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“The World’s Damndest Ass”
As he began his second term in the spring of 1865, President Abraham Lincoln planned two changes in his cabinet. He appointed Hugh McCulloch as Secretary of the Treasury on March 9 and intended to appoint James Harlan, a sitting Iowa Senator, as Secretary of the Interior within a few weeks.
Although Lincoln was assassinated before Harlan could join his cabinet, in May of 1865 Harlan resigned from the Senate to become Secretary of the Interior under Andrew Johnson.
A typical new boss, Harlan vowed to run a tight ship and announced plans to rid his department of non-essential positions. He also vowed to ensure the loyalty of each employee. Harlan’s intentions are easy to understand for the recently-concluded Civil War had drained the country financially, and southern sympathizers had infiltrated Washington. Equally significant is Harlan’s interest in the “moral character” of his employees. It, too, is understandable as Harlan was an ordained Methodist minister.
Harlan made good on his word. Within six weeks, he dismissed numerous staffers. One of them, a 47-year-old second-class clerk in the Bureau of Indian Affairs, protested his firing. His name was Walt Whitman.
Upon receiving his dismissal letter dated June 30, the journalist, poet, and volunteer nurse of wounded soldiers activated his network of somewhat influential friends. The result was a meeting between Assistant Attorney General J. H. Ashton and Secretary Harlan.
When Ashton asked that Whitman be retained, Harlan adamantly refused. Deeming the sexual frankness of The Leaves of Grass morally reprehensible, he not only declined to rehire Whitman but also vowed to resign if President Johnson reinstated him. Additionally, he declared Whitman unfit to work for the government in any capacity. Harlan was so vehement that the best Ashton could do was have him agree not to challenge Whitman’s appointment to another government job. Ashton then arranged for Whitman to became a clerk in the office of the Attorney General, where he remained until 1874.
Harlan’s response to Ashton was a career-damaging tactical mistake in which he confused his ministerial and political roles. He defended his firing of Whitman within the parameters of his Methodist-minister morals. While editions of The Leaves of Grass had been published in 1855, 1856, and 1860, Harlan did not read the controversial book until he discovered a copy on or in Whitman’s desk. Whitman supporters claim Harlan made his discovery during an after-hours prowl through the department when he removed the volume to his own office for examination.
Had Harlan kept his emotions in check and responded to Ashton as a logical, efficient bureaucrat, the incident would probably have been forgotten, as Harlan had numerous objective reasons for dismissing Whitman.
First, Whitman was a recent hire, having joined the Bureau of Indian Affairs on January 24, 1865, only five months before his dismissal. Sometime in March, Whitman asked for and received a furlough to go to his mother’s home in Brooklyn where his brother George, a recently exchanged prisoner of war, was recuperating. Whitman was in New York when Lincoln was assassinated on April 14 and did not return to Washington until following Monday, April 17. Thus, during his five-month stint with the Department of the Interior, Whitman had been at his desk only a little more than four months.
Nor was Whitman putting in long hours when he was on the job, as evidenced by the text of two letters now available online in The Whitman Archive. In a letter dated January 30, 1865, when he had been with the Department less than a week, Whitman wrote to his brother Jeff, “the rule is to come at 9 and go at 4– but I don’t come at 9, and only stay till 4 when I want.” A few days later, he wrote to Abby H. Price, “I have a little employment here, of three or four hours every day.”
If Whitman was expected to be putting in seven-hour days but was coming and going at his discretion, he was insubordinate. If he was being told to report late or leave early, there was clearly little need for his services. In either case, Harlan had irrefutable grounds to dismiss him and could have so informed Ashton. If he chose to reference The Leaves of Grass at all, he could have confined his comments to the handwritten notes Whitman had made in the volume Harlan found in Whitman’s desk. They were revisions planned for the next edition of the book, and they would have been evidence that Whitman was doing personal work on government time. In fact, Harlan later defended his decision by saying Whitman was fired simply because his services were not needed.
