by Michael Hill
Although Washburne knew those responsible for Darboy’s execution would “excite eternal execration,” such messages of support did little to comfort him. For years afterward he would still feel the pain of the Archbishop’s death. “Alas! Could such efforts at all times have been successful,” he wrote in 1875, “the world might not have been called upon to witness one of the most tragic and fearful events in history, the foul murder of the Archbishop of Paris.”
That same day Count Bismarck sent a letter to Minister Washburne thanking him for all he had done on behalf of the trapped German nationals in Paris:
His Majesty has commanded me to convey to your Excellency the grateful acknowledgment for the zeal and kindness you have devoted to the interests of the German residents under circumstances of extraordinary difficulty, and with corresponding sacrifice of time and personal comfort.
For weeks after the end of the reign of terror, generous praise about Washburne poured into Paris. One American paper noted:
Paris was deserted by the titled and great. It witnessed starvation and death, and all manner of disaster . . . Mr. Washburne still remained at his post, throwing himself between the ranks of arrayed Frenchmen, fighting in a horrible death struggle, saving all that he could save . . .
The New York Tribune wrote: “We do not recall an instance in our diplomacy of a more brilliant and successful performance of duty in circumstances of such gravity and delicacy . . .”
Perhaps the finest tribute came from one who had stayed by his side throughout the siege and terror. Months after the fall of the Commune, Frank Moore, Washburne’s Assistant Secretary for the Legation, wrote to his wife:
Hasn’t our Minister in Paris done splendidly? By the use of common sense, a kindly generous disposition and a true appreciation of the right, he has during the past year brought more credit to our government and people at home than they can ever reward him for. His name is on every tongue and I am sure that he will not escape the fate of other honest men for whom thousands of boy babies have been and will affectionately and admiringly be named.
“We have been through fire and blood here,” Washburne wrote to friends in mid-June. “I hope now Paris may have some peace and quiet.”
The city was in ruins. “Paris, the Paris of civilization, is no more,” wrote the Times of London. “Dust and ashes, tottering walls, twisted or molten ironwork, smolder and stench are all that remain . . . [T]he terrible end of this chapter may be only the beginning of one sadder still. Time alone can tell.”
But miraculously, within days the city came back to life. “There has been a marvelous change in Paris,” Washburne reported to Secretary of State Fish on June 2. “[T]he whole city is alive with people . . . the smoldering fires have been extinguished and the tottering walls pulled down. Nearly all the barricades have disappeared.”
As Paris sprung back to life, Washburne rejoined his family out at Vieille Église, experiencing great joy in spending time with Adele and the children once again. “It is a healthy spot and the children are in perfect health and growing like pigs,” he wrote a friend.
Now, with the turmoil in Paris at an end, Washburne himself was ready for an extended rest. “I am a good deal used up and run down,” he wrote a friend. “From 193 [pounds] I am down to 176.” In early July he left Paris, on his way to the curing springs of Carlsbad. He was thrilled to be away, and by late August the “wonderful waters” of Bohemia had restored him to health. “I have not been as well for five years,” he proudly told a friend. And by the fall he was pleased to report back to America that life in Paris was pleasant once again. “All is quiet on the banks of the Seine,” he told an old colleague in Washington.
On October 8, 1871, the city of Chicago was consumed by fire. For two days the “Great Fire” raged through the city killing some 300 people, leaving nearly 100,000 homeless, $222 million in property destroyed, and nearly 4 square miles of the city in ruins.
When Washburne received word in Paris about the “awful calamity” that had struck Chicago, he was devastated:
Our great and beautiful city, to which we have been allied by so many associations, is literally in ashes [he wrote a friend]. It is such destruction as has never been recorded in human annals. Nearly all our mutual friends must be ruined. It has made Mrs. W[ashburne] and myself nearly sick . . . Indeed, it is impossible for us to comprehend the long train of horrors and suffering that must follow that awful tragedy.
Washburne immediately called a meeting of Americans in Paris to solicit funds for the suffering in Chicago. He raised $30,000 in contributions1 which he immediately transferred by telegraph to Chicago.
Despite these successful efforts in Paris, Washburne still hoped he could do more, telling friends back home he wished he could be there “to put my shoulder to the wheel” to help in the rebuilding of Chicago.
A month later Washburne’s American friends in Paris held a dinner in his honor for the “valuable services” he had provided during the siege and Commune. The dinner was held at Washburne’s home, which was “brilliantly lit up for the occasion and tastefully decorated with American flags.” In attendance were Dr. Thomas Evans, Charles Moulton, and many others from the American colony who gathered to pay tribute to their friend. He was presented with a “superb service of silver plate”—some 213 pieces in all—manufactured by Tiffany & Company in New York.
Over the next several years Washburne watched Paris steadily come back to life. By late 1872 work began on restoring the Vendôme Column, toppled during the Commune; the Grand Opera House was reopened; repairs were under way on the Palais-Royal; and some forty swans were scattered about the city’s public parks to replace those eaten during the siege.
