第52章

I decided at once to do what was possible to secure Judge Folger's nomination, though our personal relations were very unsatisfactory. Owing to our two conflicts at the close of our senatorial term above referred to, and to another case where I thought he had treated me unjustly, we had never exchanged a word since I had left the State Senate; and though we met each other from time to time on the board of Cornell University trustees, we passed each other in silence. Our old friendship, which had been very dear to me, seemed forever broken, but Ifelt deeply that the fault was not mine. At the same time I recognized the fact that Judge Folger was not especially adapted to the position of assistant treasurer of the United States, and was admirably fitted for the position of judge in the Court of Appeals. I therefore did everything possible to induce one or two of the delegations with which Ihad some influence to vote for him, dwelling especially upon his former judgeship, his long acquaintance with the legislation of the State, and his high character, and at last he was elected by a slight majority.

The convention having adjourned, I was on my way to the train when I was met by Judge Folger, who had just arrived. He put out his hand and greeted me most heartily, showing very deep feeling as he expressed his regret over our estrangement. Of course I was glad that bygones were to be bygones, and that our old relations were restored. He became a most excellent judge, and finally chief justice of the State, which position he left to become Secretary of the Treasury.

To the political cataclysm which ended his public activity and doubtless hastened his death, I refer elsewhere.

As long as he lived our friendly relations continued, and this has been to me ever since a great satisfaction.

In this same year, 1870, occurred my first extended conversation with General Grant. At my earlier meeting with him when he was with President Johnson in Albany, I had merely been stiffly presented to him, and we had exchanged a few commonplaces; but I was now invited to his cottage at Long Branch and enjoyed a long and pleasant talk with him. Its main subject was the Franco-German War then going on, and his sympathies were evidently with Germany. His comments on the war were prophetic.

There was nothing dogmatic in them; nothing could be more simple and modest than his manner and utterance, but there was a clearness and quiet force in them which impressed me greatly. He was the first great general Ihad ever seen, and I was strongly reminded of his mingled diffidence and mastery when, some years afterward, Italked with Moltke in Berlin.

Another experience of that summer dwells in my memory.

I was staying, during the first week of September, with my dear old friend, Dr. Henry M. Field, at Stockbridge, in the Berkshire Mountains of Massachusetts, and had the good fortune, at the house of his brother, the eminent jurist, David Dudley Field, to pass a rainy evening in company with Mr. Burton Harrison, who, after a distinguished career at Yale, had been the private secretary of Jefferson Davis, president of the Southern Confederacy.

On that evening a storm had kept away all but a few of us, and Mr. Harrison yielded to our entreaties to give us an account of Mr. Davis's flight at the surrender of Richmond, from the time when he quietly left his pew in St. Paul's Church to that of his arrest by United States soldiers. The story was most vivid, and Mr. Harrison, as an eye witness, told it simply and admirably. There had already grown out of this flight of Mr. Davis a most luxuriant tangle of myth and legend, and it had come to be generally believed that the Confederate president had at last endeavored to shield himself behind the women of his household; that when arrested he was trying to escape in the attire of his wife, including a hooped skirt and a bonnet, and that he was betrayed by an incautious display of his military boots beneath his wife's flounces. The simple fact was that, having separated from his family party, and seeking escape to the coast or mountains, he was again and again led by his affection for his family to return to them, his fears for them overcoming all care for himself; and that, as he was suffering from neuralgia, he wore over his clothing, to guard him from the incessant rain, Mrs. Davis' waterproof cloak. Out of this grew the legend which found expression in jubilant newspaper articles, songs, and caricatures.

This reminds me that some years later, my old college friend, Colonel William Preston Johnston, president of Tulane University, told me a story which throws light upon that collapse of the Confederacy. Colonel Johnston was at that period the military secretary of President Davis, and, as the catastrophe approached, was much vexed at the interminable debates in the Confederate Congress. Among the subjects of these discussions was the great seal of the Confederacy. It had been decided to adopt for this purpose a relief representing Crawford's statue of Washington at Richmond, with the Southern statesmen and soldiers surrounding it; but though all agreed that Washington, in his Continental costume, and holding in his hand his cocked hat, should retain the central position, there were many differences of opinion as to the surrounding portraits, the result being that motions were made to strike out this or that revolutionary hero from one State and to replace him by another from another State, thus giving rise to lengthy eulogies of these various personages, so that the whole thing resembled the discussions in metaphysical theology by the Byzantines at the time when the Turks were forcing their way through the walls of Constantinople. One day, just before the final catastrophe, Mr. Judah Benjamin, formerly United States senator, but at that time the Confederate secretary of state, passed through Colonel Johnston's office, and the following dialogue took place.