Attacking Corrupt Judges—Interest in Political Questions—Advocating Arthur’s Renomination—Opposing Blaine—Supporting Cleveland—Campaign of 1884—After the Battle.

It had always been Mr. Beecher’s belief that a Christian gentleman should be a good citizen, and that being a good citizen involved some responsibility in securing and enforcing righteous laws, in electing honest men, and defeating the corrupt and unworthy. With this belief his whole life was consistent. In his early ministry we find him fighting corruption, intoxication, and slavery, the then three great public evils. Later he stood as one of the sponsors to the Republican party. In 1856 he entered with all his force in the Fremont campaign, and in 1860 stumped the Middle and New England States for Lincoln. The overthrow of slavery was his objective point—the one great public evil which at that time overtopped all others.

When, in 1864, Lincoln ran for re-election, he spared no effort to secure it.

And as he thought that whatever pertained to the duties of a Christian man might properly be discussed in the pulpit, he did not hesitate, during those war times, when the national existence was threatened, to advocate the cause of the nation and the cause of liberty from his pulpit; at one time, just before the election of 1864, devoting his evening sermon for the six preceding weeks exclusively to the nation’s cause.

We remember vividly the great throngs that packed the church for two hours before the sermon, many getting entrance through the side windows, while the street contained as many more trying in vain to even reach the open doors.

We shall never forget the thrills of excitement that ran through the audience under the influence of Mr. Beecher’s impassioned eloquence. He was thoroughly aroused, and seemed to impart much of the intensity of his own feelings to his audience. He felt that to defeat Lincoln then meant to throw away all that had been obtained by such a sacrifice of men and money.

We are not surprised, then, in 1868-69—at the time when the flood of corruption had deluged New York city, reaching even to the judges on the bench—that his voice was raised in continuous protest against that disgraceful state of affairs, calling on all good men to unite and purge the city of its corruption. The attack from Plymouth pulpit upon the corrupt judiciary, especially, was unsparing and continuous, sometimes through whole sermons and sometimes incidentally.

The times were in desperate need of some bold moral surgery, for it would be hard to imagine a worse condition in the public administration—in well nigh every department and branch—than that which existed from 1867 to 1871. The infamous Tweed had assumed virtually the dictatorship, and impudently wanted to know of the people, “What are you going to do about it?” A query which was fully answered a few years later. But the climax was reached in the almost utter corruption of the bench. There were some honest judges in New York then, but they suffered from the same imputation that, in more modern times, falls upon any man who has had the misfortune to have been elected an alderman of the same city. Friends of some of the judges were rash enough to attempt an answer through the public press to Mr. Beecher’s attack. But this only furnished the text for a series of more terrible denunciations in reply, which led to a very hasty muzzling of the rash defenders of the bench. A public discussion, even in those days of public apathy and demoralization, was the last thing that was wished by the corruptionists whom he was attacking.

To a member of the federal bench who wrote him, protesting that there were some honest judges who would be injured by Mr. Beecher’s strictures, he replied:

“... Of the fourteen (elective) judges of New York there are not over five who are not known to be corrupt—i. e., who do not employ their office for the promotion of their private interests at the expense of the public good—and hardly one of the whole fourteen who is not guilty of flagrant nepotism.

“Now, if clergymen were violating the vows of their calling in half that proportion they would have no right to complain, if some judge declared ‘the clergy were corrupt,’ and the judges have no just reason of complaint, when a clergymen declares the courts of New York to be corrupt, and that their judges ‘stink’ (asking pardon of your sensibility).

“If this allegation in so broad a form involves the innocent along with the guilty, it is because such is the law of social liability....

“If the honorable men who are alive to the purity of the judicial reputation can find no way of making a public and recognized distinction between themselves and their unworthy companions, they should not be surprised if their own names are clouded, too.

“In regard to yourself, personally, I have never heard a whisper of dishonor, ... and if you do not receive the full meed of your desert, is it not because you belong to a profession which, in New York City, is earning itself an odious reputation?

“I wish to arouse a conscience in the community, outside of courts, which will compel those judges who are pure, and who value their reputation, to manifest their repugnance at corruption. I do not mean to pause....

