Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 2 | Page 3

law of the land; exclude the great mass of their fellow- citizens from the protection of the Constitution; declare themselves emancipated from the obligations which the Constitution pronounces to be supreme over them and over their laws; arrogate to themselves all the prerogatives of independent power; rescind the acts of cession of the public property; occupy the public offices; seize the fortresses of the United States confided to the faith of the people among whom they were placed; embezzle the public arms concentrated there for the defence of the United States; array thousands of men in arms against the United States; and actually wage war on the Union by besieging two of their fortresses and firing on a vessel bearing, under the flag of the United States, reinforcements and provisions for one of them. The very boundaries of right and wrong seem obliterated when we see a Cabinet minister engaged for months in deliberately changing the distribution of public arms to places in the hands of those about to resist our public authority, so as to place within their grasp means of waging war against the United States greater than they ever used against a foreign foe; and another Cabinet minister, still holding his commission under the authority of the United States, still a confidential adviser of the President, and bound by his oath to support the Constitution of the United States, himself a commissioner from his own State to another of the United States for the purpose of organizing and extending another part of the same great scheme of rebellion; and the doom of the Republic seems sealed when the President, surrounded by such ministers, permits, without rebuke, the Government to be betrayed, neglects the solemn warning of the first solider of the age, till almost every fort is a prey to domestic treason, and accepts assurances of peace in his time at the expense of leaving the national honor unguarded. His message gives aid and comfort to the enemies of the Union, by avowing his inability to maintain its integrity; and, paralyzed and stupefied, he stands amid the crash of the falling Republic, still muttering, 'Not in my time, not in my time; after me the deluge!'"
Soon after Mr. Colfax's election as speaker of the Thirty-eighth Congress, I met him in a restaurant. He expressed surprise that he had not heard from me in regard to a place upon a committee. I said that the subject did not occupy my thoughts--that I had work enough whether I was upon a committee or not. He expressed himself as disturbed by the fact that he could not give me as good a place as he wished to give me. I tried to relieve his mind upon that point. In all my legislative experience I never made any suggestion as to committee work. Mr. Colfax placed me upon the Judiciary Committee, which, in the end, was the best place to which I could have been assigned.
Mr. Colfax was made of consequence in the country by the newspapers, and he was ruined by his timidity. If he had admitted that he was an owner of stock in the Credit Mobilier Company, not much could have been made against him. His denials and explanations, which were either false or disingenuous, and his final admission of a fact which implied that he had been in the receipt of a quarterly payment from a post- office contractor, completed his ruin. There was a time when the country over-estimated his ability. He was a genial, kindly man, with social qualities and an abundance of information in reference to men in the United States and to recent and passing politics. He had newspaper knowledge and aptitude for gathering what may be called information as distinguished from learning. He was a victim to two passions or purposes in life, that are in a degree inconsistent--public life and money-making. Instances there have been of success, but I have never known a case where a public man has not suffered in reputation by the knowledge that he had accumulated a fortune while he was engaged in the public service. As a speaker of the House, Colfax was agreeable and popular, but he lacked in discipline. His rule was lax, and there can be no doubt that from the commencement of his administration there had been a decline in what may be termed the morale of the House. Something of its reputation for dignity and decorum had been lost.
A young man from New York, Mr. Chanler, made a speech in the Thirty- eighth or Thirty-ninth Congress, which seemed to favor the Confederacy. This phase of his speech was due to the fact that he was a transcendental State Rights advocate. He did not believe in secession, as a wise and proper