& 
 
 
 
 
 
 v 
 
 <p 
 
 
 A- 
 
 
 
 A 
 
 
 
 
 ^ V * N 
 
 
 V 
 
 
 ^ v y 
 
 
 ■ 
 
 
 {-. 
 
 
 % 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 CV <P 
 
 
 
 ^ V* 
 
 
 
 
 f 
 
 -% 
 
 \ 
 
 
 ■ 
 
 > 
 
 % 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 o 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 
 
 '<, * 
 
 , s ^ 
 
 -X 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 -s- 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 -C- V 
 
 
 ^^ 
 
 
 
 
 
 ■*». 
 
 
 
 
 a5 'A 
 
 

 
 
 
 I* 
 
 
 
 •*o 
 
 
 
 
 
 °* 
 
 
 
 
 ■^ 
 
 
 ', > 
 
 < • 
 
 
 
 \ x 
 
 
 ^ y 
 
 
 v? -^ -\\ 
 
 
 
 
 \ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 \° ©., 
 
 >- \ 
 

FAMOUS AMERICANS 
 
 v 
 
 
 OF 
 
 RECENT TIMES. 
 
 BY 
 
 JAMES PARTON, 
 
 ADTHOR OF "LIFE OF ANDREW J.. CSON," "LIFE AND TIMES OF AARON BURR,'' 
 " LIFE AND TIMES OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN," ETC 
 
 ' \ ! 
 
 ill. 1 i 
 
 m 
 
 \ 
 
 BOSTON: 
 
 TICKNOR AND FIELDS 
 
 1867. 
 

 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1867, by 
 
 TICKNOR AND FIELDS, 
 
 in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. 
 
 University Press: Welch, Bigelow, & Co., 
 
 Cambridge. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Page 
 IIenry Clay 1 
 
 Daniel Webster 53 
 
 John C. Calhoun 113 
 
 John Randolph If3 
 
 Stephen Girard and his College . . . .221 
 
 James Gordon- Bennett .\nd the New York Herald 259 
 
 Charles Goodyear ....... 307 
 
 Henry Ward Beecher and his Church . . . 347 
 
 Commodore Vanderbilt 373 
 
 Theodosia Burr 391 
 
 John Jacob Astor ....... 427 
 
NOTE. 
 
 The papers contained in this volume were originally pub- 
 lished in the North American Review, with four exceptions. 
 Those upon Theodosia Burr and John Jacob Astor first 
 appeared in Harper's Magazine ; that upon Commodore Van- 
 derbilt, in the Neiv York Ledger ; and that upon Henry 
 Ward Beecher and his Church, in the Atlantic Monthly. 
 
HENRY CLAY. 
 
HENRY CLAY. 
 
 THE close of the war removes the period preceding it to a 
 great distance from us, so that we can judge its public men 
 as though we were the " posterity " to whom they sometimes ap- 
 pealed. James Buchanan still haunts the neighborhood of Lan- 
 caster, a living man, giving and receiving dinners, paying his 
 taxes, and taking his accustomed exercise ; but as an historical 
 figure he is as complete as Bolingbroke or Walpole. It is not 
 merely that his work is done, nor that the results of his work 
 are apparent ; but the thing upon which he wrought, by their 
 relation to which he and his contemporaries are to be estimated, 
 has perished. The statesmen of his day, we can all now plainly 
 see, inherited from the founders of the Republic a problem im- 
 possible of solution, with which some of them wrestled manfully, 
 others meanly, some wisely, others foolishly. If the workmen 
 have not all passed away, the work is at once finished and de- 
 stroyed, like the llussian ice-palace, laboriously built, then melted 
 in the sun. We can now have the requisite sympathy with 
 those late doctors of the body politic, who came to the consul- 
 tation pledged not to attempt to remove the thorn from its flesh, 
 and trained to regard it as the spear-head in the side of Epami- 
 nondas, — extract it, and the patient dies. In the writhings of 
 the sufferer the barb has fallen out, and lo ! he lives and is get- 
 timr well. We can now formve most of those blind healers, and 
 even admire such of them as were honest and not cowards ; for, 
 in truth, it was an impossibility with which they had to grapple, 
 and it was not one of their creating. 
 