“I am obliged to you for the frankness of your letter, and none the less because I entirely disagree with your judgment.

“You fear that such indiscriminate censure will ruin the influence of law and courts, and demoralize society.

“Bad laws and bad judges demoralize society, and not the exposure of them. Religion was in no danger when our Master denounced the priesthood of the temple, among whom, as with judges, there were many devout and pure men. He expressed, as I do, the opinion of society outside of the profession. The exposure was a step toward reformation.”

How far his persistent denunciation stimulated and awakened the public conscience and hastened the final overthrow of that colossal reign of corruption, of course no man can say. But the attention and excitement aroused thereby indicated that his part in that strife was no insignificant one.

In his own city he took an active part in the local elections, working earnestly for the public welfare, striving to secure the election of those men who would best administer the local government.

In the earlier years of the Republican party questions vitally affecting the welfare of the nation, and even its very existence, were before the people. And on these the Republican party maintained those principles, which he believed were essential to the maintenance of the nation. He threw his entire strength and influence with that party, sparing nothing. After the war had determined the questions of secession and slavery, and the reconstruction period had past and a sound financial policy been established, he noticed with no little disturbance the insidious growth of corrupting influences in various branches of the government, and the gradually increasing prominence and influence in the party’s councils of men who did not, in his opinion, stand for the highest principles of personal and political honesty. So far as he could he sought to counteract this tendency downward. He earnestly supported the better men in the party, and tried to prevent the dangerous ones from obtaining power.

So long as the high national principles for which the party stood were in the least in danger, and were acquiring a settled permanence, he viewed these disquieting signs as morbid growths upon a body healthy in the main, and which the general strength of the body could throw off, like boils or skin eruptions on a strong man—painful and unsightly, but not dangerous to life nor difficult to cure.

But as the government became more and more settled, and as the questions which called the Republican party into existence and which followed in the reconstructive period became more and more fixed facts, he noticed with increasing disquietude that the struggles at the national election were becoming more a contest for party supremacy than for national security, where personal benefit was rapidly outstripping the country’s welfare. At each election the politicians on either side found an increasingly greater difficulty in framing a platform that should differ in any important particular from its opponent’s, save on the tariff question, regarding which Mr. Beecher was not in accord with his party. The party platforms were rapidly becoming noticeable only for the ingenuity with which the same ideas were expressed in high-sounding phrases, differing only in words.

Even as far back as 1877, in a sermon published under the title of “Past Perils and Perils of To-day,” he gave an intimation of his growing feeling, almost prophetic:

“The perils of the hour are the last that I shall mention, and they are the least. Whatever may betide the questions that are now at issue, they will result in nothing worse than simple transient mischief, moral, political, and civil. The foundations are settled. The future policy of this nation, whichever hands undertake to hold the helm, is assured. I would rather that the nation, which has been rescued by the great Republican party, and borne through all the shoals and whirls and troubles of the reconstructive period, for which they are now receiving more curses than kindnesses, and whose mistakes are multiplied before the eyes of men, while their wisdom is little thought of—I would rather that this nation should remain in their hands, if they are worthy to hold the helm; but if not, give me a hand that can hold the helm, whosesoever it is. If their light is extinguished along the coast, and they have no longer power to guide the ship of state to a safe harbor, let other lights be kindled. We cannot afford to wait for any party. The nation is more important than any party. It is not, then, any particular peril of a change of administration that is to be feared. I look upon that with interest, but still with equanimity.”

He noticed with jealous interest the men who were growing up and pushing to the front in the Republican party, studying their characters, watching their actions, noting their words to see toward what they were tending, whether good or evil, whether they would be safe leaders and wise administrators. So that when the notable campaign of 1884 began, and the conventions were called to select the candidates for the Presidency, he had very clearly defined opinions as to the fitness of the various aspirants in both parties, the result of long and careful observation.

Of course his first concern was as to the action of the Republican party. He earnestly hoped that the party would have the wisdom to renominate President Arthur.