James Harlan
However, as often happens when emotion trumps reason, the damage was done. Whitman’s friend William Douglas O’Connor published an emotional essay, “The Good Gray Poet” that villified Harlan while praising Whitman as a poet and a patriot. This time emotions worked in favor of Whitman. Drum Taps, his volume of war poems which came out in May 1865 and When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed, his heartfelt Lincoln elegy, appealed to the partriotic masses who grieved for their fallen soldiers and their commander-in-chief. In addition, even his uninhibited approach to poetry gradually gained acceptance with critics and readers, many of whom had been comforted by his caring presence in the hospitals of Washington during and after the war.
Being known as the man who fired Walt Whitman tarnished Harlan’s reputation to the extent that in 1919, when writing about the event in the Smart Set, H. L. Mencken said, “one day in 1865 brought together the greatest poet America had produced and the world’s damdest ass.”
Some Harlan Trivia
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Harlan and Lincoln were friends. James Harlan was among the small group to whom Lincoln relayed his prophetic dream of seeing mourners in the White House greiving for their president who had been killed by an assassin.
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Harlan’s daughter Mary became the wife of Robert Lincoln.
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Harlan was Iowa’s first State Superintendent of Education as well as the first president of Iowa Wesleyan College. Ironically, the poetry of Walt Whitman is now included in high school and college curricula across the state.
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Mencken’s assessment of Harlan was addressed by Louis R. Harlan in The Harlan Family in America: A Brief History. With a gentlemanly display of tact, he wrote, “Let us attribute that remark . . . more to Mencken’s admiration of Whitman than as a true characterization of Harlan, whom Mencken never met.”
What You Can Do
- Visit the Harlan-Lincoln House on the campus of Iowa Wesleyan College in Mt. Pleasant, Iowa. Harlan built it as his retirement home, and Mrs. Robert Lincoln and her children spent summers there with her parents.
- While on campus, view the statue of Harlan that stood in the National Statuary Hall in the U. S. capitol in Washington, D. C. from 1910 until March of 2014 when it was replaced with a statue of Norman Borlaug.
The transcontinental railroad was completed on May 10, 1869, when railroad titan Leland Stanford
drove the golden spike that connected the Central Pacific and Union Pacific lines at Promontory
Summit in the Utah Territory. Three years later, the New York Sun uncovered a massive financial
scam and scandal involving the Union Pacific and a sham company it set up to handle the
construction, Credit Mobilier of America. Basically, the construction was financed by the government,
and Credit Mobilier was used as a front to overbill the government so the railroad executives and
major owners could get rich quick.In effect, the railroad was billing for what today would be called cost overruns, though they werefictitious. Congress had to appropriate the extra money, though, and that’s where James Harlan comes in. A MassachusettsCongressman named Oakes Ames — he’s the man Ames, Iowa, is named for — got involved with Credit Mobilier and began bribing his
colleagues by offering them valuable stock in Credit Mobilier at a great discount.
After the newspaper exposed the scandal, the Congress investigated. Ultimately, eight Senators were investigated — including both fromIowa, William B. Allison and James Harlan. Allison returned his stock, and the Iowa legislature kept returning him to Washington until his
death in 1908. Investigators did not say Harlan had received stock, but they discovered that in 1865 he had received a $10,000“campaign contribution” from the mastermind of the scandal — that’s the equivalent of $140,845.07 today — and said “the use of largesums of money to influence either popular or legislative elections strikes directly at the fundamental principle of a Republican
government.” And, as if predicting events to come 140 years later, they said, “It cannot be concealed that [the use of large sums of moneyin campaigns] is one of the threatening dangers to the permanence of our Government, and one which calls for that popular rebuke which
can come only, and should come speedily from the united voice of the virtuous citizens of the Republic…”The committee report didn’t say Harlan was bribed, and it didn’t find that he sold his vote, but it did recommend that he be censured.Harlan himself said the money simply was a gift from an old friend.He did not name the Friend -Does his friends normally give him thousands of dollars ?Does Harlan make it a practice to take money from his So called Friends -what the reason got money?
Nobody gives a person money just to give them money so their has to be reason give the money?
Secretary of Interior -James Harlan in andrew Johnson
cabinet -april 15-1865 resigned July 27, 1866
Secretary of Interior -Senator of Iowa James Harlan.
His wife :Ann Eliza Peck parents Silas/Mary Harlan.
