I told him that it was, and, what was more, so winding that you could not see ten feet ahead anywhere between here and Condé.

'Humph,' he said, 'Perfectly clear, thank you very much. Please wait right there a moment.'

He looked up the hill behind him, and made a gesture with his hand above his head. I turned to look up the hill also. I saw the corporal at the gate repeat the gesture; then a big bicycle corps, four abreast, guns on their backs, slid round the corner and came gliding down the hill. There was not a sound, not the rattle of a chain or a pedal. "Thank you very much,' said the captain. 'Be so kind as to keep close to the bank.'

When I reached my gate I found some of the men of the guard dragging a big, long log down the road, and I watched them while they attached it to a tree at my gate, and swung it across to the opposite side of the road, making in that way a barrier about five feet high. I asked what that was for. "Captain's orders,' was the laconic reply. But when it was done, the corporal took the trouble to explain that it was a barricade to prevent the Germans from making a dash up the hill.

'However,' he added, 'don't you get nervous. If we chase them out it will only be a little rifle practice, and I doubt if they even have any ammunition.'

As I turned to go into the house he called after me,

'See here, I notice that you've got doors on all sides of your house. Better lock all those but this front one.'

As all the windows were barred and so could be left open, I did n't mind; I went in and locked up. The thing was getting to be funny to me, always doing something, and nothing happening. I suppose courage is a cumulative thing, if only one has time to accumulate, and these boys in khaki treated even the cannonading as if it were all 'in the day's work.'

It was just dusk when the bicycle corps returned up the hill. They had to dismount and wheel their machines under the barricade, and they did so prettily, dismounting and remounting with a precision that was neat.

'Nothing,' reported the captain. 'We could not go in far, road too rough and too dangerous. It is a cavalry job.'

All the same, I am sure the Uhlans are there.

I

THE problem with Stanton is to find out how a man so thoroughly disliked and apparently objectionable could get the most important administrative position in the country and hold it through the greatest crisis in American life. Here, too, is a man with no political standing and very little executive experience, a clever practical lawyer, nothing more, who is set to handling hundreds of thousands of men and hundreds of millions of money, and does it. How? Why?

That Stanton was thoroughly disliked had better be made plain by beginning with two general quotations, of great vigor and significance. The first represents the result of Mr. John T. Morse's wide study of the man and his surroundings: 'Stanton's abilities commanded some respect, though his character excited neither respect nor liking. .. In his dealings with men he was capable of much duplicity, yet in matters of business he was rigidly honest.

...

He was prompt and decisive rather than judicious and correct in his judgments concerning men and things; he was arbitrary, harsh, bad-tempered, and impulsive; he often committed acts of injustice and cruelty, for which he rarely made amends and still more rarely seemed disturbed by remorse or regret. . . . Undoubtedly Mr. Lincoln was the only ruler known to history

who could have coöperated for years with such a minister.'

Beside this verdict of the historian let us place the contemporary judgment of Gideon Welles, remembering, however, that the Secretary of the Navy viewed all his colleagues with a sternly critical eye. After reading his shrewd but acrid pages, I ask myself how Hamilton and Jefferson would have appeared under similar scrutiny, and more than once I am reminded of the cynical remark of Chancellor Oxenstiern: 'Here you see, my son, with how little wisdom the world is governed.'

But on Stanton Welles is more severe than on any one else, even Seward; and the following comments are amplified again and again in the fifteen hundred pages of the Diary.

'He is impulsive, not administrative; has quickness, often rashness, when he has nothing to apprehend; is more violent than vigorous, more demonstrative than discriminating, more vain than wise; is rude, arrogant, and domineering toward those in subordinate positions if they will submit to his rudeness, but is a sycophant and dissembler in deportment and language towards those whom he fears.'

These general indictments are surely savage enough. But we can support them by much other testimony as to special phases. It is said that the Secretary had an unfortunate habit of interfering in technical military matters;

and though his enthusiastic biographer believes him to have been born as great in strategy as in everything else, critics in general are not of this opinion. Moreover, whatever he set out to do, he persisted in, and he had an incredible reluctance to admit that he had made a mistake.

