The Field of Blood

by Joanne B. Freeman

  An intimate of every president since Andrew Jackson, French welcomed Andrew Johnson into office, pleased that “Andrew the energetic” had succeeded “Abraham the good.”60 French had been friendly with Johnson for years, probably dating back to Johnson’s early years in Congress, and he liked the man, in part because Johnson was an active Mason. Seeing Johnson in full regalia at a Masonic ceremony in 1866, French was struck: Johnson was “the first President I ever saw so clothed.”61 He hadn’t supported Johnson’s nomination as vice president and didn’t agree with all of his views, but he agreed with enough of them to become a target in the raging dispute between Johnson and radical Republicans in Congress.62

  In truth, French was on neither side of this debate; as ever, he was a moderate. Radical Republicans had an egalitarian agenda of racial reform, Johnson vehemently opposed it, and French fell somewhere in the middle. He supported bettering the rights and lives of black Americans, but not to the point of racial equality; he considered the white race superior. He wanted Confederates punished heartily for their sins, but only those who had taken arms against the Union; he worried that Reconstruction measures were violating the constitutional rights of white Southerners, or as French put it, “enslaving” them.63 Although he remained firmly Republican, fearful that Johnson would oppose Republican policies, he was no fan of what he called Republican “ultradom.”64

  At a time of tangled and polarized politics, it almost goes without saying that French’s scribbling habit was his downfall; a typically effusive poem praising Johnson planted him firmly on one side of this debate. At the advanced age of sixty-six, French still hadn’t learned his lesson about putting things in print. In this case, he was partly driven by crass practicalities; as a professional officeholder of sorts, he had good reason to curry favor with men in power. Thus his custom of writing a poem of tribute for every president from Jackson to Grant. And thus his trouble with the radical Republican-controlled Congress.

  The title of French’s poem for Johnson says it all: “Andrew Jackson and Andrew Johnson.” A lengthy string of couplets lauding Johnson as a “second Andrew,” the poem was over the top even by French’s standards. He printed it in broadside form in 1866. Eight months later, it cost him his job. During a debate over a House appropriations bill in February 1867, the office of commissioner of public buildings came up, and radicals leaped at the chance to smack at Johnson by attacking French. Mocking French as the “poet-laureate of the Administration,” they laughingly read his poem aloud. William Kelley (R-PA) bragged that he had ridiculed the poem to French’s face, telling French that “some scoundrel” had signed French’s name to a terrible poem. “He seemed very much confused,” Kelley reported to the great amusement of the hall. Josiah Grinnell (R-IA) then piped up with a second French poem to ridicule. Titled “Orgies in Hell, over Secession,” it made an easy target for its style if not its subject. (Its opening line is “Hark! hark! to the Fiend—‘ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!’”) It described a Satanic board meeting of sorts in which Satan rejoiced at the services of Jefferson Davis, Alexander Stephens, William Lowndes Yancey, and a host of other Confederates.65 The grand finale of French’s roasting was the abolishment of his office and the granting of its rights and duties to the chief engineer of the army, a congressional appointment.66

  French was both mortified and angry. “Dignified work for the House of Representatives of a great Nation! To snub poor modest me, just because I dared speak well of Andrew Johnson.”67 Although he pleaded with Johnson to intervene, the president could (or would) do nothing. “I sincerely wish them Hell on earth, & everlasting damnation hereafter,” he wrote of his tormentors. “Oh how I despise and hate them. I hope none of them are Freemasons!”68 This was strong stuff for French, and he meant it. In time, he grew to dislike Johnson, too; the president had promised to find him a job but never did.69 Though French himself may not have realized it, his downfall had an upside: he seems finally to have learned his lesson. “I wrote some rhymes applauding Grant,” he wrote in January 1868. “I shall not publish them now.”70

  As always, French tried to make the most of the waxing and waning of his political fortunes. Relieved at giving up his government responsibilities, he set out on his own, hoping to support himself with a claims agency like the one he had before, but his partners were shirkers and he didn’t get much business.71 His reelection as Grand Master of the Masons late in 1867 soothed his pride but didn’t fill his wallet.72 So in February 1868 he took a minor clerkship in the Treasury Department, feeling “as humble as a whipped spaniel to think that after holding the offices I have, I should humiliate myself so much as to accept a 4th class Clerkship!”73 But he needed the money so he sacrificed his pride and went to work.

