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Title: Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2

Author: George Hoar

Release Date: October 15, 2006 [EBook #19548]
[Last updated on May 30, 2007]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF SEVENTY ***




Produced by Ed Ferris




[Frontispiece:  v1.jpg]
SENATOR GEORGE F. HOAR
  From a photograph taken in 1897
  _Copyright, 1897, by H. Schervee, Worcester, Mass._

[Title page]
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
OF SEVENTY YEARS

BY
GEORGE F. HOAR

WITH PORTRAITS

VOLUME I.

NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1903

[Dedication]
TO
MY WIFE AND CHILDREN
THIS RECORD OF A LIFE WHICH
THEY HAVE MADE HAPPY
IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED

[Table of Contents]
CONTENTS

CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY

CHAPTER II
ROGER SHERMAN AND HIS FAMILY

CHAPTER III
SAMUEL HOAR

CHAPTER IV
BOYHOOD IN CONCORD

CHAPTER V
FAMOUS CONCORD MEN

CHAPTER VI
FARM AND SCHOOL

CHAPTER VII
HARVARD SIXTY YEARS AGO

CHAPTER VIII
1849 TO 1850--FOUNDATION OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY--
DANIEL WEBSTER

CHAPTER IX
LIFE IN WORCESTER

CHAPTER X
POLITICAL HISTORY OF MASSACHUSETTS FROM 1848 TO 1869

CHAPTER XI
THE KNOW NOTHING PARTY AND ITS OVERTHROW

CHAPTER XII
ELECTION TO CONGRESS

CHAPTER XIII
SUMNER AND WILSON

CHAPTER XIV
PERSONALITIES IN DEBATE

CHAPTER XV
THE NATIONAL HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES IN 1869

CHAPTER XVI
POLITICAL CONDITION IN 1869

CHAPTER XVII
RECONSTRUCTION

CHAPTER XVIII
COMMITTEE SERVICE IN THE HOUSE

CHAPTER XIX
SALMON P. CHASE

CHAPTER XX
ADIN THAYER

CHAPTER XXI
POLITICAL CORRUPTION

CHAPTER XXII
CREDIT MOBILIER

CHAPTER XXIII
THE SANBORN CONTRACTS

CHAPTER XXIV
BENJAMIN F. BUTLER

CHAPTER XXV
BELKNAP IMPEACHMENT

CHAPTER XXVI
ELECTORAL COMMISSION

CHAPTER XXVII
FOUR NATIONAL CONVENTIONS, 1876

CHAPTER XXVIII
FOUR NATIONAL CONVENTIONS, 1880

CHAPTER XXIX
FOUR NATIONAL CONVENTIONS, 1884

CHAPTER XXX
FOUR NATIONAL CONVENTIONS, 1888

CHAPTER XXXI
SATURDAY CLUB

CHAPTER XXXII
THE WORCESTER FIRE SOCIETY

APPENDIX I.

APPENDIX II.

[Text]
AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF SEVENTY YEARS

CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY

Everybody who reads this book through will wonder that a man
who ought to be able to tell so much has really told so little.

I have known personally and quite intimately, or have known
intelligent and trustworthy persons who have known personally
and quite intimately, many men who have had a great share
in the history of this country and in its literature for a
hundred and thirty years.

In my younger days there were among my kindred and near friends
persons who knew the great actors of the Revolutionary time
and the time which followed till I came to manhood myself.
But I did not know enough to ask questions.  If I had, and
had recorded the answers, I could write a very large part
of the political and literary history of the United States.
I never kept a diary, except for a few and brief periods.
So for what I have to say, I must trust to my memory.  I have
no doubt that after these volumes are published, there will
come up in my mind matter enough to make a dozen better ones.

I invoke for this book that kindly judgment of my countrymen
which has attended everything I have done in my life so far.
I have tried to guard against the dangers and the besetting
infirmities of men who write their own biography.  An autobiography,
as the word implies, will be egotistical.  An old man's autobiography
is pretty certain to be garrulous.  If the writer set forth
therein his own ideals, he is likely to be judged by them,
even when he may fall far short of them.  Men are likely to
think that he claims or pretends to have lived up to them,
however painfully conscious he may be that they are only dreams
which even if he have done his best have had little reality
for him.

There is another danger for a man who tells the story of
great transactions, in which he has taken part, whether legislative,
executive, military, or political, or any other, in which
the combined action of many persons was required for the result.
He is apt to claim, consciously or unconsciously, that he
himself brought the whole thing about.

"Papa," said the little boy to the veteran of the Civil War,
"Did anybody help you to put down the Rebellion?"

This peril specially besets narrators in their old age.  I
am afraid I can hardly escape it.

I once heard General George H. Thomas relate to a brilliant
company at a supper party, among whom were Chief Justice Chase,
General Eaton, Commissary General in two wars, Senator Trumbull,
William M. Evarts, Joseph Henry, John Sherman, his brother
the General, and several other gentlemen of equal distinction,
the story of the battles of Nashville and Franklin.  The story
was full of dramatic interest.  Yet no one who heard it would
have known that the speaker himself had taken part in the
great achievement, until, just at the end, he said of the
Battle of Nashville that he thought of sending a detachment
to cut off Hood's army at a ford by which he escaped after
they were defeated, but he concluded that it was not safe
to spare that force from immediate use in the battle.  "If
I had done it," he added, with great simplicity, "I should
have captured his whole army.  There is where I made my mistake."

The recollections of the actors in important political transactions
are doubtless of great historic value.  But I ought to say
frankly that my experience has taught me that the memory of
men, even of good and true men, as to matters in which they
have been personal actors, is frequently most dangerous and
misleading.  I could recount many curious stories which have
been told me by friends who have been writers of history and
biography, of the contradictory statements they have received
from the best men in regard to scenes in which they have been
present.

If any critic think this book lacking in dignity, or wisdom,
or modesty, it is hoped that it may, by way of offset, make
up for it in sincerity.  I have so far lived in the world
without secrets.  If my countrymen, or the people of Massachusetts,
have trusted me, they have fully known what they were doing.
"They had eyes and chose me."

I have never lifted any finger or spoken a word to any man
to secure or to promote my own election to any office.  I
do not mean to criticise other men who advance their honorable
ambition for public service or exert themselves to get office
for which they think themselves fit.  It was the "high Roman
fashion."  It has been the fashion in England always.  English
gentlemen do not disdain a personal solicitation for political
support, and think no harm in it, to which no American gentleman
would for a moment stoop.

It has been the custom in other parts of the country almost
from the beginning of the Government.  But what I think a
better custom has prevailed in Massachusetts.  I arrogate
to myself no virtue in this respect.  I only say that it has
been my supreme good fortune to be the son of a Commonwealth
among whose noble and high-minded people a better and more
fastidious habit has prevailed.

The lesson which I have learned in life, which is impressed
on me daily, and more deeply as I grow old, is the lesson
of Good Will and Good Hope.  I believe that to-day is better
than yesterday, and that to-morrow will be better than to-
day.  I believe that in spite of so many errors and wrongs
and even crimes, my countrymen of all classes desire what
is good, and not what is evil.  I repeat what I said to the
State Convention of Massachusetts after the death of President
McKinley:

"When I first came to manhood and began to take part in public
affairs, that greatest of crimes, human slavery, was entrenched
everywhere in power in this Republic.  Congress and Supreme
Court, Commerce and Trade and Social Life alike submitted
to its imperious and arrogant sway.  Mr. Webster declared
that there was no North, and that the South went clear up
to the Canada line.  The hope of many wise and conservative
and, as I now believe, patriotic men, of saving this country
from being rent into fragments was in leaving to slavery forever
the great territory between the Mississippi and the Pacific,
in the Fugitive Slave Law, a law under which freemen were
taken from the soil of Massachusetts to be delivered into
perpetual bondage, and in the judgment of the Supreme Court
which declared it as the lesson of our history that the Negro
had no rights that a white man was bound to respect.

"Last week at Dartmouth, at the great celebration in honor
of Daniel Webster, that famous college gave the highest honor
in its power to a Negro, amid the applause of the brilliant
assembly.  And there was no applause more earnest or hearty
than that of the successor of Taney, the Democratic Chief
Justice of the United States.  I know that the people of that
race are still the victims of outrages which all good men
deplore.  But I also believe that the rising sense of justice
and of manhood in the South is already finding expression
in indignant remonstrance from the lips of governors and preachers,
and that the justice and manhood of the South will surely
make their way.

"Ah, Fellow Citizens, amid the sorrow and the mourning and
the tears, amid the horror and the disappointment and the
baffled hope, there comes to us from the open grave of William
McKinley a voice of good omen!  What pride and love must we
feel for the republic that calls such men to her high places?
What hope and confidence in the future of a people, where
all men and all women of all parties and sections, of all
faiths and creeds, of all classes and conditions, are ready
to respond as ours have responded to the emotion of a mighty
love.

"You and I are Republicans.  You and I are men of the North.
Most of us are Protestants in religion.  We are men of native
birth.  Yet if every Republican were to-day to fall in his
place, as William McKinley has fallen, I believe our countrymen
of the other party, in spite of what we deem their errors,
would take the Republic and bear on the flag to liberty and
glory.  I believe if every Protestant were to be stricken
down by a lightning-stroke, that our brethren of the Catholic
faith would still carry on the Republic in the spirit of a
true and liberal freedom.  I believe if every man of native
birth within our borders were to die this day, the men of
foreign birth, who have come here to seek homes and liberty
under the shadow of the Republic, would carry it on in God's
appointed way.  I believe if every man of the North were to
die, the new and chastened South, with the virtues it has
cherished from the beginning, with its courage and its constancy,
would take the country and bear it on to the achievement of
its lofty destiny.  The Anarchist must slay 75,000,000 Americans
before he can slay the Republic.

"Of course there would be mistakes.  Of course there would
be disappointments and grievous errors.  Of course there would
be many things for which the lovers of liberty would mourn.
But America would survive them all, and the nation our fathers
planted would endure in perennial life.

"William McKinley has fallen in high place.  The spirit of
Anarchy, always the servant of the spirit of Despotism, aimed
its shaft at him, and his life for this world is over.  But
there comes from his fresh grave a voice of lofty triumph:
'Be of good cheer.  It is God's way.'"

I account it my supreme good fortune that my public life
has been spent in the service of Massachusetts.  No man can
know better than I do how unworthy I have been of a place
in the great line of public men who have adorned her history
for nearly three hundred years.  What a succession it has
been.  What royal house, what empire or monarchy, can show
a catalogue like that of the men whom in every generation
she has called to high places--Bradford, and Winthrop, and
Sir Henry Vane, Leverett, and Sam Adams and John Adams and
his illustrious son, and Cabot and Dexter, Webster and Everett
and Sumner and Andrew.  Nothing better can be said in praise
of either than that they have been worthy of her, and she
has been worthy of them.  They have given her always brave
and honest service, brave and honest counsel.  She has never
asked of them obsequiousness, or flattery, or even obedience
to her will, unless it had the approval of their own judgment
and conscience.  That relation has been alike most honorable
and most advantageous to both sides.  They have never been
afraid to trust the people and they have never been afraid
to withstand the people.  They knew well the great secret
of all statesmanship, that he that withstands the people on
fit occasions is commonly the man who trusts them most and
always in the end the man they trust most.


CHAPTER II
ROGER SHERMAN AND HIS FAMILY

My mother, who died in 1866, at the age of eighty-three,
was the daughter of Roger Sherman of Connecticut.  Her father
died when she was ten years old.  She lived in her mother's
house, opposite the College in New Haven, until her marriage
in 1812.  New Haven was one of the capital cities of New England.
Its society had the special attraction which belonged to the
seat of a famous college.  Her mother's house was visited
by the survivors of the great period of the Revolution and
the framing of the Constitution, whom her father had known
during an eminent public service of nearly forty years.

My mother was the most perfect democrat, in the best sense
of the word, that I ever knew.  It was a democracy which was
the logical result of the doctrines of the Old Testament and
of the New.  It recognized the dignity of the individual soul,
without regard to the accident of birth or wealth or power
or color of the skin.  If she were in the company of a Queen,
it would never have occurred to her that they did not meet
as equals.  And if the Queen were a woman of sense, and knew
her, it would never occur to the Queen.  The poorest people
in the town, the paupers in the poorhouse, thought of her
as a personal friend to whom they could turn for sympathy
and help.  No long before her death, an old black woman died
in the poorhouse.  She died in the night.  An old man who
had been a town pauper a good part of his life sat up with
her and ministered to her wants as well as he could.  Just
before she died, the old woman thanked him for his kindness.
She told him she should like to give him something to show
her gratitude, but that she had nothing in the world; but
she thought that if he would go to Mrs. Hoar and ask her
to give him a dollar, as a favor to her she would do it.  The
draft on the bank of kindness was duly honored.  And I think
the legacy was valued as highly by her who paid it as if it
had been a costly gem or a work of art from an emperor's gallery.

Mr. Calhoun was very intimate in my grandmother's household
when he was in college, and always inquired with great interest
after the young ladies of the family when he met anybody who
knew them.  He had a special liking for my mother, who was
about his own age, and always inquired for her.

William M. Evarts visited Washington in his youth and called
upon Mr. Calhoun, who received him with great consideration,
went with him in person to see the President and what was
worth seeing in Washington.  Mr. Calhoun spoke in the highest
terms of Roger Sherman to Mr. Evarts, said that he regarded
him as one of the greatest of our statesmen, and that he had
seen the true interests of the South when Southern statesmen
were blind to them.  This Mr. Calhoun afterward said in a
speech in the Senate, including, however, Mr. Paterson of
New Jersey and Oliver Ellsworth in his eulogy.

The story of Roger Sherman's life has never been told at length.
There is an excellent memoir of him in Sanderson's "Lives
of the Signers," written by Jeremiah Evarts, with the assistance
of the late Governor and Senator Roger S. Baldwin of Connecticut.
But when that was written the correspondence of the great
actors of his time, and indeed the journals of the Continental
Congress and the Constitutional Convention and the Madison
Papers, were none of them accessible to the public.

An excellent though brief memoir of Mr. Sherman was published
a few years ago by L. H. Boutell, Esq., of Chicago.  Mr. Sherman
was a man who seemed to care nothing for fame.  He was content
to cause great things to be done for his country, and cared
nothing for the pride and glory of having done them.  The
personal pronoun I is seldom found in any speech or writing
of his.  He had a large share in the public events that led
to the Revolution, in the conduct of the War, in the proceedings
of the Continental Congress, in the framing of the Constitution,
in securing its adoption by Connecticut, and in the action
of the House and Senate in Washington's first Administration.
He was also for many years Judge of the highest court of his
State.  He was a man of indefatigable industry.  An accomplished
lady employed to make investigations in the public archives
of the Department of State, reported that she did not see
how he could ever have gone to bed.

He had a most affectionate and tender heart.  He was very
fond of his family and friends.  Although reserved and silent
in ordinary company, he was very agreeable in conversation,
and had a delightful wit.  Some of the very greatest men of
his time have left on record their estimate of his greatness.

Thomas Jefferson said of him:  "There is old Roger Sherman,
who never said a foolish thing in his life."

Theodore Sedgwick said:  "He was a man of the selectest wisdom.
His influence was such that no measure, or part of a measure
which he advocated, ever failed to pass."

Fisher Ames said that if he were absent through a debate
and came in before the vote was taken he always voted with
Roger Sherman, as he always voted right.

Patrick Henry said that the first men in the Continental
Congress were Washington, Richard Henry Lee, and Roger Sherman,
and, later in life, that Roger Sherman and George Mason were
the greatest statesmen he ever knew.  This statement, published
in the life of Mason, was carefully verified for me by my
friend, the late William Wirt Henry, grandson and biographer
of Patrick Henry, as appears by a letter from him in my possession.*

[Footnote]
*I attach a passage from Mr. William Wirt Henry's letter, dated
December 28, 1892.

"I am glad to be able to say that you may rely on the correctness
of the passage at page 221 of Howe's Historical Collections of Va.
giving Patrick Henry's estimate of Roger Sherman.  It was furnished
the author by my father and though a youth I well remember Mr. Howe's
visit to Red Hill, my father's residence.  My father, John Henry,
was about three years of age when his father died, but his mother
long survived Patrick Henry, as did several of his older children.
From his mother, brothers and sisters my father learned many
personal reminiscences of his father and his exceptionally
retentive memory enabled him to relate them accurately.  I have
often heard him relate the reminiscences given on that page by
Mr. Howe."
[End of Footnote]

John Adams, in a letter to his wife, speaks of Sherman as
"That old Puritan, as honest as an angel, and as firm in
the cause of Independence as Mt. Atlas."

But perhaps the most remarkable testimony to his character,
one almost unexampled in the history of public men, is that
paid to him by Oliver Ellsworth, himself one of the greatest
men of his time,--Chief Justice of the United States, Envoy
to France, leader in the Senate for the first twelve years
of the Constitution, and author of the Judiciary Act.  He
had been on the Bench of the Superior Court of Connecticut,
with Mr. Sherman, for many years.  They served together in
the Continental Congress, and in the Senate of the United
States.  They were together members of the Convention that
framed the Constitution, and of the State Convention in Connecticut
that adopted it.  Chief Justice Ellsworth told John Adams
that he had made Mr. Sherman his model in his youth.  Mr.
Adams adds:  "Indeed I never knew two men more alike, except
that the Chief Justice had the advantage of a liberal education,
and somewhat more extensive reading.  Mr. Sherman was born
in the State of Massachusetts, and was one of the strongest
and soundest pillars of the Revolution."  It would be hard
to find another case of life-long and intimate companionship
between two public men where such a declaration by either
of the other would not seem ludicrous.

He was the only person who signed all four of the great State
Papers, to which the signatures of the delegates of the different
Colonies were attached:

  The Association of 1774;
  The Articles of Confederation;
  The Declaration of Independence, and
  The Constitution of the United States.

Robert Morris signed three of them.

His tenacity, the independence of his judgment, and his influence
over the great men with whom he was associated, is shown by
four striking instances among many others where he succeeded
in impressing his opinion on his associates.

_First:_  It is well known that the dispute between the large
States, who desired to have their votes in the National Legislature
counted in proportion to numbers, and the small States, who
desired to vote by States as equals, a dispute which nearly
wrecked the attempt to frame a Constitution of the United
States, arose in the Continental Congress, and gave rise to
great controversy there when the Articles of Confederation
were framed.  Mr. Sherman was one of the Committee that framed
those Articles, as he was afterward one of the Committee who
reported the Declaration of Independence.

John Adams writes in his diary, that Mr. Sherman, in Committee
of the Whole, moved August 1, 1776, that the vote be taken
both ways, once according to numbers, and a second time, when
the States should vote as equals.

This was, in substance, so far as the arrangement of political
power was concerned, the plan of the Constitution.  In the
Constitutional Convention, Mr. Sherman first moved this plan,
known as the Connecticut Compromise, and made the first argument
in its support, to which his colleague, Oliver Ellsworth,
afterward gave the weight of his powerful influence.  The
Convention afterward, almost in despair of any settlement
of this vexed question, referred the matter to a grand committee,
on which Mr. Ellsworth was originally named.  But he withdrew
from the committee, and Mr. Sherman took his place.  Mr.
Sherman had the parliamentary charge of the matter from the
beginning, and at the close of the Convention, moved the provision
that no State should be deprived of its equal vote without
its consent.

When Mr. Sherman's known tenacity, and his influence over
the great men with whom he was associated, testified to by
so many of them, is borne in mind, it seems there can be no
doubt that he is entitled to the chief credit of carrying
out the scheme which he himself devised, and which, years
before the Convention met, he himself first moved in the
Continental Congress for which he made the first argument,
and which was reported from the committee of which he was
a member, representing the State which gave the name to the
Compromise.  His motion, which was adopted, that no State
should be deprived of its equal vote in the Senate without
its consent, made the equality secure.*

[Footnote]
* See Boutell's "Life of Roger Sherman," Lodge's "Flying Frigate,
--Address on Ellsworth," Proceedings Am. Ant. Soc., October, 1902.
[End of Footnote]

_Second:_  In 1774, when Mr. Adams was on his way to the
Continental Congress in Philadelphia, he records in his diary
that he met Roger Sherman at New Haven, who, he says, "is
a solid and sensible man."  Mr. Sherman said to him that he
thought the Massachusetts patriots, especially Mr. Otis,
in his argument for the Writs of Assistance, had given up
the whole case when they admitted that Parliament had the
power to legislate for the Colonies under any circumstances
whatever.  He lived to join in the report from the committee,
and to sign the Declaration of Independence, which put the
case on his ground.  The Declaration of Independence does
not recognize Parliament at all, except indirectly, when it
says the King "has combined with others" to do the wrongs
which are complained of.

_Third:_  In 1752 the whole country was overrun with paper
money.  Mr. Sherman published in that year a little pamphlet,
entitled, "A Caveat Against Injustice, or An Inquiry Into
the Evil Consequences of a Fluctuating Medium of Exchange."
He stated with great clearness and force the arguments which,
unhappily, we have been compelled to repeat more than once
in later generations.  He denounced paper money as "a cheat,
vexation, and snare, a medium whereby we are continually cheating
and wronging one another in our dealings and commerce." He
adds, "So long as we import so much more foreign goods than
are necessary, and keep so many merchants and traders employed
to procure and deal them out to us: a great part of which
we might as well make among ourselves; and another great part
of which we had much better be without, especially the spiritous
liquors, of which vast quantities are consumed in the colony
every year, unnecessarily, to the great destruction of estates,
morals, healths and even the lives of many of the inhabitants,--
I say, so long as these things are so, we shall spend a great
part of our labor and substance for that which will not profit
us.  Whereas, if these things were reformed, the provisions
and other commodities which we might have to export yearly,
and which other governments are dependent upon us for, would
procure us gold and silver abundantly sufficient for a medium
of trade.  And we might be as independent, flourishing and
happy a colony as any in the British Dominions."

He lived to move in the Convention, and to procure its insertion
in the Constitution, the clause that no State should make
anything but gold and silver legal tender.

_Fourth:_  Mr. Sherman took his seat in the Federal Convention
May 30, 1787.  Mr. Randolph's resolution, submitted on the
29th day of May, being before the Convention the next day,
included the proposition that the National Legislature ought
to be empowered to enjoy the legislative rights vested in
Congress by the confederation, "and moreover to legislate
in all cases in which the separate States are incompetent,"
--the question being whether the clause authorizing Congress
to legislate in all cases in which the separate States are
incompetent should be retained, every State in the Convention
voted Aye, except Connecticut.  Connecticut was divided.  Ellsworth
voted Aye, and Sherman, No.

Mr. Sherman lived, not only to sign a Constitution of limited
powers, but himself to support the Tenth Article of Amendment
thereto, which is as follows:

"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution,
nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States
respectively, or to the people."  The words "or to the people"
were moved by Mr. Sherman after the original article was reported.
So he saw clearly in the beginning, what no other member saw,
the two great American principles, first that the National
Government should be a Government of limited and delegated
powers, and next, that there is a domain of legislation which
the people have not delegated either to the National Government
or to the States, and upon which no legislative power may
rightfully enter.

I surely am not mistaken in thinking that even without the
other services of a life devoted to the public, these four
contributions to the Constitutional history of the country
entitle Mr. Sherman to an honorable place in the grateful
memory of his countrymen, and vindicate the tributes which
I have cited from his illustrious contemporaries.

My grandmother, the daughter of Benjamin Prescott of Salem,
was a woman of great intelligence and a great beauty in her
time.  She was once taken out to dinner by General Washington
when he was President.  Madam Hancock, whose husband had been
President of the Continental Congress and Governor of Massachusetts,
complained to General Washington's Secretary, Mr. Lear, that
that honor belonged to her.  The Secretary told General Washington,
the next day, what she said.  The General answered that it
was his privilege to give his arm to the handsomest woman
in the room.  Whether the reply was communicated to Mrs. Hancock,
or whether she was comforted by it, does not appear.  General
Washington had been a guest at my grandfather's house in my
mother's childhood, and she had sat on his knee.  She was
then six years old.  But she always remembered the occasion
very vividly.

My grandfather was a friend of Lafayette, who mentions him
in one of his letters, the original of which is in my possession.
One of my mother's brothers, Lt. Colonel Isaac Sherman, led
the advance at Princeton, and was himself intimate with Washington
and Lafayette.  He was a very brave officer and commanded
a Connecticut regiment at the storming of Stony Point.  He
is honorably mentioned in Gen. Wayne's report of the action.
Washington alludes to him in one of his letters to Lafayette,
as one of his friends whom Lafayette will be glad to see if
he will visit this country once more.  There is, in the State
Department, an amusing correspondence between Col. Sherman
and Gen. Wayne, in which he complains that Mad Anthony does
great injustice in his report to the soldiers from other States
than Pennsylvania.  Mad Anthony was mad at the letter.  But
after a rather significant request from Gen. Washington,
he repaired the wrong.

Another of her brothers who died at the age of eighty-eight,
when I was thirty years old, and at whose house I was often
a visitor, spent three weeks as Washington's guest at Mount
Vernon.  Old Deacon Beers of New Haven, whom I knew in his
old age, was one of the guard who had Andre in custody.  During
his captivity, Andre made a pen-and-ink likeness of himself,
which he gave to Deacon Beers.  It is now in the possession
of Yale College.

I had from my mother the story of General Washington taking
Chief Justice Ellsworth's twin children, one on each knee,
and reciting to them the ballad of the Derbyshire Ram.  This
tradition has remained in the Ellsworth family.  I have confirmed
it by inquiry of the Rev. Mr. Wood, a grandson of Oliver Ellsworth,
who died in Washington a few years ago.

Besides the uncle to whom I allude, who died in 1856, Judge
Simeon Baldwin, who married two of my aunts, died in 1851,
aged ninety.  He was a Member of Congress in 1803-5, and was
an intimate friend of Chancellor Kent, who was his classmate
and chum in Yale, and was intimate with the Federalist leaders
of the Hamilton party.  I several times made visits in his
household before his death.  President Jeremiah Day, another
uncle by marriage, was at the head of Yale for thirty years.
He died in 1867, at the age of 94.

My mother's sister, Mrs. Jeremiah Evarts, was born January
28, 1774, and died in 1851, at the age of seventy-seven.  She
knew intimately many famous men and women of the Revolutionary
period.  Her husband was an intimate friend of John Jay.  She
had a great deal of the sprightly wit for which her son, William,
was so famous.  She was at home at the time of Washington's
visit, then a child eleven years old, and opened the door
for him when he took his leave.  The General, who was very
fond of children, put his hand on her head and said, "My little
lady, I wish you a better office." She dropped a courtesy
and answered, quick as lightning, "Yes, sir; to let you in."

Mrs. Evarts was a woman not only of sprightly wit, but of
great beauty.  She liked to tell in her old age of a dinner
which John Hancock gave for her father and her, in Boston,
when she was a girl.  She described her dress with great
minuteness, and added naively, "Didn't I look pretty?"

My mother, who was married in 1812, knew very intimately many
of her father's and mother's old friends who had been distinguished
in the public service in the Revolutionary period and the
Administration of Washington and John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.
She knew very well the family of John Jay.  He and his wife
were visitors at my grandmother's after their return from
Spain.  My mother was intimate in the household of Oliver
Ellsworth as in a second home.  His children were her playmates.
She was also very intimate indeed with the family of Senator
Hillhouse, whose daughter Mary was one of her dearest friends.

Senator Hillhouse held a very high place in the public life
of Connecticut in his day.  He was one of the friends of Hamilton,
and one of the group of Federal statesmen of whom Hamilton
was the leader.  He was United States Senator for Connecticut
from 1796 to 1810.

After she became a young lady, my mother, with Fanny Ellsworth,
afterward Mrs. Wood, and Mary Hillhouse, daughter of the Senator,
established a school to teach young colored children to read
and sew.  The colored people in New Haven were in a sad condition
in those days.  The law of the State made it a penal offence
to teach a colored child to read.  These girls violated the
law.  The public authorities interfered and threatened them
with prosecution.  But the young women were resolute.  They
insisted that they were performing a religious duty, and declared
that they should disobey the law and take the consequences.
A good deal of sympathy was aroused in their behalf.  The
New Haven authorities had to face the question whether they
would imprison the daughter of a Signer of the Declaration
of Independence, who had affixed his signature to the great
affirmation that all men are created equal, the daughters of
two Framers of the Constitution, and the daughter of James
Hillhouse, then the foremost citizen of Connecticut, for
teaching little children to read the Bible.  They gave up the
attempt.  The school kept on and flourished.  President Dwight
raised a considerable fund for it by a course of lectures,
and it continued down to within my own recollection.  What
became of the fund which was raised for its support I cannot
tell.

Jeremiah Evarts was born February 13, 1781.  He died May 10,
1831.  He was the founder and Secretary of the American Board
of Commissioners for Foreign Missions.  He was one of the
thirteen men who met in Samuel Dexter's office in 1812, to
inaugurate the Temperance Reformation.  The habit of excessive
drinking was then almost universal in this country.  Liquors
and wines were freely used on social occasions, at weddings
and at funerals.  The clergyman staggered home from his round
of pastoral calls, and the bearers partook of brandy or gin
or rum in the room adjoining that where the coffin was placed
ready for the funeral.  A gentleman present said it was utterly
impracticable to try and wean the American people from the habit of
drinking.  Jeremiah Evarts answered, "It is right, therefore
practicable."

He was a Puritan of the old school.  He made a vigorous but
ineffectual attempt in Connecticut to enforce the Sunday
laws.  His death was caused by his exertions in resisting
the removal of the Cherokee Indians from Georgia, a removal
accomplished in violation of the Constitution and of public
faith.  The Supreme Court of the United States declared the
law of Georgia unconstitutional.  But Georgia defied the mandate
of the Court, and it was never executed.  The missionary agent
was imprisoned and died of his confinement.  Mr. Evarts said,
"There is a court that has power to execute its judgments."

I told this story to Horace Maynard, an eminent member of
Congress and a member of the Cabinet.  Mr. Maynard said, "There
was never a prophecy more terribly accomplished.  The territory
from which those Indians were unlawfully removed was the scene
of the Battle of Missionary Ridge, which is not far from the
grave of Worcester, the missionary who died in prison.  That
land was fairly drenched with blood and honeycombed with graves."

Mr. Evarts edited the _Panoplist,_ a very able magazine which
powerfully defended the old theology against the Unitarian
movement, then at its height.

A well-known writer, Rev. Leonard W. Bacon, published a short
time ago a sketch entitled, "The Greater Evarts," in which
he contrasted the career of Jeremiah Evarts with that of his
brilliant and delightful son.  Whether that judgment shall
stand we may know when the question is settled, which is to
be answered in every generation, whether martyrdom be a failure.

Among the inmates of my grandfather's household in my mother's
childhood and youth was Roger Minott Sherman.  He was the
son of the Reverend Josiah Sherman, my grandfather's brother,
a clergyman of Woburn, Massachusetts, where Roger Minott was
born.  His father died in 1789.  My grandfather took the boy
into his household and educated him and treated him as a son,
and just before his death gave him his watch, which is now
in the possession of a son of General Sherman.

Roger Minott Sherman was unquestionably the ablest lawyer
in New England who never obtained distinction in political
life, and, with the exception of Daniel Webster and Jeremiah
Mason and Rufus Choate, the ablest New England ever produced.*

[Footnote]
* See Appendix.
[End of Footnote]

Roger Minott Sherman's father died in 1789.  The widow wrote
to some of her friends to see what assistance could be obtained
to enable her son to continue his studies at Yale.  It was
apparently in response to this appeal that Mr. Sherman wrote
the following letter to his nephew.

NEW YORK, April 28, 1790.

_Dear Nephew,_--I would have you continue your studies and
remain at my house as you have done hitherto.  I hope you
will be provided for so as to complete your education at College,
and lay a foundation for future usefulness.  When I return
home I shall take such further order respecting it as may
be proper.  I shall afford you as much assistance as under
my circumstances may be prudent.

  I am your affectionate uncle,
  ROGER SHERMAN.

Mr. Sherman died a year after his nephew graduated; but before
he died he doubtless saw the promise of that distinguished
career which added new lustre to the Sherman name.

It is a rather remarkable fact that my mother had such close
relations to so many eminent lawyers.  Her father, though
his public duties prevented him from practising law very long,
was a very great lawyer and judge.  Her brother-in-law, Judge
Baldwin, was an eminent Judge of the Connecticut Supreme Court.
Her cousin, Roger Minott Sherman, as has just been said, was
an inmate of her father's household in her childhood, and
was to her as a brother.  She had, after his mother's death,
the care of Senator Roger Sherman Baldwin, her nephew, who
was for many years at the head of the Connecticut Bar.  To
her nephew, William M. Evarts, my father's house was as another
home in his boyhood.  He was the leading advocate of his time.
Her son, E. R. Hoar, was Attorney General of the United
States.  And her husband was in his day one of the foremost
advocates of Massachusetts.  So, with a little alteration,
the Greek epitaph of the woman who was the daughter, wife,
sister and mother of princes, might apply to her, if, as I like
to think, a first-rate American lawyer is entitled to as much
respect as a petty Greek prince.


CHAPTER III
SAMUEL HOAR

I was born in Concord August 29, 1826.  My grandfather, two
great-grandfathers, and three of my father's uncles were at
Concord Bridge in the Lincoln Company, of which my grandfather,
Samuel Hoar, whom I well remember, was lieutenant, on the
19th of April, 1775.  The deposition of my great-grandfather,
John Hoar, with a few others, relating to the events of that
day, was taken by the patriots and sent to England by a fast-
sailing ship, which reached London before the official news
of the battle at Concord came from the British commander.
John had previously been a soldier in the old French War and
was a prisoner among the Indians for three months.  His life
was not a very conspicuous one.  He had been a Selectman of
Lexington, dwelling in the part of the town afterward incorporated
with Lincoln.  There is in existence a document manumitting
his slave, which, I am happy to say, is the only existing
evidence that any ancestor of mine ever owned one.

My father's grandfather, on the mother's side, was Colonel
Abijah Peirce, of Lincoln.  He was prominent in Middlesex
County from a time preceding the Revolutionary War down to
his death.  He was one of the Committee of the Town who had
charge of corresponding with other towns and with the Committee
of Safety in Boston.  The day before the battle at Concord
Bridge, he had been chosen Colonel of a regiment of Minute
Men.  But he had not got his commission, taken the oath, or
got his equipments.  So he went into the battle as a private
in the company in which his son-in-law was lieutenant, armed
with nothing but a cane.  After the first volley was exchanged
he crossed the bridge and took the cartridge-box and musket
of one of the two British soldiers who were killed, which
he used during the day.  The gun was preserved for a long
time in his family, and came to my grandfather, after his
death.  It was the first trophy of the Revolutionary War taken
in battle.  Such things, however, were not prized in those
days as they are now.  One of my uncles lent the musket to
one of his neighbors for the celebration of the taking of
Cornwallis, and it never was brought back.  We would give
its weight in gold to get it back.

I will put on record two stories about Colonel Peirce, which
have something of a superstitious quality in them.  I have
no doubt of their truth, as they come from persons absolutely
truthful and not superstitious or credulous themselves.

When Colonel Peirce was seventy years old, he told his wife
and my aunt, her granddaughter, from whom I heard the story,
who was then a grown-up young woman, that he was going out
to the barn and going up to the high beams.  In those days
the farmers' barns had the hay in bays on each side, and over
the floor in the middle rails were laid across from one side
to the other, on which corn-stalks, for bedding the cattle,
and other light things were put.  They urged him not to go,
and said an old man like him should not take such risks; to
which he replied by dancing a hornpipe in the room in their
presence, showing something of that exhilaration of spirit
which the Scotch called being "fey" and which they regard
as a presage of approaching misfortune.  He went out, and
within a few minutes fell from the high beams down to the
floor and was instantly killed.

The other story is that a little while before this happened
he said that he thought he saw the dim and misty figure of
a ship pass slowly from one side of the barn to the other,
under the roof.

A like story is told of Abraham Lincoln; that he used to
see a vision of a ship before any great event, and that it
came to him the night before he died.

I asked Mr. Secretary Hay about the Lincoln anecdote and give
his reply.

DEPARTMENT OF STATE, WASHINGTON, April 18, 1903.

_Dear Senator Hoar:_

You will find on page 281 of Volume 10 of "The Life of Lincoln,"
by Nicolay and Hay, all I know about the story.

General Grant, in an interview with the President, on the
14th of April--the day he was shot--expressed some anxiety
as to the news from Sherman.  "The President answered him
in that singular vein of poetic mysticism, which, though constantly
held in check by his strong common sense, formed a remarkable
element in his character.  He assured Grant that the news
would come soon and come favorable, for he had last night
had his usual dream which preceded great events.  He seemed
to be, he said, in a singular and indescribable vessel, but
always the same, moving with great rapidity towards a dark
and indefinite shore.  He had had this dream before Antietam,
Murfreesboro, Gettysburg and Vicksburg."

The story is also found in George Eliot's Life (Vol. 3, 113),
as related by Charles Dickens on the authority of Stanton,
with characteristic amplifications.

  Yours faithfully,
  JOHN HAY.
  The Honorable
  George F. Hoar
  United States Senate

My father, Samuel Hoar of Concord, was born in 1778 and died
in 1856.  He was one of the most eminent lawyers at the Massachusetts
Bar.  To this statement I can give better testimony than my
own, in the following letter from the Honorable Eben F. Stone,
late member of Congress from the Essex District.

WASHINGTON 9 March, '84.

_My dear Mr. Hoar:_

When I was a law student, I dined at Ipswich in our county,
with the Judges of the Supreme Court and the members of the
Essex Bar, who then had a room and a table by themselves.
The conversation took a professional turn, and a good deal
was said about Mr. Choate's great skill and success as an
advocate.  Judge Shaw then remarked that, sitting at nisi
prius in different parts of the State, he had had an opportunity
to compare the different lawyers who were distinguished for
their success with juries, and that there was no man in the
State, in his opinion, who had so much influence with a jury
as Sam Hoar of Concord.  This he ascribed not simply to his
legal ability, but largely to the confidence the people had
in his integrity and moral character.

  Yours truly,
  E. F. STONE.

Mr. Hoar was associated with Mr. Webster in the defence of
Judge Prescott when he was impeached before the Senate of
Massachusetts.  He encountered Webster, and Choate, and Jeremiah
Mason, and John Davis, and the elder Marcus Morton, and other
giants of the Bar, in many a hard battle.  Mr. Webster makes
affectionate reference to him in a letter to my brother, now
in existence.  He was a member of the Harrisburg Convention
which nominated General Harrison for the Presidency in 1839.
He represented Concord in the Massachusetts Convention to
Revise the Constitution, in 1820, in which convention his
father, Samuel Hoar, represented Lincoln.  When he first rose
to speak in that body, John Adams said, "That young man reminds
me of my old friend, Roger Sherman." He was a Federalist,
afterward a Whig, and in the last years of his life a Republican.

Mr. Hoar succeeded Edward Everett as Representative in Congress
from the Middlesex District in 1835.  He served there but
a single term.  He made one speech, a Constitutional argument
in support of the power of Congress to abolish slavery in
the District of Columbia.  He also took rather a prominent
part in a discussion in which the Whig members complained
of one of the rulings of the Democratic speaker.

His service was not long enough to gain for him any considerable
national distinction.  But that he made a good impression
on the House appears from an extract of a letter I lately
received from my classmate, Rev. Walter Mitchell, the author
of the spirited and famous poem, "Tacking Ship off Fire Island."
He says:  "I heard your uncle, Mr. Eliot, say that when your
father went to Congress the Southern members said, 'Where
has this man been all his life, and why have we never heard
of him?  With us a man of his ability would be known all over
the South.'"

My father retired from active practice at the Bar shortly
after his return from Congress in 1837.  In 1844 an event
occurred which contributed largely to the bitter feeling
between the two sections of the country, which brought on the
Civil War.

As is well known, under the laws of South Carolina, colored
seamen on ships that went into the port of Charleston were
imprisoned during the stay of the ship, and sold to pay their
jail fees if the ship went off and left them, or if the fees
were not paid.

The Legislature of Massachusetts directed the Governor to
employ counsel to test the constitutionality of these laws.
No Southern lawyer of sufficient ability and distinction could
be found who would undertake the duty.  The Governor found
it difficult to procure counsel who were in active practice.
Mr. Hoar was led by a strong sense of duty to leave his retirement
in his old age and undertake the delicate and dangerous mission.
When he arrived in South Carolina and made known his errand,
the people of the State, especially of the city of Charleston,
were deeply excited.  The Legislature passed angry resolutions,
directing the Governor to expel from the State, "the Northern
emissary" whose presence was deemed an insult.  The mob of
Charleston threatened to destroy the hotel where Mr. Hoar
was staying.  He was urged to leave the city, which he firmly
and steadfastly refused to do.  The mob were quieted by the
assurances of leading gentlemen that Mr. Hoar would be removed.
A deputation of seventy principal citizens waited upon him
at his hotel and requested him to consent to depart.  He
had already declined the urgent request of Dr. Whittredge,
an eminent physician, to withdraw and take refuge at his
plantation, saying he was too old to run and could not go
back to Massachusetts if he had returned without an attempt
to discharge his duty.  The committee told him that they
had assured the people that he should be removed, and that
he must choose between stepping voluntarily into a carriage
and being taken to the boat, or being dragged by force.  He
then, and not until then, said he would go.  He was taken by
the committee to the boat, which sailed for Wilmington.

It has generally been said that Mr. Hoar was driven from
Charleston by a mob.  This I suppose to be technically true.
But it is not true in the popular sense of the words.  The
committee of seventy, although they had no purpose of personal
violence, other than to place one old gentleman in a carriage
and take him to a boat, were, of course, in every legal sense
a mob.  But when that committee waited upon him the personal
danger was over.

A solitary negative vote against the resolve of the Legislature
directing Mr. Hoar to be expelled was cast by C. S. Memmenger,
afterward Secretary of the Treasury of the Southern Confederacy.
He is said to have been a Union man in 1832.

I was told by General Hurlburt of Illinois, a distinguished
officer in the Civil War, and member of the national House
of Representatives, that at the time of my father's mission
to South Carolina, he was a law student in the office of
James L. Petigru.  Mr. Petigru, as is well known, was a Union
man during the Civil War.  Such, however, was the respect
for his great ability and character that he was permitted
to live in Charleston throughout the War.  It is said that
on one occasion while this strife was going on, a stranger
in Charleston met Mr. Petigru in the street and asked him
the way to the Insane Hospital.  To this the old man answered
by pointing north, south, east and west, and said, "You will
find the Insane Hospital in every direction here."

According to General Hurlburt, Mr. Petigru had quietly organized
a company of young men whom he could trust, who were ready,
under his lead, to rescue Mr. Hoar and insure his personal
safety if he were attacked by the mob.

John Quincy Adams says in his diary, speaking of the transaction:
"I approved the whole of his conduct." Governor Briggs, in
communicating the facts to the Legislature, says in a special
message:  "The conduct of Mr. Hoar under the circumstances
seems to have been marked by that prudence, firmness and wisdom
which have distinguished his character through his life."
Mr. Emerson says, in a letter dated December 17, 1844:

"Mr. Hoar has just come home from Carolina, and gave me this
morning a narrative of his visit.  He had behaved admirably
well, I judge, and there were fine heroic points in his story.
One expression struck me, which, he said, he regretted a little
afterward, as it might sound a little vapouring.  A gentleman
who was very much his friend called him into a private room
to say that the danger from the populace had increased to
such a degree that he must now insist on Mr. Hoar's leaving
the city at once, and he showed him where he might procure
a carriage and where he might safely stop on the way to his
plantation, which he would reach the next morning.  Mr. Hoar
thanked him but told him again that he could not and would
not go, and that he had rather his broken skull should be
carried to Massachusetts by somebody else, than to carry it
home safe himself whilst his duty required him to remain.
The newspapers say, following the Charleston papers, that
he consented to depart: this he did not, but in every instance
refused,--to the Sheriff, and acting Mayor, to his friends, and
to the committee of the S. C. Association, and only went
when they came in crowds with carriages to conduct him to
the boat, and go he must,--then he got into the coach himself,
not thinking it proper to be dragged."

I add this letter from Dr. Edward Everett Hale.

39 HIGHLAND ST., ROXBURY, MASS., Mar. 13, 1884.

_Dear Hoar:_

Thank you very much for your memoir of your father.  I was
in Washington the day he and your sister came home from Charleston.
I remember that Grinnell told me the news--and my first real
feeling _in life_ that there must be a war, was when Grinnell
said on the Avenue:  "I do not know but we may as well head
the thing off now--and fight it out." The first public intelligence
the North had of the matter was in my letter to the _Daily
Advertiser,_ which was reprinted in New York, their own correspondents
not knowing of the expulsion.

  Always yours,
  EDW. E. HALE.

I have Dr. Vedder's permission to publish the accompanying
correspondence, which so happily turns into a means of delightful
reconciliation what has been so long, but can be no longer,
a painful memory.  I was received in Charleston with the delightful
hospitality of which no other people in the world so fully
understand the secret.

CHARLESTON, S. C., Oct. 20, 1898.
  THE HONORABLE GEORGE F. HOAR.

_Dear Sir:_

We have a New England Society in Charleston which is now seventy-
six years old.  It has had a notable history, Daniel Webster
having been among its annual orators.  Its Forefathers' Anniversary
is the social and literary event of our year.  I write to
extend the warm greeting of the Society to yourself, and the
earnest request that you will be our guest at the banquet
on Forefathers' Day Dec. 22, and speak to the sentiment--
"The Day we Celebrate," or any other that you would prefer.
Of course, it will be our privilege to make your coming wholly
without cost to yourself.  May I venture to urge that your
presence with us will have a beautiful significance in its
relation to the good feeling which so happily obtains in all
our land, and a past event which associates your honored Father's
name so memorably and sadly with our City?  Charleston would
fain give the honored Son a welcome which shall obliterate
the past.

  Hoping for a favorable and early reply, I remain,
  Yours with great respect,
  CHARLES S. VEDDER, _President._


WORCESTER, MASS., October 26, 1898.

_My Dear Sir:_

I am sure you will not doubt that I feel myself highly honored
by your invitation in behalf of the New England Society of
Charleston, as I am deeply touched and gratified by what you
say in the letter which conveys it.  I thank God that I have
lived to behold this day, and that my eyes have been spared
to see the people of the whole country united again in affection
as in the early time.

I hope and expect to be able to attend your banquet next
Forefathers' Day.  I will do so if the condition of the public
business shall permit.  I have the charge of the business of
the Committee on the Judiciary, two of whose important members
are now absent in Paris, and it is of course possible that
some of the great questions which are before us may require
constant attendance in their places of all the Senators during
the next session without the possibility of interruption for
a Christmas holiday.  Subject to that possibility, I will
accept your invitation, and am, with high regard,

  Faithfully yours,
  GEO. F. HOAR.

In 1850, after he had withdrawn from professional and public
life, being then seventy-two years old, Mr. Hoar was sent
to the House of Representatives, by the town of Concord, to
oppose the removal of the courts from Concord.  He was successful
in the opposition.  He had, during the winter, an opportunity
to render a very important service to Harvard College.  There
was a vigorous and dangerous attempt to abolish the existing
Corporation, and transfer the property and control of the
College to a board of fifteen persons, to be chosen by the
Legislature by joint ballot, one third to go out of office
every second year.  This measure was recommended in an elaborate
report by Mr. Boutwell, an influential member of the House,
chosen Governor at the next election, and advocated by Henry
Wilson, afterward Senator and Vice-President, and by other
gentlemen of great influence.  All the members of the Corporation
were Whigs in politics and Unitarians, a sect containing a
very small proportion of the people of the State.  The project
to take the College from their control was very popular.  The
House listened willingly to the able arguments with which
the measure was introduced, and before Mr. Hoar spoke its
opinion was unmistakable for the bill.  He argued that the
measure was in conflict with the Constitution of the United
States, and defended the College with great earnestness from
the charge that it had "failed to answer the just expectations
of the public."  The Boston _Daily Atlas,_ edited by General
Schouler, then a member of the House, said the next day of
this speech:  "The argument of Mr. Hoar was of transcendent
excellence, and had a most overpowering effect upon the House.
We regret that no report was made of it.  It is a pity that
so much learning, argument and eloquence should be lost."

This speech caused a revolution in the opinion of the body.
The measure was referred to the next General Court.  Mr. Hoar
was employed by the Corporation as counsel to appear before
the Legislature the next winter in its behalf.  But the measure
was never heard of afterward.  Dr. Walker said of this occurrence,
after his sententious fashion:  "Other men have served the
College; Samuel Hoar saved it."

The Board of Overseers, who have visitorial powers over the
College, and whose concurrence is necessary to the election
or appointment of officers, Professors and members of the
Corporation, and who included for a long time the Governor,
Lieutenant-Governor, and members of the Senate, had always
been held to be the representative of the Commonwealth, although
the members of the body who were not members _ex-officio_
were elected by the Board itself.

A bill passed in 1851, to which no objection was made, vested
the election of this body in the Legislature.  But after a
few years' trial, that was abandoned, and the members of the
Overseers are now chosen by the Alumni of the College.

I shall speak in a later chapter of the foundation of the
Free Soil Party.  The call for the Convention held at Worcester
on the 28th of June, 1848, addressed to all persons opposed
to the election of Cass and Taylor, written by his son, E.
R. Hoar, was headed by Mr. Hoar.  He presided over the meeting,
and delegates were elected to a National Convention to be
held at Buffalo, which nominated Van Buren and Adams for President
and Vice-President.  This was the origin of the Republican
party.

After 1848, Mr. Hoar did not relax his efforts to bring about
a union of all parties in the North, in opposition to further
encroachments of the slave power.  In accomplishing this end,
his age, the regard in which he was held by all classes of
people, his known disinterestedness and independence, fitted
him to exert a large influence.  The Free Soil movement had
led to the formation of a party in Massachusetts, small in
numbers, but zealous, active, in earnest, containing many
able leaders, eloquent orators, and vigorous writers.  They
had sent Charles Allen to the lower House of Congress, and
Sumner and Rantoul to the Senate.  But they had apparently
made little impression on the national strength of either
of the old parties.

In 1854, the passage of the measure known as the Kansas-
Nebraska Bill afforded a new opportunity.  A meeting of citizens
of Concord appointed a committee, of which Mr. Hoar was Chairman,
and A. G. Fay, Secretary, who called a meeting of prominent
persons from different parts of the State to meet at the American
House in Boston, to take measures for forming a new party
and calling a State Convention.  This Convention was held
at Worcester on the 7th of September, and formed a party under
the name of Republican, and nominated candidates for State
offices.  Its meeting has been claimed to be the foundation
of the Republican party of Massachusetts, and its twenty-
fifth anniversary was celebrated accordingly in 1879.  But
it effected little more than to change the name of the Free
Soil party.  Few Whigs or Democrats united to the movement.
A secret organization called Americans, or Know-Nothings,
swept the Commonwealth like a wave, electing all the State
officers, and, with scarcely an exception, the entire Legislature.

The candidate for Governor nominated by the Republicans at
Worcester, himself joined the Know-Nothings, and labored to
defeat his own election.

The next year the attempt was more successful.  On the 10th
of August, 1855, a meeting without distinction of party was
held at Chapman Hall, in Boston, which was addressed by Mr.
Hoar, George Bliss, Franklin Dexter, William Brigham, Lyman
Beecher, Richard H. Dana, Jr., Charles F. Adams, Henry Wilson,
Stephen C. Phillips, and others.  On the 30th of the same
month, a meeting of conference committees was held, representing
the American or Know-Nothing party, the Know-Somethings, an
antislavery organization which had held a National Convention
at Cleveland in June, and the Chapman Hall Convention.  This
conference appointed a committee of twenty-six to call a State
Convention, at the head of which they placed Mr. Hoar.  This
State Convention was held at Worcester, nominated Julius
Rockwell for Governor, and the organization which it created
has constituted the Republican party of Massachusetts to the
present day.