When General Arthur was called to the Presidential chair by the sad death of General Garfield, Mr. Beecher, in common with many others, had grave misgivings as to his wisdom and ability to administer so important an office. But he developed such unexpected administrative ability, showed so much wisdom and such rare fortitude in resisting his party’s leaders, in any unwise or hurtful action, and so much discrimination in the exercise of his veto power, that he won the admiration and esteem of those who had, with doubt and solicitude, seen him enter upon his untried duties.

Every instinct of good sense, every argument of wisdom, urged his renomination; the precedents of the party gave him a second term.

With this feeling Mr. Beecher was fully in accord. So when a meeting of merchants and business men was called at the Cooper Institute, early in the summer of 1884, to give expression to this sentiment, Mr. Beecher very gladly accepted an invitation to address it.

He had a double reason in advocating General Arthur’s renomination, or rather two reasons, one positive and the other negative.

He had acquired great confidence in General Arthur, and admiration for his past administration. He believed that he was by all odds the best man in his party for the place.

He also felt sure that if General Arthur was not nominated, Mr. Blaine would be, and in Mr. Blaine he saw, as he believed, a very serious threatening danger. He was one of the men whose career he had carefully watched, and for whom he had a very pronounced distrust. Of him he said:

“For twelve years I have watched him, anxious that he should be the right man—that he is not. For more than ten years I have been afraid of him.”

Behind Mr. Blaine, as his earnest advocates, he saw the men who had been most prominent in the jobbery and corruption that had, from time to time, broken out like plague-spots in different parts of the country.

He strongly felt that his election would be regarded by the world at large as an endorsement of the idea, painfully prevalent, that all a man should aim at in politics is success, no matter how.

He deeply regretted the unwisdom of not renominating General Arthur.

When the National Convention put Mr. Blaine in nomination Mr. Beecher had three courses left open to him: either (1) support Mr. Blaine, as his party’s nominee regularly presented by the National Convention; or (2) stay at home and not vote; or (3) support the opposing candidate.

To the first his answer was:

“It is almost the one argument I hear on every hand: ‘I don’t like Blaine. He was not my choice, but then he is the regular nominee of our party.’

“Why, according to your logic, you must vote for whomsoever the convention gives you. If the convention had given you Tweed, every mother’s son of you would have dropped your tail between your legs and voted for Tweed. The logic of this is infamous.... You would not do it anywhere else, I tell you, except where the murrain of a blighted politics had fallen upon you.”

The second course had too much of prudential shirking to suit Mr. Beecher’s temperament. If the Republican nominee was an unfit man to vote for, he was an unfit man to be elected; and, unless his opponent should be as conspicuously unfit, every vote should be so cast as to affect the greatest result.

The third course alone seemed open, and when the Democratic Convention, in a sudden spasm of good sense and wisdom, nominated Governor Cleveland, Mr. Beecher’s mind was speedily made up.

With the first outbreak of that campaign of slanders Mr. Beecher was greatly disturbed. He at once requested some personal friends residing in Buffalo, and well acquainted with Governor Cleveland’s life and reputation, themselves Republicans, to make a thorough investigation of the scandalous stories in circulation, and was satisfied from their report that with the one exception, admitted, repented of, and lived down by a life of honesty and integrity, the stories were false.

Once satisfied of their falsity, he entered into the campaign with all his old-time fire and zeal.

His indignation was intensely roused at their circulation, and it only needed the timid caution of friends, that he would injure himself, by advocating the cause of a man about whom such stories were told, to arouse him to an outburst of indignant scorn.

“In all the history of politics we do not believe that lies so cruel, so base, so atrocious have ever been set in motion. The air is murky with the shameless stories of Mr. Cleveland’s private life. To our sorrow and shame we find these cockatrice’s eggs brooded and hatched by rash and credulous clergymen. They could not go to Mr. Cleveland with honest inquiry, so they opened their ears to the harlot and the drunkard. They have sought by hint, innuendo, irresponsible slander, to poison the faith of holy men, of innocent women, and they have sought to make back-biting a copt virtue, and to change the sanctuary into a salacious whispering-gallery. Is it for our sins, or for a trial of our faith, that God has permitted the plagues of Egypt to revisit us? The land swarms with vermin, frogs slime our bread-troughs, and lice crawl about our chambers.

