MANSFIELD, Oct. 26,
1866.
Dear Brother: Your
letter of the 20th has been received. I thought, and was glad to hear, that you
had a charming trip. I saw enough of the mountain region to give me a new
estimate of its great value. In some respects I regret that I did not go with
you, but situated as I am, it was extremely fortunate that I returned as I did.
My political position ought not to be misunderstood, but unfriendly critics
took occasion of my absence in the canvass to attribute it to duplicity or
cowardice. The President's course on the Civil Rights Bill and constitutional
amendment was so unwise that I could not for a moment allow any one to suppose
that I meant with him to join a coalition with rebels and Copperheads. Besides,
Johnson was elected by a party upon professions before and after his election
and inauguration so pointedly different from his recent course that it appeared
to me a betrayal of those who trusted his professions, and therefore in the
highest sense dishonorable. But worse than all, his turning out good men—sometimes
wounded soldiers merely because they adhered to their party convictions, and
putting in men who opposed the war throughout, is simply an unmitigated outrage
that will stain the name of any man connected with such conduct. This was the
deliberate judgment of nearly every man in the Union party, and the feeling was
intensified by the President's conduct in his recent tour, when he sunk the
Presidential office to the level of a grog-house.
I do trust you will
not connect your name with this administration. You lose in every way by it.
Grant ought not to ask it, for in the common judgment it places you in
equivocal relations with him. You will have all the odium caused by
disappointment in the reorganization of the Army, and will have a most
difficult, delicate, and responsible duty to discharge, in which you can gain
no credit and may lose much. Besides, it connects you as a partisan with
Johnson—just what he wants, but what you ought to dread. What can you think of
the recent telegrams about your private letter? If you wrote a private letter,
what business had they to make it public in the most offensive way by innuendo?
Grant and you are above the ephemera of party politics, and for the sake of the
country I hope will keep so. Let Johnson take Cowan, or some one that left the
Union party with him, but my convictions are so strong that you ought not to play
“Administrator de bonis non” of Stanton, that I write thus freely. If you conclude
otherwise, I can only say I shall deeply regret it. . . .
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