Among the amusing episodes of the campaign was one which occurred at an open-door mass meeting at Watertown, N. Y. John A. Dix had been nominated for governor on the Republican ticket, and I was speaking of him and his career. He had changed from one party to the other five or six times in the course of his long career, and each time received an office. There was great doubt as to his age, because in the American Encyclopaedia the date of his birth was given as of a certain year, and in the French Encyclopaedia, which published his biography when he was minister to France, a widely different date was given. In the full tide of partisan oratory I went over these changes of political activity, and how each one had been rewarded, also the doubt as to his age, and then I shouted: "I have discovered among the records of the Pilgrim Fathers that when they landed on Plymouth Rock they found John A. Dix standing on the rock and announcing that unless they made him justice of the peace he would join the Indians." An indignant farmer, who could not hold his wrath any longer, shouted:
"That's a lie! The Pilgrims landed more than two hundred and fifty years ago." I saw that my interrupter had swallowed my bait, hook, and line, bob and sinker, pole and all, and shouted with great indignation: "Sir, I have narrated that historical incident throughout the State, from Montauk Point to Niagara Falls, and you are the first man who has had the audacity to question it."Another farmer stepped up to the heckler and said: "Here is my hat, neighbor. You can keep it. I am going bareheaded for the rest of my life." In his uproarious laughter the crowd all joined.
It was years before the questioning farmer could visit Watertown without encountering innumerable questions as to when the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock.
The last meeting of the campaign was held at Mr. Greeley's home at Chappaqua in Westchester County. We all knew that the contest was hopeless and defeat sure. I was one of the speakers, both as his neighbor and friend, and accompanied him to New York.
A rough crowd on the train jeered him as we rode along. We went to his office, and there he spoke of the lies that had been told about him, and which had been believed by the public; of the cartoons which had misrepresented him, especially those of Tom Nast, and of which there were many lying about. Leaning upon his desk, a discouraged and hopeless man, he said: "I have given my life to the freeing of the slaves, and yet they have been made to believe that I was a slave driver. It has been made to appear, and people have been made to believe, that I was wrong or faithless, or on the other side of the reforms which I have advocated all my life. I will be beaten in the campaign and I am ruined for life."He was overcome with emotion, and it was the saddest interview I ever had with any one. It was really the breaking of a great heart. He died before the votes were counted.
There was instantly a tremendous revulsion of popular feeling in the country. He had lost his wife during the campaign, and the people woke up suddenly to the sorrows under which he had labored, to his genius as a journalist, to his activity as a reformer, and to a usefulness that had no parallel among his contemporaries. The president-elect, General Grant, and the vice-president-elect, Schuyler Colfax, attended the funeral, and without distinction of party his death was universally mourned.
After the election, in consultation on railroad affairs, Commodore Vanderbilt said to me, "I was very glad you were defeated," which was his way of saying that he did not want me either to leave the railroad or to have other duties which would impair my efficiency.
With the tragic death of Mr. Greeley the Liberal Republican movement ended. Most of us who had followed him resumed at once our Republican party relations and entered actively into its work in the next campaign. The revolt was forgiven, except in very few instances, and the Greeley men went back to their old positions in their various localities and became prominent in the official life of the State. I, as usual, in the fall took my vacation on the platform for the party.