“Do timid ministers ever reflect that the guilt of a vice or a crime measures the guilt of him who charges them falsely? Slander takes on the guilt of crime alleged. True religion does not creep through twilight passages, but is open, frank, rejoicing not in iniquity, but rejoicing in the truth, hoping all things. These vespertilian saints, whose soft bat’s wings bear them from house to house, and from town to town, in the service of Baal, the God of flies and lies, will one day creep into the holes and clefts of rocks and hide themselves....

“When in the gloomy night of my own suffering I sounded every depth of sorrow, I vowed that if God would bring the day star of hope I would never suffer brother, friend, or neighbor to go unfriended should a like serpent seek to crush him. That oath I will regard now. Because I know the bitterness of venomous lies, I will stand against infamous lies that seek to sting to death an upright man and magistrate. Men counsel me to prudence lest I stir again my own griefs. No! I will not be prudent. If I refuse to interpose a shield of well-placed confidence between Governor Cleveland and the swarm of liars that nuzzle in the mud, or sling arrows from ambush, may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth and my right hand forget its cunning! I will imitate the noble example set me by Plymouth Church in the day of my calamity. They were not ashamed of my bonds. They stood by me with God-sent loyalty. It was a heroic deed. They have set my duty before me, and I will imitate their example.”

Of course many of Mr. Beecher’s friends were greatly exercised, and lamented what they feared would be a suicidal course. Again, for the twentieth time or more, he was rushing upon self-destruction—his prestige would be destroyed, his influence lost, and untold woes would follow.

As we look back, scarce three years, we cannot but smile, in the light of subsequent events, at the great excitement and grief that existed then.

But then it was real. Every effort was made at first to win Mr. Beecher to support Mr. Blaine, and then that he should not support Governor Cleveland, and this was carried even to the extent of threats.

The excitement threatened a serious division in his church, and the danger seemed more real than on any previous occasion. Party zeal ran high.

But Mr. Beecher had acted only after careful deliberation; being satisfied as to what his duty was, no argument could sway him in the least that appealed to his fears or personal benefit.

To a clerical friend who wrote in early autumn, just before the real campaign began, he replied:

“... But, now, hear me. If I thought it my duty to speak for Cleveland and against Blaine, I would do it, though I lost all my influence, all my friends, my church, and even my own family. All considerations urged upon me which touch my feelings, hopes, interests, are repelled by me with the whole force of my nature, and I cannot treat my friends better than I do my innermost self. I will not be bribed even by love. I have but a few years left. They shall not put to shame all my anti-slavery days. I do not doubt that you love me, but if you loved me yet more you would urge me to stand firmly to my conscientious convictions and not heed ‘what men can do unto me.’ The election of Blaine will be a sign of such demoralized moral sense as I never dreamed could befall Christian men and ministers; or I should feel so, if I had not seen good men and ministers in the great anti-slavery struggle....

“I wish you would say to all my honest-hearted brethren, please let me alone! I am as old as you are, as diligent in seeking the truth, and as conscientious in deciding and acting.”

To a letter of remonstrance and advice from a dear friend, a member of his church, he wrote:

“I am sure that I receive with consideration any advice which grown-up men desire to lay before me, especially those of my church. But, on the other hand, I hope the brethren will take into consideration that I am as much interested in being right as they can possibly be, and that I have had some experience in public life, and that all that is said in the newspapers, and constituting the knowledge in which the brethren act, is also before me, and that I have a profound interest in the welfare of the nation and of the young men in it.

“That, after forty years’ hot experience of stormy times, I have been led, hitherto by God’s providence, to the right conclusion.

“I am still in God’s hands, and daily ask His guiding providence. What more?

“The alarm of friends, the party excitement of others, has no effect upon me whatever. Any new and real information I shall be grateful for, but to tell me nothing, and only to express amazement, wonder, concern, etc., and let me know how damaging to my reputation and interests it will be if I follow my judgment, and not theirs, who love me as I am sure these brethren do, indicates how far gone in political excitement they are, and how little they understand the man whom they love.

“I shall do my duty as God reveals it to me, without a moment’s consideration of its effect on me. I am ready to resign my pastorate at an hour’s notice, when I no longer have freedom to follow my convictions, or when doing so divides the church and scatters the congregation.

