the Civil War, governor of his state, Secretary of the Interior
in President Grant's Cabinet, a member of Congress, the president of a
large railroad, a writer of books, dean and teacher in a law school, and
a reviewer of books in the _Nation_,--such were the varied activities of
General Cox. All this work was done with credit. He bore a prominent
part in the battle of Antietam, where Ropes speaks of his "brilliant
success"; he was the second in command at the battle of Franklin, and
bore the brunt of the battle. "Brigadier-General J. D. Cox," wrote
Schofield, the commanding general, in his report, "deserves a very large
share of credit for the brilliant victory at Franklin."

The governor of the state of Ohio did not then have a great opportunity
of impressing himself upon the minds of the people of his state, but Cox
made his mark in the canvass for that office. We must call to mind that
in the year 1865, when he was the Republican candidate for governor,
President Johnson had initiated his policy of reconstruction, but had
not yet made a formal break with his party. Negro suffrage, which only a
few had favored during the last year of the war, was now advocated by
the radical Republicans, and the popular sentiment of the party was
tending in that direction. Cox had been a strong antislavery man before
the war, a supporter of President Lincoln in his emancipation measures,
but soon after his nomination for governor he wrote a letter to his
radical friends at Oberlin in opposition to negro suffrage. "You
assume," he said, "that the extension of the right of suffrage to the
blacks, leaving them intermixed with the whites, will cure all the
trouble. I believe it would rather be like the decision in that outer
darkness of which Milton speaks where

"'chaos umpire sits,
And by decision more embroils the fray.'"

While governor, he said in a private conversation that he had come to
the conclusion "that so large bodies of black men and white as were in
presence in the Southern States never could share political power, and
that the insistence upon it on the part of the colored people would lead
to their ruin."

President Grant appointed General Cox Secretary of the Interior, and he
remained for nearly two years in the Cabinet. James Russell Lowell, on a
visit to Washington in 1870, gave expression to the feeling among
independent Republicans. "Judge Hoar," he wrote, "and Mr. Cox struck me
as the only really str