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He was a man of ability and very broad culture, and was not only efficient in the performance of his duties, but one of the most delightful of companions. His health was bad, and his friends were always alarmed, and justifiably so, about him. Nevertheless, I met him years afterwards in Washington, when he was past eighty-four. At Mr. Conkling's request Mr.
As such he had held the collectorship of the port of New York, and as such, during his occupancy of the Vice-Presidency, he had visited Albany and done his best, though in vain, to secure Mr. Conkling's renomination; but immediately on his elevation to the Presidency all this was changed, and there is excellent authority for the statement that when Mr.
Conkling's enemies an opportunity to talk about his theatrical, overbearing manner, but his appointment met general approbation; some, doubtless, feeling a relief that his political career would thus be ended. The Senate confirmed the nomination, but Mr. Conkling declined the honor thus tendered.
If this estimate was trustworthy, then Mr. Conkling's misgivings as to his charges may have been groundless. If a rich man, whose property is put in peril, whose liberty is assailed, or whose reputation is threatened, will seek the advice and aid of the leading advocate of the city, state, or country, shall not the compensation be commensurate with the stake that has been set up?
Mr. Conkling's election followed as a thing of course, and throughout the State there was general approval. During this session of 1867 I found myself involved in two rather curious struggles, and with no less a personage than my colleague, Judge Folger.
The controversy thus opened came to an end only with Mr. Conkling's death. It is not known to me that Mr. Conkling and Mr. Blaine were unfriendly previous to the encounter of April, 1866. That they could have lived on terms of intimacy, or even of ordinary friendship, is not probable.
In an attempt to discredit the President before the country, he made public a letter from Garfield giving countenance to the practice of levying campaign assessments on federal employees. Conkling's point of view is not difficult to understand.
He had contemptuously referred to Conkling's "haughty disdain, his grandiloquent swell, his majestic, supereminent, overpowering, turkey-gobbler strut." Accordingly when Garfield disregarded Conkling's wishes in regard to the representation which New York should have in the cabinet, Conkling laid the blame upon his old enemy.
Morton that no friend of his would go on the ticket. It was then suggested that they try General Arthur, who was Conkling's first lieutenant and chairman of the Republican State Committee of New York. Senator Conkling made the same answer to General Arthur, but he frankly said to Conkling: "Such an honor and opportunity comes to very few of the millions of Americans, and to that man but once.
If those words had been uttered by any other Senator than Roscoe Conkling it is more than probable that he would have been severely reprimanded; no other Senator, however, cared to incur Conkling's displeasure by becoming the author of a resolution for that purpose.
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