Franklin County: "The Political Struggle of 1865," by A. K. McClure, 1905
Summary: McClure details the partisan politicking and infighting of state politics in 1865.
Chambersburg's Midnight Jubilee over the Surrender of Lee-The Long Strained Border People Had Peace at Last-Peculiar Political Conditions-How Cameron Lost His Candidate for Auditor General by His Struggle to Obtain Control of the Party Organization-Senator Heistand Defeated When He Expected a Unanimous Nomination-Hartranft Suddenly Forced to the Front-The Organization for Chairmanship of the Republican State Committee Taken from the President of the Convention by Resolution of Stevens-A Sluggish Battle Resulting in the Success of the Republican Ticket.
THE darkest hour is, sometimes just before the break of day, and the people of smitten Chambersburg realized the truth of the adage within a week or ten days after the adjournment of the Legislature that had refused them any measure of relief, leaving them to struggle with despair. About midnight on the 9th of April, 1865, when the sorely-depressed people of Chambersburg were at rest, many of them in hastily-improvised homes, the bell of the courthouse that had been hastily rebuilt awaked the community from its slumbers as it rang out its loudest tones. The ringing was continued for a considerable time, and in a little while the bells of churches, which had escaped the torch of the vandal, joined in the welcome music. It was known to all that there was then no immediate danger of a raid from the enemy, and all understood that some cheerful news had come to the desolated town.
I was waked from sleep in the little cottage formerly occupied by a colored house servant, that Captain Smith, in his haste, had neglected to burn. My first impression was that shared by nearly all when the first toll of the bell was heard, that some new danger threatened, but very little reflection made me understand that there could be no immediate peril to the community, and that the bells were ringing out the proclamation of some achievement toward peace. After a hurried and imperfect toilet I hastened toward the town and first heard the echo of cheers from the center of the village, and as I approached nearer I was finally enabled to distinguish the shouts which mingled with the cheers of the people, announcing that Lee had surrendered. The trained lightning had flashed the same message from Eastern to Western sea, and there was universal rejoicing throughout the entire loyal brotherhood of people, but in no one community was the news so profoundly appreciated, or so wildly welcomed, as in Chambersburg and its beautiful and bountiful surroundings on the border.
For four long years the people of Franklin County had been under the severe strain of border warfare. They had been raided in 1862 by Stuart, in 1863 by Jenkins, in 1864 by McCausland, who had levelled Chambersburg to ashes, and in addition Lee's army occupied the county for some days before the battle of Gettysburg. There was no time during those four years when Moseby, or any like commander of Southern raiders, could not have penetrated even as far north as Chambersburg in a single night, excepting only in the dead of winter. The people had not only suffered from actual raids, but by the appropriation of property alike by Union and Southern soldiers, and there was rarely a month during any of the four summers when they were not under the exhausting strain of apprehension of raids or invasion from the South. To these long-suffering people, who had not only given their full quota of their fathers and sons to join in the flame of battle for the Union, but had suffered constant waste and terrible anxiety, the surrender of Lee meant more than peace to the nation, and the final triumph of the Union cause; it meant to them peace in their homes, protection against robbery, and safety in the pursuit of their daily avocations.
I have many times seen aggregations of people express enthusiastic delight, but never before nor since have I witnessed a mass of people express such whole-souled gratification. Not only those who rent the air with their cheers, and the many enthusiasts who shook hands and embraced each other in the fervor of their joy, but there were other hundreds of men and women whose mute but expressive eloquence told the story that at last relief had come to the long-fretted and plundered people. To them it was not only peace to State and Nation, but it was rest in the homes which had long been racked by constant apprehension. All who were able to leave their beds were on the street, and remained there until the light of another day broke in the east as the sun arose to shine upon the liberated people.
The surrender of Lee that was soon followed by the surrender of Johnston, and later by every organized Confederate command in the field, at once brought the people of the North to face the new grave problems which confronted them. The North had overthrown the military power of the Confederacy, and the Confederacy itself was hopelessly destroyed, with its chief executive a prisoner at Fortress Monroe. General Grant, with all his heroic record, exhibited the highest heroism of his life when he dictated the generous terms on which the surrender of Lee's army was accepted. He was severely criticised by the more radical element of the Republican party, but the people of the country very soon learned to appreciate how grandly Grant had vindicated himself, and how, in defiance of well-known views of the cabinet, he had opened the door wide for the return of peace by paroling General Lee and all the officers of his army, under the solemn assurance that they could return to their homes and remain unmolested as long as they obeyed the laws of the government in force in their respective localities.
