that Kentucky schoolmaster, particularly those of us who go into national politics and get elected to office. After we’ve spent a few years in Washington, we begin to think that’s all there is to the country, and that when things go wrong there, the nation itself is going to the dogs. There have been times when I have felt that there was nothing much to hope for, when the people seemed blind to everything except self-interest and ready to follow any leader who offered them a chance to profit at the expense of their countrymen. You’ve sometimes heard me in my blindness rail against the blindness of others, little realizing that this land is far too big and too strong to be much affected by the quarrels of the politicians. What the office-holders need is a smattering of foreign geography. I’ve been taking that course myself these past few weeks and I’ve come to realize what I should have known all along: that the people’s welfare is not, and never can be, in the hands of any one man or group of men.”

He had become quite earnest as he talked, and now he stood up and began pacing between the bed and the window, his hands clasped behind his back.

“There’s one thing this outing has done, Matt,” he continued, “and that is to make me realize that the wrongs we saw done these past few years, and that we were powerless to prevent, are not nearly so serious as they appeared at the time. One can’t ride for days across the plains and mountains, as we have done, without having one’s eyes opened and one’s faith renewed. This morning I’ve been sitting under that great oak and meditating while I looked out over the hills and canyons toward the far ridges of the mountains. And as I looked, it came to me how foolish it is to imagine that any set of men, no matter how wrong-headed or selfish, or how much power they hold, can do the nation any lasting hurt. Their day will pass, and with it all the injustices of their making; the bitterness too will pass and be forgotten; but the nation will endure, never fear, and be so little marred by all this turmoil that in a few years, or in a few decades at the most, what seem to us now matters of such import will be seen in their true light, and all this striving and grief and disappointment will end in—what? At the most, in a few passing lines in the history books.”

The Shogun paused before the door leading into the hall; his manner changed and a droll smile came over his face. “Matt,” he added, “I hope you haven’t minded having to listen to this harangue so early in the morning. But that’s what you’ve got to expect from us politicians; once an idea gets into our heads we can never rest until we’ve had a chance to try it out on an audience.”

The Shogun’s habit of rising early not only inspired such philosophical observations as that reported above; it was also a contributing factor in the sequence of events that were to make his stay at Auburn memorable by bringing him again briefly to the notice of the entire nation.

The memoir of eighty-nine-year-old Hubert Gans, excerpts from which were quoted earlier in this narrative, recounts his meetings with the Shogun when the Auburn schoolboy rode out from his father’s dairy each morning and delivered milk to the David summer home. This, however, was not the

only friendship David’s guest formed during those early-morning hours while the rest of the household slept. Several times each week the David housekeeper, Mrs. Odgers, made up a bundle of soiled linen and, before she went to bed, deposited it outside the kitchen door. Early the next morning it was picked up by the fourteen-year-old daughter of the Auburn washerwoman, who left in its place the freshly laundered pieces she had carried away on her last trip.

One morning not long after he arrived, the Shogun came upon the girl as she was lifting the heavy wicker basket down from her buckboard. He came forward and helped her carry it up on the back porch. This was the beginning of their friendship, the details of which have been preserved because the incident to which it led caused comment far beyond the confines of the town, stirring up a controversy so heated that it assumed an importance neither of them could have foreseen.

Among various accounts of the episode that found their way into print, that of the one-time Auburn editor C. E. Hargraves (whose article in the October ij, 1903 issue of The California Plowman has already been quoted), states the facts more briefly than most. The version that follows is based on a later installment of Hargraves’s reminiscences, that of October 24, which is mainly devoted to this matter.

The editor begins by describing the first meeting between Maud Luning and the Shogun and then goes on to relate that in the course of their subsequent visits he won the confidence of the reticent child and learned something of her history. The latter was simple enough. She lived with her mother and younger sisters in a cottage on lower High Street, near the edge of Chinatown. Since her husband’s death, some two years earlier, Mrs. Luning had supported her small family by taking in washing, and Maud, a slight, freckle-faced girl who looked less than her fourteen years, did her part by delivering the bundles before and after school. The vehicle in which she made her rounds was, states Hargraves, a dilapidated buckboard drawn by an ancient sorrel mare; both were familiar sights on Auburn’s streets long before the events of July 4 projected them into wider prominence. The family had come to California in the summer of 1866 and settled at Auburn in the hope that the town’s climate would prove beneficial to the husband and father, Henry Luning, whose health had been shattered by four years in the Confederate Army, where he had served under Jubal Early and, after 1864, with Mosby’s guerrillas.

