CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 THIS BOOK IS ONE OF 
 A COLLECTION MADE BY 
 
 BENNO LOEWY 
 
 I854-I9I9 
 
 AND BEQUEATHED TO 
 CORNELL UNIVERSITY 
 
Cornell University Library 
 PS 3123.D15 
 
 Gulian C. Verplanckihis ancestry life. 
 
 3 1924 022 207 454 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tiiis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924022207454 
 
JAN C. VEi 
 
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 OHAIILES P. DALY, LL. D. 
 

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GULIM C. VEKPLANCK 
 
 HIS ANOESTEY, LIFE, A]^D 
 H AE AC TE R. 
 
 DELIVERED BEFORE THE CENTUBT CLUB, APRIL 9, 1870, 
 
 BY 
 
 CHAKLES P. DALY, LL. D. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 D. APPLETON & COMPANY, 
 90, 92 & 94 GRAND STREET. 
 ' 1870. 
 
ill; 
 
 ■Hmkmm^i^ 
 
THE BIOGRAPHICAL ADDRESS 
 
 CHIEF- JUSTICE DALY 
 
 To Mr. Verplanck must be accorded the rdetropoli- 
 tan lionor of having been the most distinguished de- 
 scendant of the men who nearly two centuries and a 
 half ago founded the city of New York. It may be 
 doubted if there be any family now extant in the city, 
 with the single exception of the Browers, who can 
 trace their connection with its early history as far 
 back as the one of which he, by direct chain of lin- 
 eal descent, was at the time of his death the gifted 
 head. They were, as their name denotes, of that 
 old Batavian stock, half Flemish and half Dutch, of 
 Brabant and Zealand — a race to which he was not 
 merely allied by blood, but of which he was a reprc- 
 
sentatlve type, for lie resembled them in his personal 
 appearance, and lie had their characteristic abilities and 
 virtues; their probity, frugality, and firmness; their 
 independence of mind, their tolerant spirit, their ca- 
 pacity for public affairs, and their love of letters. 
 
 A book published in Amsterdam, in 1651 ("-Be- 
 schryvinghe Van Virginia,^'' etc.), contains the earliest 
 pictorial representation of the little dorp or village 
 which has since become the commercial metropolis of 
 America. This print represents a fort at the southern 
 extremity of the island of New York, close to the 
 water's edge, with a few houses sparsely scattered to 
 the east and west of it, the roofs of some of which, from 
 the inequality of the ground, are alone visible, and tow- 
 ering above all, that indispensable and uniformly prom- 
 inent object in a Dutch village, a windmill. Before 
 the draAving for this print was made, or, to express it 
 more definitely, in 1630, four years after the purchase 
 of the island from the Indians, when the entire popula- 
 tion, men, women, and children, did not exceed three 
 hundred souls, Abraham Isaacson Ver Planck, or, as he 
 was sometimes called, Planck, was married to Maria, 
 daughter ot Jan Yigne, one of the proprietors of the 
 land surrounding "The Collect," or Great Fresh-water 
 Pond, which existed up to the early part of the present 
 century, on the space now bounded by Broadway, 
 
Grand, Chatliani, and Eeade Streets. As he Avas the 
 first immigrant and common ancestor, it may not be 
 inappropriate upon an occasion like this to put together 
 from oTir early Dutch records what has been preserved 
 respecting him. In the year of his marriage, a director 
 of the Amsterdam Company, named Pauw, obtained a 
 patent for a large tract of land, opposite the little set- 
 tlement, upon the western bank of the Hudson, which 
 included what is now Jersey City and Hohoken. This 
 tract, to which he gave the Latin name of Pavonia, was 
 granted to him as a Patroon under the imposing title 
 of the Lord of Achtienhoven, that he might found 
 there a feudal estate or manor of the kind which Van 
 Rensselaer about the same period established in the 
 land about Albany. Plaving vainly endeavored for 
 several years to accomplish this object, he gave up the 
 grant, and Abraham Verplanck was the first to avail 
 himself of the opportunity thus offered to obtain, by 
 purchase, a considerable portion of this fertile tract at 
 or in the vicinity of Jersey City, where he soon estab- 
 lished a flourishing farm, and, by selling off other por- 
 tions of it unconditionally to actual settlers for farms 
 and tobacco-plantations, he managed to bring about 
 what the would-be feudal proprietor could not, an 
 active and thriving agricultural settlement. In 1641 
 he was selected by the inhabitants as one of the coun- 
 
cil of " Twelve Men," the first attempt at any thing 
 like representative government in the colony, which 
 had its origin in the following circumstance : 
 
 In 1626 a peaceatle Indian from Westchester, ac- 
 companied by his son, a young boy, started for the 
 Dutch foi-t to barter some beaver-skins, and was met 
 upon his way, in the vicinity of "the Collect," by 
 three of the inhabitants, who robbed him of his 
 peltries, and, to conceal what they had done, murdered 
 him. The boy, however, escaped, to remember the deed 
 and to avenge it in the manner of his race. "When 
 he had arrived at the age of manhood, fifteen years 
 afterward, he went to New Amsterdam, and, entering 
 the house of an humble mechanic, stnick him dead with 
 the blow of an axe. This open and daring act, per- 
 petrated under the very walls of the fort, filled the 
 whole settlement Avith consternation and alarm. The 
 governor demanded the mui'derer, but his tribe, approv- 
 ing of what he had done, refused to give him up, 
 iipon which the heads of families in Manhattan and its 
 vicinity were summoned to the fort, and, upon the gov- 
 ernor apprising them of his design to make a general war 
 upon the Indians, they selected twelve of their number 
 as a representative body to confer with him. The 
 " Twelve Men " decided agaiast the war, evasively ad- 
 vising the governor to wait for a fitting opportunity ; 
 
and, having in this way been called into existence as 
 representatives, they proceeded to recommend a re- 
 modelling of the government, so as to secure to the in- 
 habitants the rights and privileges they had enjoyed 
 in Holland, vrhich resulted in an ordinance of Gov- 
 ernor Kief dissolving that body and forbidding any 
 future assemblage of the people, as " dangerous and 
 tending to the great injury of the country and of his 
 authority." Very soon afterward Abraham Verplanck 
 was arrested " for slandering the authorities and ma- 
 liciously tearing down an ordinance posted on the 
 gate of the fort," possibly the one dissolving the pop- 
 ular body, for which he was fined three hundred guil- 
 ders. The imposition of this fine, a very heavy one 
 at the time, appears to have wrought a thorough 
 change in his sentiments; for in the following year, 
 with two others who had served with him in the 
 Council of the Twelve Men, he went to Kief, and, 
 falsely professing to represent the wishes of the in- 
 habitants, proposed that an attack should be made 
 upon the unsuspecting savages, he and his two as- 
 sociates offering to guide the soldiers , and to assist 
 them in making it. The proposition was eagerly ac- 
 cepted, and led to the perpetration of the darkest deed 
 that stains the annals of New Netherland. One hun- 
 dred and twenty Indians at Pavonia and Corlear's 
 
Hook were massacred in cold blood in their -n-igwams 
 at midnight. Forty were mui'dered in their beds. In- 
 fants, torn from their mothers' breasts, were chopped 
 into pieces with axes, and the fragments thrown into 
 the fire. Neither age nor sex was spared; and the 
 cries of the unhappy wretches, borne across the waters 
 of the Hudson, were heard on the ramparts of the fort 
 at New Amsterdam, by the navigator De Vries, who 
 has recorded the incident. 
 
 That Abraham Verplanck was not merely one of the 
 instigators, but one of the chief actors in the execution 
 of this bloody deed, may be inferred from the fact that, 
 when the matter came before the States-General for in- 
 vestigation, the committee to whom it was referred 
 recommended that two persons should be brought to 
 Holland for examination, and Abraham Verplanck 
 was one of them. It may very well have been, in view 
 of this circumstance, that Mr, Verplanck never felt any 
 desire to write the history of New Netherland, but left 
 the task to be discharged long after he had become 
 prominent as a literary man, by Dr. O. Callagham and 
 Mr. Brodhead. Indeed, with the exception of a slight 
 allusion in an oration delivered half a century ago, I 
 am not aware that he ever wrote any thing about the 
 people of New Netherland or their history. 
 
 The investigation in Holland seems to have been 
 
(^yj. '^'''■y'^'7,cf2). 
 
abandoned, or at least was productive of no injurious 
 consequences to Abratam Verplanck, for lie grew in 
 favor under the subsequent government of Stuyve- 
 sant. In 1649 lie was the owner .of a plot of ground 
 adjoining the fort, upon which he had a house and 
 garden, which I suppose to have been the site of the 
 present Bowling-Green, as it was taken that year to 
 be used as an open place for the holdtag of the weekly 
 fairs, or markets, another piece of land being given to 
 him in exchange for it, and because there was only 
 one open space or public square within the city walls 
 for more than half a century afterward. In 1655 his 
 name appears upon the list of those upon whom a 
 compulsory tax was imposed for the defences of the 
 city, and it may be mentioned as a characteristic, that 
 it does not appear upon the list of those who had pre- 
 viously made voluntary loans for the building of the 
 wall from which Wall Street takes its name. Ten 
 years afterward he appears as a witness to a treaty 
 which Stuyvesant effected with the Indians for the 
 acquisition of lands upon the South Kiver, in Dela- 
 ware, of which he became one of the grantees. He 
 appears by the records to have been no respecter of 
 the ordinances, where the disregard of them was at- 
 tended by any advantage in trading, and to have been 
 very litigious, involved in lawsuits with his mother-in- 
 
10 
 
 law and his wife's relations respecting the lands sur- 
 rounding " the Collect," and with others. In 1664 he 
 Avas one of the signers of the remonstrance urging the 
 inexorahle Stuy vesaqt to capitulate to the English ; and 
 we can imagine the temper with which the indignant 
 governor read the passage advising him not " to call 
 down the vengeance of Heaven for all the innocent 
 blood which may be shed by reason of your honor's 
 obstinacy." Upon the capitulation of the city, Abra- 
 ham Verplanck was one of the two hundred and sev- 
 enty-two who swore allegiance to the English, and 
 with that act his name disappears from our records. 
 
