CHAPTER XXVIII
CONCLUSION
On the 22d of March, 1896, Trumbull made an argument before the Supreme Court at Washington City. On the 11th of April, although ailing from an unknown malady, he went to Belleville to attend the funeral of his old and faithful friend, Gustave Koerner, and to make a brief address over the remains. This journey was made against the advice of his physician. At the conclusion of his remarks he became ill at his hotel in Belleville. There was a consultation of physicians, who reached the conclusion that he would be able to go home if he should go at once. He decided not to delay, and he reached home on the morning of April 13. Here another consultation of physicians took place at which a surgical operation was decided upon. This led to the discovery of an internal tumor which, in their judgment, could not be removed without causing immediate death. He lingered till the 5th of June. Before his death he made a calm and careful adjustment of his business affairs and gave to his children and grandchildren keepsakes that he had for years preserved for them. He passed away at the age of eighty-two years, seven months, and twelve days. His funeral, which was largely attended, took place from his house, No. 4008 Lake Avenue, and his remains were interred in Oakwoods Cemetery.
There was a meeting of the Bar Association of Chicago to prepare a memorial on his life and services. On this occasion Hon. Thomas A. Moran, former judge of the appellate court, said:
At the end of his career in the United States Senate, Judge Trumbull became a member of the Chicago Bar. He was thereafter continuously, and up to the time of his death, engaged in the active and laborious practice of his profession. The great place that he had held in the councils of the nation, the influence that he had exerted upon national legislation, and the esteem in which he was held by the lawyers and the statesmen of the country, entitled him to a lofty mien; but as is well known to us all who had the privilege of his acquaintance at the bar, while his demeanor was grave it was also modest, and his manner was marked by a gentleness that was most grateful to everybody with whom he came in contact. His sincerity and honesty in the presentation of his case, his respectful demeanor to any court in which he was engaged in a legal contest, constituted him a model that the lawyers of our bar might well imitate. He was in practice at the bar forty-four years after he ceased to be a judge of the supreme court of this state.... He was preëminently the grand old man of this country. In his intercourse with his fellow citizens he was a quiet, sincere, frank, honest American gentleman. Lyman Trumbull was one of the very great men of the nation.
Eulogistic remarks were made also by Senator John M. Palmer, ex-Senator James R. Doolittle, and Judge Henry W. Blodgett. Mr. Doolittle said that of the sixty-six members of the United States Senate who were there when Secession began, only four were then living. They were Harlan, of Iowa, Rice, of Minnesota, Clingman, of North Carolina, and himself (Doolittle).
Trumbull's forte was that of a political debater well grounded in the law. Here he stood in the very front rank, both as a Senator addressing his equals and as an orator on the hustings. He was always ready to discuss the questions which he was required to face. He had a logical mind, and the ability to think quickly and to choose the right words to express his ideas. He never wasted words in ornament or display. He never lost his balance when addressing the Senate, or a public audience. He had perfect self-possession. He never stood in awe of any other debater or hesitated to reply promptly to question or challenge. Nor did he ever lose his dignity in debate. Once he came near to calling Sumner a falsifier, when the latter had described him as recreant to the principles of human liberty; but he restrained himself in time to avoid an infraction of the rules of the Senate. And he afterwards came to the defense of Sumner when the latter was deposed, by his more subservient colleagues, from the chairmanship of the Committee on Foreign Relations. On this occasion Sumner came forward holding out both hands, and with tears in his eyes thanked him for his generosity.
His rare forensic gifts would have been unavailing without confidence in the justice of his cause, and a clear conscience which shone in his face and pervaded him through and through. Although not endowed with oratorical graces he grasped the attention of his audience at once, and he never failed to convince his hearers that he had an eye single to the public good. It was hard for him to separate himself from the Republican party in 1871-72, but he considered it a duty that he owed to the country to expose the rottenness then pervading the national administration. He did not have General Grant in mind when he moved the investigation of custom-house frauds in New York. He did not aim at him directly or indirectly, but at the system which had grown up before his election. Grant's mental make-up was such that he considered any fault-finding with federal office-holders a reproach to himself, as the head of the Government, and accordingly braced himself against it; and this habit grew on him through the whole eight years of his presidency. Yet Trumbull uttered no reproach against him during the campaign of 1872, or later.