The part taken in calling this Convention, and in promoting
the union which gave it birth, was Mr. Hoar's last important
public service.  His failing health prevented his taking an
active share in the Presidential campaign of 1856.

I prefer, in putting on record this brief estimate of a character
which has been to me the principal object of reverence and
honor in my life, to use the language of others, and not
my own.  From many tributes to my father's character, from
persons more impartial than I can be, I have selected two
or three.

I cannot quote at length Ralph Waldo Emerson's sketches of
Mr. Hoar, who was his near neighbor and intimate personal
friend for many years.  They are noble and faithful as portraits
of Van Dyke or Titian.  One of them is a speech made in Concord
town-meeting on the third day of November, 1856, the day after
Mr. Hoar's death.  The other was contributed to the _Unitarian
Monthly Religious Magazine,_ then edited by Rev. Dr. Huntington,
afterward Bishop of New York.  Mr. Emerson says in one of
them:  "His head, with singular grace in its lines, had a
resemblance to the bust of Dante.  He retained to the last
the erectness of his tall but slender form, and not less the
full strength of his mind.  Such was, in old age, the beauty
of his person and carriage, as if his mind radiated, and made
the same impression of probity on all beholders."

He ends with this quatrain:

  With beams December planets dart,
  His cold eye truth and conduct scanned;
  July was in his sunny heart,
  October in his liberal hand.

The following is from a letter of Sherman Day, a man whose
reputation for wisdom and integrity is among the treasures
of California:

"BERKELEY, 23d May, 1884.
  HON. GEO. FRISBIE HOAR,
  U. S. Senate, Washington, D. C.

_My Dear Sir:_

"I was very much gratified to receive, some weeks since,
a copy of your biographical sketch of your venerable father.
It was the more precious to me because it awakened memories
of my own early life; while it recalls the tall, the gentle
and dignified figure and courteous demeanor of your father
in his prime of life.  I can remember being at your father's
wedding at my grandmother's house when I was about 6-1/2
years old.  Several years before you were born, I was at
the Phillips Academy at Andover, and used occasionally to
spend a vacation with my beloved aunt, who was a sort of
mother to me in my earliest childhood.  It was at her home
that I first read Washington Irving's Sketch Book, then just
appearing in separate numbers.  I believe the book belonged
to a law student of your father's, as your father had not
yet taken to the reading of romances.

"My memory extends back to the organization of the Constitutional
Convention of 1820.  I well remember the venerable figure
of John Adams, as he took the seat of honor at the right hand
of the president, and I remember the sonorous voice of Josiah
Quincy, the Secretary.  I was staying at the house of Mr.
Evarts, and remember your father's dining there, and discussing
the deportment and characteristics of several of the more
prominent members.  Among them was the tall member from Worcester,
Levi Lincoln, conspicuous by his drab overcoat, by his frequent
speaking, and by his constantly moving about among the members.
The member who made the most lasting impression on my memory
was Daniel Webster.  He was not yet forty years old, stalwart,
black haired and black eyed, with a somewhat swarthy complexion;
his manly beauty and his eloquence being alike objects of
admiration.  He had not attained that stoutness which his
form assumed in later years.  I could illustrate his appearance
better to your brother, Edward, by asking him to recall Don
Pablo de la Guerra of Santa Barbara, whom I deemed a very
good type, _in appearance,_ of Webster in the Convention of
1820."

George William Curtis came to know Mr. Hoar very well during
his own life in Concord.  He and his brother, Burrill, were
almost daily visitors at our house:

WEST NEW BRIGHTON, STATEN ISLAND, N. Y.,
  March 19, 1884.

_My dear Mr. Hoar:_

I thank you very much for a copy of your sketch of your father
which vividly recalls him to me as I remember him in my Concord
days long ago.  I recollect that when I saw in Paris Couture's
famous picture of the Decadence of the Romans, it was your
father that I thought of as I saw the figures of the older
Romans gazing reproachfully upon the revels.  So he may have
felt of his country as he died.

  With great regard, very truly yours,
  GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS.

The following is from J. Evarts Greene, formerly editor of
the Worcester _Spy,_ and one of the ablest members of his
profession in New England:

WORCESTER, Mar. 10, 1884.

_My dear Mr. Hoar:_

I want to thank you especially for the copy of the Memoir
of your father, which I received to-day.  I am exceedingly
glad to have it on your account and his.  He is the most venerable
figure in my memory.  He was always spoken of in our family
with the highest respect, and few things have ever gratified
me so much as his kindness to me on the occasion of my last
visit to Concord during his lifetime.  It was in 1850, I think,
while I was in college and about fifteen years old.  I had
always held him in awe as the greatest and wisest man within
my knowledge, and should have no more have thought of familiar
conversation with him than with the Pope.  But his grave and
kindly courtesy, as he sat down with me after supper, though
it did not quite put me at my ease, gave me courage to talk
more freely than I had ever thought possible; and while my
veneration for him was not diminished, I felt that there was
no one now on earth that I need be afraid of.

  Faithfully yours,
  J. EVARTS GREENE.
  The Hon. Geo. F. Hoar.

The following letter is from Professor Thatcher, the eminent
Latin Professor of Yale:

NEW HAVEN, 14th March, 1884.
  HONORABLE GEORGE F. HOAR.

_My dear Senator:_

I write simply but cordially to thank you for the copy of
your venerated Father's Memoir which you have been so kind
as to send to your cousin, Elizabeth.  I have read it with
the delight which must be common to all who read it.  A life
so qualified with the selectest traits of a great and gentle
soul, so substantial with continual but full and unembarrassed
labor, and so constantly influential for elevated and beneficent
ends, with nothing discoverable in it to check its great drift
and power,--such a life is an almost unequalled gift of God
to such a community as his.  There is a rare charm in the
narrative, and one cannot help rejoicing that you have been
able to gather together the recorded judgments of so many
men whose judgments are worthy to be recorded,

  I am, ever,
  Very truly yours,
  THOMAS A. THATCHER.

SENATE, WASHINGTON, March 9, 1884.

_My dear Mr. Hoar:_

I thank you very much for a copy of the Memoir of your father.
It is a tribute to his worth and fame worthy of him and of
yourself.  I hardly know which most to admire, the character
it portrays, or the filial piety it evinces.

It brings back very vividly the venerable form and the lovely
character I met and revered in the Massachusetts Legislature
when I was a young man, and have ever since held among the
safest and best of the land.  Permit me to count it my own
best fortune that I can subscribe myself the colleague and
friend of the son and biographer of Samuel Hoar.

  Truly yours,
  H. L. DAWES.
  The Honorable Geo. F. Hoar,
  Senate.

HONORABLE GEO. F. HOAR

_Dear Sir_

Thanks for the "Memoir of Samuel Hoar, by his Son, George
F. Hoar."

For years the character of this true man, as a noble, courageous,
self-sacrificing and independent American citizen has commanded
my profound admiration and respect, and I am greatly pleased
to become more familiar with his life.  Fortunately the facts
of it need no ornamentation or partial painting by the Son,
for the modesty of the latter would never have responded to
any such necessity.

  I am,
  Very truly,
  Yours, etc.
  WM. P. FRYE.

LEICESTER, March 13/84.

_Dear Mr. Hoar:_

I cannot too much thank you for sending me the memoir--tho'
so brief and exceedingly temperate--of your father.

He was one of the few men who kept Massachusetts and New England
from rushing down the steep place and perishing in the waters,
as the herd of swine was doing,--a son worthy of the Fathers
of New England.  I think of him as a kind of tall pillar,
on a foundation of such granite solidity as to quiet all fears
of possible moving therefrom.  He was an example--and became
by his S. Carolina mission a conspicuous one; by his attitude
and demeanor, opposing the whole moral power of the North
to the despotic and insolent assumptions of Slavery.

  Yours very truly,
  SAML MAY.

My father, in everything that related to his own conduct,
was controlled by a more than Puritan austerity.  He seemed
to live for nothing but duty.  Yet he was a man of strong
affections, unlike what is generally deemed to be the character
of the Puritan.  He was gentle, tolerant, kindly and affectionate.
He had all his life a large professional income.  But he never
seemed to care for money.  In that respect he was like one
who dwelt by the side of a pond, ready to dip up and to give
its waters to any man who might thirst.  He never wasted money,
or spent it for any self-indulgence.  But he was ready to
share it with any deserving object.  Starr King said of him
that "he lived all the beatitudes daily."

Mr. Hoar was, I suppose, beyond all question, the highest
authority in New England, indeed in the whole country, on
the difficult and abstruse questions belonging to the law of
water privileges and running streams.  He was declared to
be such by the late Judge Benjamin R. Curtis.  The great Locks
and Canals Company was organized and all the arrangements
for the ownership, management and control of the water-power
of Lowell were made under his advice and direction.  The same
methods have been followed in substance at Lawrence and Woonsocket
and other manufacturing places.

He preserved his vigor of body until he entered his seventy-
seventh year, taking walks of five or six miles without fatigue.
About that time he took a severe cold at a neighbor's funeral.
An illness followed which seriously impaired his strength.
He died, November 2, 1856, two days before the Presidential
election.

He was six feet three inches in height, erect, with fine
gray hair, blue eyes, of graceful and dignified deportment,
and of great courtesy, especially to women and children.

He held a few simple beliefs with undoubting faith. He submitted
himself to the rule of life which followed from these, and
rigorously exacted obedience to it from all for whom he was
responsible.  He accepted the exposition of Christian doctrine
given by Dr. Channing.  The Massachusetts Constitution of
1780 seemed to him a nearly perfect system of government.
He earnestly resisted, in the Convention of 1820, the abolition
of the property qualification for voters, and of the obligation
of all citizens to be taxed for the support of religious worship.
He took early and deep interest in the temperance reform,
and gave much time, labor, and money to promote it.  "The
strength and beauty of the man," says Mr. Emerson, "lay in
the natural goodness and justice of his mind, which in manhood
and in old age, after dealing all his life with weighty private
and public interests, left an infantile innocence of which
we have no second or third example,--the strength of a chief
united to the modesty of a child.  He returned from the courts
and Congresses to sit down with unaltered humility, in the
church, or in the town-house, on the plain wooden bench,
where Honor came and sat down beside him.  He was a man in
whom so rare a spirit of justice visibly dwelt, that, if one
had met him in a cabin or in a court, he must still seem a
public man answering as a sovereign state to sovereign state;
and might easily suggest Milton's picture of John Bradshaw,
--'that he was a consul from whom the fasces did not depart
with the year, but in private seemed ever sitting in judgment
on kings.'"

But he would have liked better than anything else what was
said of him in his official report by the President of the
College he loved with that deep affection which her children
felt for her in his time.  President Walker closes his annual
report of December 31, 1856, as follows:  "The undersigned
could not conclude his report without allusion to the recent
lamented death of the Honorable Samuel Hoar, a distinguished
and justly influential member of this board,--venerable alike
for his age and his virtues,--a devoted friend of the College
which he has been able to serve in a thousand ways by the
wisdom of his counsels and the weight of his character."

Mr. Hoar was naturally conservative, as would be expected
as an old Federalist who was educated at Harvard in the beginning
of the nineteenth century.  His rules of public and private
conduct were strict and austere.  He applied them more strictly
to himself than to others.  His classmates in college used
to call him Cato.  He favored the suppression of the sale
and use of intoxicating liquors, and desired that the whole
force of the State should be brought to bear to accomplish
that end.  He was the inveterate foe of oppression, and in
his later years, opposed every compromise with slavery.  But
he had no sympathy with reforms which seemed to him to be
devised merely as political instruments to advance the fortunes
of persons or parties.

He had a huge respect for John Quincy Adams, a respect which
I have good reason to know was reciprocated.  But he was by
no means Mr. Adams's blind follower. The ex-President, I think
about the year 1832, published a pamphlet in which he savagely
attacked the Masonic Order.  He met Mr. Hoar in Boston and
asked him what he thought of it.  Mr. Hoar answered: "It
seems to me, Mr. Adams, there is but one thing in the world
sillier than Masonry.  That is Anti-Masonry."

Mr. Hoar used to relate with some amusement a dialogue he
had with a shrewd and witty old lawyer named Josiah Adams,
who shared the old Federalist dislike of his namesake, John
Quincy Adams.  My father was talking quite earnestly in a
gathering of Middlesex lawyers and said: "I believe John Quincy
Adams means to be a Christian." "When?" inquired Josiah.

But I cannot draw the portraiture of this noble and stately
figure.  George Herbert did it perfectly, long ago, in his
poem, "Constancy."

Old Dr. Lyman Beecher, the foremost champion in his day of
the old Orthodoxy, spent his life in combating what he deemed
the pestilent Unitarian heresy.  He was the most famous preacher
in the country.  Mr. Hoar was a pillar of Unitarianism.  Yet
the Doctor came to know and honor his old antagonist.  He
read in the Boston papers, late Saturday evening, that Mr.
Hoar was dying at Concord.  Early Sunday morning before daybreak
he started, with his son-in-law, Professor Stowe, and drove
twenty miles to Concord.  He got there just after Mr. Hoar's
death.  He asked to go into the chamber where his old friend
lay.  My sister said:  "Father would have been glad to see
you, if he were alive."  The Doctor gazed a moment, and then
said:  "He's passed safe over, I haven't a doubt of it.  He
was an Israelite indeed, in whom there was no guile."


CHAPTER IV
BOYHOOD IN CONCORD

I have never got over being a boy.  It does not seem likely
that I ever shall.  I have to-day, at the age of three score
and sixteen, less sense of my own dignity than I had when
at sixteen I walked for the first time into the College Chapel
at Harvard, clad as the statute required, in a "black or black-
mixed coat, with buttons of the same color," and the admiring
world, with its eyes on the venerable freshman, seemed to
me to be saying to itself, "Ecce caudam!" Behold the tail!

Most men are apt to exaggerate the merits of their birthplace.
But I think everybody who knew the town will agree with me
that there never was in the world a better example of a pure
and beautiful democracy, in the highest sense of the term,
than the town of Concord from 1826 to the close of the war.
If there were any aristocracy, it was an aristocracy of personal
worth.  There was little wealth and little poverty.  There
were no costly dwellings and no hovels.  There was no pride
of wealth or of family.  The richest man in town took an interest
in the affairs of the poorest as in those of a kinsman.  It
never occurred to the poorest that he must, for that reason,
doff his hat to any man.

The population was permanent, I suppose, as could have been
found in any spot in Europe.  Ninety-three of the inhabitants
of the town, in 1654, signed a paper pledging their persons
and estates to support the General Court in the contest with
King Charles II. for the preservation of the Charter.  Fourteen
of their descendants, bearing the same names, were present
at the Centennial Celebration in 1885, dwelling on the land
which their ancestors occupied nearly 230 years before.  There
were 23 others whose descendants of the same name were dwelling
at the time of the Centennial within the original limits of
the town.  A good many others were represented by female descendants.
So that at least 50 of the 93 signers of the paper were represented
in the assembly.  A list of the names of the principal inhabitants
of the town to-day would contain the names of a large number
of the principal inhabitants of any generation since its
foundation.

They were of good English stock.  Many of them were of gentle
blood and entitled to bear coat armor at home.  It is interesting
to observe how little the character of the gentleman and gentlewoman
in our New England people is affected by the pursuit, for
generations, of humble occupations, which in other countries
are deemed degrading.  Our ancestors, during nearly two centuries
of poverty which followed the first settlement, turned their
hands to the humblest ways of getting a livelihood, became
shoemakers, or blacksmiths or tailors, or did the hardest
and most menial and rudest work of the farm, shoveled gravel
or chopped wood, without any of the effect on their character
which would be likely to be felt from the permanent pursuit
of such an occupation in England or Germany.  It was like
a fishing party or a hunting party in the woods.  When the
necessity was over, and the man or the boy in any generation
got a college education, or was called to take part in public
affairs, he rose at once and easily to the demands of an exalted
station.  What is true of New England people in this respect
is, I suppose, true of the whole country.

I wrote, a few years ago, an account of so much of my boyhood
as elapsed before I went to college.  Through the kindness
of the proprietors of _The Youth's Companion,_ I am permitted
to print it here.  I think, on the whole, that is better than
to undertake to tell the story in other phraseology adapted
to maturer readers.  Indeed, I am not sure that the best examples
of good English are not to be found in books written for children.
When we have to tell a story to a small boy or girl, we avoid
little pomposities, and seek for the plainest, clearest and
most direct phrase.

I believe that boys nowadays are more manly and mature than
they were in my time.  Perhaps this is partly because the
boys show more gravity in my presence, now I am an old man,
than they did when I was a boy myself.  But in giving an account
of the life of a boy sixty years ago, I must describe it as
I saw it, even if it appear altogether childish and undignified.

The life and character of a country are determined in a large
degree by the sports of its boys.  The Duke of Wellington
used to say that the victory at Waterloo was won on the playing-
fields at Eton.  That is the best people where the boys are
manly and where the men have a good deal of the boy in them.

Perhaps all my younger readers do not know how much that makes
up, not only the luxury, but the comfort of life, has first
come in within the memory of persons now living.  The household
life of my childhood was not much better in those respects
than that of a well-to-do Roman or Greek.  It had not improved
a great deal for two thousand years.  There were no house-
warming furnaces, and stoves were almost unknown.  There were
no double windows, and the houses were warmed by open fires.
There were no matches.

There were no water-pipes in the houses, and no provision
was made for discharging sewage.  There were no railroads,
telegraphs or telephones.  Letter postage to New York from
Boston was twenty-five cents.  None of the modern agricultural
machinery then existed, not even good modern plows.  Crops
were planted by hand and cultivated with the hoe and spade.
Vegetables were dug with the hoe, and hay and grain cut with
the sickle or scythe.  There were no ice-houses.  The use
of ice for keeping provisions or cooling water was unknown.

My father was well-to-do, and his household lived certainly
as well as any family in the town of Concord, where I was
born.  I have no doubt a Roman boy two hundred years before
Christ, or an Athenian boy four hundred years before Christ,
lived quite as well as I did, if not better.

The boy got up in the morning and dressed himself in a room
into which the cold air came through the cracks in the window.
If the temperature were twenty degrees below zero outside,
it was very little higher inside.  If he were big enough to
make the fires, he made his way down-stairs in the dark of
a winter morning and found, if the fire had been properly raked
up the night before, a few coals in the ashes in the kitchen
fireplace.  The last person who went to bed the night before
had done exactly what Homer describes as the practice in Ulysses's
time, when he tells us that Ulysses covered himself with leaves
after he was washed ashore in Phaiakia:

"He lay down in the midst, heaping the fallen leaves above,
as a man hides a brand in a dark bed of ashes, at some outlying
farm where neighbors are not near, hoarding a seed of fire
to save his seeking elsewhere."

But first he must get a light.  Matches are not yet invented.
So he takes from the shelf over the mantelpiece an old tin
or brass candlestick with a piece of tallow candle in it,
and with the tongs takes a coal from the ashes, and holds
the candle wick against the coal and gives a few puffs with
his breath.  If he have good luck, he lights the wick, probably
after many failures.

My mother had a very entertaining story connected with the
old-fashioned way of getting a light.  Old Jeremiah Mason,
who was probably the greatest lawyer we ever had in New England,
unless we except Daniel Webster, studied law in my uncle's
office and shared a room in his house with another law student.
One April Fool's day the two young gentlemen went out late
in the afternoon, and my aunt, a young unmarried girl who
lived with her sister, and another girl, went into the room
and took the old half-burnt candle out of the candlestick,
cut a piece of turnip to resemble it, cut out a little piece
like a wick at the end, blackened it with ink, and put it
in the candlestick.

When Mr. Mason came in in the dark, he took a coal up with
the tongs and put it against the wick, and puffed and puffed,
until after a long and vexatious trial he discovered what
was the matter.  He said nothing but waited for his chum to
come in, who went through the same trial.  When they discovered
the hoax they framed an elaborate complaint in legal jargon
against the two roguish girls, and brought them to trial before
a young lawyer of their acquaintance.  The young ladies were
found guilty and sentenced to pay as a fine a bowl of eggnog.

After getting his candle lighted, the boy takes dry kindling,
which has been gathered the night before, and starts a fire.
The next thing is to get some water.  He is lucky if the water
in the old cast-iron kettle which hangs on the crane in the
fireplace be not frozen.  As soon as the fire is started he
goes outdoors to thaw out the pump, if they have a wooden
pump.  But that is all frozen up, and he has to get some hot
water from this kettle to pour down over the piston till he
can thaw it out.  Sometimes he would have an old-fashioned
well, sunk too low in the ground for the frost to reach it,
and could get water with the old oaken bucket.

He brings in from out-of-doors a pail or two of water.  If
there has been a snow-storm the night before he has to shovel
a path to the wood-shed, where he can get the day's supply
of wood from outside, and then from the doors of the house
out to the street.  Meantime the woman whose duty it is to
get breakfast makes her appearance.

The wooden pump, which took the place of the old well in many
dooryards, was considered a great invention.  We all looked
with huge respect upon Sanford Adams of Concord, who invented
it, and was known all over the country.

He was quite original in his way.  The story used to be told
of him that he called at my father's house one day to get
some advice as to a matter of law.  Father was at dinner
and went to the door himself.  Mr. Adams stated his case in
a word or two as he stood on the door-step, to which father
gave him his answer, the whole conversation not lasting more
than two minutes.

He asked Mr. Hoar what he should pay, and father said, "Five
dollars."  Mr. Adams paid it at once, and father said, "By
the way, there is a little trouble with my pump.  It does
not draw.  Will you just look at it?"  So Mr. Adams went
around the corner of the shed, moved the handle of the pump,
and put his hand down and fixed a little spigot which was
in the side, which had got loose, and the pump worked perfectly.
Father said, "Thank you, sir." To which Adams replied: "It
will be five dollars, Mr. Hoar," and father gave him back
the same bill he had just taken.

I am afraid the sympathy of the people who told the story
was with the pump-maker and not with the lawyer.

The great kitchen fireplace presented a very cheerful appearance
compared with the black range or stove of to-day.  It was
from six to eight or ten feet wide, with a great chimney.
In many houses you could stand on the hearth and look up the
chimney and see the stars on a winter night.  Across the fireplace
hung an iron crane, which swung on a hinge or pivot, from
which hung a large number of what were called pothooks and
trammels.  From these were suspended the great kettles and
little kettles and the griddles and pots and boilers for the
cooking processes.

The roasting was done in a big "tin kitchen," which stood
before the fire, in which meats or poultry were held by a
large iron spit, which pierced them and which could be revolved
to present one side after the other to the blaze.  Sometimes
there was a little clockwork which turned the spit automatically,
but usually it was turned round from time to time by the cook.
As you know, they used to have in England little dogs called
turnspits, trained to turn a wheel for this purpose.  A little
door in the rear of this tin kitchen gave access for basting
the meat.  In the large trough at the bottom the gravy was
caught.

No boy of that day will think there is any flavor like that
of roast turkey and chicken or of the doughnuts and pancakes
or griddle-cakes which were cooked by these open fires.

By the side of the fireplace, with a flue entering the chimney,
was a great brick oven, big enough to bake all the bread
needed by a large family for a week or ten days.  The oven
was heated by a brisk fire made of birch or maple or some
very rapidly burning wood.  When the coals were taken out,
the bread was put in, and the oven was shut with two iron
doors.  The baking-day was commonly Saturday.

When the bread was taken out Saturday afternoon it was usual
to put in a large pot of beans for the Sunday dinner.  They
were left there all night and the oven was opened in the morning
and enough came out for breakfast, when there was put into
the oven a pot of Indian pudding, which was left with the
rest of the beans for the Sunday dinner.

The parlor fire was a very beautiful sight, with the big
logs and the sparkling walnut or oak wood blazing up.  Some
of the housekeepers of that time had a good deal of skill
in arranging the wood in a fireplace so as to make of it
a beautiful piece of architecture.  Lowell describes these
old fires very well in his ballad, "The Courtin'":

  A fireplace filled the room's one side
  With half a cord o'wood in--
  There warn't no stoves (till comfort died)
  To bake ye to a puddin'.

  The wannut logs shot sparkles out
  Towards the pootiest, bless her!
  An' leetle flames danced all about
  The chiny on the dresser.

  Agin' the chimbley crooknecks hung,
  An' in amongst 'em rusted
  The old queen's arm thet Gran'ther Young
  Fetched back from Concord busted.

We did not have fireplaces quite as large as this in my father's
house, although they were common in the farmers' houses round
about.

In the coldest weather the heat did not come out a great
way from the hearth, and the whole family gathered close
about the fire to keep warm.  It was regarded as a great
breach of good manners to go between any person and the fire.
The fireplace was the centre of the household, and was regarded
as the type and symbol of the home.  The boys all understood
the force of the line:

  Strike for your altars and your fires!

I wonder if any of my readers nowadays would be stirred by
an appeal to strike for his furnace or his air-tight stove.

Sunday was kept with Jewish strictness.  The boys were not
allowed to go out-of-doors except to church.  They could
not play at any game or talk about matters not pertaining
to religion.  They were not permitted to read any books except
such as were "good for Sunday."  There were very few religious
story-books in those days, and what we had were of a dreary
kind; so the boy's time hung heavy on his hands.

"Pilgrim's Progress," with its rude prints, was, however,
a great resource.  We conned it over and over again, and knew
it by heart.  An elder brother of mine who was very precocious
was extremely fond of it, especially of the picture of the
fight between Apollyon and Christian, where the fiend with
his head covered with stiff, sharp bristles "straddled clear
across the road," to stop Christian in his way.  Old Dr. Lyman
Beecher, who had his stiff gray hair cropped short all over
his head, made a call at our house one afternoon.  While he
was waiting for my mother to come down, the little fellow
came into the room and took a look up at the doctor, and then
trotted round to the other side and looked up at him again.
He said, "I think, sir, you look like Apollyon."

The doctor was infinitely amused at being compared to the
personage of whom, in his own opinion and that of a good many
other good people, he was then the most distinguished living
antagonist.

The church was an old-fashioned wooden building, painted yellow,
of Dutch architecture, with galleries on three sides, and
on the fourth a pulpit with a great sounding-board over it,
into which the minister got by quite a high flight of stairs.
Just below the pulpit was the deacons' seat, where the four
deacons sat in a row.  The pews were old-fashioned square,
high pews, reaching up almost to the top of the head of a
boy ten years old when he was standing up.

The seats were without cushions and with hinges.  When the
people stood up for prayer the seats were turned up for greater
convenience of standing, and when the prayer ended they came
down all over the church with a slam, like a small cannonade.

One Sunday, in the middle of the sermon, the old minister,
Doctor Ripley, stood up in the pulpit and said in a loud
voice, "Simeon, come here.  Take your hat and come here."
Simeon was a small boy who lived in the doctor's family and
sat in the gallery.  We boys all supposed that Simeon had
been playing in church, or had committed some terrible offence
for which he was to be punished in sight of the whole congregation.

Simeon came down trembling and abashed, and the doctor told
him to go home as fast as he could and get the Thanksgiving
Proclamation.  The doctor filled up the time as well he could
with an enormously long prayer, until the boy got back.  Simeon
confessed to some of the boys that he had been engaged in
some mischief just before he was called, and he was terribly
afraid the doctor had caught him.

This old church with its tower, yellow spire, old clock and
weathercock, seems to me as I look back on it to have been
a very attractive piece of architecture.  It was that church
which suggested to Emerson the leading thought in one of
his most famous poems, "The Problem."

In those days, when people were to be married the law required
notice to be given of their intention by proclaiming it aloud
in the church three Sundays in succession.  So just before
the service began, the old town clerk would get up and proclaim:
"There is a marriage intended between Mr. John Brown of this
town and Miss Sarah Smith of Sudbury," and there was great
curiosity in the congregation to hear the announcement.  The
town clerk in my boyhood had been a wealthy old bachelor for
whom the young ladies had set their caps in vain for two generations.
One day he astonished the congregation by proclaiming: "There
is a marriage intended between Dr. Abiel Keywood"--which
was his own name--"and Miss Lucy P. Fay, both of Concord."
That was before I can remember, as his boys were about my
age.

Doctor Ripley, the minister in Concord, was an old man who
had been settled there during the Revolutionary War and was
over the parish sixty-two years.  He was an excellent preacher
and scholar, and his kindly despotism was submitted to by
the whole town.  His way of pronouncing would sound very queer
now, though it was common then.  I well remember his reading
the lines of the hymn--

  Let every critter jine
  To praise the eternal God.

Scattered about the church were the good gray heads of many
survivors of the Revolution--the men who had been at the bridge
on the 19th of April, and who made the first armed resistance
to the British power.  They were very striking and venerable
figures, with their queues and knee-breeches and shoes with
shining buckles.  Men were more particular about their apparel
in those days than we are now.  They had great stateliness
of behavior, and admitted of little familiarity.

They had heard John Buttrick's order to fire, which marked
the moment when our country was born.  The order was given
to British subjects.  It was obeyed by American citizens.
Among them was old Master Blood, who saw a ball strike the
water when the British fired their first volley.  I heard
many of the old men tell their stories of the Battle of Concord,
and of the capture of Burgoyne.

I lay down on the grass one summer afternoon, when old Amos
Baker of Lincoln, who was in the Lincoln Company on the 19th
of April, told me the whole story.  He was very indignant
at the claim that the Acton men marched first to attack the
British because the others hesitated.  He said, "It was because
they had bagnets [bayonets].  The rest of us hadn't no bagnets."

One day a few years later, when I was in college, I walked
up from Cambridge to Concord, through Lexington, and had a
chat with old Jonathan Harrington by the roadside.  He told
me he was on the Common when the British Regulars fired upon
the Lexington men.  He did not tell me then the story which
he told afterward at the great celebration at Concord in 1850.
He and Amos Baker were the only survivors who were there that
day.  He said he was a boy about fifteen years old on April
19, 1775.  He was a fifer in the company.  He had been up
the greater part of the night helping get the stores out of
the way of the British, who were expected, and went to bed
about three o'clock, very tired and sleepy.  His mother came
and pounded with her fist on the door of his chamber, and
said, "Git up, Jonathan! The Reg'lars are comin' and somethin'
must be done!"

Governor Briggs repeated this anecdote in the old man's presence
at the Concord celebration in 1850.  Charles Storey, a noted
wit, father of the eminent lawyer, Moorfield Storey, sent
up to the chair this toast:  "When Jonathan Harrington got
up in the morning on April 19, 1775, a near relative and namesake
of his got up about the same time: Brother Jonathan.  But
his mother didn't call him."

A very curious and amusing incident is said, and I have no
doubt truly, to have happened at this celebration.  It shows
how carefully the great orator, Edward Everett, looked out
for the striking effects in his speech.  He turned in the
midst of his speech to the seat where Amos Baker and Jonathan
Harrington sat, and addressed them.  At once they both stood
up, and Mr. Everett said, with fine dramatic effect, "Sit,
venerable friends.  It is for us to stand in your presence."

After the proceedings were over, old Amos Baker was heard
to say to somebody, "What do you suppose Squire Everett meant?
He came to us before his speech and told us to stand up when
he spoke to us, and when we stood up he told us to sit down."

So you will understand how few lives separate you from the
time when our country was born, and the time when all our
people were British subjects.

But to come back to our old meeting-house.  The windows rattled
in the winter, and the cold wind came in through the cracks.
There was a stove which was rather a modern innovation; but
it did little to temper the coldness of a day in midwinter.
We used to carry to church a little foot-stove with a little
tin pan in it, which we filled with coal from the stove in
the meeting-house, and the ladies of the family would pass
it round to each other to keep their toes from freezing; but
the boys did not get much benefit from it.

They had good schools in Concord, and the boys generally
were good scholars and read good books.  So whenever they
thought fit they could use as good language as anybody; but
their speech with one another was in the racy, pithy Yankee
dialect, which Lowell has made immortal in the "Biglow Papers."
It was not always grammatical, but as well adapted for conveying
wit and humor and shrewd sense as the Scotch of Burns.

The boys knew very well how to take the conceit or vanity
out of their comrades.  In the summer days all the boys of
the village used to gather at a place on the river, known as
Thayer's swimming-place, about half a mile from the town
pump, which was the centre from which all distances were
measured in those days.  There was a little gravel beach
where you could wade out a rod or two, and then for a rod
or two the water was over the boy's head.  It then became
shallow again near the opposite bank.  So it was a capital
place to learn to swim.

After they came out, the boys would sit down on the bank
and have a sort of boys' exchange, in which all matters of
interest were talked over, and a great deal of good-natured
chaff was exchanged.  Any newcomer had to pass through an
ordeal of this character, in which his temper and quality
were thoroughly tried.  I remember now an occasion which
must have happened when I was not more than eight or ten
years old, when a rather awkward-looking greenhorn had come
down from New Hampshire and made his appearance at the swimming-
place.  The boys, one after another, tried him by putting
mocking questions or attempting to humbug him with some large
story.  He received it all with patience and good nature until
one remark seemed to sting him from his propriety.  He turned
with great dignity upon the offender, and said, "Was that
you that spoke, or was it a punkin busted?"  We all thought
that it was well said, and took him into high favor.

I suppose the outdoor winter sports have not changed much
since my childhood.  The sluggish Concord River used to overflow
its banks and cover the broad meadows for miles, where we
found excellent skating, and where the water would be only
a foot or two in depth.  The boys could skate for ten miles
to Billerica and ten miles back, hardly going over deep water,
except at the bridges, the whole way.

Sleigh-riding was not then what it is now.  There were a
few large sleighs owned in the town which would hold thirty
or forty persons, and once or twice in the winter the boys
and girls would take a ride to some neighboring town when
the sleighing was good.

The indoor games were marbles, checkers, backgammon, dominoes,
hunt-the-slipper, blind-man's-buff, and in some houses, where
they were not too strict, they played cards.  High-low-jack,
sometimes called all-fours or seven-up, everlasting and old
maid were the chief games of cards.  Most of these games have
come down from a very early antiquity.

The summer outdoor games were mumble-the-peg, high-spy, snap-
the-whip, a rather dangerous performance, in which a long
row of boys, with the biggest boy at one end, and tapering
down to the smallest at the other end, would run over a field
or open space until suddenly the big boy would stop, turn
half around, and stand still and hold fast with all his might.
The result was that the boy next to him had to move a very
little distance, but the little fellow at the end was compelled
to describe a half-circle with great rapidity, and was sometimes
hurled across the field, and brought up with a heavy fall.
There were thread-the-needle, hunt-the-red-lion and football,
played very much as it is now, except with less system and
discipline, and various games of ball.  These games of ball
were much less scientific and difficult than the modern games.
Chief were four-old-cat, three-old-cat, two-old-cat and base.

We had fewer studies at our school than now.  The boy who
did not go to college learned to read and write, perhaps
an elementary history of the United States, and arithmetic,
and occasionally made some little progress in algebra.  On
Saturdays we used to "speak pieces."  Our favorites were
some spirited lyric, like "Scots Wha Hae" or Pierpont's "Stand,
the ground's your own, my braves," "The boy stood on the burning
deck," and "Bernardo del Carpio."  Sometimes, though not often,
some comic piece was chosen, like Jack Downing's "Tax on Old
Bachelors."

Those who fitted for college added Latin and Greek to these
studies.  The children were sent to school earlier than is
the present fashion, and had long school hours and few vacations.
There were four vacations in the year, of a week each, and
three days at Thanksgiving time.  Little account was made
of Christmas.  The fashion of Christmas presents was almost
wholly unknown.  The boys used to be allowed to go out of
school to study in the warm summer days, and would find some
place in a field, and sometimes up in the belfry of the little
schoolhouse.  I remember studying Caesar there with George
Brooks, afterward judge, and reading with him an account of
some battle where Caesar barely escaped being killed, on which
Brooks's comment was "I wish to thunder he had been!"

I am afraid the boys did not respect the property of the
owners of the neighboring apple orchards, as undoubtedly
the better-trained boys of modern times do now.  We understood
the law to be that all apples that grew on the branches extending
over the highway were public property, and I am afraid that
when the owner was not about we were not very particular as
to the boundary line.  This seems to have been a trait of
boy nature for generations.  You know Sidney Smith's account
of the habit of boys at his school to rob a neighboring orchard,
until the farmer bought a large, savage bulldog for his protection.
Some of the big boys told Sidney that if a boy would get down
on his hands and knees and go backward toward the dog the
dog would be frightened, and he could get the apples.  He
tried the experiment unsuccessfully, and with the result that
concluded, as he says, that "it makes no difference to a bulldog
which end of a boy he gets hold of, if he only gets a good
hold."

The discipline of the schoolmaster in those days was pretty
severe.  For slight offences the boys were deprived of their
recess or compelled to study for an hour after the school
was dismissed.  The chief weapon of torture was the ferule,
to the efficacy of which I can testify from much personal
knowledge.  The master had in his desk, however, a cowhide
for gross cases.  I do not remember knowing how that felt
from personal experience, but I remember very well seeing
it applied occasionally to the big boys.

In the infant schools, which were kept by women, of course
the discipline was not expected to be so severe.  The schoolmistress
in those days wore what was called a busk--a flat piece of
lancewood, hornbeam, or some other like tough and elastic
wood, thrust into a sort of pocket or sheath in her dress,
which came up almost to the chin and came down below the waist.
This was intended to preserve the straightness and grace of
her figure.  When the small boy misbehaved, the schoolma'am
would unsheath this weapon, and for some time thereafter the
culprit found sitting down exceedingly uncomfortable.

Sometimes the sole of the schoolmistress's slipper answered
the same purpose, and sometimes a stick from some neighboring
birch-tree.  It all came to pretty much the same thing in
the end.  The schoolmistress knew well how to accomplish her
purpose.  There was a diversity of gifts but the same spirit.

We were put to school much earlier than children are now
and were more advanced in our studies on the whole.  I began
to study Latin on my sixth birthday.  When I was nine years
old I was studying Greek, and had read several books of Virgil.
We were not very thorough Latin scholars, even when we entered
college, but could translate Virgil and Cicero and Caesar
and easy Greek like Xenophon.

The boys occasionally formed military companies and played
soldier, but these did not, so far as I remember, last very
long.  There was also a company of Indians, who dressed in
long white shirts, with pieces of red flannel sewn on them.
They had wooden spears.  That was more successful, and lasted
some time.

They were exceedingly fond of seeing the real soldiers.  There
were two full companies in Concord, the artillery and the
light infantry.  The artillery had two cannon captured from
the British, which had been presented to the company by the
legislature in honor of April 19, 1775.  When these two companies
paraded, they were followed by an admiring train of small
boys all day long, if the boys could get out of school.  I
remember on one occasion there was a great rivalry between
the companies, and one of them got the famous Brigade Band
from Boston, and the other an equally famous band, called
the Boston Brass Band, in which Edward Kendall, the great
musician, was the player on the bugle.  A very great day indeed
was the muster-day, when sometimes an entire brigade would
be called out for drill.  These muster-days happened three
or four times in my boyhood in Concord.

But the great day of all was what was called "Cornwallis,"
which was the anniversary of the capture of Cornwallis at
Yorktown.  There were organized companies in uniform representing
the British army and an equally large number of volunteers,
generally in old-fashioned dress, and with such muskets and
other accoutrements as they could pick up, who represented
the American army.  There was a parade and a sham fight which
ended as all such fights, whether sham or real, should end,
in a victory for the Americans, and Cornwallis and his troops
were paraded, captive and ignominious.  I quite agree with
Hosea Biglow when he says, "There is a fun to a Cornwallis,
though; I aint agoin' to deny it."

The boys cared little for politics, though they used to profess
the faith of their fathers; but every boy sometimes imagined
himself a soldier, and his highest conception of glory was
to "lick the British."  I remember walking home from school
with a squad of little fellows at the time Andrew Jackson
issued his famous message, when he threatened war if the French
did not pay us our debt.  We discussed the situation with
great gravity, and concluded that if the French beat us, we
should have a king to rule over us.

Besides the two military companies, there was another called
the "Old Shad."  The law required every able-bodied man of
military age to turn out for military training and inspection
on the last Wednesday in May; they turned out just to save
the penalty of the law, and used to dress in old clothes,
and their awkward evolutions were the object of great scorn
to the small boy of the time.

The streets of Concord were made lively by the stage-coaches
and numerous teams.  There were four taverns in the town,
all well patronized, with numerous sleeping-rooms.  Two of
them had large halls for dancing.  A great many balls were
given, to which persons came from the neighboring towns.

There was an excellent fiddler named John Wesson, who continued
to give the benefit of his talent to all parties, public and
private, down to the time of the war, when he said he would
not play a dancing tune till the boys came home.  He died
soon after, and I do not know whether his music was ever heard
again.  These taverns were crowded with guests.  One principal
route for stages and teams to New Hampshire, Vermont and Canada
passed through Concord.

There were several lines of stages, one from Lowell to Framingham,
and two at least from Boston.  The number of passengers, which
now are all carried by rail, was so large that extras were
frequently necessary.  The teams were very often more than
the barns of the taverns in the town could accommodate, and
on summer nights the wagons would extend for long distances
along the village street with horses tied behind them.

The sound of the toddy stick was hardly interrupted in the
barroom inside from morning till night.  The temperance reform
had not made great headway in my youthful days.  It was not
uncommon to see farmers, bearing names highly respected in
the town, lying drunk by the roadside on a summer afternoon,
or staggering along the streets.  The unpainted farmhouses
and barns had their broken windows stuffed with old hats or
garments.  I have heard Nathan Brooks, who delivered the first
temperance lecture in the town, at the request of the selectmen,
say that after it was over he and the selectmen and some of
the principal citizens went over to the tavern, and each took
a mug of flip.

There were great quantities of huckleberries in the pastures
about Concord, and the sweet high blackberries abounded by
the roadside.  There were plenty of chestnuts in the woods,
and the walnut, or pig-nut, also abounded; so that berrying
and nutting were favorite pastimes.

When I was a small boy a party of us went down to Walden woods,
afterward so famous as the residence of Henry Thoreau.  There
was an old fellow named Tommy Wyman, who lived in a hut near
the pond, who did not like the idea of having the huckleberry-
fields near him invaded by the boys.  He told us it was not
safe for us to go there.  He said there was an Indian doctor
in the woods who caught small boys and cut out their livers
to make medicine.  We were terribly frightened, and all went
home in a hurry.

When we got near the town, we met old John Thoreau, with his
son Henry, and I remember his amusement when I told him the
story.  He said, "If I meet him, I will run this key down
his throat," producing a key from his pocket.  We reported
the occurrence at the village store, but were unable to excite
any interest in the subject.

Thanksgiving was then, as it is and ought to be now, the
great day of the year.  All the children were at home.  The
ambition of the head of the house was to get the largest
turkey that money could buy.  No Thanksgiving dinner was
quite complete unless there were a baby on hand belonging
to some branch of the family, no bigger than the turkey.
The preparation for Thanksgiving was very interesting to
the small boy mind.  A boiled or roasted turkey, a pair of
chickens, chicken pie, wonderful cranberry sauce, a plum
pudding, and all manner of apple pies, mince pies, squash
pies, pumpkin pies, and nuts, raisins, figs and noble apples
made part of the feast.  I suppose Thanksgiving customs have
changed less than most others, except in one particular.
I do not believe there is a small boy's stomach in this generation
that can hold a tenth part of what used to go into mine, not
only on Thanksgiving day, but on the days before and after.
The raisins were to be picked over, the nuts and citron got
ready, when Thanksgiving was coming on, of all which we took
abundant tolls.  The cold and warmed-over dishes lasted through
the rest of the week.  I do not know what the Jewish festival
or the old Roman banquets might have been, but they could
not have equalled a New England Thanksgiving week in a house
in the country.

The doctor in those days was a terror to the small boy.  The
horrible and nasty castor oil, ipecac and calomel, and the
salts and senna, sulphur and molasses taken three mornings
in succession and then missed three mornings, were worse than
any sickness.  Of the last I speak only from hearsay, not
from personal knowledge.  Then the cupping and bleeding were
fearful things to go through or look upon.  We had none of
the sweet patent medicines that the children now cry for,
and none of the smooth capsules or the pleasant comfits that
turn medicine into confectionery nowadays.

The boys were not allowed in most families to read novels,
even on week-days.  My father had a great dislike of fiction
of all sorts, and for a good while would not tolerate any
novels in the house; but one winter day he went to Pepperell,
in the northern part of the county, to try a case before a
sheriff's jury.  About the time the case got through there
came up a sudden and violent snowstorm, which blocked up the
road with deep drifts so that he could not get home for two
or three days.  He had to stay at a small country tavern,
and the time hung very heavily on his hands.

He asked the landlord if he had any books.  The only one
he could find was a first volume of Scott's "Redgauntlet,"
which was just then being published in Boston by a bookseller
named Parker, in what was called Parker's revised edition.
Father read it with infinite delight.  His eyes were opened
to the excellence of Scott.  He got home the next day at
about noon, and immediately sent one of the children down
to the circulating library to get the second volume.  He
subscribed to Parker's edition, and was a great lover of Scott
ever after.

We were permitted, however, to read the "Tales of a Grandfather."
I hope if any boy reads this book he will read the "Tales
of a Grandfather," especially the parts which give the history
of Scotland.  It is a most interesting and noble story.  I
can remember now how the tears ran down my cheeks as I read
Scott's description of finding the bones of Robert Bruce in
the old abbey at Dunfermline:

"As the church would not hold half the numbers, the people
were allowed to pass through it one after another, that each
one, the poorest as well as the richest, might see all that
remained of the great king, Robert Bruce.  Many people shed
tears; for there was the wasted skull which once was the head,
that thought so wisely and boldly for his country's deliverance;
and there was the dry bone which had once been the sturdy
arm that killed Sir Henry de Bohun, between the two armies,
at a single blow on the evening before the Battle of Bannockburn."

I account it one of the chief blessings of my life that my
boyhood was spent in the pure, noble and simple society of
the people of Concord.  I am afraid I did not do it much
credit then.  Old Dr. Bartlett, one of the worthiest and
kindliest of men, but who always uttered what was in his
heart, said after my two oldest brothers and I had grown
up, that Samuel Hoar's boys used to be the three biggest
rascals in Concord, but they all seemed to have turned out
pretty well.  I have so far kept this statement strictly from
the knowledge of the Democratic papers.  But I suppose it
is too late to do any harm now.


CHAPTER V
FAMOUS CONCORD MEN

There were in Concord in my boyhood three writers who afterward
became very famous indeed--Emerson, Hawthorne and Thoreau.
Mr. Lowell said that these three names shine among all others
in American literature as the three blazing stars in the belt
of Orion shine in the sky.

The town is represented in the beautiful building of the
Congressional Library at Washington by busts of Emerson and
Hawthorne on the outside front of the building; by Emerson's
name on the mosaic ceiling in the entrance pavilion, and by
three sentences from his writings inscribed on the walls.
There are two out of eight such busts.  It is also represented
by two figures, a symbolic Statue of History, and a bronze
Statue of Herodotus, both by Daniel Chester French, the sculptor,
a Concord man.

Emerson came to live in Concord in the summer of 1835.  Although
he was born in Boston and went to school there, he belonged
to the town by virtue of his descent from a race of Concord
ministers who held the pulpit, with very brief intervals,
from 1635 to 1841.  But I do not think his influence upon
the town was very great for the first fifteen or twenty years
of his life there.  Indeed, I think he would have said that
the town had more influence upon him than he had upon it.
The Concord people, like the general public, were slow in
coming to know his great genius.  He was highly respected
always.  But the people were at first puzzled by him.  His
life was somewhat secluded.  He spent his days in study and
in solitary walks.  Until Mrs. Ripley came to the old manse,
about 1846, Emerson had, I think, no intimate friend outside
of his own household, except my sister Elizabeth, who had
been betrothed to his brother Charles, and was as a sister
to Emerson until her death in 1878.  A good many allusions
to her will be found in his life and in his letters to Carlyle.
After she died and shortly before his own death he appeared
at my brother's house one day with a manuscript which he had
handed to the Judge.  He had gone over his diary for a great
many years and extracted and copied everything in it which
related to her.

He used to read lectures to the Lyceum, and in reading his
books now I find a great many passages which I remember to
have heard him read in my youthful days.  In one of his lectures
upon Plato, he said that he turned everything to the use of
his philosophy, that "wife, children and friends were all
ground into paint"--alluding to Washington Allston's story
of the Paint King who married a lovely maiden that he might
make paint of the beautiful color of her cheeks.

A worthy farmer's wife in the audience took this literally,
and left the room in high dudgeon.  She said she thought
Waldo Emerson might be in better business than holding up
to the people of Concord the example of a wicked man who ground
his wife and children into paint.

In Emerson's later days he was undoubtedly a powerful educational
influence in the town.  He was a man of much public spirit.
In his philosophy his "soul was like a star and dwelt apart."

But he had a heart full of human affections.  He loved the
town.  He loved his country.  He loved his family.  He loved
his neighbors and friends.  He could be stirred deeply on
fit occasions by righteous indignation.  Some of the men
who frequented the tavern, posted in the barroom a scurrilous
libel upon old Dr. Bartlett, the venerable physician, who
had incurred their hostility by his zeal in enforcing the
prohibitory laws.  Emerson heard of it and repaired to the
spot and tore down the offensive paper with his own hand.
After Wendell Phillips made an equally scurrilous attack
on Judge Hoar, Emerson refused to take his hand.

In his lament for his beautiful boy he uttered the voice of
parental sorrow in immortal accents.  In the poems, "In Memoriam,"
and in "The Dirge," he records how lonely the lovely Concord
Valley is to him since his brothers are gone as he wanders
there in the long sunny afternoon:

  Harken to you pine warbler,
  Singing aloft in the tree!
  Hearest thou, O, traveller,
  What he singeth to me?

  Not unless God made sharp thine ear
  With sorrow such as mine,
  Out of that delicate lay couldst thou
  Its heavy tale divine.

But I think that the life of his younger brother Charles,
though he died so early, was felt as an even greater force in
Concord than that of Waldo.

I hope I may be pardoned if I put on record here a slight
and imperfect tribute to the memory of Charles Emerson, who
was betrothed to my eldest sister.  It is nearly seventy
years ago.  Yet the sweet and tender romance is still fresh
in my heart.  He was a descendant of a race of Concord clergymen,
including Peter Bulkeley, the founder of the town.  He was
born in Boston, but spent much of his youth in Concord in
the household of Dr. Ripley, who was the second husband of
the grandmother of the Emersons.  He studied law partly at
Cambridge Law School, partly in Daniel Webster's office in
Boston, and afterward with my father in Concord.  When my
father took his seat in Congress, in 1835, Emerson succeeded
to his office, and if he had lived would have succeeded to
his practice.  Waldo Emerson had left it on record that he
was led to choose Concord as a dwelling-place to be near his
brother.  Waldo's house had been enlarged to make room for
Charles and his bride under the same roof.  The house was
ready and the wedding near at hand when, in riding from Boston
to Concord on top of the stage, Charles took a violent cold,
which was followed by pleurisy and death.  He was of a very
sociable nature, knew all the town people, lectured before
the Lyceum, had a class in the Sunday-school and used to speak
in the Lyceum debates.  He had a very pleasant wit.  He was
on the committee for the celebration of the settlement of
the town in 1835, at the end of two hundred years, and about
the same time was on a committee to attend the celebration
at Acton, where the people claimed for themselves all the
glory of the Concord Fight.  He had thought it likely the
Acton people would ask him to speak.  But they did not.  As
he was riding back in the chaise, he said if they had asked
him to speak, he had it in mind to give as a toast, "The blessed
Memory of the Pilgrim Fathers, who first landed at Acton."

