-
9: A Surprising Death, an Unexpected Appointment
- University of New Mexico Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
85 Chap ter nine A Surprising Death, an Unexpected Appointment Ross himself, had recommended the appointment of another man, but I knew him to be an honest, straightforward soldier of sterling worth and unflinching courage; and on that account he was appointed. I had seen him on the field of battle amid shot and shell that tried men’s souls, and I knew he could be trusted. —Samuel Crawford, Kansas in the Sixties| June and July 1866 were crucial months both in Washington and in Kansas. On June 13 the extraordinary Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution was passed and sent to all states, including all seceded states, for ratification. It secured the right of citizenship, both state and national, to all persons either born in the United States or legally naturalized; it guaranteed the right of all citizens to life, liberty, and property; it guaranteed all citizens the right of due process and equal protection under the law. While amendments to the Constitution are strictly a matter between the United States Congress and the states, Andrew Johnson nonetheless expressed his disapproval of the Fourteenth Amendment. Citing diminished power of states, Johnson’s objection to the amendment likely contributed to a delay in ratification and further deepened the chasm between the president and the Republican delegations in Congress. In Kansas, with its heavy concentration of Radical Republicans, the impeachment of Johnson had started to be a topic of conversation along with the disapproval of Senator Jim Lane’s support of the president’s veto of the Civil Rights bill. The Lawrence meeting led by Edmund Ross may have been the most prominent of meetings censuring Lane, since Lawrence was Lane’s hometown, but openly expressed disappointment in Lane’s vote 86 < chapter nine was heard throughout Kansas. To deal with the growing negative sentiment , Lane returned to Kansas on June 16, 1866.1 He gave a speech in the state capital on June 18 and began his trip back to Washington on June 20. Given the difficulty involved in traveling so far, Lane’s stay was oddly short. Moreover, he was making the trip to Kansas against the advice of physicians . He had complained of dizziness and numbness for several months. When he reached St. Louis on his return trip on June 22, his condition worsened, and a doctor was summoned to the Lindell Hotel to examine him. The St. Louis Post Dispatch reported that the doctor “found him in bed complaining of dizziness, extreme depression of spirits, sinking sensations, numbness of the limbs after sleeping, intense nervousness and loss of sleep. The patient was also timid, and expressed himself as afraid to be alone.” Lane, in fact, would not permit himself to be left alone, and his private secretary , Captain Williams, stayed with him constantly.2 Lane’s wife, herself ill in Lawrence and unable to travel to St. Louis to be with him, asked that Lane be brought back to Lawrence. For the return trip Lane insisted that the doctor accompany him and Williams. On the trip Lane complained that he was losing his mind and asked to be taken to an insane asylum. He complained about the bitter denunciations from his former friends who did not understand him. When they reached Leavenworth, Lane was met by a group of his supporters but was unable or unwilling to talk to them. His brother-in-law, General McCall, brought a carriage to take Lane to his home two miles from town. The doctor reported that Lane was melancholic and that he had related the story of how his brother in Florida had some years before committed suicide.3 On July 1 Lane and McCall took a carriage ride, probably part of Lane’s convalescent routine. When they reached the gate of the farmhouse on their return, McCall stepped down to open the gate. He turned when he heard Lane—who apparently had jumped from the carriage—say goodbye. Before McCall could react, Jim Lane shot himself.4 He remained alive for ten days. One report had it that Lane shot himself in the mouth, but a report by John Speer, who visited with his friend on July 8, had Lane in grave condition but also eating with relish and both recognizing and responding to visitors.5 On July 10 Speer reported that Lane’s room was crowded with friends. The same report expressed disgust with a story sent to the New York Tribune from Washington on July 2 that Speer believed misrepresented the facts leading to Lane’s suicide attempt. Speer certainly hated the story that made Lane appear to be friendless. Ross, too, could not have been pleased by the [44.211.91.23] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 07:27 GMT) A Surprising Death, an Unexpected Disappointment = 87 implications of the story, because he was the highest-profile critic of Lane. Nevertheless, the article was reprinted in the Kansas Tribune. The report certainly was over the top, badly written and intended to sensationalize the suicide attempt, beginning with a report of Lane’s return to Lawrence in June. “His first appearance on the streets of Lawrence shocked him with a sense of terrible error. In a town where he had once walked a Monarch, no man spoke to him. Old friends passed him on the sidewalk without recognition.”6 The story was meant to suggest that the entire reason for Lane taking his own life was total rejection by friends and constituents. Censure by his fellow Kansans may have been a trigger, but the underlying cause of his suicide was either seriously deep, clinical depression or possibly something biological such as tumor. Biographer Lloyd Lewis believed that “with the end of the Civil War, he saw his whole world gone, his era dead, his age vanished.”7 Lane’s adult life had been defined by military campaigns. He had fought in the Mexican War, organized and commanded the Free-State Army in Kansas, and been made a general in the Civil War by Abraham Lincoln, with whom he shared a close relationship. Lane had even convinced Lincoln that he should have a company of men