It was commonly said that Trumbull's nature was cold and unsympathetic. This was a mannerism merely. He did not carry his heart upon his sleeve for daws to peck at, but he was an affectionate husband and father and grandfather, most generous to his parents, brothers, and sisters, and one of the most unselfish men I ever knew. His poor constituents, who were often stranded in Washington, needing help to get home, seldom applied to him for assistance in vain, and this kind of drain was pretty severe during his whole senatorial service. He was fond of little children. He was often seen playing croquet with his own and others in Washington City. Mr. Morris St. P. Thomas, a member of the Chicago Bar who shared Trumbull's office during his later years, says that he never knew a warmer-hearted man than Trumbull. He was kindness and consideration itself to the people in his office. He was never cross or short, and every young man there always felt that he could go into the judge's room whenever he liked, and sit down and tell him his troubles. Once it devolved upon Mr. Thomas to engage a stenographer for the office. Of the several applicants the best was an unprepossessing, hump-backed girl. "I told the judge about her—that she was the ablest applicant, but very unprepossessing in appearance." "Why," said he, at once, "that's the very reason to take her, poor girl!" And they kept her for years.133
In short, he was a high-minded, kind-hearted, courteous gentleman, without ostentation and without guile. In business affairs he was punctual, accurate, and spotless. He never borrowed money, never bought anything that he could not pay cash for, never gave a promissory note in his life, not even in the purchase of real estate where deferred payments are customary. The best blood of New England coursed in his veins and he never dishonored it, in either private or public life.
It is perhaps too early to assign to Trumbull his proper place in the roll of statesmen of the Civil War period. Those who come after us and can look back one hundred years, instead of fifty, will doubtless have a better perspective and a clearer vision than those who lived with the actors of that momentous struggle. Some things, however, we may be sure of. One is that the man who drew the Thirteenth Amendment of the Constitution, abolishing slavery in the United States and all places under the jurisdiction thereof, will never be forgotten as long as the love of liberty survives in this land. Not that the Thirteenth Amendment would not have been passed and incorporated in our system even if Lyman Trumbull had not been a Senator, or if he had never been born. It was a consequence of the taking-up of arms against the Union in 1861 that slavery should come to an end somehow. All that Lincoln did, all that Trumbull did, all that Congress did, was to seize the occasion to give direction to certain irresistible forces then called into existence for blessing or cursing mankind. There were different ways of bringing slavery to an end. That of constitutional amendment was the best of all because it removed the subject-matter from the field of dispute at once and forever. Lincoln paved the way for it. He prepared the public mind for it by his two proclamations of emancipation. Trumbull and Congress and the state legislatures did the rest.
It may be fairly said that Trumbull took the lead in putting an end to arbitrary arrests in the loyal states where the courts of justice were open, and in prescribing the process of the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus. This was a difficult problem to handle and it cost Trumbull some popularity, since the loyal spirit of the North was very touchy on the subject of Copperheads and easily inflamed against anybody who was accused of sympathy with them. The law finally passed seems now to be altogether just, and well suited to be put in practice again if occasion for it should arise.
Trumbull's place as one of the "Seven Traitors" who voted not guilty on the impeachment of Andrew Johnson is now universally considered a proud position, and I think that that of his neighbor and friend, James R. Doolittle, of Wisconsin, who earned the title of traitor a year or two earlier, is entitled to a place in the same Valhalla. Both are deserving of monuments at the hands of their respective states.
The reader of these pages cannot fail to discern a marked change in Trumbull's course on Reconstruction about midway of the struggle on that issue. Gideon Welles said, under date January 16, 1867, "He [Trumbull] has changed his principles within a year.134 The facts are that he agreed with Lincoln's plan of Reconstruction, embodied it in the Louisiana Bill, reported it favorably from the Judiciary Committee, tried to pass it in the closing days of the Thirty-eighth Congress, but was prevented by the filibustering tactics of Sumner. After Johnson became President he adhered to that plan until Johnson vetoed the Freedmen's Bureau and Civil Rights Bills. He then believed that Johnson had betrayed the cause for which the nation had fought through a four years' war and that the freedom of the blacks would be endangered if Johnson were sustained by the loyal states. He accordingly went with his party, but with misgivings, halting now and then, putting blocks in the way of the radicals here and there. He ceased to be the leader of the Senate as he had hitherto been, on this class of questions, and he became a reluctant follower. When Sumner became angry and charged him in 1870 with betrayal of the cause of freedom, he hotly affirmed that he had voted for every measure for the equal rights of the freedmen that Congress had passed, including the three constitutional amendments. The truth was that he had put obstacles in the way of several measures that Sumner deemed indispensable, until it became plain that the Republican party was determined to pass them and that further resistance would be useless. Then he gave his assent to them. This course he pursued until the Anti-Ku-Klux Bill was agreed to, by the Judiciary Committee, in 1871. Against this measure he voted in the committee and in the Senate. He held it to be unconstitutional, and he used against it the same arguments in substance that Bingham had used in the House against the Civil Rights Bill; and both he and Bingham were right. Trumbull did not change his principles, but he made an error in common with his party and he corrected it as soon as he became convinced that it was an error. I am open to the same criticism."