He was especially fond of boys, and they of him.  When he
died, every schoolboy thought he had lost a friend.  One
had a knife and another a book or a picture which he prized,
and another a pair of skates which Charles Emerson had given
him.  It may be a fond exaggeration, but I think he was the
most brilliant intellect ever born in Massachusetts.

Mr. Webster, who was consulted as to where Emerson should
settle, said, "Settle!  Let him settle anywhere.  Let him
settle in the midst of the back woods of Maine, the clients
will throng after him."  Mr. Everett delivered an eloquent
eulogy after his death, at the Phi Beta Kappa dinner at Harvard.

Dr. Holmes' exquisite tribute in his Phi Beta poems is well
known:

  Thou calm, chaste scholar!  I can see thee now,
  The first young laurels on they pallid brow,
  O'er thy slight figure floating lightly down
  In graceful folds the academic gown,
  On thy curled lip the classic lines that taught
  How nice the mind that sculptured them with thought,
  And triumph glistening in the clear blue eye,
  Too bright to live,--but Oh! too fair to die.

Dr. Holmes also says in his last tribute to Waldo:

"Of Charles Chauncey, the youngest brother, I knew something
in my college days.  A beautiful, high-souled, pure, exquisitely
delicate nature in a slight but finely wrought mortal frame,
he was for me the very ideal of an embodied celestial intelligence.
I may venture to mention a trivial circumstance, because it
points to the character of his favorite reading, which was
likely to be guided by the same tastes as his brother's, and
may have been specially directed by him.  Coming into my room
one day, he took up a copy of Hazlitt's British Poets.  He
opened it to the poem of Andrew Marvell's, entitled, 'The
Nymph Complaining for the Death of her Fawn,' which he read
to me with delight irradiating his expressive features.  The
lines remained with me, or many of them, from that hour,--

  Had it lived long, it would have been
  Lilies without, roses within.

"I felt as many have felt after being with his brother, Ralph
Waldo, that I had entertained an angel visitant.  The fawn
of Marvell's imagination survives in my memory as the fitting
image to recall this beautiful youth; a soul glowing like
the rose of morning with enthusiasm, a character white as
the lilies in its purity."

The late Samuel May, who was in the class after Emerson's
at Harvard, told me that the impression his character and
person made upon the students of his time was so great that
when he passed through the college yard, everybody turned
to look after him, as in later days men looked after Webster
when he passed down State Street.

The Rev. Joseph H. Cross, now (1903) still living, the oldest
graduate of Harvard, was his classmate.  I received this letter
from him a few years ago:

66 BRADFORD ST., LAWRENCE,
  January 8, 1897.
  HON. G. F. HOAR,

_Dear Sir:_

Yours of 5th inst. is before me; and I am glad to remember
my classmate Emerson and answer your inquiries.  I knew that
he studied law in your Honored Father's office, and was betrothed
to your eldest sister.

Your first inquiry is "as to his looks."  He was above medium
height, well proportioned and straight as an arrow, brown
hair and clear blue eyes, with fair complexion and handsome
features.  "His scholarship and talents," both of the highest
order.  The class regarded him as the first and best scholar,
dignified and refined in manners, courteous and amiable in
spirit.  He had great influence in his own class, and was
much esteemed and beloved by all.  I think the impression
he made upon all who knew him was that of a classical scholar
and a perfect gentleman.


Dr. Channing said when he died that all New England mourned
his loss.

Although Charles was seven years the younger, his brother
Waldo speaks of him as his own master and teacher.  The following
letter was written by Waldo to his aunt Mary just after Charles's
death.  A part of it is printed in Cabot's Biography.  Waldo
and my sister, Elizabeth, heard of the extremity of his danger,
and were on their way to see him, but arrived too late to
find him alive.

"12 May.

"You have already heard that E. and I arrived too late to
see Charles.  He died on Monday afternoon, immediately after
returning from a ride with Mother.  He got out of the coach
alone, walked up the steps and into the house without assistance,
then sat down upon the stairs, fainted and never recovered.
Yesterday afternoon we attended his funeral, and that is the
end on this side Heaven, of his extraordinary promise, the
union of such shining gifts,--grace and genius, and sense
and virtue.  What a loss is this to us all--to Elizabeth and
Mother and you and me.  In him I have lost all my society.
I sought no other and formed my habits to live with him.  I
deferred to him on so many questions and trusted him more
than myself, that I feel as if I had lost the best part of
myself.  In him were the foundations of so solid a confidence
and friendship that all the years of life leaned upon him.
His genius too was a fountain inexhaustible of thoughts and
kept me ever curious and expectant.  Nothing was too great,
nothing too beautiful for his grasp or his expression, and
as brilliant as his power of illustration was, he stuck like
a mathematician to his truth and never added a syllable for
display.  I cannot tell you how much I have valued his conversation
for these last two or three years, and he has never stopped
growing, but has ripened from month to month.  Indeed, the
weight of his thoughts and the fresh and various forms in
which he constantly clothed them has made Shakespeare more
conceivable to me, as Shakespeare was almost the only genius
whom he wholly loved.  His taste was unerring.  What he called
good was good, but so severe was it that very few works and
very few men could satisfy him, and this because his standard
was a pure ideal beauty and he never forgot himself so far
as to accept any lower actual one in lieu of it.  But I must
not begin yet to enumerate his perfections.  I shall not know
where to stop, and what would be bare truth to me would sound
on paper like the fondest exaggeration.

"I mourn for the Commonwealth, which has lost before it yet
had learned his name the promise of his eloquence and rare
public gifts.  He blessed himself that he had been bred from
infancy as it were in the public eye, and he looked forward
to the debates in the Senate on great political questions
as to his fit and native element.  And with reason, for in
extempore debate his speech was music, and the precision,
the flow and the elegance of his discourse equally excellent.
Familiar as I was with his powers, when a year ago I first
heard him take part in a debate, he surprised me with his
success.  He spoke so well that he was impatient of writing
as not being a fit medium for him.  I never shall hear such
speaking as his, for his memory was a garden of immortal
flowers, and all his reading came up to him as he talked, to
clear, elevate and decorate the subject of his present thought.
But I shall never have done describing, as I see well I shall
never cease grieving as long as I am on the earth that he
has left it.  It seems no longer worth living in, if whatever
delights us in it departs.  He has quitted forever the apparent,
the partial.  He has gone to make acquaintance with the real,
the good, the divine, and to find mates and co-operators such
as we could not offer him."

Charles Emerson entered with zeal and sympathy into the daily
life of the people of Concord.  He delivered a few lectures,
which were quite celebrated.  Some of his manuscripts are
in existence, and there is a boyish essay or two in the _Harvard
Magazine,_ one on Conversation and one on Friendship, which
show a singular charm and simplicity of style.  He wrote the
epitaph on the tomb of Professor Ashmun at Mount Auburn, and
a tribute to his friend, James Jackson, Jr., which is preserved
in Jackson's memoir by his father.

Miss Martineau, in a chapter of her autobiography written
in 1836, describes the feeling in Boston in regard to the
opposition to slavery, which seems now incredible even to
those who remember it.  She says:

"The Emersons, for the adored Charles Emerson was living then,
were not men to join an association for any object . . . . But
at the time of the hubbub against me in Boston, Charles Emerson
stood alone of a large company in defence of free thought
and speech, and declared that he had rather see Boston in
ashes than that I or anybody should be debarred in any way
from perfectly free speech."

Robert C. Winthrop, who was Charles Emerson's intimate friend
in boyhood, wrote for the _Advertizer_ a beautiful obituary
notice.  He says:  "Emerson was eminently a man of genius.
We know not that in his riper years he ever wrote a line of
poetry, but no one could have listened to him, either in private
or public without feeling that he had a poet's power; while
his prose composition was of so pure and finished a style
as to show plainly that close perusal of the English Classics
in which he so much delighted . . . . One opinion which Mr.
Emerson had early formed, and which had he been spared to
mature life might have contributed much to his eminence may,
in the sad event which has occurred, have contracted the circle
of his fame . . . . He had formed in his own mind a standard
of education far beyond that which can be completed, even
by the most faithful application, within the ordinary rounds
of school and college--an education in which every man must
be mainly his own master.  In the work of this enlarged self-
education he was engaged, and, until it was finished, he shrunk
from the appearance of attempting to instruct others.  He
had in him all the elements which would have insured the success
of early efforts at display--a fluent speech, a fine elocution,
quick conception, a brilliant fancy.  But his ambition, . . .
while it aspired to a lofty eminence, was content to see that
eminence still in the distance."  Mr. Winthrop adds, "Principle,
unyielding and uncompromising principle, was the very breath
of his soul, and pervaded and animated his whole intellectual
system . . . . He openly professed what he believed, and he acted
up to his professions.  He not only held conscience the guide
of his life, but he took care to school and discipline that
conscience so that its dictates should always conform to truth,
to duty, to the laws of God.  He was an honorable, high-minded,
virtuous man--a sincere and devout Christian . . . . He has
fallen at the very gate of an honorable and eminent career,
and a thousand hopes are buried in his grave."

A few years before Mr. Winthrop died I met him in Cambridge,
at the Peabody Museum, of which we were both trustees.  The
trustees were gathered in their room waiting for the meeting
to be called to order.  Mr. Winthrop was talking about his
college days.  I asked him how it happened that there were
so many distinguished persons, in various departments of excellence,
who were graduated from Harvard about his time, in his class
and in the few classes following and preceding.  I said that
sometimes there would be several orators, or eminent men of
science, or eminent classical scholars, or eminent teachers,
graduated about the same time, and their excellence would
be attributed to some one instructor; but that in his time
there seemed to be a crop of great men in all departments
of life--in natural history, in the pulpit, the bar, in oratory,
in literature, and in public life.  Mr. Winthrop rose to
his feet from this chair and brought his hand down with great
emphasis on the table as he answered: "It was the influence
of Charles Emerson, Sir."

Charles Emerson delivered just before his death a very beautiful
and impressive lecture on Socrates.  It was long remembered
by the people of Concord.  It is said that they who heard
it never forgot his beautiful figure and glowing countenance
as he ended a passage of great eloquence at the close of the
lecture with the words,

  "God for thee has done His part.  Do thine."


Mr. Hawthorne had published some short stories which had already
made his name quite celebrated, but his great fame was still
to be gained.  He was poor and had a good deal of difficulty
in gaining a decent living for himself and his young wife.
I will not undertake to repeat the story of his life which
Hawthorne has told so beautifully in his "Mosses from an Old
Manse."  I knew Mrs. Hawthorne very well indeed.  She was
a great friend of my oldest sister and used to visit my father's
house when I was a boy, before she was married.  It was owing
to that circumstance that the Hawthornes came to live in Concord.
She was quite fond of me.  I used to get strawberries and
wild flowers for her, and she did me great honor to draw my
portrait, which now, fortunately or unfortunately, is lost.
I went up to the house while they were absent on their wedding
journey when I was a boy of fourteen or fifteen to help put
things in order for the reception of the young couple.

The furniture was very cheap; a good deal of it was made
of common maple.  But Mrs. Hawthorne, who was an artist,
had decorated it by drawings and paintings on the backs of
the chairs and on the bureaus and bedsteads.  On the headboard
of her bed was a beautiful copy, painted by herself, of Guido's
Aurora, with its exquisite light figures and horses and youths
and maidens flying through the air.

I never knew Hawthorne except as a stately figure, whom I
saw sometimes in Concord streets and sometimes in his own
home.  He rarely, if ever, opened his lips in my hearing.
He was always very silent, hardly spoke in the presence of
any visitor with whom he was not very intimate.  So far as
I know he never visited at the houses of his neighbors and
never went to town-meeting.  The latter was a deadly sin in
the eyes of his democratic neighbors.  Mr. Emerson induced
him, one evening, to be one of a small company at his house.
But Hawthorne kept silent and at last went to the window and
looked out at the stars.  One of the ladies said to the person
next her:  "How well he rides his horses of the night."  He
was very fond of long walks, and of rowing on the river with
Thoreau and Ellery Channing.

The Old Manse was built in 1759 by the Rev. Daniel Bliss
for his daughter Phoebe on her marriage to the Rev. William
Emerson.  She was grandmother of Waldo Emerson.  Her second
husband was the Rev. Dr. Ripley.

I knew Henry Thoreau very intimately.  I went to school with
him when I was a little boy and he was a big one.  Afterward
I was a scholar in his school.

He was very fond of small boys, and used to take them out
with him in his boat, and make bows and arrows for them, and
take part in their games.  He liked also to get a number of
the little chaps of a Saturday afternoon and take them out
in his boat, or for a long walk in the woods.

He knew the best places to find huckleberries and blackberries
and chestnuts and lilies and cardinal and other rare flowers.
We used to call him Trainer Thoreau, because the boys called
the soldiers the "trainers," and he had a long, measured stride
and an erect carriage which made him seem something like a
soldier, although he was short and rather ungainly in figure.
He had a curved nose which reminded one a little of the beak
of a parrot.

His real name was David Henry Thoreau, although he changed
the order of his first two names afterward.  He was a great
finder of Indian arrow-heads, spear-heads, pestles, and other
stone implements which the Indians had left behind them, of
which there was great abundance in the Concord fields and
meadows.

He knew the rare forest birds and all the ways of birds and
wild animals.  Naturalists commonly know birds and beasts
and wild flowers as a surgeon who has dissected the human
body, or perhaps sometimes a painter who has made pictures
of them knows men and women.  But he knew birds and beasts
as one boy knows another--all their delightful little habits
and fashions.  He had the most wonderful good fortune.  We
used to say that if anything happened in the deep woods which
only came about once in a hundred years, Henry Thoreau would
be sure to be on the spot at the time and know the whole story.

  It seemed that Nature could not raise
  A plant in any secret place,
  In quaking bog or snowy hill,
  Beneath the grass that shades the rill,
  Under the snow, between the rocks,
  In damp fields known to bird and fox,
  But he would come in the very hour
  It opened in its virgin bower,
  As if a sunbeam showed the place,
  And tell its long-descended race.
  It seemed as if the breezes brought him;
  It seemed as if the sparrows taught him;
  As if by secret sight he knew
  Where, in the far fields, the orchis grew.
  Many haps fall in the field
  Seldom seen by wishful eyes,
  But all her shows did Nature yield,
  To please and win this pilgrim wise.
  He saw the partridge drum in the woods;
  He heard the woodcock's evening hymn;
  He found the tawny thrushes' broods;
  And the shy hawk did wait for him;
  What others did at distance hear,
  And guessed within the thicket's gloom,
  Was shown to this philosopher,
  And at his bidding seemed to come.

These lines fit Henry Thoreau exactly.  Most people think
Emerson had him in mind when he wrote them.  But as a matter
of fact, they were written before he knew Henry Thoreau.

I wonder how many know the woodcock's evening hymn.  I have
known many sportsmen and naturalists who never heard it or
heard of it.  When the female is on her nest the male woodcock
flies straight up into the sky, folds his wings and falls
down through the air, coming down within a foot or two of
the nest from which he ascended, pouring out a beautiful song,
which he never sings at any other time.  He is said to be
one of the best and sweetest of our song birds.

It is a singular fact that Emerson did not know Henry Thoreau
until after Thoreau had been some years out of college.  Henry
walked to Boston, eighteen miles, to hear one of Emerson's
lectures, and walked home again in the night after the lecture
was over.  Emerson heard of it, and invited him to come to
his house and hear the lectures read there, which he did.
People used to say that Thoreau imitated Emerson, and Lowell
has made this charge in his satire, "A Fable for Critics";

  There comes ----, for instance; to see him's rare sport,
  Tread in Emerson's tracks with legs painfully short.

I think there is nothing in it.  Thoreau's style is certainly
fresh and original.  His tastes and thoughts are his own.
His peculiarities of bearing and behavior came to him naturally
from his ancestors of the isle of Guernsey.

I retained his friendship to his death.  I have taken many
a long walk with him.  I used to go down to see him in the
winter days in my vacations in his hut near Walden.  He was
capital company.  He was a capital guide in the wood.  He
liked to take out the boys in his boat.  He was fond of discoursing.
I do not think he was vain.  But he liked to do his thinking
out loud, and expected that you should be an auditor rather
than a companion.

I have heard Thoreau say in private a good many things which
afterward appeared in his writings.  One day when we were
walking, he leaned his back against a rail fence and discoursed
of the shortness of the time since the date fixed for the
creation, measured by human lives.  "Why," he said, "sixty
old women like Nabby Kettle" (a very old woman in Concord),
"taking hold of hands, would span the whole of it."  He repeats
this in one of his books, adding, "They would be but a small
tea-party, but their gossip would make universal history."

Another man who was famous as a writer went to school and
afterward tended store in Concord in my childhood.  This was
George H. Derby, better known as John Phoenix.  He was also
very fond of small boys.  I remember his making me what I
thought a wonderful and beautiful work of art, by taking a
sheet of stiff paper of what was called elephant foolscap,
and folding it into a very small square, and then with a penknife
cutting out small figures of birds and beasts.  When the sheet
was opened again these were repeated all over the sheet, and
made it appear like a piece of handsome lace.

He did not get along very well with his employer, who was
a snug and avaricious person.  He would go to Boston once
a week to make his purchases, leaving Derby in charge of the
store.  Derby would lie down at full length on the counter,
get a novel, and was then very unwilling to be disturbed to
wait on customers.  If a little girl came in with a tin kettle
to get some molasses, he would say the molasses was all out,
and they would have some more next week.  So the employer
found that some of his customers were a good deal annoyed.

Another rather famous writer who lived in Concord in my time
was Mr. A. Bronson Alcott.  He used to talk to the children
in the Sunday-school, and occasionally would gather them together
in the evening for a long discourse.  I am ashamed to say
that we thought Mr. Alcott rather stupid.  He did not make
any converts to his theories among the boys.

He once told us that it was wicked to eat animal food; that
the animal had the same right to his life that we had to ours,
and we had no right to destroy the lives of any of God's
creatures for our own purposes.  He lived only on vegetable
food, as he told us.  But he had on at the time a very comfortable
pair of calfskin boots, and the boys could not reconcile his
notion that it was wicked to kill animals to eat, with killing
animals that he might wear their hides.  When such inconsistencies
were pointed out to him he gave a look of mild rebuke at the
audacious offender, and went on with his discourse as if nothing
had happened.

The people who do not think very much of Alcott ought to
speak with a god deal of modesty when they remember how highly
Emerson valued him, and how sure was Emerson's judgment; but
certainly nobody will attribute to Alcott much of the logical
faculty.  Emerson told me once:

"I got together some people a little while ago to meet Alcott
and hear him converse.  I wanted them to know what a rare
fellow he was.  But we did not get along very well.  Poor
Alcott had a hard time.  Theodore Parker came all stuck full
of knives.  He wound himself round Alcott like an anaconda;
you could hear poor Alcott's bones crunch."

Margaret Fuller used to visit Concord a good deal, and at
one time boarded in the village for several months.

She was very peculiar in her ways, and made people whom she
did not like feel very uncomfortable in her presence.  She
was not generally popular, although the persons who knew her
best valued her genius highly.  But old Doctor Bartlett, a
very excellent and kind old doctor, though rather gruff in
manner, could not abide her.

About midnight one very dark, stormy night the doctor was
called out of bed by a sharp knocking at the door.  He got
up and put his head out of the window, and said, "Who's there?
What do you want?"  He was answered by a voice in the darkness
below, "Doctor, how much camphire can anybody take by mistake
without its killing them?"  To which the reply was, "Who's
taken it?"  And the answer was "Margaret Fuller."  The doctor
answered in great wrath, as he slammed down the window, and
returned to bed:  "A peck."

William Ellery Channing, the poet, was a constant visitor
of my sister, and later of my brother Edward.  He was a moody
and solitary person, except in the company of a few close
friends who testified to the charming and delightful quality
of his companionship.  I suppose his poems will outlast a
great many greater reputations.  But they will always find
very few readers in any generation.

Channing visited my elder sister almost every day or evening
for a good while, but rarely remained more than two or three
minutes if he found anybody else in the room.

George William Curtis, afterward the famous orator, and his
brother, Burrill, occupied for a year or two a small farmhouse
or hut, with one or two rooms in it, in Concord, on the Lincoln
road.  They had been at Brook Farm and came to Concord, I
suppose attracted by Emerson.  They came to my father's house
during their stay there every afternoon, and their call was
as much a regular incident of the day as any stated meal.
Each of them was a boy of a very pleasant and delightful nature.
I think if George Curtis had dwelt almost anywhere but in
New York city, he would have been a very powerful influence
in the public life of his generation.  But he did not find
any congenial associates in the men in New York who had any
capacity to effect much good.  His pure and lofty counsel
fell unheeded upon the ears of his near neighbors, and the
people of Massachusetts did not listen very patiently to lectures
on political purity or reform in civil service from New York
city.

I never maintained any considerable intimacy with Curtis,
although I have a few letters from him, expressing his regard
for some of my kindred or his interest and sympathy in something
I had said or done.  These I value exceedingly.  One of the
very last articles he wrote for _Harper's Weekly,_ written
just before his death, contains a far too kind estimate of
my public service.

The Concord quality has come down with its people from the
first settlement.  The town was founded by Peter Bulkeley.
He was a clergyman at Odell in Bedfordshire, where the church
over which he was settled is still standing.  He was a gentleman
of good family and of a considerable estate which he spent
for the benefit of the people whom he led into the wilderness.
He encountered the hostility of Laud and, to use the phrase
of that time, was "silenced for non-conformity." With Major
Simon Willard, he made a bargain with the Indians, just to
both parties, and with which both parties were perfectly satisfied,
which rendered the name of Concord so appropriate, although
in fact the name was given to the settlement before the company
left Boston.  That pulpit was occupied by Bulkeley and his
descendants either by blood or marriage, from 1635 to 1696;
from 1738 to 1841; and from 1882 to 1893.

I was able some forty years ago to settle in Concord a matter
which had puzzled English historians, as to the legitimacy
of the famous statesman and Chief Justice, Oliver St. John.
Lord Campbell, in his "Lives of the Chief Justices," says:
"It is a curious circumstance that there should be a dispute
about the parentage of such a distinguished individual, who
flourished so recently.  Lord Clarendon, who knew him intimately
from his youth, who practised with him in the Court of King's
Bench, who sat in the House of Commons with him, and who was
both associated with him and opposed to him in party strife,
repeatedly represents him as illegitimate; and states that
he was 'a natural son of the house of Bolingbroke.'  Lord Bacon's
account of his origin is equivocal--calling him 'a gentleman
as it seems of an ancient house and name.'  By genealogists
and heralds a legitimate pedigree is assigned to him, deducing
his descent in the right male line from William St. John,
who came in with the Conqueror; but some of them describe
him as the son of Sir John St. John, of Lydiard Tregose in
Wiltshire, and others as the son of Oliver St. John of Cagshoe
in Bedfordshire, and they differ equally respecting his mother.
Lord Clarendon could hardly be mistaken on such a point,
and I cannot help suspecting that the contrary assertions
proceed from a desire to remove the bar sinister from the
shield of a Chief Justice."

Lord Campbell has had diligent search made in the archives
of Oxford and Lincoln's Inn, but does not find anything to
change his opinion.

Fortunately we are able to settle the question about which
Lord Campbell and Lord Bacon and Lord Clarendon were misled,
in Old Concord.  Peter Bulkeley was the uncle of Oliver St.
John.  He speaks of him in his will, and leaves him his Bible.
Bulkeley's Gospel-Covenant, a book the substance of which
was originally preached to his congregation, is dedicated
to Oliver St. John.  In the Epistle Dedicatory, he speaks
of the pious and godly lives of St. John's parents, and alludes
to the dying words of St. John's father as something which
he and St. John had heard, but which was not known to other
men.  "I speak a mystery to others but not unto your Lordship."

So it is quite clear that St. John could not have been born
out of wedlock, and the son of a man who had seduced the
sister of this eminent and pious clergyman.

In Noble's "Memoirs of the Cromwell Family," published about
seventy-five years after the death of St. John, he is said
to be the son of Oliver St. John of Cagshoe in Bedfordshire.

When the "Lives of the Chief Justices" was first published,
I wrote to Lord Campbell, telling him these facts, and received
the following letter in reply:

LONDON, July 9th, 1861.

_Sir_

I thank you very sincerely for your interesting letter of
December 13th, respecting Lord Chief Justice St. John.  I
think you establish his legitimacy quite satisfactorily and
in any future edition of my Lives of the Chief Justices I
shall certainly avail myself of your researches.

  I have the honor to be
  Sir
  Your obliged and obedient Servant
  CAMPBELL.

  The Honorable
  Geo. F. Hoar.

Something of Bulkeley's character may be gathered from this
extract from the Gospel-Covenant, which Mr. Emerson, who was
his descendant, loved to quote.  Think of these words, uttered
to his little congregation in the wilderness; the only company
of white men in the Western Hemisphere who dwelt away from
tide-water:

"And for ourselves, the people of New England, wee should
in a speciall manner, labour to shine forth in holinesse
above other people; we have that plenty and abundance of
ordinances and meanes of grace as few people enjoy the like;
wee are as a City set upon a hill, in the open view of all
the earth, the eyes of the world are upon us, because wee
professe ourselves to be a people in Covenant with God, and
therefore not only the Lord our God, with whom we have made
Covenant, but heaven and earth, Angels and men, that are witnesses
of our profession, will cry shame upon us, if we walk contrary
to the Covenant which we have professed to walk in; if we
open the mouthes of men against our profession, by reason
of the scandalousnesse of our lives, wee (of all men) shall
have the greater sinne.

"To conclude, let us study so to walk, that this may be our
excellency and dignity among the Nations of the world, among
which we live; That they may be constrained to say of us,
onely this people is wise, an holy and blessed people: that
all that see us, may see and know that the name of the Lord
is called upon us:  and that we are the seed which the Lord
hath blessed.  Deut. 28. 10 Esay. 61. 9.  There is no people
but will strive to excell in something:  what can we excell
in if not in holinesse?  If we look to number, we are the
fewest; If to strength, we are the weakest; If to wealth
and riches, we are the poorest of all the people of God throughout
the whole world, we cannot excell (nor so much as equall)
other people in these things; and if we come short in grace
and holiness too, we are the most despicable people under
heaven; our worldy dignitie is gone, if we lose the glory
of grace too, then is the glory wholly departed from our Israel,
and we are become vile; strive we therefore herein to excell,
and suffer not this crown to be taken away from us:  Be we
a holy people, so shall we be honorable before God and precious
in the eyes of his Saints."

To these eminent Concord authors should be added the name
of William S. Robinson.  He was one of the brightest and wittiest
men of his time.  He very seldom had praise for anybody, although
for a few of his old Anti-Slavery friends he had a huge liking.
When I was a little boy he was in a newspaper office in Concord,
where he got most of his education.  Afterward he was associated
with William Schouler in editing the Lowell _Courier,_ a Whig
paper.  When Schouler became editor of the _Atlas,_ Robinson
succeeded to the paper.  But when the Free Soil movement
came in, he would not flinch or abate a jot in his radical
Anti-Slavery principles, which were not very agreeable to
the proprietors of the cotton mills in Lowell, who depended
both for their material and their market largely upon the
South.  Sumner described their alliance with their Southern
customers as an alliance between the Lords of the Loom and
the Lords of the Lash.  So Robinson was compelled to give
up his paper, in doing which he voluntarily embraced poverty
instead of a certain and lucrative employment.  He started
an Anti-Slavery weekly paper in Lowell known as the Lowell
_American._  That afforded him a bare and difficult living
for a few years.  After the Anti-Slavery people got into power
he was made Clerk of the Massachusetts House of Representatives.
Then he began to write his famous letters to the Springfield
_Republican,_ which he signed Warrington.  They were full
of wit and wisdom and displayed great knowledge of the best
English literature.  He made many enemies and finally, by
a concert among them, was turned out of office.  He lost his
health not long after, and died prematurely.

He was quite unsparing in his attacks on anybody who offended
him, or against whom he took a dislike; and he seemed to dislike
everybody whom he did not know.  It was said of him that,
like the rain of Heaven, he "fell alike on the just and on
the unjust."  He attacked some of the most venerable and worthy
citizens of the Commonwealth without any apparent reason.
He used to call Chief Justice Chapman, one of the worthiest
and kindest of men, Chief Justice Wheelgrease.  He had a controversy
in his paper of long standing with a man named Piper, a pompous
and self-important little personage, who edited the Fitchburg
_Reveille._  That was a Whig paper which circulated in the
country towns where Robinson's paper was chiefly taken.  He
made poor Piper's life unhappy.  One of the issues of his
paper contained a life of Piper.  It begun by saying that
Piper began life as the driver of a fish-cart in Marblehead,
and that he was discharged by his employer on account of the
diffuseness of his style.  He quoted with great effect on
Otis P. Lord the toast given by the Court Jester of Archbishop
Laud's time:  "Great Laud be to God, and Little Lord to the
Devil."

When he was clerk of the House of Representatives there was
a story in the newspapers that he was preparing a treatise
on Parliamentary law.  He published a letter denying the statement.
But he added, that if he did write such a treatise, he should
sum it up in one sentence:  "Never have an ass in the chair."

I was associated with him one day on the Committee on Resolutions
of the Republican State Convention, held in Worcester.  The
Committee went over to my office to consult.  While we were
talking together Robinson broke out with his accustomed objurgations
levelled at several very worthy and excellent men.  I said:
"William, it is fortunate that you did not live in the Revolutionary
time.  How you would have hated General Washington."  He replied,
with a smile that indicated the gratification he would have
had if he could have got at him: "He was an old humbug, wasn't
he?"

But Robinson was always on the righteous side of any question
involving righteousness.  He was kind, generous, absolutely
disinterested, and a great and beneficent power in the Commonwealth.


CHAPTER VI
FARM AND SCHOOL

I spent my life in Concord until I entered college except
one year when I lived on a farm in Lincoln.  There I had
an opportunity to see at its best the character of the New
England farmer, a character which has impressed itself so
strongly and so beneficently on our history.  Deacon James
Farrar, for whom I worked, was, I believe, the fifth in descent
from George Farrar, one of the founders of the town of Lincoln.
All these generations dwelt on the same farm and under the
same roof.  An ancient forest came to a point not far from
the house.  That, with a large river meadow and some fertile
upland fields, made up the farm.  In every generation one
or more of the family had gone to college and had become eminent
in professional life, while one of them had stayed at home
and carried on the farm.  An uncle of the Deacon with whom
I lived was Timothy Farrar of New Ipswich, an eminent judge
who died considerably more than a hundred years old, and who
was the oldest graduate of Harvard.  Deacon James's own brother
was Professor John Farrar of Harvard, a famous mathematician
in his day, thought by his pupils to be the most eloquent
man of his time, although Webster and Everett and Channing
were his cotemporaries.  It was a healthy and simple life
of plain living and high thinking.  But I think I got more
good out of it in learning how the best intelligence of the
State of Massachusetts was likely to judge of the questions
of morals and duty than I got afterward from my four years
in college.  Two of the Deacon's sons succeeded him on the
farm.  One was his successor in his office in the church.
Another son, George Farrar, graduated at Amherst where he
was cotemporary with Dr. Storrs and Henry Ward Beecher.  He
died a few years after his admission to the Bar.  But he had
already given proof that he would, if he had lived, have taken
rank among the foremost at the Bar in Massachusetts.

Before entering college I was for about six months a pupil
of Mrs. Sarah Ripley of Waltham.  She removed to Concord with
her husband afterward.  She was one of the most wonderful
scholars of her time, or indeed of any time.  President Everett
said she could fill any professor's chair at Harvard.  She
was an admirable mathematician.  She read the "Mecanique Celeste"
of Laplace in the original without the aid of Dr. Bowditch's
translation.  She was a fine German and Italian scholar.  She
had a great fondness for Greek literature, especially for
Plato and AEschylus.  She was an accomplished naturalist.
She was simple as a child, an admirable wife and mother, performing
perfectly all the commonest duties of the household.  The
authorities of Harvard used to send boys to her who were rusticated
for some offence.  She would keep them along in all their
studies, in most cases better instructed than they would have
been if they had stayed in Cambridge.  I remember her now
with the strongest feeling of reverence, affection and gratitude.
In that I say what every other pupil of hers would say.  I
do not think she ever knew how much her boys loved her.

In 1876 the Directors of the Centennial Exposition at Philadelphia
took steps to have the lives of three or four of the foremost
women of the century that had just passed written as the best
examples of American womanhood for our first century.  Mrs.
Schuyler was selected from New York, Mrs. Livermore from
New Hampshire, and Mrs. Randolph from Virginia.  Mrs. Ripley
was chosen as the representative of Massachusetts.  If anybody
doubt the capacity of the intellect of woman to rival that
of man in any calling requiring the highest intellectual capacity,
without in the least forfeiting any quality of a delicate
womanhood, let him read the "Life of Sarah Ripley."

After her death Mr. Emerson wrote the following notice of
her.  It is not found in his collected works.

"Died in Concord, Massachusetts, on the 26th of July, 1867,
Mrs. Sarah Alden Ripley, aged seventy-four years.  The death
of this lady, widely known and beloved, will be sincerely
deplored by many persons scattered in distant parts of the
country, who have known her rare accomplishments and the singular
loveliness of her character.  A lineal descendant of the first
governor of Plymouth Colony, she was happily born and bred.
Her father, Gamaliel Bradford, was a sea-captain of marked
ability, with heroic traits which old men will still remember,
and though a man of action yet adding a taste for letters.
Her brothers, younger than herself, were scholars, but her
own taste for study was even more decided.  At a time when
perhaps no other young woman read Greek, she acquired the
language with ease and read Plato,--adding soon the advantage
of German commentators.

"After her marriage, when her husband, the well-known clergyman
of Waltham, received boys in his house to be fitted for college,
she assumed the advanced instruction in Greek and Latin, and
did not fail to turn it to account by extending her studies
in both languages.  It soon happened that students from Cambridge
were put under her private instruction and oversight.  If
the young men shared her delight in the book, she was interested
at once to lead them to higher steps and more difficult but
not less engaging authors, and they soon learned to prize
the new world of thought and history thus opened.  Her best
pupils became her lasting friends.  She became one of the
best Greek scholars in the country, and continued, in her
latest years, the habit of reading Homer, the tragedians,
and Plato.  But her studies took a wide range in mathematics,
in natural philosophy, in psychology, in theology, as well
as in ancient and modern literature.  She had always a keen
ear open to whatever new facts astronomy, chemistry, of the
theories of light and heat had to furnish.  Any knowledge,
all knowledge was welcome.  Her stores increased day by day.
She was absolutely without pedantry.  Nobody ever heard of
her learning until a necessity came for its use, and then
nothing could be more simple than her solution of the problem
proposed to her.  The most intellectual gladly conversed with
one whose knowledge, however rich and varied, was always with
her only the means of new acquisition.  Meantime her mind
was purely receptive.  She had no ambition to propound a theory,
or to write her own name on any book, or plant, or opinion.
Her delight in books was not tainted by any wish to shine,
or any appetite for praise or influence.  She seldom and unwillingly
used a pen, and only for necessity or affection.

"But this wide and successful study was, during all the hours
of middle life, only the work of hours stolen from sleep,
or was combined with some household task which occupied the
hands and left the eyes free.  She was faithful to all the
duties of wife and mother in a well-ordered and eminently
hospitable household, wherein she was dearly loved, and where

  'her heart
  Life's lowliest duties on itself did lay.'

"She was not only the most amiable, but the tenderest of
women, wholly sincere, thoughtful for others, and, though
careless of appearances, submitting with docility to the
better arrangements with which her children or friends insisted
on supplementing her own negligence of dress; for her own
part indulging her children in the greatest freedom, assured
that their own reflection, as it opened, would supply all
needed checks.  She was absolutely without appetite for luxury,
or display, or praise, or influence, with entire indifference
to trifles.  Not long before her marriage, one of her intimate
friends in the city, whose family were removing, proposed
to her to go with her to the new house, and, taking some articles
in her own hand, by way of trial artfully put into her hand
a broom, whilst she kept her in free conversation on some
speculative points, and this she faithfully carried across
Boston Common, from Summer Street to Hancock Street, without
hesitation or remark.

"Though entirely domestic in her habit and inclination, she
was everywhere a welcome visitor, and a favorite of society,
when she rarely entered it.  The elegance of her tastes recommended
her to the elegant, who were swift to distinguish her as they
found her simple manners faultless.  With her singular simplicity
and purity, such as society could not spoil, nor much affect,
she was only entertained by it, and really went into it as
children into a theatre,--to be diverted,--while her ready
sympathy enjoyed whatever beauty of person, manners, or ornament
it had to show.  If there was conversation, if there were
thought or learning, her interest was commanded, and she gave
herself up to the happiness of the hour.

"As she advanced in life, her personal beauty, not remarked
in her youth, drew the notice of all, and age brought no fault
but the brief decay and eclipse of her intellectual powers."

In 1833, three years before Emerson wrote "Nature," Mrs. Ripley
said of him:  "We regard him still, more than ever, as the
apostle of the Eternal Reason.  We do not like to hear the
crows, as Pindar says, caw at the bird of Jove."*

[Footnote]
* On the stone which marks Mrs. Ripley's grave in the beautiful
cemetery at Concord, her children placed an inscription containing
a part of the passage with which Tacitus ends his Life of Agricola.
"It was a passage which was specially dear to her," says her
biographer; "many of her friends will recall the fine glow of
feeling with which she read or quoted it; and to these it will
always be associated with her memory.  I cannot better close this
imperfect sketch of her life than by giving the whole of it:  of
no one was it ever more worthily spoken than of her.  The words
enclosed in brackets are those which are on her gravestone."

"Si quis piorum manibus locus; si, ut sapientibus placet, non
cum corpore exstinguunter magnae animae; (placide quescas, nosque,
domum tuam, ab tuarum voces, quas neque lugeri neque plangi fas
est:  admiratione te potius, temporalibus laudibus, et, si natura
suppedit, similitudine decoremus.)  Is verus honos, ea conjunctissimi
cujusque pietas.  Id filiae quoque uxorique praeceperim, sic
patris, sic mariti memoriam venerari, ut omnia facta dictaque
ejus secum revlvant; famamque ac figuram animi magis quam
corporis complectantur:  non quia intercedendum putem imaginibus,
quae marmore aut aere finguntur, sed ut vultus hominum, ita simulacra
vultus imbecilla ne mortalia sunt, forma mentis aeterna, quam
tenere et exprimere non per alienam materiam et artem, sed tuis
ipse moribus posis.  Quidquid ex Agricola amavimus, quidquid mirati
sumus, manet mansurumque est in animis hominum, in aeternitate
temporum, fama rerum.  Nam multos veterum, velut inglorios et
ignobiles oblivio obruet:  Agricola posteritati narratus et
superstes erit."
[End of Footnote]


CHAPTER VII
HARVARD SIXTY YEARS AGO

I do not think Harvard College had changed very much when
I entered it on my sixteenth birthday in the year 1842 either
in manners, character of students or teachers, or the course
of instruction, for nearly a century.  There were some elementary
lectures and recitations in astronomy and mechanics.  There
was a short course of lectures on chemistry, accompanied by
exhibiting a few experiments.  But the students had no opportunity
for laboratory work.  There was a delightful course of instruction
from Dr. Walker in ethics and metaphysics.  The college had
rejected the old Calvinistic creed of New England and substituted
in its stead the strict Unitarianism of Dr. Ware and Andrews
Norton,--a creed in its substance hardly more tolerant or
liberal than that which it had supplanted.  There was also
some instruction in modern languages,--German, French and
Italian,--all of very slight value.  But the substance of
the instruction consisted in learning to translate rather
easy Latin and Greek, writing Latin, and courses in algebra
and geometry not very far advanced.

The conditions of admission were quite easy.  They were such
as a boy of fourteen of good capacity, who could read and
write the English language and had gone through some simple
book of arithmetic, could easily master in two years.  There
were three or four schools were the boys were pretty well
fitted, so that they could translate Cicero and Virgil, Nepos
and Sallust and Caesar and Xenophon and Homer.  The Boston
Latin School, the Roxbury Latin School, Phillips Academy at
Exeter and Phillips Academy at Andover and Mrs. Ripley's
school at Waltham were the best schools for this purpose.
The boys from the Boston Latin School generally took their
places at the head of the class when they entered.  Next came
the best scholars from the other schools I have named.  But
the bulk of the pupils were very poorly fitted.

There was, as it seems to me in looking back, little instruction
of much value.  The good scholars and the bad went to the
recitation together.  The good ones lost the hour, and the
poor scholars got the benefit of hearing the good ones recite.
Their mistakes were corrected by the professor.  They handed
in written exercises in Latin and Greek which were examined
by the instructor and the faults corrected, and returned.
There were, during the last three years, declamations once
a month, where the boy recited some piece of prose or poetry
in the presence of the class, but got very little instruction
or criticism from the professor.  Then, in the last three
years, English themes were required.  The subjects were given
out by Professor Channing, himself a most accomplished and
admirable scholar in his line.  He seemed to choose his subjects
with a view of taxing the ingenuity of the boy to find anything
to say about them instead of taking something which the boy
knew about and devoting himself to improve his English style
in expressing his thought.  Channing was a good critic.  His
published lectures on rhetoric and oratory, now almost wholly
forgotten, remind one of Matthew Arnold in their delicate
and discriminating touch.  He had a face and figure something
like that of Punch in the frontispiece of that magazine.  His
method was to take the themes which the boys handed in one
week, look them over himself, then, a week after, meet the
class, call the boys in succession to sit down in a chair
by the side of his table, read out passages from the theme,
and ridicule them before the others.  It was a terrible ordeal
for a bashful or awkward boy.  Those of a more robust nature,
or whose performance had nothing ridiculous in it, profited
by the discipline.  But it certainly took all the starch and
courage out of me.  I never sat down to write my theme without
fancying that grinning and scornful countenance looking at
my work.  So I used to write as few sentences as I thought
would answer so that I should not be punished for failure
to bring in any theme at all, and never attempted to do my
best.

But the Faculty themselves were certainly an assemblage of
very able men.  Making all the allowance for the point of
view, and that I was then a youth looking at my elders who
had become famous, and that I am now looking as an old man
at young men, I still think there can be no comparison between
the college administrators of fifty years ago and those of
to-day.  It was then the policy of the college to call into
its service great men who had achieved eminent distinction
in the world without.  It is now its policy to select for
its service promising youth, in the hope that they will become
great.  Perhaps the last method is the best where it succeeds.
But the effect of failure is most mischievous.  Presidents
Quincy, Everett, Walker and Sparks administered in succession
the office of President during my connection with the Academic
Department and the Law School, although Dr. Walker's inauguration
was not until later.  Each of them in his own way was among
the first men of his time.  Quincy had been an eminent statesman,
a famous orator, and a most successful mayor of Boston.  Edward
Everett had been in his early youth one of the most famous
pulpit orators of the country, afterward a distinguished
Member of Congress, Governor of the Commonwealth, Minister
to England, and Senator of the United States.  He was a consummate
orator, on whose lips thousands and thousands of his countrymen
had hung entranced.  He was, what is less generally remembered
now, perhaps the ablest and most accomplished diplomatist
ever in the public service of the United States.  Jared Sparks
was a profound student of history, somewhat dull as a narrator,
but of unerring historic judgment.  I suppose he would be
placed by all our writers of history with great unanimity
at the head of American historic investigators.  James Walker
was a great preacher and a profound thinker.  In the judgment
of his hearers, young and old, he was probably deemed nearly
or quite the foremost of American preachers.

That I may not be supposed to imply any disparagement of the
present accomplished head of Harvard, let me say that while
each of the men I have named had done a great work in life
and achieved a great fame before he came to the Presidency,
President Eliot has, in my opinion, achieved an equal fame
and performed an equal work since he came to it.

A like policy prevailed in those days in the choice of instructors
in the Law School.  Judge Story, the senior professor, died
just before I graduated from the College.  His fame as a jurist
was known throughout Europe.  He was undoubtedly the most
learned judge in the United States.  Chief Justice Marshall
and Chief Justice Shaw of Massachusetts doubtless excelled
him in intellectual vigor.  Chancellor Kent rivalled him as
a writer upon law.  But he had no other rival among judges
or commentators in this country,--few anywhere.  He was unquestionably,
at the time of his death, the most famous teacher of law in
the civilized world.  His associate professor, Greenleaf,
was an admirable lawyer, who, before he went to Harvard, had
had a great practice in Maine, and made some good arguments
in the Supreme Court of the United States.  Judge Story was
succeeded by Chief Justice Joel Parker of New Hampshire, a
very eminent jurist, who was saturated with the old learning
of special pleading and real property.  He would have been
a fit associate for Coke or Saunders, and would have held
his own anywhere with either.

There was nothing in the teaching of Latin or Greek to inspire
the student with any love of Greek or Latin literature.  The
professor never pointed out its beauties or illustrated the
text in any way.  The students, in succession, were called
upon to construe a few lines, reading one or two Greek words
and then giving their English equivalents.  The time of the
good scholar was taken up in hearing the recitation of the
poor scholar and so very largely wasted.  I had four or five
persons in my class who became afterward eminent classical
scholars.  I do not believe that when we graduated there were
more than four men in the class who could write a decent Latin
sentence without the laborious use of grammar and dictionary.
I doubt whether there was more than one, certainly there were
not more than three, who could do the same thing in Greek.
I do not suppose there was a man in the class who could have
spoken either language with ease.

Yet, somehow, the graduates of Harvard got a good intellectual
training from the University.  The rough country boy, if he
had it in him, came out at his graduation a gentleman in behavior
and in character.  He was able to take hold of life with great
vigor.  The average age of graduation I suppose was twenty.
Not more than three years were spent in studying a profession.
In some few cases, the graduate got a little money by teaching
for a year.  But the graduates of Harvard College and Harvard
Law School were apt to take quite rapidly the high places
of the profession.  That was true then much more than it is
now.

There were many persons who graduated before my time or shortly
afterward whose high place in the public life of the Commonwealth
and of the country was assured before they were thirty years
old.  Edward Everett was called to the pulpit of Brattle Street
Church at the age of nineteen.  He succeeded in that pulpit
Joseph Stevens Buckminster, who was himself settled over that
important parish at the age of twenty-one and was a wonderful
pulpit orator.  Edward Everett preached a sermon when he was
twenty-four years old before a large audience in the Representatives
Chamber at Washington which was heard with breathless silence.
Rufus King said it was the best sermon he ever heard, and
Harrison Gray Otis was affected to tears.  Benjamin R. Curtis
was admitted to the bar in Boston when he was twenty-two years
old and shortly after was retained in a very important case.
It is said that an old deputy sheriff, who had just heard
Curtis's opening argument, was met in the street and asked
if anything was going on in court.  "Going on?" was the reply.
"There's a young chap named Curtis up there has just opened
a case so that all Hell can't close it."  I suppose Edward
Everett Hale and James Freeman Clarke were almost as famous
in the pulpit when they were twenty-five or twenty-six years
old as they ever were afterward.  I might extend the catalogue
indefinitely.  Where is there to be found to-day at the New
England bar or in the New England pulpit a man under thirty
of whom it can be said that his place among the great men
of his profession is assured? It will not do to say in answer
to this that it takes a greater man in this generation to
fill such a place than it took in other days.  That is not
true.  The men of those generations have left their work behind
them.  It does not suffer in comparison with that of their
successors.  There was something in the college training of
that day, imperfect as were its instruments, and slender as
were its resources, from which more intellectual strength
in the pupil was begotten than there is in the college training
of the present generation.  I will not undertake to account
for it.  But I think it was due in large part to the personality
of the instructors.  A youth who contemplated with a near
and intimate knowledge the large manhood of Josiah Quincy;
who listened to the eloquence of James Walker, or heard his
expositions of the principal systems of ethics or metaphysics;
or who sat at the feet of Judge Story, as he poured forth
the lessons of jurisprudence in a clear and inexhaustible
stream, caught an inspiration which transfigured the very
soul of the pupil.

Josiah Quincy, "old Quin" as we loved to call him, was a very
simple and a very high character.  He was born in Boston,
February 4, 1772, just before the Revolutionary War.  It was
said, I have no doubt truly, that the nurse who attended his
mother at his birth went from that house to the wife of Copley,
the painter, when her son, Lord Lyndhurst, was born.  Copley
was a Tory, though a patriot and an ardent lover of his country.
His departure from Boston made Lord Lyndhurst an Englishman.
Quincy entered early into politics.  He was a candidate for
Congress in the last century before he was twenty-five years
old.  I heard him say once that the Democrats called for a
cradle to rock the Federal candidate.  He was a good type
of the old Massachusetts Federalist,--brave, manly, sincere,
of a broad and courageous statesmanship, but distrustful of
the people and not understanding their temper.  He made some
very powerful speeches in the House of Representatives, attacking
the greed and office-seeking of that time.  His eloquence
was something of the style of the famous Irish orators.  One
of his passages describing the office-seekers tumbling over
each other like pigs to a trough will be long remembered.
He hated Jefferson and moved his impeachment in the House
of Representatives,--a motion for which he got no vote but
his own.  He retired disgusted from National public life,
became Mayor of Boston, an office which he filled with much
distinction, and then was called to the Presidency of Harvard,
mainly because of his business capacity.  The finances of
the University were then in a sad condition.  He put them
on an excellent footing.  He was very fond of the boys and
they of him, although he was rough and hasty in his manners.
While I was in college (although I happened to be at home
that day and did not see the affair) some of the boys had
got into some serious rows in Boston one Saturday.  They had
undertaken to wear the Oxford cap and gown.  They were ridiculed
by the populace in Boston, and a good many fights were the
consequence.  They were driven from the streets, and in the
afternoon a lot of roughs took hold of a long rope, as if
they belonged to an engine company, ran out to Cambridge across
the bridge, and proposed to attack the college buildings.
Old Quin gathered the students together at the gate and told
the boys to keep within the yard and not to attack anybody
unless they were attacked, but to permit none of those men
to come within the gate.  The old fellow was ready to head
the students and a fight was expected.  But the police gathered,
and finally the Boston roughs were persuaded to depart in
peace.

The old gentleman's heart always warmed to the son of an old
Federalist.  I had to visit his study a good many times, I
regret to say, to receive some well-deserved admonitions.
But the interview always ended in an inquiry after my father
and some jolly, or at least kindly utterance about myself.
One of my classmates gave an account in rhyme of one of these
interviews which I wish I could repeat.  I can only remember
two lines:

  Quin deigned a grin, perforce,
  And Hoar a roar, of course.

He died in 1864 at the age of ninety-two, preserving to the
last his mental vigor and his ardent interest in public affairs.
During the darkest period of the War he never lost his hope
or faith.  He fell on the ice and broke his hip a little while
before his death.  He was treated by the somewhat savage
method of the surgery of the time.  Dr. George E. Ellis,
from whom I had the story, went to see him one day at his
house on Park Street and found the old man lying on his bed
with a weight hanging from his foot, which projected over
the bed, to keep the bones in their place and the muscles
from contracting.  He said to Mr. Quincy's daughter:  "You
have been shut up here a long time.  Now go and take a walk
round the Common and let me stay with your father." Miss Quincy
went out and the old man kept Dr. Ellis so full of interest
by his cheerful and lively talk that he never once thought
to ask him how he was getting along.  When Miss Quincy returned,
he took his leave and had got downstairs when the omission
occurred to him.  He went back to the chamber and said to
Mr. Quincy:  "I forgot to ask you how your leg is."  The old
fellow brought his hand down with a slap upon the limb and
said:  "Damn the leg.  I want to see this business settled."