This condition, for which Grant was alone responsible, made it impossible for the government, without violating its solemnly plighted faith, to persecute or punish any of the officers in Lee's army; and some months later, when President Johnson, in the floodtide of his vindictive assaults upon the South after he became President, decided to inflict some punishment upon Lee and other officers, Grant, then the General of the army, notified the President that he would be guilty of an act of dishonor in violating any of the terms of Lee's surrender, and stated distinctly that if the President attempted it the General could no longer, with self-respect, hold a commission in the army of the United States. That position assumed by General Grant, and that alone, saved Johnson from adding to his many other follies the prosecution of Lee's paroled officers and other Confederate generals. While all in the North had been for several years discussing the basis of peace with little agreement of public sentiment, Grant solved the problem himself by teaching the Nation that the way to peace was by the highest measure of magnanimity to the vanquished. I honor Grant more for what he did at Appomattox than for any military achievement of his life. He not only heroically blazed the way to peace, but his first thought after signing the surrender with Lee, and voluntarily issuing an order for all of Lee's exhausted heroes to be bountifully fed from the Union commissary stores, made him hurriedly start to Washington to take the promptest measures for the reduction of the army to halt the appalling expenses of the war.
With all the enormous taxes gathered from the people to support the war; with the lavish expenditure for bounties that loaded not only cities and counties but townships with enormous debt, the debt of the nation was over two billions, and there were few, indeed, at that day who were hopeful that the National credit could be maintained. The government bonds were payable in coin, and silver was at a premium over gold, while in all the transactions of every-day life among the people the currency of the nation was accepted as a legal tender enforced by law, when a dollar of the lawful money of the country did not purchase two-thirds thirds of its face value in the necessaries of life. Had President Johnson at once planted himself on a peace platform with Grant after he had waded into the Presidency through the tears of a bereaved nation, there would have been less disturbance and uncertainty in the North, but he started out to pursue the leading men of the South most vindictively. He proclaimed Davis and others as assassins of President Lincoln, and his whole policy seemed to have but one aim and that to plunge the two sections, at the close of the war, into an aftermath of even more fiendish hatred and brutality than war itself had given. Fortunately, he changed his attitude before the summer ended, but, like the violently-swung pendulum that had gone beyond its normal point, the swing of vengeance naturally exceeded the normal point of generous peace in its rebound.
These conditions brought the Republican leaders of Pennsylvania to a sober realization of the new duties which had come upon the party. We had a National administration that was ostensibly Republican, and yet the new President had already taken two positions on the question of adjustment with the South so violently extreme and so violently opposing each other that the party was placed in a very embarrassing condition when the State convention of 1865 met at Harrisburg to nominate candidates for auditor general and surveyor general. The incumbents of those offices were Democrats, having been elected in the Republican break of 1862, caused chiefly by the Emancipation Proclamation, but neither Auditor General Slenker nor Surveyor General Barr was a candidate for renomination. The Democrats were greatly encouraged by the varying radical policies of the President, and at the time their convention met they were hopeful, and a with good reason, that Johnson would gradually, and at an early day, develop into a full-fledged Democratic President. They placed at the head of their ticket for auditor general the gallant Democratic soldier, General Davis, of Doylestown, who was not only distinguished as a soldier, but a gentleman of the highest character and admirable personal qualities. For surveyor general they nominated John Linton, of Cambria, who had been a Whig in the earlier days, and unusually strong in the interior of the State, and they made an earnest battle; but public sentiment was easily aroused against placing the Democrats in power to make peace after four years of war, whose policy they had so generally opposed, and General Davis was defeated by over 20,000.
The Republicans had every indication of a very peaceful convention. John A. Heistand, of Lancaster, then editor of one of the leading inland Republican papers of the State, who had served in both house and senate, was a candidate for auditor general. He was ranked as a supporter of General Cameron, but while he faithfully followed Cameron in every emergency that called for a rally of Cameron's friends, he maintained very friendly relations with Governor Curtin, and nearly or quite all the men around him. He knew that the friends of Curtin would be likely to control the convention, and he personally visited Curtin and others closely connected with him and appealed to them to assent to his nomination for auditor general and have the party with a united front and a candidate who would not be presented to the people by a faction. He was a jolly, genial fellow, was personally liked by all who knew him, and some time before the meeting of the convention Curtin and his people had all assented to the nomination of Heistand for auditor general.
The convention was composed of a number of the ablest of the Republican leaders, including Thaddeus Stevens, who had consented to come as a delegate for Heistand; General Todd, of Carlisle, who was one of the ablest and boldest of leaders in the fight; John Cessna, of Bedford, ex-Democratic speaker, with many others of much more than ordinary ability and influence. The convention was known to have a decided majority of delegates who were friends of Curtin, but as there was to be no contest on the nomination of Heistand, a follower of Cameron, for auditor general, it was accepted all around that there was little or nothing to do beyond the formality of making nominations. The morning session of the convention was devoted to the appointment of committees for permanent organization, resolutions, etc., and after a brief session adjourned to meet in the afternoon.
