HENDRICKS, SHERMAN, BANCROFT -1884 -1891 215 



talk in the House, and here they are in the New York 

 papers of this morning. " 



During this visit to Washington I met at the house of 

 my classmate and dear friend, Randall Gibson, then a 

 senator from Louisiana, a number of distinguished men, 

 among them the Vice-President, Mr. Hendricks, and Gen- 

 eral Butler, senator from South Carolina. 



Vice-President Hendricks seemed sick and sore. He 

 had expected to be a candidate for the Presidency, with 

 a strong probability of election, but had accepted the Vice- 

 Presidency; and the subject which seemed to elicit his 

 most vitriolic ill will was reform in the civil service. As we 

 sat one evening in the smoking-room at Senator Gibson's, 

 he was very bitter against the system, when, to my sur- 

 prise, General Butler took up the cudgels against him and 

 made a most admirable argument. At that moment, for 

 the first time, I felt that the war between North and South 

 was over; for all the old issues seemed virtually settled, 

 and here, as regarded this new issue, on which I felt very 

 deeply, was one of the most ardent of Confederate sol- 

 diers, a most bitter pro-slavery man before the Civil War, 

 one who, during the war, had lost a leg in battle, nearer 

 me politically than were many of my friends and neigh- 

 bors in the North. 



Senator Jones of Florida, who was present, gave us 

 some character sketches, and among others delineated ad- 

 mirably General Williams, known in the Mexican War 

 as "Cerro Gordo Williams," who was for a time sena- 

 tor from Kentucky. He said that Williams had a wonder- 

 ful gift of spread-eagle oratory, but that, finding no 

 listeners for it among his colleagues, he became utterly 

 disgusted and went about saying that the Senate was a 

 "d d frigid, respectable body that chilled his intellect." 

 This led my fellow-guests to discuss the characteristics of 

 the Senate somewhat, and I was struck by one remark in 

 which all agreed namely, that " there are no politics in 

 executive session." 