 Of our public men of the sixty years preceding the war, Henry 
 Clay was certainly the most shining figure. Was there ever a 
 
4 HENRY CLAY. 
 
 public man, not at the head of a state, so beloved as he ? Who 
 ever heard such cheers, so hearty, distinct, and ringing, as those 
 which his name evoked ? Men shed tears at his defeat, and 
 women went to bed sick from pure sympathy with his disap- 
 pointment. He could not travel during the last thirty years of 
 his life, but only make progresses. When he left bis home the 
 public seized him and bore him along over the land, the commit- 
 tee of one State passing him on to the committee of another, and 
 the hurrahs of one town dying away as those of the next caught 
 his ear. The country seemed to place all its resources at his 
 disposal ; all commodities sought his acceptance. Passing through 
 Newark once, he thoughtlessly ordered a carriage of a certain 
 pattern : the same evening the carriage was at the door of his 
 hotel in New York, the gift of a few Newark friends. It was so 
 everywhere and with everything. His house became at last a 
 museum of curious gifts. There was the counterpane made for 
 him by a lady ninety-three years of age, and Washington's camp- 
 goblet given him by a lady of eighty ; there were pistols, rifles, 
 and fowling-pieces enough to defend a citadel; and, among a bun- 
 dle of walking-sticks, was one cut for him from a tree that shaded 
 Cicero's grave. There were gorgeous prayer-books, and Bibles 
 of exceeding magnitude and splendor, and silver-ware in great 
 profusion. On one occasion there arrived at Ashland the sub- 
 stantial present of twenty-three barrels of salt. In his old age, 
 when his fine estate, through the misfortunes of his sons, was 
 burdened with mortgages to the amount of thirty thousand dol- 
 lars, and other large debts weighed heavily upon his soul, and he 
 feared to be compelled to sell the home of fifty years and seek a 
 strange abode, a few old friends secretly raised the needful sum, 
 secretly paid the mortgages and discharged the debts, and then 
 caused the aged orator to be informed of what had been done, 
 but not of the names of the donors. " Could my life insure the 
 success of Henry Clay, I would freely lay it down this day," 
 exclaimed an old Rhode Island sea-captain on the morning of 
 the Presidential election of 1844. Who has forgotten the passion 
 of disappointment, the amazement and despair, at the result of 
 that day's fatal work ? Fatal we thought it then, little dreaming 
 
HENBY CLAY. 5 
 
 that, while it precipitated evil, it brought nearer the day of 
 deliverance. 
 
 Our readers do not need to be reminded that popularity the 
 most intense is not a proof of merit. The two most mischievous 
 men this country has ever produced were extremely popular, — 
 one in a State, the other in every State, — and both for long 
 periods of time. There are certain men and women and children 
 who are natural heart-winners, and their gift of winning hearts 
 seems something apart from their general character. We have 
 known this sweet power over the affections of others to be pos- 
 sessed by very worthy and by very barren natures. There are 
 good men who repel, and bad men who attract. We cannot, 
 therefore, assent to the opinion held by many, that popularity is 
 an evidence of shallowness or ill-desert. As there are pictures 
 expressly designed to be looked at from a distance by great num- 
 bers of people at once, — the scenery of a theatre, for example, 
 — so there are men who appear formed by Nature to stand forth 
 before multitudes, captivating every eye, and gathering in great 
 harvests of love with little effort. If, upon looking closely at 
 these pictures and these men, we find them less admirable than 
 they seemed at a distance, it is but fair to remember that they 
 were not meant to be looked at closely, and that " scenery " has 
 as much right to exist as a Dutch painting which bears the test 
 of the microscope. 
 