Hargraves goes on to state that one morning a week or two after their acquaintance began, the Shogun observed that his young friend, who was normally a quiet, uncommunicative child, seemed more than usually preoccupied. At first she offered no explanation of her silence, but under his kindly questioning she at length explained that a group of girls in her class at school were preparing to ride on a float in the town’s coming Fourth of July parade. Thirteen girls had been selected for that honor, and each was to wear a costume representing one of the original thirteen colonies, a project that had aroused added interest among the girls because their class was then studying the history of the American Revolution.

Maud had not been one of those chosen to ride on the float, but that had disturbed her less than what she believed to be the reason why she had not been included. The other girls, she related, had gathered about her at recess the previous day and jeeringly addressed her as a Johnny Reft, adding that no one whose father had fought for old Jeff Davis would be permitted to take part in the celebration.

Having bit by bit drawn this story from the child, the Shogun reassured her as best he could, and at length she climbed into her buckboard and headed back to town, measurably cheered. Later that day he mentioned the incident to his host. Both men thought it likely that the whole matter was the result of a childish misunderstanding, but when Brooke David made inquiries in town that afternoon, he discovered that her version was substantially correct. The float, he learned, was being sponsored by the Auburn branch of the then dominant wing of the Shogun’s party, and the county chairman, a staunch supporter of that faction’s stem policy toward the South, had issued orders that no children of Southern sympathizers be allowed to participate.

When David related these facts at supper that night, the Shogun listened without comment, but the lines about his mouth took on an added grimness, and those familiar with that expression grew convinced that the matter would not be dropped. And so it proved, although if at first he had any definite plans in mind he took no one into his confidence. The result was that the means he employed to rebuke the narrow intolerance of the town’s Radical Republicans was as much a surprise to David and his friends as it was to the generality of the citizens.

Only later did those close to him recall certain happenings that, had they given thought to them at the time, might have indicated that something was afoot. Soon after the Shogun’s presence in Auburn had become known, the group in charge of the Independence Day celebration had invited him to view the parade from the reviewing stand and later to deliver the traditional Fourth of July oration. Bosley, in his reference to this, states that the Shogun’s reply expressed his appreciation of the honor but he asked to be excused, pleading his uncertain health and adding with characteristic humor that in his opinion discarded politicians could best serve their country by maintaining a discreet silence on all public questions.

A day or two after his talk with the Liming girl, however, he mildly surprised his host by remarking that he had been thinking over the committee’s invitation and had concluded that perhaps he had reached too hasty a decision. Would David get in touch with the committee chairman and tell him that, if their arrangements would permit a last-minute change, he would be happy to attend the parade. This offer was promptly accepted. Seldom had the town had the privilege of entertaining so well known a public figure, and news that he was to appear was duly heralded in the next issue of the Sentinel.

The committee had assumed that the Shogun’s role in the exercises would be exclusively that of spectator, and a place had been reserved for him on the flag-draped stand at the head of High Street. But on the morning of

the qth, to the growing concern of the officials, his chair remained unoccupied when the sound of distant music announced that the parade was getting under way. Brooke David, who was among the guests on the stand, could throw no light on the Shogun’s whereabouts. They had, he explained, driven in to town together, but he and his guest had parted immediately on their arrival, the latter setting off through the crowd after remarking, casually that he had agreed to meet a friend on a little matter of business.

It was some time before those on the stand learned the nature of this business or the identity of the Shogun’s friend. The first of the floats, led by the twelve-piece Auburn band, had reached and passed the reviewing stand, and still the chair of the honored guest remained vacant. Then from far down the street came a roar of applause from the sidewalk crowds. The cheers grew in volume moment by moment, interspersed with shouts of laughter, and all up High Street necks craned to learn what was causing so much hilarity.

Soon the dignitaries on the reviewing stand saw a curious sight. Well toward the end of the column and sandwiched between gaily decorated floats and uniformed marching teams was a vehicle that, despite the bunting draped from its sides and festooned from the bridle and reins of the horse, was instantly recognized as the familiar laundry wagon in which Maud Luning daily made her rounds. That young lady herself was driving, sitting erect and prim in her starched white frock, her corn-colored hair in two tight pigtails down her back, and her eyes straight ahead, seemingly oblivious of the tumult about her. But it was the odd figure on the seat beside her that captured the attention of the crowd. He, too, preserved a manner as decorous as that of his companion as he periodically doffed his stovepipe hat in acknowledgment of the cheers, his bearing as grave and formal as though this ancient vehicle had been the most elegant of open carriages.

