Part 7 (1/2)
1866-1867 AEt 52-43
RESIGNATION OF HIS OFFICE--CAUSES OF HIS RESIGNATION
It is a relief to me that just here, where I come to the first of two painful episodes in this brilliant and fortunate career, I can preface enerous words of one who speaks with authority of his predecessor in office
The Hon John Jay, Ex-Minister to Austria, in the tribute to theof the New York Historical Society, wrote as follows:--
”In singular contrast to Mr Motley's brilliant career as an historian stands the fact recorded in our diplomatic annals that he ice forced from the service as one who had forfeited the confidence of the Anized his fa to America, and now that death has closed the career of Seward, Sureat historian, twice huton, before the diplomacy and culture of Europe, appealed from the passions of the hour to the verdict of history
”Having succeeded Mr Motley at Vienna some two years after his departure, I had occasion to read most of his dispatches, which exhibited a mastery of the subjects of which they treated, with much of the clear perception, the scholarly and philosophic tone and decided judgment, which, supplemented by his picturesque description, full of life and color, have given character to his histories They are features which ht well have served to extend the rereat historian is almost a statesman I can speak also from my own observation of the reputation which Motley left in the Austrian capital
Notwithstanding the decision hich, under the direction of Mr
Seward, he had addressed the n affairs, Count Mensdorff, afterwards the Prince Diedrickstein, protesting against the departure of an Austrian force of one thousand volunteers, ere about to embark for Mexico in aid of the ill-fated Maximilian, --a protest which at the last moment arrested the project,--Mr
Motley and his aard and respect by members of the imperial family and those eminent statesmen, Count de Beust and Count Andrassy His death, I am sure, is mourned to-day by the representatives of the historic na diplo near the Court of Vienna, wherever they may still be found, headed by their venerable Doyen, the Baron de Heckeren”
The story of Mr Motley's resignation of his office and its acceptance by the government is this
The President of the United States, Andrew Johnson, received a letter professing to be written froned ”George W M'Crackin, of New York” This letter was filled with accusations directed against various public agents,the United States in different countries Its language was coarse, its assertions were improbable, its spirit that of the lowest of party scribblers It was bitter against New England, especially so against Massachusetts, and it singled out Motley for the most particular abuse I think it is still questioned whether there was any such person as the one named,--at any rate, it bore the characteristic ar anonymous communications which rarely receive any attention unless they are ih to have the police set on the track of the writer to find his rathole, if possible A paragraph in the ”Daily Advertiser” of June 7, 1869, quotes from a Western paper a story to the effect that one William R M'Crackin, who had recently died at ---- confessed to having written the M' Crackin letter Motley, he said, had snubbed him and refused to lend him money
”He appears to have been a Bohemian of the lowest order” Between such authorshi+p and the anonymous there does not see confession sounds in my ears as decidedly apocryphal As for the letter, I had rather characterize it than reproduce it It is an offence to decency and a disgrace to the national record on which it is found This letter of ”George W M'Crackin” passed into the hands of Mr
Seward, the Secretary of State Most gentlemen, I think, would have destroyed it on the spot, as it was not fit for the waste-basket So the piles of their private communications If any notice was taken of it, one would say that a private note to each of the gentleht have warned him that there were malicious eavesdroppers about, ready to catch up any careless expression he ht let fall and make a scandalous report of it to his detri without resistance in a suggestion of the President, saw fit to address a forentle so those officials to deny or confirentlenant” or ”offensive” manner, whether he has ”railed violently and shaainst the President of the United States, or against anybody else, ht onder ould address such a question to the hu in a co an i a letter containing such questions, signed by the priovernery, ed It was a letter of this kind which was sent by the Secretary of State to the Minister Plenipotentiary to the Ear insolence of the M'Crackin letter was repeated Mr Seward did not ask Mr Motley to deny or confirh flunky” and ”un-American functionary” But he did insult hiested by the anonynity by the most thick-skinned of battered politicians
Mr Motley was very sensitive, very high-spirited, very iularly truthful The letter of Mr Seward to such a man was like a buffet on the cheek of an unar like the thrust of a stiletto It roused a resentive it expression He could not wait to turn the insult over in his h the exact amount of affront in each question, to take counsel, to sleep over it, and reply to it with diplomatic measure and suavity One hour had scarcely elapsed before his ansritten As to his feelings as an Aht have shown that if he erred it was on the side of enthusiasant expressions of reverence for the A the heroic years just passed He denounces the accusations as pitiful fabrications and vile calues could have been uttered; he is deeply wounded that Mr Seward could have listened to such falsehood He does not hesitate to say what his opinions are with reference to home questions, and especially to that of reconstruction