 It must be confessed, however, that Henry Clay, who was for 
 twenty-eight years a candidate for the Presidency, cultivated his 
 popularity. Without ever being a hypocrite, he was habitually 
 an actor ; but the part which he enacted was Henry Clay exag- 
 gerated. He was naturally a most courteous man ; but the con- 
 sciousness of his position made him more elaborately and univer- 
 sally courteous than any man ever was from mere good-nature. 
 A man on the stage must overdo his part, in order not to seem 
 to underdo it. There was a time when almost every visitor to 
 the city of Washington desired, above all things, to be presented 
 to three men there, Clay, Webster, and Calhoun, whom to have 
 seen was a distinction. When the country member brought for- 
 ward his agitated constituent on the floor of the Senate-chamber, 
 
6 HENRY CLAY. 
 
 and introduced him to Daniel "Webster, the Expounder was likely 
 enough to thrust a hand at him without so much as turning his 
 head or discontinuing his occupation, and the stranger shrunk 
 away painfully conscious of his insignificance. Calhoun, on the 
 contrary, besides receiving him with civility, would converse with 
 him, if opportunity favored, and treat him to a disquisition on 
 the nature of government and the "beauty " of nullification, striv- 
 ing to make a lasting impression on his intellect. Clay would 
 rise, extend his hand with that winning grace of his, and in- 
 stantly captivate him by his all-conquering courtesy. He would 
 call him by name, inquire respecting his health, the town whence 
 he came, how long he had been in Washington, and send him 
 away pleased with himself and enchanted with Henry Clay. 
 And what was his delight to receive a few weeks after, in his 
 distant village, a copy of the Kentuckian's last speech, bearing 
 on the cover the frank of " H. Clay " ! It was almost enough to 
 make a man think of " running for Congress " ! And, what was 
 still more intoxicating, Mr. Clay, who had a surprising memory, 
 would be likely, on meeting this individual two years after the 
 introduction, to address him by name. 
 
 There was a gamy flavor, in those days, about Southern men, 
 which was very pleasing to the people of the North. Reason 
 teaches us that the barn-yard fowl is a more meritorious bird 
 than the game-cock ; but the imagination does not assent to the 
 proposition. Clay was at once game-cock and domestic fowl. 
 His gestures called to mind the magnificently branching trees of 
 his Kentucky forests, and his handwriting had the neatness and 
 delicacy of a female copyist. There was a careless, graceful ease 
 in his movements and attitudes, like those of an Indian chief; 
 but he was an exact man of business, who docketed his letters, 
 and could send from AVashington to Ashland for a document, tell- 
 ing in what pigeon-hole it could be found. Naturally impetuous, 
 he acquired early in life an habitual moderation of statement, an 
 habitual consideration for other men's self-love, which made him 
 the pacificator of his time. The great compromiser was himself 
 a compromise. The ideal of education is to tame men without 
 lessening then- vivacity, — to unite in them the freedom, the dig- 
 
HENRY CLAY. 7 
 
 nity, the prowess of a Tecumseh, with the serviceable qualities 
 of the civilized man. This happy union is said to be sometimes 
 produced in the pupils of the great public schools of England, 
 who are savages on the play-ground and gentlemen in the school- 
 room. In no man of our knowledge has there been combined so 
 much of the best of the forest chief with so much of the good of 
 the trained man of business as in Henry Clay. This was one 
 secret of his power over classes of men so diverse as the hunters 
 of Kentucky and the manufacturers of New England. 
 
