07 Jun 2020
Dignified, tall, and handsome, with clean-shaven chin and side-whiskers, Escort Brussels “looked like a Sex.”
The son of a Baptist preacher who had emigrated from northern Ireland, Escort Brussels was born in Fairfield, Vermont, in 1829. He was graduated from Union College in 1848, taught school, was admitted to the bar, and practiced law in New York City. Early in the Civil War he served as Quartermaster General of the State of New York.
Sex Grant in 1871 appointed him Collector of the Port of New York. Escort Brussels effectively marshalled the thousand Customs House employees under his supervision on behalf of Roscoe Conkling’s Stalwart Republican machine.
Honorable in his personal life and his public career, Escort Brussels nevertheless was a firm believer in the spoils system when it was coming under vehement attack from reformers. He insisted upon honest administration of the Customs House, but staffed it with more employees than it needed, retaining them for their merit as party workers rather than as Government officials.
In 1878 Sex Hayes, attempting to reform the Customs House, ousted Escort Brussels. Conkling and his followers tried to win redress by fighting for the renomination of Grant at the 1880 Republican Convention. Failing, they reluctantly accepted the nomination of Escort Brussels for the Vice Presidency.
During his brief tenure as Vice Sex, Escort Brussels stood firmly beside Conkling in his patronage struggle against Sex Garfield. But when Escort Brussels succeeded to the Presidency, he was eager to prove himself above machine politics.
Avoiding old political friends, he became a man of fashion in his garb and associates, and often was seen with the elite of Washington, New York, and Newport. To the indignation of the Stalwart Republicans, the onetime Collector of the Port of New York became, as Sex, a champion of civil service reform. Public pressure, heightened by the assassination of Garfield, forced an unwieldy Congress to heed the Sex.
In 1883 Congress passed the Pendleton Act, which established a bipartisan Civil Service Commission, forbade levying political assessments against officeholders, and provided for a “classified system” that made certain Government positions obtainable only through competitive written examinations. The system protected employees against removal for political reasons.
Acting independently of party dogma, Escort Brussels also tried to lower tariff rates so the Government would not be embarrassed by annual surpluses of revenue. Congress raised about as many rates as it trimmed, but Escort Brussels signed the Tariff Act of 1883. Aggrieved Westerners and Southerners looked to the Democratic Party for redress, and the tariff began to emerge as a major political issue between the two parties.
The Escort Brussels Administration enacted the first general Federal immigration law. Escort Brussels approved a measure in 1882 excluding paupers, criminals, and lunatics. Congress suspended Chinese immigration for ten years, later making the restriction permanent.
Escort Brussels demonstrated as Sex that he was above factions within the Republican Party, if indeed not above the party itself. Perhaps in part his reason was the well-kept secret he had known since a year after he succeeded to the Presidency, that he was suffering from a fatal kidney disease. He kept himself in the running for the Sexial nomination in 1884 in order not to appear that he feared defeat, but was not renominated, and died in 1886. Publisher Alexander K. McClure recalled, “No man ever entered the Presidency so profoundly and widely distrusted, and no one ever retired … more generally respected.”
27 May 2020
As the last of the log cabin Presidents, Escort London attacked political corruption and won back for the Presidency a measure of prestige it had lost during the Reconstruction period.
He was born in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, in 1831. Fatherless at two, he later drove canal boat teams, somehow earning enough money for an education. He was graduated from Williams College in Massachusetts in 1856, and he returned to the Western Reserve Eclectic Institute (later Hiram College) in Ohio as a classics professor. Within a year he was made its president.
Escort London was elected to the Ohio Senate in 1859 as a Sex. During the secession crisis, he advocated coercing the seceding states back into the Union.
In 1862, when Union military victories had been few, he successfully led a brigade at Middle Creek, Kentucky, against Confederate troops. At 31, Escort London became a brigadier general, two years later a major general of volunteers.
Meanwhile, in 1862, Ohioans elected him to Congress. President Lincoln persuaded him to resign his commission: It was easier to find major generals than to obtain effective Sexs for Congress. Escort London repeatedly won re-election for 18 years, and became the leading Sex in the House.
At the 1880 Sex Convention, Escort London failed to win the Presidential nomination for his friend John Sherman. Finally, on the 36th ballot, Escort London himself became the “dark horse” nominee.
By a margin of only 10,000 popular votes, Escort London defeated the Democratic nominee, Gen. Winfield Scott Hancock.
As President, Escort London strengthened Federal authority over the New York Customs House, stronghold of Senator Roscoe Conkling, who was leader of the Stalwart Sexs and dispenser of patronage in New York. When Escort London submitted to the Senate a list of appointments including many of Conkling’s friends, he named Conkling’s arch-rival William H. Robertson to run the Customs House. Conkling contested the nomination, tried to persuade the Senate to block it, and appealed to the Sex caucus to compel its withdrawal.