stationed in the White House for his protection and organized the Frontier Guard, a contingent of men from Kansas who literally occupied the East Room of the White House to protect the president. As leader of the Frontier Guard, Lane had frequent close contact with Lincoln, and no doubt Lincoln’s assassination also contributed to Lane’s depressed state of mind. Lane’s family wanted people to know that friends had not abandoned him, that he had many friends who were devoted to him and stood by him without question. However, at the very least, there undoubtedly were some Kansans who read the New York Tribune dispatch and believed without question that it was rejection by people like Ross that caused Lane to take his own life. There were others who read it and had their doubts about its veracity but perhaps wondered if it held a degree of truth. In Lawrence, where Lane had so many close friends, Ross must have been castigated by some who believed he contributed to Lane’s despondency and death. As for the relationship between Ross and Speer, it must have been decidedly cool. Just as Lane was drawn to the power Lincoln had as president , so too was Speer drawn to Lane for his magnetic personality and status as a United States senator. Lane could charm people in a way that few people could and often was compared to Lincoln as a persuasive speaker. 88 < chapter nine Lewis says that “he had what all great artists have—the power to make the thing they imagine and conceive pass out from themselves and possess other minds. Again and again it is recorded that Jim Lane’s enemies feared to meet him lest they be charmed out of their principles.”8 It seems likely that Speer reveled in his friendship with the powerful Lane and could not help but place some of the blame for his death on Edmund Ross. At the same time, another part of him reveled in the thought that he would be the one to replace Lane in Washington—especially when, after Lane’s death, Mrs. Lane asked the governor to name Speer as her husband’s replacement.9 The day following the New York Tribune article reprint, July 11, 1866, Lane died at his brother-in-law’s farm near Leavenworth with family membersandfriends ,includingJohnSpeer,nearby.Aneditorial,almostcertainly written by Ross and preceded by the text of Speer’s wire from Leavenworth, justifiably lauded Lane’s career. There had been no more widely recognized leader in Kansas since its earliest days as a territory. Lane was a natural leader highly regarded even by his strongest critics, including Ross, whose thoughts must have gone back to that day ten years before when Lane met Ross’s wagon train as it crossed into the Kansas Territory. “It was but natural that he should have evoked criticisms and antagonisms peculiar to the stirring times during which he occupied his most exalted position, but we believe his bitterest enemies are with general accord ready to lay aside their animosities, and bury them in the grave of the distinguished Senator.”10 With Jim Lane’s death, it fell to Governor Samuel Crawford to appoint a replacement. This was no small problem for Crawford, who would be seeking another term as governor and facing a state Republican Party convention within a few months. In selecting a replacement for Lane he had to avoid, as much as possible, offending the diverse factions within the party. An article in the Kansas Historical Quarterly in 1962 superbly explores the dilemma for Crawford. In addition to a number of unlikely candidates, there were four prominent men seeking the job: James G. Blunt, who was Crawford’s army commander; Jim Lane’s friend, and Ross’s partner, John Speer; the Reverend H. D. Fisher, a highly regarded pioneer Kansas preacher and politician; and former governor Thomas Carney. On July 17 Crawford apparently discussed the appointment with John Speer and Speer’s son-inlaw C. W. Adams and, without making an immediate commitment, may have led them to believe that Speer would be his choice when the announcement was made within days.11 The governor also asked Ross to come to Topeka on July 19. Ross, according to Lillian Leis, was “thinking that as [44.211.91.23] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 07:27 GMT) A Surprising Death, an Unexpected Disappointment = 89 Mr. Speer’s associate in the newspaper, the Governor wished to question him in regard to the Speer appointment.”12 Leis agreed that Mrs. Lane had recommended John Speer to replace her husband. It is not hard to imagine that Ross and Speer discussed, in advance, Ross’s trip to the capital. Ross and Speer were close in their political views, and other than their disagreement about censuring Lane in April, they may have still been on reasonable terms, especially since Speer would now really need Ross to run the Tribune while he was off to Washington. When Ross reached the governor’s office in Topeka, he “began at once to advance Speer’s interest,” but, as the governor years later told Leis, her father “apparently had no idea I wanted him and not Speer.”13 The selection of Ross made political sense for Crawford, since nearly all Kansans who knew him thought he was a good choice. Historian Mark Plummer pointed out that Ross was acceptable to Radical Republicans because he was a high-profile critic of President Johnson; his fellow senator Samuel Pomeroy and his supporters did not perceive Ross to be a threat to them; newspaper editors saw Ross as one of their own; and since he was a popular veteran of the war, he was acceptable to veterans.14 In his autobiography Crawford tells the same story but does not mention Speer by name. He also explains exactly why he selected Ross: “Ross himself, had recommended the appointment of another man, but I knew him to be an honest, straightforward soldier of sterling worth and unflinching courage; and on that account he was appointed. I had seen him on the field of battle amid shot and shell that tried men’s souls, and I knew he could be trusted.” The appointment of Ross was well received by the people generally and especially by Kansas soldiers who had served with him in the