 His son, the first Gulian, was the founder of the 
 subsequent wealth and prosperity of the familj^ He 
 became a merchant, having his store upon Pearl 
 Street, which then faced the water, between Broad 
 and Whitehall Streets. He was a* sharp-sighted man 
 of business, attentive to his own interest, but regarded 
 as worthy of so much trust and confidence, that he 
 was one of the three persons charged with the care 
 and settlement of Governor Lovelace's estate. When 
 the Dutch repossessed themselves of the city in 1673, 
 he was one of five selected by the government, out of 
 fifteen recommended by a vote of the inhabitants, for 
 the ofiice of schepen, a position ranking next to that 
 of burgomaster; but, while filling the position, he 
 
EP'FETEK K'TM.nT"^''IE'r&F^T, 
 
 
11 
 
 was tried for holding intercourse with the English, a 
 grave offence on the part of a magistrate in the eyes 
 of his associates ; which he defended upon the ground 
 that he did so to secure his estate in New Eng- 
 land ; which not being considered satisfactory, a heavy 
 fine was imposed upon him of five hundred beaver- 
 skins. Upon the restoration of the city to the Eng- 
 lish in 1674, an enumeration was made of two hundred 
 and seven of the most wealthy of the inhabitants, in 
 which his personal estate is put down at five thousand 
 florins, being the twenty-eighth in order on the list. A 
 few years afterward he united with others in a purchase 
 from the Indians of a large tract of land upon the Hud- 
 son, which was followed shortly thereafter by the loca- 
 tion of Fishkill, of which he was one of the founders — 
 the first settlement made in Dutchess County. It was 
 by this act chiefly that he laid the foundation of the fu- 
 ture wealth and social influence of the family ; his de- 
 scendants having managed, amid the mutations, revolu- 
 tions, and changes, that have occurred in our history, 
 to retain, to a very great extent, what he had the fore- 
 thought to acquire. A family homestead, built about 
 the commencement of the last century, was Mr. Ver- 
 planck's country residence, which, together with the 
 lands around it, has passed, by his death, to his only 
 surviving son, "William S. Verplanck, Esq., the father 
 of a numerous family. 
 
12 
 
 During tlie colonial period, the Verplancks, by in- 
 termarriage witli the leading English, and. Dutcli fam- 
 ilies, the Bayards and tlie Lud.lows, the Van Cortlands 
 and the Beekmans, increased in wealth and social im- 
 portance. By their marriage with the Van Cortlands 
 they acquired the large tract of land jutting out into 
 Hudson River wMcli is known as Verplanck's Point. 
 In 1730 they intermarried witk the Crommelins, an 
 influential Dutcli family, long afterward, and until 
 a few years ago, represented in Amsterdam by the 
 wealthy banking-house of that name. This family con- 
 nection was further cemented by the marriage of Mr. 
 Verplanck's grandfather with an heiress of one of 
 principal members of this house, a few years before 
 the breaking out of the American Revolution, and 
 this family association with Holland was preserved 
 in the middle name of Crommelin, borne alike by 
 Mr. Verplanck and by his father. Throughout the 
 whole of the colonial period, the family were, to employ 
 a term that was then in use, " people of figure ; " the 
 most distinguished member during that period be- 
 ing Philip Verplanck, who, in 1734 and 1768, repre- 
 sented the Manor of Cortland in the Colonial Assembly, 
 and who, in 1746, was one of the commissioners to con- 
 fer with the other colonies upon the French and Indian 
 "War. "When the difficulty occurred with Great Brit- 
 
'sm&.Wii^ms €Ammmv:3, m? ^/SxEm'Wi,^'^:!!'^'! - 
 
13 
 
 ain, like many of the Dutcli families, their sympathies 
 were with the colonists. Samuel Verplanck, Mr. Ver- 
 planct's grandfather, was a member of the general com- 
 mittee of one hundred, organized in the city of New 
 York in 1775, and, as a delegate of the Provisional 
 Congress of the colony, he signed the celebrated Dec- 
 laration of Association and Union against the preten- 
 sions of Great Britain, one of the preparatory steps 
 to the Declaration of Independence in the following 
 year. But with that his active sympathies ceased, 
 and he failed to fulfil the bold resolution to which 
 he had bound himself by his signature, to " carry into 
 execution whatever the Continental Congress should 
 recommend." No doubt the possibility of the loss, in 
 the event of failure, of his landed estate in Dutchess, 
 and his possessions in the city of New York, was 
 too great a risk for a member of a family that 
 had been ever mindfal of the preservation of their 
 property. He had not the Celtic quality- of blood 
 which led Charles Carroll, in affixing his name to 
 the Declaration of Independence, to imperil a vast 
 estate upon the issue, and, that there might be no 
 mistake, to add to his signature, "of Carrollton." 
 In December of 1776, Thomas Paine uttered the 
 memorable words, " These are the times that try men's 
 souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot 
 
14 
 
 will, in this crisis, shrink from the sacred cause of his 
 country ; " and Samuel Verplanck was one of the men 
 to whom these words applied. He was not willing to 
 risk family distinction or property upon the issue of a 
 cause, though he believed it to be right, and although 
 he had declared, under his own signature, that the salva- 
 tion of the rights and liberties of America " depended 
 upon a firm union of its inhabitants, in the vigorous 
 prosecution of the measures necessary to oppose the 
 arbitrary and oppressive acts of Great Britain." 
 He took no farther part in aid of the colonists, 
 but carefully avoided doing any thing to incur their 
 ill-will. His mansion and grounds at Fishkill be- 
 came the headquarters of Baron Steuben during the 
 period that the American Army were encamped in the 
 vicinity, and in a large room in this mansion the meet- 
 ing was held at which the Society of the Cincinnati 
 was formed. Its owner appears to have acted with so 
 much discretion, and to have given so little offence, 
 that he escaped from being named in the act of for- 
 feiture of 1779, and when the war closed he quietly 
 repossessed himself of his property. As he was a 
 rich man, and his Dutch wife was a woman of great 
 intelligence and cultivation, he became one of the 
 social magnates of the city of New York ; occupying 
 a large double mansion in Wall Street, upon the site 
 
C-f^f c^-C 
 
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 /rt 
 
 -^ iV '"i i 
 
 ( 
 
 is 
 
 
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 n)w.) — 
 
 ^ 
 
 
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 ■15^ 
 
 
15 
 
 of what was afterward the United States Assay build- 
 ing, where, and upon his patrimonial estate at Fishkill, 
 he kept up the old Dutch hospitality. He died at the 
 homestead at Fishkill, in 1819, at the age of ninety-one. 
 Having said thus much respecting the family, I 
 cannot pass, at least without a brief notice, Gulian 
 Verplanck, Mr. Verplanck's grand-uncle, after whom he 
 was named, and who was in his time a very prominent 
 man. He was for many years one of the leading mer- 
 chants of the city, carrying on an extensive trade with 
 Holland, where he had been sent in early life for his 
 education. Like his grand-nephew, he was a man of 
 literary tastes. Mr. Kelby, of the Historical Society, 
 called my attention to a paragraph in the Columbian 
 of February 23, 1817, which I will read, as the verses 
 are quite respectable, containing what the writer 
 felt to be a political prophecy. 
 
 " The following lines were transcribed from a pane 
 of glass at an inn, in England : 
 
 " Hail, happy Britain, Freedom's blest retreat, 
 Great is thy power ; thy wealth, thy glory, great : 
 But wealth and power have no immortal day, 
 For all things only ripen to decay ; 
 And when that time amves, the lot of all, 
 When Britain's glory, wealth, and power, must fall, 
 
16 
 
 Then shall thy sons, for such is Heaven's decree, 
 In other worlds, another Britain see-r- 
 And what thou art, America shall be. 
 
 " (Signed) Gdlian Verplanck. 
 
 1775." 
 
 His anticipations of the future glory of America, 
 however, liad little effect upon Lis loyalty when the 
 struggle with the mother country arose, and he 
 remained in New York during the long period of 
 the British occupation, a steadfast adherent to the 
 crown. When the Duke of Clarence, then a young 
 midshipman, afterward William IV., was in New York, 
 Gulian Verplanck was his associate, skated with him 
 upon the Collect, and rescued him from drowning 
 when he fell through a hole in the ice. He was, how- 
 ever, a man of so much character and capacity, that 
 his Tory antecedents in no way operated to his 
 prejudice, for he was more influential and prominent 
 after the Kevolution than before. He represented 
 the city of New York in the House of Assembly 
 in 1788-89, and again in 1796-97, and upon both 
 occasions was elected Speaker, a position at that 
 time of great dignity and influence. In 1790 he be- 
 came the President of the Bank of New York, then 
 the only bank in the city, and continued to be its 
 President until his death in 1799. He was the father 
 
CD 
 
 
17 
 
 of Jolmsoii Verplanck, for many years a prominent 
 editor in New York, an active Federal politician, and 
 a literary man. 
 
 Daniel C. Verplanck, Mr. Verplanck's father, mar- 
 ried in early life Elizabeth Johnson, the daughter of 
 the third and the grand-daughter of the first President 
 of Columbia College, of which union Mr. Verplanck was 
 the only child. His father afterward married Ann Wal- 
 ton, the daughter of William Walton, the proprietor, 
 during the Revolution, of the old mansion, still stand- 
 ing in Pearl Street, known as the Walton House ; by 
 which marriage he had two daughters and three sons.' 
 After his second marriage he lived exclusively in Dutch- 
 ess County, which he represented for six years in Con- 
 gress, from 1803 to 1809, and later in life he was one 
 of the County Judges. He died in Fishkill, in 1846, 
 at the age of eighty-eight. 
 
 Mr. Verplanck was born at his grandfather's house, 
 in Wall Street, in 1786. He lost his mother at a very 
 early age, and after his father's second marriage he was 
 brought up exclusively by his grandmother, and passed 
 most of his childhood in the house in which he was born 
 and that of his grand-uncle Gulian, who lived a few 
 doors below it, in Wall Street ; or in occasional visits 
 
 ' Mary Ann Verplanck, Samuel Verplanck, Elizabeth Verplanck, Wil- 
 liam "Walton Verplanck, and James Delancey Verplanck. 
 
