As soon as the nomination of President Hayes was declared in the Convention of 1876, I spent a very busy hour in going about among the delegates whom I knew, especially those from the Southern States, to urge upon them the name of Mr. Wheeler as a suitable person for Vice-President. I have no doubt I secured for him his election. Mr. James Russell Lowell was a Massachusetts delegate. He was a little unwilling to vote for a person of whom he had no more knowledge. I said to him: "Mr. Lowell, Mr. Wheeler is a very sensible man. He knows the 'Biglow Papers' by heart." Lowell gave no promise in reply. But I happened to overhear him, as he sat behind me, saying to James Freeman Clarke, I think it was: "I understand that Mr. Wheeler is 'a very sensible man.'" Wheeler was one of the best parliamentarians and one of the best presiding officers I ever knew. He had no children. It is pathetic to remember the affection which existed between him and his wife. Their long living together had brought about a curious resemblance. She looked like him, talked like him, thought like him, and if she had been dressed in his clothes, or he had been in hers, either might have passed for the other. When she died Wheeler seemed to lose all interest in this world, shut himself off from all ordinary activities, and died a year or two after, I suppose with a broken heart. CHAPTER XVI POLITICAL CONDITIONS IN 1869 When the Republican Party came into power in 1869 under its great and simple-hearted President, it found itself confronted with very serious duties. They were enough to fill ordinary men in ordinary times with dismay. The President was without political experience. He had never held civil office. He had voted but twice in his life. He had voted the Whig ticket once and the Democratic ticket once. So he could not justly be charged with being an offensive partisan. He had no experience in business except in a humble way and in that he had been unfortunate. Congress and the President could only act under the restraint of a written Constitution. Everything done by either must pass the ordeal of the Supreme Court, a majority of whose members then had no sympathy with a liberal interpretation of the National powers. The Chief Justice had been a great Republican leader. But he had quarrelled with Lincoln, and was an eager aspirant for the Democratic nomination for the Presidency.