Meanwhile, Washburne spent time with his family traveling about Europe—making trips to Nice and Bonn—and attending to his ceremonial duties as Minister to France. He hosted a number of formal dinners in Paris, including one in August of 1872 for the famous British explorer Henry Morton Stanley, who only ten months before had successfully located Dr. David Livingstone in the tropical forests of Tanganyika. He also helped promote a bold and ambitious idea by French sculptor Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi to design and create a “Statue of Liberty” as a gift to America from the people of France.
In the fall of 1872, Washburne returned to America for the first time since leaving to serve in France. He traveled briefly to Galena, where he was met at the train station by a huge crowd of old friends who stood for hours to greet him. Days later he made the long journey to Livermore, Maine, to see his eighty-seven-year-old father. Washburne found him to be “blind, a little deaf, but [his] intellect, bright and disposition cheerful.”
It was the last time Washburne would see his father alive. Four years later, on September 1, 1876, Israel Washburn, Sr., passed away. During the dark days in Paris, Washburne had thought often of his father, and now he was gone. “The hour has come finally to strike. Celestial spirits at last beckoned our kind, good father to a brighter and better world,” he told Adele. Though his father’s death brought “a pang of grief” to the entire family, he told his brother Cadwallader:
In dying he has left to his children the most priceless legacy of an honored and well spent life . . . Well will it be for his children if, when they should be called hence, they can leave to those that survive and come after them, as clear a record and as spotless a name.
In the fall of 1877 after Rutherford B. Hayes had succeeded Ulysses S. Grant as President, Elihu Washburne stepped down from his post in Paris. In accepting his resignation on behalf of the President, Secretary of State William Evarts expressed to Washburne an “appreciation of the faithful manner” in which he had performed his duties and a recognition that those “services . . . must ever remain on record as among the most important rendered by the diplomatic representatives of this Government.”
Upon his departure from Paris, a large group of friends bade farewell to Washburne at the train station.
The passengers on the tr
ain . . . took off their hats as a mark of respect and many of them, who had never seen or known him, asked to be presented and shake his hand [reported the Chicago Tribune]. Mr. Washburne and family . . . received, not without some emotion, these marks of attention . . . As the train moved out of the depot, there was a general raising of hats and waving of handkerchiefs, and groups stood watching the train until it was out of sight . . .
He and his family traveled by way of Le Havre to Southampton, where they boarded the steamer Neckar for New York. Upon Washburne’s arrival, the press noted with pride the return of the American Minister:
Mr. Washburne has returned from France . . . [He] is not a scholar, but a plain Western man who . . . has an unusual amount of that practical every day common sense for which the American character is distinguished. There is no flummery about him, no pretense, no palaver. He wore no beads, nor ribbons, and [had] no coat-of-arms painted on his carriage. He talked the plainest sort of English, and took off his coat and worked in his shirt-sleeves, doing the thing that most needed to be done . . .
Washburne had served his nation faithfully for twenty-six years, and now he was private citizen Washburne, heading home to the little town he had left nearly nine years before.
Washburne and his family arrived by train in Galena, Illinois, on October 16. An immense crowd stood in heavy rain to greet them at the station. That evening a formal welcome was staged at Turner Hall attended by a packed gathering of “all classes of . . . citizens irrespective of nationality and politics.” The stage in the hall was decorated with American, French, and German flags, and a huge banner overhead proclaimed, “Galena honors the man who honors the nation.”
As Washburne entered the hall, a band struck up “La Marseillaise.” Speeches in tribute followed and then Washburne rose to speak. After thanking the people of Galena for the “hand of friendship which [had] never been withdrawn,” he recounted his memories of first arriving in Galena and the struggle he had endured to make a go of it.
He concluded by saying:
I have long looked forward to the period of my return home with feelings of pleasure, but all my anticipations have been far more than realized by the goodwill and hearty friendship with which I have been welcomed back. While I guard so many pleasant souvenirs of my official residence in Paris, and while I severed with regret so many agreeable associations formed with the Americans abroad and with the French people whom Dr. Franklin once so justly described as being, “A pleasant people to live among,” I hailed the approaching day when I could turn my face towards my own country and home . . . I pray that you will believe me that wherever I am, and whatever fate may betide me, all my aspirations will go up for the happiness and prosperity of all the people of Galena . . .
When Washburne had accepted the post as Minister to France, he was thrilled to be leaving the rough-and-tumble life of Washington politics. In fact, many times he expressed deep regret in ever giving up his law practice. “That little old law library I had in Galena has been pretty well-scattered since the time I was fool enough to abandon a noble profession and enter into political life,” he wrote an old colleague in 1871.
However, in 1880, out of loyalty to an old friend, he was once again dragged into politics and, to his deep regret, ended up destroying one of the most cherished friendships of his life.
Beginning in 1873, while Washburne was still Minister to France, rumors had circulated about him as a future candidate for President or Vice President. Such speculation continued for the next several years until, in 1876, he flatly told a reporter, “I am not vain enough to suppose that my name can ever figure seriously in that direction.” However, as the 1880 presidential campaign approached, newspapers and politicians throughout the country pushed once more for him to accept the nomination of the Republican Party for President. The Boston Herald noted that he had “elements of political strength not possessed by any other man in the United States.” The New York Sun touted him as “by far the strongest man” that the party could pick.