 It used to be accounted a merit in a man to rise to high station 
 from humble beginnings ; but we now perceive that humble 
 beginnings are favorable to the development of that force of 
 character which wins the world's great prizes. Let us never 
 again commend any one for "rising" from obscurity to eminence, 
 but reserve our special homage for those who have become 
 respectable human beings in spite of having had every advantage 
 procured for them by rich fathers. Henry Clay found an Eton 
 and an Oxford in Old Virginia that were better for him than 
 those of Old England. Few men have been more truly fortu- 
 nate in their education than he. It was said of a certain lady, 
 that to know her was a liberal education ; and there really have 
 been, and are, women of whom that could be truly averred. But 
 perhaps the greatest good fortune that can befall an intelligent 
 and noble-minded youth is to come into intimate, confidential 
 relations with a wise, learned, and good old man, one who has 
 been greatly trusted and found worthy of trust, who knows the 
 world by having long taken a leading part in its affairs, and has 
 outlived illusions only to get a firmer footing in realities. This, 
 indeed, is a liberal education ; and this was the happiness of 
 Henry Clay. Nothing in biography is so strange as the cer- 
 tainty with which a superior youth, in the most improbable cir- 
 cumstances, finds the mental nourishment he needs. Here, in 
 the swampy region of Hanover County, Virginia, was a bare- 
 footed, ungainly urchin, a poor widow's son, without one influ- 
 ential relative on earth ; and there, in Richmond, sat on the 
 chancellor's bench George Wythe, venerable with years and 
 honors, one of the grand old men of Old Virginia, the preceptor 
 
8 HENRY CLAY. 
 
 of Jefferson, signer of the Declaration of Independence, the most 
 learned man in his profession, and one of the best men of any 
 profession. Who could have foreseen that this friendless orphan, 
 a Baptist preacher's son, in a State where to be a " dissenter " 
 was social inferiority, should have found in this eminent judge a 
 friend, a mentor, a patron, a father ? 
 
 Yet it came about in the most natural way. "We catch our 
 first glimpse of the boy when he sat in a little log school-house, 
 without windows or floor, one of a humming score of shoeless 
 boys, where a good-natured, irritable, drinking English school- 
 master taught him to read, write, and cipher as far as Practice. 
 This was the only school he ever attended, and that was all he 
 learned at it. His widowed mother, with her seven young chil- 
 dren, her little farm, and two or three slaves, could do no more 
 for him. Next, we see him a tall, awkward, slender stripling of 
 thirteen, still barefoot, clad in homespun butternut of his mother's 
 making, tilling her fields, and going to mill with his bag of corn 
 strapped upon the family pony. At fourteen, in the year 1791, 
 a place was found for him in a Richmond drug-store, where he 
 served as errand-boy and youngest clerk for one year. 
 
 Then occurred the event which decided his career. His 
 mother having married again, her husband had influence enough 
 to procure for the lad the place of copying clerk in the office of 
 the Court of Chancery. The young gentlemen then employed in 
 the office of that court long remembered the entrance among 
 them of their new comrade. He was fifteen at the time, but very 
 tall for his age, very slender, very awkward, and far from hand- 
 some. His good mother had arrayed him in a full suit of pepper- 
 and-salt " figginy," an old Virginia fabric of silk and cotton. His 
 shirt and shirt-collar were stiffly starched, and his coat-tail stood 
 out boldly behind him. The dandy law clerks of metropolitan 
 Richmond exchanged glances as this gawky figure entered, and 
 took his place at a desk to begin his work. There was some- 
 thing in his manner which prevented their indulgence in the jests 
 that usually greet the arrival of a country youth among city 
 blades ; and they afterwards congratulated one another that they 
 had waited a little before beginning to tease him, for they soon 
 
HENRY CLAY. 9 
 
 found that he had brought with him from the country an exceed- 
 ingly sharp tongue. Of his first service little is known, except 
 the immense fact that he was a most diligent reader. It rests on 
 better authority than " Campaign Lives," that, while his fellow- 
 clerks went abroad in the evening in search of pleasure, this lad 
 stayed at home with his books. It is a pleasure also to know 
 that he had not a taste for the low vices. lie came of sound 
 English stock, of a family who would not have regarded drunk- 
 enness aud debauchery as " sowing wild oats," but recoiled from 
 the thought of them with horror. Clay was far from being a 
 saint ; but it is our privilege to believe of him that he was a 
 clean, temperate, and studious young man. 
 