Among interviews with men of note published in the Chicago press concerning the deceased was one with Mr. Joseph Medill, not a friendly critic but a political seer of the first class, who thought that Trumbull might have been President of the United States if he had voted, in the impeachment case, to convict Andrew Johnson.
If he had remained true to his party [said Mr. Medill], Judge Trumbull, I believe, would have died with his name in the roll of Presidents of the United States. I have always thought that he could have been the successor of Grant. He stood so high in the estimation of his party and the nation that nothing was beyond his reach. Grant, of course, came before everybody, but Trumbull was next, a man of great ability, undoubted integrity, and stainless reputation, pure as the driven snow and nearly as cold. He could have been President instead of Hayes, or Garfield, or Harrison.[1]
Following the interview with Mr. Medill is one with Mr. Henry S. Robbins, a member of Trumbull's law firm from 1883 until 1890. Mr. Robbins did not find Trumbull a cold man.
All the time we were together [said Mr. Robbins] I never heard him speak a cross word to a clerk in the office. Among children he was a child again. He and his little grandson, the child of Walter Trumbull, who died several years ago, were inseparable companions when the grandfather was at home. They played together and talked together like two little boys. All the children in the neighborhood where he lived were wont to come to him with their little troubles and always found him one who could enter into fullest sympathy with them. Judge Trumbull had no worldliness. He seemed to practice law as a mission, not as a vocation by which to make money. With his reputation and his ability combined he might have died a millionaire. It always gave him a pang to charge a fee, and when he fixed the charge it was usually about half what a modern lawyer would charge.[1]
Another partner, Mr. William N. Horner, said:
I came here from Belleville where Judge Trumbull formerly lived, and people down there—some of them at least—used to think that he was a cold man. I never found him so. I remember the first day we moved into these offices and while we were getting settled, Judge Trumbull worked harder than any of us. He was more solicitous for our comfort than he was for his own. He was always trying to do something for the comfort of others. He had all the gentleness and sweetness of disposition and patience of a woman.135
Mr. C. S. Darrow, who had charge of the Debs case in which Trumbull volunteered his services, said that
the socialistic trend of the venerable statesman's opinions in his later years sprang from his deep sympathies with all unfortunates; that sympathy that made him an anti-slavery Democrat in his early years, and afterwards a Republican. He became convinced that the poor who toil for a living in this world were not getting a fair chance. His heart was with them.136
A letter to myself from the widow of Walter Trumbull, who died in 1891, says:
After my husband died, I, with my two boys, lived with Judge Trumbull until his death; and I wish I could tell you how beautiful that home life was. He was so devoted to his family, so sweet and tender and thoughtful for us all. Others never realized this and often thought him cold. He was so great a man and yet so gentle and simple in his ways that little children clung to him.
Among the papers left by Trumbull was the following estimate of the character and career of Abraham Lincoln. It was addressed to his son Walter Trumbull and is here published for the first time:
My dear Son: I have often been requested to give my estimate of Mr. Lincoln's life and character. His death at the close of a great civil war in which the Government of which he was the head had been successful, and the manner of his taking off, were not favorable to a candid and impartial review of his character. The temper of the public mind at that time would not tolerate anything but praise of the martyred President, and even now it is questionable whether the truthful history of his life by Mr. Herndon, his lifelong friend, and law partner for twenty years, will be received with favor. As I could not give any other than a truthful narration of Mr. Lincoln's character, as he was known to me, I have hitherto declined to write anything for the public concerning him. Having known him at different times as a political adversary and a political friend, my opportunities for judging his public life and character were from different standpoints. We were members of the Illinois House of Representatives in 1840. He was a Whig and I a Democrat, but we had no controversies, political or otherwise. Indeed, Mr. Lincoln took very little part in the legislation of that session. It was the period when, as related by Mr. Herndon, he was engaged in love affairs which some of his friends feared had well-nigh unsettled his mental faculties. I recall but one speech he made during the session. In that he told a story which convulsed the House to the great discomfiture of the member at whom it was aimed. Mr. Lincoln was regarded at that time by his political friends as among their shrewdest and ablest leaders, and by his political adversaries as a formidable opponent. Contemporary with him in the legislature of 1840 were Edward D. Baker, William A. Richardson, William H. Bissell, Thomas Drummond, John J. Hardin, John A. McClernand, Ebenezer Peck, and others whose subsequent careers in the national councils, on the field of battle, and in civil life have shed lustre on their country's history. It is no mean praise to say of Mr. Lincoln that among this galaxy of young men convened at the capital of Illinois in 1840, to whom may be added Stephen A. Douglas, although not then a member of the legislature, he stood in the front rank.