18 
 
 to his mother's relations, the Johnsons, at Stratford, 
 in Connecticut. Mrs. Henry Pierrepont remembered 
 to have been present at a dinner-party at his grand- 
 uncle's when young Gulian, then a very small boy, was 
 brought in and placed upon the table, to repeat, for 
 the entertainment of the company, a speech from one 
 of the dramatists. The taste for the drama, thus early 
 implanted, he retained through life. The theatre was 
 always one of his greatest enjoyments, and his recollec- 
 tions of the great actors he had seen in this country and 
 Europe, his vivid remembrance and delicate discrim- 
 ination of their distinctive qualities, and the many in- 
 teresting anecdotes he had to tell respecting them, was 
 one of the charming features in his table-talk. 
 
 At his grandmother's house, and more especially 
 at that of his grand-uncle, he had the opportunity of 
 seeing all that was cultivated and refined of the society 
 of New York at that period, and in his old age he fre- 
 quently spoke of the happy hours he had spent in 
 Gulian Verplanck's hospitable mansion, especially dur- 
 ing the period when he was passing through college, 
 and of the many distinguished persons he had seen 
 there. 
 
 He graduated at Columbia College in 1801, at the 
 early age of fifteen. Having outlived nearly all his 
 contemporaries, I have met with no one who could 
 
unto.lbjVU-^p 
 
 jr.s\M.KS lEiJsnr ilil.b. 
 
 I'lritered acccmiinc^Lo llio Actor ConCTess in llieyoaj ]E;:ii "hy iojiies llorrm^ iuti^>; 
 nistxjrt C.-.urt. >jf Uie So.iiLu!riO>i;JiiclaI8.Tott 
 
 oi-k's >jfti:.> uf \h., 
 
19 
 
 communicate any particulars of his college-life; but it 
 may be taken for granted that lie was an apt student, 
 and diligently earned his degree. After leaving col- 
 lege he studied law in the office of the celebrated Ed- 
 ward Livingston, and was admitted to the bar by 
 Chancellor (then Chief-Justice) Kent, in 1807, at the 
 age of twenty-one. 
 
 In the following year he had an office as an attor- 
 ney-at-law, at 51 Wall Street, and kept one for some 
 years thereafter in Pine Street, but I apprehend did no 
 business, as he was never known to have tried or ar- 
 gued a cause in court except a case of his own, which 
 will be hereafter referred to. 
 
 In 1809 he may be said to have made his entrance 
 into public life by the delivery of an oration upon the 
 4th of July, in the old North Dutch Church in Wil- 
 liam Street, before the Washington Benevolent So- 
 ciety. He was at the time a Federalist, the party 
 to which his family belonged, and accordingly we 
 find the young orator in this oration denouncing 
 " the bold imposture and many-colored lies by which 
 the friends of Washington were driven from public 
 confidence." He portrayed in glowing rhetoric the 
 disastrous effects of Jefferson's Administration, de- 
 scribed the country during that period as " sunk in 
 lethargy ; its people drugged with flattery ; its navy 
 
20 
 
 dismantled; its commerce a prey to every petty 
 pirate ; its judiciary trampled under feet, witli corrup- 
 tion sprouting from tlie liead of the Administration 
 and spreaamg through every department of the state, 
 until the nation was brought to the very verge of ruin." 
 Nor did the newly-elected President, Madison, fare 
 much Letter. He was referred to as " the supporter of 
 the calumniators of "Washington, the patron of the 
 admirers of French licentiousness who was content to 
 submit in silence to the plans of men which had 
 nearly brought the nation to the feet of Napoleon." 
 All this was highly acceptable to the body before 
 whom it was delivered. They printed the address, and 
 with them, and with all who entertained the same sen- 
 timents, he acquired considerable reputation, and was 
 marked as a rising man. 
 
 But he had been two years a student-at-law in the 
 office of Edward Livingston, the talented leader of the 
 Democratic party, and had the opportunity of learning 
 something of the^ real views and sentiments of the 
 other side. This association had doubtless opened his 
 eyes to the fact that the general distrust of the people 
 entertained by Hamilton and most of the leading 
 Federalists was not destined to promote the success or 
 secure the permanency of that party ; and he was con- 
 sequently careful to incorporate in his oration the sen- 
 
21 
 
 timent that " to tlie people of this land experience has 
 shown that the protection of their rights may be safely 
 confided," indicating that he was then drifting toward 
 the Democratic party, a result which an event that 
 occurred two years afterward materially contributed 
 to bring about. 
 
 In 1811 one of the graduating class of Columbia 
 College, afterward well known as Dr. J. B. Stevenson, 
 who had been appointed one of the disputants in a 
 political debate which was to take place at the college 
 commencement, submitted, as required, what he was to 
 say, to the inspection of one of the faculty. Dr. Wilson. 
 It contained this passage : " Representatives ought to 
 act according to the sentiments of their constituents," 
 which Dr. Wilson required him to modify by limiting 
 it to one instance only. The young man remonstrated, 
 but the doctor was inexorable, because, as he afterward 
 testified, he considered it expedient that the young 
 man should deliver correct principles, as he was to be 
 the respondent in the debate. The commencement was 
 held in Trinity Church before a crowded audience, and, 
 when Stevenson came to reply, he omitted the qualifi- 
 cation and delivered the passage exactly as he had 
 written it. When his name was called for the de- 
 livery of a diploma, he ascended the stage, and, as the 
 president was in the act of handing him the one 
 

 
 prepared for him, one of the professors interposed, and 
 the president refused to confer the degree. The young 
 man withdrew, overwhelmed by this public exposure, 
 but upon returning to the body of the church he was 
 surrounded by his fellow-graduates and friends, for he 
 had been an industrious and most exemplary student, 
 and at their instigation here turned to the platform and 
 demanded his diploma. One of the professors, anxious 
 to accommodate matters, said to him, " Probably you 
 forgot," but the j'^oung man promptly answered, " I did 
 not, but I would not utter what I did not believe." 
 The diploma was again refused, upon which he had 
 the courage to turn to the audience and say : " I am 
 refused my degree, ladies and gentlemen, not from any 
 literary deficiency, but because I refused to speak the 
 sentiments of others as my own." This at once pro- 
 duced a sensation, upon which Hugh Maxwell, an 
 alumnus of the college and afterward a distinguished 
 advocate, went upon the stage and addressed the 
 audience in support of Stevenson, condemning the 
 faculty in what they considered very bold and offensive 
 language. At this juncture Mr. Verplanck also went 
 upon the platform and demanded of Dr. Mason, the 
 provost, who was the ruling power in the college, why 
 the degree was not conferred. Dr. Mason informed 
 him, and Verplanck answered : " The reason, sir, is not 
 
23 
 
 satisfactory; Mr. Maxwell must be sustained." The 
 audience now became greatly excited in favor of Steven- 
 son, and Verplanck, turning toward them, moved a 
 vote of thanks to Mr. Maxwell "for his zealous and 
 honorable defence of an injured man," a proposition 
 which the graduating class received with three cheers, 
 followed by three groans for the provost. Verplanck's 
 manner in this scene, as subsequently described by Dr. 
 Mason, " was loud and rude, with an air of consequence 
 and disdain, calculated to aid and increase the disturb- 
 ance," and, according to the doctor's account, he " ap- 
 peared as if erecting himself into a tribunal to judge 
 above the heads of the faculty," a statement in which 
 others who were present did not concur. Old as well as 
 young men now took as active a part as Verplanck or 
 Maxwell ; and when Dr. Mason, in his official character 
 as provost, came forward to restore order, he was, to 
 employ his own words when examined as a witness, 
 received with a "hiss that in manner and quality 
 would not disgrace a congregation of snakes upon 
 Snake Hill in New Jersey." He was compelled to re- 
 tire, the police were brought in, and the commence- 
 ment came to an end in confusion and disorder. 
 
 From the college and the church the affair passed 
 into the newspapers. The faculty published in the 
 daily journals a lengthy vindication of their course. 
 
24 
 
 and were answered by a rejoinder from the graduating 
 class, and "by replies from others who were present. A 
 complaint was made to the grand jury, and seven of 
 the principal actors, Stevenson, Verplanck, and Max- 
 well being included, were indicted, and at the August 
 term of the Court of Sessions, or, as it was then pop- 
 ularly called, the Mayor's Court, they were arraigned 
 and put upon their trial for the criminal offence of 
 creating or assisting in a riot. De Witt Clinton, being 
 then mayor of the city, presided ; and from the unusual 
 circumstance of such an occurrence in a church upon 
 such an occasion, and the fact that all who were 
 indicted were members of leading families of the 
 city, the trial excited the deepest interest. Verplanck 
 and Maxwell defended themselves, and three of the 
 most eminent counsel of that day, David B. Ogden, 
 Josiah O. Hoffman, and Peter A. Jay, appeared for the 
 other defendants. The principal members of the fac- 
 ulty were examined as witnesses, conspicuous among 
 whom was Dr. Mason, the provost of the college, in 
 the earnestness and zeal which he displayed to secure 
 a conviction. He was at the time the most eloquent 
 preacher in the city, or indeed in the country, and in 
 giving his testimony brought all the weight of his pop- 
 ularity and his intellectual gifts to bear with great 
 effect against the accused. 
 