When Felton was inaugurated as President, Gov. Banks in performing
his part of the ceremony of presenting the charter and the
keys to the new officer alluded in his somewhat grandiloquent
way to four of Felton's predecessors, Everett, Sparks, Walker
and Quincy, who were upon the stage.  Speaking of Quincy he
said:  "He would be reckoned among honorable men, though their
number were reduced to that of the mouths of the Nile or the
gates of Thebes."

Felton, the Greek professor, was the heartiest and jolliest
of men.  He was certainly one of the best examples of a fully
rounded scholarship which this country or perhaps any country
ever produced.  He gave before the Lowell Institute a course
of lectures on Greece Ancient and Modern, into which is compressed
learning enough to fill a large encyclopaedia.  He also edited
two or three Greek plays and an edition of Homer, which was
extensively used as a text-book.

Professor Felton was a very impulsive man, though of great
dignity and propriety in his general bearing.  He had some
theories of his own as to the matter of pure and correct
English and was very much disgusted if anybody transgressed
them.  His brother, John Felton, of the class of 1847, afterward
the foremost lawyer on the Pacific Coast, was altogether the
best and most brilliant scholar in his class.  He was reported
to the Faculty just before his graduation for the offence
of swearing in the College Yard, an offence which was punished
by what was called a public admonition which involved a considerable
loss of rank and a letter to the parent or guardian of the
offender.  The Faculty, in consideration of John Felton's
excellent scholarship, instead of the ordinary punishment
directed that Professor Felton should admonish his brother
of his fault in private.  The professor was some eighteen
or twenty years the elder and respected by his brother rather
as a father than as a brother.  He sent for John to his study
and told him the nature of the complaint, and proceeded: "I
cannot tell you how mortified I am that my brother, in whose
character and scholarship I had taken so much pride, who stood
so high in his class, should have been reported to the Faculty
for this vulgar and wicked offence."  John said, with great
contrition:  "I am exceedingly sorry.  It was under circumstances
of great provocation.  I have never been guilty of such a
thing before.  I never in my life have been addicted to profanity."
"Damnation, John," interposed the professor, "how often have
I told you the word is profaneness and not profanity?"  It
is needless to say that the sermon ended at that point.

But the most interesting single figure in the Harvard Faculty
in my day was James Walker.  He was a man of quiet dignity,
and of modest bearing.  He appeared rather awkward when he
walked, as if there were some want of strength in the feet
or ankles.  He heard the classes in my time in Jouffroy and
Cousin and in Butler's "Analogy."  His method was to require
the boy to get into his mind some account of a system or special
course of reasoning of the author and to state it at considerable
length in his own language.  I think all that I got out of
college that was of much use to me came from this training
in James Walker's recitation-room, except that I think I got
some capacity for cross-examining witnesses which was very
useful to me afterward from reading Plato's dialogues and
getting familiar with Socrates's method of reducing a sophist
ad absurdum.  But Dr. Walker's throne was the pulpit of the
College Chapel.  He used to preach four Sundays in each of
the two terms.  He had a beautiful head, a deep but clear
voice, a deliberate manner and a power of emphasizing his
weighty thoughts which I have never seen surpassed by any
orator.  He had a small and beautiful hand of which it is
said, though such a thing is hard to believe of him, he was
somewhat vain.  But his only gesture was to bring very infrequently
the back of his hand down upon the cushion of the pulpit before
him.  The ticking of the clock in the College Chapel was inaudible
when the chapel was empty.  But it ticked out clear and loud
upon the strained ears of the auditors who were waiting in
the pauses of his sentences.  I can remember his sermons now.
They are admirable to read, although, like other eloquence,
their life and sprit is lost without the effect of speech.
There was one on the text, "Thou shalt say no," which no hearer,
I venture to say, ever forgot to the day of his death.  There
was another, on the control of the thoughts, from the text,
"Leading into captivity every thought."  This made a deep impression
on the students.  I seem to hear the tones of his voice now.
The Doctor described with a terrific effect the thinking over
in imagination scenes of vice by the youth who seemed to
the world outside to fall suddenly from virtue.  He said
there was no such thing as a sudden fall from virtue.  The
scene had been enacted in thought and the man had become
rotten before the time of the outward act.

"Sometimes the novice in crime thinks himself ready to act
when he is not; as appears from his hesitancy and reluctance
when the moment for action arrives.  If, however, this unexpected
recoil of his nature does not induce him to change his purpose
altogether, he knows but too well how to supply the defect
in training for sin.  If we could look into his heart, we
should find him at his accursed rehearsals again.  A few more
lessons, and the blush and the shudder will pass away, never
to return."

This is tame enough in the recital.  But I dare say there
are old men who will read these pages to whom it will bring
back the never-forgotten scenes of more than fifty years ago.
The Doctor had a great gift of sententious speech, not only
in his written discourses, but in his ordinary conversation or
his instruction from the professor's chair.  He was speaking
one day of Combe and of something disrespectful he had said
about the English metaphysicians.  "What does Mr. Combe mean?"
said the Doctor.  "I make no apology for the English metaphysicians.
They have made their mistakes.  They have their shortcomings.
But they are surely entitled to the common privilege of Englishmen
--to be judged by their peers."  He was speaking one day of
some rulers who had tried to check the rising tide of some
reform by persecuting its leaders.  "Fools!" said the Doctor.
"They thought if they could but wring the neck of the crowing
cock it would never be day."

One of the delightful characters and humorists connected
with Harvard was Evangelinus Apostolides Sophocles, tutor
in Greek.  He was a native of Thessaly, born near Mount Pelion
and educated in the convent of the Greek Church on Mount Sinai.
It is said, although such instances are rare, that he was
of the purest Greek blood.  At any rate, his face and head
were of the Greek type.  He was a man of wonderful learning,
--I dare say the best Greek scholar of his generation, whether
in Europe or America.  He was a very simple-hearted person
in dealing with ordinary affairs.  But his conversation and
his instruction in the class-room were full of wit and sense.
He used to tell a story, whether of his father or his grandfather
I am not sure, that one night very late he was sitting in
his warehouse alone when two men entered and told him they
were come to kill him.  He asked them why they wished to kill
him, and they told him that they had been hired by an enemy
of his.  "Well," said the old man, "what are you to be paid?"
They told him the sum.  He said:  "I will give you twice as
much to kill him."  Accordingly they accepted the offer and
went away, leaving the old fellow alive, kept their bargain
with him and killed his enemy.

Sophocles had a great love of little children and a curious
love of chickens which he treated as pets and liked to tame
and to play with, squatting down on the ground among them
as if he were a rooster himself.  It is said that during his
last sickness the doctor directed that he should have chicken
broth.  He indignantly rejected it, and declared he would
not eat a creature that he loved.

In what I have said about Professor Channing I am describing
him and his method in instruction faithfully as it seemed
to me at the time.  It is quite possible I may be wrong.  I
am sure that the better scholars and the youths who were much
better in every way than I was at that time of my life who
were his pupils will dissent from my opinion and be shocked
at what I say.  So it is quite likely that I am in fault and
not he.  I have read again lately his book on Rhetoric and
Oratory since what I said a little while ago was dedicated,
and I wish to reaffirm my high opinion of the book.  For fresh,
racy and correct style, for clear perception and exquisite
literary taste, it is one of the best books on the subject,
as it one of the best books on any subject ever written by
an American.  His mistake was, in large measure, the prevalent
mistake of the College in his time,--the use of ridicule and
severity instead of sympathy as a means of correcting the
faults incident to youth.  It was the fault of the College,
both of instructors and of the students.  Dr. Walker in one
of his public addresses speaks with commendation of "the storm
of merciless ridicule" which overwhelms young men who are
addicted to certain errors which he is criticising.

The Latin professor was Charles Beck, Ph.D.  He was a native
of Heidelberg.  He had been compelled to leave Prussia because
of his love of liberty.  He had studied theology, and had
published a treatise on gymnastics, in which he was accomplished.
We read with him Terence and Plautus, the Medea of Seneca,
Horace, and probably some Latin prose, which I have forgotten.
He was a very learned Latin scholar.  I do not know whether
he cared anything about poetry or eloquence or the philosophy
of the Roman authors or no.  Certainly he did nothing to indicate
to us that he had any such interest or to stimulate any such
interest in his pupils.  He was strict to harshness in dealing
with his class.  The only evidence of enthusiasm I ever witnessed
in Dr. Beck was this:  He brought into the classroom one day
an old fat German with very dirty hands and a dirty shirt.
He had a low forehead and a large head with coarse curling
hair which looked as if it had not seen a comb or brush for
a quarter of a century.  We looked with amazement at this
figure.  He went out before the recitation was over.  But
Dr. Beck said to us:  "This is Dr. ----, gentlemen.  He is
a most admiwable scholar."  (This was the Doctor's pronunciation
of the r.)  "He has wead Cicewo through every year for nearly
fifty years for the sake of settling some important questions.
He has discovered that while necesse est may be used indifferently
either with the accusative and infinitive, or with ut with
the subjunctive, necesse ewat can only be used before ut with
the subjunctive.  I should think it well worth living for
to have made that discovery."

I suppose we all thought when we graduated that Dr. Beck
was a man of harsh and cold nature.  But I got acquainted
with him later in life and found him one of the most genial
and kind-hearted of men.  He was a member of the Legislature.
He was a Free Soiler and an Abolitionist, liberally contributing
to the Sanitary Commission, and to all agencies for the benefit
of the soldiers and the successful prosecution of the war.

He came vigorously to the support of Horace Mann in his famous
controversy with Mr. Webster.  Mann had vigorously attacked
Webster, and Webster in return had spoken of Mann as one of
that class of persons known among the Romans as Captatores
Verborum, which he supposed to mean one of those nice persons
who catch up other person's words for the sake of small criticism
and fault-finding.  Mr. Mann replied that Webster was wrong
in his Latin, and the words Captatores Verborum meant toad-
eaters, or men who hang on the words of great men to praise
and flatter them, of which he found some conspicuous modern
examples among Webster's supporters.  Professor Felton, the
Greek professor, who was a staunch friend of Webster, attacked
Mann and charged him with ignorance of Latin.  But Dr. Beck
came to the rescue, and his authority as a Latin scholar
was generally conceded to outweigh that of Webster and Felton
put together.

One of the most brilliant men among the Faculty was Professor
Benjamin Peirce.  Undoubtedly he was the foremost American
mathematician of his time.  He dwelt without a companion in
the lofty domain of the higher mathematics.

  A privacy of glorious light is thine.

He was afterward the head of the Coast Survey.  He had little
respect for pupils who had not a genius for mathematics,
and paid little attention to them.  He got out an edition
of Peirce's Algebra while I was in college.  He distributed
the sheets among the students and would accept, instead of
a successful recitation, the discovery of a misprint on its
pages.  The boys generally sadly neglected his department,
which was made elective, I think, after the sophomore year.
At the examinations, which were held by committees appointed
by the Board of Overseers, he always gave to the pupil the
same problem that had been given to him in the last preceding
recitation.  So the boys were prepared to make a decent appearance.
He used to dress in a very peculiar fashion, wearing a queer
little sack and striped trousers which made him look sometimes
as if he were a salesman in a Jew clothing-store.  He had
a remarkably clear and piercing black eye.  One night one
of the students got into the belfry and attached a slender
thread to the tongue of the bell, contrived to lock the door
which led to the tower and carry off the key, then went to
his room in the fourth story of Massachusetts Hall and began
to toll the bell.  The students and the Faculty and proctors
gathered, but nobody could explain the mysterious ringing
of the bell until Peirce came upon the scene.  His sharp eye
perceived the slender line and it was traced to the room where
the roguish fellow who was doing the mischief thought himself
secure.  He was detected and punished.

Peirce gained great fame in the scientific world by his controversy
with Leverrier.  Leverrier, as is well known, discovered some
perturbations in the movement of the planet Herschel, now
more commonly called Uranus, which were not accounted for
by known conditions.  From that he reasoned that there must
be another planet in the neighborhood and, on turning his
glass to the point where his calculations told him the disturbing
body must be, he discovered the planet sometimes called by
his name and sometimes called Neptune.  This discovery created
a great sensation and a burst of admiration for the fortunate
discoverer.  Peirce maintained the astounding proposition
that there was an error in Leverrier's calculations, and that
the discovery was a fortunate accident.  I believe that astronomers
finally came to his conclusion.  I remember once going into
Boston in the omnibus when Peirce got in with a letter in
his hand that he had just got from abroad and saying with
great exultation to Professor Felton, who happened to be there,
"Gauss says I am right."

I got well acquainted with Professor Peirce after I left
College.  He used to come to Washington after I came into
public life.  I found him one of the most delightful of men.
His treatise "Ideality in the Physical Sciences," and one
or two treatises of a religious character which he published,
are full of a lofty and glowing eloquence.  He gave a few
lectures in mathematics to the class which, I believe, were
totally incomprehensible to every one of his listeners with
the possible exception of Child.  He would take the chalk
in his hand and begin in his shrill voice, "If we take," then
he would write an equation in algebraic characters, "thus
we have," following it by another equation or formula.  By
the time he had got his blackboard half covered, he would
get into an enthusiasm of delight.  He would rub the legs
of his pantaloons with his chalky hands and proceed on his
lofty pathway, apparently unconscious of his auditors.  What
has become of all those wonderful results of genius I do not
know.  He was invited to a banquet by the Harvard Alumni in
New York where he was the guest of honor.  Mr. Choate expressed
a grave doubt whether the professor could dine comfortably
without a blackboard.

John W. Webster gave lectures to the boys on chemistry and
geology which they were compelled to attend.  I think the
latter the most tedious human compositions to which I ever
listened.  The doctor seemed a kind-hearted, fussy person.
He was known to the students by the sobriquet of Sky-rocket
Jack, owing to his great interest in having some fireworks
at the illumination when President Everett was inaugurated.
There was no person among the Faculty at Cambridge who seemed
less likely to commit such a bloody and cruel crime as that
for which he was executed.  The only thing that I know which
indicated insensibility was that when he was lecturing one
day in chemistry he told us that in performing the experiment
which he was then showing us a year or two before with some
highly explosive gas a copper vessel had burst and a part
of it had been thrown with great violence into the back of
the bench where a row of students were sitting, but fortunately
the student who sat in that place was absent that day and
nobody was hurt.  He added drily: "The President sent for
me and told me I must be more careful.  He said I should feel
very badly indeed if I had killed one of the students.  And
I should."

There was nothing in my time equivalent to what used to be
called a rebellion in the older days, and I believe no such
event has occurred for the last fifty years.  The nearest
to it was a case which arose in the senior class when I was
a freshman.  One of the seniors, who was a rather dull-witted
but well-meaning youth, concluded that it was his duty to
inform the Faculty of offences committed by his classmates,
a proceeding it is needless to say contrary to all the boys'
sentiments as to honorable conduct.  Some windows had been
broken, including his.  He informed the Faculty of the person
who had broken them, who was rusticated for a short time as
punishment.  The next day being Saturday, this informer, dressed
up in his best, was starting for Boston, when he was seized
by six of his classmates and held under the College pump until
he received a sound ducking.  He seized the finger of one
of them with his teeth and bit it severely, though it was protected
somewhat by a ring.  He complained of five of the six, who
were forthwith suspended until the next Commencement, losing,
of course, their rank in the class and their chances for taking
part in the Commencement exercises.  One of them, of whom
he omitted to tell, was much disturbed by the omission and
demanded of the informer why he left him out.  He said that
he had rather a pity for him, as he had already been suspended
once and he supposed the new offence would lead to his being
expelled.  Whereupon he said, "I will give you some reason
to tell of me," and proceeded to administer a sound caning.
That was at once reported to the Faculty.  The offender was
expelled, and criminal proceedings had which resulted in a
fine.

We had some delightful lectures from Longfellow on the literature
of the Middle Ages.  He read us some of his own original poems
and some beautiful translations.  All the substance of these
lectures I think is to be found in his book entitled "The
Poets and Poetry of the Middle Ages."  I do not see that we
gained anything of solid instruction by having them read to
us that we could not have got as well by reading them.  We
had also a course of lectures from Jared Sparks on American
history.  They were generally dull and heavy, but occasionally
made intensely interesting when he described some stirring
event of the Revolutionary War.  We hung breathless on his
account of the treason of Arnold and its detection and the
class burst out into applause when he ended,--a thing the
like of which never happened in any time in College.  There
was a little smattering of instruction in modern languages,
but it was not of much value.  We had a French professor named
Viau whom the boys tormented unmercifully.  He spoke English
very imperfectly, and his ludicrous mistakes destroyed all
his dignity and rendered it impossible to maintain any discipline
in the class.  He would break out occasionally in despair,
"Young zhentlemen, you do not respect me and I have not given
you any reason to."  A usual punishment for misconduct in those
days was to deduct a certain number of the marks which determined
rank from the scale of the offending student.  M. Viau used
to hold over us this threat, which, I believe, he never executed,
"Young zhentlemen, I shall be obliged to deduce from you."

He was followed by the Comte de la Porte, a gentleman in bearing
and of a good deal of dignity.  The Count was asked one day
by Nat Perry, a member of the class from New Hampshire who
was very proud of his native State and always boasting of
the exploits in war and peace of the people of New Hampshire,
what sort of a French scholar M. Viau, his predecessor, was.
The Count replied:  "He was not a fit teacher for young gentlemen.
He was an ignorant person from the Provinces.  He did not
have the Parisian accent.  He did not know the French language
in its purity.  It would be as if somebody were to undertake
to teach English who came from New Hampshire or some such
place."  The Count said this in entire innocence.  It was
received with a roar of laughter by the class, and the indignation
and wrath of Perry may well be imagined.

Another instructor in modern languages was Dr. Bachi.  He
was a very accomplished gentleman.  His translations of Italian
poetry, especially of Dante and Tasso, were exquisite.  It
was like hearing a sweet and soft music to hear him read his
beloved poets, and he had a singular gift of getting hold
of the most sweet and mellifluous English words for his rendering.
"And he did open his mouth, and from it there did come out
words sweeter than honey."  He once translated to us a passage
in the Inferno where the damned are suspended, head downwards,
with the burning flames resting upon the soles of their feet.
"Ah," exclaimed Bachi, "they do curl up their toes."

My class is not one of the very famous classes of the College.
Certainly it does not equal the class of 1802 or the class
of 1829.  But I think it was, on the whole, very considerably
above the average.  In it were several persons who became
eminent scholars and teachers, and some who have been eminent
in other walks of life.  I think, on the whole, its two most
distinguished members, entitled to hold a greater place than
any others in the memory of future generations, were Dr. Calvin
Ellis, Dean of the Medical Faculty of Harvard, who died in
1883, and Judge Nathan Webb, of the United States District
Court of Maine, who died in 1902.  Neither of these had very
high rank in the class.  The first half of the class used
to have parts assigned at Commencement in those days.  Ellis's
part was very nearly the lowest of the first half.  Webb's
was higher.  Webb entered college very young.  He was quite
small in his stature and was known all though college as "little
Webb."  He grew to a stature of about six feet after he left
college.  He did, I believe, some very hard work indeed in
his senior year.  Although universally liked and respected
by his classmates, he was not regarded as among the eminent
scholars.  Ellis performed all his duties in College very fairly
but did not seem to care much for rank or for scholarship
until, in the senior year, some lectures on anatomy were delivered
by old Dr. John C. Warren.  Ellis was filled with enthusiasm,
as were some of the other members of the class.  He and I
got a skull somewhere and studied bones, processes, and sutures,
both meaning to be physicians.  My zeal lasted but a few weeks.
Ellis's never abated until his death.  He was at the head
of his profession in the country in his own department, became
Dean of the Harvard Medical School, and was loved and revered
by his numerous pupils as by the members of his profession.
He was one of the most simple-hearted, affectionate, spotless
and lovable of men.  He died of a lingering and painful disease,
never losing his courage and patience, or his devoted interest
in science.  Webb was exceedingly fond of his home, not being
very ambitious of higher office, but content to discharge
ably and faithfully and to the universal satisfaction of the
profession and the public, the duty of the important place
he held.  I have seen a good many public men from Maine of
both parties.  They all unite in this estimate of Judge Webb.
There is no doubt that if he had been willing he would long
ago have been made Judge of the Circuit Court, and then if
the seat on the Supreme Court of the United States held by
Mr. Justice Gray of the New England Circuit had become vacant,
I suppose he would have been called from the Circuit Bench to
that Court by almost universal consent.

Three persons, Child, Lane and Short, all very distinguished
scholars in after life, took their place at the head of the
class in the beginning.  Two of them held the same place when
they graduated.  Short was outstripped by Edwin Moses Bigelow,
who is now living, a lawyer, in Boston.  He entered college
from the country not so well fitted when he entered as most
of the class.  But he made his way by an indefatigable diligence
until he graduated with great distinction, the third scholar,
going a little above Short.

Child was a man of great genius.  He seems to me now, as I
look back upon him, to have been as great a man at seventeen
when he entered college, as he was when he died.  He was the
best writer, the best speaker and the best mathematician,
the most accomplished person in his knowledge of general literature
in the class,--indeed, I suppose, in college,--in his day.
He was probably equalled, and I dare say more lately excelled,
by Lane as a Latin scholar, and by Short as a Greek scholar.
He was a great favorite with the class.  He spent his life
in the service of the College.  He was tutor for a short time
and soon succeeded Channing as Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory.
He became one of the most eminent scholars in the country
in early English literature and language.  He edited a collection
of ballads, Little & Brown's edition of the British Poets,
and was a thorough student of Shakespeare and Chaucer.  To
the elucidation of the text of Chaucer he made some admirable
contributions.  He was shy and diffident, full of kindness
toward persons whom he knew and to children, and of sympathy
with persons who were in sorrow, but whimsical, grotesque,
and apt to take strong prejudices against persons whom he
did not know.  I suppose some of the best of our American
men of letters of late years would have submitted their productions
to the criticism of Child as to a master.

Next to him stood Lane, the learned Latin scholar.  I do
not believe that anybody ever went through Harvard College
who performed four years of such constant and strenuous labor.
What he did in his vacations I do not know, but there was
no minute lost in the term time.  It is said that he never
missed attendance on morning and evening prayers but once.
The class were determined that Lane should not go through
college without missing prayers once.  So one night a cord
was fastened to the handle of his door and attached to the
rail of the staircase.  But Lane succeeded in wrenching open
the door and got to morning prayers in time.  He was the monitor,
whose duty it was to mark the students who were absent from
prayers and who were punished for absence by a deduction
from their rank and, if the absences were frequent enough,
by a more severe penalty.  The next time the measures were
more effective.  Lane's chum, Ellis, was in the conspiracy.
The students bored holes carefully into the door and into
the jamb by the side and took a quantity of hinges and screwed
them carefully on to the door and the jamb.  When Lane got
ready to start for prayers in the morning, he found it impossible
to open the door.  As soon as he discovered what was the trouble,
he seized his hatchet and undertook to cut his way out.  His
chum, Ellis, who had remained quietly in bed, sprang out
of bed and placed his back against the door and declared
that the door of his room should not be hewn down in that
manner.  Lane was obliged to desist.  He however took his
monitor's book, marked himself and his chum absent, and submitted.
There were a good many such pranks played by the boys in those
days, in the spirit of a harmless and good-natured mischief.
I do not know whether the College has improved in the particular
or no.  I do not think anybody in my day would have defaced
the statue of John Harvard.

Whether Lane will go farther down on the path to immortality
as the author of the admirable Latin Grammar to which he gave
so much of his life or as author of the song, "The Lone Fish
Ball," posterity alone will determine.

Charles Short, the third of the three whom I named as standing
at the head of the class, became President of Kenyon College
and afterward Professor of Latin in Columbia College.  He
was one of the committee to prepare the revised version of
the Scriptures, and contributed largely to the Harpers' excellent
Latin Dictionary.

Another of our famous scholars was Fitzedward Hall, who died
lately in England.  He was a very respectable scholar in the
ordinary college studies, but he attained no special distinction
in them as compared with the others whom I have mentioned.
He became, however, quite early, interested in Arabic and
other Oriental languages, a study which he pursued, I think,
without the help of an instructor.  He had a very remarkable
career.  After graduating, he sailed for the East Indies with
a view to pursue there the study of the Oriental languages
and literature.  He took with him letters of introduction
to influential persons in Calcutta, and, of course, a sufficient
supply of funds.  But the vessel on which he was a passenger
was wrecked as it approached the shore.  He got ashore with
difficulty, drenched with sea-water, having lost his letters
of introduction and of credit, and with no resources but a
few coins which happened to be in his pockets.  He knew nobody
in Calcutta.  He disliked very much to present himself to
the persons to whom he had been commended by his friends in
America in that sorry plight with the possibility that he
might be suspected of being an impostor.  Accordingly, he
determined that he would take care of himself.  He walked
about the street to see what he could find to do.  As he went
along he saw the sign of the _Oriental Quarterly Review._
He went in and inquired for the editor and asked him if he
would accept an article.  The editor said that he would consider
it if it were brought in.  Hall then went out and found a
bookstore.  Going in he spied a copy of Griswold's "Poets
and Poetry of America." With a pencil and some sheets of paper,
he wrote an article on American literature, filled up with
pretty copious extracts.  He took it to the editor of the
_Review_ who paid him for it, I think five pounds, and told
him that he should be happy to have him make other contributions.
Hall supported himself by writing for that review and some
other periodicals published by the same concern until he could
send home, get new letters of introduction and credit and
support himself as a gentleman.  He spent three years in Calcutta
studying Hindostanee and Persian, and afterward, Bengalee
and Sanscrit.  Later he removed to Benares, where he was appointed
to a tutorship in the Government College.  Then he became
professor and afterward Inspector of Schools for Ajmere and
Mairwara.  He was in a besieged fort for seven months during
the Indian Mutiny.  He received the degree of D.C.L. from
Oxford in 1860.  He went to London afterward to promote the
election of Max Mueller as professor at Oxford.  While there
he was himself made professor of Sanscrit and of Indian jurisprudence
in London University.  I saw him in England, I think in 1871,
when he was librarian of the great library of the East India
Company, having in charge not only a vast library, but the
archives of the East India Company going back beyond the time
of Cromwell.  He showed me many interesting letters and documents
in manuscript of Cromwell, Nelson and other famous persons.
Professor Edward B. Whitney once told me that with the exception
of Max Mueller he considered Hall the foremost Oriental scholar
in the world.  I suppose Hall would have said the same of
Professor Whitney.

Hall maintained his sturdy Americanism throughout his long
life in England.  He was ready at all times to do battle,
in public or in private, when his countrymen were attacked.
I think, in many cases, if he had been at home, he would have
attacked the same things with which the Englishmen found fault.
He could not bear Ruskin.  He thought he, himself, as an American
had to endure much contempt and injury from Englishmen because
of Ruskin's bitter and contemptuous speech.  But when we consider
that he was an American we must admit that England treated
him very well.  He had, I suppose, the most welcome admission
to all their scientific journals.  In his time he was employed
on the very best and most important work done in England
in his line.  He was professor of Hindostanee and of Hindoo
law and Indian jurisprudence in King's College in London,
also of the Sanscrit language and literature, and Indian
history and geography.  In April, 1865, he was made Librarian
of the India Office, having in his charge the best collection
of Oriental manuscripts in the world, twenty thousand in
number.

While the catalogues of the libraries show a large number
of books published under his name, he said that the greater
part of his work had been anonymous.

In 1893 he wrote to a London magazine:  "Although I have lived
away from America upwards of forty-six years, I feel to this
hour, that in writing English I am writing a foreign language."

Next in rank to Child, Lane, Bigelow and Short was Judge Soule.
Next to him came George Cheyne Shattuck Choate, one of the
well-known family of brothers of that name, sons of a Salem
physician.  Choate became a physician himself.  He was at
the head of the Massachusetts Institution for the Insane at
Trenton.  He afterward had an establishment of his own near
New York, where Horace Greeley was under his care.  I saw
little of him after we graduated.  But he was nearly or quite
at the head of his department in the country.  It is said
that his testimony in court involving questions of medical
jurisprudence was wonderful for its beauty, its precision
and its profound analysis.

But I am inclined to think that the one member of our class
whose fame will last to remote posterity, a fame which he
will owe to a single poem, is Walter Mitchell.  He was a
very bright and accomplished person in college and a great
favorite with his friends.  He studied law, but afterward
determined to become a clergyman and took orders in the Episcopal
Church.  I have never heard him preach, but I have no doubt
from his distinction as a writer and scholar in college that
he is an excellent preacher.  But his poem of the sea entitled
"Tacking the Ship off Fire Island" is one of the most spirited
and perfect of its kind in literature.  You can hear the wind
blow and feel the salt in your hair as you read it.  I once
heard it read by Richard Dana to the Phi Beta Kappa Society
at Harvard, and again by that most accomplished elocutionist,
E. Harlow Russell.  I never read it or hear it without a renewed
admiration.

But the brightest, raciest, wittiest, liveliest, spunkiest of
all the youths was Daniel Sargent Curtis, one of the race
of that name so well known in Boston for excellence in various
departments.  Curtis was the son, I believe, of Thomas B.
Curtis, the merchant, a nephew of Charles P. Curtis, the
eminent lawyer, and a cousin of Judge Benjamin R. Curtis.
I do not know what he would not have made of himself if he
had cultivated his great literary capacity.  Certainly if
he had performed the promise of his boyhood he would have
been one of the foremost men in American literature.  He
studied law but pretty soon became a banker.  Soon after
he took up his residence in Italy, where I suppose he is
living now.  He produced some serious poetry which he read
to some college societies.  I hope for the credit of the class
and for the country and his name he may have done something
in later years which will be given to the world.  It is said,
I know not how truly, that he was for many years a near neighbor
and intimate friend of Browning.  When he was in college and
in the Law School the boys used to enliven all social gatherings
by repeating his good jests as, in later years, the lawyers
did those of Rufus Choate, or the people in public life in
Washington still later, those of Evarts.  Such things lose
nine-tenths of their flavor in the repetition and nine parts
of the other tenth when they are put in writing.  Curtis was
quite small in stature but he was plucky as a gamecock, and
a little dandyish in his dress.  It is said that when he was
a freshman, the boys at the Cambridge High School, a good
many of whom were much bigger than he was, undertook to throw
snowballs at him one day as he went by.  Whereupon Curtis
marched up to the biggest boy and told him if another snowball
were thrown at him he would thrash him and he might pass it
over to the boy who did it.  The result was that Curtis was
not troubled again.

You could not attack or rally him without some bright reply.
Horace Gray, afterward the judge, went shooting one day and
met Curtis as he was coming back with his gun over West Boston
Bridge.  Curtis asked him if he had shot anything.  Gray said,
"No, nothing but a hawk in Watertown.  I stopped at the Museum
as I came by, and gave it to Agassiz." "I suppose Agassiz
said 'Accipter,'" said Curtis.

When Professor Greenleaf resigned his place at the Dane Law
School, much to the regret of the students, it was proposed
to secure a likeness of him for the lecture room.  There was
some discussion whether it should be a bust or a picture,
and if a bust what should be the material.  Curtis said: "Better
make it Verd Antique.  That means Old Green."

Dr. Beck once required his class each to bring a Latin epigram.
Dan Curtis, who was not very fond of work unless it was in
the line of his own tastes, sent in the following:

  Fugiunt.  Qui fugiunt?  Galli; tunc moriar contentus.

"What is that, Curtis?" said the Doctor.  "Dying words of
Wolfe, sir," replied Curtis.  "Ah," said the Doctor with
great satisfaction.  He thought it was Wolf the famous Greek
scholar, and thought the epigram highly to Curtis's credit.

I have still in my memory a very bright poem of his.  I do
not think I ever saw or read it written or in print.  But
I remember hearing it read in one of the college clubs more
than fifty years ago.  He has Longfellow's style very happily,
including the dropping from a bright and sometimes a sublime
line to one which is flat and commonplace, as for instance
in the ode on the death of the Duke of Wellington.

  Meantime without the surly cannon waited,
  The sky gleamed overhead.
  Nothing in Nature's aspect indicated
  That a great man was dead.

This is Curtis's poem:

  Wrapped in musing dim and misty,
  Sit I by the fitful flame;
  And my thoughts steal down the vista
  Of old time, as in a dream.

  Here the hero held his quarters,
  Whom America holds dear;
  He beloved of all her daughters,
  Formerly resided here.

  Here you often might have seen him,
  Silvery white his reverend scalp,
  Frowned above a mighty chapeau
  Like a storm-cap o'er the Alp.

  Up and down these rooms the hero
  Oftentimes would thoughtful stray,
  Walking now toward the window,
  Stalking then again away.

  By the fireside, quaintly moulded
  Oft his humid boots would lie;
  And his queer surtout was folded
  On some strange old chair to dry.

  In the yard where now before me
  Underclothes, wind-wafted hang
  Waved the banners of an army;
  Warriors strode with martial clang.

  These things now are all departed,
  With us on the earth no more,
  But the chieftain, noble-hearted,
  Comes to visit me once more.

  In he comes without permission,
  Sits him down before mine eyes,
  Then I tremble and demnition
  Curious thoughts within me rise.

  Slow he speaks in accents solemn,
  Life is all an empty hum,
  Man, by adulation only
  Can'st thou ever great become.

I ought perhaps to mention a young man of most brilliant
promise, an excellent scholar and a great favorite, who died
before the class graduated, on a voyage to the East Indies
which he undertook in the hope of restoring his health,--
Augustus Enoch Daniels.  He left behind him one _bon mot_
which is worth recording.  We were translating one day one
of the choruses in AEschylus, I think in the Agamemnon, where
the phrase occurs [Greek omitted], meaning "couches unvisited
by the wind," which he most felicitously rendered "windlass
bedsteads."  Such is the vanity of human life that it is not
uncommon that some hardworking, faithful and bright scholar
is remembered only for one single saying, as Hamilton in the
House of Commons was remembered for his single speech.  Another
instance of this is that worthy and excellent teacher of Latin
and Professor of History, Henry W. Torrey.  He was an instructor
in college in our time, afterward left the college to teach
a young ladies' school and came back again later as a Professor.
I presume if any member of the class of 1846 were asked about
Torrey he would say: "Oh, yes.  He was an excellent Latin
scholar, an excellent teacher in elocution and in history.
But all I remember of him is that on one occasion a man who
professed to be learned in Egyptian antiquities advertised a
course of lectures, one of which was to be illustrated by
unrolling from a mummy the bandages which had been untouched
since its interment, many centuries before Christ.  The savant
claimed to be able to read the inscription on the cloth in
which the mummy was wrapped and declared that it was the corpse
of an Egyptian princess, whose name and history he related.
Having given this narrative and excited the expectation of
his auditors, the wrappers were taken off and, alas, it turned
out to be the body of a man.  The poor professor was, of course,
much disconcerted and his lectures, I believe, came to a sudden
ending.  Mr. Torrey said that 'it was undoubtedly the corpse
of Spurius Mummius.'"

But no account of my class ought to omit the name of Henry
Whitney.  He was a universal favorite.  In all the disputes
which arose in all the divisions of sets or sections, Whitney
maintained the regard and affection of the whole class.

After graduating he was a very successful and influential
business man in Boston and was President of the Boston &
Providence Railroad, which under his masterly administration,
attained a very high degree of prosperity.  I think he corresponded
with every member of the class, and did more to preserve and
create a kindly class feeling than any other member.  It seemed
when he died as if half the college had died.  He was a man
of great refinement and scholarship, and was fond of collecting
rare books.  He had a great many editions of Milton which
he liked to exhibit to his friends.  He had a most delightful
wit, and was the author of some very good songs and other
humorous poetry.

I do not of course undertake to give sketches of all my classmates,
either the living or the dead, or those who have attained
distinction as useful and honorable members of society.  So
far as I know their career since they left college, there
is none of them of whom the class or the college need be ashamed.

The different classes had not much intercourse with each
other unless it happened in the case of boys who came from
the same town, or who came from the same school, until late
in the college course, when the members of the Hasty Pudding
Club and the Porcellian, the two principal secret societies,
formed intimacies beyond their own class in the meetings
of those clubs.  There were some persons in the classes near
mine, both below and above me, with whom I had an acquaintance
in college which grew into a cordial friendship in the Law
School or in later life.  Perhaps, taking him all together,
the most brilliant man in Harvard in my time was John Felton.
He went to California and became afterward unquestionably
the greatest lawyer they have ever had on the Pacific Coast.
He was in the class after mine.  I knew him slightly in our
undergraduate days.  But when I went to the Law School in
September, 1847, we boarded together in the same house.  We
speedily became intimate and used to take long walks together
of three or four hours every day.  We rambled about Watertown
and Brighton and Somerville and West Cambridge and had long
discussions about law and politics and poetry and metaphysics
and literature and our own ambitions and desires.  We were
constantly in each other's rooms, and often sat up together,
sometimes until the constellations set, with the wasteful,
time-consuming habits of boyhood.

  Say, for you saw us, ye immortal lights,
  How oft, unwearied, have we spent the nights
  In search of deep philosophy,
  Wit, eloquence and poetry,--
  Arts which I loved, for they, my friend, were thine.

John came of a distinguished family.  His brother Cornelius
was a famous Greek professor, one of the most striking figures
about Cambridge.  Another brother was Samuel M. Felton, the
most distinguished civil engineer in the country of his time;
builder of the Fitchburg railroad, afterward builder and President
of the Pennsylvania Railroad; the man who conceived the plan
of getting the New England troops into Washington by the way
of Annapolis when Baltimore was in the power of the Rebels.
Another brother was quite distinguished in college in the
class of 1851.  John after he graduated went to California
and never came back from the Pacific Coast or kept up his
communication with his old friends, although he received them
with great hospitality, I am told, when they went out there.
I think he had a fancy that he would keep to himself until
he could come back in some great place, like that of Senator
or Judge of the Supreme Court of the United States.  He was
a candidate for the Senate at one time, but was defeated by
a much inferior man.  He was fond of argument; never was
contented without challenging somebody and was a very tough
customer to encounter, whatever side of a question he chose
to take.  He liked, however, nothing better than a sturdy
resistance.  To yield to him was never the way to win his
good will.  The first day when we went to live at the same
boarding-house, I got into a hot dispute with him at dinner
over the Wilmot Proviso, and the constitutional power of Congress
to legislate against slavery in the territories, which was
then a burning question.  John took the Southern side of that
question, although I dare say he would have taken the other
if a Southerner had introduced it, and we got pretty zealous
on both sides and walked home together continuing the argument
as we walked.  As we separated, Felton said: "We will continue
this discussion to-morrow.  Meantime, won't you look up the
history of the matter a little?"  "Yes," said I, "and won't
you study up a little on Whately's Logic?"  The answer seemed
to delight Felton, and he took me into high favor.  I never
knew a man of such ready wit, although I have known a good
many famous wits in my day.  But all these things evaporate
with time.  Or, if you remember them, they are vapid and tasteless
in the telling, like champagne which has been uncorked for
a week.  We were one day discussing some question of law at
the table, and John, who had not yet begun to study law himself,
put in his oar as usual, when Charles Allen, afterward Judge
of the Massachusetts Supreme Court, turned on him with some
indignation.  "What do you know about it, Johnny? You don't
know what a quantum meruit is." "If you had it, 't would kill
you," said Felton.  He was invited to the dinner given by
the people of Nevada in honor of their admission as a State,
and there was some discussion about a device for a State
seal.  Felton suggested that the Irish emblem would be the
most appropriate, the "Lyre and shamrock."  Once after deciding
a case in his favor, Mr. Justice Field said to him: "Felton,
I have made great use of your brief in my opinion." "Always
do that, Judge," said Felton.  He possessed considerable capacity
for poetry, although I do not know that he cultivated it much
after he left college.  He delivered a very successful poem
at Commencement, and gave the Phi Beta Kappa poem the next
year and read some very witty verses at the Society's dinner
the same day.  He was much distressed over choosing a subject,
and put off and put off writing his poem till within a few
days of the time when it was to be delivered.  And he finally
resolved, in a fit of desperation, that he would go into his
room, shut his eyes, turn round three times and take for his
subject the first object on which they rested when he opened
them.  That happened to be a horseshoe which he had picked
up in the street and hung over his fireplace for luck.  He
made a charming poem from this subject, on Superstition.  The
opening lines are:

  Just over the way, with its front to the street,
  Up one flight of stairs, is a room snug and neat,
  With a prospect Mark Tapley right jolly would call;--
  Two churches, one graveyard, one bulging brick wall,
  Where, raven-like, Science gloats over its wealth,
  And the skeleton grins at the lectures on health.
  The tree by the window has twice hailed the Spring
  Since we circled its trunk our last chorus to sing.
  Maidens laughed at our shouts, they knew better than we;
  And the world clanked its chains as we cried, "We are free."
  On the wall hangs a Horseshoe I found in the street;
  'Tis the shoe that to-day sets in motion my feet
  'Tis a comfort, while Europe to freedom awoke
  Is peeping like chickens just free from their yolk
  To think Pope and Monarch their kingdoms may lose;
  Yet I hang my subject wherever I choose.

He goes on in a more serious strain to sketch the history
of superstition and ends with an eloquent aspiration for a
day of universal peace:

  As now my thoughts like clustering bees have clung
  To thee, my Horseshoe, o'er the lintel hung,
  The future bard, with song more richly fraught,--
  Some reverenced wrong the nucleus of his thought,
  Some relic crown or virtuoso's gun,
  Some nation's banner when all earth is one,--
  Back through the past in mournful strain shall wind
  Where demon fancies vex the darkling mind,
  Where light but faintly streaks the dappled sky,
  Nor Morn has shot his glittering shafts on high;
  Trembling with grief and hope, his lyre shall thrill
  To twilight times of blending good and ill,
  Where whizz of bullets, and the clanking chain,
  Jar on the praise of Peace and Freedom's reign.
  In louder strains shall burst the exulting close,
  That sounds the triumph o'er the struggling foes,--
  The slave unbound, War's iron tongues all dumb,--
  His glorious Present, our all hail To Come,
  All hail To Come, when East and West shall be--
  While rolls between the undividing sea--
  Two, like the brain, whose halves ne'er think apart,
  But beat and tremble to one throbbing heart!

He took what was then an unusual method of making himself
a good lawyer.  That was to begin to deal with a legal principle
in historic order, going back to the first case where it was
announced and tracing it down through the reports, making
no use of text-books.  That was the way the old lawyers before
Blackstone got their training.  I have been told, though that
happened after I left Cambridge, that he and Professor Langdell,
the eminent teacher at Harvard who had introduced that method
with so much success, studied together.  Whether it was Felton's
plan or Langdell's I do not know.

John Felton died suddenly in May, 1877.  Everybody who comes
to Washington from California who is old enough speaks with
pleasure of his knowledge of Felton and is full of stories
of his brilliant wit.  He had probably the largest fees ever
received by an American lawyer.  He is said by his biographer
to have received a fee of a million dollars in one case.  His
death was received with universal sorrow.  All the places
of business and amusement were closed and the flags displayed
at half mast on the day of his funeral.

Another rather interesting figure among the men of the classes
above me was Thomas Hill, afterward President of the College.
He was a good mathematician and a good preacher.  But he was
not as successful in the Presidency as his friends hoped.
The only thing I remember about him of any importance is highly
to his credit.  One winter's day a little gaunt-looking and
unhappy pig that had strayed away from a drove wandered into
the College Yard just as the boys were coming out of evening
prayers.  The whole surface of the yard was covered with a
sheet of thin and very slippery ice.  It was rather hard to
stand up on it.  The boys came across the pig, which was frightened
and attempted to run.  After running a little, he would slip
on the ice and slide and tumble over, and then gather himself
up again and try once more.  There was a general shout and
a general chase.  Poor piggy strove to elude his pursuers.
His own tail was a little slippery, so that if a boy caught
it he did not hold it long.  The whole college, pretty much,
engaged in the pursuit, which certainly seemed to be great
fun.  But, on a sudden, there was a loud, angry shout from
a stentorian voice as Tom Hill jumped in among the pursuers,
who were just on the point of conquering the bewildered animal.
"For shame.  Take one of your size." The boys saw the point,
were filled with mortification, desisted, and allowed the
poor creature to go in peace.

The boys generally boarded in the College Commons, where they
could board for $2.25 a week on one side, and on the other
called "starvation commons" for $1.75 a week.  In the latter
they had meat only every other day.  A few of the sons of
the wealthier families boarded in private houses where the
rate of board varied from $3 to $3.50 a week.  The rooms were
furnished very simply, almost always without carpets, though
in rare instances the floors would be covered with a cheap
carpet which did not last very well under the wear and tear
of boyish occupation.  The students generally made their own
fires and blacked their own boots and drew their own water.
But there was a family of negroes named Lewis who performed
those services for such boys as desired, at a compensation
of $5 or $6 a term.  The patriarch of this race was a very
interesting old character.  He was said to be one hundred
years old.  He was undoubtedly very near it.  One morning,
just as we were coming out of the morning prayers, shortly
after six o'clock, old Mr. Lewis drove by with a horse which
he was said to have bought for $5, and a wagon of about the
same value.  He had a load of all sorts of vegetables which
he had raised in his little garden near where the Arsenal
stood and was carrying into Boston to market.  One of his
old wheels broke and the wagon came down, spilling the old
fellow himself and his load of vegetables.  He lay there flat
on his back, unable to get up, surrounded by turnips and
squashes and onions and potatoes, etc.  As he lay with his
black face and his white, grizzled poll, he was a most ludicrous
spectacle.  One of us asked him:  "Why, Mr. Lewis, what is
the matter?"  "Well," he said with a mournful tone, "I laid
eaout to go into Boston."

I suppose there was more turbulence and what would be called
rowdyism in my day than now.  At any rate I do not hear of
such things very often nowadays.  But it was usually of a
harmless character.  There were very few instances indeed
of what would be called dissipation, still fewer of actual
vice.  The only game which was much in vogue was foot-ball.
There was a little attempt to start the English game of cricket
and occasionally, in the spring, an old-fashioned, simple
game which we called base was played.  But the chief game
was foot-ball, which was played from the beginning of the
September term until the cold weather set in, and sometimes,
I believe, in the spring.  It was very unlike the game as at
present carried on.  After evening prayers, which were over
about five or ten minutes after six, the boys repaired to
the foot-ball ground and ranged themselves on sides nearly
equal in number.  If one side thought they were not fairly
matched they would shout, "More, more," until enough went
over to them from the other side to make it about equal.  Then
one of the best kickers gave the ball a kick toward the other
side of the field, and there was a rush and an attempt to
get it past the goal.  Nobody was allowed to pick up the foot-
ball, or to run with it in his hand.  A fast runner and good
kicker who could get the ball a little outside of the line
of his antagonists could often make great progress with it
across the field before he was intercepted.  It was allowable
to trip up one of the other side by thrusting the foot before
him.  But touching an opponent with the hand would have been
resented as an assault and insult.  The best foot-ball players
were not the strongest men but the swiftest runners, as a
rule.

The practice of hazing freshmen during a few weeks after
their entering was carried on sometimes under circumstances
of a good deal of cruelty.  One boy in my class was visited
by a party of sophomores, treated with a good deal of indignity,
and his feelings extremely outraged.  He was attacked by a
fever shortly afterward of which he died.  During his last
hours, in his delirium, he was repeating the scenes of this
visit to his room.  His father thought that the indignity
caused his death.  Another was taken out from his room in
his night clothes, tied into a chair and left on the public
commons in the cold.  It was a long time before he was discovered
and rescued.  A heavy cold and a fit of sickness were the consequence.

There was an entertaining custom of giving out what were called
mock parts when the real parts for the exhibitions or Commencement
were announced.  They were read out from a second-story window
to an assemblage of students in the yard, and after the real
parts had been given some mock parts were read.  Usually some
peculiarity of the person to whom they were assigned was made
the object of good-natured ridicule in the selection of the
subject.  For example, one boy, who was rather famous for
smoking other fellows' cigars and never having any of his
own, had assigned to him as a subject, "The Friendships of
this Life all Smoke."

When the parts were assigned for the Commencement, which
were given usually to the first half of the class, there was a
procession of what was called the Navy Club and an assignment
of honors which were in the reverse order of excellence to
that observed in the regular parts.  The Lord High Admiral
was supposed to be the worst scholar in the class,--if possible,
one who had been rusticated twice during the college course.
The laziest man in the class was Rear Admiral.  Then there
was a Powder Monkey and a Coxswain, and other naval officers,
who were generally famous for what used to be called demerits.
The members of the class to whom parts were assigned were
called "digs" and marched in the procession, each with a spade
on his shoulder, the first scholar, who in our class was Child,
as the "dig of digs," having a spade of huge dimensions.
I believe James Russell Lowell was the Lord High Admiral in
his class.  The Rear Admiral in mine was borne about on a
couch or litter, supported by four men, having another one
marching by his side to carry his pipe, which he was supposed
to be too lazy to put into his mouth or take out of his mouth
himself.  The procession had banners bearing various devices
and went around to take leave of the President and the different
professors, giving them cheers at their houses.  President
Everett, who was a serious-minded person, was much offended
by the whole proceeding.  He sent for some members of the
class and remonstrated; told them he had been obliged to apologize
to his English servant-girl for such an exhibition.  I believe
our class was the last one which performed this harmless and
highly entertaining ceremony.

One of my classmates, afterward a worthy physician, was a
tall man, older considerably than the rest of the class.  He
used to wear an old-fashioned blue, straight-bodied coat
with brass buttons, a buff vest, and nankeen pantaloons which
were said to have come down as an heirloom in his family from
a remote generation.  He was addicted to rather a pompous
style of speech.  He was very fond of playing the bass-viol,
of which he was by no means a very skilful master.  He had,
as a subject for his mock part, "The Base Violation of all
Rules of Harmony."  One Sunday evening he had a few friends
with him who were singing psalm tunes to the accompaniment
of his bass-viol.  They made a prodigious noise, not at all
to the liking of the proctor who had the care of the discipline
of that entry, which was in Holworthy.  He went to the room
from which the noise issued.  It was locked and he had some
difficulty in getting in.  The persons assembled, instead
of maintaining their place, betook themselves to hiding places
in the inner rooms.  My classmate, however, stood his ground
like a Roman and told the officer that his room was his castle
and that he had no right to come in.  The matter was reported
to the Faculty and the musician sent for.  Instead of submitting
himself, however, he maintained very sturdily that the visit
of the official to his room was an outrage which he ought
not be asked to endure.  He made quite an oration to the Faculty.
Thereupon he was sentenced, more for his contumacy than for
the original offence, to suspension from the college for two
or three months.  The class were very indignant and determined
to manifest their indignation in a way that should be understood.
They got a chariot with six white horses which drove up to
his door in Holworthy at midday.  Nearly the whole college
assembled to see him off.  He came out and took his seat in
solitary state in the chariot.  Some eight or ten of the class
on horseback accompanied him as outriders.  They drove into
Boston to the front door of the Tremont House in great state.
It was just at the time the Governor-General of Canada, I
think Lord Elgin, was expected in Boston on a great occasion
in the history of the city.  The waiters and landlord at the
Tremont House thought the English nobleman had arrived and
hurried down the steps to open the door and meet him.  But
he got out of his carriage with his carpet-bag in his hand
and disappeared in a humble fashion round the corner.  The
Faculty were very indignant and thought of disciplining severely
the members of the class who had got up the burlesque, especially
the outriders.  Edward Everett then had under consideration
the question whether he would accept the Presidency of the
College.  It was thought that if a rebellion occurred then
he would decide against undertaking the responsibility.  So
they let the whole matter pass.