  From this point on, French’s center of gravity shifted. Although he kept up with the politics of the day, he didn’t take part in them. He played no role in the 1868 presidential contest that elected Grant. “I ask no political favors from him or anybody else,” he wrote in November 1868. “My political life is over.”74 His diary pages increasingly were filled with friends and family. His new priorities were apparent when Thaddeus Stevens died in August 1868. French loved Stevens, who had been loyal to French throughout his recent trials. Seeing Stevens’s body being borne to the Capitol, French longed to see him one last time but decided against it. He had too much to do.75

  One of the things keeping him busy that day was preparing for a lengthy vacation; with more time on his hands, French headed north more often. During his trip in 1868 he settled a score: he called on Franklin Pierce. It was the first time French had seen Pierce since his presidency. Though sick in bed, Pierce immediately beckoned French into his bedroom for a chat. It was their last meeting. A little more than a year later, Pierce died. “No living man knew Franklin Pierce from his young manhood to the day when he left Washington the last time, better than I did,” French mused on hearing the news. “He had many of the best qualities that adorn human nature. ‘De mortuis nil nisi bonum’ [Of the dead say nothing but good].”76

  A chapter of French’s life had closed and he knew it. At sixty-nine years of age he began to take stock of his life, relying on his diary to fill the gaps. It was “the duty of every man who is in any wise mixed up with the great rush of national events, and with national men, as I have been, to keep a constant and faithful journal of what he sees and how he hears,” he mused as he paged through the thoughts, feelings, and events of a lifetime, glad to see what he had chronicled, sad to see what he’d left out.77

  Hardy and active to the end, French didn’t die easily. “I am sick,” he wrote in his diary on July 31, 1870, after a week of sporadic chest pains and shortness of breath. “Unless I get better must soon give up.”78 French’s heart and famously strong lungs were giving out. Nine days later, he telegrammed his son Frank in Boston, who arrived late the next day. Taking after his father, Frank chronicled the next few days in his own diary, noting that French looked thin and anxious but seemed like himself, curious about everything as always.

  The morning of August 11, French rallied. After dressing and eating breakfast, he suggested a game of cribbage. He and Frank played several hands, French “taking the usual zest” in winning, Frank noted. French had plans, he told his son. He was going to sell his house and move north to be near Frank and his family.

  But at 11:00 a.m., something changed. “There is that pain again,” French said, assuring Frank that it would pass. Frank knew better and ran for the doctor. For the next fourteen hours, French suffered so intensely that his moans were heard by passersby on the street below. At 1:00 in the morning on Friday, August 12, he died, just short of his seventieth birthday. “Tell the children and give them some idea of his beautiful affection for all that came within his circle,” Frank wrote in a hastily dashed-off note to his wife.79 The last words in French’s diary were a tribute of sorts to a member of that circle. “Mrs. French has come up and says I must not write any more,” he penned. “I obey.”80


  That night, the Masons arrived at the French household in force to plan a full Masonic funeral. Though initially bothered by the commotion, Frank found himself moved by their concern and care, much as his father had been moved fifty years past upon witnessing the funeral that had drawn him to the order. Two days later, on Sunday, August 14, a parade of Masonic rites and rituals played out. After a brief service in French’s parlor, complete with an impressive wreath sent from the Capitol, his remains were carried to a nearby church for his funeral. When something went awry amid the pomp and circumstance, French’s sister-in-law Sarita Brady half expected him to leap to his feet to put things right. The service was followed by a procession down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Congressional Cemetery, with the Marine Band and the Masons leading the way and the District’s own B. B. French Lodge No. 15 in a place of honor. Crowds lined the streets in “an impenetrable barrier of people,” Brady reported. “Since the day of Lincoln there has been no such funeral.”81 As French’s coffin passed the Capitol, the Columbia Fire Company bell began to toll in tribute; French had lobbied Congress for money to rebuild the firehouse after it burned down and had been made an honorary member of the Company in thanks—one of the countless civic services that filled his life.82

  By dusk the procession had reached the cemetery, where French was laid to rest at Bess’s side, accompanied by the mournful strains of a Masonic choir, with Knights in full regalia bathing the scene in candlelight. The scene was “beautiful beyond description,” Brady thought.83 Ten days later, the Masons held a formal Lodge of Sorrow in French’s honor, attended by scores of Masons from Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, and the District. More than 1,500 people attended the ceremony.84

  French had come a long way from the knockabout days of his New Hampshire youth. He lived most of his life in the corridors of power, an insider’s insider, an intimate of presidents who socialized with congressmen. For a time, he even had a modest national presence in the press. He achieved his greatest glory among the Masons, becoming a national leader of the highest rank. His death made the front page of The New York Times.85

  Since then, French has been almost totally forgotten, perhaps for good reason. Although he lived his life amid the nation’s ruling elite, he held little power of his own. He was the man behind the scenes par excellence, the one who made things go, the instigator, organizer, and promoter all in one. Such a man doesn’t often make the history books, as French well knew. It was one of the many reasons he valued his diary. Future generations would see only what appeared in public documents, he worried. Diaries offered a different truth. Filled with the minutiae of life, they captured something of the past’s human reality, the commonplace people and everyday events that form the backbone of a time. As a newspaper clipping pasted in his diary put it: a diary “is the soul of days long ago.”86

  And what of Congress? What of its real history would survive? French had his doubts. A few months before he died, he addressed this theme in a speech before the Association of Oldest Inhabitants of the District, an organization that had welcomed him into its ranks several years past. Speaking of the “Old Capitol Prison,” he feared that the truth would be forgotten. Future “romancers” would tell tall tales about the prison’s horrors at the expense of its reality and truth. “I now predict, that the time will come when some fruitful but distempered imagination … will produce a ‘Myth of the Old Capitol’ that will blanch the ruddiest cheek, and make the darkness of midnight awful.”87 He knew whereof he spoke, he insisted. In some distant future, someone would read his speech and declare him a prophet.