Jet.\MCJ M-Uii^-J^^ 
 
Verplanck addressed the jury upon his own behalf. 
 He declared, which was no douht the truth, that he 
 was moved to do what he did solely from his sense of 
 the injustice of the college authorities, in puhlicly re- 
 fusing to confer the degree because the young man 
 would not utter their political sentiments. " There 
 was," he said, " gentlemen of the jury, a lofty spirit of 
 gallantry about the conduct of Mr. Maxwell with which 
 at the time I could not but sympathize, and which now 
 I cannot but admire. He was bold in the cause of 
 friendship and of character. I approved of his behav- 
 ior, and I am proud, that I did so ; " and then gratified 
 his own feelings at least by telling the jury that Dr. 
 Mason was " a man towering in the proud consciousness 
 of intellectual strength, little accustomed to yield, or 
 even to listen to the opinion of others, that he appeared 
 as a witness pouring forth upon him and Maxwell all 
 the bitterness of his rancor and the overboiling of his 
 contempt ; throwing off the priest and the gentleman 
 and assuming the buffoon ; showering upon them his 
 delicate irony, his choice simile of the congregation of 
 snakes, and all the other savory flowers of rhetoric, in 
 which he was so fertile, and had poiired forth in such 
 abundance," and, appealing to the jury, asked, " What 
 credit will you give to a witness, inflamed by passion, 
 smarting with wounded pride, and mortified self-con- 
 fidence ? " 
 
26 
 
 It was very doubtful whetlier the offence, which 
 the law denominates a riot, had been proved, or in 
 fact committed, whether there was any thing more than 
 a strong expression of disapprobation on the part of 
 the audience, an occurrence more or less incident to the 
 nature of public assemblages, which became a scene 
 of disorder from the faculty persisting in refusing to 
 give the young man his diploma. No actual violence 
 on the part of any of the defendants was proved, nor 
 was what occurred of a nature to create public terror, 
 a necessary ingredient in the crime of riot. There 
 was probably nothing more than a breach of the 
 peace. 
 
 It was pertinently suggested by Mr. Jay that if 
 the college permitted the students to discuss a polit- 
 ical question, as a part of the public exercises at a 
 commencement, they should have been allowed the 
 free exercise of their own views in the discussion of it, 
 and that the supervision of their remarks should have 
 been confined to the correction merely of literary de- 
 fects; that otherwise there was no freedom in the 
 debate, but the students were simply mouth-pieces to 
 utter the political views and sentiments of the pro- 
 fessors ; that there was nothing in the statutes of the 
 college which imposed the penalty of a refusal of a 
 degree if a student would not incorporate in his speech 
 
27 
 
 what a professor directed Hm to put in ; that a reso- 
 lution had "been inserted in the minutes of 1796, sub- 
 jecting the compositions of the students to the inspec- 
 tion of the faculty, and, if any such penalty as the 
 deprivation of a degree were attached, the students 
 were left in ignorance of it, as there was nothing of 
 the kind in the college statutes; and he argued that it 
 was not the young men upon trial, but the faculty, 
 who wei-e responsible for the disturbance ; that they 
 had, perhaps, without sufficient reflection, fallen into 
 an error, which their pride prevented them afterward 
 from admitting. They had committed a palpable act 
 of injustice, and it was their unwillingness to recede 
 from it, and their determination to persist in it, that 
 had exasperated the audience. They consequently 
 were the real authors of the riot, if there was one, 
 but he insisted, as did the other counsel for the de- 
 fence, that, in the sense of the law, there had been no 
 riot. 
 
 Clinton, however, had no misgivings in respect to 
 the law. He charged the jury that the offence had 
 been committed, that all the defendants were guilty 
 of it, and got rid of the definition of a riot by Haw- 
 kins, a learned elementary authority upon the criminal 
 law, by declaring it to be " undoubtedly bad." He 
 commented upon the conduct of the defendants with 
 
28 
 
 great sev^erity, and was especially severe upon Ver- 
 jjlanck. It was difficult, be said, to speak of Ms con- 
 duct in terms sufficiently strong ; tliat he was one of 
 the principal ringleaders " in the scene of disorder and 
 disgrace," and that in his reply to the provost, and 
 in his moving a vote of thanks to Maxwell, he evinced 
 " a matchless insolence." He told the jury that they 
 were bound, " by every consideration arising out of the 
 public peace and the public morals, and by their re- 
 gard for an institution venerable for its antiquity, to 
 bring in all the defendants guilty;" that he had no 
 hesitation in declaring that the disturbance was "the 
 most disgraceful, the most unprecedented, the most 
 unjustifiable, and the ,most outrageous, that had ever 
 come to the knowledge, of the court." 
 
 Under this charge the jury found the defendants 
 guilty. Verplanck and Maxwell were fined two.hundred 
 dollars each, which was imposed, says Eenwick, Clin-, 
 ton's biographer, in an address conveying a severe, mer- 
 ited, and pointed reprimand. They were required, in 
 addition, to procure sureties for their fature good be- 
 havior; and the same authority states that Clinton 
 hesitated for some time whether he was not called 
 upon, by a regard for justice, to inflict also the disr 
 grace of imprisonment. 
 
 But the result of the prosecution did not. produce 
 
I 'ill 
 
 ,, 1 " ' 
 
 ■„ I,'. 
 
 II I 
 
 Engiavel lj>' ^ 1 fib n > tU, On il i- 
 
 miDnFTifi;! ejis?©. 
 
 xtl'iA'1 
 
 J^^ 
 
 
r.-.iTTi ii rt It j ^ I'.i iT*^ '^ Tmr"}" 1^ 
 
 M/l^/^iy- 
 
29 
 
 the effect which its promoters anticipated. Public 
 feeling, especially in the Democratic party, was with 
 the defendants, and the course of Clinton, upon the 
 trial, greatly augmented the hostility of the Madiso- 
 nian Democrats to him. We were then on the eve of a 
 war with England. The measures of Madison had not 
 been sufficiently energetic to satisfy the more ardent 
 of the Democrats ; and Clinton, relying upon a diver- 
 sion of the dissatisfied portion of that party in his fa 
 vor, had taken the field as a candidate for the presi- 
 dency against Madison, and at this very time was in- 
 triguing to secure the support of the Federalists. By 
 the Democrats his course upon the trial was at- 
 tributed to a desire to ingratiate Tiiuiself with the Fed 
 eral party, and matters subsequently brought to light 
 disclose that this belief was not wholly without foun- 
 dation. Dr. Mason, a Federalist of the straitest 
 sect, either shortly before,- or about the time of the 
 trial, had acted as the private friend of Clinton in 
 bringing . about an interview between- him and John 
 Jay, Eufus King, and Gouverneur Morris, three of the 
 principal Federal leaders, which failed of its object 
 through John Jay's disgust at hearing Clinton say that 
 he had never sympathized with the Democrats, but had 
 always been in favor of the policy of "Washington and 
 Adams's Administration — an extraordinary statement 
 
30 
 
 from the man whose denunciation of the Federal lead- 
 ers, as " men who would rather reign in hell than serve 
 in heaven," had rung through every part of the Union. 
 It was therefore not without, some ground that he was 
 exposed to the suspicion of having been actuated upon 
 this trial loj a desire to do something that would gratify 
 the Federalists, and especially his negotiator with them, 
 a man of imperious temper and despotic will, who had 
 set his heart upon the success of this prosecution. 
 
 Two months after this trial Mr. Verplanck was mar- 
 ried to Miss Eliza Fenno, by whom he had two chil- 
 dren, .William L. and Gulian Verplanck, Jr. The lady 
 died in Paris, in 1817. The younger son, Gulian, 
 in 1845. 
 
 During this year, 1811, he made his first venture 
 in authorship, in an anonymous pamphlet, in the form 
 of a letter, addressed to the learned Dr. Samuel L. 
 Mitchell, pui-portihg to come from Abiraelech Goody, 
 ladies' shoemaker, 289 Division Street, beseeching the 
 learned doctor, who was then a United States Senator, 
 to advise him how he should invest ten thousand dol- 
 lars which he had drawn in a lottery, and detailing his 
 ill success in attempting to use it in banks, in manu- 
 facturing companies, and in discounting commercial 
 paper. This production was rather playful than witty, 
 but it attracted attention at the time from the nature 
 
Li.gi-iv.d uy ..ra^Der,-- ...,-^ oy P-TWi.-.:-..on of uie tJ Y. Ly.-vom frf/n .'. Pauiii/ig" t,y 
 
 SAMITEI,.L. MnTHII.L. M.I) I,. L.I). 
 
 ^^T^-y '^ 
 
 ^^r 4'^ 
 
 Diiu-ivi '-'.-.urL Dt" ih.- Stiuthei-ii rji-.5mct of Hew York 
 
31 
 
 of tlie subject, and because it was a pioneer of a kind 
 of writing in whicli Artemus "Ward and otlier humor- 
 ists have been so successful, where mucL. of the effect 
 is produced by the way in which the words are spelled 
 and in the clever imitation of the style of an illiterate 
 person. 
 
 Having entered the literary arena under the so- 
 briquet of Abimelech Coody, he used this nom deplume 
 afterward in pamphlets and in political articles in the 
 newspapers during the years 1814 and 1815. One 
 was a vigorous appeal to the Federalists to come out 
 manfully in support of the war. In another, " A Fa- 
 ble for Statesmen and Politicians," the struggle for 
 the presidency was depicted as a strife among the va- 
 rious animals for supremacy, in which Clinton figures 
 as a " young Irish greyhound of high mettle and ex- 
 travagant pretensions." 
 
 In 1812 and 1813 Clinton cooperated with the 
 Federalists, first in his effort for the presidency and 
 afterward in an attempt to defeat Governor Tompkins; 
 and Verplanck, though an avowed Federalist, exerted 
 himself against Clinton, whom he regarded as playing 
 a double part, by secretly acting with the Federalists, 
 who opposed the war, and outwardly with that portion 
 of the Democratic party who regarded Madison's meas- 
 ures as not sufficiently energetic. 
 
32 
 
 In tlie spring of 1814 he took a more decided 
 course in tlie formation of a small party of Federalists 
 opposed to Clinton and in favor of the war, who ran 
 a separate ticket for members of Assembly fi'om the 
 city of New York, Mr. Verplanck being one of the nomi- 
 nees. The pretension of this organization to repre- 
 sent the Federalists was unsparingly ridiculed, by Cole- 
 man, the editor of the Evening Post, who bestowed 
 upon them the sobriquet of "the Coodies,". and the 
 ridicule finding support in the very small vote which 
 they polled at the election, the organization was aban- 
 doned. But, though small in numbers, they were for- 
 midable in talent, and kept up the war against Clinton 
 by clever and witty articles in the newspapers, which 
 he appears to have felt much more keenly than the 
 organized efforts of the politicians. 
 
