COLUMBUS, OHIO, January 13, 1868.
I now send you another copy of the inaugural containing a fourth idea. I found our Democrats foolish. enough to be repealing Ohio's assent to the Fourteenth Amendment. So I put in some words on that head. — All well.
I see no real occasion for trouble with Johnson. The great error of his life was in not acquiescing in and supporting the 14th Amendment of the Constitution in the Thirty-ninth Congress. This he could easily have carried. It referred the suffrage question to each State, and if adopted long ago the whole controversy would have culminated; or if further opposed by the extreme Radicals, they would have been easily beaten. Now I see nothing short of universal suffrage and universal amnesty as the basis. When you come on, I suggest that you give out that you go on to make your annual report and settle Indian affairs. Give us notice when you will be on, and come directly to my house, where we will make you one of the family.
Grant, I think, is inevitably a candidate. He allows himself to drift into a position where he can't decline if he would, and I feel sure he don't want to decline. My judgment is that Chase is better for the country and for Grant himself, but I will not quarrel with what I cannot control.
JOHN SHERMAN.
* * * * * * * * * *
On the whole I am
not sorry that your mission failed, since the French are leaving; my sympathies
are rather with Maximilian. The usual factions of Ortega and Juarez will divide
the native population, while Maximilian can have the support of the clergy and
property. They are a miserable set, and we ought to keep away from them. Here
political strife is hushed, and the South have two months more in which to
accept the constitutional amendment.1 What folly they exhibit! To me
Johnson and the old encrusted politicians who view everything in the light of
thirty years ago seem like blind guides. After the 4th of March they will rally
to the amendment, and it will then be too late.
1 The 14th amendment, then pending before the
State Legislatures.
SOURCE: Rachel
Sherman Thorndike, Editor, The Sherman Letters: Correspondence Between
General and Senator Sherman from 1837 to 1891, p. 286