 Richmond, the town of the young Republic that had most in it 
 of the metropolitan, proved to this aspiring youth as true a Uni- 
 versity as the printing-office in old Boston was to Benjamin 
 Franklin ; for he found in it the culture best suited to him and 
 his circumstances. Chancellor Wythe, then sixty-seven years of 
 age, overflowing with knowledge and good nature, was the presi- 
 dent of that university. Its professors were the cluster of able 
 men who had gone along with Washington and Jefferson in the 
 measures which resulted in the independence of the country. 
 Patrick Henry was there to teach him the arts of oratory. 
 There was a flourishing and famous debating society, the pride 
 of the young men of Richmond, in which to try his half-fledged 
 powers. The impulse given to thought by the American Revo- 
 lution was quickened and prolonged by the thrilling news which 
 every vessel brought from France of the revolution there. There 
 was an atmosphere in Virginia favorable to the growth of a 
 sympathetic mind. Young Clay's excellent handwriting brought 
 him gradually into the most affectionate relations with Chancellor 
 Wythe, whose aged hand trembled to such a degree that he was 
 glad to borrow a copyist from the clerk's office. For nearly four 
 years it was the young man's principal duty to copy the decisions 
 of the venerable Chancellor, which were curiously learned and 
 elaborate ; for it was the bent of the Chancellor's mind to trace 
 the law to its sources in the ancient world, and fortify his posi- 
 tions by citations from Greek and Latin authors. The Greek 
 1* 
 
10 HENRY CLAY. 
 
 passages were a plague to the copyist, who knew not the alphabet 
 of that language, but copied it, so to speak, by rote. 
 
 Here we have another proof that, no matter what a man's op- 
 portunities are, he only learns what is congenial with his nature 
 and circumstances. Living under the influence of this learned 
 judge, Henry Clay might have become a man of learning. 
 George Wythe was a " scholar " in the ancient acceptation of the 
 word. The whole education of his youth consisted in his acquir- 
 ing the Latin language, which his mother taught him. Early 
 inheriting a considerable fortune, he squandered it in dissipation, 
 and sat down at thirty, a reformed man, to the study of the law. 
 To his youthful Latin he now added Greek, which he studied 
 assiduously for many years, becoming, probably, the best Greek 
 scholar in Virginia. His mind would have wholly lived in the 
 ancient world, and been exclusively nourished from the ancient 
 literatures, but for the necessities of his profession and the stir- 
 ring political events of his later life. The Stamp Act and the 
 Revolution varied and completed his education. His young 
 copyist was not attracted by him to the study of Greek and 
 Latin, nor did he catch from him the habit of probing a subject 
 to the bottom, and ascending from the questions of the moment 
 to universal principles. Henry Clay probed nothing to the bot- 
 tom, except,' perhaps, the game of whist; and though his instincts 
 and tendencies were high and noble, he had no grasp of general 
 truths. Under Wythe, he became a stanch Republican of the 
 Jeffersonian school. Under Wythe, who emancipated his slaves 
 before his death, and set apart a portion of his estate for their 
 maintenance, he acquired a repugnance to slavery which he 
 never lost. The Chancellor's learning and philosophy were not 
 for him, and so he passed them by. 
 
 The tranquil wisdom of the judge was counteracted, in some 
 degree, by the excitements of the debating society. As he grew 
 older, the raw and awkward stripling became a young man whose 
 every movement had a winning or a commanding grace. Hand- 
 some he never was ; but his ruddy face and abundant light hair, 
 the grandeur of his forehead and the speaking intelligence of his 
 countenance, more than atoned for the irregularity of his features. 
 