 In 1815 Clinton was removed from the office of 
 Mayor of New York. He had become alienated from 
 the Democratic party,- without acquiring the confidence 
 of the Federalists; and, with his political prospects 
 blasted, he found himself with a large family, deprived 
 of a lucrative office, and heavily in debt. This painful 
 position was augmented by the fact that his life had 
 been passed wholly in politics and that he had never 
 followed any business or profession. At this moment, 
 when many would have sunk in despondency, this 
 
r£)IiT5\fTIWTC SICjUMIE^Mc 
 
remarkable man determined to devote Lis eneregy 
 to a work witli whicli liis name will be forever 
 associated — the construction of the Erie Canal; 
 and, anticipating political opposition both to it and 
 to himself, he resolved to attack with their own 
 weapons those who by their writings had assisted in 
 producing his downfall. Accordingly, in 1815, a 
 pamphlet appeared entitled " An Account of Abime- 
 lech Coody and other celebrated writers of New York, 
 in a letter from a traveller to his friend in South 
 Carolina." Under a show of apparent fairness, it was 
 designed to demolish the political and literary influence 
 " of the Coodies," whom he described as of " a hybrid 
 nature, the combined spawn of Federalism and Jacobin- 
 ism, generated in the venomous passions of disappoint- 
 ment and revenge." Washington Irving, Paulding, and 
 many others, came in for severe castigation, but he 
 especially devoted himself to Verplanck (Abimelech 
 Coody). He reviewed all his literary performances, 
 charged him with avarice, and, what was apparently a 
 high offence in Clinton's eyes, of writing in the magazines 
 for money. He detailed the particulars of Verplanck's 
 trial and conviction as a rioter in Trinity Church, giving 
 extracts from the severest portions of his own charge ; 
 and, after admitting that Verplanck had more knowledge 
 than his brother wits, and was polite in his manner, he 
 
34 
 
 proceeded, in an imaglnaiy interview, to give this not 
 very complimentary account of Ms personal appearance • 
 " When I saw Abimelech Coody, he arose from his 
 chair as I was announced and did not approach me in 
 a direct line, but in a sidelong way, or diagonally, a 
 kind of echelon movement, reminding one of Lin- 
 naeus's character of a dog, who, he says, always inclines 
 his tail to the left. This I attributed at first to diffi- 
 dence, but I no sooner had a full view of him, than 
 
 I instantly saw 
 
 - ' tlie proud 'patrician sneer, 
 The conseious simper, and the jealous leer.' 
 
 " His person is squat and clumsy, reminding one of 
 Humpty Dumpty on the wall. A nervous tremor is 
 concentrated at the end of each nostril, from his habit- 
 ual sneering and carping, with a look as wise as that of 
 Solomon, at the dividing of the child, upon an old piece 
 of tapestry." And, after having disposed of Verplanck, 
 he proceeded, under the shelter of an anonymous name, 
 to give the following very flattering account of him- 
 self: "Mr. Clinton, among his other great qualifica- 
 tions, is distinguished for his marked devotion to sci- 
 ence ; few men have read more and few men can claim 
 more varied and extensive knowledge, and the bounties 
 of Nature have been improved by persevering and unre- 
 mitting industry." It would scarcely be credited that 
 
a^.A<-_^.^/C('Z-^ J i'^^'^^^^-y^' 
 
35 
 
 a man should write in this way respecting himself, and 
 the existence of this passage might justify a doubt of 
 his being the author of the pamphlet, were it not that 
 the original manuscript, in his handwriting, which 
 was preserved by the printer, is in existence. 
 
 It would have been better had he left Abimelech 
 Coody alone ; for, though Clinton, as a writer, had a 
 great deal of force, and was something of a master of 
 invective, he had not Verplanck's learning, his critical 
 acuteness, nor his wit — qualities of which the lattei 
 made ample use when the proper time arrived. 
 
 It would appear from Clinton's statement that Mr. 
 Verplanck held some military position during the war, 
 for he enumerates, among his other acts, that he settled 
 down into a captain of sea-fencibles for money. He 
 was, however, what Clinton was not, an earnest and 
 oonsistent supporter of the war from the beginning, 
 alienating himself in this respect from his family and 
 from all his previous associations. 
 
 In 1813 Washington Irving undertook the editorial 
 charge of a periodical known as the Analectic Maga- 
 zine', in which he was aided by the contributions of 
 two of his literary friends, Verplanck and Paulding. 
 Mr. Verplanck's contributions, which will be found 
 under the signature of V., consisted chiefly of biograph- 
 ical sketches of such leading Americans as Samuel 
 
36 
 
 Adams, Fisher Ames, Oliver EUswortii, and otliers, 
 These papers, thougli exceedingly well written, were 
 as biographical sketches, wanting in a due apprecia- 
 tion of some of the characters delineated. He did not, 
 for instance, give Samuel Adams the position he de 
 served as one of the master-spirits of the American 
 Revolution, for the reason, probably, that the facts 
 which show it had not then come to light. 
 
 At the close of 1816 he went to Europe, and was 
 absent two years. He was joyfully welcomed, upon 
 his arrival in London, by his friend "Washington Irving. 
 " The sight of him," writes Irving to Mrs. Hoffman, 
 " brought a thousand melancholy recollections of past 
 times and scenes ; of friends that are distant, and others 
 that are gone to a better world; " and the two friends 
 passed much of their time together. While he was 
 in London he was a frequent attendant in the Court of 
 King's Bench, then presided over by the celebrated Lord 
 Ellenborough. ■ Of EUenborough, and of what occurred 
 in the law courts, he had many pleasant anecdotes. 
 As a ludicrous illustration of the weight which this 
 eminent jurist gave to the want of collegiate educa- 
 tion in a professional man, Mr. Verplanck had this 
 anecdote : that he was present in court in an action 
 brought by a surgeon for the recovery of his bill, 
 which the person who employed him resisted, as an 
 
t^^i^j^^ (^i^^. O- cX<^C^.'7^-1. 
 
 y 
 
 Or.ii.rv '•\ I'o' 
 
i^>^^t 
 
'&i 
 
 unreasonaLle charge. These were not the days of Sir 
 Astley Cooper, or of Dr. Mott, and Lord Ellenborough, 
 who probably looked upon the calling of a surgeon as 
 but slightly removed from that of a barber, was de- 
 scribed by Mr. Verplanck as closing . his charge to the 
 jury, in his deep-toned voice and with all his impres- 
 siveness of manner, in these words : " I submit to you, 
 gentlemen of the jury, whether this is not an enor- 
 mous charge on the part of a man whose education has 
 been illiberal, and whose art is mechanical." 
 
 He was fortunate, in 1816, in seeing Mrs. Siddons 
 in her two greatest characters. Queen Katherine and 
 Lady Macbeth, upon the only two occasions after her 
 retirement, when she consented to reappear, first for 
 the benefit of her brother, and afterward at the special 
 request of the royal family. He spoke of her per- 
 formance, upon both occasions, as transcending any 
 thing he had ever witnessed, expressing this opinion 
 after he had seen Rachel and Eistori in their finest 
 personations. He was also present in 1817 when her 
 brother, John P. Kemble, took his farewell of the stage, 
 in the character of Coriolanus. He described Kemble 
 as a careful, studied, and classical actor, who was very 
 fine in Roman characters, but not equal to Cooke or to 
 Kean in some of the master-creations of Shakespeare, 
 such as Othello, Lear, Macbeth, Shylock, and Richard 
 
38 
 
 the Third. He saw Kemble in Hamlet, wliicli was 
 considered the most perfect of his performances, and 
 paid Mr. Edwin Booth the compliment of saying that 
 his personation of Hamlet was superior to that of 
 Kemble, Cooke, or Kean. After leaving England he 
 made the usual tour of the Continent, and passed much 
 of his time in Paris, a close observer of the effects 
 produced by the reactionary movement that followed 
 upon the downfall of Napoleon. He especially enjoyed, 
 while in Paris, the acting of Talma, Mdlle. Mars, and 
 Mdlle. George, for he was an excellent French scholar, 
 and as thoroughly acquainted with the dramatic litera- 
 ture of France as he was with that of England. 
 
 Upon his return to this city, in 1818, he delivered an 
 anniversary discourse before the New York Historical 
 Society. It is among the most finished of his produc- 
 tions, and greatly augmented his literary reputation. 
 Among other things in this admirable discourse, he suc- 
 cessfully vindicated the benevolent Las Casas from the 
 charge of Robertson, and other historians, of having 
 been the one to suggest the importation of negroes from 
 Africa for slaves, as a means of dispensing with the en- 
 slavement of the Indians, a statement until then univer- 
 sally credited. He reviewed the leading events con- 
 nected with the colonization of New England, the Mid 
 die States, and some of the Southern States, interweav- 
 
39 
 
 ing his observations with some finely-sketclied poi-traits, 
 especially of Oglethorpe and Bishop Berkeley, calling 
 attention for the first time in this country to Berkeley's 
 well-known poem, containing the prophetic line, " West- 
 ward the course of empire takes its way." In adverting 
 to the founding of this city by the Dutch, he vindi- 
 cated the Hollanders from the aspersions of English 
 writers, and referred to his friend Irving's " Knicker- 
 bocker," in these words : 
 
 " It is more in sorrow than in anger that I feel my 
 self compelled to add to these gross instances of na 
 tional injustice, a recent work of a writer of our own, 
 who is justly considered one of the brightest orna 
 ments of American literature. I allude to the bur 
 lesque history of New York, in which it is painful to 
 see a mind as admirable for its exquisite perception of 
 the beautiful, as it. is for its quick sense of the ridicu- 
 lous, wasting the riches of its fancy on an ungrateful 
 theme, and its exuberant humor in a coarse caricature." 
 Irving, writing home to his brother, says ; " I have seen 
 what Verplanck said of my work. He did me more 
 than justice in what he said of my mental qualifications, 
 and, he said nothing of my work that I have not long 
 thought of it myself He is one of the honestest of 
 
 men I know of in speaking his opinion His own 
 
 talents and acquirements are too great to suffer him to 
 
40 
 
 entertain jealousy; but, were I his bitterest enemy, 
 such an opinion have I of his integrity of mind, that 
 I would refer any one to him, for an honest account of 
 me, sooner than to any one else." 
 