Although the Shogun’s presence at the David house was then generally known in Auburn, this was the first glimpse many of the townspeople had had of him. But portraits and caricatures of his homely, rough-hewn features had appeared so often in the public prints as to make them familiar to all. It was the unassuming informality of his first appearance among them that so captivated the onlookers, stirring them to continuous laughing applause as the little wagon and its oddly incongruous occupants filed past.

No was the reason for the Shogun’s presence in this humble vehicle lost on the crowd, for news that Maud Luning had been refused permission to ride with her schoolmates had for days past been widely discussed. Having thoroughly debated the question pro and con, the great majority of the townspeople, whatever their political beliefs, had concluded that the float’s sponsors had been clearly in the wrong to hold the child responsible for her father’s having fought on the side of the Rebels. Thus the Shogun’s unexpected presence in the parade, squiring the small figure about which this controversy had raged, made so strong an appeal to the spectators’ sense of justice that the wagon’s progress up Auburn’s main street took on the aspect of a triumphal procession.

His gesture won, too, as events were to prove, the lively approbation of

many thousands elsewhere, for news of the incident was not long restricted to that obscure California town. So deep-seated were the political animosities of the period that this small event, which in less contentious times would have passed unnoticed, was eagerly seized upon and its importance magnified until it was presently claiming national attention. The wires of the overland telegraph carried the story across the mountains, and during the next few days it was printed, often with editorial comment, in hundreds of newspapers.

What significance the various journals attached to the incident depended of course on their political affiliations. Those that during the years following the war had supported the administration in its policy of conciliation saw in it a gesture of friendship to all helpless victims of popular prejudice and a rebuke to those who sought to keep alive wartime enmities. On the other hand, the opposition papers—and these included many of the most influential in the land—professed to see in the episode a plot on the part of the so-called moderate wing of the party to curry the favor of the unrepentant Rebels in the hope of thus regaining its lost political influence.

No useful end would be served by relating here the full story of that long-forgotten controversy. Yet this small happening had consequences far out of proportion to its intrinsic importance. Whether or no the Shogun, when he took that means of delivering a well-deserved rebuke to the bigotry of a local political faction, foresaw its possible result can only be guessed at, but it seems probable that so astute a politician could not have been unaware that it might cause far more than local repercussions.

It is a truism that consequences of importance sometimes spring from small beginnings, and so it proved now. For the Shogun’s ride with small Maud Luning in Auburn’s Fourth of July parade had the effect, whether planned or not, of bringing dramatically to the country’s notice the treatment too often dealt out to innocent victims of mass prejudice. That his protest struck a responsive chord in the hearts of so many was due in part to the fact that the enmities growing out of the war, and intensified during the years that followed, had grown increasingly burdensome. Thus the Shogun, whether by design or accident, had chosen well the time to make his forthright plea for the burial of old resentments. The war had been over for more than four years, and the bitter quarrels that had followed, reaching their climax during the national election of 1868, had run their course. The rank and file were everywhere in a mood to welcome a return of peaee and tranquillity and eager for a leader to guide them back along the paths of harmony and good will.

That it was the Shogun who found himself abruptly elevated to this role is not surprising in view of the treatment we too often accord our leaders. For as a nation it has long been our habit alternately to place our public servants on a pedestal as paragons of wisdom and probity and then, having tired of hero-worship, to brand them as rogues and cast them into the outer darkness, only in the end to have another change of heart and restore them miraculously to public esteem.

Like others before him and since, it was the Shogun’s lot to pass sue-

cessively through periods of phenomenal popularity and of equally complete disfavor. It is pleasant to reflect that, having completed the cycle, he enjoyed during the few brief months still allotted him the renewed regard of his fellows, who by common consent conferred on him the accolade he valued above all others: that of spokesman for the weak and oppressed everywhere, who with courage and humility and infinite patience supported to the end the doctrine of justice and equality for all.

It is perhaps fitting that this memoir be brought to a close by a final brief quotation from the diary of Matthew Bosley, written in mid-October 1869, hardly three months after the Shogun’s visit to Auburn ended.

Among the scores of messages that have daily arrived during the past fortnight [he wrote] the most touching by far have been those that come, not from men who occupy high places in the affairs of the nation, but from humble citizens who, prompted by one can only surmise what feelings of sorrow and compassion, were moved to take their pens in hand and record their deep sense of personal loss. For these messages, coming as they have from every corner of the land, many of them crudely written and phrased, yet have one quality in common, and shining through even the least legible of their scrawls and investing them with a quiet dignity is their boundless admiration for a great and humble fellow American and their candid grief at his passing.

These simple, heartfelt tributes form an imperishable garland to his memory, for one and all they voice the confidence and trust that so often sustained and comforted him during the troubled years when he walked among us.