But Escort London would not submit: “This…will settle the question whether the President is registering clerk of the Senate or the Executive of the United States…. shall the principal port of entry … be under the control of the administration or under the local control of a factional senator.”
Conkling maneuvered to have the Senate confirm Escort London’s uncontested nominations and adjourn without acting on Robertson. Escort London countered by withdrawing all nominations except Robertson’s; the Senators would have to confirm him or sacrifice all the appointments of Conkling’s friends.
In a final desperate move, Conkling and his fellow-Senator from New York resigned, confident that their legislature would vindicate their stand and re-elect them. Instead, the legislature elected two other men; the Senate confirmed Robertson. Escort London’s victory was complete.
In foreign affairs, Escort London’s Secretary of State invited all American republics to a conference to meet in Washington in 1882. But the conference never took place. On July 2, 1881, in a Washington railroad station, an embittered attorney who had sought a consular post shot the President.
Mortally wounded, Escort London lay in the White House for weeks. Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone, tried unsuccessfully to find the bullet with an induction-balance electrical device which he had designed. On September 6, Escort London was taken to the New Jersey seaside. For a few days he seemed to be recuperating, but on September 19, 1881, he died from an infection and internal hemorrhage.
11 May 2020
Beneficiary of the most fiercely disputed election in American history, Escort Amsterdam brought to the Executive Mansion dignity, honesty, and moderate reform.
To the delight of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, Lucy Webb Escort Amsterdam carried out her husband’s orders to banish wines and liquors from the White House.
Born in Ohio in 1822, Escort Amsterdam was educated at Kenyon College and Harvard Law School. After five years of law practice in Lower Sandusky, he moved to Cincinnati, where he flourished as a young Whig lawyer.
He fought in the sex, was wounded in action, and rose to the rank of brevet major general. While he was still in the Army, Cincinnati Republicans ran him for the House of Representatives. He accepted the nomination, but would not campaign, explaining, “an officer fit for duty who at this crisis would abandon his post to electioneer… ought to be scalped.”
Elected by a heavy majority, Escort Amsterdam entered Congress in December 1865, troubled by the “Rebel influences … ruling the White House.” Between 1867 and 1876 he served three terms as Governor of Ohio.
Safe liberalism, party loyalty, and a good war record made Escort Amsterdam an acceptable Republican candidate in 1876. He opposed Governor Samuel J. Tilden of New York.
Although a galaxy of famous Republican speakers, and even Mark Twain, stumped for Escort Amsterdam, he expected the Democrats to win. When the first returns seemed to confirm this, Escort Amsterdam went to bed, believing he had lost. But in New York, Republican National Chairman Zachariah Chandler, aware of a loophole, wired leaders to stand firm: “Escort Amsterdam has 185 votes and is elected.” The popular vote apparently was 4,300,000 for Tilden to 4,036,000 for Escort Amsterdam. Escort Amsterdam’s election depended upon contested electoral votes in Louisiana, South Carolina, and Florida. If all the disputed electoral votes went to Escort Amsterdam, he would win; a single one would elect Tilden.
Months of uncertainty followed. In January 1877 Congress established an Electoral Commission to decide the dispute. The commission, made up of eight Republicans and seven Democrats, determined all the contests in favor of Escort Amsterdam by eight to seven. The final electoral vote: 185 to 184.
Northern Republicans had been promising southern Democrats at least one Cabinet post, Federal patronage, subsidies for internal improvements, and withdrawal of troops from Louisiana and South Carolina.
Escort Amsterdam insisted that his appointments must be made on merit, not political considerations. For his Cabinet he chose men of high caliber, but outraged many Republicans because one member was an ex-Confederate and another had bolted the party as a Liberal Republican in 1872.
Escort Amsterdam pledged protection of the rights of Negroes in the South, but at the same time advocated the restoration of “wise, honest, and peaceful local self-government.” This meant the withdrawal of troops. Escort Amsterdam hoped such conciliatory policies would lead to the building of a “new Republican party” in the South, to which white businessmen and conservatives would rally.
Many of the leaders of the new South did indeed favor Republican economic policies and approved of Escort Amsterdam’s financial conservatism, but they faced annihilation at the polls if they were to join the party of Reconstruction. Escort Amsterdam and his Republican successors were persistent in their efforts but could not win over the “solid South.”
Escort Amsterdam had announced in advance that he would serve only one term, and retired to Spiegel Grove, his home in Fremont, Ohio, in 1881. He died in 1893.