James Harlan sisters : Lydia Harlan/Jane Harlan.
Harlan’s brother in law – George C Snow.
Robert Todd Lincoln & Mary Eunice Harlan wed
September 24,1868 at Harlan’s residence :
304 H Street Washington D.C.
Mary Surratt Boarding House, 604 H Street Washington.
James Harlan & Wife went with the Lincoln to City Point with mary dress-maker Beckley,
They went to Opera & to the Theatre with the Lincoln why didnt they go april 14,1865?
ulysses Grant Wife got on the steamer at City point several times claimed Beckley.
So why did Grant not go Ford theatre & instead let wife get him to leave town?
Why did Robt T Lincoln would not attend Presidential functions wouldn’t go theatre’?
Thomas Tad Lincoln went to the theatre the same day that Abe was shot at Fords”
National Theatre -Grover Theatre near Williard Hotel .
The Willard Hotel -corner 14th St / F Street washington.
Williard Hotel – 1401 Pennsylvania Ave / 4th St washington.
{Robert T Lincoln -wife Mary -1775 N Street washington.
and Robt Lincoln -wife mary -3014 N Street Washington)
Ford theatre -10th st /E St and Herndon House 9thst/F/g St.
Peterson House across Ford theatre-Kirwood House 12st/D St.
National Hotel – Pennsylvania avenue / 6th Street Washington
J W Booth stay at the National Hotel as well Lucy Lambert Hale.
Lucy’s with suitors Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., John Hay,
Hay was Abraham Lincoln personal Secretary with info.
Robt T Lincoln wrote books with Nicolay and John Hay.
..After John Wilkes Booth was shot at Garrett’s farm
on April 26, 1865 Colonel Everton Conger removed
JWB items on him those items were wallet / Diary.
Many pages were missing in the diary some say over 18 pgs.
diary were probably written between april 14- to – Apr 26,1865.
Colonel Everton Conger took it to Washington and gave
it to Lafayette C. Baker,chief of the War Department’s National Detective Police.. Baker in turn gave it to Secretary of War Edwin Stanton.Indian Affairs :Edwin Stanton -Secretary of Interior –
James Harlan.Gen Pope to Grant 6-14-1865.Pope To Stanton feb 1864.Pope to J Harlan 6-19-1865.Maj G.M.Dodge to J Harlan 6-22-1865.J Harlan to Gen.Pope 7-6-1865.Harlan to Commissoner D.V.Cooley -Edward Taylor-Henry Reed-Orin Guerney-Gen S.R.Curtis-Henry H.Sibley.!Sec of Interior James Harlan announced that in the future Indian Officials would accept the policy of the War Department Edwin Stanton.Harlan . As secretary, Harlan regulated the settlement and cultivation of public lands, urged forest conservation, and worked to protect American Indian tribes.maps of the Lewis and Clark journey across Missouri territory by combining information featured Jim Harlan, the mapmaker. . Harlan Bill after James Harlan, the Iowa senator who authored the bill). … The Harlan Bill sought to organize Indian Territory (as a federal territory) with the ultimate goal of voiding Indian land rights and opening the territory to white settlement and economic exploitation .; he had proposed an Indian territorial bill to Congress that called for denationalization of the tribes in Indian Territory and their consolidation into one government.Cooley, a native of New Hampshire and a lawyer from Iowa, strove to reduce the corruption among the agents and to promote efficiency in Indian affairs. Nonetheless, Indian policy fell under the control of President Andrew Johnson, Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, Secretary of the Interior James Harlan. Forced to cede varying amounts of land that collectively totaled over five million acres, the Five Tribes forfeited lands originally granted.Indian Affairs. was added and placed in market on the 28th of last February a portion of the diminished reserve, making the whole amount placed in the market about 339,772 acres; the whole number of acres now remaining unsold being about 70,000.August 30, 1866, James Harlan, then Secretary of the Interior, sold the lands to the American Emigrant Company. Two days later, Harlan was succeeded by Orville H. Browning, who set aside the contract with the American Emigrant Company on an opinion of the United States Attorney General .
You appear to love studying history.Keep it up! Thanks for the additional information on Harlan.