It is said, further, that, independent of excessive confidence in his own military judgment, Stanton liked to exercise authority in all things, big and little. 'Drunk with the lust of power,' Piatt calls him, somewhat rhetorically; and Grant, in more sober language, comments on his 'natural disposition to usurp all power and control in all matters that he had anything to do with.' Equally severe is the comment of Welles. 'Mr. Stanton was fond of power and its exercise. It was more precious to him than pecuniary gain to dominate over his fellow man.'

The passion for power naturally breeds jealousy of the power of others and dislike of those who resist one's authority or interfere with it. Seward told Bigelow that Stanton was of a jealous disposition. Blaine declares that the Secretary, with an uncontrollable greed for fame, had its necessary counterpart, jealousy and envy of the increasing reputation of others. Mr. Rhodes thinks that he was 'incapable of generosity to a prostrate foe.'

Also, in such a fiercely energetic nature, jealousy and animosity could not remain in the condition of sentiment, but were bound to be translated into accordant action. Those who thwarted the Secretary in his purposes had to suffer, all the more because he usually managed to identify his personal antagonists with the enemies of his country. 'He used the fearful power of the government to crush those he hated, while he sought, through the same means, to elevate those he loved,' says one who knew him well. Nor did he

hesitate at methods, when the object to be attained was an important one. Thus, he is said to have abstracted bodily certain official records in which one of his favorites was harshly treated.

We do not expect charges of arbitrariness and violence to be combined with accusations of duplicity. It happens, however, with this much-abused man. There is Welles, of course, hacking away, as usual: 'He has cunning and skill, dissembles his feelings, in short, is a hypocrite, a moral coward, while affecting to be, and to a certain extent being, brusque, overvaliant in words.' But on this point Welles has many to sustain him. It is charged by some that Stanton entered Buchanan's Cabinet and then betrayed his chief to his Republican enemies. The general statement of McClellan, that the Secretary would say one thing to a man's face and just the reverse behind his back, may perhaps be attributed to McClellan's own state of mind. But it is difficult to set aside entirely the general's account of Stanton's extreme enthusiasm and even subservience in their early acquaintance, as compared with the steady opposition of a little later period. And it is much more difficult to set aside Stanton's explicit warning to McClellan that Halleck was probably the greatest and most barefaced villain in America, while at the very same time the Secretary was sending word to Halleck, through Hitchcock, that he had never had any other than the highest respect for him and hoped Halleck would not imagine that he ever had. In Stanton's suddenly high-handed treatment of Sherman as to his compact with Johnston at the close of the war, Sherman's brother, the senator, does not know whether to read profound duplicity or, as Mr. Rhodes does, a quick impulse of violent irritation. 'He manifested and assumed the intensest kindness for you,'

John Sherman writes, 'and certainly showed it to me. I still think that with him it was mere anger - the explosion of a very bad temper.'

And as the accusation of duplicity almost necessarily implies, Stanton was further charged with truckling to those who had power and influence, just as he bullied those who had none. Welles declares that the Secretary of War regarded himself as the protégé of Seward and always treated him with obsequiousness and servility; that he was an adept at flattering and wheedling members of Congress and pandering to their whims and fancies; that he treated Andrew Johnson as fawningly at first as he did roughly at last. Welles adds further that he himself met Stanton's browbeating with a determined front and from that time on was treated with a deference shown to few members of the Cabinet. Mr. John T. Morse writes vividly, referring to the Sherman quarrel mentioned above: 'Stanton had that peculiar and unusual form of meanness which endeavors to force a civility after an insult.' And Blaine, who in other points praises Stanton highly, admits that he had great respect for men who had power, and considered their wishes in a way. quite unusual with him in ordinary

cases.

It is even asserted that the Secretary's bullying manner melted at once before conduct equally aggressive; and other experiences are told similar to that of Colonel Dwight, who went to get a pass for an old man to visit his dying son. The pass was refused, whereupon the colonel said, 'My name is Dwight, Walton Dwight, Lieutenantcolonel of the One Hundred and Fortyninth Regiment of Pennsylvania Volunteers. You can dismiss me from the service as soon as you like, but I am going to tell you what I think of you.' He did, and got his pass.