As a lawyer Mr. Lincoln was painstaking, discriminating, and accurate. He mastered his cases, and had a most happy and fascinating way of presenting them. He was logical, fair, and candid. It was said of him by one of the most eminent judges who ever presided in Illinois, that after Mr. Lincoln had opened a case he [the judge] fully understood both sides of it. Some of Mr. Lincoln's contemporaries at the bar were more learned, and better lawyers, but no one managed a case, which he had time to thoroughly study and understand, more adroitly. The breaking-up of the Whig and Democratic parties in 1854, growing out of the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, and the opening of the territory to slavery, threw Mr. Lincoln and myself together politically. We were both opposed to the spread of slavery, and from the foundation of the Republican party till his death we were in political accord. I do not claim to have been his confidant, and doubt if any man ever had his entire confidence. He was secretive, and communicated no more of his own thoughts and purposes than he thought would subserve the ends he had in view. He had the faculty of gaining the confidence of others by apparently giving them his own, and in that way attached to himself many friends. I saw much of him after we became political associates, and can truthfully say that he never misled me by word or deed. He was truthful, compassionate, and kind, but he was one of the shrewdest men I ever knew. To use a common expression he was "as cunning as a fox." He was a good judge of men, their motives, and purposes, and knew how to wield them to his own advantage. He was not aggressive. Ever ready to take advantage of the public current, he did not attempt to lead it. He did not promulgate the article of war enacted by Congress forbidding army and navy officers from employing their forces to return slaves to their masters, under penalty of dismissal from the service, till more than six months after its passage. It was more than nine months after the enactment of a law by Congress declaring free all slaves of rebels captured, or coming within the Union lines, or found in any place occupied by rebel forces and afterwards occupied by the forces of the Union, that he issued the proclamation declaring free the slaves then within the rebel lines, all of whom, belonging to persons in rebellion, were made free by the act of Congress as soon as the Union forces occupied the country, and till then the proclamation could not be enforced. When applied to by a friend, just previous to the meeting of the convention at Baltimore which nominated him for a second term, to indicate what resolutions or policy he desired the convention to adopt, he declined to suggest any. These and many other illustrations might be given to show that Mr. Lincoln was a follower and not a leader in public affairs. Without attempting to form or create public sentiment, he waited till he saw whither it tended, and then was astute to take advantage of it. Some of Mr. Lincoln's admirers, instead of regarding his want of system, hesitancy, and irresolution as defects in his character, seek to make them the subject of praise, as in the end the rebellion was suppressed, and slavery abolished, during his administration, ignoring the fact that a man of more positive character, prompt and systematic action, might have accomplished the same result in half the time, and with half the loss of blood and treasure.
Mr. Lincoln was by no means the unsophisticated, artless man many took him to be. Mr. Swett, a lifelong friend and admirer, writing to Mr. Herndon, says: "One great public mistake of his character, as generally received and acquiesced in, is that he is considered by the people of this country as a frank, guileless, and unsophisticated man. There never was a greater mistake. Beneath a smooth surface of candor, and apparent declaration of all his thoughts and feelings, he exercised the most exalted tact, and the widest discrimination.... In dealing with men he was a trimmer, and such a trimmer as the world has never seen."137
Herndon in his "Lincoln," at page 471, says: "He had a way of pretending to assure his visitor that in the choice of his advisers he was free to act as his judgment dictated, although David Davis, acting as his manager at the Chicago Convention, had negotiated with the Pennsylvania and Indiana delegations, and assigned places in the Cabinet to Simon Cameron and Caleb Smith, besides making other arrangements which Mr. Lincoln was expected to satisfy."
Another popular mistake is to suppose Mr. Lincoln free from ambition. A more ardent seeker after office never existed. From the time when, at the age of twenty-three, he announced himself a candidate for the legislature from Sangamon County, till his death, he was almost constantly either in office, or struggling to obtain one. Sometimes defeated and often successful, he never abandoned the desire for office till he had reached the presidency the second time. Swett says, "He was much more eager for it [a second nomination] than for the first," and such was known to his intimate friends to be the fact, though his manner to the public would have indicated that he was indifferent to a second nomination. When first a candidate for the presidency Mr. Herndon tells us, "He wrote to influential party workers everywhere," promising money to defray the expenses of delegates to the convention favoring his nomination.