Another paper, in an obvious slight to former President Ulysses S. Grant and his scandal-ridden administration, wrote of Washburne: “He is one of the few American politicians who stands before the public pure and undefiled . . . With Washburne as the standard bearer . . . we would have a character needing no whitewash and an easy walk over any leader the Democrats could put forth.”
Meanwhile, Grant himself, who had just returned from a triumphant world tour, was hinting that he might be interested in seeking a third term as President. (He was President from 1869 to 1877.) Although there was an initial surge of support for his candidacy, many in the party were adamantly opposed to his nomination.
Washburne himself thought his old friend was making a grave mistake and would be defeated. He knew many would oppose a third term as a matter of principle—seeing it as a “menace to our form of government”—but he also felt his old friend was simply being used by old cronies in an attempt to regain power in Washington.
Once Grant signaled his desire for the nomination, Washburne nevertheless agreed to support his bid, helping to direct the Grant campaign in Illinois and offering advice and counsel to the candidate. However, as the convention grew nearer, Grant’s candidacy began to lose steam. Anti–third-term groups mounted opposition to him and many party leaders pulled away from his campaign. One Republican Party leader told Washburne: “I shall vote the Republican ticket down to the last constable, but I shall never vote for Grant electors.” The Philadelphia Telegraph declared: “The people have had enough of him.”
As support for Grant began to dwindle, there were “scattered voices” heard around the country once again pushing Washburne for the nomination and promoting him as a “dark horse” candidate. Washburne, however, dismissed all such encouragement and remained loyal to Grant. In May 1880, only weeks before the convention, Washburne told a reporter that under no circumstances was he a candidate for President and that he was “for Grant, first last and all the time.”
Some in Grant’s inner circle, however, grew suspicious of the talk about a Washburne candidacy, hinting that he was “guilty of duplicity” and secretly seeking the nomination himself. In fact, the St. Louis Globe-Democrat openly “accused Washburne of plotting his own candidacy while avowing support” for Grant.
As voting at the convention got under way, Grant was at home in Galena. On the first ballot he received 304 votes—the most of any candidate—but not enough to secure the nomination. For days the convention was deadlocked, shifting back and forth between Grant, James G. Blaine, John Sherman, and others, until finally James A. Garfield secured the nomination on the thirty-sixth ballot. During the balloting, Washburne had received a total of 40 votes “in spite of his own repeated declaration that he was not a candidate.”
After his defeat Grant was “deeply disappointed” and, astoundingly, allowed family and advisors to convince him that his old friend Washburne had been “guilty of a kind of personal treason” in the campaign. Grant’s son, Fred, publicly proclaimed that Washburne was “a God damned liar and fraud.”
Grant himself would never speak of Washburne without “bitterness,” and the two old friends from Galena would never talk to each other again.
In 1880, Elihu Washburne was sixty-four years old. Despite occasional bouts of ill health, he was still as active and strong as ever:
Washburne’s face and form call up the idea of granite-cliffs and clear-sky—not of wool-bags on a wet day [noted one Chicago reporter]. He . . . knows just what he wants to say, and says it; just where he wants to go, and goes there by the most direct-route, without waste of nervous force. His voice [has] the ring of perfect self-control and consequent command.
Since returning from Paris, he had spent a great deal of time busying “himself with the pen,” delivering lectures throughout the country, mostly about his years in Paris, and publishing articles about many great figures of the past, including Thomas Paine and Abraham Lincoln. He also began work on his memoi
r, Recollections of a Minister to France, 1869–1877, which was initially published in Scribner’s Magazine during the winter and spring of 1887.
He and Adele eventually bought a house in Chicago, but Washburne used it mostly as “his headquarters, a place to which he returned from time to time from his frequent journeys.” But being in the city also put them near their son Hempstead, who had become a prominent lawyer in Chicago and who, like his father some three decades before, would eventually enter politics.
On December 17, 1886, Washburne’s oldest son, Gratiot, died in Louisville, Kentucky. He was on business as Secretary of the American Exposition in London and died suddenly from a stroke. He was only thirty-seven years old.
In his diary Washburne wrote, “Our hearts are all broken.” He was devastated and “prostrate” with grief at the death of the son who was by his side in Paris throughout the bloody days of 1870–1871. “The world is nothing to me anymore,” he told one of his daughters. “The light of my life has gone out . . .”
Just three months later on March 20, 1887, his beloved wife, Adele, died in Chicago. Days earlier she had suffered a sudden attack of “gastric fever” and never recovered. She was sixty-five years old. After a memorial service in Chicago, she was taken to Galena and buried in the family plot at Greenwood Cemetery.
Washburne was “crushed into the earth” by her death and was in deep agony for months afterward. Feeling alone and adrift, he told his daughter Marie: “Where I shall go and what I shall do it is impossible for me to tell. I sometimes think I will take a sea voyage in order to get away from myself, but I know nothing further than that I am the most miserable man on the face of the earth. Pray write me oftener and try and lift me out of the despair which overwhelms me . . .” Grief-stricken and with his own health deteriorating, Washburne moved in with Hempstead and his wife at their home on Maple Street in Chicago.