Before the meeting of the afternoon session it became whispered around that Cameron, not content with getting the head of the ticket from the Curtin convention, had manipulated the committee on permanent organization by compelling Heistand to give his two members of the committee from Lancaster County to the Cameron side, and thus nominate Johnson, a prominent and aggressive friend of Cameron, for president of the convention. Inquiry was at once made, and we ascertained that Cameron had forced Heistand to transfer the committeemen from his own county against their wishes to the Cameron candidate for president, and a murmur of indignation swelled up at once throughout the whole Curtin ranks, as Cessna was expected to be named without a contest. A hasty conference was called in which Stevens participated, as he felt that the transfer of the committeemen from his own county under Cameron's order was an outrage not to be pardoned, and we decided that instead of defeating the Cameron candidate for president of the convention, as we could have done, we would give him a unanimous election, and then when he entered the chair, and was presumably in possession of the power of the convention, we would publicly impale him.
When Heistand was reproached for his perfidy to the Curtin people, he could do no more nor less than to admit that Cameron had demanded it of him, and in less than an hour the convention that was to nominate Heistand for auditor general unanimously, organized to defeat him, and then to strip the president of the convention of his power to appoint the chairman of the State committee. Stevens said that he would obey his instructions and vote for the nomination of Heistand, but insisted that he had committed an outrage that should be resented, and he participated in the conference that decided who should be presented to defeat Heistand, and how it should be done. Cameron's purpose in forcing Heistand to betray his Curtin friends in the selection of the president of the convention was to be able to name the chairman of the State committee, either for himself or for some one who would be distinctly in his interest, and with a Cameron man at the head of the ticket, a Cameron man president of the convention, and a Cameron man chairman of the State committee, he would present the appearance of omnipotence in the State.
I was one of three men assigned to the duty of conferring with General Hartranft, who was present at the convention, but not a delegate, to ask him to accept a nomination for auditor general. I might here say that at that time General Hartranft was regarded by Curtin and his friends as their candidate for Governor the following year, 1866, and Hartranft, of course, had no thought of being auditor general, and reluctantly accepted it; but as the men who urged him to accept were the men upon whom he depended for the gubernatorial nomination, he finally yielded to their importunities, and agreed that his name should be presented to the convention if we thought it best to do so.
It was known that the Democrats would present General Davis, a distinguished soldier, for the office, and it was arranged that General Todd, who had a good military record, and who was a most eloquent champion of any cause he supported, should present the name of Hartranft to the convention, and demand his nomination as a matter of justice to the gallant soldiers of Pennsylvania. John Cessna, who had been a Democrat, legislator and speaker of the house, and who had been slaughtered by Heistand, followed Todd in support of the soldier candidate, and several other able like appeals were made; and when the first ballot was footed up, Heistand was dumfounded to discover that he was largely defeated by Hartranft, who had been sprung upon the convention just on the spur of the moment. The convention made its record consistent by nominating General J. M. Campbell, another gallant soldier, for surveyor general, thus presenting a solid soldier ticket of candidates exceptionally strong.
After the nominations had been made the work of the convention was about to conclude, and Stevens rose in his place and offered a resolution that John Cessna be appointed chairman of the Republican State committee. The Cameron leaders at once saw that they had not only defeated themselves in the convention for auditor general, but that their control of the president of the body was to bring them nothing but humiliation. They vainly urged that it was the immemorial custom of the party to have the president of the convention appoint the chairman of the State committee in consultation with the candidates on the State ticket, but it was answered that the president of the convention of 1864 had appointed the chairman of the State committee against the expressed wishes of nearly three-fourths of the members of the body. It was a hopeless fight for the already-defeated supporters of Cameron, and the resolution was carried by a decided majority. Cameron not only thus lost his candidate for auditor general, who would have been accepted by the Curtin people, but he had an aggressive anti-Cameron man placed at the head of the organization, instead of one reasonably acceptable to both sides, as would have been done if Heistand had not been compelled to violate his faith with his Curtin friends and defeat himself.
It was a most unexpected and humiliating defeat for Heistand, but he realized that he had been forced wantonly to provoke the battle that unhorsed him. He was popular with his people, who later sent him to Congress for two terms, and closed his official career as naval officer of Philadelphia, a position with liberal salary and little or nothing to do. He enjoyed the navy office immensely, and frequently gave high encomiums to the genius of Alexander Hamilton, who had created one honorable and lucrative office with limited duties, which could be performed wholly by assistants. Like many others, as age grew upon him he did not appreciate the celerity with which business conditions were advancing about him, and that journalism was a most exacting mistress, and he went on in the good old quiet way until others outstripped him in his calling. Then broken health came; his life-work was finished, and green memories come back to many in the gentle whispers from the tomb.
Bibliographic Information: Source copy consulted: Old Time Notes of Pennsylvania, Vol. II, Ch. LXVIII, p. 181-191