“I am thankful to the brethren who have written; even more so to those who have not.

“I receive ten to forty letters a day from all over the land, clean and unclean, and merely glance at them and burn them.”

To one who went to the extent of threats he replied:

“Your remarkable note of August 8th is received. I have nothing to say to the general views, except that every man should determine his duty for himself and respect the same liberty in other people.

“To your closing sentence, which contains the threat that, if I vote for Cleveland, you ‘(I) shall feel compelled to withdraw from your Church and your teachings,’ I would only say that, having profited so little by my teachings, as this arrogant sentence indicates, I should certainly advise you to change your church relations in the hope of better results.”

It was not until the campaign had gotten under full headway, and within three or four weeks of the election, that Mr. Beecher began to take any very active part in it. At first he intended to speak only in New York and Brooklyn; but as the campaign progressed he realized the importance of devoting every energy to securing the States of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. Accordingly, during the last two weeks he spoke every day save Sunday, and on some days twice, visiting the more important cities of those three States. He was very earnest that the “Independents” should not enter the Democratic party, but should organize as “Independent Republicans.”

He thought that it was time that the political managers should understand, that there was a moral sense in the community that would not submit to bad nominations; that the best way to redeem his party was by defeating unworthy nominees, and that, if this was persisted in, the politicians would soon see the necessity of deferring to an enlightened public sentiment, and putting in nomination only its best men.

He felt that the Republican party was being misled, by the same influences that had secured unwise or improper nominations, into a very dangerous path, that would ultimately lead to the utter destruction of the party itself.

In one of his earlier speeches in the campaign of 1884, he voiced that feeling when he spoke of his appearing in opposition to the organized action of the party:

“I confess, at the risk of the imputation of some immodesty, that my appearance here to-night, to antagonize the organized action of the Republican party, is itself a fact of the most significant character. Before many of you were born I was rocking the cradle of the Republican party. I fought its early battles when it was in an apparently hopeless minority. I advocated its cause, speaking day and night, at the risk of my health and of my life itself, which I counted as nothing compared with the interests of my country, when Fremont was our first notable candidate. When Mr. Lincoln became our candidate I gave all I had of time, strength, influence, and persuasion, and when his election was ascertained and efforts were made to intimidate the North, and to prevent his being inaugurated, I went up and down through this country stiffening the backs of willow-backed patriots. I faced mobs, I preached day and night in my own church, to hold the North up to its own rights and interests. When the war broke out, I sent to it the only boy I had big enough to hold a musket. And as the war went on my contribution could not be much, but such as it was I gave it—I gave it as a mother gives her breast to her child.

“And when, seeking some rest from exhausting cares and labors, I went abroad, I did not suffer the grass to grow under my feet, but, in the face of royalty and aristocracy and of great wealth in England, I upheld the justice and the rectitude of the cause for which we were all striving. And at every canvass from that day to this I have not held back health, strength, or influence. Why, then, is it that I am now opposed to the organized movement of the Republican party? That is a significant question.

“I am now opposing the party whose cradle I rocked, because I do not mean to be a pall-bearer to carry the coffin of that party to the grave. The Republican party is on its way to destruction, unless you turn the switch and run it on a side track. And by all my love of my country—and it is next to my love of my God—by all my pride in the past, I feel bound to do whatever God will inspire me to do, to stop the ruinous progress of the Republican party and to save it.

“It behooves you, therefore, not to make mere amusement of the work of this evening. I speak to you as to a jury. The case before you is not that of some trembling culprit, or some wronged citizen seeking redress. It is your whole country that is before you to-night, whose cause I am to plead—to plead as if life or death hung on the issues. I am in dead earnest. It is very natural that men working through a political party, should, by and by, come to look upon all events in the community in their relation to party welfare and party success. But I, who have had nothing to do with parties, except as moral instruments, naturally look upon their movements and purposes from the moral standpoint. What are they attempting to do for this great people? What does their success mean? How does it stand alongside the intelligence, the morality, the true religion of this people, alongside that patriotism which rests its feet on morality, but whose head stands in the spirituality which connects man with God? I study public affairs from the moral and religious standpoint, and that which is offensive to God may I never live to see the day when it may be acceptable to me and to my countrymen.