field and those who had known him before the war. Nevertheless, his appointment did not please all the “statesmen” who had remained at home during the war and had been playing politics for their own personal benefit.15 Crawford’s comments are telling. He was not impressed with pretenders whose egos and personal goals often got in the way of true public service. He even put quotation marks around the word “statesmen,” making it a point that they were the ones who “had remained at home during the war.” In Crawford’s mind, all things being equal, he would give the job to a veteran who had sacrificed dearly for his country and state. It was a bond that was formed over a period of three years that saw fellow soldiers die in battle or of pneumonia or cholera or the measles. It was a bond forged by hundreds of miles of marching in the cold, at night, when it rained or snowed 90 < chapter nine and when there was little to eat. “Statesmen” who were the important movers and shakers of their communities would not understand the bond. Word of Ross’s appointment was staggering news to Speer, who must have been quite sure the appointment was his. Lillian Leis tells how “Mr. Speer walked the street in Topeka that night, until the train (only the Union Pacific) came by—and the next morning had my father’s name struck from off of his paper as an editor. There was never any settlement. Also—from that time—Mr. Speer was very bitter towards him.”16 Just as Leis recalled, on July 21, 1866, the Kansas Daily Tribune was published as usual, but on the top of the front page that had always listed Speer and Ross as editors, only the name Speer appeared. The same was true at the top of the editorial page. The lead comment on the editorial page was a single sentence: “Maj. E. G. Ross, of this city, was on Thursday night, appointed by the Governor to the vacancy occasioned in the United States Senate by the death of General Lane.”17 Speer mentions nothing about Ross’s editorship of the newspaper or their partnership. There were no congratulations, only the coldest possible acknowledgement. It was not, however, the only thing Speer had to say on the subject. A long editorial immediately below the announcement lashed out at Governor Crawford, never mentioning Ross by name. The tone of Speer’s commentary was bitter and emotional, referring to Crawford as a man with a “poor, weak, vacillating mind.” He condemned Crawford for selecting a man who was no friend of Lane’s, saying that in selecting a replacement for Lane he had deliberately insulted Lane’s family, and using terms such as “ingrate” and “imbecile” to describe the governor.18 The next day Speer’s harangue continued with another editorial, this time on the front page, beginning with the statement “The public will bear us out that selfishness has not been our characteristic.” Speer was indignant that a good friend of Lane’s was not selected by Crawford. Speer simply could not accept that he had been excluded from the honor he felt was his, to be a member of that most “exclusive of men’s clubs.” Perhaps the selection of anyone but himself would have been a crushing blow to Speer, but to have his own partner, who had never really expressed an interest in politics, be moved all the way to the front from out of nowhere was too much for him to bear. Leis confirms that Mrs. Lane would not see Ross before he departed for Washington but attributes her refusal to exhaustion from mental and physical strain and makes the point that afterwards they were good friends.19 [44.211.91.23] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 07:27 GMT) A Surprising Death, an Unexpected Disappointment = 91 As Speer continued his editorial campaign against Crawford, Ross was en route to Washington to present his credentials to the United States Senate, which was due to adjourn within days. He left with ambivalent feelings , since Fannie was very late in pregnancy again; indeed, Ross was probably in Washington when his fourth son, Kay, was born on August 6. Leis ends her notes about that summer with a couple of sentences that express sadness about this remarkable appointment. “At the close of the war, we had thought we would not be left alone again—we had but one winter together— but we could not be with him. The children must be in school, and the home cared for. So mother still watched over her boys alone.”20 If there was loneliness and a degree of disappointment for Fannie, there was apprehension and at least some bewilderment for Edmund, who had no idea what to expect in Washington, D.C. Getting off the train and flagging one of the dozens of hacks in front of the railroad station was unlike anything he had experienced in the remoteness of Kansas. As he moved along Pennsylvania Avenue, lined with a myriad of businesses and hotels and the sidewalks thick with pedestrians dressed in unfamiliar styles, Ross must have felt like a stranger in a foreign country. His first look at the Capitol Building, visible from anywhere in Washington, was surely intimidating, and if not, walking through the rotunda rising more than 180 feet from the floor, with its frescoed walls and statue of Alexander Hamilton in the center, surely would have prompted some fear in one who never imagined himself in such a place. Samuel Pomeroy, Ross’s fellow senator and fellow Radical Republican, was there to help him and give him confidence. So was Ross’s former commander there, Thomas Ewing Jr., a lawyer, a Democrat, and a sometime advisor to the president. Between the two he would hear conflicting points of view in the coming months. Ross also had the good fortune to have a friend, Robert Ream, living in Washington in a large enough home to rent Ross a room while Congress was in session. And then there was Perry Fuller, a Lawrence businessman now living in Washington and married to Mary Ream, a daughter of Robert Ream. If Ross did not already know Fuller, the two men would become friends before the year was out. Each member of this unusual admixture of acquaintances would play an important role in Ross’s life in the coming years. ...