 Upon Verplanch's return, Clinton, through his la- 
 bors as one of the commission of inquiry, and his 
 earnest advocacy of the Erie Canal, had been restored 
 to popular favor and was Governor of the State ; but 
 there was still a strong party against him, upon whom 
 Clinton conferred the sobriquet^ by which they Avere 
 lono- afterward known, of " The Bucktails," and Avith 
 that party Mr. Verplanck allied himself. 
 
 The fruit of this political connection was the ap: 
 pearance in the following year, 1819, of a production 
 which was then extensively read in the city and in the 
 State, upon Avhich the newspapers bestowed the popu- 
 lar name which it afterward bore, of " The Bucktail 
 Bards." It was a poetical satire upon Clinton, of great 
 merit not only in the epigrammatic point of the verse, 
 but in the wit and learning displayed in the notes with 
 which it was profusely garnished. It first appeared in 
 the form of a brief poetical epistle, entitled " Dick Shift," 
 which was afterAvard, during the same year, augmented 
 in quantity and published with another poetical effu- 
 sion assuming to come from one Major Pindar Puff, a 
 friend of Clinton's, and some smaller poems, the whole 
 
41 
 
 being Embraced under the general title of " The State 
 Triumvirate," to whicli a ludicrously learned and witty 
 introduction was added, and an increased quantity of 
 notes. My limits will admit only of the observation 
 that the description of the hero, Dick Shift, an un- 
 principled politician and applicant for office ; the por- 
 trait of the learned Dr, Samuel L. Mitchell ; the inter- 
 view with Clinton ; and the meeting of the council, in 
 which Dick's application for office is passed upon, will 
 bear comparison with any thing in Hudibras or Swift : 
 while the imitation of the Irish orator, Charles Phillips ; 
 the French congratulatory poem; the ludicrous epi- 
 gram disguised in Greek letters, purporting to come 
 from Dr. Parr; the philological dissertation upon the 
 derivation and meaning of the word Bucktail ; and 
 the learned letter of Dr. Mitchell in the notes, explain- 
 ing scientifically the kind of vermin that troubled the 
 sapient Mr. Pell, the secretary and political ally of 
 Clinton, arc all full of point and humor. 
 
 The object of this production was to expose the 
 political venality and corruption of many of the lead- 
 ing men that surrounded Clinton, as well as to take 
 down the Governor's literary and scientific pretensions, 
 which was done with telling effect both in the poem 
 and in the notes. 
 
 " The Bucktail Bards " was at the time attributed 
 
42 
 
 to Mr. Verplanck, though it has been since suppt)sed to 
 have been the work of several hands, and the names 
 of Judge John Duer, and of Rudolph Bunner, an active 
 politician and a man of vivacity and wit, have been 
 named as connected with him in the production of it. 
 He was himself always very reticent upon the subject. 
 When called upon, at the dinner given in the Century to 
 Fitz-Greene Halleck, to respond to a toast compliment- 
 ary to this satire, he evaded the question of the au- 
 thorship, but upon another occasion impliedly ad- 
 mitted his connection with it, but that was all. He 
 probably felt (for he was not a man to bear animosi- 
 ties) that he had accomplished, by its j)roduction at the 
 time, all that he had desired, and was willing to let the 
 controversy end with the causes that had produced it. 
 In this year, 1819, he was elected by the anti-Clin- 
 tonians, or Bucktails, to the Legislature, as a member 
 from the city of New York, and continued to represent it 
 in the Assembly during the years 1820, 1821, 1822, and 
 1823. He took no prominent part as a speaker or as 
 a debater, nor is his name mentioned in any of the 
 struggles which led to the overthrow of the old Coun- 
 cil of Appointment, and the adoption of a new Consti- 
 tution in 1821. He was chairman of the Committee 
 upon Education, and appears to have devoted himself 
 to those quiet legislative labors which produce their 
 
43 
 
 effects without attracting the attention whicli is given 
 to exciting political discussions in representative bod- 
 ies. In fact, like Clinton himself, he never became a 
 ready public speaker or debater. Whatever he did 
 was the result of previous thought and preparation ; 
 and even then, though his matter was excellent, his 
 manner was unimpressive, his voice unattractive, and 
 his gestures awkward. He was fluent and easy 
 enough with his pen, and, when he had before him a 
 carefnlly-written address, he could read it before a lit- 
 erary or other public body with considerable effect. 
 
 In 1821 he was appointed a professor in the Gen- 
 eral Theological Seminary of the Episcopal Church, 
 in the city of New York, and after his retirement 
 from the Legislature, in 1824, he published a volume 
 " On the Nature and Uses of the Evidences of Re- 
 vealed Eellgion," a work of sterling merit. Though 
 the subject was one upon which several able and well- 
 known works had been written, his treatment of it had 
 an especial merit of its own. He did not bring together, 
 like Lardner, the great array of historical proof, nor 
 methodize it, to make the conclusions it warrants more 
 apparent, like Paley ; nor reason from the analogy of 
 Nature, like Butler ; but he relied mainly upon the in- 
 ternal evidence which Christianity itself affords of its 
 divine origin. Toward the close of the essay he 
 
44 
 
 surveyed the leading features of the historical proof, 
 but the body of the work was devoted to show- 
 ing the superiority of Christianity to every other form 
 of religious belief, in its adaptation to the wants and 
 hopes of man's nature. It is impossible to read this 
 book without being profoundly impressed by the sin- 
 cerity of the writer's convictions, and it abounds in 
 passages of great force, earnestness, and beauty, of 
 which the following may be cited as a specimen : 
 
 " Prophecy announces the advent of the religion of 
 Jesus ; history records its progress ; literature and criti- 
 cism combine to attest the muniments of its doctrines ; 
 but its surest witnesses are to be found in man's own 
 breast — in the grandeur of his thoughts — in the low- 
 ness of his desires — in the aspirations which lift him 
 toward the heavens, in the vices which weigh him to 
 the earth — in his sublime, his inexplicable conceptions 
 of infinity and eternity — in his humiliating experience 
 of folly, misery, and guilt. ... It unfolds to him his 
 own character and situation, his duties and the means of 
 discharging them, the moral diseases under which he 
 labors, and the remedies he needs. ... It presents to 
 Lim a high and beautiful, an unostentatious and pure 
 morality, taught in weighty and impressive aphorismsi 
 in natural and touching similitudes, or in the most 
 engaging forms of action and character. ... It speaks 
 
45 
 
 to him of tte nature and attributes of God, and this 
 not in the way of dry and didactic systems, but as 
 those attributes are actually exhibited in the manifes- 
 tations of His power and goodness. While it offers 
 to man's consideration subjects to engage and employ 
 the noblest powers of his reason, it addresses him also 
 as a being largely endowed with sentiments and affec- 
 tions, and it calls upon the warm sensibilities and 
 strong emotions of his breast, moving him in turns by 
 each and every rational motive of interest, duty, and 
 feeling, to remorse, to fear, to repentance, to devotion, 
 and to gratitude." 
 
 This period of comparative leisure was productive 
 of other fruits. His attention was attracted by the 
 want of commercial morality in that period of wild 
 speculations and fluctuations in value which preceded 
 the panic of 1825, and the legal rules by which con- 
 tracts for the buying and selling of merchandise are 
 governed, which, as he conceived, were insufficient to 
 secure that integrity in trading which he deemed in- 
 dispensable to a commercial people. Accordingly, in 
 1825, he pjiblished a volume called an "Essay on the 
 Doctrine of Contracts as affected in Law and Morals by 
 Concealment, Error, or Inadequate Price." Whatever 
 may be the judgment of lawyers upon the modifica- 
 tions he proposed in the rules upon this branch of the 
 
46 
 
 commercial law, there can be but one opinion in re- 
 spect to tlie legal learning displayed in the work, and 
 upon the ability with which it is written. It would 
 have produced at the time a marked impression, had 
 its author been an eminent lawyer or judge, but, 
 emanating from one unknown in the practice of the 
 law, it appears to have attracted but little attention. 
 It was, moreover, most unjustly assailed by the editor 
 of a law journal then published in the city of New 
 York, who, so far as it related to the law, spoke of it 
 with the utmost contempt, and, as an ethical treatise, 
 pronounced it of no value. He recommended those 
 Avho had not bought it, to leave it untouched upon the 
 bookseller's shelves, and those who had, to let it lie 
 upon their tables with its leaves uncut. It may. be 
 doubted, from his remarks, if the writer had ever read 
 it, and the whole article bears internal evidence of hav- 
 ing been written by a personal or political enemy. 
 The reviewer was answered by William Sampson, a 
 lawyer of some literary notoriety at the time, A^'hose 
 praise of the work, at least among lawyers, was prob- 
 ably as detrimental as the other writer's q,buse; for 
 kSampson, in public addresses, in pamphlets, and in 
 newspaper articles, had indulged for years in an indis- 
 criminating denunciation of the whole system of the 
 common law, a course as extreme and as unreasonable 
 
47 
 
 as tlie legal bigotry of those who consider it the per- 
 fection of human reason, and as beyond the possibility 
 of improvement. 
 
 . One of the leading objects of this work was to 
 bring about some modification of the rule of caveat 
 emptor^ by which, in the event of any defect in the ar- 
 ticle sold, the loss is upon the buyer, unless he has 
 bought upon an express warranty, or the seller has 
 been guilty of fraud. He urged with great force the 
 unjust extent to which this rule had been carried, and 
 gave many illustrations of cases in which it would be 
 to the benefit of commerce, entirely practicable and 
 certainly just, to impose the loss upon the seller; and, 
 having been engaged for many years in the chief com- 
 mercial city of the Union, in the discharge of duties 
 involving the practical application of this legal rule, I 
 am enabled to say that the law is coming round to the 
 recognition of some of the very distinctions insisted 
 upon in this derided book; and I may add, as tbe 
 result of my experience, that, if a more strict and just 
 rule had been applied, we should, I think, have had a 
 higher standard of morality in buying and seEing, 
 without any diminution of our commercial prosperity 
 as a people. 
 