The principal figure in this scene used to be a thorn in
the flesh of Professor Channing.  He used to insert very
pompous and magniloquent sentences in his themes, much to
Channing's disgust.  One day Channing took up a theme and
held it up and called out, X.  X. came to the chair by the
Professor's side, and the Professor read, in his shrill voice:
"'The sable sons of Afric's burning coast.'  You mean negroes,
I suppose."  He admitted that he did.  The Professor took
his pen and drew a line over the sentence he had read and
substituted the word "negroes" above the line, much to X.'s
mortification.

I was guilty of one practical joke of which I have repented
all my days, but for which the poetical justice of Providence
administered to me, many years afterward, a punishment in
kind.  There was a classmate who sat next to me in the recitation
in the sophomore year, whom everybody knew and liked, but
who was not very much interested in study.  He got along as
he best could by his native wits and such little application
as he found absolutely necessary.  One day we were reciting
in Lowth's Grammar.  The Bishop says that in English the substantive
singular is made plural for the most part by adding s.  Professor
Channing called up this classmate of mine, who stated this
as follows:  "The author says that the distinction between
nouns in the singular and plural is that the latter end in
s."  "Is that a good distinction?" asked the Professor.  My
neighbor answered with great confidence, "No, sir," as he
was well warranted in doing from the form of the question.
"Can't you give us some instance of words in the singular
number that end in s?" said the Professor.  My friend, who
was considerable embarrassed, stammered, was staggered, and
hesitated a moment.  I whispered in his ear, "Hoss," on which
he, without any reflection, blurted out, "Hoss."  There was
a roar of laughter from the class, and the poor fellow sat
down, much distressed at his blunder.  Channing dismissed
the class, and the next day gave us a lecture.  He said our
uproarious laughter had disturbed Dr. Walker's recitation
in the neighboring room, "especially you, Curtis, with your
pit laugh."  I ought to have risen up instantly and avowed
myself the guilty cause of my classmate's innocent blunder.
But, much to my own shame and disgrace, I did not do it.  But
some forty years afterward, I was engaged in an earnest discussion
in the Senate Chamber with Butler of South Carolina, at the
time of the passage of the first Civil Service law.  Butler
favored the law and his whole bearing in the discussion was
exceedingly proper and creditable.  We were talking of some
prohibition, of some clause forbidding the imposing assessments
upon office-holders for political purposes, and it was proposed
to except from the prohibition voluntary contributions for
proper election purposes.  Butler asked me what I should consider
improper election purposes.  I hesitated a moment when Miller
of California, who was a man of a good deal of fun, whispered
in my ear, "Buying shotguns to shoot negroes with," which
I, without reflecting and indeed hardly conscious of what
I was saying, repeated aloud.  Butler, who was a man of high
spirit, and quick temper, was furious.  He came down upon
me with a burst of wrath.  I tried to interrupt him.  But
he was so angry that it was impossible to interrupt him and
said something which made it seem to me impossible either
to explain or apologize.  But I regretted the transaction
exceedingly, and have always considered that I was well punished
for my joke at the expense of my unhappy classmate.

An anecdote came down from a class before my time which I
think ought not to be lost.  One of the boys when the cold
weather came on in the first term of his freshman year took
out from the college library a book which was nearly the largest
and thickest volume it contained.  It was the works of Bishop
Williams, who I think was one of the seven bishops persecuted
by James II.  The book contained an exceedingly dull treatise
on theology.  The youth had no special literary tastes, of
which anybody knew, and that was the only book he was ever
known to take out.  He kept it out the six weeks which were
allowed, and then renewed it, not taking it back to the library
until the hot weather of the following summer.  He repeated
this in his sophomore and junior and senior years.  Dr. Harris,
the librarian, was very much puzzled and asked some of the
boys if they could tell him why this young man kept Bishop
Williams's works so constantly.  None of the boys knew.  They
used to see it lying on his table, but never saw any signs
of his reading it.  At last one winter night late in the senior
year something happened which caused a good deal of excitement.
Several of the boys who were down in the yard rushed up in
great haste to this classmate's room.  It happened to be unlocked.
They got in without knocking and found him undressed with
nothing on but his nightgown.  His bed happened to be near
the fire, and standing up on the edge in front of the fire
was Bishop Williams's works.  It turned out that he was in
the habit of thoroughly warming the book and then of putting
it in the bed before he got in himself, so that it would serve
the function of a warming-pan.  The young gentleman turned
out in after life to be a very distinguished Bishop himself,
an eminent champion of the doctrines of the Episcopal Church,
which he had doubtless acquired by absorption.

The boys were always ready for mischief and always kind and
easily moved to sympathy.  One day just before prayers there
was found on the square in front of Willard's Hotel a large
load of straw.  The owner had stopped and unhitched his horses
to feed them at Willard's stable.  Some mischievous boy set
fire to the load and it burned with a blaze which illuminated
the whole neighborhood.  Pretty soon the owner appeared in
a state of great distress; said he was a very poor man; that
he was moving his household furniture and that his beds, chairs,
and all the goods he had in the world were in the cart covered
up with the straw.  The boys immediately took up a subscription
and sent the fellow off well satisfied with his sale.  It
was said he got about twice as much as the value he set on
all his goods, and that about a week after he appeared with
another load of straw which he left exposed in the same place
at the same time in the afternoon.  I believe that was not
molested.

The people of Cambridge in those days were a quiet folk.
The students did not go much into the society of the town
unless they happened to have some kindred there.  There were
a great many old houses, some of which are standing now, built
before the Revolutionary War.  Some had been occupied by old
Tories.  Among them was the Craigie House still standing,
having been Washington's headquarters, and now more famous
still as the residence of Longfellow.  There were a few old
gentlemen wandering about the streets who were survivors of
the generation which just followed the Revolutionary War,
among them Dr. Jennison, the old physician, and Dr. Popkin,
the old Greek professor, of whom a delightful life was written
by President Felton.  Mr. Sales, an old Spaniard, had given
lessons in Spanish from time immemorial.  He was a queer looking
old gentleman, who had his gray hair carefully dressed every
day by a barber, wearing an ancient style of dress, covered
with snuff, but otherwise scrupulously neat.  He had a curious
bend and walk, which made him seem a little like a dog walking
on his hind legs.  He was very fond of the boys and they
of him.  He made full allowance for the exuberance of youth.
Two careless students who were driving in a sleigh ran against
him in the street and knocked him over and injured him severely.
But the old fellow would not betray their names and had nothing
to say when somebody talked severely of their carelessness
but "Oh, oh, young blood, young blood."  I never saw him in
the least disturbed or angry with anything the boys said or
did except on one occasion.  Henry Whitney said, in reciting
in Don Quixote, in the course of some discussion, "By Jingo,
Mr. Sales."  Sales was struck with horror.  He said it was
the most horrible phrase that ever came from the lips of mortal
man, and he should think the walls of the building where they
were would fall down on Whitney's head and overwhelm him.
What awful and mysterious meaning the words "by Jingo" had
for the old Spanish gentleman we never could discover.  He
declined to give any explanation and treated the subject
as one to be avoided with horror ever after.  I commend the
question to the consideration of philologists.

The treatment of the students in general by the authorities
and the college was stern, austere and distant.  The students
had little social intercourse with the families or the professors,
except such of them as had relatives in Cambridge, which allowed
intercourse with the families of the professors.  The professors
did nothing to encourage familiarity, or even to encourage
any request for help in the difficulties of study.  Indeed
a boy who did that fell into disfavor with his companions,
and was called a fish.

President Eliot in some speech, I think before the graduates
of the Latin School, speaking of his life as a boy, said
he had a great respect for his little self.  I cannot say that
of my young self at Harvard.  My time was largely wasted
in novel reading or reading books which had not much to do
with the college studies, and lounging about in my own room
or that of other students.  I am not sure that the period of
growth from sixteen to twenty is one when it is good for a
youth to study hard.  So far as my observation extends the
poor scholars who have graduated at Harvard become as useful
and eminent men in after life as the good scholars.  I do
not now think of any person, who has graduated first scholar
since Edward Everett, who became in after life a very great
man, although some of them have been very respectable.  Judge
Thomas Russell, who was first in the class before mine, was
a very successful and brilliant man, performing admirably
everything that he undertook.  He was a good judge of the
Superior Court, a good minister to Venezuela, a good advocate,
and an excellent political speaker.  But he never attained
a place in the world equal to that of his classmate Gray,
who, if I remember right, did not have a part at Commencement.
Professor Child gained great distinction in his chosen field,
but, I incline to think, would have gained the same distinction
if he had devoted himself to the same pursuits and had never
entered college at all.  The first scholar in the class of
1843, the first class that graduated after I entered, was
Horace Binney Sargent, a brave soldier, and the author of
some beautiful and spirited war lyrics.  But there were several
of his classmates, including Thomas Hill, John Lowell and
Octavius B. Frothingham, who attained much greater distinction.
In the class of 1844 the first scholar was Shattuck Hartwell,
a highly respectable and worthy gentleman, many years an officer
in the Boston Custom House, who spent a large part of his
life fitting pupils for college, while Francis Parkman, the
historian, Benjamin Apthorp Gould, the mathematician, and
Dr. John Call Dalton, the eminent physician, neither of whom
had a very high record, became distinguished in after life.
Among my own classmates, as I have already said, Judge Webb,
Fitzedward Hall and Calvin Ellis attained very great distinction,
although no one of them stood very high in rank.  In the next
class John Felton, Judge Endicott, Judge Charles Allen, and
Tuckermann, the naturalist, were the persons who have been
most famous in after life.  I believe no one of them, except
Felton who graduated the second scholar, ranked very high
in college.  I myself graduated with a fairly decent rank.
I believe I was the nineteenth scholar in a class of sixty-
six.  When I graduated I looked back on my wasted four years
with a good deal of chagrin and remorse.  I set myself resolutely
to make up for lost time.  I think I can fairly say that I
have had few idle moments since.  I have probably put as much
hard work into life as most men on this continent.  Certainly
I have put into it all the work that my physical powers, especially
my eyes, would permit.  I studied law in Concord the first
year after graduation.  I used to get up at six o'clock in
the morning, go to the office, make a fire and read law until
breakfast time, which was at seven in the summer and half-
past in the winter.  Then I went home to breakfast and got
back in about three-quarters of an hour and spent the forenoon
until one diligently reading law.  After dinner, at two o'clock,
I read history until four.  I spent the next two hours in
walking alone in the woods and roads of Concord and the neighboring
towns, went back to the office at seven, read a little geometry
and algebra, reviewing the slender mathematics which I had
studied in college, and then spent two hours in reading Greek.
I read through Thucydides, Homer and Xenophon's Hellenica
and some other Greek books in that year.  Sundays I went to
church twice, but shut myself up in a room at home the rest
of the day and read a great quantity of English literature,
including Milton, Spencer, Chaucer, George Herbert, South's
Sermons and other English classics, reading over again Butler's
Analogy and Jouffroy.  It has been said that if a man wish
to acquire a pure English style he should give his days and
nights to Addison.  I say that if a law student wish to acquire
a vigorous and manly English style, the fit vehicle for conveying
weighty thoughts to courts or juries or popular assemblages,
let him give his days and nights to Robert South.

I spent two years at the Law School after graduating from
the College.  I cannot state too strongly my great debt to
it, and to Franklin Dexter, Simon Greenleaf, Joel Parker,
and Theophilus Parsons.  I have no remorse for wasted hours
during those two years.  The time in a Law School is never
likely to be wasted if the youth have in him any spark of
generous ambition.  He sees the practical relation of what
he is learning with what he has to do in life.  The Dane Law
School was then, and I suppose it is even more true of it
now, a most admirable place for learning the science of law
and preparing for its practice.  The youth breathed a legal
atmosphere from morning till night all the year round.  He
had the advantage of most admirable instruction, and the resources
of a complete library.  He listened to the lectures, he studied
the text-books, he was drilled in the recitations, he had
practice in the moot courts and in the law clubs.  He discussed
points of law in the boarding-house and on his walks with
his companions.  He came to know thoroughly the great men
who were his instructors, and to understand their mental processes,
and the methods by which they had gained their success.  The
title of old Nathan Dane to a high place on the roll of his
country's benefactors, and to the gratitude of the profession of
the law, and of all lovers of jurisprudence throughout the
country cannot be disputed.


CHAPTER VIII
1846 TO 1850.  FOUNDATION OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY.
DANIEL WEBSTER.

The foundation of the Republican party, and my personal memories
of Daniel Webster, belong to the same period.  I will not
try to separate them.

The story I am to tell may seem trivial enough to my readers.
But it is to me a very tender and sacred memory.  The time
was ripe for the great movement that abolished slavery.  If
no one of the eminent men of that day had ever lived other
men would have been found in abundance for the work.  If Massachusetts
had failed in her duty some other State would have taken her
place.  But in the Providence of God it was given to Massachusetts
to lead in this great battle and it was given to these men
whom I have to name to be leaders in Massachusetts.  I thank
God that it was given to my eyes to behold it.  The American
people have had many great affairs to deal with since that
day.  They have had great trials and great triumphs.  They
have won renown among the nations.  They have grown in wealth
and in power.  They have subdued a mighty rebellion.  They
have carried their flag in triumph to the ends of the earth.
They have wrested the last vestige of power in this hemisphere
from an old and proud nation who once occupied the place that
England has since occupied and which it seems likely we are
to occupy hereafter.  They have resisted many strong temptations
and acquired much glory.  I am afraid they have of late yielded
for a time to one strong temptation and missed an opportunity
for still greater glory, that never will come back.  But there
was something in that struggle with slavery which exalted
the hearts of those who had a part in it, however humble,
as no other political battle in history.

  Bliss it was in that dawn to be alive.

And, surely, to be young was far nearer Heaven than Wordsworth
found France in the opening of the French Revolution.

I became of age at just about the time when the Free Soil
Party, which was the Republican party in another form, was
born.  In a very humble capacity I stood by its cradle.  It
awakened in my heart in early youth all the enthusiasm of
which my nature was capable, an enthusiasm which from that
day to this has never grown cold.  No political party in history
was ever formed for objects so great and noble.  And no political
party in history was ever so great in the accomplishment for
liberty, progress and law.

I breathed a pure and bracing atmosphere in those days.  It
was a time of plain living and high thinking.  It was a pretty
good education, better than that of any university, to be
a young Free Soiler in Massachusetts.  I had pretty good company,
not in the least due to any merit or standing of my own, but
only because the men who were enlisted for the war in the
great political battle against slavery were bound to each
other by a tie to which no freemasonry could be compared.
Samuel G. Howe used, when his duties brought him to Worcester
on his monthly visit, to spend an hour or two of an afternoon
in my office.  I was always welcome to an hour's converse
with Charles Allen, the man who gave the signal at Philadelphia
for breaking away from the Whig Party.  Erastus Hopkins occasionally
spent a Sunday with me at my boarding house.  When I went
to Boston I often spent an hour in Richard Dana's office,
and was sure of a kindly greeting if I chanced to encounter
Sumner.  The restless and ubiquitous Henry Wilson, who, as
he gathered and inspired the sentiment of the people, seemed
often to be in ten places at once, used to think it worth
his while to visit me to find out what the boys were thinking
of.  In 1851 I was made Chairman of the Free Soil County Committee
of Worcester County.  I do not think there was ever so good
a political organization in the country before, or that there
ever has been a better one since.  The Free Soilers carried
all but six, I think, of the fifty-two towns in that county.
I was in correspondence with the leading men in every one
of them, and could at any time summon them to Worcester, if
there were need.

We acquired by the Mexican War nearly six hundred thousand
square miles of territory.  When the treaty was signed, the
struggle began between freedom and slavery for the control
of this imperial domain.  No reader of the history of Massachusetts
will doubt her interest in such a struggle.  Three things
stood in the way of lovers of liberty in the Commonwealth.

  First, the old attachment to the Whig party;
  Second, her manufacturing interests; and
  Third, her devotion to Daniel Webster.

Massachusetts was a Whig State.  There were many things which
tended to give that great political organization a permanent
hold on her people.  Its standard of personal character was
of the highest.  Its leading men--Saltonstall, Reed, Lawrence,
Lincoln, Briggs, Allen, Ashmun, Choate, Winthrop, Davis, Everett,
and their associates--were men whose private and public honor
was without a stain.  Its political managers were not its
holders of office or its seekers of office.  It contained
a large body of able and influential men who wielded the power
of absolute disinterestedness.  They were satisfied if they
could contribute, by counsel or labor, to the well-being of
the State by the advancement of their cherished political
principles.  They asked no other reward.  The Whigs were in
favor of using wisely, but courageously, the forces of the
Nation and State to accomplish public objects for which private
powers or municipal powers were inadequate.  The Whigs desired
to develop manufacture by national protection; to foster internal
improvements and commerce by liberal grants for rivers and
harbors; to endow railroads and canals for public ways by
grants of public lands and from the treasury; to maintain
a sound currency; and to establish a uniform system for the
collection of debts, and for relieving debtors by a National
bankruptcy law.

The Whig policy had made Massachusetts known the world over
as the model Commonwealth.  It had lent the State's credit
to railroads.  It had established asylums for the blind and
insane and deaf and dumb, and had made liberal gifts to schools.
The Massachusetts courts were unsurpassed in the world.  Her
poor laws were humane.  All her administrative policies were
wise, sound, and economical.

They asked from the National Government only a system of protection
that should foster home manufacture, and that they might pursue
their commercial and manufacturing occupation in peace.

Daniel Webster was the idol of the people.  He was at the
fulness of his great intellectual power.  The series of speeches
and professional and political achievements which began with
the oration at Plymouth in 1820 was still in progress.  The
Whigs of Massachusetts disliked slavery; but they loved the
Union.  Their political gospel was found in Webster's reply
to Hayne and his great debates with Calhoun.  It was the one
heart's desire of the youth of Massachusetts that their beloved
idol and leader should be crowned with the great office of
the Presidency.

Mr. Webster tried to avert the conflict by voting against
the treaty with Mexico, by which we acquired our great territory
in the far West; but in vain.  The Whigs feared the overthrow
of the Whig Party.  The manufacturer and the merchant dreaded
an estrangement that would cause the loss of their southern
trade, and with it all hope of a law that would protect their
manufactures.

It was in this condition of things that I cast my first vote
in November, 1847, shortly after I became of age.  It was
for the Whig Governor.  The Whig Party was already divided
into two sections, one known as "Cotton Whigs," and the other
as "Conscience Whigs."  These names had been suggested in
a debate in the State Senate in which Mr. Thomas G. Carey,
an eminent Boston merchant, had deprecated some proposed anti-
slavery resolutions by saying that they were likely to make
an unfavorable impression in the South, and to be an injury
to business interests; to which Mr. E. R. Hoar of Middlesex
answered, that "he thought it quite as desirable that the
Legislature should represent the conscience as the cotton
of the Commonwealth."

Both parties struggled for the possession of the Whig organization,
and both parties hoped for the powerful support of Mr. Webster.
The leader of the manufacturing interest was Mr. Abbott Lawrence,
a successful, wealthy manufacturer of great business capacity,
large generosity, and princely fortune.  He had for some years
chafed under Mr. Webster's imperious and arrogant bearing.
He was on terms of personal intimacy with Henry Clay, and
was understood to have inspired the resolutions of the Whig
State Convention, a few years before, which by implication
condemned Mr. Webster for remaining in President Tyler's
Cabinet when his Whig colleagues resigned.  But the people
of Massachusetts stood by Webster.  After the ratification
of the Ashburton Treaty, he came home to reassert his old
title to leadership and to receive an ovation in Faneuil Hall.
In his speech he declared with a significant glance at Mr.
Lawrence, then sitting upon the platform:  "I am a Whig,
a Massachusetts Whig, a Boston Whig, a Faneuil Hall Whig.
If any man wishes to read me out of the pale of that communion,
let him begin, here, now, on the spot, and we will see who
goes out first."

The first time I remember seeing Daniel Webster was June 17,
1843, at Bunker Hill.  The students of Harvard, where I was
a freshman, had a place in the procession.  We marched from
Cambridge to Boston, three miles and a half, and stood in
our places for hours, and then marched over to Charlestown.
We were tired out when the oration began.  There was a little
wind which carried the sound of Mr. Webster's voice away
from the place where we stood; so it was hard to hear him
during the first part of his speech.  He spoke slowly and
with great deliberation.  There was little in the greater
part of that weighty discourse to excite a youthful auditor;
but the great thing was to look at the great orator.  Waldo
Emerson, who was there, said of him:

"His countenance, his figure, and his manners were all in
so grand a style that he was, without effort, as superior to
his most eminent rivals as they were to the humblest.  He
alone of men did not disappoint the eye and the ear, but
was a fit figure in the landscape.  There was the Monument,
and there was Webster.  He knew well that a little more or
less of rhetoric signified nothing; he was only to say plain
and equal things--grand things, if he had them; and if he
had them not, only to abstain from saying unfit things--and
the whole occasion was answered by his presence."

He went almost through his weighty discourse without much
effect upon his auditors other than that which Emerson so
well described.  But the wind changed before he finished,
and blew toward the other quarter where the boys stood; and
he almost lifted them from their feet as his great organ tones
rolled out his closing sentences:

"And when both we and our children shall have been consigned
to the house appointed for all living, may love of country
and pride of country glow with equal fervor among those to
whom our names and our blood shall have descended! And then,
when honored and decrepit age shall lean against the base
of this monument, and troops of ingenuous youth shall be gathered
around it, and when the one shall speak to the other of its
objects, the purposes of its construction, and the great and
glorious events with which it is connected, there shall rise
from every youthful breast the ejaculation, 'Thank God, I
also--AM AN AMERICAN!'"

Mr. Webster came to Concord in the summer of 1843 as counsel
for William Wyman, President of the Phoenix Bank of Charlestown,
who was indicted for embezzling the funds of the bank.  This
was one of the _causes celebres_ of the day.  Wyman had been
a business man of high standing.  Such offences were rare
in those days, and the case would have attracted great attention
whoever had been for the defence.  But the defendant's counsel
were Daniel Webster, Rufus Choate, Franklin Dexter, and my
brother, E. R. Hoar, a young man lately admitted to the bar.
Mr. Webster, notwithstanding his great fame as a statesman,
is said never to have lost his eager interest in causes in
which he was retained.  When he found himself hard pressed,
he put forth all his strength.  He was extremely impatient
of contradiction.  The adulation to which he had been so long
accustomed tended to increase a natural, and perhaps not
wholly unjustifiable, haughtiness of manner.

The Government was represented by Asahel R. Huntington, of
Salem, District Attorney for the district which included Essex
and Middlesex.  He was a man of great intellectual vigor,
unquestioned honesty and courage, possessed of a high sense
of the dignity and importance of his office, very plain spoken,
and not at all likely to be overawed by any opposing counsel,
whatever his fame or dignity.  Yet he had a huge reverence
for Daniel Webster, whom, like the other Massachusetts Whigs
of that day, he probably thought as another described him--

  The foremost living man of all the world!

The case was tried three times:  The first time at Concord,
the second time at Lowell, and the third time at Concord.
Mr. Webster had several quite angry encounters with the court
and with the prosecuting attorney.  He was once extremely
disrespectful to Judge Washburn, who replied with great mildness
that he was sure the eminent counsel's respect for his own
character would be enough to prevent him from any disrespect
to the court.  Mr. Webster was disarmed by the quiet courtesy
of the judge, and gave him no further cause for complaint.
At Lowell, where Wyman was convicted, Webster saw the case
going against him, and interrupted the charge of the judge
several times.  At last Judge Allen, who was presiding, said:
"Mr. Webster, I cannot suffer myself to be interrupted." Mr.
Webster replied: "I cannot suffer my client to be misrepresented,"
To which the judge answered:  "Sit down, sir."  Mr. Webster
resumed his seat.  When the jury went out, Judge Allen turned
to the Bar where Mr. Webster was sitting and said: "Mr. Webster."
Mr. Webster rose with the unsurpassed courtesy and grace of
manner of which he was master, and said: "Will the court pardon
me a moment?"  He then proceeded to express his regret for
the zeal which had impelled him to a seeming disrespect to
His Honor, and expressed his sorrow for what had occurred;
and the incident was at an end.

At the first trial at Concord, Mr. Webster had frequent altercations
with District Attorney Huntington.  In his closing argument,
which is said to have been one of great power, and which he
began by an eloquent reference to the battle of Concord Bridge,
which, he said, was fought by Concord farmers that their children
might enjoy the blessings of an impartial administration of
justice under the law, he said that it was unlikely that Wyman
could have abstracted large sums from the bank and no trace
of the money be found in his possession.  He was a man of
small property, living simply and plainly, without extravagant
habits or anything which would have been likely to tempt him
to such crime.  When Huntington came to reply he said, very
roughly:  "They want to know what's become of the money.
I can tell you what's become of the money.  Five thousand
dollars to one counsel, three thousand dollars to another,
two thousand to another," waving his hand in succession toward
Webster and Choate and Dexter.  Such fees, though common enough
now, seemed enormous in those days.  Choate smiled in his
peculiar fashion, and said nothing; Franklin Dexter looked
up from a newspaper he was reading, and exclaimed: "This is
beneath our notice"; but Mr. Webster rose to his feet and
said with great indignation: "Am I to sit here to hear myself
charged with sharing the spoils with a thief?" The presiding
judge said:  "The counsel for the Government will confine
himself to the evidence." That was all.  But Mr. Webster
was deeply incensed.  The jury disagreed.  Mr. Webster came
to the next trial prepared with an attack on Huntington, in
writing, covering many pages, denouncing his method and conduct.
This he read to my brother.  But Huntington who, as I have
said, adored Webster, was unwilling to have another encounter--
not in the least from any dread of his antagonist, but solely
from his dislike to have a quarrel with the man on earth he
most reverenced.  Accordingly, Mr. Wells, the District Attorney
of Greenfield, was called in, who conducted the trial at Lowell
and succeeded in getting a conviction.  My brother, who was
very fond of Huntington, took an occasion some time afterward
to tell Mr. Webster how much Huntington regretted the transaction,
and how great was his feeling of reverence and attachment
for him.  Mr. Webster was placated, and afterward, when an
edition of his speeches was published, sent a copy to Huntington
with an inscription testifying to his respect.

The general reader may not care for the legal history of
the trial, but it may have a certain interest for lawyers.  Mr.
Wyman was indicted for embezzlement of the funds of the bank
under the Revised Statutes of Massachusetts, which provided
that "if any cashier or other officer, agent or servant of
any incorporated bank shall embezzle or fraudulently convert
to his own use the property of the bank, he shall be punished,"
etc.  It was earnestly contended that a president of a bank
was not an officer within the meaning of the statute; but
this contention was overruled by the presiding judge, who
was sustained in that view by the Supreme Court on exception.
There was, however, no such offence as embezzlement known
to the common law.  So a person who fraudulently converted
to his own use the property of another could only be convicted
of larceny; and the offence of larceny could not be committed
where the offender had been entrusted with the possession
of the property converted, the essence of larceny being the
felonious taking of the property from the possession of the
owner.  Further, nobody could be convicted of larceny except
on an indictment or complaint which set forth the time and
place of each single conversion.  So, if a servant or agent
appropriated the fund of his principal, the embezzlement extending
over a long period of time, and it was not possible to set
forth or to prove the time, place, and circumstances of any
particular taking, the offender could not be convicted.  The
statute to which I have just referred was intended to cure
both these difficulties; first, by making persons liable to
punishment who fraudulently appropriated the property of others,
notwithstanding they had come rightfully into possession; and
next, the necessity of setting forth the particular transaction
was obviated by an enactment that it should be enough to
prove the embezzlement of any sum of money within six months
of the time specified in the indictment.

After the conviction of Wyman, the case was carried to the
Supreme Court, which held that the statute making bank officers
liable included bank presidents.  But the court held that
the other part of the statute, providing for the mode of
setting forth the offence in the indictment, did not apply to
bank officers; and that they could only be held on an indictment
which described the particular transaction, with time and
place.  So the verdict of guilty against Wyman was set aside,
and a new trial ordered.

Before the new trial came on at Concord, a statute was passed
by the Legislature for the purpose of meeting this very case,
extending the provisions of the Revised Statutes as to the
mode of pleading in such cases to officers of banks.  It was
claimed and argued by Mr. Choate, with great zeal, eloquence,
and learning, that this was an _ex post facto_ law, which
could not, under the Constitution, be made applicable to transactions
which happened before its passage.  Mr. Choate argued this
question for several hours.  The court took time for consideration,
and overruled his contention.  There seemed nothing for it
but to go to trial again on the facts, upon which one verdict
of guilty had already been had.  As they were going into the
court-house in the morning, Mr. Choate said to Mr. Hoar,
whose chief part in the trial, so far, had been finding law
books, hunting up authorities, and taking notes of the evidence:
"You made a suggestion to me at the last trial which I did
not attend to much at the time; but I remember thinking afterward
there was something in it." Mr. Hoar replied: "It seems to
me that Wyman cannot be convicted of embezzlement unless the
funds of the bank were entrusted to him.  They must either
have been in his actual possession or under his control.
There is nothing in the office of president which involves
such an authority.  It cannot exist unless by the express
action of the directors, or as the result of a course of
business of the bank."  The facts alleged against Wyman were
that he had authorized the discount of the notes of some
friends of his who were irresponsible, and that he had, in
some way, shared the proceeds.  Mr. Choate seized upon the
suggestion.  The Government witnesses, who were chiefly the
directors of the bank, were asked in cross-examination whether
they had not consented that Mr. Wyman should have the right
to dispose of the funds of the bank, or to give him power
or authority to dispose of them.  They supposed the question
was put with the intent of making them morally, if not legally,
accomplices in his guilt, or of charging them with want of
fidelity or gross carelessness in their office.  Accordingly,
each of them indignantly denied the imputation, and testified
that Wyman had no power or authority to authorize the discount
or to meddle with the funds.  When the Government case closed,
the counsel asked the court to rule that as the funds were
never entrusted to the possession of Wyman he could not be
convicted of embezzlement.  The court so held and directed an
acquittal.  This is another instance, not unusual in trials
in court, of the truth of the old rhyme, with which the readers
of "Quentin Durward" are familiar;

  The page slew the boar,
  The peer had the gloire.

Mr. Webster always had a strong and kindly regard for my brother.
When Mr. Hoar visited Washington in 1836, Webster received
him with great kindness, showed him about the Capitol, and
took him to the Supreme Court, where he argued a case.  Mr.
Webster began by alluding very impressively to the great changes
which had taken place in that Tribunal since he first appeared
as counsel before them.  He said: "No one of the judges who
were here then, remains.  It has been my duty to pass upon
the question of the confirmation of every member of the Bench;
and I may say that I treated your honors with entire impartiality,
for I voted against every one of you." After the argument
was over Mr. Webster gave Mr. Hoar a very interesting sketch
of the character of each of the judges, and told him the reasons
which caused him to vote against confirmation in each case.

The next time I saw Daniel Webster was on July 4, 1844.  He
made a call at my father's house in Concord.  I was near one
of the front windows, and heard a shout from a little crowd
that had gathered in the street, and looked out just as Mr.
Webster was coming up the front steps.  He turned, put his
hand into his bosom under his waistcoat and made a stately
salutation, and then turned and knocked on the door and was
admitted.  He was physically the most splendid specimen of
noble manhood my eyes ever beheld.  It is said, I suppose
truly, that he was but a trifle over five feet nine inches
high, and weighed one hundred and fifty-four pounds.  But
then, as on all other occasions that I saw him, I should have
been prepared to affirm that he was over six feet high and
weighed, at least, two hundred.  The same glamour is said
to have attended Louis XIV., whose majesty of bearing was
such that it never was discovered that he was a man of short
stature until he was measured for his coffin.

Mr. Webster was then in the very vigor of his magnificent
manhood.  He stood perfectly erect.  His head was finely
poised upon his shoulders.  His beautiful black eyes shone
out through the caverns of his deep brows like lustrous jewels.
His teeth were white and regular, and his smile when he was
in gracious mood, especially when talking to women, had an
irresistible charm.  I remember very little that he said.
One thing was, when the backwardness or forwardness of the
season was spoken of, that there was a day--I think it was
June 15--when, in every year vegetation was at about the same
condition of forwardness, whether the spring were early or
late.  A gentleman who was in the room said: "You have the
cool breezes of the sea at Marshfield?" "There, as at other
sea places," replied Mr. Webster.  When he rose to go, he
said:  "I have the honor to be a member of the Young Men's
Whig Club of Boston.  I must be in my place in the ranks."

I heard him also in Faneuil Hall, in the autumn of 1844,
after the elections in Maine and Pennsylvania and in the
South had made certain the defeat of Mr. Clay.  I remember
little that he said, except from reading the speech since.
What chiefly impressed the audience was the quotation from
Milton, so well known now:

  What though the field be lost?
  All is not lost; the unconquerable will,
  And study of revenge, immortal hate,
  And courage never to submit or yield,
  And what is else not be overcome.

I also saw Mr. Webster at the inauguration of Edward Everett
as President of Harvard, April 30, 1846.  It was perhaps the
proudest period of Webster's life.  It was also, perhaps,
the greatest day of the life of Edward Everett.  Webster had
been Everett's great over-shadower.  Gov. Everett would have
been, but for him, the chief public man and the orator of
Massachusetts at that time.  He had returned from the Court
of St. James crowned with new laurels, and had been called
to succeed Josiah Quincy as the head of the University.  By
a simple but impressive inaugural ceremony the Governor had
just invested Mr. Everett with his office, and delivered to
him the keys and the charter.  Everett was stepping forward
to deliver his inaugural address when Webster, who had come
out from Boston a little late, came in upon the stage by a
side door.  President and orator and occasion were all forgotten.
The whole assembly rose to greet him.  It seemed as if the
cheering and the clapping of hands and the waving of handkerchiefs
would never leave off.  The tears gushed down the cheeks of
women and young men and old.  Everything was forgotten but
the one magnificent personality.  When the din had subsided
somewhat, Mr. Everett, with his never-failing readiness and
grace, said:  "I would I might anticipate a little the function
of my office, and saying--_Expectatur oratio in vernacula_--
call upon my illustrious friend who has just entered upon
the stage to speak for me.  But I suppose that the proprieties
of the occasion require that I speak for myself."

It is to the credit of Mr. Everett and of that other Massachusetts
orator, Rufus Choate, that no tinge of jealousy or of envy
ever embittered in the smallest degree their hearty love and
support of their friend.  They were his pupils, his companions,
his supporters, his lovers, while he lived, and were his best
eulogists when he died.

I heard another speech of his, which I think was never reported.
He appeared before a Committee of the Legislature as counsel
for the remonstrants against the scheme to fill up the Back
Bay lands.

I do not think the employment of a Senator of the United
States as counsel before the Legislature would be approved
by public opinion now.

I do not know what year it was, but probably 1849 or 1850.
He had grown old.  But I learned more of the fashion of his
mental operations than could be learned from his speeches
on great occasions, especially after they had been revised
for publication.  He spoke with much contempt of a petition
signed by many of the foremost merchants and business men
of Boston.  He described with great sarcasm the process of
carrying about such petitions, and the relief of the person
to whom they were presented on finding he was not asked to
give any money.  "Oh, yes, I'll sign--I'll sign."  He then
read out one after another the names of men well known and
honored in the city.  He threw down the petition with contempt,
and the long sheet fell and unrolled upon the floor.

He had a singular habit, which made it wearisome to listen
to his ordinary speech, of groping after the most suitable
word, and trying one synonym after another till he got that
which suited him best.  "Why is it, Mr. Chairman, that there
has gathered, congregated, this great number of inhabitants,
dwellers, here; that these roads, avenues, routes of travel,
highways, converge, meet, come together, here?  Is it not
because we have here a sufficient, ample, safe, secure, convenient,
commodious, port, harbor, haven?"  Of course when the speech
came to be printed all the synonyms but the best one would
be left out.

Mr. Webster seemed rather feeble at that time, and called
upon his friend Mr. William Dehon to read for him the evidence
and extracts from reports with which he had to deal.  His
tome was the tone of ordinary conversation, and his speech,
while it would not be called hesitating, was exceedingly
slow and deliberate.  I have been told by persons who heard
him in the Supreme Court in his later years that the same
characteristic marked his arguments there, and that some of
his passages made very little impression upon the auditors,
although they seemed eloquent and powerful when they came
to be read afterward.

His is frequently spoken of as a nervous Saxon style.  That
is a great mistake, except as to a few passages where he rose
to a white heat.  If any person will open a volume of his
speeches at random, it will be found that the characteristic
of his sentences is a somewhat ponderous Latinity.

A considerable number of Democrats joined the Free Soil movement
in 1848.  Conspicuous among them was Marcus Morton, who had
been Governor and one of our ablest Supreme Court judges,
and his son, afterward Chief Justice, then just rising into
distinction as a lawyer.  The members of the Liberty Party
also, who had cast votes for Birney in 1844, were ready for
the new movement.  But the Free Soil Party derived its chief
strength, both of numbers and influence, from the Whigs.  The
Anti-Slavery Whigs clung to Webster almost to the last.  He
had disappointed them by opposing the resolution they offered
at the Whig State Convention, pledging the party to support
no candidate not known by his acts or declared opinions to
be opposed to the extension of slavery.  But he had coupled
his opposition with a declaration of his own unalterable opposition
to that extension, and had said, speaking of those who were
in favor of the declaration:  "It is not their thunder."

He declared in the Senate, as late as 1848:  "My opposition
to the increase of slavery in the country, or to the increase
of slave representation in Congress, is general and universal.
It has no reference to lines of latitude or points of the
compass.  I shall oppose all such extension, and all such
increase, at all times, under all circumstances, even against
all inducements, against all combinations, against all compromises."

So the Anti-Slavery Whigs eagerly supported him as their
candidate for the Whig nomination in 1848.

If Mr. Webster had been nominated for the Presidency in 1848,
the Free Soil Party would not have come into existence that
year.  There would have been probably some increase in the
numbers of the Liberty Party; yet the Anti-Slavery Whigs of
Massachusetts would have trusted him.  But the nomination
of General Taylor, a Southerner, one of the largest slaveholders
in the country, whose laurels had been gained in the odious
Mexican War, upon a platform silent upon the engrossing subject
of the extension of slavery, could not be borne.  The temper
of the Whig National Convention was exhibited in a way to
irritate the lovers of freedom in Massachusetts.  When some
allusion was made to her expressed opinions, it was received
with groans and cries of "Curse Massachusetts." But, on the
whole, the Massachusetts Whigs shared the exultant anticipation
of triumph, and of regaining the power from which they had
been excluded since the time of John Quincy Adams, except
for the month of Harrison's short official life.  But as the
convention was about to adjourn, intoxicated with hope and
triumph, Charles Allen, a delegate from Massachusetts, a man
of slender figure, rose, and with a quiet voice declared the
Whig Party dissolved.  Never was a prediction received with
more derision; never was prediction more surely fulfilled.
He was reinforced by Henry Wilson, afterward Vice-President
of the United States.

Immediately on their return from Philadelphia, a call was
circulated for a convention to be held at Worcester of all
persons opposed to the nomination of Cass and Taylor.  The
call was written by E. R. Hoar.  My father, Samuel Hoar, was
its first signer.

This is the call.  It should be preserved in a form more
enduring than the leaflet, of which I possess, perhaps, the
only copy in existence.

"TO THE PEOPLE OF MASSACHUSETTS.

"The Whig National Convention have nominated General Taylor
for President of the United States.  In so doing they have
exceeded their just authority, and have proposed a candidate
whom no Northern Whig is bound to support.

"HE IS NOT A WHIG, when tried by the standard of our party
organization.  He has never voted for a Whig candidate, has
declared that the party must not look to him as an exponent
of its principles, that he would accept the nomination of
the Democratic Party, and that he would not submit his claims
to the decision of the Whigs, acting through their regularly
constituted Convention.

"HE IS NOT A WHIG, if judged by the opinions he entertains
upon questions of public policy. Upon the great questions
of currency and Finance, of Internal Improvements, of Protection
to American Industry, so far from agreeing with the Whigs,
he has distinctly avowed that he has formed no opinion at
all.

"HE IS NOT A WHIG, if measured by the higher standard of principle,
to which the Whigs of Massachusetts and of the North have
pledged themselves solemnly, deliberately, and often.  He
is not opposed to the extension of Slavery over new territories,
acquired, and to be acquired, by the United States.  He is
a Slave-holder, and has been selected because he could command
votes which no Whig from the free States could receive.

"To make room for him, the trusted and faithful Champions
of our cause have all been set aside.

"The Whigs of Massachusetts, by their Legislature, and in
their popular assemblies, have resolved, that opposition
to the extension of Slavery is a fundamental article in their
political faith.  They have spoken with scorn and upbraiding
of those Northern Democrats who would sacrifice the rights
and interests of the Free States upon the altar of party subserviency.

"The Whigs of the Legislature have recently declared to the
country, 'that if success can attend the party, only by the
sacrifice of Whig principles, or some of them,' they did
not mean to be thus successful; that they are determined
'to support a candidate who will not suffer us to be over-
balanced by annexations of foreign territory, nor by the
further extension of the institution of Slavery, which is
equally repugnant to the feelings, and incompatible with the
political rights of the Free States'; and that they 'believe
it to be the resolute purpose of the Whig people of Massachusetts,
to support these sentiments, and carry into effect the design
which they manifest.'

"Believing that the support of General Taylor's nomination
is required by no obligations of party fidelity, and that
to acquiesce in it would be the abandonment of principles
which we hold most dear, treachery to the cause of Freedom,
and the utter prostration of the interests of Free Labor and
the Rights of Freemen:

"The undersigned, Whigs of Massachusetts, call upon their
fellow-citizens throughout the Commonwealth, who are opposed
to the nomination of CASS and TAYLOR, to meet in Convention
at Worcester, on _Wednesday,_ the 28th day of June current,
to take such steps as the occasion shall demand, in support
of the PRINCIPLES to which they are pledged, and to co-operate
with the other Free States in a Convention for this purpose."

My first political service was folding and directing these
circulars.  The Convention was held, and Samuel Hoar presided.
It was addressed by men most of whom afterward became eminent
in the public service.  Among them were Charles Sumner, Charles
Francis Adams, Henry Wilson, E. R. Hoar, Edward L. Keyes,
Charles Allen, Lewis D. Campbell, of Ohio, and Abraham Payne,
of Rhode Island.  Richard H. Dana was present, but I think
he did not speak.  William Lloyd Garrison and Francis Jackson
were present, but took no part whatever.  I rode to Boston
in a freight car after the convention was over, late at night.
Garrison and Jackson were sitting together and talking to
a group of friends.  Garrison seemed much delighted with the
day's work, but said he heard too much talk about the likelihood
that some of the resolutions would be popular and bring large
numbers of votes to the party.  He said:  "All you should
ask is, what is the rightful position? and then take it."
Among the resolutions was this:

"That Massachusetts looks to Daniel Webster to declare to
the Senate and to uphold before the country the policy of
the Free States; that she is relieved to know that he has not
endorsed the nomination of General Taylor; and that she invokes
him at this crisis to turn a deaf ear to 'optimists' and 'quietists',
and to speak and act as his heart and his great mind shall
lead him."

Daniel Webster's son Fletcher was present, and heartily in
accord with the meeting; and this resolution was passed with
his full approval.  It met great opposition from the men who
had come into the movement from the Liberty Party and from
the Democratic Party.  The shouts of "No, no; too late" were
nearly, if not quite, equal to the expressions of approval.
But the president declared that it was passed.

Mr. Webster sulked in his tent during the summer, and at last,
September 1, 1848, made a speech at Marshfield, in which he
declared the nomination of Taylor not fit to be made, but
gave it a half-hearted support.  My brother, Judge E. R.
Hoar, had been an enthusiastic admirer of Webster, who had
treated him with great personal kindness; and, as I have said,
he had been associated with Mr. Webster in the famous Wyman
trial.  Mr. Webster made a speech in the Senate in August,
declaring his renewed opposition to the extension of slavery.
Mr. Hoar wrote a letter expressing his satisfaction with that
speech, and urging him to take his proper place at the head
of the Northern Free Soil movement.  This is Mr. Webster's
reply.  It is interesting as the last anti-slavery utterance
of Daniel Webster.

MARSHFIELD, August 23, 1848.

_My Dear Sir:_

I am greatly obliged to you, for your kind and friendly letter.
You overrate, I am sure, the value of my speech, it was quite
unpremeditated and its merit, if any, consists I presume in
its directness and brevity.  It mortified me to see that some
of the newspaper writers speak of it as the "taking of a position";
as if it contained something new for me to say.  You are not
one of them, my dear sir, but there are those who will not
believe that I am an anti-slavery man unless I repeat the
declaration once a week.  I expect they will soon require
a periodical affidavit.  You know, that as early as 1830 in
my speech on Foote's resolution, I drew upon me the anger
of enemies, and a regret of friends by what I said against
slavery, and I hope that from that day to this my conduct
has been consistent.  But nobody seems to be esteemed to be
worthy of confidence who is not a new convert.  And if the
new convert be as yet but half converted, so much the better.
This I confess a little tries one's patience.  But I can assure
you in my own case, it will not either change my principles
or my conduct.

It is utterly impossible for me to support the Buffalo nomination.
I have no confidence in Mr. Van Buren, not the slightest.
I would much rather trust General Taylor than Mr. Van Buren
even on this very question of slavery, for I believe that
General Taylor is an honest man and I am sure he is not so
much committed on the wrong side, as I know Mr. Van Buren
to have been for fifteen years.  I cannot concur even with
my best friends in giving the lead in a great question to
a notorious opponent to the cause.  Besides; there are other
great interests of the country in which you and I hold Mr.
Van Buren to be essentially wrong, and it seems to me that
in consenting to form a party under him Whigs must consent
to bottom their party on one idea only, and also to adopt
as the representative of that idea a head chosen on a strange
emergency from among its steadiest opposers.  It gives me
pain to differ from Whig friends whom I know to be as much
attached to universal liberty as I am, and they cannot be
more so.  I am grieved particularly to be obliged to differ
in anything from yourself and your excellent father, for both
of whom I have cherished such long and affectionate regards.
But I cannot see it to be my duty to join in a secession from
the Whig Party for the purpose of putting Mr. Van Buren at
the head of the Government.  I pray you to assure yourself,
my dear Sir, of my continued esteem and attachment, and remember
me kindly and cordially to your father.

  Yours, etc.,
  DANIEL WEBSTER

  Honorable E. Rockwood Hoar.

Mr. Hoar had before had a somewhat interesting interview
with Mr. Webster to the same effect.  Late in the winter,
before the convention at Philadelphia, some young Whigs had
a dinner at the Tremont House, to concert measures to support
his candidacy.  There were forty or fifty present.  Mr. Webster
was expected to speak to them, but his daughter Julia was
very ill.  He sent them a message that he would see them at
the house in Summer Street where he was staying.  So when
the dinner was half over, the party walked in procession to
Mr. Paige's house.  As Judge Hoar described the interview,
he seemed very glum.  He shook hands with the young men as
they passed by him, but said very little.  There was an awkward
silence, and they were about to take leave, when the absurdity
of the position struck Mr. Hoar, who was the youngest of
the party, rather forcibly.  Just then he heard Mr. Webster
say to somebody near him: "The day for eminent public men
seems to have gone by."  Whereupon Hoar stepped forward and
made him a brief speech, which he began by saying that the
object of their coming together was to show that, in their
opinion, the day for eminent public men had not gone by, and
some more to the same effect.  Webster waked up and his eyes
flashed and sparkled.  He made a speech full of vigor and
fire.  He spoke of his name being brought before the Whig
convention at Philadelphia, and of his fidelity to the party.
He said that whether his own name should be in the judgment
of the convention suitable or the best to present to the country
the convention would determine, and added: "If the convention
shall select anyone of our conspicuous leaders, trained and
experienced in civil affairs, of national reputation as a
statesman, he will receive my hearty support.  But if I am
asked whether I will advise the convention at Philadelphia
to nominate, or if nominated I will recommend the people to
support for the office of President of the United States,
a swearing, fighting, frontier colonel, I only say that I
shall not do it."

Many people think that if Mr. Webster would have supported
General Taylor's policy of dealing with the questions relating
to slavery it would have prevailed, and that the country would
have been pacified and the Civil War avoided.  I do not think
so.  The forces on both sides who were bringing on that conflict
were too powerful to be subdued by the influence of any individual
statesman.  The irrepressible conflict had to be fought out.
But Mr. Webster's attitude not only estranged him from the
supporters of General Taylor in his own party, but, of course,
made an irreparable breach between him and the anti-slavery
men who had founded the Free Soil Party.  He was the chief
target for all anti-slavery arrows from March 7, 1850, to his
death.

When I was in the Harvard Law School, Mr. Webster was counsel
in a very interesting divorce case where Choate was upon the
other side.  The parties were in high social position and
very well known.  Mr. Choate's client, who was the wife, was
charged with adultery.  I did not hear the closing argument,
but my classmates who did reported that Mr. Webster spoke
of the woman with great severity and argued the case with
a scriptural plainness of speech.  He likened the case of
the husband bound to an adulterous wife to the old Hebrew
punishment of fastening a living man to a corpse.  "Who shall
deliver me from the body of this death?" But Judge Fletcher,
who held the court, decided in favor of the wife.

The meeting which gathered at Worcester in pursuance of the
above call, inaugurated for the first time a party for the
sole object of resisting the extension of slavery.  The Liberty
Party, which had cast a few votes in the presidential election
of 1840, and which, in 1844, had turned the scale in New York
and so in the nation against Mr. Clay, was willing to support
the candidates of other parties who were personally unobjectionable
to them in this respect.  But the Free Soil Party, of which
the present Republican party is but the continuation under
a change of name, determined that no person should receive
its support for any national office, who himself continued
his association with either of the old political organizations.

The Free Soil Party of Massachusetts cast in the presidential
election of 1848 only about 37,000 votes, but it included
among its supporters almost every man in the Commonwealth
old enough to take part in politics who has since acquired
any considerable national reputation.  Charles Sumner who
had become known to the public as an orator and scholar by
three or four great orations, was just at the threshold of
his brilliant career.  Charles Francis Adams, who had served
respectably but without great distinction, in each branch
of the Legislature, brought to the cause his inflexible courage,
his calm judgment, and the inspiration of his historic name.
John A. Andrew, then a young lawyer in Boston, afterward to
become illustrious as the greatest war Governor in the Union,
devoted to the cause an eloquence stimulant and inspiring
as a sermon of Paul.  John G. Palfrey, then a Whig member
of Congress from the Middlesex District, discussed the great
issue in speeches singularly adapted to reach the understanding
and gratify the taste of the people of Massachusetts, and
in a series of essays whose vigor and compactness Junius might
have envied, and with a moral power which Junius could never
have reached.  Anson Burlingame, afterward Minister to China,
captivated large crowds with his inspiring eloquence.*  Samuel
G. Howe, famous in both hemispheres by his knightly service
in the cause of Greek independence, famous also by his philanthropic
work in behalf of the insane and blind, brought his great
influence to the party.  Henry Wilson, a mechanic, whose early
training had been that of the shoemaker's shop, but who understood
the path by which to reach the conscience and understanding
of the workingmen of Massachusetts better than any other man,
had been also a delegate to the Convention at Philadelphia,
and had united with Judge Allen in denunciation of its surrender
of liberty.  Stephen C. Phillips, a highly respected merchant
of Salem, and formerly Whig Representative from the Essex
District, gave the weight of his influence in the same direction.
Samuel Hoar, who had been driven from South Carolina when
he attempted to argue the case for the imprisoned colored
seamen of Massachusetts before the courts of the United States,
one of the most distinguished lawyers of the Massachusetts
bar, came from this retirement in his old age to give his
service in the same cause; of which his son, E. R. Hoar,
was also a constant, untiring, and enthusiastic champion.
Richard H. Dana, master of an exquisite English style, the
only Massachusetts advocate who ever encountered Rufus Choate
on equal terms, threw himself into the cause with all the
ardor of his soul.  On the Connecticut River, George Ashmun,
the most powerful of the Whig champions in western Massachusetts,
found more than his match in Erastus Hopkins.  William Claflin,
afterward Speaker, Lieutenant Governor, and Governor of Massachusetts,
member of the National House of Representatives, and Chairman
of the Republican National Committee, was then in his early
youth.  But he had already gained a competent fortune by his
business sagacity.  He brought to the cause his sound judgment,
his warm and affectionate heart, and his liberal hand.  He
was then, as he has ever since been, identified with every
good and generous cause.  His stanch friendship was then,
as it has been ever since, the delight and comfort of the
champions of freedom in strife and obloquy.