“Looking forward, as the pilot looks, what are our perils? The war is over. The great questions that agitated the community are past. You can’t bring them back. There are, however, two great dangers that betide our government. One is the danger that comes from the corrupt use of wealth; the other, that which comes from the corruption of too-long-held power. It is a common proverb, ‘An honest man can bear watching; a dishonest man needs it.’ This is just as true of politics as of common procedure. This is the age of enterprise, of production, of commerce—of money. Russia, Austria, and France failed in their greatest recent wars and enterprises because those countries were honeycombed with official corruption. We are in danger from the same cause.”

He regarded the introduction of the moral element into politics as an event of the greatest importance.

Politics had become so eminently “practical” that any one who should suggest the wisdom, or even propriety, of basing political action on any moral principle, was in danger of being laughed at as a “crank,” “dude,” or “political pharisee.”

And when in the birth of the Prohibition party, and the sudden uprising of the Independent Republicans, he saw the attempt to found practical politics upon a purely moral foundation, he hailed them both as among the most hopeful signs of the times.

Writing of these two movements, he said:

“Men of moral aims have been ruled out as impracticables, as ignorant of real politics, as enthusiasts and sentimentalists, as idealists and doctrinaires. This has been very true, and they have hitherto hung on the border of parties like a fringe of no substance or use. But the development of the party of Prohibitionists and of Independent Republicans is a disclosure, it seems to me, of a great providential development in politics, and that there is to be hereafter a place found for the moral elements in the politics of our country!

“I have spoken of the two formative elements as likely to coalesce. For, though there be thousands who cannot become technical prohibitionists, yet they will help them to create a higher moral sentiment on the subject of temperance.”

The results of the election and the part that Mr. Beecher took therein have become history, and need not be further detailed.

Mr. Beecher’s action was not, as has been erroneously suggested, caused by any sudden impulse. On the contrary, it was the result of careful and earnest deliberation, and was not taken until his mind was fully made up, and it retained the approval of his later judgment, after the heat and excitement of the contest had died out.

In his Thanksgiving sermons, it was his custom to review to some extent the political as well as material growth of the country, to find in both whatever there might be fit for thanksgiving.

On Thanksgiving, 1884, he, at first, intended to review the course of the events of the campaign just completed, and commenced a sermon for that purpose. After writing a part, he changed his plans and prepared another, in which he reviewed the reconstruction of the country since the war. From this we have quoted in a previous chapter.

The manuscript of his unfinished sermon we have, and, though it is a fragment only, it will be of value as showing his more sober judgment, reviewing in retrospect the campaign just past and his part therein.

“During the great political campaign which has just terminated, I have scrupulously refrained from introducing into the pulpit, or into the social meetings of this church, a word that, directly or indirectly, had any bearing upon politics.

“Not that I had not the right, but because it was not expedient. Out of the bounds of the church I felt called to take an active part.

“I am not willing that you should be ignorant of my inmost motives, and that you should have spread out before you the whole map of affairs as looked at from my standpoint. Many of you, steadfast friends, will not agree with my theory and judgment of my duty; but you will acquit me of apostasy, or of inconsistency, and perhaps will even admit that, if my view of the whole condition of national affairs was correct, my action and career have been in one direction for forty years, and that the very influences which led me to help in the formation of the Republican party, to accept its hardships, its perils, its reproaches, in all the successive periods of its development, have at this late day led me to dissent from its aims and policy. I have not left the party. I am standing on the very ground over which the battles have raged, when I have lost good repute and suffered endless revilings.

“No, I have left nothing. If there has been any change, it is not in me. I would not take one step away from those great moral principles which have been the strength of this great historic party.

“Others may think that I have mistaken the reality of affairs, and been misled by will-o’-wisp lights.

“But, taking all counsel of all sobriety and deliberation, every true man must follow his own ripe judgment. I have followed mine, and, looking back over the canvass, I should be conceited indeed if I said that I had been perfect, had carried a cool intensity always, said nothing too severely. Accepting my own limitations, I nevertheless look back upon the past few months as worthy to be associated with the months and years of half a century of public labor, and indeed, if you will forgive the conceit, I regard this service as the very blossom of my life.