While ardently devoted to the Union, Mr. Lincoln had no well-defined plan for saving it, but suffered things to drift, watching to take advantage of events as they occurred. He was a judge of men and knew how to use them to advantage. He brought into his Cabinet some of the ablest men in the nation, and left to them the management of their respective departments. This country never had an abler head of the Treasury Department than Salmon P. Chase. To his skillful management of the finances the country was indebted for the means to carry on the war of the rebellion, and bring it to a successful issue. For the distinguished ability with which the State and War Departments were managed during the rebellion the country is greatly indebted to Mr. Seward and Mr. Stanton. Other members of Mr. Lincoln's Cabinet were men of great executive ability. Lincoln was unmethodical and without executive ability, but he selected advisers who possessed these qualities in an eminent degree.
To sum up his character, it may be said that as a man he was honest, pure, kind-hearted, and sympathetic; as a lawyer, clear-headed, astute, and successful; as a politician, ambitious, shrewd, and farseeing; as a public speaker, incisive, clear, and convincing, often eloquent, clothing his thoughts in the most beautiful and attractive language, a logical reasoner, and yet most unmethodical in all his ways; as President during a great civil war he lacked executive ability, and that resolution and prompt action essential to bring it to a speedy and successful close; but he was a philanthropist and a patriot, ardently devoted to the Union and the equality and freedom of all men. He presided over the nation in the most critical period of its history, and lived long enough to see the rebellion subdued, and a whole race lifted from slavery to freedom. The fact that he was at the head of the nation when these great results were accomplished, and of his most cruel assassination, before there was time to fully appreciate the great work that had been done during his administration, will forever endear him to the American people, and hand his name down to posterity as among the best, if not the greatest, of mankind.
Another manuscript, addressed to Mrs. Gershom Jayne, the mother of the first Mrs. Trumbull, in answer to a communication from her, gives Trumbull's views on religion:
Chicago, Apr. 22, 1877.
Dear Mother: I scarcely know how to reply to your texts of Scripture and your solicitude for me. If the fervent prayers of the righteous avail, it would seem as if yours and those of my departed Julia should have their influence, and I sometimes feel as if the spirit of my dear Julia was even now not far away. That I am not what I should be is too true: I feel it and I know it, and yet I trust the influence and prayers of those who have loved me have not been entirely thrown away. I have abundant reason to be thankful to our Heavenly Father for his protection and ten thousand kindnesses to me which I know I have not deserved. How often when the way was dark before me has an unseen hand carried me safely through! And yet, whilst ever ready to acknowledge my own imperfection and impotence, I suppose I know nothing of, or at best see but as through a glass dimly, that change of heart of which the converted speak, and which comes of a faith it has not been given me to possess. I certainly hope through the Saviour's interposition for a happy hereafter, but at the same time am obliged to confess that the way is to me dark and mysterious, and by no means as discernible as it appears to some others. I rejoice that they can see it clearly and wish that I could too....
Affectionately yours,
Lyman Trumbull.
Three sons of Lyman Trumbull reached mature years: Walter, Perry, and Henry. The latter died unmarried, January 20, 1895.
Walter, the eldest, was married September, 1876, to Miss Hannah Mather Slater. Three sons were born of this union. The first of these, Lyman Trumbull, Jr., died in infancy. The second, Walter S., was born in 1879, married Miss Marjorie Skinner, of Hartford, Connecticut, in 1905, and now resides in New York City. The third, Charles L., born in 1884, married in 1910 Miss Lucy Proctor, of Peoria, Illinois, and now resides in Chicago. Walter Trumbull died October 25, 1891.
Perry Trumbull was married to Mary Caroline Peck, daughter of Ebenezer Peck, judge of the United States Court of Claims, in 1879. Four children were born to them: (1) Julia Wright, married to H. Thompson Frazer, M.D., now resides at Asheville, North Carolina; (2) Edward A., married Anna Whitby, and resides at Seattle, Washington; (3) Charles P., married, resides at Las Vegas, New Mexico; (4) Selden, resides in Chicago. Perry Trumbull died December 10, 1902.
Mrs. Mary Ingraham Trumbull, widow of Lyman Trumbull, resides at Saybrook Point, Connecticut.