[Footnote]
* Shortly after Burlingame came into active life, he made a journey
to Europe.  The American Minister obtained for him a ticket of
admission to the House of Commons.  He was shown into a very
comfortable seat in the gallery.  In a few minutes an official
came and told him he must leave that seat; that the gallery
where he was was reserved for Peers.  They are very particular
about such things there.  Burlingame got up to go out when an
old Peer who happened to be sitting by and had heard what was
said, interposed.  "Let him stay, let him stay.  He is a Peer
in his own country."  "I am a Sovereign in my own country, Sir,"
replied Burlingame, "and shall lose caste if I associate
with Peers."  And he went out.
[End of Footnote]

Each of these men would have been amply fitted in all respects
for the leader of a great party in State or Nation.  Each
of them could have defended any cause in which he was a believer,
by whatever champion assailed.  They had also their allies
and associates among the representatives of the press.  Among
these were Joseph T. Buckingham, of the Boston _Courier,_
then the head of the editorial fraternity in Massachusetts;
John Milton Earle, the veteran editor of the Worcester _Spy;_
William S. Robinson, afterward so widely known as Warrington,
whose wit and keen logic will cause his name to be long preserved
among the classics of American literature.

I have spoken of some of these men more at length elsewhere.
I knew them, all but two, very intimately.  I only knew Joseph
T. Buckingham by sight.  He edited the Boston _Courier_ with
great ability.  He was a member of both Houses of the Massachusetts
Legislature.  He was a member of the State Senate in 1850
and 1851.  He left the _Courier_ in June, 1848, about the
time the Free Soil movement begun, and was not active in politics
afterward.

I had no personal acquaintance with Charles Francis Adams.
I have known his son, Charles Francis Adams, President of
the Massachusetts Historical Society, pretty well.  He inherits
a great deal of the ability and independence which belongs
to his race.  He would undoubtedly have taken a very high
place in the public and official life of his generation if
he had found himself in accord with either of the great political
parties.

I do not think anybody, except the very intimate friends
of Charles Francis Adams, was aware of his great abilities
until he manifested them amid the difficulties of the English
Mission.  They were known, however, to a few men who were
intimate with him.  I was quite astonished one day when I
called on Dr. Palfrey, at his house in Cambridge in 1852,
and he told me Mr. Adams was entirely competent for the office
of President of the United States.

Mr. Adams was rather dull as a public speaker.  He was apt
to announce commonplaces slowly and deliberately, as if they
were something he thought his audience was listening to for
the first time.  But the influence of his historic name was
very great.  His marvellous resemblance to his father and
grandfather made a great impression.  When he said at Worcester
on the 28th of June, 1848:  "I say, in words to which I have
a hereditary right, 'Sink or Swim, Live or Die, Survive or
Perish, I give my hand and my heart to this movement,'" it
seemed to the audience as if old John Adams had stepped down
from Trumbull's picture of the Signing of the Declaration
of Independence to give his benediction.*

[Footnote]
* I like very much the epitaph which his sons placed over him in
the burial place at Quincy.  Every word of it is true.

THIS STONE
MARKS THE GRAVE OF
CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS
SON OF JOHN QUINCY
AND LOUISA CATHERINE (JOHNSON)
ADAMS
BORN 18 AUGUST 1807
  Trained from his youth in politics and letters
  His manhood strengthened by the convictions
  Which had inspired his fathers
  He was among the first to serve
  And among the most steadfast to support
  That new revolution
  Which restored the principles of liberty
  To public law
  And secured to his country
  The freedom of its soil
  During seven troubled and anxious years
  Minister of the United States in England
  afterward arbitrator at the tribunal of Geneva
  He failed in no task which his Government imposed
  Yet won the respect and confidence
  of two great nations
  Dying 21 November 1886
  He left the example
  of high powers nobly used
  and the remembrance
  of a spotless name.
[End of Footnote]

Besides these more conspicuous leaders, there was to be found,
in almost every town and village in Massachusetts, some man
eminent among his neighbors for purity of life, for philanthropy,
and for large intelligence who was ready to join the new party.
The glowing hopes and dreams and aspirations of youth were
inspirited by the muse of Whittier and Longfellow and Lowell
and Bryant.  The cause of free labor appealed to the strongest
sympathies of the mechanics of Essex and the skilled laborers
of Worcester.

Four years afterward Daniel Webster, as he lay dying at Marshfield,
said to the friend who was by his side:  "The Whig candidate
will obtain but one or two States, and it is well; as a national
party, the Whigs are ended."

The Whig Party retained its organization in Massachusetts
until 1856; but its intellect and its moral power were gone.
Mr. Winthrop, as appears from the excellent "Life" published
by his son, had no sympathy with Mr. Webster's position.  Mr.
Webster died, a disappointed man, in the autumn of 1852.  He
took no part in political affairs in Massachusetts after 1850.
Mr. Choate, who was to follow his great leader to the grave
within a few years, transferred his allegiance to the Democrats.
Mr. Everett, after a brief service in the Senate, a service
most uncongenial to his own taste, resigned his seat in the
midst of the angry conflict on the Nebraska bill, and devoted
himself to literary pursuits until, when the war broke out,
he threw himself with all his zeal, power, and eloquence into
the cause of his country.


CHAPTER IX
LIFE IN WORCESTER

After leaving college I studied for a year in my brother's
office in Concord, then for two years at the Harvard Law
School, and afterward for four months in the office of Judge
Benjamin F. Thomas in Worcester.  I was led to choose Worcester
as a place to live in chiefly for the reason that that city
and county were the stronghold of the new Anti-Slavery Party,
to which cause I was devoted with all my heart and soul.  I
have never regretted the choice, and have spent my life there,
except when in Washington, for considerably more than half
a century.  In that time Worcester has grown from a city of
fifteen thousand to a city of one hundred and thirty thousand
people.  I can conceive of no life more delightful for a man
of public spirit than to belong to a community like that which
combines the youth and vigor and ambition of a western city
with the refinement and conveniences, and the pride in a noble
history, of an old American community.  It is a delight to
see it grow and a greater delight to help it grow,--to help
improve its schools, and found its Public Library, and help
lay the foundations of great institutions of learning.  Worcester
had an admirable Bar, admirable clergymen, and physicians
of great skill and eminence.  Among her clergymen was Edward
Everett Hale, then in early youth, but already famous as a
preacher throughout the country.  There was no Unitarian pulpit
where he was not gladly welcomed.  So his congregation here,
by way of exchange, heard the most famous pulpit orators of
the country.

Among the physicians was Dr. Joseph Sargent, a man then without
a superior in his profession in Massachusetts.  The friendship
I formed with him in 1849 lasted till his death, more than
forty years afterward.

The mechanics of Worcester were unsurpassed for their ingenuity
anywhere on the face of the earth.  Worcester was the centre
and home of invention.  Within a circle of twelve miles radius
was the home of Blanchard, the inventor of the machine for
turning irregular forms; of Elias Howe, the inventor of the
sewing machine; of Eli Whitney, the inventor of the cotton
gin, which doubled the value of every acre of cotton-producing
land in the country; of Erastus B. Bigelow, the inventor
of the carpet machine; of Hawes, the inventor of the envelope
machine; of Crompton and Knowles, the creators and perfectors
of the modern loom; of Ruggles, Nourse and Mason, in whose
establishment the modern plow was brought to perfection, and
a great variety of other agricultural implements invented
and improved.  There were many other men whose inventive genius
and public usefulness were entitled to rank with these.  The
first house-warming furnace was introduced here, and the second
cupola furnace was set up near by.

These inventors and mechanics were all men of great public
spirit, proud of Worcester, of its great achievements, and
its great hope.  They got rich rapidly.  They and their households
made social life most delightful.  There was little pride
of family or wealth.  Men and women were welcomed everywhere
on their merits.

The City of Worcester was the heart of one of the foremost
agricultural counties in the country.  The county stood fourth
among American counties in the value of its agricultural products,
and the proportion of the value of the product to the value
of the lands.  It was the spot on the face of the earth where
labor got the largest proportion of the joint product of labor
and capital.  The farmers made an excellent living.  They
made excellent legislators, excellent town officers, excellent
jurors, and excellent clients.  I have been at some time or
other in my life counsel for every one of the fifty-two towns
in Worcester County.  I had a large clientage among the farmers.
In the intimacy of that relation I got a knowledge of the
inmost soul and heart of a class of men who I think constituted
what was best in American citizenship, a knowledge which has
been a great educational advantage to me and valuable in a
thousand ways in my public and professional life.

From the first of December, 1849, until the fourth of March,
1869, I was diligently employed in my profession, save for
a single year's service in each house of the Massachusetts
Legislature.  But during all that time I kept a very zealous
interest in political affairs.  I was Chairman of the County
Committee for several years, made political speeches occasionally,
presided at political meetings, always attended the caucus
and was in full sympathy and constant communication with the
Free Soil and Republican leaders.

The Worcester Bar in my time afforded a delightful companionship.
It was like a college class in the old days.  My best and
most cordial friends were the men whom I was constantly encountering
in the courts.  The leaders of the Bar when I was admitted
to it,--Charles Allen, Emory Washburn, Pliny Merrick, Benjamin
F. Thomas, Peter C. Bacon,--would have been great leaders
at any Bar in the United States, or on any circuit in England.
Study at a law school is invaluable to the youth if he is
to rise in his profession; but there is no law school like
a court-house when such men are conducting trials.  The difficult
art of cross-examination, the more difficult art of refraining
from cross-examination, can only be learned by watching men
who are skilled in the active conduct of trials.

The Supreme Court of Massachusetts at that day with Chief
Justice Shaw at its head was without an equal in the country
and not surpassed by the Supreme Court of the United States
itself.  I can conceive of no life more delightful than that
of a lawyer in good health, and with good capacity, and with
a sufficient clientage, spent in that manly emulation and
honorable companionship.

The habit of giving dissenting opinions which has become
so common both in the Supreme Court of the United States
and of late in the Massachusetts Supreme Court did not then
exist.  If there were a division on an important question
of law the statement of the result was usually "a majority
of the Court is of opinion."  That was all.  I do not believe
any court can long retain public confidence and respect when
nearly all its opinions in important matters are accompanied
by a powerful attack on the soundness of the opinion and the
correctness of the judgment from the Bench itself.  The Reporter
of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is, I believe, authorized
to report the decisions of the court more or less at length
at his discretion.  If he would exercise that discretion by
an absolute refusal to print dissenting opinions, except in
a few very great and exceptional cases, he would have the
thanks of the profession.  It may be harder to put a stop
to the practice in the Supreme Court of the United States.
That will have to be done, if at all, by the good sense of
the Judges.  The recent opinions of the Court in what are
known as the Insular Cases have shocked the country and greatly
diminished the weight and authority of the tribunal.  This
was not because of public disapproval of the opinion of the
Court.  It was because upon one of the greatest questions
of Constitutional law and Constitutional liberty that ever
went to judgment, there could be found no single reason for
the decision of the Court strong enough to convince any two
judges.

The fact that I have been for nearly thirty-five years in
public life, and likely to be, if I live, in public life a few
years longer, is an instance of how--

  The best laid schemes o' mice and men
  Gang aft a-gley.

Down to the time I was admitted to the Bar, and indeed for
a year later, my dream and highest ambition were to spend
my life as what is called an office lawyer, making deeds and
giving advice in small transactions.  I supposed I was absolutely
without capacity for public speaking.  I expected never to
be married; perhaps to earn twelve or fifteen hundred dollars
a year, which would enable me to have a room of my own in
some quiet house, and to earn enough to collect rare books
that could be had without much cost.  I can honestly say with
George Herbert:  "I protest and I vow I even study thrift,
and yet I am scarce able, with much ado, to make one half
year's allowance shake hands with the other.  And yet if a
book of four or five shillings come in my way, I buy it, though
I fast for it; yea, sometimes of ten shillings."

But I happened one night in the autumn of 1850 to be at a
great mass meeting in the City Hall, at Worcester, which
Charles Allen was expected to address.  It was the year of
the Compromise Measures, including the Fugitive Slave Law,
and of Daniel Webster's 7th of March speech.  Judge Allen,
as he was somewhat apt to do, came in late.  A vast audience
had gathered and were waiting.  Nobody seemed ready to speak.
Somebody started the cry, "Hoar!  Hoar!"  My father and brother
were known as leaders in the Free Soil Party, and that I suppose
made somebody call on me.  I got up in my place in the middle
of the hall in great confusion.  There were shouts of "platform,"
"platform." I made my way to the platform, hoping only to
make my excuses and get off without being detected.  But the
people were disposed to be good-natured, and liked what I
said.  Dr. Stone, the famous stenographic reporter, was present
and took it down.  It was printed in the Free Soil papers,
and from that time I was in considerable demand as a public
speaker.  The coalition between the Free Soilers and Democrats
carried the State of Massachusetts that year and elected Sumner
Senator and Boutwell Governor.  The next year Worcester failed
to elect her representatives to the Legislature, which were
voted for all on one ticket and required a majority, and there
was to be a second election on the fourth Monday of November.
There was a delegate convention to nominate representatives,
of which I was a member.  When the vote was announced, to
my surprise and consternation, I was one of the persons nominated.
Nobody had said a word to me about it beforehand.  That was
Friday night.  I told the Convention I could not accept such
a nomination without my father's approval.  I was then twenty-
five years old.  It was proposed that the Convention adjourn
until the next evening, and that meantime I should go down
to Concord and see if I could get my father's leave.  Accordingly
the Convention adjourned to see if the infant candidate could
get permission to accept.  My father told me he thought that
to go to the Legislature once would be useful to me in my
profession; I should learn how laws were made, and get acquainted
with prominent men from different parts of the State.  So
he advised me to accept, if I would make up my mind that I
would go only for one year, and would after that stick to
the law, and would never look to politics as a profession
or vocation.  I accepted the nomination, was elected, and
was made Chairman of one of the Law Committees in the House.

I declined a reelection and devoted myself to my profession,
except that I served in the Massachusetts Senate one year,
1857, being nominated unexpectedly and under circumstances
somewhat like those which attended my former nomination.  I
was Chairman of the Judiciary Committee that year.  I devoted
all my time, day and even far into the night, to my legislative
duties.  I was never absent a single day from my seat in the
House in 1852, and was absent only one day from my seat in
the Senate, in 1857, when I had to attend to an important
law suit.  It so happened that there was a severe snow storm
that day, which blocked up the railroads, so that there was
no quorum in the Senate.  I could not myself have got to the
State House, if I had tried.  I suppose I may say without
arrogance that I was the leader of the Free Soil Party in
each House when I was a member of it.  In 1852 I prepared,
with the help of Horace Gray, afterward Judge, who was not
a member of the Legislature, the Practice Act of 1852, which
abolished the common law system of pleading, and has been
in principle that on which the Massachusetts courts have acted
in civil cases ever since.  I studied the English Factory
legislation, and read Macaulay's speeches on the subject.
I became an earnest advocate for shortening the hours of labor
by legislation.  That was then called the ten-hour system.
Later it has been called the eight-hour system.  I made, in
1852, a speech in favor of reducing the time of labor in factories
to ten hours a day which, so far as I know, was the first
speech in any legislative body in this country on that subject.
My speech was received with great derision.  The House, usually
very courteous and orderly, seemed unwilling to hear me through.
One worthy old farmer got up in his seat and said: "Isn't
the young man for Worcester going to let me get up in the
morning and milk my caouws."

When a member of the Senate in 1857, I was Chairman of the
Judiciary Committee.  I made a very earnest and carefully
prepared speech against the asserted right of the jury to
judge of the law in criminal cases.  It is a popular and specious
doctrine.  But it never seemed to me to be sound.  Among others,
there are two reasons against it, which seem to me conclusive,
and to which I have never seen a plausible answer.  One is
that if the jury is to judge of the law, you will have as
many different laws as you have juries.  There is no revision
of their conclusion.  They are not obliged to tell, and there
is no way in which the court can know, what their opinion
was.  So a man tried on one side of the court-house may be
held guilty, and another man tried on the other side of the
court-house may be held innocent for precisely the same act.

The other reason is that the court must always decide what
evidence shall be admitted.  So if the jury are to be the
judges of the law, one authority must determine what evidence
they shall consider, and another determine what law shall
be applied to it.  For instance, suppose a defendant charged
with homicide offers to prove certain facts which as he claims
justify the killing.  The Judge says these facts do not, under
the law, justify the killing and excludes the evidence.  That
may be the real point in the case, and the jury may believe
that those facts fully justify the homicide; still they cannot
be permitted to hear them.  It is preposterous to suppose
that so logical and reasonable a system as the Common Law
could ever have tolerated such an absurdity.  My friend, Mr.
Justice Gray of the United States Supreme Court, an admirable
judge and one of the great judges of the world, in his dissenting
opinion in _Sparf et al. v. U. S., 156, U. S. Reports,
page 51, etc.,_ has little to say on this point, except that
of course there must be some authority to regulate the conduct
of trials.

I declined a reelection to the Senate.  I was twice nominated
for Mayor by the Republicans of Worcester, when the election
of their candidate was sure; once by a Citizens' Convention,
and once by a Committee authorized to nominate a candidate,
and another year urged by prominent and influential citizens
to accept such a nomination.  But I preferred my profession.
I never had any desire or taste for executive office, and
I doubt if I had much capacity for it.

When Charles Allen declined reelection to Congress, in 1852,
I have no doubt I could have succeeded him if I had been willing,
although I was but twenty-six years old, only a year past
the Constitutional age.

As I found myself getting a respectable place in the profession
my early ambitions were so far changed and expanded that I
hoped I might some day be appointed to the Supreme Court of
the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.  It seemed to me then,
as it seems to me now, that there could be no more delightful
life for a man competent to the service than one spent in
discussing with the admirable lawyers, who have always adorned
that Bench, the great questions of jurisprudence, involving
the rights of citizens, and the welfare of the Commonwealth,
and helping to settle them by authority.  This ambition was
also disappointed.  I have twice received the offer of a seat
on that Bench, under circumstances which rendered it out of
the question that I should accept it, although on both occasions
I longed exceedingly to do so.

Shortly after I was admitted to the Bar, good fortune brought
me at once into the largest practice in the great County of
Worcester, although that Bar had always been, before and since,
one of the ablest in the country.  Judge Emory Washburn, afterward
Governor and Professor of Law at Harvard, and writer on jurisprudence,
had the largest practice in the Commonwealth, west of Boston,
and I suppose with one exception, the largest in the Commonwealth
outside of Boston.  He asked me to become his partner in June,
1852.  I had then got a considerable clientage of my own.
Early in 1853 he sailed for Europe, intending to return in
the fall.  I was left in charge of his business during his
six months' absence, talking with the clients about cases
in which he was already retained, and receiving their statements
as to cases in which they desired to retain him on his return.
Before he reached home he was nominated for Governor by the
Whig Convention, to which office he was elected by the Legislature
in the following January.  So he had but a few weeks to attend
to his law business before entering upon the office of Governor.
I kept on with it, I believe without losing a single client.
That winter I had extraordinarily good fortune, due I think
very largely to the kindly feeling of the juries toward so
young a man attempting to undertake such great responsibilities.

My professional life from January 1, 1850, until the 4th
of March, 1869, was a life of great and incessant labor.
When the court was in session I was constantly engaged in
jury trials.  Day after day, and week after week, I had to
pass from one side of the court-house to the other, being
engaged in a very large part of the important actions that
were tried in those days.  The Court had long sessions.  The
judges who came from abroad were anxious to get their work
done and go back to their homes.  So the Courts sat from half
past eight or nine o'clock in the morning until six in the
afternoon with an intermission of an hour, or an hour and
a quarter, for dinner.  The parties to the suits came from
all over Worcester County.  Frequently it was impossible to
see the witnesses until the trial came on, or just before.
So the lawyer had to spend his evenings and often far into
the night in seeing witnesses and making other preparations
for the next day.  General Devens and I had at one term of
the Supreme Court held by Chief Justice Bigelow twenty trial
actions.  The term resulted in a serious injury to my eyes
and in my being broken down with overwork.  So I was compelled
to go to Europe the following year for a vacation.

But I found time somehow, as I have said, to keep up a constant
and active interest in politics.  I was also able to contribute
something to other things which were going on for the benefit
of our growing city.  I got up the first contribution for
the Free Public Library, of which I was made President.  I
took a great interest in the founding of the famous Worcester
Polytechnic Institute, and I was the first person named in
its Act of Incorporation.  The first meeting of its Trustees
was held in my office, and I am now the only surviving member
of that Board, in which I have retained a warm interest ever
since.  In 1869 I made before the Massachusetts Legislature,
on a petition which was successful for a legislative grant
to that school, what I believe is the first public address
ever made in behalf of Technical Education in this country.
I was for some time President of the Board of Trustees of
the City Library and while President planned the excellent
reading room connected with the Library, for which I obtained
a handsome endowment by personal solicitation.

I was also Trustee of Leicester Academy.

The Worcester Lyceum, which furnished the principal course
of lectures in the city in those days, was in the hands of
some very worthy and conservative old Whigs.  They would not
permit any politics or religion, or what was called Radicalism,
either in religious or social matters, to be discussed on
their platform.  So we had to listen to very respectable and
worthy, but rather dull and tame conservative gentlemen, or
stay away, as we preferred.  A few of the young men, of whom
I was one, conspired to get possession of the Lyceum.  They
turned out in force for the election of officers, chose me
President, and we got Wendell Phillips and Theodore Parker
and Ralph Waldo Emerson and other shining lights of a newer
philosophy, much to the indignation of the old Whig magnates.
But the lectures were very successful, and at the end of my
Presidency, which lasted two or three years, we had an ample
balance in our treasury.

If I were to give an account of my professional life for
twenty years, I must make another book.  It was full of interest
and romance.  The client in those days used to lay bare his
soul to his lawyer.  Many of the cases were full of romantic
interest.  The lawyer followed them as he followed the plot
of an exciting novel, from the time the plaintiff first opened
his door and told his story till the time when he heard the
sweetest of all sounds to a lawyer, the voice of the foreman
saying:  "The jury find for the plaintiff." Next to the "yes,"
of a woman, that is the sweetest sound, I think, that can
fall on human ears.

I used to have eighteen or twenty law cases at the fall term
each year.  The judges gave their opinions orally in open
Court, and the old judges like Shaw and Metcalf, used to enliven
an opinion with anecdotes or quaint phrases, which lent great
interest to the scene.  If Walter Scott could have known and
told the story of the life of an old Massachusetts lawyer
from the close of the Revolution down to the beginning of
the Rebellion, there is nothing in the great Scotch novels
which would have surpassed it for romance and for humor.

I think I may fairly claim that I had a good deal to do with
developing the equity system in the courts of Massachusetts,
and with developing the admirable Insolvency system of Massachusetts,
which is substantially an equity system, from which the United
States Bankruptcy statutes have been so largely copied.

The great mass of the people of Massachusetts, Whigs and Democrats
as well as Republicans, were loyal and patriotic and full
of zeal when the war broke out.  A very few of the old Whigs
and Democrats, who were called "Hunkers" or "Copperheads,"
sympathized with the Rebellion, or if they did not, were so
possessed with hatred for the men who were putting it down
that they could find nothing to approve, but only cause for
complaint and faultfinding.  Andrew, the Governor, Sumner
and Wilson, the Senators, most of the members of Congress,
most of the leaders in the Legislature and in the military
and political activities, were of the old Free Soil Party.
There was a feeling, not wholly unreasonable, that the old
Whigs had been somewhat neglected, and that their cooperation
and help were received rather coldly.  This feeling led to
the movement, called the People's Party, which begun at a
large public meeting in Cambridge, where my dear old friend
and partner, ex-Governor Washburn, was one of the speakers.
That party called a State Convention and nominated Charles
Devens for Governor.  Devens had been an old Whig.  He had
become a Republican in 1856, and had been one of the earliest
to enlist in the War, in which he became afterward the most
famous Massachusetts soldier.  He was a man of spirit, very
affectionate and generous, always ready to stand by his friends,
especially if he suspected that anybody had treated them unjustly.
The People's Party sent a Committee to the seat of war in
September, 1862.  The Committee found Devens in his tent,
repeated to him the plans of his old Whig friends, and induced
him to accept the nomination of the People's Party for Governor.

I was called to the battlefield of Antietam, where a near
kinsman of mine had been mortally wounded, just about the
same time.  I entered Devens's tent just as this Committee
was leaving it with his written acceptance in their hands.
I told him the other side of the story, told him how the
whole people were alive with enthusiasm, and that Governor
Andrew was doing the very best possible, and that these petty
jealousies, while there was some little reason for them,
ought not to affect the public action of the people.  Devens
regretted very much what he had done.  He told me that if
he could recall the letter, he would do it.  But it was too
late.

Governor Andrew was triumphantly reelected, and Devens was
ever after an earnest and loyal Republican.


CHAPTER X
POLITICAL HISTORY OF MASSACHUSETTS FROM
1848 TO 1869

In 1848, the Free Soil Party in Massachusetts nominated candidates
for State officers.  It was made up of Whigs, Democrats and
members of the Liberty Party.  It had made no distinct issue
with the Whig Party upon matters of State administration.
Governor Briggs, the Whig Governor, was a wise and honest
Chief Magistrate, highly respected by all the people.  But
the Free Soil leaders wisely determined that if they were
to have a political party, they must have candidates for State
officers as well as National.  It is impossible to organize
a political party with success whose members are acting together
in their support of one candidate and striving with all their
might against each other when another is concerned.  My father
was urged to be the Free Soil candidate for Governor.  Charles
Francis Adams and Edmund Jackson visited him at Concord to
press it upon him as a duty.  Charles Allen wrote him an earnest
letter to the same effect.  But he was an old friend of Governor
Briggs and disliked very much to become his antagonist.  He
looked to the Whig Party for large accessions to the Free
Soil ranks.  A large plurality of the people of the community
were still devoted to that party.  He doubted very much the
wisdom of widening the breach between them by a conflict on
other questions than that of slavery.  So he refused his consent.
Stephen C. Phillips, an eminent Salem merchant, and a former
Member of Congress, was nominated.  The result was there was
no choice of State officers by the people, and the election
of the Whig candidates was made by the Legislature.

The next year it occurred to the leaders of the Free Soil
and Democratic Parties that they had only to unite their
forces to overthrow the Whigs.  The Free Soil leaders thought
the effect of this would be the eventual destruction of the
Whig Party at the North,--as afterward proved to be the case,--
and the building up in its place of a party founded on the
principle of opposition to the extension of slavery.  So in
1849 there was a coalition between the Free Soil and the Democratic
Parties in some counties and towns, each supporting the candidates
of the other not specially obnoxious to them, neither party
committing itself to the principles of the other party or
waiving its own.  In the fall of the next year, 1850, this
policy was pursued throughout the State and resulted in the
election by the Legislature of a Democratic Governor, Mr.
Boutwell, and of Charles Sumner as the successor of Daniel
Webster in the Senate.  The experiment was repeated with like
success in the fall of 1851.

These two parties had little in common.  They could not well
act together in State matters without some principle or purpose
on which they were agreed other than mere desire for office
and opposition to the Whig Party.  They found a common ground
in the support of a law providing for secrecy in the ballot.
There had been great complaint that the manufacturers, especially
in Lowell, who were in general zealous Whig partisans, used
an undue influence over their workmen.  It was said that a
man known to be a Democrat, or a Free Soiler, was pretty likely
to get his discharge from the employ of any great manufacturing
corporation that had occasion to reduce its force, and that
he would have no chance to get an increase of wages.  I do
not now believe there was much foundation for this accusation.
But it was believed by many people at the time.  So a law
requiring secrecy in the ballot was framed and enacted in
spite of great resistance from the Whigs.  This has undoubtedly
proved a good policy, and has prevailed in Massachusetts ever
since, and now prevails largely throughout the country.

But this one measure was not enough to hold together elements
otherwise so discordant.  So the Democratic and Free Soil
leaders agreed to call a convention to revise the Constitution
of the Commonwealth, which had remained unchanged save in
a few particulars since 1780.  There had been a Convention
for that purpose in 1820, made necessary by the separation
of Maine.  But the old Constitution had been little altered.
The concentration of the population in large towns and cities
had caused a demand for a new distribution of political power.
Many people desired an elective judiciary.  Others desired
that the judges should hold office for brief terms instead
of the old tenure for life.  There was a great demand for
the popular election of Sheriffs and District Attorneys, who
under the existing system were appointed by the Governor.
Others desired the choice of Senators, who had before been
chosen by the several counties on a joint ticket, by single
districts.  A proposition for a Convention was submitted to
the people by the Legislature of 1851.  But the people were
attached to the old Constitution.  There was a special dread
of any change in the independent tenure of the judiciary.
So although the coalition had a majority in the State the
proposition for a Constitutional Convention was defeated.

The scheme was renewed the next year in the Legislature of
1852, of which I was a member.  Several of the Free Soilers,
among which I was included, were unwilling to have the matter
tried again without a distinct assurance that there should
be no meddling with the judiciary.  This assurance was given
in the report of a joint committee of the Legislature to whom
the matter was committed, consisting of the leaders of the
Democratic and Republican parties, who reported that there
was no purpose to change the judicial tenure with which the
people were well satisfied.  Accordingly I voted for it.  The
measure got a bare majority in the House which it would never
would have had without that stipulation.  The plan was submitted
to the people again with a proposition that the choice of
delegates to the Constitutional Convention should be by secret
ballot.  The people approved the plan by a substantial majority.

I have no doubt that the pledge above mentioned was made in
good faith and that the men who made it meant to keep it.
But before the Convention met two things happened which changed
the conditions.  The coalition was wrecked.  There were two
causes for its overthrow.  One of them was the appointment
by Governor Boutwell of Caleb Cushing to a seat on the Supreme
Bench of Massachusetts.  General Cushing was a man of great
accomplishment, though never a great lawyer.  He could collect
with wonderful industry all the facts bearing on any historic
question and everything that had been said on either side
of any question of law.  But he never had a gift of cogent
argument that would convince any judge or jury.  He owed
his success in life largely to the personal favor of men who
knew him and were charmed by his agreeable quality.  He was
regarded by the people of Massachusetts as a man without moral
convictions and as utterly subservient to the slave power.
So his appointment was a great shock to the Anti-Slavery men
and made them believe that it was not safe to put political
power in Democratic hands.  General Cushing vindicated this
opinion afterward by the letter written when he was Attorney-
General in the Cabinet of President Pierce declaring that
the Anti-Slavery movement in the North "must be crushed out,"
and also by a letter written to Jefferson Davis after the
beginning of the Rebellion recommending some person to him
for some service to the Confederacy.  The discovery of this
letter compelled President Grant who had been induced to nominate
him for Chief Justice to withdraw the nomination.  The other
cause was the passage of the bill for the prohibition of the
manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquors, known as the Maine
law.  This measure had passed the Legislature, containing
a provision for its submission to the people.  It was vetoed
by Governor Boutwell.  The reason assigned by him was his
objection to the provision for its submission to the people,
without the secret ballot.  The referendum, a scheme by which
men charged with political duties avoid responsibility by
submitting to the people measures which they fear may be unpopular,
--has never found much favor in Massachusetts.  After many
changes of sentiment, and after passing, modifying, and repealing
many laws, the people of the Commonwealth seem to have settled
down on a policy which permits each town or city to decide
by vote whether the sale of liquor shall be permitted within
their limits.  The bill was then passed, without the reference
to the people.  But the measure sealed the fate of the coalition.
Some of its provisions, especially that for seizing and destroying
stocks of liquor kept for sale in violation of law, were very
severe, and were held unconstitutional by the Court.  The
liquor sellers, almost all of them, were Democrats.  They
would not readily submit to a law which made their calling
criminal.

So the Whigs were restored to power by the fall election
in 1852.  Their heads were turned by their success.  They
did not quite dare to repeal the law providing for a Constitutional
Convention, but they undertook to repeal so much of it as
required that the choice of delegates should be by secret
ballot.  The minority resisted this repeal with all their
might.  They alleged with great reason that it was not decent
for the Legislature to repeal a provision which the people
has expressly approved.  But their resistance was in vain,
and after a long and angry struggle which stirred the people
of the Commonwealth profoundly the provision for the secret
ballot was abrogated.  But the result of the contest was that
the Whigs were routed at the special election for delegates
to the Convention.  That body was controlled by the Coalition
by a very large majority.  Their triumph made them also lose
their heads.

So when the Convention assembled in 1853, they disregarded
the pledges which had enabled them to get the assent of the
people to calling the convention, and provided that the tenure
of office of the Judges of the Supreme Court should be for
ten years only, and that the Judges of Probate should be elected
by the people of the several counties once in three years.
It is said, and, as I have good reason to know, very truly,
that this action of the Convention was taken in consequence
of a quarrel in Court between the late Judge Merrick and General
Butler and Mr. Josiah G. Abbott, two eminent leaders of
the Democrats, members of the Convention.  They had neither
of them agreed to the proposition to change the judicial tenure.
They were absent from the convention for several days in
the trial of an important cause before Merrick, and returned
angry with the Judge and determined to do something to curb
the independent power of the Judges.  The proposition was
adopted.

These schemes were a distinct violation of the pledge which
had been given when the Legislature submitted to the people
the proposition for calling the Convention.  Of course it
was a fair answer to this complaint to say that the members
of the committee who made that report could in such a matter
bind nobody but themselves.  That was true.  But I think if
the men who signed that report, and the men who joined them
in giving the assurance to the people, had been earnest and
zealous in the matter it is quite likely they could have prevented
the action of the Convention.

The scheme for a new constitution passed the Convention by
a large majority and was submitted to the people.  The Whig
leaders, who seemed to have had all their wisdom and energy
taken out of them when the Free Soilers left them, were much
alarmed by the strength of the discontent with the existing
order of things manifested by the coalition victory in the
election of the Constitutional Convention.  Many of them concluded
that it would be unwise to resist the popular feeling.  One
Saturday afternoon during that summer I was in the office
of Francis Wayland, a great friend of mine, long Dean of the
New Haven Law School, when Henry S. Washburn, a member of
the Whig State Central Committee, came into Wayland's office
and told me he had just attended a meeting of the Committee
that day and that it determined to make no contest against
the new Constitution.  The Springfield _Republican,_ then
a Whig journal, had an article that day, or the following
Monday, to the same effect.  I was very much disturbed.  I
hurried to Concord by the first train Monday morning, and
saw my brother, who was then a Judge of the Court of Common
Pleas.  He agreed with me in thinking that the proposed scheme
of government a very bad one.  He went at once to Cambridge
and saw John G. Palfrey, a very able and influential leader
of the Free Soilers.  Mr. Palfrey agreed that the Constitution
ought to be defeated, if possible.  Judge Hoar and he sat
down together and prepared a pamphlet, the Judge furnishing
all the legal argument and Mr. Palfrey the rest, clothing
it all in his inimitable style.  It was published under Dr.
Palfrey's name.  Judge Hoar, being then upon the bench, did
not think it becoming to take any more public action in the
matter, although he made his opinion known to all persons
who cared to know it.  Charles Francis Adams and Marcus Morton
also made powerful arguments on the same side.  My father,
Samuel Hoar, also made several speeches against the Constitution.
At this defection of so many Free Soilers the Whig leaders
took heart and made a vigorous and successful resistance.

The result was that the people voted down the whole constitution.
Several of the most eminent leaders of the Free Soilers and
Democrats separated themselves from their party and joined
the Whigs in defeating it.  Among them were Marcus Morton,
formerly Governor and Judge of the Supreme Court; John G.
Palfrey, who had been the Free Soil candidate for Governor;
Charles Francis Adams, afterward member of Congress and Minister
to England, and Samuel Hoar.

I was myself, at this time, an enthusiastic Free Soiler,
and was, as I have said, Chairman of the Republican County
Committee, but I joined the rebels against the dominant feeling
of my party.

The defeat of the Constitution was aided, however, undoubtedly
by a very just and righteous proposal which was submitted
to a separate vote of the people, but which had its effect
on the feeling in regard to the whole scheme, to prohibit
the use of any money raised by taxation for sectarian schools.
To this the Catholic clergy were opposed, and the Catholic
vote, not however then very important in Massachusetts, was
cast against the whole scheme.

But the Whigs did not entirely get over the feeling that
something must be done to propitiate the desire for change.
Accordingly they, through the Legislature, submitted to the
people propositions for the election by the people of the
counties of Sheriffs and District Attorneys who before that
time had been appointed by the Governor.  These proposals
were ratified by the people and became part of the Constitution.
I have always thought the change a bad one.  I think the Governor
likely to make quite as good if not a better choice of Sheriffs
and District Attorneys than the people.  But the objection
to the new system is this.  So long as the State makes the
laws, the State, whether acting by a popular vote or through
its executive, should have the power to enforce them and select
the instrumentalities for that purpose.  Now if the particular
law which the State enacts be unpopular in a particular county,
and the people be determined to defeat it, no Sheriff or District
Attorney can be elected who will enforce it.  That has been
shown in the case of the legislation to prohibit or regulate
the sale of intoxicating liquors in Suffolk County.  Those
laws have been always unpopular and since the change in the
mode of appointment of District Attorneys and Sheriffs have
not been enforced until they were modified to meet the popular
objections.  This difficulty applies also to the enforcing
of laws for the employment of children in factories.  The
Legislature undertook to meet this difficulty by creating
officials, called State Constables, to be appointed by the
Governor and to enforce the liquor laws and the laws regulating
child labor.  But that did not wholly cure the evil.  The
officials appointed solely to enforce a law against which
there are strong objections in any quarter are always themselves
unpopular.  The Sheriffs have been from the beginning officials
of great dignity, commanding popular respect and confidence.
So if it were difficult to enforce the law the character of
the Sheriff was a great force on its side.  But in the case
of these particular laws persons of less dignity and authority,
often quite obscure when they are appointed, whose whole duty
is odious to the persons to be affected by it, instead of
giving dignity to the law tend to make it unpopular by their
attempts to enforce it.  Indeed in my opinion the Massachusetts
Constitution of 1780 was as nearly a perfect system of government
as was ever devised.  Some changes in it were made necessary
by the separation of Maine.  I suppose the abrogation of the
provision that every man should pay a tax for the support
of public worship somewhere was demanded by a public sentiment
it would have been impossible to resist, and undoubtedly the
aggregation of population in the large cities and towns required
a change in the system of representation.  But I think the
old method of electing Senators, where it was necessary that
a man should have a reputation through an entire county to
be chosen, to be better than the system of electing them by
small single districts, and I think the slight property qualification
was highly useful as a stimulant to saving and economy.

It is, however, a great pity that the labors of this Constitutional
Convention were wasted.  It was a very able body of men.  With
the exception of the Convention that framed the Constitution
in the beginning, and the Convention which revised it in 1820,
after the separation from Maine, I doubt whether so able a
body of men ever assembled in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts,
or, with very few exceptions indeed, in the entire country.
The debates, which are preserved in three thick and almost
forgotten volumes, are full of instructive and admirable essays
on the theory of constitutional government.  Among the members
were Rufus Choate, Charles Sumner, Henry Wilson, George N.
Briggs, Marcus Morton, Marcus Morton, Jr., Henry L. Dawes,
Charles Allen, George S. Hillard, Richard H. Dana, George
S. Boutwell, Otis P. Lord, Peleg Sprague, Simon Greenleaf,
and Sidney Bartlett.

There were a good many interesting incidents not, I believe,
recorded in the report of the debates, which are worth preserving.

One was a spirited reply made by George S. Hillard to Benjamin
F. Butler, who had bitterly attacked Chief Justice Shaw, then
an object of profound reverence to nearly the whole people
of the Commonwealth.  Butler spoke of his harsh and rough
manner of dealing with counsel.  To which Hillard replied,
pointing at Butler:  "While we have jackals and hyenas at
the bar, we want the old lion upon the bench, with one blow
of his huge paw to bring their scalps over their eyes."

Hillard was an accomplished and eloquent man, "of whom," Mr.
Webster said in the Senate of the United States, "the best
hopes are to be entertained."  But he lacked vigor and courage
to assert his own opinions against the social influences of
Boston, which were brought to bear with great severity on
the anti-slavery leaders.

Hillard was not so fortunate in another encounter.  He undertook
to attack Richard H. Dana, and to reproach him for voting
for a scheme of representation which somewhat diminished the
enormous political power of Boston. She elected all her representatives
on one ballot, and had a power altogether disproportionate
to that of the country.  He said, speaking of Dana: "He should
remember that the bread he and I both eat comes from the business
men of Boston.  He ought not, like an ungrateful child, to
strike at the hand that feeds him." Dana replied with great
indignation, ending with the sentence:  "The hand that feeds
me--the hand that feeds me, sir?  No hand feeds me that has
a right to control my opinions!"

A _bon mot_ of Henry Wilson is also worth putting on record.
Somebody, who was speaking of the importance of the Massachusetts
town meeting, said that it was not merely a place for town
government alone, but that it was a place where the people
of the town met from scattered and sometimes secluded dwelling-
places to cultivate each other's acquaintance, to talk over
the news of the day and all matters of public interest; and
that it was a sort of farmers' exchange, where they could
compare notes on the state of agriculture, and even sometimes
swap oxen.  Governor Briggs, who had been beaten as a candidate
for reelection by the Coalition, replied to this speech and
said, referring to the Coalition, "that the gentlemen on the
other side seemed to have carried their trading and swapping
of oxen into politics, and into the high offices of the state."
To which Henry Wilson answered, referring to Briggs's own
loss of his office, "that so long as the people were satisfied
with the trade, it did not become the oxen to complain."

Undoubtedly the ablest member of the Convention was Charles
Allen.  He spoke seldom and briefly, but always with great
authority and power.  Late in the proceedings of the Convention
a rule was established limiting the speakers to thirty minutes
each.  Hillard, who was one of the delegates from Boston, made
a very carefully prepared speech on some pending question.
Allen closed the debate, making no reference whatever to Hillard's
elaborate and most eloquent argument, until he was about to
sit down, when he said: "Mr. President, I believe my time
is up?" The President answered: "The gentleman from Worcester
has two minutes more."  "Two minutes!" exclaimed Allen.  "Time
enough to answer the gentleman from Boston." And he proceeded
in that brief period to deal a few strokes with his keen scimitar,
which effectually demolished Hillard's elaborate structure.

There is nothing in the political excitements of recent years
which approaches in intensity that of the period from 1848
until the breaking out of the War.  The people of Massachusetts
felt the most profound interest in the great conflict between
slavery and freedom for the possession of the vast territory
between the Mississippi and the Pacific.  But almost every
man in Massachusetts felt the Fugitive Slave Law as a personal
dishonor.  I think no great public calamity, not the death
of Webster, not the death of Sumner, not the loss of great
battles during the War, brought such a sense of gloom over
the whole State as the surrender of Anthony Burns and of Sims.
Worcester, where I dwelt, was the centre and stronghold of
the anti-slavery feeling in Massachusetts.  This odious statute
was, perhaps, the greatest single cause of the union of the
people of the North in opposition to the further encroachments
of slavery.  Yet but two slaves were taken back into slavery
from Massachusetts by reason of its provisions.  I will not
undertake to tell the story of those years which will form
an important chapter in the history of the country.  But I
had a special knowledge of two occurrences which are alluded
to by Colonel Higginson in his charming essay entitled, "Cheerful
Yesterdays," in regard to which that most delightful writer
and admirable gentleman has fallen into some slight errors
of recollection.

The first person seized under the Fugitive Slave Law was a
slave named Shadrach.  He was brought to trial before George
T. Curtis, United States Commissioner.  One of the chief complaints
against the Fugitive Slave Law was that it did not give the
man claimed as a slave, where his liberty and that of his
posterity were at stake, the right to a jury trial which the
Constitution secured in all cases of property involving more
than twenty dollars, or in all cases where he was charged
with the slightest crime or offence.  Further, the Commissioner
was to receive twice as much if the man were surrendered into
slavery as if he were discharged.  Horace Mann, in one of
his speeches, commented on this feature of the law with terrible
severity.  He also pointed out that the Commissioner was not
a judicial officer with an independent tenure, but only the
creature of the courts and removable at any time.  He also
dwelt upon what he conceived to be the unfair dealing of the
Commissioners who had presided at the trial of the three
slaves who had been tried in Massachusetts, and added: "Pilate,
fellow-citizens, was at least a Judge, though he acted like
a Commissioner."

Elizur Wright, a well-known Abolitionist, editor of the _Chronotype,_
was indicted in the United States Court for aiding in the
rescue of Shadrach.  While the hearing before Geo. T. Curtis
on the proceedings for the rendition of Shadrach was going
on, a large number of men, chiefly negroes, made their way
into the court-room by one door, swept through, taking the
fugitive along with them, and out at the other, leaving the
indignant Commissioner to telegraph to Mr. Webster in Washington
that he thought it was a case of levying war.  I went into
the court-room during the trial of Mr. Wright, and saw seated
in the front row of the jury, wearing a face of intense gravity,
my old friend Francis Bigelow, always spoken of in Concord
as "Mr. Bigelow, the blacksmith."  He was a Free Soiler and
his wife a Garrison Abolitionist.  His house was a station
on the underground railroad where fugitive slaves were harbored
on their way to Canada.  Shadrach had been put into a buggy
and driven out as far as Concord, and kept over night by Bigelow
at his house, and sent on his way toward the North Star the
next morning.  Richard H. Dana, who was counsel for Elizur
Wright, asked Judge Hoar what sort of man Bigelow was.  To
which the Judge replied: "He is a thoroughly honest man, and
will decide the case according to the law and the evidence
as he believes them to be.  But I think it will take a good
deal of evidence to convince him that one man owns another."

It is not, perhaps, pertinent to my personal recollections
but it may be worth while to tell my readers that Theodore
Parker, Wendell Phillips, and some others were indicted afterward
for participation in an intended rescue of Anthony Burns,
another fugitive slave.  The indictment was quashed by Judge
Curtis, who had probably got pretty sick of the whole thing.
But Parker, while in jail awaiting trial, prepared a defence,
which is printed, and which is one of the most marvellous
examples of scathing and burning denunciation to be found
in all literature.  I commend it to young men as worth their
study.

Some time after the Shadrach case, Asa O. Butman, a United
States Deputy Marshal, who had been quite active and odious
in the arrest and extradition of Burns, came to Worcester
one Saturday afternoon, and stopped at the American Temperance
House.  This was October 30, 1854.  It was believed that he
was in search of information about some fugitive negroes who
were supposed to be in Worcester, and I suppose that to be
the fact, although it was claimed that his errand was to summon
witnesses against persons concerned in the riot which took
place when Burns was captured.  The fact of his presence became
known in the course of the day on Sunday, and a pretty angry
crowd began to gather in the streets in the neighborhood of
the American House.  Butman learned his danger, and took refuge
in the City Marshal's office in the City Hall, where the police
force of the city were gathered for his protection.  No attack
was made during the night, but it was not deemed prudent to
have Butman leave his shelter.  I had been to Concord to spend
Sunday with my kindred there.  I got to Worcester at nine
o'clock Monday morning, and was told at the station of the
condition of things.  I went immediately to the City Hall,
made my way through the crowd to the building, and was admitted
to the police office by the City Marshal, who was my client,
and apt to depend on me for legal advice.  I found Butman
in a state of great terror.  It was evident that the crowd
was too large for any police force which the little city had
in its service.  Unless it should be pacified, something was
likely to happen which we should all have much regretted.
I accordingly went out and addressed the crowd from the steps
of the City Hall.  They listened to me respectfully enough.
I was pretty well known through the city as an earnest Free
Soiler, and as sharing the public feeling of indignation
against the delivering up of fugitives.  I reminded the crowd
that my father and sister had been expelled from Charleston,
S. C., where he had gone at the risk of his life to defend
Massachusetts colored sailors who were imprisoned there, and
appealed to them not to give the people of South Carolina
the right to excuse their own conduct by citing the example
of Massachusetts.  There were shouts from the crowd: "Will
he promise to leave Worcester and never come back?" Butman,
who was inside, terribly frightened, said he would promise
never to come to Worcester again as long as he lived.  I did
not, however, repeat Butman's promise to the crowd.  I thought
he ought to go without conditions.  The time approached for
the train to pass through Worcester for Boston.  It went from
a little wooden station near the site of the present Union
Depot, about half a mile from the City Hall.  It was determined,
on consultation, to take advantage of an apparently pacific
mood of the crowd, and to start Butman at once for the station
in time to catch the train.  I took one arm and I am quite
sure Colonel Higginson took the other; a few policemen went
ahead and a few behind; and we started from the back door
of the City Hall.  The mob soon found what we were after and
thronged around us.  It has been estimated that a crowd of
two thousand people at least surrounded Butman and his convoy.
I suppose he had no friend or defender among the number.  Most
of them wanted to frighten him; some of them to injure him,
though not to kill him.  There were a few angry negroes, I
suppose, excited and maddened by their not unnatural or unjustifiable
resentment against the fellow who had been the ready and notorious
tool of the slave-catchers, who would have killed him if
they could.  He was kicked several times by persons who succeeded
in the swaying and surging of the crowd, in getting through
his guard, and once knocked onto his knees by a heavy blow
in the back of the neck which came from a powerful negro,
who had a stone in his hand which increased the force of the
blow.  I believe he was hit also by some missiles.  He reached
the depot almost lifeless with terror.  The train was standing
there, and started just after we arrived.  It was impossible
to get him into it.  It was then endeavored to put him into
a buggy which was standing outside of the depot, but the owner,
a young business man of Worcester, seized the bridle of his
horse and stoutly refused to allow the horse to start.  Butman
was then thrust into a hack, into which one or two other persons
also got, and the hack was driven rapidly through the crowd
with no damage but the breaking of the windows.  Mr. Higginson
thought Butman was left at Westboro'; but my recollection,
which is very distinct, and with which I think he now agrees,
is that Lovell Baker, the City Marshal, followed with his
own horse and buggy, and took Butman from the hack after he
got a short distance out of Worcester.  Butman implored him
not to leave him at the way-station, fearing that the crowd
would come down in an accommodation train, which went also
about that time, and waylay him there.  So Baker drove him
the whole distance to Boston, forty miles.  When Butman got
to the city, he was afraid that the news of the Worcester
riot might have reached Boston, and have excited the people
there; and, by his earnest solicitation, Baker took Butman
by unfrequented streets across the city to a place where he
thought he could be concealed until the excitement abated.
Baker, who died a short time ago in Worcester, aged over ninety,
told me the whole story immediately on his return.

The proceeding undoubtedly was not to be justified; but it
was a satisfaction to know that no slave-hunter came to Worcester
after that occurrence.  Five or six people--including, if
I am not mistaken, Mr. Higginson himself, certainly including
Joseph A. Howland, a well-known Abolitionist and non-resistant,
and also including Martin Stowell, who was afterward indicted
for killing Batchelder, a Marshal who took part in the rendition
of Burns--were complained of before the police court, and
bound over to await the action of the grand jury.  The grand
jury returned no indictment, except against one colored man.
Mr. District Attorney Aldrich was quite disgusted at this,
and promptly _nol prossed_ that indictment.  And so ended
the famous Butman riot.