 During this year, 1824, he delivered a discourse at 
 the annual meeting of the American Academy of the 
 
48 
 
 Fine Arts, the superiority of which to a much-lauded 
 address of Clinton's before the same body, eight years 
 previously, is very marked. I know of no production, 
 within the same limits, in which the reasons why a 
 nation should encourage the development of the fine 
 arts are so forcibly stated; that describes so felici- 
 tously the beneficial influence which works of art exer- 
 cise upon individuals, or which points out so clearly the 
 causes of the pleasure which they impart. A consider- 
 able portion of this discourse was devoted to an ex- 
 amination of the state of architecture in this country, 
 and suggestions were made for its improvement, many 
 of which are as applicable at the present day as at the 
 time when they were delivered. 
 
 In 1825 Mr. Verplanck was elected to Congress as 
 a representative from the city of New York, and con- 
 tinued to be a member of the House of Representatives 
 for eight years, or until 1833. My limits will not allow 
 me to review in detail his congressional career during 
 a period which embraced the whole of John Quincy 
 Adams's Administration and the first four years of Gen 
 eral Jackson's. It was, as will be remembered, one of 
 the most exciting periods in our political history, and 
 in which he was an influential actor. I may refer to 
 the fact that it was through his instrumentality chiefly 
 that the law of copyright was extended from twenty- 
 
Engraredby J.WFaradijr. f/oi;* a rainchig Lv .'i.t. 1 
 
 3, il, cAtLcuwa 
 
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49 
 
 eight to forty-eight years, in recognition of whicli a 
 pntlic dinner was given to him in this city. He was 
 chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means, then 
 the most responsible as well as the most influential po- 
 sition in the House. To this committee was intrusted 
 the delicate subject of the tariff, which at that period 
 agitated the whole country, gave rise to the political 
 doctrine of nullification, and threatened the dismember- 
 ment of the Union. It was a great national crisis, through 
 which the country was carried in safety by the adop- 
 tion of the famous Compromise Act of 1833, a master- 
 stroke of policy, which pacified the nation, and satisfied 
 both the North and the South. This compromise Mr. 
 Verplanck was one of the parties in bringing about. As 
 chairman of the Committee of "Ways and Means, he re- 
 ported a bill for the diminution of duties until they 
 reached the revenue standard. As the 'passage of this 
 bill in the House was apprehended by Mr. Clay, the lead- 
 er of the protectionists, action upon it at their request 
 was delayed. Consultation s followed , and a compromise 
 for a gradual diminution of duties over a period of more 
 than two presidential terms was privately agreed upon, 
 a bill was prepared to that effect and introduced in the 
 Senate by Mr. Clay, and discussed. Pending its discus- 
 sion, the bill of the Committee of Ways and Means came 
 up in the House, when the one which had been pri- 
 
50 
 
 vately agreed upon was offered as a substitute. It was 
 referred to Mr. Verplanck's committee, was reported by 
 him the next morning, and passed the House. It was 
 immediately thereafter brought to the Senate, and, hav- 
 ing the united support of Mr. Clay and Mr. Calhoun, 
 was adopted. The chief difference between it and 
 the bill of Mr. Verplanck was, that his bill provided 
 for an immediate reduction in part, and a final reduc- 
 tion to the revenue standard in 1834 ; while the other 
 provided for a gradual diminution to that standard 
 until reached in the year 1842. The whole credit 
 of the measure was, however, accorded to Mr. Clay, 
 and little if any attention given to the fact that it 
 was the bill of Mr, Vei-planck, and the fact that he 
 had a majority in the House in favor of it, that 
 brought things to a crisis and' to a settlement. He 
 took no pains himself to advise the world of his 
 share in this important measure. He was throughout 
 life modest in respect to his own services or acquire- 
 ments, and appears to have been indifferent to the 
 value of political or literary fame. 
 
 The message of General Jackson, recommending the 
 removal of the deposits from the Bank of the United 
 States, was also referred to this committee. Mr. Ver- 
 planck reported a resolution, declaring as the opinion 
 of the House, that the deposits were safe in the custody 
 
MiEirmT (^:Tlj&:Ec 
 
 ^^. 
 
 /a. 
 
 7 
 1 
 
3 !:■ C;C? " ''^■M Q Oi'-}'') ^IdJG >;^iVJ L,i 6 &)0:V:. 
 
51 
 
 of the bank, Avhicli was adopted by a large majority. 
 This brought him into open collision with GeneralJack- 
 son, and the result was his separation, with many others, 
 from the Democratic party, and the formation, of the 
 Whig party, of which he was one of the founders. In 
 the following year, 1834, he was nominated by the 
 Whigs for the office of Mayor of New York, in opposi- 
 tion to his Democratic colleague in Congress, Cornelius 
 W. Lawrence, which gave rise to one of the most excit-^ 
 ing municipal contests that has ever occurred in this 
 city, in which his Democratic opponent was elected by 
 the small majority of one hundred and fifty-two. 
 
 Upon retiring from Congress, he devoted himself 
 more especially to literary pursuits, and contributed ar- 
 ticles to the Mirror, a literary journal then published in 
 New York, among which was a charming memoir of 
 Robert C. Sands, his literary associate-' together ^ith 
 Mr. Bryant, in the production about this period of three 
 volumes of a literary annual. The Talismcm, which 
 contains many light articles from his pen. 
 
 Clinton died in 1828. Two years afterward, Mr. 
 Verplanck delivered a discourse before the literary 
 societies of Columbia College, and, forgetting what- 
 ever cause he had for complaint at Clinton's conduct 
 upon his trial, and his coarse personality in the sketch 
 of Abimelech Goody, he availed himself of the occa- 
 
52 
 
 sion of tMs address to offer this noble tribute to Ms 
 memory : 
 
 " I gladly pay tlie homage due to his eminent and 
 lasting services, and honor the lofty ambition which 
 taught him to look to great works of public utilit}^, and 
 their successful execution, as his arts of gaining or of 
 redeeming the confidence of a generous and public-spir- 
 ited people. Whatever of party animosity might have 
 blinded me to his merits, had died away long before 
 his death, and I could now utter his honest praises 
 without the imputation of hollow pretence from 
 others, or the mortifying consciousness iu my own 
 breast of rendering unwilling and tardy justice to 
 noble designs and great public services." 
 
 In the same year, 183.0, he interested himself in 
 the movement for the erection of a public monument 
 to the great forensic orator and patriot, Thomas Addis 
 Emmet, and was the author of the lengthy English 
 inscription which records, upon the obelisk in St. 
 Paul's churchyard, the services and merits of this dis- 
 tinguished man. In 1833 Mr. Verplanck published a 
 collection of his own discourses, and for many years 
 thereafter he continued to deliver addresses before lit- 
 erary and other bodies, distinguished for the elegance 
 with which they were written, and the comprehensive- 
 ness and felicity with which he handled various sub- 
 
\ 
 
 o 
 
 '.,y(ij^^^<^ y/v 
 
 '- ^~,.^y. 
 
53 
 
 jects wittin the wide range of his knowledge. Among 
 them I should not pass without notice his introductory- 
 address to a course of scientific lectures before the 
 Mechanics' Institute of the city of New York, in 1833, 
 as exhibiting the facility with which he could impress 
 upon the popular mind the attractiveness and value of 
 scientific studies ; his discourse in the same year be- 
 fore Geneva College, upon "The Eight Moral Influ- 
 ence and Use of Liberal Studies," with its noble open- 
 ing, in which he traced the course of the mathematical 
 and physical sciences from " the time when the Chal- 
 dean shepherd solaced the long hours of his nightly 
 watch by tracing the apparent movements of the 
 heavenly bodies, and the Egyptian priest or magis- 
 trate, compelled, by the yearly overflow of the Nile, 
 to mark out again the places of each proprietor, was 
 led to the discovery of the elementary problems and 
 propositions of geometry;" and the earnestness with 
 which, in this fine address, he sought to impress upon 
 his young hearers the necessity and value of toleration 
 in all matters of opinion, which with him was not sim- 
 ply inculcating a precept, for it was illustrated by the 
 example of his own life; and his discourse in 1836, 
 before Union College, " The Advantages and Dangers 
 of the American Scholar," which may still be read 
 with interest and instruction for its admirable com- 
 
54 
 
 parison of the advantages and disadvantages wliicli 
 our republican institutions and forms of society ex- 
 ercise upon the vocation of literary men. 
 
 In 1838 lie v^as elected to the State Senate, in 
 which he served four years. It was then a body com- 
 bining legislative and judicial functions, the members 
 of which, in addition to forming a cooperative branch 
 of the Legislature, sat also as a Court of Errors, to 
 review the decisions of the Supreme Court and the 
 Court of Chancery. Of his legislative labors, my 
 limits will allow me only to refer to his masterly 
 speech upon the reform of our judicial system, a speech 
 which gave the death-blow to our Court of Chancery. 
 It exhibits how profoundly he had studied our judi- 
 cial system, and that of England and of other coun- 
 tries ; how fully he understood their defects, and how 
 clearly he comprehended the improvements that could 
 be made. It will suffice to say, that some of the most 
 valuable changes adopted by the Constitutional Con- 
 ventions of 1846 and 1868 were suggested in this 
 speech ; and I may add that our system would have 
 been more harmonious and perfect had they followed 
 his sagacious advice in some other features. 
 