“These words I speak to my friends and to my church. I owe no apology or explanation to the public. But to the great multitude of members of the Church and society, with whom so much of my life has been spent, whose friendship and love I have had, whose unity of heart and soul around me has been the source of so much gladness and strength; to you, fathers, mothers, and friends of every name—to you, laying aside my too sensitive pride and my somewhat fierce sense of personal independence, I shall to-day unbosom myself, and shall try to give you a bird’s-eye view of the condition of the United States at this hour, and my understanding of what it is that God’s providence is calling us to.

“I shall enumerate, point by point, the themes for thanksgiving to-day:

“To-day is waging a great battle between Optimism and Pessimism. What is Optimism? That happy temperament which leads one to see all things in a hopeful light and in a joyful courage.

“What is Pessimism? It is that structure of mind which inclines one to see all events in a sad and discouraging way. Either disposition carried to its farthest limit is unphilosophical. Good is not all good; bad is not all bad. Good and evil are combined, like lights and shadows in art—sometimes, as in Rembrandt, voluminous darkness nursing a small spot of light; sometimes all light and hardly enough dark to cast a shadow.

“In looking at our own day and our own country there is both light and shadow. There are reasons for criticism and regret, but more for gladness and thanksgiving.

“Great excitements in monarchical governments are great dangers. When the government takes care of the people, the people feel little need of caring for themselves. When the people, by the genius of their institutions, are to look out for themselves, they learn how, like lofty trees, to let violent winds sway all their branches without disturbing the root. That is anchored fast.

“The roaring anger of the wind and the sharp cry of anguish in the resisting branches soon pass and die away, and the tree, unclasped by the demon Storm, comes back to peace, only a few leaves lost, a few branches twisted.

“Three weeks ago a foreigner, beholding the superlative excitement of the whole community, East, North, West, and South, would have thought that there could never be peace more. Newspapers flew like unquenchable arrows every whither, business was almost forgotten, the streets were crowded processions, meetings were convoked, and men of every profession, arguing, appealing, inflamed the people. Friends let go each other’s hands, families were divided for a time. Words ran high, every truth was carried to the utmost limit of violence. A wordy prophesy filled the land, of good or of evil. The lawyer forgot his brief, the artist his Æsthetic dream, the merchant his bargains, the judge the plushy decorum of the bench. Refined ministers of the Gospel, loving elegant retiracy, burst forth in interviews. Venerable pastors presided at wild political demonstrations, and some even went forth speaking up and down the land, like Saul of old, in prophesying fury. Hundreds of honored and beloved ministers marched in full panoply of zeal, like Balaam of old, to curse....

“Three weeks have passed! It is all gone. No more banners, lanterns, transparencies, or shouts of men. The lamps are out, the men gone home to work, trades resumed, the lawyer to the courts, the clergyman to his pulpit. The anger, the scare, the grief of surprise that everybody had, that everybody should have said or done what everybody did, is dying out, the sore places are healing, friends are reaching out kindly hands again.

“The storm that darkened the heavens, the turbulent sea that thundered on the shore, have resumed their peaceful mien. The only mourners are they who sought and found not, who knocked and unto whom it was not opened. Even they will ere long cool their anger, shorten their sighs, and, like a weary child in its mother’s lap, hide all its grief in sleep.”

Mr. Beecher was very much gratified, not only at the election of Mr. Cleveland, for whom he had grown to feel a strong personal friendship, and in whose administration, despite the occasional mistakes that proved even the President to be subject to the fallibilities of mankind, he found so much of moral courage, firmness, and honest good sense to admire and approve, but in addition to these reasons, he felt that an administration in which the South should be permitted to have a part, meant the reuniting of the country in fact as well as in name, and a fitting sequel to that reconstruction which he had so earnestly advocated nearly twenty years before. He had earnestly prayed that he might see the day when our country should be one nation, without the lines of a bitter sectionalism, dividing North from South or East from West; and in his last year expressed the great satisfaction he felt in the part he had been permitted to play in bringing about such a result.