The Whigs were in a minority in Massachusetts after the year
1848.  But the constitution required a majority of all the
votes to elect a Governor; and, in the case of no choice, the
Governor, the Lieutenant Governor, the Executive Council,
and the Senators from counties where there had been no election
were chosen on joint ballot by the members elected to the
two Houses.  The Whigs were able to carry the Legislature,
and in that way chose their Governor and Lieutenant Governor,
elected Councillors, and filled vacancies in the Senate.  But
the Free Soil and Democratic leaders were not content to leave
the power in the hands of the Whig minority.  In 1849 a few
Representatives and Senators were chosen to the Legislature
by a union of the Free Soil and Democratic Parties.  In the
autumn of 1850 this arrangement was extended through the State.
The Whigs were in a minority in the Legislature, and the coalition
proceeded to elect a Democratic Governor and Lieutenant Governor
and an Executive Council.  In consideration of giving these
offices to the Democrats, it was agreed that Mr. Sumner should
be chosen Senator.  A few of the Democrats, who desired to
keep their party relations with the South, refused to agree
to this arrangement.  Mr. Winthrop was the Whig candidate.
The Senate, on its part, promptly elected Mr. Sumner, but
there was a long contest in the House of Representatives,
extending through three months.  Twenty-six ballots were cast,
of which no candidate had a majority until the last.  Mr.
Sumner several times came within two or three votes of an
election.  At last it was apparent that some member had cast
more than one vote; and an order was offered by Sidney Bartlett,
an eminent Whig member from Boston, requiring the members
to bring in their votes in sealed envelopes.  This resulted
in the choice of Sumner.

Another contribution to Mr. Sumner's election ought not to
be forgotten.  The town of Fall River was represented by Whigs;
but it was a community where there was a strong anti-slavery
feeling.  A town-meeting was called by the friends of Mr.
Sumner, and a motion made to instruct their representatives,
according to the right of the people declared in the constitution
of Massachusetts, to vote for Sumner.  An earnest and eloquent
speech in favor of the resolution was made by Robert T. Davis,
a young Quaker, since a distinguished member of Congress.
The resolution was carried, which Mr. Borden, one of the
Representatives from Fall River, obeyed.  The result was Sumner's
election by a single vote.

As stated in the preceding chapter, I was a member in 1852
of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, then consisting
of about four hundred and twenty members.  It was, I think,
as admirable a body of men for the training of a public speaker
as I ever knew.  The members were honest.  The large majority
was made up of sensible, strong-headed country farmers, rather
slow in making up their minds, but making them up always on
considerations of what was best for the Commonwealth.  There
was a time, when the opinion of the House seemed to be precipitating
or crystallizing, not too early in the debate and not too
late, when a vigorous and effective speech had great influence.
I was made Chairman of the Committee of Probate and Chancery,
the second law committee in the House; and I suppose it is
not presumptuous to say that I did as much of the hard work
of the body and had as much influence in leading its action
and shaping its legislation as anybody.

In the year 1856 I was, with Eli Thayer, sent from Worcester
as a delegate to a Convention held at Buffalo to concert measures
to help the settlers from the Free States in their contest
with slave owners led by Atchison and Stringfellow, of Missouri,
for the possession of Kansas.  Atchison had been President
pro tempore of the Senate of the United States.  The slave
holders had organized a formidable body of men to drive out
the Free State settlers from the Territories, which had just
been opened after the repeal of the Missouri Compromise.  We
met at Buffalo some gentlemen, among whom was Zachariah Chandler,
of Michigan, then in the vigor of early manhood.  We made
arrangements for getting large contributions of money and
arms with which the Northern emigrants were equipped, and
which undoubtedly enabled them to maintain successfully their
resistance and establish their free State.


CHAPTER XI
THE KNOW NOTHING PARTY AND ITS OVERTHROW

The political history of Massachusetts from 1846 to 1865
is, in general, the history of the share of the Commonwealth
in the great National contest with Slavery; the beginning
and growth of the Free Soil or Republican Party and the putting
down of the Rebellion.  The rise and dominion for three years,
and the final overthrow of the Know Nothing Party is an episode
which should not be wholly omitted, although it is an episode
which might be omitted without injury to the sense.

There have been, ever since the Irish immigration which begun
somewhere about 1840 down to to-day, a great many worthy people
who have been afraid of the Pope and the influence of Catholicism
in this country, and have been exceedingly jealous of the
influence of foreigners, especially of those of the Roman
Catholic Church.  Self-seeking political adventurers and demagogues
have not been slow to take advantage of this feeling for their
own purposes.  They have, for some reason, always preferred
to make their political movement in secret societies.  The
Catholic vote had generally been cast for the Democrats, and
was supposed to be largely influenced by the Catholic clergy.
It was thought that this influence had a good deal to do with
defeating Mr. Clay in 1844.  A movement of this kind swept
over the country after the Presidential election of 1852.
It had nearly spent its force by 1856.  It made little headway
at the South, except in two or three States.  There was a
struggle with it in Virginia, where it was defeated by the
superhuman energy of Henry A. Wise.  The party organized for
the purpose of excluding men of foreign birth from any share
in the Government, sometimes called the American Party, was
generally called the Know-Nothing Party, a name which came
from the answer each member was expected to make to any inquiry
from an outsider, "I know nothing about it."

This party swept Massachusetts in the autumn of 1854.  It
elected in that year Governor, Lieutenant Governor, all the
officers of the State Government, every member of both Houses
of the Legislature, except two from the town of Northampton,
and every member of Congress.  Its candidate for Governor
was Henry J. Gardner, a very skilful political organizer.
He had a book in which he had the names of men in every town
in the Commonwealth whom he attached to his personal fortunes
by promises, or flattery, or because in some cases of their
sincere belief in the doctrine.  He understood better than
any other man I ever knew the value of getting the united
support of men who were without special influence, even the
man who were odious or ridiculous among their own neighbors,
but who united might be a very formidable force.  He organized
with great skill and success the knave-power and the donkey-
power of the Commonwealth.

But a good many Anti-Slavery men who thought the party feeling
of the Whigs and Democrats was a great obstacle to their cause,
joined the movement simply in order that they might get rid
of the old parties, and prepare the State as with a subsoil
plow for a new one.  They had no belief in the proscriptive
doctrines, and were willing that men of foreign birth and
Catholics should have their just rights, and expected to destroy
the Know Nothing Party in its turn when it had destroyed Whiggery
and Democracy.  Of these was Henry Wilson, who owed his first
election to the Senate to the Know Nothing Legislature; and
Eli Thayer, who had been the organizer of the Emigrant Aid
Society, and the movement for the deliverance of Kansas and
Nebraska.  Both these gentlemen abandoned the Know Nothing
Party the year after its formation.  Mr. Thayer was elected
as a Republican to Congress in 1856, and reelected in 1858.
But he separated from his political associates and espoused
the squatter sovereignty doctrines of Stephen A. Douglas.
He, I have no doubt, was a sincere Anti-Slavery man.  But
he liked to do things in peculiar and original ways of his
own, and was impatient of slow and old-fashioned methods.
So he got estranged from his Republican brethren, was defeated
as a candidate for Congress in 1860, took no part in public
activities during the time of the war, became somewhat soured,
and landed in the Democratic Party.  I always had a great
liking for him, and deem him entitled to great public gratitude
for his services in the rescue of Kansas from what was known
as Border Ruffianism.

Neither Charles Sumner nor Charles Allen ever tolerated the
Know Nothing movement or made any terms with it.  Its proscriptiveness
and its secrecy were alike repugnant to their honest, brave
and liberty-loving souls.  Sumner was advised, as the question
of his reelection was coming on in January, 1857, to keep
silent about Know Nothingism.  He was told that the Slavery
question was enough for one man to deal with, and that if
he would only hold his peace all the parties would unite in
his reelection.  He answered the advice with his brave challenge.
He went about the Commonwealth, denouncing the intolerant
and proscriptive doctrine of the Know Nothings.  He told them:
"You have no real principle on which you can stand.  You are
nothing but a party of Gardnerites."

Charles Allen addressed a little company, of which I was
one, in the City Hall at Worcester in the autumn of 1854,
when Know Nothingism was in the height of its strength.  He
said:

"Perhaps I am speaking too boldly, but I learned to speak
boldly a long time ago.  I will speak my sentiments in the
face of any organization; or, if it does not show its face,
though its secret mines are beneath my feet, and unseen hands
ready to apply the match, I will declare those sentiments
that a freeman is bound to utter."

The people of Massachusetts elected Gardner Governor in 1854,
1855 and 1856.  But in the autumn of 1857 he was beaten under
the leadership of General Banks.  The party lingered until
1856 when there was an attempt to keep it alive in the Presidential
campaign of that year when Millard Fillmore was its candidate
for the Presidency.

But it was destroyed in the consuming fire kindled by the
Civil War, and has not since been heard of by its old name.

The proscriptive and intolerant opposition to Catholicism,
especially against men of foreign birth, has shown its head
occasionally.  It appeared in its most formidable shape in
a secret organization known as the A. P. A., of which I shall
speak later.  It is utterly uncongenial to the spirit of true
Americanism, and will never have any considerable permanent
strength.


CHAPTER XII
ELECTION TO CONGRESS

In the year 1868 one chapter of my life ended and a very
different one began.  In the beginning of that year I had
no doubt that what remained of my life would be devoted to
my profession, and to discharging as well as I could the
duties of good citizenship in the community to which I was
so strongly attached.  But it was ordered otherwise.  My
life in Worcester came to an end, and I shall if I live to
complete my present term in the Senate have spent thirty-
eight years in the National service.

This came from no ambition of mine.  In May, 1868, I sailed
for Europe, broken down in health by hard work.  During my
absence, some of the leading Republicans of the District issued
an appeal recommending me as a candidate for Congress.  There
were five or six other candidates.  They were all of them
men of great popularity, with hosts of friends and supporters.
Among them was John D. Baldwin, then holding the seat, a veteran
in the Anti-Slavery Service, editor of the Worcester _Spy,_
one of the most influential papers in New England.  It had
been the almost unvarying custom of the people of Massachusetts
to reelect an old member who had served as faithfully as Mr.
Baldwin.  Another candidate was Francis W. Bird, one of the
founders of the Anti-Slavery Party, and a man who had been
a powerful supporter by speech and pen and wise counsel and
large influence of the Republican Party since its foundation.
He was supported by the powerful influence of Charles Sumner,
then at the height of his popularity, and by Adin Thayer,
the ablest political organizer in Massachusetts.  Another
candidate was Amasa Walker, the eminent writer on political
economy, whose name has since been rendered still more illustrious
by the brilliant public service of his son.  Another was Mr.
Mayhew, a successful manufacturer, of large wealth, and a
deserved favorite in Milford, the second town in the District,
where he resided.  Another still was Lucius W. Pond, a generous
and warm-hearted man, although he afterward fell from his
high place.  He was a Methodist.  That denomination had always
been strong and influential in the Worcester District, and
its members have always stood stanchly by the men of their
own household when candidates for political office.  Mr. Pond
was also a member of the Masonic Order and of other secret
associations.  I ought however to say, in justice to the Masonic
Fraternity, that I have never been able to see that there
was any truth whatever in the charge that the members of that
Order deemed it their duty to support each other in politics,
or when on juries.  Many a client has told me with great alarm
that his opponent was a Mason, and that one or more leading
Masons were on the jury that were to try the case.  I always
refused to challenge a juryman on that account, and I never
found that the man's being a Mason had the least effect in
preventing him from rendering a just verdict.  I have many
intimate friends both political and personal in that Order,
although I never belonged to it and never sympathized with
or approved of secret societies in a Republic.

My strength was due to the fact that I had in general the
good will of my competitors.  So if any one failed to get
a majority it was easy to transfer his strength to me.  Perhaps
also there was a feeling, growing out of the fact that I had
had great experience in public speaking at the Bar and in
political meetings, that I might be able to take a prominent
part in the debates in the House, a faculty which all my competitors
lacked, except Mr. Bird.  But chiefly I had the advantage
of the good will of my associates in my own profession, a
body whose influence is always justly very powerful and who
were all, with scarcely an exception, my close and strong
friends.  I had, beside all that, a great many clients in
every town in the District who had been in the habit of trusting
me with their most intimate and secret concerns, and with
whom I had formed the attachment which in those days used
to exist between counsel and client.

I had said before I went to Europe that if nominated I would
accept the office.  I thought it doubtful whether my strength
would permit me to continue my professional work without interruption.
I had no thought of remaining in Congress, if I were elected,
more than one term, or perhaps two.  Indeed I did not contemplate
the probability of a nomination as a very serious one.

But almost before I got out of the sight of land the burden
lifted and my health came back.  When I got home I was utterly
sick of the whole business.  But my friends had been committed
to my support.  They claimed that I could not withdraw honorably
after the assurance I had given them before I went away.  So,
rather to my disgust, I was nominated on the first formal
ballot.  I had not expected the result.  I had gone to take
a ride while the Convention was in session.  So they were
obliged to wait for me.  I was found with some difficulty
and went in and made a brief speech which I ended by saying:
"If I shall fail to satisfy you, the trust you have so freely
conferred you can as freely recall.  If I shall fail to satisfy
myself, I shall at least have the comfort of reflecting that
it is by your free choice that this nomination has been conferred.
It has not been begged for, or bargained for, or intrigued
for, or crawled into.  If elected I shall at the close of
the term lay down the honors of the office with the same cheerfulness
with which I now accept the nomination."

I expected to go back to my home and my profession at the
end of one term.  My law practice was rapidly increasing.
Professional charges in those days were exceedingly moderate
as compared with the scale of prices now, and I had inherited
the habit of charging low fees from my partner and friend,
Emory Washburn.  If I had the same class of clients now that
I had then, I could at the present scale of charges for professional
service easily be earning more than fifty thousand dollars
a year, and I could earn it without going to my office in
the evening, and also take a good vacation every summer.

My life from that time has been devoted altogether to the
public service.  I have, what is commonly expected of men
who represent Massachusetts in the Senate, delivered a good
many literary and historical addresses, and have taken part
in political campaigns, and have occasionally eked out a scanty
salary by some professional work in the vacations.  But I
think I may fairly claim that I have done my share of the
work of the Senate and of the House to the best of my ability.
Senator Edmunds when he left the Senate was kind enough to
compliment me by saying that the whole work of the Senate
was done by six men, of whom I was one.  I do not suppose
Mr. Edmunds meant the number six to be taken literally.  But
he is a gentleman certainly never given to flattery or empty
compliment.  So I think I might call him as a witness that,
in his time, so far as hard work is concerned I did my best.
I am not quite so confident that he would testify to the wisdom
of my course on all occasions.

I did not, as I have said, expect when I entered to remain
in public life more than one term.  But I became interested
in the bill known as the National Education Bill, and accepted
another election with a view to doing what I could to carry
that through.  At the end of the next term I announced my
purpose to withdraw.  But there was a very earnest letter
to me signed by the principal men in the district, including
several gentlemen, any one of whom might very naturally have
expected to be my successor, saying it was not for the interest
of the people of the district to make a change.

Two years after I made a formal and peremptory refusal to
be a candidate again, which was encountered by a like appeal.
It was the year of what was called the Tidal Wave which swept
the Republicans from power in the House of Representatives.
It was very doubtful whether they could carry the Worcester
District.  The Democrats elected a majority of the Massachusetts
delegation in the National House of Representatives.  I was
elected by a few hundred only, although I was elected by several
thousand on former occasions.  I could not very well refuse
to accept the nomination at a time of great political peril.
So I continued once more.  At the end of that time I wrote
another peremptory refusal, and my successor was nominated
and elected.

I have been often charged with a blind and zealous attachment
to party.  The charge is sometimes made by persons who consider
that I desire to do right, but think that my understanding
and intellectual faculties are guided and blinded by that
emotion.  Others are not so charitable.  One very self-satisfied
critic, Mr. William Lloyd Garrison, sometimes in prose and
sometimes,

  A screechin' out prosaic verse
  An' like to bust,

says that I differ from my honorable colleague, Mr. Lodge,
in that Mr. Lodge has no conscience, while I have a conscience
but never obey it.  If any man be disposed to accept these
estimates, it is not likely that I can convince him to the
contrary by my own certificate.  But I will say two things:

1.  I have never in my life cast a vote or done an act in
legislation that I did not at the time believe to be right, and
that I am not now willing to avow and to defend and debate
with any champion, of sufficient importance, who desires to
attack it at any time and in any presence.

2.  Whether I am right or wrong in my opinion as to the duty
of acting with and adherence to party, it is the result not
of emotion or attachment or excitement, but of as cool, calculating,
sober and deliberate reflection as I am able to give to any
question of conduct or duty.  Many of the things I have done
in this world which have been approved by other men, or have
tended to give me any place in the respect of my countrymen,
have been done in opposition, at the time, to the party to
which I belonged.  But I have made that opposition without
leaving the party.  In every single instance, unless the question
of the Philippine Islands shall prove an exception, and that
is not a settled question yet, the party has come round, in
the end, to my way of thinking.  I have been able by adhering
to the Republican Party to accomplish, in my humble judgment,
ten-fold the good that has been accomplished by men who have
ten times more ability and capacity for such service, who
have left the party.

When Governor Boutwell, the President of the Anti-Imperialist
League, wrote me that he thought I could do more good for
that cause by staying in the Republican Party than by leaving
it, and when he declared in a public interview in Boston that
of course Mr. Hoar would remain in the Republican Party, he
was right.  If he had taken the same course himself, he would
have been a powerful help in saving his country from what
has happened.  If the gentlemen who acted with him in that
way had remained Republicans, and the gentlemen who agreed
with him, who have remained Republicans, who abandoned public
life, had kept in it, they would have saved the country from
what they and I deemed a grievous mistake and calamity.  There
was but one vote lacking for the defeat of the Spanish Treaty.
There was but one vote lacking for the passage of the Teller
resolution.  If Mr. Speaker Reed, the most powerful Republican
in the country, next to President McKinley, had stayed in
the House; if Mr. Harrison, as I earnestly desired, had come
back to the Senate; if Governor Boutwell and Mr. Adams had
uttered their counsel as Republicans, the Republicans would
have done with the Philippine Islands what we did with Cuba
and Japan.  I could cite a hundred illustrations, were they
needed, to prove what I say to be true.  There was undoubtedly
great corruption and mal-administration in the country in
the time of President Grant.  Selfish men and ambitious men
got the ear of that simple and confiding President.  They
studied Grant, some of them, as the shoemaker measures the
foot of his customer.  Mr. Sumner and Mr. Schurz and Mr.
Trumbull and Mr. Greeley and the New York _Tribune,_ and
the Springfield _Republican,_ and the Chicago _Tribune,_ and
the St. Louis _Republican,_ and scores of other men and other
papers left the party.  They were, so long as they maintained
that attitude, absolutely without political influence from
that moment.  When the great reforms which were attempted
were accomplished, they were not there.  The reforms were
accomplished.  But their names were wanting from the honorable
roll of the men who accomplished them.  President Grant himself
and President Hayes and Judge Hoar and Mr. Cox and General
Garfield, and others, if there are other names honorable enough
to be mentioned along with these, stayed in the Republican
Party.  They purified the administration.  They accomplished
civil service reform.  They helped to achieve the independence
of American manufacture.  They kept the faith.  They paid
the debt.  They resumed specie payment.  They maintained a
sound currency, amid great temptation and against great odds.
To this result our friends who were independent of party contributed
no jot or tittle.

Our system differs from that which prevails in England in
that it is hard to change the political power from one party
to another and hard to restore it when it is once lost.  We
elect our President for four years.  We elect our Senators
for six years.  Therefore in determining whether it is your
duty to forsake a party which is wrong on some single question
you are to decide, first, whether that question is important
enough to warrant sacrificing every other measure in which
you agree with your party, and having every measure espoused
by the other which you think bad enacted if it get control.
Second, you have not only in such cases to sacrifice every
other thing you think desirable to prevent the one thing you
think undesirable, but you must decide whether, in regard
to that particular matter, the party you are asked to substitute
in power for your own will accomplish what you desire if it
get power.  For example, there are some worthy Republicans
who are free-traders.  But they agree with the Republican
Party in everything else.  If you ask them to put a Democratic
President and Congress into power in order to get free trade
they must consider whether if they get power they will give
them free trade.  Otherwise they sacrifice everything else
for that chance and get no benefit in that respect.  The Republican
free-trader who voted for Mr. Cleveland in 1892 did not get
free trade.  He got only what Mr. Cleveland denounced as
a measure of infamy.  In the third place you have under our
Constitutional system to determine whether the chance to accomplish
what you want in regard to one measure warrants placing the
political power in hands you deem unfit, so that the party,
in your judgment right on one thing, but wrong in every other,
will have the fate of the country in its hands for a four
years' term, and deal with every new and unexpected question
as it shall think fit.  I was bitterly reproached for supporting
Mr. McKinley, and refusing to support Mr. Bryan, when I differed
from Mr. McKinley on the great predominant question how we
should deal with the people of the Philippine Islands.  But
the men who criticised me most bitterly were some of them
the men who applauded my purpose to do so when it was first
declared.  One of them, the President of the Anti-Imperialist
League, wrote me a letter saying that I could be more useful
to that cause by remaining a Republican than in any other
way, and declared in a public interview that of course Mr.
Hoar would remain a Republican.  The Secretary of the same
organization, after I had made a speech in which I had declared
my purpose to continue to support Mr. McKinley, in spite
of his grievous error in this respect, wrote me a letter
crowded with the most fulsome adulation, and declared that
my position was as lofty as that of Chatham or Burke.  I
could cite many other instances to the same effect.  But
what other men think, however respectable they may be, is
of course of no importance.  Every man must settle for himself
the question of his individual duty.  I could not find that
the chance that Mr. Bryan, who had urged the adoption of the
Spanish Treaty and had committed himself to the opinion that
it was right to do everything we promised to do in that Treaty,
would act wisely or righteously if he were trusted with power,
or that he could get his party to support him if he were disposed
to do so, warranted my running the risk of the mischief he
was pledged to accomplish; still less running the risk of
giving the government of this country to his supporters for
the next four years.  There are many good men in the Democratic
Party.  But the strength of that organization in 1900, as
it is to-day, was in Tammany Hall, in the old Southern leaders
committed to a policy of violence and fraud in dealing with ten
million of our American citizens at home, aided by a few
impracticable dreamers who were even less fitted than the
Democratic leaders to be trusted with political power.

The Republican Party, whatever its faults, since it came
into power in 1860 has been composed in general of what is
best in our national life.  States like Massachusetts and
Vermont, the men of the rural districts in New York, the
survivors and children of the men who put down the Rebellion
and abolished slavery, saved the Union, and paid the debt
and kept the faith, and achieved the manufacturing independence
of the country, and passed the homestead laws, are on that
side, and in general they give and will hereafter give direction
to its counsels.  On the other hand their antagonist has been,
is, and for an indefinite time to come will be, controlled
by the foreign population and the criminal classes of our
great cities, by Tammany Hall, and by the leaders of the solid
South.

I entered the House of Representatives of the United States
at the spring session which began March 4, 1869, at the beginning
of Grant's Administration.  It then contained a very interesting
and important group of men, the most brilliant and conspicuous
of whom was, undoubtedly, Mr. James G. Blaine.  The public,
friends and foes, judged of him by a few striking and picturesque
qualities.  There has probably never been a man in our history
upon whom so few people looked with indifference.  He was
born to be loved or hated.  Nobody occupied a middle ground
as to him.  In addition to the striking qualities which caught
the public eye, he was a man of profound knowledge of our
political history, of a sure literary taste, and of great
capacity as an orator.  He studied and worked out for himself
very abstruse questions, on which he formed his own opinions,
usually with great sagacity.  How far he was affected in his
position by the desire for public favor I will not undertake
to say.  I think the constitution of his mind was such that
matters were apt to strike him in much the same way as they
were apt to strike the majority of the people of the North,
especially of the Northwest, where he was always exceedingly
popular.  He maintained very friendly personal relations with
some of the more intelligent Southerners, especially with
Lamar.  One incident in his relations with Butler was intensely
amusing.  They were never on very friendly terms, though each
of them found it wise not to break with the other.  When Blaine
was a candidate for Speaker, to which office he was chosen
in the spring session of 1869, his principal competitor was
Henry L. Dawes.  Dawes's chances were considered excellent
until Butler, who had great influence with the Southern Republican
members of the House, declared himself for Blaine.  Butler
was exceedingly anxious to be Chairman of the Committee of
Appropriations.  This would have been an offence in the nostrils
of a large portion of the Republican Party.  Mr. Dawes, learning
Butler's proposed defection, was beforehand with him by rising
in the caucus and himself nominating Mr. Blaine.  This secured
Blaine's unanimous nomination.  Butler, however, still pressed
eagerly his own claim for the Chairmanship of the Appropriations.
Blaine was altogether too shrewd to yield to that.  The committees
were not appointed until the following December.  Butler suspected
somehow that there was doubt about his getting the coveted
prize.  He accordingly went to the door of the Speaker's room,
which was then opposite the door of the House of Representatives,
by the side of the Speaker's chair.  He found Blaine's messenger
keeping the door, who told him that Mr. Blaine was engaged
and could not see anybody.  "Very well," said General Butler,
"I will wait."  Accordingly, he took a chair and seated himself
at the door, so that he might intercept Blaine as he came
out.  Blaine, learning that Butler was there, went out the
window, round by the portico, and entered the House by another
entrance.  Somebody came along and, seeing Butler seated in
the corridor, said: "What are you about here, General?"  "Waiting
for Blaine," was the reply.  "Blaine is in the chair in the
House," was the answer.  "It isn't possible," said Butler.
"Yes, he is just announcing the committees."  Butler rushed
into the House in time to hear Mr. Dawes's name read by the
Clerk as the Chairman of Appropriations.  He was very angry,
and bided his time.  They had an altercation over the bill
to protect the rights of the freedmen in the South, the story
of which I tell in speaking of Grant.  But as the end of the
Congress approached, Butler endeavored to get up an alliance
between the Democrats and what were called the "Revenue Reformers."
There was a large number of Northwestern Republicans who were
disposed to break away from the party because of its policy
of high protection.  This included representatives of a good
many States that afterward were the most loyal supporters
of the tariff policy.  Butler showed me one day a call he
had prepared, saying: "How do you think something like this
would answer?"  It was a call for a caucus of all persons
who desired a reform in the tariff to meet to nominate a
candidate for Speaker.  I was never in Butler's confidence,
and I suppose he showed me the paper with the expectation
that I should tell Blaine.  Blaine circumvented the movement
by giving assurances to the friends of revenue reform that
he would make up a Committee of Ways and Means with a majority
of persons of their way of thinking.  This ended Butler's
movement.  Blaine kept his word.  Mr. Dawes, a high protectionist,
was made Chairman, and Mr. Kelly, also a high protectionist,
was second on the Committee of Ways and Means; but a majority
were revenue reformers.  The committee reported a bill which
would have been exceedingly injurious to the protected industries
of New England.  That bill was pressed and reported to the
House from the Committee of the Whole; but the member of the
committee who had it in charge, by some strange oversight,
forgot to demand the previous question.  Mr. Dawes, quick
as lightning, took from his desk a bill which he had previously
prepared, but which had been voted down by his committee,
added to it a clause putting tea and coffee on the free list,
and, I believe containing also one or two other items which
were specially popular in some parts of the country, and moved
that as an amendment to the committee's bill, and himself
demanded the previous question.  The cry of a free breakfast-
table was then specially popular.  There were enough members
who did not dare to vote against putting tea and coffee on
the free list to turn the scale.  Dawes's amendment was adopted,
the bill passed, the New England industries saved, and the
tariff reformers beaten.  The persons who saw only the quiet
and modest bearing with which Mr. Dawes conducted himself
in the Senate do not know with how much vigor, quickness of
wit, readiness and skill in debate, he conducted himself amid
the stormy sessions of the House of Representatives during
Grant's first Administration.  There has never been, within
my experience, a greater power than his on the floor of the
House.  He had mighty antagonists.  There were not only very
able Democrats, like Randall and Kerr and Holman, but there
were mighty leaders among the Republicans.  There was little
party discipline.  Each of them seemed bent on having his
own way and taking care of himself, and ready to trip up or
overthrow any of his rivals without mercy or remorse.  Among
them were Butler and Farnsworth and Garfield and Logan and
Schenck and Kelly and Banks and Bingham and Sargent and Blaine
and Poland.

I was not in the habit of going often to the White House
when Grant was President.  When I did, he received me always
with great kindness.  He always seemed to be very fond of
my brother; and I suppose that led him to receive me in a
more intimate and cordial fashion than he would otherwise
have done.  I was first introduced to him in the cloak-room
of the House of Representatives the Saturday evening before
his inauguration.  He came, I think, to see Mr. Boutwell,
then a member of the House, afterward his Secretary of the
Treasury.  He came to Worcester in the summer of that year,
and I went with him in a special car to Groton in the afternoon.
He was not very talkative, though interested in all he saw.
He expressed special delight in the appearance of the boys
of the Worcester Military School, who turned out to escort
him.  One of his sons, a well-grown lad, was upon the train.
The general had not seen him for some time, and he sat with
one arm around him, as one might with a little girl.

It used to be thought that Grant was a man without much literary
capacity.  Since the publication of his "Memoirs," this notion
has been discarded.  I can testify to his great readiness
as a writer.  I saw him write two messages to Congress, both
of a good deal of importance, without pause or correction,
and as rapidly as his pen could fly over the paper.  The first
was the message he sent in on the adoption of the Fifteenth
Amendment to the Constitution.  I was much interested in a
bill in aid of national education.  I called on the President
when the last State needed had ratified the Fifteenth Amendment,
and suggested to him that it might be well to send a special
message to Congress congratulating them on the result, and
urging the policy of promoting education for the new citizens.
I told him of General Washington's interest in a national
university, and what he had said about the importance of
education in his writings.  I said I supposed he had them
in his library.  He said he believed he had, but he wished
I would get the books and bring them to him.  I accordingly
got the books, carried them up to the White House, showed
him the passages, and Grant sat down and wrote in a few minutes,
and quite rapidly, the message that was sent to Congress the
next day.  The other occasion was when he sent in the message
at the time of the controversy between the House and the Senate
in regard to the policy to be pursued in dealing with the
outrages in the South.  The Senate had passed a bill giving
a discretion to the President to take some firm measures to
suppress these disorders, and to protect the colored people
and the Republicans of the South, and if in his judgment he
thought it necessary, to suspend the writ of _habeas corpus._
This measure, which had a considerable majority in the Senate,
was voted down in the House under the influence of Speaker
Blaine, Mr. Dawes, General Farnsworth, and other prominent
Republicans.  During the controversy Mr. Blaine left the
chair and engaged in the debate, being provoked by some thrust
of Butler's.  There was a lively passage at arms, in which
Blaine said he was obliged to leave the chair, as his predecessor
Mr. Colfax had been compelled to do, "to chastise the insolence
of the gentleman from Massachusetts."  Butler replied by some
charge against Blaine, to which Blaine, as he was walking
back to take the gavel again, shouted out:  "It's a calumny."
My sympathies in the matter, so far as the measure of legislation
was concerned, were with Butler, though I had, as is well
known, little sympathy with him in general.

The House undertook to adjourn the session, but the Senate
refused to do so without action on the bill for the protection
of human rights at the South.  While things were in this condition,
I was summoned one morning into the President's room at the
Capitol, where I found President Grant, his Cabinet, several
of the leading Senators, including Mr. Conkling, I think
Mr. Edmunds, Mr. Howe of Wisconsin, and I believe General
Wilson, Judge Shellabarger of Ohio, and one or two other members
of the House.  All the persons who were there were favorable
to the proposed legislation, I believe.  President Grant said
that he had been asked to send in a message urging Congress
to pass a law giving him larger powers for the suppression
of violence at the South; but he had sent for us to explain
the reason why he was unwilling to do it.  He thought that
the country would look with great disapprobation upon a request
to enlarge the powers of the President, and especially to
suspend the writ of _habeas corpus_ in time of peace, and that he
felt especially unwilling to subject himself to that criticism
as he had not come to that office from civil life, but had been
a soldier, and it might be supposed he favored military methods
of government.  Several of the gentlemen present expressed
rather guardedly their dissent from this view, but Grant seemed
to remain firm.  I kept silent, as became a person young in
public life, until Mr. Howe and Judge Shellabarger whispered
together, and then came to me and said: "Mr. Hoar, you may
perhaps, be able to have some influence on him.  Won't you
say something?"  I then made a little speech to the President,
in which I said that there was no question of the existence
of these disorders and crimes; that they would be likely to
be increased, and not diminished, especially as the elections
in the Southern States approached.  He could not allow them
to continue.  He would be compelled, in my judgment, to interpose
and go to the verge of his authority, or to leave to their
fate those people whom we were bound by every consideration
of honor to protect.  I asked him if he did not think it
would be better, instead of exercising a doubtful authority
of his own, acquired without legislative sanction, to obtain
the necessary authority from Congress in advance.  I thought
it much less likely to be imputed to him that he was acting
in the manner of a soldier and not of a statesman if he were
careful to ask in advance the direction of the law-making
power, and the people understood he was unwilling, even if
he had the authority, to act without the sanction of Congress.
This view produced an instant change of mind.  Grant took
a pen, wrote a brief message with great rapidity, read it
aloud to the persons who were assembled, and sent it in that
very day without the change of a word.  It is a clear and
excellent statement.  The result was that the Republican opposition
to the measure in the House was withdrawn, the two Houses
came to an agreement, and adjourned without day soon afterward.

One of the most important acts of President Grant's Administration
was his veto of the Inflation Bill, which provided for a considerable
increase of the large volume of legal tender paper money,
which at that time was not redeemed by the government.  This
veto is regarded by most persons as the turning of the corner
by the American people, and setting the face of the Government
toward specie payment and honest money.  It was during the
hard times that followed the crisis of 1873.  It is said that
President Grant had made up his mind to sign the bill, and
sat down to write out his reasons, but that he found them
so unsatisfactory that he changed his mind and sent in his
veto message.  I had not been disposed to believe this until
I was told, a little while ago, by Secretary Boutwell that
he had the statement that that was the fact from the lips
of Grant himself.  If that be true, the President must have
changed his mind twice.  When the bill was pending in the
House of Representatives, my wife's father, a very simple-
hearted and excellent merchant of Worcester, who spent seventy
years of life in business on the same spot, visited us in
Washington.  I took him up to see Grant.  The General was
alone and, contrary to his usual custom, in a very talkative
mood.  He seemed to like Mr. Miller, who had a huge respect
for him, and evidently saw that we were not there for any
office-seeking or other personal end.  He talked with great
freedom about himself and his visit to Worcester.  He expressed
his wonder that the town had grown and prospered so without
any advantage of river or harbor or water power, or the neighborhood
of rich mines or rich wheat-fields.  He then asked me how
the bill for an increased issue of green-backs was coming
on in the House.  I told him it seemed likely to pass.  He
then went on to express very earnestly his objection to the
measure and to the whole policy, and his dislike of irredeemable
paper.  He said that it was an immense injury to all classes
of the people, but that it bore heavily upon poor and ignorant
men.  He said that speculators and bankers and brokers could
foresee the changes which came about from the fluctuations
of paper money and protect themselves from them, but the workingmen
and poor men had no such advantages--that they were the greatest
sufferers.  He added a suggestion I never heard before, that
there was in many parts of the country great loss from the
counterfeiting of paper money--a loss which fell almost wholly
upon poor and ignorant men.  I never in my life heard Grant
talk so freely on any occasion.  I never in my life, but once,
saw him apparently so deeply moved.  I said: "Mr. President,
you know the story of old Judge Grier and the Pennsylvania
jury."  "No," said he.  "Well," said I, "there was once a
jury in Pennsylvania, when Grier was holding court, who brought
in a very unjust verdict.  The judge said: 'Mr. Clerk, record
that verdict and enter under it, "Set aside." I will have
you to know, Gentlemen of the Jury, that it takes thirteen
men in this court to steal a man's farm.' It takes three powers,
Mr. President, under our government to pass a law." Grant
laughed and said:  "Well, if you send it up to me, make it
just as bad as you can."  There can be no possible question
that he then desired and meant to veto the bill.  His desire
that it might be as bad as possible was that it might be more
easy to defend his action.

I had another exceedingly interesting conversation with the
President on my return from New Orleans.  In the winter of
1875 I went to New Orleans, as Chairman of a Committee of
the House of Representatives, to investigate and to ascertain
which of the rival State governments had the true title.  Louisiana
was in a terrible condition.  Sheridan was in command of the
United States troops there, and it was only their presence
that prevented an armed and bloody revolution.  The old rebel
element, as it was, had committed crimes against the freedmen
and the white Republicans which make one of the foulest and
bloodiest chapters in all history.  Sheridan had much offended
the white people there by his vigorous enforcement of laws,
and especially by a letter in which he had spoken of them
as banditti.  I stopped, during my stay in New Orleans, at
the St. Charles Hotel, where Sheridan also was a guest.  When
he came into the crowded breakfast-room every morning, there
were loud hisses and groans from nearly the whole assembled
company.  The morning papers teemed with abusive articles.
The guests would take these papers, underscore some specially
savage attack, and tell the waiter to take it to General Sheridan
as he sat at table at his breakfast.  The General would glance
at it with an unruffled face, and bow and smile toward the
sender of the article.  The whole thing made little impression
on him.  No violence toward him personally was ventured upon.
The night before I started on my return to Washington, General
Sheridan called to take leave.  I was much amused by the simplicity
and _naivete_ with which he discussed the situation.  He
said, among other things:  "What you want to do, Mr. Hoar,
when you get back to Washington, is to suspend the what-
do-you-call-it."  He meant, of course, the _habeas corpus._
He knew there was some very uncomfortable thing which stood
in his way of promptly suppressing the crimes in Louisiana,
where he said more men had been murdered for their political
opinions than were slain in the Mexican War.  When I got back
to Washington, the President sent for me and Mr. Frye of
Maine, a member of the committee, to come to the President's
room in the Capitol to report to him the result of our observations.
During the conversation, Grant expressed what he had often
expressed on other occasions, his great admiration for Sheridan.
He said:  "I believe General Sheridan has no superior as a
general, either living or dead, and perhaps not an equal.
People think he is only capable of leading an army in battle,
or to do a particular thing he is told to do.  But I mean,
all the qualities of a commander which enable him to direct
over as large a territory as any two nations can cover in
war.  He has judgment, prudence, foresight, and power to deal
with the dispositions needed in a great war.  I entertained
this opinion of him before he became generally known in the
late war." I was so impressed with this generous tribute of
one great soldier to another that, as soon as the interview
was over, I wrote it down and asked Mr. Frye to join with
me in certifying to its correctness.  It is now before me,
and has the following certificate: "The foregoing is a correct
statement of what General Grant said to me and Mr. Frye in
a conversation this morning in the President's room.  February
15, 1875.  George F. Hoar."  "I heard the above conversation,
and certify to the correctness of the above statement of it.
William P. Frye."

I heard General Grant express a like opinion of Sheridan
under circumstances perhaps even more impressive.  I was a
guest at a brilliant dinner-party given by Mr. Robeson, Secretary
of the Navy, where Grant, General Sherman, General Sheridan,
Commodore Alden, Admiral Porter, Chief Justice Chase, Attorney-
General E. R. Hoar, Lyman Trumbull, Mr. Blaine, and some
other men of great distinction were present.  There were about
twenty guests.  Mr. James Russell Lowell was of the company.
I believe no one of that brilliant circle is now living.  Commodore
Alden remarked, half in jest, to a gentleman who sat near
him, that there was nothing he disliked more than a subordinate
who always obeyed orders.  "What is that you are saying, Commodore?"
said President Grant, across the table.  The Commodore repeated
what he had said.  "There is a good deal of truth in what
you say," said General Grant.  "One of the virtues of General
Sheridan was that he knew when to act without orders.  Just
before the surrender of Lee, General Sheridan captured some
despatches from which he learned that Lee had ordered his
supplies to a certain place.  I was on the other side of the
river, where he could get no communication from me until the
next morning.  General Sheridan pushed on at once without
orders, got to the place fifteen minutes before the rebels,
and captured the supplies.  After the surrender was concluded,
the first thing General Lee asked me for was rations for his
men.  I issued to them the same provisions which Sheridan
had captured.  Now if Sheridan, as most men would have done,
had waited for orders from me, Lee would have got off." I
listened with wonder at the generous modesty which, before
that brilliant company, could remove one of the brightest
laurels from his own brow and place it on the brow of Sheridan.

I had another memorable conversation with Grant, not so pleasant.
It revealed a capacity of intense passion which I do not know
that he ever manifested on any other occasion.  He had sent
into the Senate the nomination of William A. Simmons for
the important office of Collector of Boston.  This was due
to the influence of General Butler.  Mr. Sumner, whose controversy
with the President is well known, was then the senior Senator
from Massachusetts.  The nomination had been made, of course,
without consulting him, with whom Grant was not on friendly
terms, and without consulting any of the members of the House
of Representatives except Butler.  There was a very earnest
opposition to this nomination.  I went up to the White House
to endeavor to induce President Grant to withdraw it, but
he had gone out.  I repeated my visit once or twice, but failed
to find the President.  The third or fourth time that I went
up, as I was coming away I saw President Grant on the other
side of Pennsylvania Avenue, walking alone on the sidewalk
adjoining Lafayette Square.  I suppose it was not in accordance
with etiquette to join the President when he was walking alone
in the street; but I overtook him, and said: "Mr. President,
I have been to the White House several times, and been unable
to find you in.  The business of the House is very urgent
just now, and it is difficult for me to get away again.  Perhaps,
therefore, you will kindly allow me to say what I have to
say here."  The President very courteously assented.  I walked
along with him, turned the corner, and walked along the sidewalk
adjoining the east side of Lafayette Square, until we came
to the corner opposite the house then occupied by Sumner,
which is now part of the Arlington Hotel.  I told the President
that I thought the Republicans of Massachusetts would be much
dissatisfied with the nomination of Simmons, and hoped it
might be withdrawn.  The President replied that he thought
it would be an injustice to the young man to do so, and that
the opposition to him seemed to be chiefly because he was
a friend of General Butler.  I combated the argument as well
as I could.  The whole conversation was exceedingly quiet
and friendly on both sides until we turned the corner by Mr.
Sumner's house, when the President, with great emphasis, and
shaking his closed fist toward Sumner's house, said: "I shall
not withdraw the nomination.  That man who lives up there
has abused me in a way which I never suffered from any other
man living."  I did not, of course, press the President further.
But I told him I regretted very much the misunderstanding
between him and Mr. Sumner, and took my leave.  It was evident
that in some way the President connected this nomination with
the controversy between himself and Sumner.

I have always lamented, in common with all the friends and
lovers of both these great men, that they should have so misunderstood
each other; yet it was not unnatural.  They were both honest,
fearless, patriotic, and brave.  Yet never were two honest,
fearless, patriotic, and brave men more unlike each other.
The training, the mental characteristics, the field of service,
the capacities, the virtues, the foibles of each tended to
make him underestimate and misunderstand the other.  The man
of war, and the man of peace; the man whose duty it was to
win battles and conduct campaigns, and the man who trusted
to the prevalence of ideas in a remote future; the man who
wielded executive power, and the man who in a fierce contest
with executive power had sought to extend the privileges,
power, and authority of the Senate; the man who adhered tenaciously
to his friends though good and evil report, and the man whose
friendships were such that evil report of personal dishonor
never dared assail them; the man of little taste for letters,
and the man of vast and varied learning; the man of blunt,
plain ways, and the man of courtly manners; the man of few
words, and the man who ever deemed himself sitting in a lofty
pulpit with a mighty sounding board, with a whole widespread
people for a congregation--how could they understand each
other?  Grant cared little for speech-making.  It sometimes
seemed as if Sumner thought the Rebellion itself was put down
by speeches in the Senate, and that the war was an unfortunate
and most annoying, though trifling disturbance, as if a fire-
engine had passed by.  Sumner did injustice to Grant; Grant
did injustice to Sumner.  The judgment of each was warped
and clouded, until each looked with a blood-shotten eye at
the conduct of the other.  But I believe they know and honor
each other now.


CHAPTER XIII
SUMNER AND WILSON

When I took my seat on the 4th of March, 1869, the Commonwealth
of Massachusetts had a position of power in both Houses of
Congress never held by any other State before or since, unless
we except that held for a short time in early days by Virginia.
Charles Sumner was beyond all question the foremost figure
on the National stage, save Grant alone.  He had seen the
triumph of the doctrines for which he had contended all his
life.  He had more than any other man contributed to fetter
the hands of Andrew Johnson and drive him from power.  Henry
Wilson was the most skilful political organizer in the country.
Sumner was at the head of the Committee on Foreign Relations,
and Wilson of that of Military Affairs.  In the House Henry
L. Dawes was at the head of the Committee on Appropriations,
Benjamin F. Butler of the Committee on Reconstruction, William
B. Washburn of the Committee on Claims, Nathaniel P. Banks
of the Committee on Foreign Affairs.  These Committees with
the Committee on the Judiciary of which General Butler was
a member, and the Committee on Ways and Means, controlled
the policy of the House on all the great questions then interesting
the country.  Samuel Hooper had the third place on the Committee
on Coinage, Weights and Measures.  But he was its dominant
member and in a later Congress introduced the Bill for Reforming
the Currency, a wise and salutary measure.  It is known,
however, among ignorant people in some parts of the country
as "The Crime of '73."

Sumner and Wilson are so well known to the American people
that it would be superfluous for me to attempt to describe
either elaborately.  I have spoken of each at some length
elsewhere.

Charles Sumner held a place in the public life of the country
which no other man ever shared with him.  He held a place
in the public life of the world shared by very few indeed.
He was an idealist.  He subjected every measure to the inexorable
test of the moral law.  Yet, at the same time, he was a powerful
political leader, and in a time when the fate of the Republic
was decided accomplished vast practical results.  Where duty
seemed to him to utter its high commands he could see no obstacle
in hostile majorities, and no restraint in the limitations
of a written Constitution.  It is right, therefore Constitutional,
was the logical formula with which he dealt with every question
of State.  We should be deaf and blind to all the lessons
of history, if we were to declare it to be safe that men
trusted with Executive or even with Legislative power should
act on that principle.  Unfortunately, humanity is so constituted
that the benevolent despot is likely to work more mischief
even than a malevolent despot.  His example of absolute disregard
of constitutional restraints will be followed by men of very
different motives.  Yet the influence of one such man pressing
and urging his companions forward in a Legislative body like
the Senate of the United States, keeping ever before the people
the highest ideals, inspired by the love of liberty, and ever
speaking and working in the fear of God, is inestimable.

Charles Sumner lacked that quality which enables the practical
statesman to adjust the mechanism of complicated statutes.
He had no genius for detail.  It would not have been safe
to trust him with Appropriation Bills, or Bills for raising
revenue.  But he was competent to deal with questions of the
greatest moment to the State.  He knew what are its governing
forces.  He retained his hold on those forces.  He directed
them.  He caused sound principles of action to take effect
in the Government of the State in great emergencies.  He converted
the people to his opinion.  He inspired the people with lofty
desires.  He accomplished wise public ends by wise means.
He maintained his hold on power in an important time.  He
took a prominent part in great debates and was the acknowledged
leader of one side of the question.  He believed that the
conscience of the people was a better guide than individual
ambitions.  He always did the thing he could best do.  He
did the thing that most needed to be done, the thing most
effective at the time, the thing that no other man did or
could do.  He left to others to do what hundreds of others
could do well enough.  He contributed largely to the Government
of his country, in the most trying period of our history,
its motive and its direction.  That is a pretty practical
contribution to the voyage which furnishes to the steamship
its engine and its compass.  His figure will abide in history
like that of St. Michael in art, an emblem of celestial purity,
of celestial zeal, of celestial courage.  It will go down
to immortality with its foot upon the dragon of Slavery, and
with the sword of the spirit in its hand, but with a tender
light in its eye, and a human love in its smile.  Guido and
Raphael conceived their "inviolable saint,"

  Invulnerable, impenetrably armed:
  Such high advantages his innocence
  Gave him above his foe; not to have sinned,
  Not to have disobeyed.  In fight he stood
  Unwearied, unobnoxious to be pained
  By wounds.

The Michael of the painters, as a critic of genius akin to
their own has pointed out, rests upon his prostrate foe light
as a morning cloud, no muscle strained, with unhacked sword
and unruffled wings, his bright tunic and shining armor without
a rent or stain.  Not so with our human champion.  He had
to bear the bitterness and agony of a long and doubtful struggle,
with common weapons and against terrible odds.  He came out
of it with soiled garments and with a mortal wound, but without
a regret and without a memory of hate.

It was fortunate for Sumner and fortunate for the Commonwealth
and the country that he had Henry Wilson for his colleague.
Wilson supplied almost everything that Sumner lacked.  I cannot
undertake to tell the story of his useful life in the space
at my command here.  If I were to try I should do great injustice
to him and to myself.

He was a very impressive and interesting character, of many
virtues, of many faults.  His faults he would have been the
first to acknowledge himself.  Indeed, I do not know of any
fault he had that he would not have acknowledged and lamented
in a talk with his near friend, or that he would have sought
to hide from the people.

The motives which controlled his life from the time when
he snatched such moments as he could from this day's work
on a shoemaker's bench and studied far into the night to
fit himself for citizenship, down to the time when he died
in the Vice-President's chamber--the second officer in the
Government--and if his life and health had been spared, he
very likely would have been called to the highest place in
the Government--were public and patriotic, not personal.
He was not without ambitions for himself.  But they were
always subordinate in him to the love of liberty and the
love of country.  He espoused the unpopular side when he
started in life, and he stuck to it through all its unpopularity.

He was a skilful, adroit, practised and constant political
manager.  He knew the value of party organization, and did
not disdain the arts and diplomacies of a partisan.  He carried
them sometimes farther, in my judgment, than a scrupulous
sense of honor would warrant, or than was consistent with
the noble, frank, lofty behavior which Massachusetts and the
American people expect of their statesmen.  The most conspicuous
instance of this was his joining the Know Nothing Party, in
whose intolerance he had no belief.

But it was done as an instrument for destroying the existing
political parties, which were an obstacle to freedom, and
clearing the field for a new one.  This object was successfully
accomplished, and in its accomplishment Wilson had a large
share.  But it was, in my judgment, doing evil that good may
come.  Wilson freely admitted this before he died, and said--
I have no doubt with absolute sincerity--that he would give
ten years of his life if he could blot out that one transaction.

He was a very valuable legislator.  He was the author of many
important measures in the war, during which he was chairman
of the Committee on Military Affairs of the Senate, and showed
much ability in the way of practical and constructive statesmanship.
I do not believe any man in the Senate in his time, not even
Sumner, had more influence over his colleagues than he.

There was not a drop of bigotry, intolerance, or personal
hatred in him.  As you would expect from a man who raised
himself from the humblest to the loftiest place in the republic,
he was a believer in pure manhood, without respect of persons
or conditions.

He was a powerful stump orator.  He never made speeches that
were quoted as models of eloquence or wisdom.  But he knew
what the farmer and the mechanic and the workman at his bench
were thinking of, and addressed himself always to their best
and highest thought.  He was a great vote-making speaker.
When Mechanics Hall, in Worcester, or the City Hall was filled
to hear Henry Wilson in a close campaign, many men who entered
the hall undecided or against him, went away to take earnest
part on his side.

He had a good many angry political strifes.  But he never
bore malice or seemed to keep angry over night.  General Butler
once wrote him a letter pouring out on his head the invective
of which he was so conspicuous a master.  Wilson brought the
letter into the office of a dear friend of mine in Boston
when I happened to be there, handed it to us to read, and
observed:  "That is a cussed mean letter." I do not think
he ever spoke of it or scarcely thought of it again.

