CHAPTER XXXV

VARIOUS ISSUES AND OPPOSING POLICIES

MAKING A FUSS

the way

The beginning of 1875 was marked by the passage of the "Resumption Act "-a Republican measure, providing for the payment of the U. S. currency in specie to take effect four years later. Nast commemorated this important piece of legislation in two cartoons which could hardly have pleased the opposing De

The lost Traveller condemning the Post which points him mocracy, or the two Republican senators and twenty representatives who had fought the sound basis issue.

It was early in seventy-five that the Louisiana contention as to whether William Pitt Kellogg (Rep.) or John McEnery (Dem.) had been elected to govern the State became especially fierce and bitter. The question was complicated by the White League element, and reports of riot and bloodshed, with interference of the Military, under General Sheridan, aroused and excited the nation.

There had been perjury, bribery and coercion on both sides and it was the duty of Congress to decide which governor should

be recognized. But Congress, says Curtis, had been busy dodging the Credit Mobilier investigation and passing the "salary grab" and refused to do its duty. It then became the duty of President Grant to take action and he recognized the Kellogg government. In doing so he unluckily gave reasons for his actions, and the reasons were unsound. Later, he did not see fit to rescind his own claim and allowed it to stand.

Grant's recognition of the Kellogg government was not wholly approved by his followers, and for a time seemed likely to cause a split in the party. This split was especially noticeable in the pages of Harper's Weekly. The editorials were distinctly against the President's policy, while the pictures of Nast supported it throughout. It frequently happened that a cartoon depicting Sheridan or Grant as heroes appeared on a page, while on the

reverse page was printed an editorial expressing precisely the opposite opinion. The inevitable controversy, with a long letter from Curtis, followed. Nast had naturally assailed the editors who had called upon Grant to resign in favor of Wilson, caricaturing Mr. Bennett as the "Hoax" editor, Don Piatt as "Don Pirate" and Whitelaw Reid as a bandit, displaying the

Tribune of January 9 in which was printed a letter headed

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Bayonets and Legislation," signed J. H. H. and closing with this remarkable paragraph:

If he (Grant) insists on fighting it out on this line, some one will play Brutus to his Cæsar without fail, which, by the way, would be a great blessing to the country.

It was the bayonet outcry that had suggested to Nast the introduction of this weapon into his pictures; and this, in turn, brought a characteristic protest from Curtis.

My Dear Nast:

February 7, 1875.

I wish that we met oftener, and I hope that you are quite well again.

Mr. Harper showed me your note about the bayonet picture. My feeling is that the country feels that there has been rather too much bayonet, and there is nothing worse as an educator. The sign of health in a free government is jealousy of the bayonet, and it seems to me a fatal error for a party devoted to freedom to put forward the bayonet as its symbol, as if it yearned to use it. Of course the bayonet is behind all constitution and law and government, but it is the last, not the first, resort, and when it is the constant reliance there is a present end of freedom. It is true that the bayonet "would, if legal, soon put an end to disorder." It did so at Warsaw. But it puts an end to liberty also. Everything depends upon the who, and the when and the how. If we accustom the country to the use of the bayonet in peace, and for good purpose, as we say, we set the tune for the Democrats to use it, without public consternation, for a bad purpose. Besides, I don't doubt that Kellogg rests upon a fraud, and to see the army maintaining a fraud in the name of Liberty and the Republican party is to me a sin against the holy ghost. I don't say McEnery isn't a fraud, but he isn't our fraud, and as I have no doubt that a very large part of the party believes with me that Kellogg is a fraud, the policy of defending all that he does and of boosting him constantly with the bayonet is the sure end of the Republican ascendency and the beginning of the Democratic régime.

I look with great expectation to George Hoar's report. If he says that the other two committees told the truth, nobody can doubt any longer.

Don't misunderstand me. The army has a right to be in Louisiana, for it must be somewhere, but it should be used only in

the strictest conformity to law, and even if Kellogg should be recognized as Governor, the circumstances under which he became so should make the Government very wary of yielding to his request. On the first of January he had no more right to order the troops than I had, and the President doesn't think or say that he had. The kind of letter which I answer in my leader this week (coming) shows how loose and demoralized people have become. The man writes just as the tories used to write in New England a hundred years ago. My dear Nast, forgive this long sermon, and believe me always most truly yours,

An old party named Curtis.

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REPUBLICANS.

The
Nast

This would seem a long DEMOCRATS, sermon indeed, to result from one small and inoffensive looking picture of a personified and strictly non-partisan bayonet, used to illustrate an extract from the President's message maintaining that the troops in Louisiana had been the means of preserving law and order which the police alone could not have enforced.

"With reference to Louisiana, it is to be borne in mind that any attempt by the Gov ernor to use the police force of that State at this time would have undoubtedly precipitated a bloody conflict with the White League, as it did on the 14th of September. There is no doubt but that the presence of the United States troops upon the occasion prevented bloodshed and the loss of life. Both parties appear to have relied upon them as conservators of the publie peace. The first call was made by the Democrats to remove persons obnoxious to them from the legislative hall, and the second was from the Republicans to remove persons who had usurped seats in the Legislature without legal certificates entitling them to seats, and in sufficient numbers to change the majority. Nobody was disturbed by the military who had a legal

right at that time to occupy a seat in the Legislature."-Frem President GRANT's Message

But on the week following there were bayonets in plenty, for Nast gave pictorial expression to the general outcry of " Bayonet Policy!" by "letting the wild animals loose again," the cartoon being an escaped menagerie of many beasts, each with a bayonet head. Yet Curtis did not appear to see that Nast, in some measure at least, was ridiculing the very thing which he himself condemned, and felt called upon to anounce that he was responsible only for the matter found in the editorial pages. Nast would seem to have been in rather bad humor after this and retired like Achilles to his tent. It was Fletcher Harper, as usual, who pointed the path to peace and usefulness:

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CAN A MAN BE A NURSE?

U.S. G. Both parties say they love it. But

THE JUBILEE, 1875.

"Hi, Massa Peter, you can't objec' to open de gates ro' me now!"
N. B. Pare White Churches please take notice.

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I should like to have a page and two comics from you for our next paper. Don't get into a flurry, but learn to stoop to conquer.' Nobody out of Morristown can always have his own way. I'm sure you very well know that I don't.

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"How is the Baptist minister?"

Bennett letting loose "Hoax" and "Sensation," the two dogs of war," came in response to this letter, and in the same issue another shot is fired for the " Retrenched Skeleton Army."

In the general political upheaval of 1874-5, James G. Blaine, who for six years had been Speaker of the House of Representatives, was defeated by Michael C. Kerr of Indiana. Also, in the Senate there were many new faces, and among these was that of Andrew Johnson, who began in the Senate just where he had left off in the Presidency, seven years before. Nast signalized the return of Johnson with a small good-natured cartoon, entitled "The Whirligig of Time," and Johnson in return said,

"I forgive Tom Nast for all he ever did to me."

But he did not forgive Grant. He assailed the President and the administration in language which was all the more effective for being more dignified than his former utterances, but which failed to restore his lost prestige. On the last day of July, of the