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Chapter 57: attempts to reconcile the President and the senator.—ineligibility of the President for a second term.—the Civil-rights Bill.—sale of arms to France.—the liberal Republican party: Horace Greeley its candidate adopted by the Democrats.—Sumner's reserve.—his relations with Republican friends and his colleague.—speech against the President.—support of Greeley.—last journey to Europe.—a meeting with Motley.—a night with John Bright.—the President's re-election.—1871-1872.
The hope of reconciling the
President and the senator was not given up by their common friends; and with that view
Wilson, at the beginning of this session, made more than one visit to the
White House, accompanied on one occasion by another senator.
A similar controversy with
Mr. Lincoln might readily have been adjusted; but the two
Presidents were constituted differently.
1 Wilson found his errand bootless; and when he gave up the effort he applied a term to the
President which it is not worth while to perpetuate.
He desired his colleague's restoration to the leadership of the foreign relations committee, now called for in public journals of large influence; but he encountered obstructions in the state department, as well as in the
Executive Mansion, which could not be overcome.
With another type of public men the
President was more easily reconciled.
General Butler having been relieved (unjustly as he thought) by
General Grant from command after the affair at
Fort Fisher issued a farewell address to his troops which was almost mutinous; and in that address, and also in one made at
Lowell shortly after, he charged, by certain implication, on his chief a wanton or wasteful sacrifice of human life.
His conversations, guarded with no privacy, abounded in still more offensive imputations; and he went so far as to prepare a bulky manuscript