But his chief gift and faculty is one which I can hardly
think of words to describe fitly.  The few of his old friends
who are left will understand what I mean.  But I can hardly
make those who did not know him, or live in his time, comprehend
it.  That was his rare and unequalled gift of gathering and
uttering the sentiment of the people.  When new and doubtful
matters of pith and moment were to be dealt with, and after
a long apparent hesitation, and backing and filling, and what
people who did not know him thought trembling in the balance,
he would at last make up his mind, determine on his action,
and strike a blow which had in it not only the vigor of his
own arm, but the whole vigor and strength of the public sentiment
which he had gathered and which he represented.  He was an
ubiquitous person.  He would travel all over the State, spending
the day, perhaps, in visiting forty shops and factories in
the neighborhood of Boston; then take a nine or ten o'clock
train at night and go up to Springfield, get in there at two
or three o'clock in the morning, call up out of bed some active
politician and tell him he had come to sleep with him; spend
the night in talking over the matter about which he was anxious
until six or seven o'clock in the morning (I do not believe
he ever slept much, either with anybody or alone), and then,
perhaps, up to Northampton or Greenfield to see some person
whom he called Tom, Dick, or Harry, but who knew the local
feeling there; and after a week or two spent in that way,
never giving his own opinion, talking as if he were all things
to all men, seeming to hesitate and hesitate and falter and
be frightened, so if you had met him and talked with him you
would have said, if you did not know him well, that there
was no more thought, nor more steadiness of purpose, or backbone
in him than in an easterly cloud; but at length, when the
time came, and he had got ready, the easterly cloud seemed
suddenly to have been charged with an electric fire and a
swift and resistless bolt flashed out, and the righteous
judgment of Massachusetts came from his lips.

With all his faults, Peace be to the ashes of Henry Wilson.
He was a leader and a tribune of the people.  We do not seem
to have such leaders now-a-days.  I liked Charles Sumner better.
But it was a great thing for Massachusetts, a great thing for
human liberty, and a great thing for Charles Sumner himself
that he had Henry Wilson as a friend and ally, a disciple
and a co-worker.

If Wilson had lived, in my opinion, it is quite likely that
he would have been the Republican candidate for the Presidency
in 1876, and would have been triumphantly elected.  There
was a very powerful movement going on all over the country
to bring that about.  Wilson's hold upon the affection of
the people everywhere was very strong indeed.

Wilson became Vice-President of the United States, March 4,
1873.  He died two years afterward.  I was asked to write
the inscription for a tablet placed in the Vice-President's
Room in the Capitol by order of the Senate in 1902.  It follows
here.

IN THIS ROOM
HENRY WILSON
VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES
DIED NOVEMBER 22 1875.
THE SON OF A FARM LABORER, NEVER AT
SCHOOL MORE THAN TWELVE MONTHS, IN
YOUTH A JOURNEYMAN SHOEMAKER, HE
RAISED HIMSELF TO THE HIGH PLACES OF
FAME, HONOR AND POWER, AND BY UNWEARIED
STUDY MADE HIMSELF AN AUTHORITY IN THE
HISTORY OF HIS COUNTRY AND OF LIBERTY,
AND AN ELOQUENT PUBLIC SPEAKER TO
WHOM SENATE AND PEOPLE EAGERLY
LISTENED.  HE DEALT WITH AND CONTROLLED
VAST PUBLIC EXPENDITURE DURING A GREAT
CIVIL WAR, YET LIVED AND DIED POOR, AND
LEFT TO HIS GRATEFUL COUNTRYMEN THE
MEMORY OF AN HONORABLE PUBLIC SERVICE,
AND A GOOD NAME FAR BETTER THAN RICHES.


CHAPTER XIV
PERSONALITIES IN DEBATE

I have been, in general, enabled to avoid angry conflicts
in debate or the exchange of rough personalities.  My few
experiences of that kind came from attacks on Massachusetts,
which I could not well avoid resenting.  The only two I now
think of happened in my first term.  In one case, Mr. S.
S. Cox of New York, who was one of the principal champions
on the Democratic side of the House, a man noted for his wit,
undertook to make an attack on the Massachusetts Puritans,
and to revive the old slander that they had burned witches.
I made some slight correction of what Mr. Cox had said but
he renewed the attack.  I was then comparatively unknown in
the House.  Mr. Cox treated me with considerable contempt,
and pointing to Mr. Dawes, who had charge of the bill then
under discussion, but who had not given any reply to Cox's
attack, said, with a contemptuous look at me: "Massachusetts
does not send her Hector to the field," to which I answered
that it was not necessary to send Hector to the field when
the attack was led by Thersites.  The retort seemed to strike
the House favorably, and was printed in the papers throughout
the country, and Cox let me and Massachusetts alone thereafter.

I had a like encounter with Daniel W. Voorhees of Indiana,
who was a more formidable competitor.  Mr. Voorhees made the
same charge against the people of Massachusetts of having
burned witches at the stake in the old Puritan time.  It was
in a debate under the five-minute rule.  After reiterating
the old familiar slander that the State of Massachusetts in
her early history had burned witches at the stake, Mr. Voorhees
added that in 1854 or 1855 the Know Nothings broke up convents,
burned Catholic churches, and would have burned Catholics
and Sisters of Charity themselves at the stake within her
borders, if they had dared to do so.

I declared both of these charges to be utterly false, and
said that no human being was ever burned at the stake in
Massachusetts for the crime of witchcraft, and though at a
time when the whole civilized world believed in witchcraft
on the authority of certain passages in the Old Testament,
the courts of Massachusetts did execute some nineteen or
twenty persons of both sexes for the alleged crime of witchcraft,
it was also true that the people of Massachusetts were the
first among men to see the error and wickedness of this course;
that although late in the following century, many people were
condemned for witchcraft in England and on the Continent,
the love of justice and the intelligence of Massachusetts
first exposed that error and wickedness.

I explained that a convent was burned in Massachusetts, not
in 1854 or 1855 by the Know Nothings, but in 1836, by a mob
excited by a rumor that some terrible cruelty had been inflicted
upon some young women who had been placed in a convent at
Charlestown; that the criminals were arrested, tried and sentenced,
and that their crime left no more stain upon the State than
any criminal act committed within the limits of any civilized
country.  In conclusion, I said it did not become the political
friends of the men who had burned our soldiers alive at Fort
Pillow, or who burned orphan asylums in New York, and hung
negroes on lamp posts, to talk of cruelties in a past age.

This retort angered Voorhees beyond endurance, and before
I could finish my sentence, he sprang to his feet and cried
out in great anger:  "Every word the gentleman says is false
and he knows it."  There was a demand that my words be taken
down and that the words of Mr. Voorhees be taken down.  That
was done.  The chairman of the committee, Mr. Ingersoll,
brother of the famous Robert G. Ingersoll, declared that
the words of Mr. Voorhees were unparliamentary, and ruled
that my language was "rather pungent but not unparliamentary."
Whereupon the committee arose amid great laughter, and the
transaction ended.


CHAPTER XV
THE NATIONAL HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES IN 1869

The House, when I entered it, contained many very able men.
Some of them remained long enough in public life to fill a
large and prominent place in the history of the country.  Others
retired early.  I will mention only a few.

I do not think his countrymen have estimated Nathaniel P.
Banks at his true value.  When he left office at the ripe
age of seventy-five a public service ended surpassed in variety
and usefulness by that of few citizens of Massachusetts since
the days of John Adams.  He bore a great part in a great history.
Men who saw him in his later life, a feeble, kindly old man,
with only the remains of his stately courtesy, had little
conception of the figure of manly strength and dignity which
he presented when he presided over the Constitutional Convention
in 1853, or took the oath of office as Governor in 1858.  He
raised himself from a humble place, unaided, under the stimulant
of a native and eager desire for excellence.  He was always
regarded by the working people of Massachusetts as the type
of what was best in themselves and as the example and representative
of the great opportunity which the Republic holds out to its
poorest citizens and their children.  He was a natural gentleman,
always kindly and true.  From this trait and not because of
a want of fidelity to his own convictions he found as warm
friends among his political opponents as among his political
associates.

Gen. Banks was Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations
in 1869.  He was then beginning to lose somewhat his oratorical
power and the splendid qualities which made him so important
a force in the history of Massachusetts and of the country.
But still on fit occasions he showed all his old vigor and
brilliancy.  When the delegation gave a dinner to William
B. Washburn on his election as Governor Banks presided.  He
kept up a running stream of eloquence and wit as he introduced
the different speakers and punctuated their remarks with interjections
of his own, which I have never known equalled, though I have
attended many like occasions.  Banks was a man of humble origin.
He used to be known as the Waltham Bobbin Boy.  He worked
in his boyhood and youth in a factory in Waltham.  He had
very early a passion for reading.  When Felton was inaugurated
President of Harvard, Banks was Governor.  As is the custom,
he represented the Commonwealth and inducted the new President
into office.  There were famous speakers at the Dinner,--
Daniel Webster, old Josiah Quincy, Edward Everett, Dr. Walker,
Winthrop, and Felton himself.  But the Governor's speech was
the best of the whole.  He described the time of his poverty
in his youth when he used to work in a mill five days in a
week, and on Saturday walk ten miles to Boston to spend the
day in the Athenaeum Library and ten miles back at night.
He told how he used to peer in through the gate as he passed
Harvard College with an infinite longing for the treasures
of learning that were inside.  That refined and fastidious
audience was stirred by an unwonted emotion.

The older public men of Massachusetts did not take very kindly
to Banks.  He was a man of the people.  He was sometimes charged,
though unjustly, with being a demagogue.  He sometimes erred
in his judgment.  But he was a man of large and comprehensive
vision, of independence, and exerted his vast influence with
the people for high ends.  He might justly be called, like
the negro Toussaint, L'Ouverture,--The Opener.  His election
as Governor extracted the people from the mire of Know Nothingism.
His election as Speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives
was part of the first victory over the Whig Dynasty which
had kept the State, contrary to its best traditions, in alliance
with slavery.  His election as Speaker of the United States
House of Representatives was the first National Republican
victory.  His taking a little slave girl on a cannon during
the War in his march through the Shenandoah Valley was hailed
throughout the country as an omen that the War would not end
until slavery was abolished.  He rendered a special service
to the Commonwealth and to the cause of good learning which
I think never would have been accomplished without his personal
influence.  When Agassiz had been in this country but a few
years he seriously contemplated going back to Europe.  It
was understood that he would stay if a sufficient fund could
be raised to enable him to prosecute his researches here and
to establish a museum where his collections could be cared
for and made useful to science.  There was a meeting in Boston
to see about raising the fund.  The Governor was invited to
attend.  The gentlemen present spoke rather doubtfully of
the prospect of success.  Governor Banks was asked what he
thought the Commonwealth would do.  He replied: "The Commonwealth
will give a hundred thousand dollars." The Legislature had
been of late years economical, not to say niggardly, in such
matters.  Governor Banks's declaration was received with entire
incredulity.  One gentleman present said that he was very
much discouraged by what His Excellency had said.  If he
had said some moderate sum there might have been hope that
it would be given, but it was utterly hopeless to expect
that any such extravagant sum as that would be contributed
by the State.  The gentleman seemed to be well warranted
in what he said.  The three colleges, Harvard, Amherst and
Williams, had united in an application for one hundred thousand
dollars shortly before.  It was supported by the eloquence
of Edward Everett and the authority of Mark Hopkins and President
Hitchcock.  Harvard was then so poor that they had not money
to spare when they wanted to move the pulpit from the end
to the side of the Chapel.  But the application was denied.
Banks relied in his somewhat sonorous fashion: "You need not
trouble yourself, Sir.  The Commonwealth will give a hundred
thousand dollars." And she did.  This was followed by the
grant, under Banks's influence, for the endowment of the Boston
Institute of Technology, large grants to the colleges and
grants to some of the endowed schools.

General Banks's statue should stand by the State House as
one of the foremost benefactors of the great educational
institutions of the Commonwealth, and as an example of what
a generous ambition can accomplish for the humblest child
in the Republic.


Governor Boutwell, who is still living, became a member of
President Grant's Cabinet in March, 1869, and remained in
the House only a day or two of the spring session which lasted
about ten days.  He was succeeded in the following December
by George M. Brooks, who had been my friend from early boyhood.
He would in my judgment have had an eminent political career
if he had remained in public life, but for his great modesty.
He never seemed to value highly anything he accomplished himself.
But his sympathy and praise were always called out by anything
done by a friend.  I think Brooks took much more pleasure
in anything well done or well said by one of his colleagues
than in anything of his own.  He was a man of an exceedingly
sweet, gracious and affectionate nature, loving as a  child,
yet as men of such natures often are, thoroughly manly.  He
was incapable of any meanness or conscious wrong-doing.  He
had a very pleasant and ready wit.  The people of Middlesex
County, especially of Concord, were very fond of him, and
would have kept him in public life as long as he desired.
But his heath was not good in Washington.  The climate of
the place and the bad air of the House were unfavorable.  He
did not fancy very much the strife and noise of that turbulent
assembly.  So he gladly accepted an appointment to the office
of Judge of Probate of Middlesex County which was absolutely
suited to him.  He administered that important office to the
entire satisfaction of the people until his death.  I think
George Brooks's smile would be enough to console any widow
in an ordinary affliction.


William Barrett Washburn, afterward Governor and Senator,
was Chairman of the Committee on Claims.

He is one of the best recent examples of a character whose
external manifestations change somewhat with changing manners
and fashions, but the substance of whose quality abides and
I believe will abide through many succeeding generations.
He was a New England Puritan.  He brought to the service of
the people a purity of heart, a perfect integrity, an austerity
of virtue which not so much rendered him superior to all temptation
as made it impossible to conceive that any of the objects
of personal desire which lead public men astray could ever
to him even be a temptation.

There were few stronger or clearer intellects in the public
service.  His mind moved rapidly by a very simple and direct
path to a sound and correct result in the most difficult
and complicated cases.  The Chairmanship of the Committee
on Claims was then with two or three exceptions the most
important position in the House.  He spoke very seldom and
then to the point, stating very perfectly the judgment of
a clear-headed and sound business man.  But his opinion carried
great weight.  He was universally respected.  Every man felt
safe in following his recommendation in any matter which he
had carefully investigated.

Congress was beset by claims to the amount of hundreds and
hundreds of millions, where fraud seemed sometimes to exhaust
its resources, where, in the conflict of testimony, it was
almost impossible to determine the fact, and where the facts
when determined often presented the most novel and difficult
questions of public law and public policy.  Mr. Washburn's
dealing with these cases was the very sublimity of common
sense.  He very soon acquired the confidence of the House
so completely that his judgment became its law in matters
within the jurisdiction of his committee.  I became acquainted
with him, an acquaintance which soon ripened into cordial
friendship, when I entered the House in the spring of 1869.
I think I may fairly claim that it was the result of what
I said and did that he was agreed upon by the opponents of
General Butler as their candidate for Governor, and was Butler's
successful antagonist.

Beneath his plain courtesy was a firmness which Cato never
surpassed.  Upon a question of morality, or freedom or righteousness
there was never a drop of compromise in his blood.  He could
not be otherwise than the constant foe of slavery, and the
constant friend of everything which went to emancipate and
elevate the slave.  It was his good fortune to record his
vote in favor of all the three great amendments to the constitution,
and to be the supporter, friend and trusted counsellor of
Abraham Lincoln.

After his election to fill Sumner's unexpired term I had a
letter from Adin Thayer in which he said:  "Washburn hates
Butler with an Evangelical hatred which you know is more intense
than a Liberal Christian can attain to."


James Buffington was a shrewd and amusing character.  He understood
the temper of the House very well and had great influence
in accomplishing anything he undertook.  He prided himself
on the fact that he never missed answering to his name at
roll call during his whole term of service.  He understood
very well the art of pleasing his constituents.  He made it
a rule, he told me, to send at least one document under his
own frank every year to every voter in his District.  On one
occasion in a hotly contested election he had four votes more
in a town on Cape Cod than any other candidate.  He was curious
and inquired what it meant.  The Chairman of the Selectmen
told him that there were four men who lived in an out-of-
the-way place, who never came to town meetings and nobody
seemed to know much about them.  They were a father and his
three sons, living together on the same farm.  But at that
election they appeared at the town meeting.  All four voted
for Buffington and for no other candidate and disappeared
at once.  The Selectman asked him why he voted for Buffington.
"If he knew him?" "No!" said the old fellow.  "He knows me.
He sends me and each of my sons a document every winter."

Buffington was very anxious about the matter of patronage
and of getting offices for all his constituents.  A great
many men applied for his support; frequently there were many
applications for the same office.  He did not like to refuse
them.  So he made it a rule to give all of them a letter of
recommendation to the Departments.  But he had an understanding
with the appointing clerks that if he wrote his name Buffington
with the g he desired that man should be appointed, but if
he wrote it Buffinton without the g he did not wish to be
taken seriously.


Beyond all question the leader of the Massachusetts delegation,
and of the House, was Henry L. Dawes.  He had had a successful
career at the bar and in public life before his election to
Congress.  In Congress he made his way to the front very rapidly.
No member of the House of Representatives from Massachusetts
and few from any part of the Union had an influence which
could be at all compared with his.  He became in succession
Chairman of the two foremost Committees, that of Appropriations
and that of Ways and Means.  He was a prominent candidate
for the office of Speaker when Mr. Blaine was elected and
was defeated, as I have said elsewhere, only by the adroit
management of Butler.

Mr. Dawes represented the Berkshire District in the House
for eighteen years when he declined further service there.
He was then elected to the Senate where he remained eighteen
years longer, when he declined further service there.  During
the last part of his last term he was troubled with a growing
deafness which I suppose had much to do with his declining
to enter upon the contest for another reelection.  He was
regarded by the manufacturers of Massachusetts as their faithful
and powerful representative.  He had several contests for
his seat in the Senate when his opponents thought they were
sure of success; but they found themselves left in the minority
when the vote came to be taken.  They never fully comprehended
what defeated them.  They would get the support of men who
were active in caucuses and nominating conventions and supposed
with excellent reason that they were safe.  But there was
in every factory village in Massachusetts some man of influence
and ability and wealth, frequently a large employer of labor,
who had been in the habit of depending on Mr. Dawes for the
security of his most important interests, so far as they could
be affected by legislation.  They knew him and they knew that
he knew them, and their power when they chose to exert it
could not be resisted.

Persons who saw Mr. Dawes in his later years only, when he
sat quietly in his seat in the Senate, taking little part save
in a few special subjects, could not realize what a power he
had been when he was the leading and strongest champion in
that great body which contained Blaine and Bingham and Butler
and Schenck and Farnsworth and Allison and Eugene Hale and
Garfield.

When Mr. Dawes left the Senate in 1893, his associates gave
a banquet in his honor, at which I made the following remarks.
They were, I believe, approved by the entire company.  I record
them here as my deliberate judgment:

"If there be any admirer of other forms of government who
think unfavorably of our republican fashion of selecting
our rulers, I would invite him to examine the list of men
whom Massachusetts for a hundred years has chosen as her
Senators of the first class.  I do not claim for her any
superiority over other Commonwealths in this respect--but
certainly she has given you of her best.  She has sent men who
were worthy to be peers of the men who have represented her
sister States, and if that be true, they surely have been
worthy to be peers in any Senate that was ever gathered upon
earth.  The line begins with Tristram Dalton, save Washington
the stateliest gentleman of his time, rich in every mental
accomplishment, whose presence graced and ennobled every assembly
that he entered.  Next to him comes George Cabot, the wise
statesman and accomplished merchant, beloved friend of Hamilton,
trusted counsellor of Washington, whose name and lineage are
represented at this table to-night, who shared with this successor,
Benjamin Goodhue, the honor of being the first authority in
finance in their generation, save Hamilton alone.

"Then comes John Quincy Adams, who left the Senate, after
years of illustrious public service, in 1808, but to begin
another public service of forty years, still more illustrious.
He served his country in every department of public occupation.
He was Minister in five great Powers in succession.  He was
present as Secretary when the treaty of peace was signed in
1783.  He negotiated and signed the Treaty of Ghent, the Commercial
Treaty of 1815, the French Treaty of 1822, the Prussian Treaty,
and the treaty which acquired Florida from Spain.  He was
Senator, Representative, Foreign Minister, Secretary of State,
and President.  He breasted the stormy waves of the House
of Representatives at the age of eighty, and when he died
in the Capitol, he left no purer or loftier fame behind him.

"Next came James Lloyd, the modest gentleman, the eloquent
orator and the accomplished man of business.  Then came Gore
and Ashmun and Mellen and Mills, each great among the great
lawyers of a great generation.  Next in the procession comes
the majestic presence of Daniel Webster, whose matchless logic
and splendid eloquence gave to the Constitution of the country
an authority in the reason and in the hearts of his countrymen
equal to anything in judicial decision and equal to that of
any victory of arms.  With his reply to Hayne, it has been
said that every Union cannon in the late war was shotted.
His power in debate was only equalled by his wisdom in council.
It was said of him by one whose fame as a great public teacher
equals his own: 'His weight was like the falling of a planet,
his discretion the return of its due and perfect curve.'

"Then comes Rufus Choate, next to Webster himself the foremost
forensic orator of modern times, against whose imperial eloquence
no human understanding, either on the Bench or in the jury
box, seemed to be proof.  Following them is he who still lives
in his honored age, with his intellectual powers unshattered,
the foremost citizen of his native Commonwealth, the accomplished
and eloquent Winthrop.  Next comes Rantoul, who died when
his foot had scarcely crossed the threshold of the Senate
Chamber, whose great hope was equal to the greatest of memories.
Next is the figure of the apostle of liberty, Charles Sumner,
the echo of whose voice still seems to linger in the arches
of the Capitol.  To those of us who remember him, he seems,
as Disraeli said of Richard Cobden, 'still sitting, still
debating, still legislating' in the Senate Chamber.

"No two of these men were alike in the quality they brought
to the public service.  Their mental portraiture is as different
and as individual as the faces painted by Titian or Van Dyke
or Holbein.  But each brought to the service of the State
what she most needed in each generation.  The constructive
statesman, the framer of the Constitution and statutes, the
financier, the debater, the lawyer, the man of business, the
diplomatist, the reformer, the orator, are all there, and
all are there at their best.

"It is enough, and not too much, to say of my colleague that,
as he lays down his office, the State that has been proud
of them is proud of him.  The State that has been satisfied
with them is satisfied with him.  In all this illustrious
line, there is none other who has more faithfully and more
successfully discharged every duty of Senatorial service,
and who has more constantly represented the interests and
character of the dear old Commonwealth, who has maintained
a higher or firmer place in her confidence and respect than
he whom we greet and with whom we part to-night.  Mr. Dawes
was elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives
in 1847.  Every year since, with one exception, he has held
some honorable public station from the gift of his native
State.  Everywhere, at the Bar, in the State Legislature,
in the Representative Chamber, in the Senate Chamber, he has
been a leader.  Some great department of public service has
depended upon him for a successful administration.  He has
always been appointed to some special service or duty or difficulty
which he has discharged to the entire satisfaction of his
constituents and his political associates.  His work has been
as remarkable for its variety as for its dignity and importance,
or the length of time for which it has continued.  He has
proved himself fit for every conspicuous position in our
Republican army except that of trumpeter.  When the duty
was done, he has not sought for personal credit or popular
applause.  His qualities have not been those for which the
people manifested their regard by shouting or clapping of
hands, or stamping of feet in public meetings; he has had
no following of ambitious politicians whom he has sought to
repay for their political services at the public expense.

"But he has had a place second to that of no other man in
the solid and enduring esteem of the people of the Commonwealth.
He has been content to do a service, and has left the other
men who sought for it the credit of doing it.  His official
action has tended to make or unmake great industries.  Great
fortunes have depended upon it.  He has affected values of
millions upon millions, and yet he retires from office with
unstained hands, without fortune, and without a spot upon
his integrity.  He has no children pensioned at the public
charge.  He will leave behind him no wealth gained directly
or indirectly from his public opportunities.  He will go back
to a humble and simple dwelling not exceeding in costliness
that of many a Massachusetts merchant or farmer.  But honor,
good fame, the affection of his fellow citizens, the friendship
of his fellow Senators will enter its portals with him, and
there they will dwell with him until he leaves it for his
last home."

Mr. Dawes was a very powerful and logical reasoner.  He was
a very successful advocate when at the Bar and he was always
a strong antagonist in debate and very effective as a campaign
speaker.  He stuck closely to his subject.  He had a gift
of sarcasm with which he could make an adversary feel exceedingly
uncomfortable, although he rarely indulged in it.  He almost
never attempted eloquence, except so far as it is found in
his grave and effective statement of his case.  One sentence
of his which I myself heard deserves to be remembered among
the best things in American eloquence.  Speaking to thirty
or forty people at a club in Boston of the power and greatness
of the Republic, he said: "If we cannot say of our country,
as Mr. Webster said of England, 'that her morning drum-beat
circles the earth with an unbroken strain of her martial airs,'
we can at least say that before the sun sets upon Alaska he
has risen upon Maine."


In my first Congress the leadership was shared between my
colleague, Mr. Dawes, and Robert C. Schenck of Ohio.  General
Schenck was an old Whig.  He had served with distinction in
the time of Webster and Clay and Calhoun and Corwin.  He had
the gift of vigorous, simple Saxon English.  He was a very
powerful debater, a man of wisdom and of industry.  He was
Chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means, and carried through
to success, against odds and difficulties, an important tariff
bill.  At one time he found the measure, which he had introduced,
overloaded and destroyed by amendments.  He abandoned it in
disgust, declaring that it had been "nibbled to death by
pismires."  But he afterward introduced the measure in another
form, and came off successful and triumphant in the end.

He was afterward sent abroad by General Grant to succeed Mr.
Motley.  He got into trouble there by giving a letter of recommendation
which was unwisely used to promote an enterprise known as
the Emma Mine.  He gave the recommendation, I have no doubt,
in entire good faith.  The stock of that mine went down.  The
investors lost their money, and great complaint was made that
he had used his official position to promote a fraudulent
scheme.  He was compelled to withdraw from the Mission.  He
was not recalled, but came home on leave of absence, and resigned
here.  So he was not obliged to take formal leave.  But the
stock of the mine afterward became exceedingly valuable,
and the public regretted the unjust judgment they had formed
about General Schenck.  I had and have a great regard for
him.  There was not a dishonest hair on the old fellow's head.
His health failed soon after, so he had no opportunity to
render further service, which would undoubtedly have caused
that unpleasant affair to be forgotten.


Judge Luke P. Poland of Vermont was another very interesting
character.  He was well known throughout the country.  He
had a tall and erect and very dignified figure, and a fine
head covered with a beautiful growth of gray hair.  He was
dressed in the old-fashioned style that Mr. Webster used,
with blue coat, brass buttons and a buff-colored vest.  His
coat and buttons were well known all over the country.  One
day when William Lloyd Garrison was inveighing against some
conduct of the Southern whites, and said: "They say the South
is quiet now.  Order reigns in Warsaw.  But where is Poland?"
An irreverent newspaper man said: "He is up in Vermont polishing
brass buttons."

The Judge was a very able lawyer, and a man of very great
industry.  He and Judge Hoar went over together the revision
of the United States statutes of 1874, completing a labor
which had been neglected by Caleb Cushing.  Judge Poland had
a good deal of fun in him, and had a stock of anecdotes which
he liked to tell to any listener.  It was said, I do not know
how truly, that he could bear any amount of whiskey without
in the slightest degree affecting his intellect.  There was
a story that two well-known Senators laid a plot to get the
Judge tipsy.  They invited him to a room at Willards, and
privately instructed the waiter, when they ordered whiskey
to put twice as much of the liquid into Poland's glass as
into the others.  The order was repeated several times.  The
heads of the two hosts had begun to swim, but Poland was not
moved.  At last they saw him take the waiter aside and heard
him tell him in a loud whisper: "The next time, make mine
a little stronger, if you please." They concluded on the whole
that Vermont brain would hold its own with Michigan and Illinois.

One of the most amusing scenes I ever witnessed was a call
of the House in the old days, when there was no quorum.  The
doors were shut.  The Speaker sent officers for the absentees.
They were brought to the bar of the House one after another.
Judge Poland happened to be one of the absentees.  My colleague,
Mr. Dawes, was in the chair.  Poland was brought to the bar.
Mr. Dawes addressed him with solemnity: "Mr. Poland, of Vermont,
you have been absent from the session of the House without
its leave.  What excuse have you to offer?" The Judge paused
a moment and then replied in a tone of great gravity and emotion:
"I went with my wife to call on my minister, and I stayed
a little too long."  The House accepted the excuse, and I
suppose the religious people of the Judge's district would
have maintained him in office for a thousand years by virtue
of that answer, if they had had their way.  A man who had
been so long exposed to the wickedness and temptations of Washington,
and had committed only the sin of staying a little too long
when he called on his minister might safely be trusted anywhere.


Judge Peters, of Maine, did not speak very frequently and
did not attract much public attention.  But he had a strong
influence with the members of the House.  He was on the Judiciary
Committee.  He made brief, pithy speeches which generally
convinced the House.  He declined to continue in the National
service, where the people of Maine would have been willing
to keep him until his dying day.  He afterward became Chief
Justice of Maine, and sustained the high character which the
Bench of that State has had from the beginning.

There is one anecdote of him, which does not come within
the sphere of my recollections, but which I think perhaps
my readers will prefer to anything that does.  A few years
ago a young man who kept a grocery store was tried before
Judge Peters for larceny.  He was a very respectable young
tradesman.  The Salvation Army had engaged quarters next to
his store, where they disturbed him and his customers a good
deal by playing on the drum and other similar religious services.
But that was not all.  They used to come out on the sidewalk
and beat a large drum and sing and kneel in prayer just before
his door, much to the disturbance of his customers and the
aggravation of the young grocer.  One day he purloined and
hid the large drum.  He was detected and indicted for larceny.
The Attorney-General, for the Government, maintained that
everything that went to constitute the crime of larceny existed
there.  He had taken secretly another man's property from his
possession, for purposes of his own.  Whether he meant to
destroy it or hide it or to convert it to his own use made
no difference in the offence against the owner or against
the law.  On the other hand the defendant's counsel argued
that it was a mere matter of mischief; that there was no felonious
intent, and no purpose to deprive the owner permanently of
the property.  The Chief Justice charged very strongly for
the Commonwealth.  The jury very reluctantly brought in a
verdict of guilty.  The poor fellow was sorely distressed.
He was convicted as a thief.  His life seemed to be blighted
and ruined past hope.  The Chief Justice said:  "Mr. Clerk,
you may record the verdict.  I may as well sentence him now.
I shall fine him a dollar, without costs.  I once stole a
drum myself."


John A. Logan was a member of the House when I entered it,
and I served with him in the Senate also.  He was a man of
remarkable power, and remarkable influence, both with the
Senate and with the people.  It is, I believe, agreed by all
authorities that we had no abler officer in the Civil War
than he, except those who were educated at West Point.  He
was always a great favorite with the veteran soldiers.  He
was rough in speech, and cared little for refinements in
manner.  He was said to be an uneducated man.  But I believe
he was a man of a good many accomplishments; that he spoke
some foreign languages well, and had a pretty good knowledge
of our political history.  He was exceedingly imperious and
domineering, impatient of contradiction in any matter which
he had in charge.  So he was rather an uncomfortable man to
get along with.  He was especially sensitive of any ridicule
or jesting at his expense.  He was supposed, I know not how
truly, to be exceedingly impatient and ready for war on any
man who crossed his path.  But his behaviour when he was ordered
to supersede General Thomas, just before the battle at Nashville
and Franklin, is a noble instance of magnanimity.

When Sherman started for the sea, Hood, with a large rebel
army, was in his rear.  Gen. Thomas was ordered to attack
him.  But he delayed and delayed till the authorities at Washington
grew impatient and ordered Logan to supersede Thomas.  Everybody
knows the intensity of the passion for military glory.  General
Logan could have carried out his orders, taken advantage of
Thomas's dispositions, and won himself one of the most brilliant
victories of the war, which would have had a double lustre
from the seeming lukewarmness of his predecessor; but when
he arrived at the place of operations and learned Thomas's
dispositions and the reason for his delay, he became satisfied
that the great Fabius was right and wise.  His generous nature
disdained to profit by the mistake at headquarters and to
get glory for himself at the expense of a brave soldier.  So
he postponed the execution of his orders, and left Thomas
in his command.  The result was the battle of Nashville and
the annihilation of Hood.  Where in military story can there
be found a brighter page than that?  That one act of magnanimous
self-denial gave to American history two of its brightest
names,--the name of Thomas and the name of Logan.


Another very able member of the House was Thomas A. Jenks
of Rhode Island.  He never seemed to care much for that field
of service, but preferred to enjoy the practice of his profession,
in which he was largely employed, and was earning a large
income.  But he is entitled to honorable memory as the originator
and father of the reform of the civil service in this country.
He made a very able speech in its favor in 1867 or 1868, which
was the beginning of a movement which has been successful,
for which I think the public gratitude should be shared between
him and Dorman B. Eaton.


Elihu B. Washburn, of Illinois, was appointed Secretary of
State by General Grant, whose constant friend and supporter
he had been through his whole military career.  Washburn was
brave, vigorous and far-sighted, a man of great influence
in his State and in the House.  He was prominently spoken
of for the Presidency.  But with Grant and Logan as his competitors
from his own State, there was not much chance for him.  He
was afterward Minister to France, and gained great distinction
and credit by remaining in Paris throughout the siege, and
giving shelter and support to persons who were in danger from
the fury of the mob.  He earned the gratitude alike of the
Germans and the French ecclesiastics.

He was known as the watch dog of the Treasury, when he was
in the House.  Few questionable claims against the Government
could escape his vigilance, or prevail over his formidable
opposition.  But, one day, a private bill championed by his
brother, Cadwallader, passed the House while Elihu kept entirely
silent.  Somebody called out to the Speaker: "The watch dog
don't bark when one of the family goes by."


When I entered the House, William B. Allison, of Iowa, had
already acquired great influence there.  He manifested there
the qualities that have since given him so much distinction
in the Senate.  He was understood to favor what was called
Revenue Reform, and moderation in the exercise of all doubtful
national powers.

But his chief distinction has been gained by a service of
thirty years in the Senate.  He was out of public life two
years, and then was elected to the Senate, where he has been
kept by the State of Iowa, maintaining the confidence of his
State and of his associates in public life.  During all that
time he has done what no other man in the country, in my
judgment, could have done so well.  He has been a member
of the great Committee on Appropriations for thirty years,
most of the time Chairman, and for twenty-six years a member
of the Committee on Finance.  He has controlled, more than
any other man, indeed more than any other ten men, the vast
and constantly increasing public expenditure, amounting now
to more than 1,000 millions annually.  It has been an economical,
honest and wise expenditure.  He has been compelled in the
discharge of his duties to understand the complications and
mechanism of public administration and public expenditure.
That is a knowledge in which nobody else in the Senate, except
Senator Hale of Maine, and Senator Cockrell of Missouri, can
compare with him.  He has by his wise and moderate counsel
drawn the fire from many a wild and dangerous scheme which
menaced the public peace and safety.

He almost never takes part in the debates, unless it becomes
necessary to explain or defend some measure of which he has
charge.  It is said that he is very careful not to offend
anybody, and that he is unwilling to take responsibilities
or to commit himself.  There is undoubtedly some truth in
that criticism.  Indeed if it were otherwise, he would find
it very hard to maintain the personal influence necessary
to success in the duties to which he is immediately devoted.
But he never avoids voting.  His name, since he has been Senator,
has been first or second alphabetically on the roll of the
Senate.  He is found in the Senate Chamber unless engaged
in his committee-room on work which requires him to be there
during the sessions,--and he always votes when his name is
called.

I have never seen any indication that he is interested in
anything, or has any special knowledge or accomplishment,
except what is necessary to the line of his duty.  I do not
know that he has any interest in history or literature or
science or music.  What he does in his time of recreation--
if he ever has any time for recreation--I cannot tell.  He
never seems to take any active interest in any of the questions
which determine the action of the party or the destiny of
the State, except those that relate to its finances.  I use
the word finances in the largest sense, including means for
raising revenue and maintaining a sound currency, as well
as public expenditures.  He is like a naval engineer, regulating
the head of steam but seldom showing himself on deck.  I think
he has had a good deal of influence in some perilous times
in deciding whether the ship should keep safely on, or should
run upon a rock and go to the bottom.

There is a good story told that after Thaddeus Stevens died,
a friend of Mr. Blaine's was walking with him one day through
the Rotunda of the Capitol toward the House of Representatives.
Mr. Blaine said:  "The death of Stevens is an emancipation
for the Republican Party.  He kept the party under his heel."
His friend replied:  "Whom have you got for leaders left?"
Blaine said:  "There are three young men coming forward.  There
is a young man who will be heard from yet." He pointed to
Allison, who happened to be just approaching.  "James A. Garfield
is another." There was a little pause, and his friend said:
"Well, who is the third?"  Blaine gazed straight up into
the dome, and said:  "I don't see the third."

I give my estimate of James A. Garfield later in this book.


I think I ought not to leave out of an account of the very
able and remarkable Massachusetts delegation in the Congress
of 1869 the name of George S. Boutwell, although he remained
in the House only a few days after I entered in and is still
living.  He had been a very faithful, useful and prominent
member of the House from the time he entered it in March,
1863, at the middle of the War.

It was the desire of his associates in the House that he
should be a Member of General Grant's cabinet.  When General
Grant's Cabinet was announced the name of Governor Boutwell
did not appear, and my brother, Judge Hoar, was nominated
for Attorney-General.  He had a high opinion of Mr. Boutwell
and had been very earnest, so far as he could properly do
so, in advocating his original nomination to Congress.  In
the evening after the Cabinet had been announced Mr. William
B. Washburn, afterward Governor, called upon me at my room.
Mr. Washburn and I were not then intimate, although we afterward
became close friends.  He said that he had been requested
by the delegation to tell me that they earnestly hoped to
Mr. Boutwell might have a place in the Cabinet, and that,
although they had great regard for Judge Hoar, they hoped
that some arrangement might still be made which would bring
about the selection of Mr. Boutwell.  I told Mr. Washburn
that I was sure that the appointment of Judge Hoar would be
a surprise to him, as it was to me, and that I thought it
quite doubtful whether he would wish to leave his place on
the Bench for a seat in the Cabinet, but that I could not
speak for him or judge for him.  I telegraphed at once to
Judge Hoar not to commit himself in any way until he reached
Washington and could see me.  I met him at the depot, told
him of the communication of the Massachusetts delegation and
that, especially considering President Johnson's quarrel with
Congress, it seemed quite important that General Grant, who
had no experience whatever in political life, should have
some person among his counsellors who had the full confidence
of the leaders in Congress.  The Judge strongly appreciated
that view.  When he called upon President Grant his first
conversation consisted in urging upon him very strongly the
selection of Governor Boutwell.  He supposed then that it
would be quite unlikely that the President would take two
men from the same State and supposed that selection would
require his own refusal of the offer of the office of Attorney-
General.  President Grant said that he would think it over
and not decide the question that day.  The next morning he
sent for the Judge and said:  "Judge, I think I would like
to have you take the oath of office."  He handed the Judge
his commission.  The Judge looked at it and saw that it was
not signed.  He said:  "I think perhaps it would be better
if you were to sign it."  Grant laughed and complied with
the suggestion.  Judge Hoar's first official duty was to give
an opinion upon the question whether Mr. Stewart, who had
been nominated for Secretary of the Treasury, could under
the law undertake the office.  Mr. Stewart proposed to make
some conveyances of his business in trust, by which he should
part with his legal title to it while he held the office of
Secretary of the Treasury and come back to it again after
his term ended.  But the Attorney-General advised the President
that that was impracticable, and the result was the withdrawal
of Mr. Stewart's name and the appointment of Mr. Boutwell
a day or two afterward.

I have had some serious difficulties with Mr. Boutwell since
he left the Democratic Party after his term of service as
Governor.  They have, I believe, never been differences of
political principle.  My differences of opinion with him have
been mainly upon the question what individuals were fit to
be trusted with political office and power, and with the leadership
in political parties, and upon the question whether certain
men and influences were to be tolerated, or whether the public
safety required unsparing warfare upon them.  So, while we
have agreed in general as to policies, we have always had
an entirely different set of friends and companions.

Mr. Boutwell has borne an honorable part in our history.
His titles to a place in the grateful memory of his countrymen
are not likely to be overlooked.

One of them deserves special mention.  I am but repeating
what I said many years ago.  As a leading member of the House
of Representatives, and as Secretary of the Treasury under
President Grant's Administration, he had, of course, a large
influence upon our financial history.  He saw very early the
importance of devoting every resource of the country to the
reduction of the National debt.  It was not with him, as I
understand it, a question whether a little saving could be
made in the way of taxes by postponing the payment until the
rate of interest should be less or the National resources
greater.  He saw that it was important that the people should
not get accustomed, as the English people are, to consider
a National debt as something that was to continue always.
He saw that it was important to the character of the people,
as to an individual, that they should be impatient and restless
under the obligation of debt, and should consider it alike
the Nation's first duty and its greatest pride and luxury
to get rid of the burden.  This has always been the temper
of the State of Massachusetts, of her towns, and, in general,
of her citizens.

Accordingly he insisted that the debt should be reduced so
rapidly that the people would take pride in having paid it,
and would be relieved from the temptation of listening to
the specious and seductive arguments of persons contriving
dishonest methods of getting rid of it by issuing fiat money,
or any device of direct or indirect repudiation.  Many persons
can remember in what dangerous forms this temptation came,
and how many men, who otherwise deserve to be held in high
esteem, yielded to it wholly or partly.  Mr. Boutwell's powerful
influence was a very important factor in attaining the result
in which we all now take so much satisfaction, and keeping
the American people in the path of duty and honor.


William A. Wheeler, of New York, entered the House in 1869.
I soon became very well acquainted with him, an acquaintance
which ripened into a very intimate friendship.  He was a very
serious, simple-hearted and wise man.  There was no man in
his time who had more influence in the House.  His ancestors
dwelt in my native town of Concord in the early generations,
and in Lincoln, which had been part of Concord.  One of the
family emigrated to Vermont.  Wheeler's father went from Vermont
to Malone, New York, where he was born, and where he was left
by his father an orphan in very early youth.  The widow and
children were without any property whatever, but got along
somehow.  Wheeler got an education, spending two or three
years in college, and became the foremost man in his part
of New York.  The people of his district were in character
and way of thinking very much like our best Massachusetts
constituencies.  Wheeler had little respect for the devious
and self-seeking politics which are supposed to have been
needed for success in that State.  He very much disliked Roscoe
Conkling, and all his ways.  Conkling once said to him: "Wheeler,
if you will join us and act with us, there is nothing in the
gift of the State of New York to which you may not reasonably
aspire."  To which Wheeler replied:  "Mr. Conkling, there
is nothing in the gift of the State of New York which will
compensate me for the forfeiture of my own self respect."

Mr. Wheeler was one of the sub-committee, of whom Mr. Frye
and myself were the other two Republican members, to inquire
into the condition of the legality of the Kellogg State Government
of Louisiana.  He suggested what is known as the Wheeler
compromise, the acceptance of which by both sides was due
to his influence and capacity for conciliation.  The compromise
consisted in an agreement to allow the Republican State officers
to remain in office during the remainder of their terms, without
turbulent or factious opposition, to submit quietly to their
authority on the one hand, and that the two Houses of the
Legislature, on the other hand, should seat the Democratic
contestants whom our sub-committee found entitled to their
seats.  This compromise in reality gave effect to the opinion
of the committee, as if they had been a tribunal of arbitration.
Of course they had no authority to enforce their opinion against
the objection of either party.

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.

Of the eight years after the inauguration of Lincoln more
than four had been years of actual war and more than five
passed before formal declaration of peace.  During all this
time nothing could be considered but the preservation of the
Union.  From the end of the War to the accession of President
Grant, Congress and the President had been engaged in a struggle
with each other for power.  President Johnson had been impeached
and put on trial before the Senate.  So there could be no
important legislation from the summer of 1866 until March,
1869, that did not command the assent of two thirds of both
Houses.

Yet the feeling everywhere among the Republicans in Washington
and throughout the North was of exultant and confident courage.
The strength of the Nation had been tried and not found wanting.
It had overthrown a mighty rebellion.  The burden of slavery,
which had hung like a millstone about the neck of the Republic,
had been thrown off.  Congress had been triumphant in its
contest with the President.  The loyal people of the country
looked to Grant with an almost superstitious hope.  They were
prepared to expect almost any miracle from the great genius
who had subdued the rebellion, and conducted without failure
military operations on a scale of which the world up to that
time had had no experience.  So the dominant party addressed
itself without fear to the great work before it.

They had to determine on what conditions the States that
had been in rebellion should come back to their place under
the Constitution.

They were to determine on what terms the men who had taken
part in the rebellion should be fully restored to citizenship.

They were to determine the civil and political condition
of more than five million people just set free from slavery.

They were to secure fair elections in fifteen States, where
for many years neither free elections nor free speech had
been tolerated.

If they could, they were to reconcile the North and the South,
estranged by a strife so bitter that even before the War the
life of no Northern man who dared to utter Northern opinions
was safe in half the States of the country, and which had
been intensified by four years of bloody war--bellum plus
quam civile--which had left nearly every household in the
country mourning for its dead.

They were to confront the greatest temptation that ever besets
men of Anglo-Saxon race, a race ever restless and ever hungry
for empire.  Hungry eyes were already bent on San Domingo
and Cuba.  Good men were rendered uneasy by the tales of Spanish
oppression in Cuba.  Men who were looking for the union of
the two oceans by a canal across the Isthmus, or who hoped
that we should extend our dominion in this continent southward,
looked upon the island belonging to the Negro Republics of
Hayti and San Domingo as a desirable addition to our military
and naval strength.

They were to provide for the payment of an enormous debt.

They were to accomplish the resumption of specie payment.

They were to consider and determine anew the question of
currency.  What should be the standard of value and a legal
tender for the payment of debts?

They were to get rid of the vast burden of war taxes which
pressed heavily upon all branches of business.

They were to decide whether the duties on imports which
had been laid to meet the heavy cost of war should be kept
in peace and whether to follow the counsel of Hamilton and
his associates in the first Administration of Washington, or
the counsel of the free traders and the English school of
political economics, in determining whether American industry
should be protected.

The people felt that they had suffered a grievous wrong from
England, and that unless there were reparation, which England
had so far steadily refused either to make or consider, the
honor of the country required that we should exact it by war.

The emigrants from foreign lands who had come to our shores
in vast numbers, and were coming in rapidly increasing numbers,
were made uneasy by the doctrine of perpetual allegiance on
which all Europe insisted.  They claimed that they were entitled
to protection like native-born American citizens everywhere
on the face of the earth.

The number of civil officers appointed by the Executive had
largely increased.  This put an undue and most dangerous
power into the hands of the party controlling the Government.
There was a strong feeling that this should be checked.

Besides; during the controversy with Andrew Johnson the members
of the two Houses of Congress had come to think that they
were entitled to control all appointments of civil officers
in their own States and Districts, and they were ready with
scarce an exception to stand by each other in this demand.
They had passed, over the veto of President Johnson, an act
of disputed and quite doubtful constitutionality, seriously
crippling the Executive power of removal from office, without
which the President's constitutional duty to see that the
laws are faithfully executed cannot be performed.  So each
Senator and Representative was followed like a Highland Chieftain
"with his tail on," by a band of retainers devoted to his
political fortunes, dependent upon him for their own, but
supported at the public charge.

This not only threatened the freedom of election, but itself
brought a corrupting influence into the Administration of
the Government.

But there was a still greater danger than all these in the
corruption which then, as always, followed a great war.  Unprincipled
and greedy men sought to get contracts and jobs from the Government
by the aid of influential politicians.  This aid they paid
for sometimes, though I think rarely, in money, and in contributions
to political campaigns, and in the various kinds of assistance
necessary to maintain in power the men to whom they were so
indebted.  This corruption not only affected all branches
of the Civil Service, especially the War and the Navy and
the Treasury, but poisoned legislation itself.

They had to deal with claims amounting to hundreds of millions
of dollars, some wholly fraudulent, some grossly exaggerated
and some entirely just.  Some of these belonged to persons
who had contracts with the Government for constructing and
supplying a powerful Navy, or for supplies to the Army.  There
were demands still larger in amount from the inhabitants of
the territory which had been the theatre of the War.  This
class of claims was wholly new in the history of our own country.
There were few precedents for dealing with them in the experience
of other countries, and the Law of Nations and the law of
war furnished imperfect guides.

Men wounded or disabled in the Military or Naval Service,
and their widows and orphans, were to be provided for by a
liberal pension system.

These were a part only of the questions that must be studied
and understood, under the gravest personal responsibility
by every member of either House of Congress.  Under the Administration
of Grant and those that succeeded, of course, there was a
constant struggle on the part of the party in power to keep
in power and on the part of its opponent to get power.  So
that it was necessary that a Representative or Senator who
would do his duty, or who had the ordinary ambition, or desired
that the counsel best for the country should prevail, should
master these subjects and take a large part in discussing
and advocating the policy of his party.

During the thirty-two years from the 4th of March, 1869,
to the 4th of March, 1901, the Democratic Party held the
Executive power of the country for eight years.  For nearly
four years more Andrew Johnson had a bitter quarrel with
the Republican leaders in both Houses of Congress.  For six
years the Democrats controlled the Senate.  For sixteen years
they controlled the House of Representatives.  There is left
on the Statute Book no trace of any Democratic legislation
during this whole period except the repeal of the laws intended
to secure honest elections.  The two Administrations of President
Cleveland are remembered by the business men and the laboring
men of the country only as terrible nightmares.  Whatever
has been accomplished in this period, which seems to me the
most brilliant period in legislative history of any country
in the world, has been accomplished by the Republican Party
over Democratic opposition.  The failure to secure honest
National elections and the political and civil rights of the
colored people is the failure of the Republican Party and
the success of its Democratic antagonist.  With that exception,
to all the problems which confronted the country in 1869 the
Republican Party has given a simple, wise, final and most
successful solution.  It has done it not only without help, but
over the constant opposition of its Democratic antagonist.

Every State that went into the Rebellion has been restored
to its place in the Union.

There has been complete and universal amnesty.  No man has
been punished for his share in the Rebellion.

In spite of dishonest and subtle counsel, and in spite of
great temptation, we have dealt with the public debt on the
simple and honest principle that the only thing to do with a
debt is to pay it.  The National credit is the best in the
world, and the National debt has ceased to be an object either
of anxiety or consideration.

Specie payments have been resumed.  Every dollar issued by
the Government, or by national banks under government authority,
passes current like gold.  Indeed the ease with which it can
be transported and the certainty of its redemption makes the
paper money of the United States better than gold.

The United States has joined the commercial nations of the
first rank in making gold the world's standard of value.
In doing this we have never departed from the theoretical
principle of bimetallism as announced by Hamilton and Washington
and Webster and all our statesmen without exception down to
1869.  The contest was an exceedingly close one.  The arguments
in support of the free coinage of silver were specious and
dangerous.  Undoubtedly for a time, and more than once, they
converted a majority of the American people.  The battle for
honest money would have been lost but for the wisdom of the
Republican statesmen who planted the party not only upon the
doctrine of theoretical bimetallism, but also upon the doctrine
that the question of the standard of value must be settled
by the concurrence of the commercial nations of the world
and that if there were to be one metal as a standard, gold,
the most valuable metal, was the fittest for the purpose.
That was the doctr