GRANT AND SANTO DOMINGO- 1868 -1871 151 



bors had now become such an assembly that the largest 

 hall in the place was crowded with voters of all parties. 



But this year came a disappointment. Although the 

 contest was between General Grant, who on various de 

 cisive battle-fields had done everything to save the admin 

 istration of which Mr. Seward had been a leading member, 

 and on the other side, Governor Horatio Seymour, who 

 had done all in his power to wreck it, Mr. Seward devoted 

 his speech to optimistic generalities, hardly alluding to 

 the candidates, and leaving the general impression that 

 one side was just as worthy of support as the other. 



The speech was an unfortunate ending of Mr. Seward s 

 career. It was not surprising that some of his old ad 

 mirers bitterly resented it, and a remark by Mr. Cornell 

 some time afterward indicated much. We were arranging 

 together a program for the approaching annual com 

 mencement when I suggested for the main address Mr. 

 Seward. Mr. Cornell had been one of Mr. Seward s 

 lifelong supporters, but he received this proposal coldly, 

 pondered it for a few moments silently, and then said 

 dryly, Perhaps you are right, but if you call him you 

 will show to our students the deadest man that ain t buried 

 in the State of New York.&quot; So, to my regret, was lost the 

 last chance to bring the old statesman to Cornell. I have 

 always regretted this loss ; his presence would have given 

 a true consecration to the new institution. A career like 

 his should not be judged by its little defects and lapses, 

 and this I felt even more deeply on receiving, some time 

 after his death, the fifth volume of his published works, 

 which was largely made up of his despatches and other 

 papers written during the war. When they were first 

 published in the newspapers, I often thought them long 

 and was impatient at their optimism, but now, when I read 

 them all together, saw in them the efforts made by the 

 heroic old man to keep the hands of European powers 

 off us while we were restoring the Union, and noted the 

 desperation with which he fought, the encouragement 

 which he infused into our diplomatic representatives 