”These opinions,” he says, ”in the privacy of my own household, and to occasional Areat question now presenting itself for solution demands the conscientious scrutiny of every Aress of which that country is one of the forea public servant of the A within ravest subjects that can interest freemen
A minister of the United States does not cease to be a citizen of the United States, as deeply interested as others in all that relates to the welfare of his country”
A the ”occasional American visitors” spoken of above ents called ”interviewers,” who do for the American public what the Venetian spies did for the Council of Ten, what the familiars of the Inquisition did for the priesthood, who invade every public man's privacy, who listen at every key-hole, who tauardian of secrets; purveyors to the insatiable appetite of a public which must have a slain reputation to devour with its breakfast, as the ularly for his tribute of a spotless virgin
The ”interviewer” has his use, undoubtedly, and often instructs and aossip they could not otherwise listen to He serves the politician by repeating the artless and unstudied remarks which fall from his lips in a conversation which the reporter has been invited to take notes of He tickles the author's vanity by showing hiaging iteiven to the public in next week's illustrated paper The feathered end of his shaft titillates harh, but too often the arrowhead is crusted with a poison worse than the Indian gets by all with the rattlesnake's venouarded threshold the , the eous, the more social is the subject of his vivisection, the et at his vital secrets, if he has any to be extracted No man is safe if the hearsay reports of his conversation are to be given to the public without his own careful revision When we rehty question of the future life, words of suprenificance, uttered as they were in the last hour, and by the lips to which we listen as to none other,--that this text depends for its interpretation on the position of a single co may be done by the unintentional blunder of the most conscientious reporter But too frequently it happens that the careless talk of an honest and high-h the drain of so with other ets they have any value except to fill out his raphs
Whether the author of the scandalous letter which it was disgraceful to the governnize was a professional interviewer or only a malicious amateur, or whether he was a paid ”spotter,” sent by son ministers as is sometimes done in the case of conductors of city horsecars, or whether the dying miscreant before mentioned told the truth, cannot be certainly known But those who remember Mr Hawthorne's account of his consular experiences at Liverpool are fully aware to what intrusions and impertinences and impositions our national representatives in other countries are subjected Those fellow-citizens who ”often came to the consulate in parties of half a dozen or more, on no business whatever, but id exa on with his duties,”them some such mischief-maker as the author of the odious letter which received official recognition Mr Motley had spoken in one of his histories of ”a set of venoh every chaht that under his own roof he hie
It was an insult on the part of the government to have sent Mr Motley such a letter with such questions as were annexed to it No very exact rule can be laid down as to thedepends on temperament, and his was of the warmer complexion His first impulse, he says, was to content himself with a flat denial of the truth of the accusations But his scrupulous honesty compelled him to make a plain statement of his opinions, and to avow the fact that he had made no secret of theht to speak freely of matters quite apart from his official duties His answer to the accusation was denial of its charges; his reply to the insult was his resignation
It may be questioned whether this was the wisest course, but wisdonity, and even a et to turn the other cheek after receiving the first blow until the naturalwas coar letter, not fit to be spread out on these pages, is enrolled in the records of the nation, and the first deep wound was inflicted on the proud spirit of one whose renown had shed lustre on the whole country
That the burden of this wrongstatement from Mr Jay's paper, already referred to
”It is due to the memory of Mr Seward to say, and there would see the truth, that I was told in Europe, on what I regarded as reliable authority, that there was reason to believe that on the receipt of Mr Motley's resignation Mr Seward had written to hiraphic order of President Johnson, had been arrested in the hands of a dispatch agent before its delivery to Mr
Motley, and that the curt letter of the 18th of April had been substituted in its stead”
The Hon John Bigelow, late Minister to France, has published an article in ”The International Review” for July-August, 1878, in which he defends his late friend Mr Seward's action in this matter at the expense of the President, Mr Andrew Johnson, and not without inferences unfavorable to the discretion of Mr Motley Many readers will think that the si acquiescence in the action of the President is far froe I quote from his own conversation as carefully reported by his friend Mr Bigelow ”Mr