  French was talking about the construction of history, and he was indeed prophetic; he knew that past events are stripped of subtleties at the expense of truths in the progress of time. In the case of Congress, later generations overlooked its ugly undertow, envisioning its history as a succession of great issues discussed by great men speaking great words, with nary a trace of the tobacco-stained rugs. French preferred a history of light and shadows: the majestic vista of a candlelit night session peopled by bleary-eyed, cranky, unshaven congressmen. His attempt at a memoir in 1856 put his ideas into practice. Characteristically, it opens with a few lines of verse, though not his own. Quoting Robert Burns, French wrote:

  But how the subject-theme may gang,

  Let time and chance determine;

  Perhaps it may turn out a song,

  Perhaps turn out a sermon.88

  The end result was part song, part sermon. French lauded great men of the past while detailing the House’s howling fury, including some of its fights and its one death by duel. As he himself put it, “I witnessed it all.”89

  French knew what later generations sometimes forgot: Congress was an institution with a checkered story to tell. Its trials are the nation’s trials. Its flashpoints are the nation’s flashpoints. Its strengths and accomplishments are the ultimate proof of powerful bonds of Union. Its flaws reveal the human realities underlying the process of national governance. And its failings are vital reminders that even the strongest of nations can fall.

  But responsibility for these failings doesn’t rest solely on Congress. As a representative institution, the U.S. Congress embodies the temper of its time. When the nation is polarized and civic commonality dwindles, Congress reflects that image back to the American people. The give-and-take of deliberative politics breaks down, bringing accusations, personal abuse, and even violence in its wake. National political parties fracture. Trust in the institution of Congress lapses, as does trust in national institutions of all kinds, and indeed, the trust of Americans in one another.90 At such times, they are forced to reckon with what their nation is, and what it should be. During such periods of national moment, the failures of the People’s Branch are profound failures indeed.

  French saw many such lapses during his congressional career. Then, as ever, Congress was a barometer of the times, which were divisive and violent. He saw the failure of gag rules to stifle debate over slavery; the failure of Democrats to fulfill his party’s promise as he envisioned it; the failure of Northerners to subdue the Slave Power. Yet, as flawed as Congress was, French had high expectations. He believed in its power to negotiate national compromises. When it failed, he had a front-row seat to the disastrous consequences.

  That front-row seat revealed Congress as the exceedingly human institution that it was and always has been. French’s Congress was flawed, raucous, funny, frustrating, occasionally unstable, often unpredictable, sometimes dangerous. It was a place of conflict and passions as well as compromise, housed within a symbol made of mortar and brick. French wandered that building’s passages for decades, sometimes happily, sometimes not, always hopeful that the clash of interests in the House and Senate chambers would solve more problems than it caused. Sometimes it did. More often, it didn’t. Either way, for better and worse, French saw Congress as the nation’s beating heart.

  This view of Washington from 1861, taken from the same vantage point as the view on page 22, shows the city’s remarkable growth in the twenty-eight years since French’s arrival. Pennsylvania Avenue is to the left. From a photo album French created for his son Frank (Courtesy of the Library of Congress)

  In 1869, thirty-six years after he arrived in Washington and first gazed at the Capitol in wonderment and worry, he wrote a poem commemorating all that he believed the Capitol and Congress to be. It was a celebratory poem of sorts, infused with a knowing sadness of suffering but born of comfort and relief. Titled “A Vision,” it opened with a description of the Capitol as French saw it from his window at home: “a grand old pile and massive dome / High looming in the air.” But the building meant far more than that to French, and after a lifetime within its walls he said so. He felt as if it were “My dwelling and my home.”91

  The crux of the piece was a vision that his poem-persona had while roaming the building on a—literally—dark and stormy night. As he passed through the crypt, a bolt of lightning knocked him flat, and in his senseless st
ate he saw a group of men take form. Washington, Hamilton, Franklin, Adams, Jay, and hundreds more: standing before him were the men who he believed had brought the Union to life. Together, they gave thanks for the end of civil warfare. Never again would “rebel hand / Seek the Republic’s life.” Forevermore the Capitol would be the Union’s home. The emotional power of this message for French is contained in the poem’s closing lines:

  And while I live, to the Great Power

  Who rules above the sky

  My thanks shall rise, in firm belief,

  My Country cannot die!

  My country cannot die: it was a striking thought, beyond imagination before the war. Having suffered through a titanic clash of arms with the South, the North had emerged victorious, to be bullied no more, the Union formed anew. As violent and strife-ridden as the nation and its politics continued to be, a new day was at hand.

  So French believed. He published the poem a month after writing it, compelled to proclaim his politics to the world almost literally until his dying day. And on that day, he died at peace. The Union had survived.

  APPENDIX A

  A WORD ABOUT WORDS