 In the Court of Errors he occupied from the be- 
 ginning a commanding position. In the first case that 
 was argued after he became a member of the Court, 
 
55 
 
 Saltus vs. Everett^ he delivered the leading opinion 
 upon a most embarrassing and difficult question of 
 commercial law, an opinion frequently cited with ap- 
 probation by judges, and followed in other States and 
 in England. In the one hundred and seven cases de- 
 cided while he was a member of the Court, he wrote 
 opinions in seventy-one, an unusual proportion when 
 the importance and difficulty of the questions are con- 
 sidered that come before a court of last resort. These 
 opinions, which were perspicuously and elegantly writ- 
 ten, were not simply his conclusions, but elaborate 
 judgments, founded on the closest investigations of the 
 questions submitted, the most careful and exhaustive 
 examination of authorities, and a practical, comprehen- 
 sive, and familiar acquaintance with legal rules and 
 principles, even those of the most technical kind. It 
 was, as it might well be, a matter of astonishment that 
 a man wlio had never sat before in a court of justice — 
 who never argued or tried a cause for a client in a 
 court in his life — should at once take such a position 
 as this in the highest judicial tribunal of the State, 
 and hold it during the entire period that he continued 
 to be a member of it. In fact, he was the controlling 
 power, for, whenever the Chancellor differed from him, 
 he invariably carried the Court, and the weight that 
 was attached to his opinions may be inferred from the 
 
56 
 
 fact that, during tlie four years that lie served, it is 
 only in three instances that his vote is found recorded 
 with the judges who voted in the minority/ 
 
 Throughout his life he had been a diligent student 
 of Shakespeare, and upon his quitting the Senate he 
 
 ' The opinions he delivered will be found from vols. xx. to xxvi. of 
 Wendell's Reports ; and, that some estimate may be formed of their 
 extent and value, I will briefly enumerate some of the most important, 
 viz. : His learned opinion in Thompson vs. The People, upon tbe true 
 nature of franchises in this country, the right to construct bridges over 
 navigable streams, and the limits of the writ of quo warranto. His 
 exhaustive examination of the whole structure of our State and Federal 
 Government, in Delafield vs. The State of Indiana, upon the question 
 whether a citizen of this State could maintain an action against one of 
 the States of the Union. His admirable exposition of the reasons upon 
 which the doctrine of prescription, or rights established by custom and 
 long usage, is founded, in Post vs. Pearsall. On the interpretation of 
 technical legal terms, in Lovett vs. Pell. His admirable survey of the 
 whole law of marine insurance, and of the principles upon which it 
 rests, in the American Insurance Company vs. Bryan. The right which 
 the owners of the adjoining soil have in the beds of rivers, involving a 
 lengthy examination of the law of navigable rivers and fresh-water 
 streams, in HempshalV s case ; a most masterly opinion, in which the 
 whole Court concurred. His opinion in Smith vs. AcTeer, in which he 
 carried the Court against the Chancellor, and overturned all the pre- 
 vious decisions of the Supreme Court, on the right of a jury, upon an 
 uncontradicted state of facts, to decide whether there was or not a 
 fraudulent intent in a mortgage of personal property, the Supreme 
 Court having uniformly held that the question of fraudulent intent, 
 
J^y-^x-S^LtVin' /^^ 
 
 Vi^^^r^'" 
 
 ■^ 
 
57 
 
 undertook, at the request of tlie Messrs. Harper, to 
 edit a new edition of the poet's works. To this task 
 he applied himself with great assiduity and devoted 
 to it three years. It was completed in 1847, in three 
 
 upon an undisputed state of facts, was a question of law for the judge 
 and not for the jury. His controlling opinion in the great case of 
 Alice Lispenard, upon the amount of mental capacity necessary to mate 
 a will, affecting an immense amount of property in the city of New 
 York. Upon the law of personal trusts, in Darling vs. Rogers. Of 
 joint banking corporations, in Warner vs. Beers; of partnership, in 
 Vernon vs. The Manhattan Company. On the right of an advocate to 
 maintain an action for his fees, in Stephens vs. Adams. Upon the law 
 of the delegation of trusts, in Lyon vs. Jerome. Upon the fraudulent 
 hypothecation of vessels and the obligation of bottomry bonds, in Cole 
 vs. White, an opinion of great length and of great ability. His opinion 
 maintaining the power of the Chancellor to compel the payment of 
 taxes where there is no adequate remedy at law, in Durant vs. The 
 Supervisors of Albany. Upon the law of fire insurance, in The Mayor 
 of New York vs. Pentz. The law of libel, in Byckman vs. Belavan. 
 Upon erasures in deeds and instruments under seal, in Brown vs. Kim- 
 bal. His exposition of the whole law of lien, in Faile vs. White, and 
 his opinion upon the liability of a city to pay for a building which 
 was blown up by order of the authorities to stop a conflagration, in 
 Stone vs. The Mayor of New York. In Hoe vs. Acker, the Court of 
 Errors afterward qualified their previous decision ; and, in the great 
 case of Alice Lispenard, the correctness of Mr. Verplanck's conclusion 
 has been doubted. With these two exceptions, however, so far as I 
 know, the soundness of his numerous opinions has never been ques- 
 tioned. 
 
58 
 
 large volumes, and was from its literary merit, its pic- 
 torial embellisliments, and the perfection of its typo- 
 graphical execution, the best edition of Shatespeare 
 that had appeared in this country. Its chief value as 
 an edition lies in the care Mr. Verplanck bestovped 
 upon the text ; in the light thrown by his notes upon 
 many obscure passages, which he was enabled to do 
 from his extensive readinof and his thorouarh knowl- 
 edge of the political and legal history of England, 
 and in a judicious selection, fi'om the whole range 
 of Shakespearian literature, of such critical observa- 
 tion as would lead to a better understanding of the 
 plays, a clearer conception of the characters, and a 
 fuller appreciation of the poet's genius. No one, un- 
 less he is very familiar with the subject, would get 
 from the work itself a knowledge of the precise ex- 
 tent or value of Mr. Verplanck's labors, for his own 
 observations, he says, are sometimes incorporated with 
 the remarks of others, and sometimes given in separate 
 notes ; modestly observing that he had not felt enough 
 of the pride of authorship to designate any thing of 
 his own by his name or any peculiar mark. He did 
 little in the way of conjectural emendation. If, he 
 says, in one of his notes, the safe rule of endeavor- 
 ing to understand the original text, instead of guess- 
 ing what the author ought to have written, had been 
 
59 
 
 adopted, we should have been saved volumes of com- 
 mentary, and it is his judicious adherence to this 
 rule that renders the edition, in my judgment, so valu- 
 able. He remodelled Collier's life of the poet, and 
 vs^rote an introduction to each play, in which, in addi- 
 tion to many admirable observations upon the separate 
 plays, he bestowed much study and thought to deter- 
 mine the time or periods in which they were suc- 
 cessively produced, his object being to trace the prog- 
 ress of Shakespeare's taste and experience ; or, to use 
 his own language, " to follow out, through each suc- 
 cessive change, the luxuriant growth of his poetic 
 faculty and comic power, and the still nobler expan- 
 sion of the moral wisdom, the majestic contemplation, 
 the terrible energy, the matchless fusion of the impas- 
 sioned with the philosophical, that distinguished the 
 matured mind of the author of Hamlet, Lear, and Mac- 
 beth." It is much to be regretted that the plates of 
 this excellent edition were shortly afterward destroyed 
 by fire. Being a very costly work, it was not repro- 
 duced, and it consequently never became as exten- 
 sively known as it deserved to be. 
 
 It now remains but to enumerate what he did, in 
 his capacity as a private citizen, for public objects. He 
 was for more than fifty years a trustee of the Society Li- 
 brary ; for forty -four years a regent of the University of 
 
60 
 
 tlie State of New York, reqtdring his personal attend- 
 ance twice a year at its sessions in Albany; for twenty- 
 six years he was a member of the vestry of Trinity 
 Church, and was at his death one of the two church- war- 
 dens, a position involving the care and management of 
 the enormous property of that great religious corpora- 
 tion; for twenty-four years he was president of the 
 Board of Emigration, a public trust of the most im- 
 portant and onerous character, to which he attended 
 with the most scrupulous fidelity up to last week 
 of his life ; for many years he was a governor of the 
 'New York Hospital, and a director of the New York 
 Life Insurance Company ; and was one of the managers 
 of the Manhattan Club, and the first vice-president of the 
 New York Historical Society. All of these positions 
 he held at the time of his death ; to which it must be 
 added that he had been for many years a trustee of 
 the Public School Society, an institution no longer in 
 existence ; a trustee for several years of Columbia 
 College, and had been vice-president of the American 
 Academy of Fine Arts, the institution which preceded 
 and gave rise to the present National Academy of 
 Design. He was at first the usual chairman, and after 
 its charter the president, of the Century Club for 
 seventeen years. His connection with these institu- 
 tions was not like that of many who merely give the 
 

 
 GULIAN C. VJCItPLAKCK. 
 
61 
 
 countenance of their names, but he attended to their 
 affairs with the exactness, punctuality, and method of 
 a merchant. 
 
 He did little, if any thing, during his long life, to 
 aid public objects by pecuniary assistance. I have 
 never seen or heard of his name attached to a volun- 
 tary subscription for such a purpose. It was a great 
 defect in a man so accomplished and otherwise so pub- 
 lic-spirited, and was the more marked in a city where 
 pecuniary liberality, for public objects, is a distinguish- 
 ing characteristic of its citizens. Clinton charged him 
 with avarice. This was scarcely just, for he was not 
 a man who had made the accumulation of money 
 or property a leading object of life. He was con- 
 tent with the fortune he had inherited, which was sup- 
 posed, during his life, to be large, but which after his 
 death appears to have been much exaggerated. He may 
 have been parsimonious ; but he was not avaricious, 
 nor in any way mercenary, for he gave his time and 
 his intellect for years, as has been shown, to public 
 institutions, and public labors, frequently of an exact- 
 ing nature, where he neither received nor sought for 
 compensation. 
 
 Finally, when it is considered that he was for years 
 an efficient manager of institutions, eleemosynary, finan- 
 cial, educational, municipal, and religious; that he had 
 
62 
 
 been an active politician, a legislator, and a statesman ; 
 tliat he was an eminent jurist, an able theologian, an 
 acute literary critic, a satirical poet^ an exquisite prose 
 writer, and a scholar of vast and varied attainments, 
 it will be felt that I have not overestimated in saying 
 that he was the most distinguished of the descendants 
 of the founders of New York. The appreciation of 
 his talents and services, the consciousness that a great 
 citizen had departed, were shown in the character of 
 the men who filled Trinity Church upon the day of 
 his funeral, and this voluntary tribute of respect, at 
 the busy hour of noon, in this busy metropolis, was 
 a demonstrative and public proof of the estimate 
 formed in his native city of his life and character. 
 
1^ 
 
 f '_// 
 
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