Some go so far as to maintain that this appearance of moral cowardice was accompanied by a decided lack of mere physical courage. Such a charge is pretty strongly implied in Grant's accusation that Stanton's timidity made him keep the armies near Washington, that he could see the Union weakness but not that of the enemy, and that the Confederates would have been in no danger if Stanton had been in the field. Mr. Rhodes speaks quite frankly of the Secretary's 'lack of physical courage.' Welles had no doubt whatever upon the subject. His account of Stanton's behavior after the assassination of Lincoln should be read with care, though with a clear recollection that Welles did not know his associate at all intimately and saw him, as for that matter he saw himself, through a cloud of prejudice. Still another paragraph from the Secretary of the Navy's Diary I cannot resist quoting in full, for its vivid picture of Stanton and also its unconscious and thoroughly Pepysian portrayal of the writer. It refers to the wild excitement in the Cabinet, when it was feared that the Merrimac would advance on Washington:

'In all that painful time my composure was not disturbed, so that I did not perhaps as fully realize and comprehend the whole impending calamity as others, and yet to me there was throughout the whole day something inexpressibly ludicrous in the wild, frantic talk, action, and rage of Stanton as he ran from room to room, down and jumped up after writing a few words, swung his arms, scolded, and raved. He could not fail to see and feel my opinion of him and his bluster,

sat

that I was calm and unmoved by his rant, spoke deliberately, and was not excited by his violence.'

There must be something inspiring in the joyous, salt freedom of the sea which could impel two secretaries of

the navy, separated by an interval of two hundred years, to expose themselves to posterity with such incomparable frankness.

II

But as to Stanton. After perusing with attention the above cheerful catalogue of amiable qualities, the reader must be inclined to ask, with Malcolm in Macbeth, 'If such a one be fit to govern, speak,' and to expect something like Macduff's answer, 'Fit to govern! no, not to live!'

We shall try a little later to emphasize some acts and characteristics of Stanton which may seem not wholly compatible with all these charges of his critics. Meanwhile, it must be evident, whether the charges are true, or, still more, if they are exaggerated and untrue, that the Secretary was not a man who went out of his way to be agreeable. He certainly was not. His position in itself forced him to acts that seemed harsh and even cruel. The Secretary of War had to tread on many toes and scorch many fingers. But it is possible to tread on toes so that the owner of them will remember it with tolerance, if not with a certain amiability. Stanton trod squarely and provoked a groan or an oath.

Indeed, there are many who agree with Grant that the Secretary took positive pleasure in refusing requests and disappointing suitors. If it is difficult to believe this, at least it cannot be denied that in the ordinary transaction of business he paid little attention to social amenities. Dana, who admired him much, admitted that he would have been a far greater man if he could have kept his temper. Chittenden, who admired him somewhat less, but knew him intimately, declares that few masters of literary denunciation were more apt at inflicting a bitter wound in

a brief sentence. The same authority adds that attempts to ingratiate by compliment were rarely repeated; for the Secretary would repel the first one by a shaft of satire or a glance of contempt. His daily receptions appear at times to have been of the nature of shindies. In one case, recorded even by the enthusiastic biographer, an interview with a senator rose to such a pitch of vehemence that the Secretary dashed a full inkstand all over the floor, while in another he emerged from the office with his nose bleeding so freely that cracked ice was required to repair the damages.

There is abundant and most curious evidence as to the manifestation of these unamiable peculiarities in the Secretary's official intercourse with his subordinates. Soldiers are accustomed to treat one another with the precision of military civility, prefacing orders with salutation and politeness. Stanton had bells put into the different rooms of the War Office. When he wanted to call a general, he pulled a cord, as if he were calling a bell-boy. Generals did not like it.

Also, Stanton's manner of imparting information and receiving requests was not such as to inspire cordiality or gratitude. For instance, Schurz writes, inquiring if he is relieved from command. The Secretary replies, 'General Hooker is authorized to relieve from command any officer that interferes with or hinders the transportation of troops in the present movement. Whether you have done so, and whether he has relieved you from command, ought to be known to yourself.' When your cheek is slapped like that, it stings for some time after. Again, a fellow member of the administration politely suggested a young friend as a candidate for office. 'Usher,' was the sharp reply, 'I would not appoint the Angel Gabriel a paymaster, if he was only twenty-one.'