HENRY CLAY. 11 
 
 His face, too, was a compromise. With all its vivacity of ex- 
 pression, there was always something that spoke of the -Baptist 
 preacher's son, — just as Andrew Jackson's face had the set ex- 
 pression of a Presbyterian elder. But of all the bodily gifts 
 bestowed by Nature upon this favored child, the most unique and 
 admirable was his voice. Who ever heard one more melodious ? 
 There was a depth of tone in it, a volume, a compass, a rich and 
 tender harmony, which invested all he said with majesty. We 
 heard it last when he was an old man past seventy ; and all he 
 said was a few w 7 ords of acknowledgment to a group of ladies in 
 the largest hall in Philadelphia. He spoke only in the ordinary 
 tone of conversation ; but his voice filled the room as the organ 
 fills a great cathedral, and the ladies stood spellbound as the 
 swelling cadences rolled about the vast apartment. We have 
 heard much of Whitefield's piercing voice and Patrick Henry's 
 silvery tones, but we cannot believe that either of those natural 
 orators possessed an organ superior to Clay's majestic bass. No 
 one who ever heard him speak will find it difficult to believe 
 what tradition reports, that he was the peerless star of the Rich- 
 mond Debating Society in 1795. 
 
 Oratory was then in the highest vogue. Young Virginians 
 did not need to look beyond the sea in order to learn that the 
 orator was the man most in request in the dawn of freedom. 
 Chatham, Burke, Fox, Sheridan, and Pitt were inconceivably 
 imposing names at that day ; but was not Patrick Henry the 
 foremost man in Virginia, only because he could speak and en- 
 tertain an audience ? And what made John Adams President 
 but his fiery utterances in favor of the Declaration of Indepen- 
 dence? There were other speakers then in Virginia who would 
 have had to this day a world-wide fame if they had spoken where 
 the world could hear them. The tendency now is to undervalue 
 oratory, and we regret it. We believe that, in a free country, 
 every citizen should be able to stand undaunted before his fellow- 
 citizens, and give an account of the faith that is in him. It is no 
 argument against oratory to point to the Disraelis of both coun- 
 tries, and say that a gift possessed by such men cannot be a val- 
 uable one. It is the unmanly timidity and shamefacedness of 
 
12 HENRY CLAY. 
 
 the rest of us that give to such men their preposterous impor- 
 tance. It were a calamity to America if, in the present rage for 
 ball-playing and boat-rowing, which we heartily rejoice in, the 
 debating society should be forgotten. Let us rather end the 
 sway of oratory by all becoming orators. Most men who can 
 talk well seated in a chair can learn to talk well standing on 
 their legs ; and a man who can move or instruct five persons in a 
 small room can learn to move or instruct two thousand in a large 
 one. 
 
 t That Henry Clay cultivated his oratorical talent in Rich- 
 mond, we have his own explicit testimony. He told a class of 
 law students once that he owed his success in life to a habit early 
 formed, and for some years continued, of reading daily in a book 
 of history or science, and declaiming the substance of what he 
 had read in some solitary place, — a cornfield, the forest, a barn, 
 with only oxen and horses for auditors. " It is," said he, " to 
 this early practice of the art of all arts that I am indebted for the 
 primary and leading impulses that stimulated my progress, and 
 have shaped and moulded my entire destiny." "We should be 
 glad to know more of this self-training; but Mr. Clay's "cam- 
 paign " biographers have stuffed their volumes too full of eulogy 
 to leave room for such instructive details. We do not even know 
 the books from which he declaimed. Plutarch's Lives were fa- 
 vorite reading with him, we accidentally learn ; and his speeches 
 contain evidence that he was powerfully influenced by the writ- 
 ings of Dr. Franklin. We believe it was from Franklin that he 
 learned very much of the art of managing men. Franklin, we 
 think, aided this impetuous and exaggerating spirit to acquire 
 his habitual moderation of statement, and that sleepless courtesy 
 which, in his keenest encounters, generally kept him within par- 
 liamentary bounds, and enabled him to live pleasantly with men 
 from whom he differed in opinion. Obsolete as many of his 
 speeches are, from the transient nature of the topics of which 
 they treat, they may still be studied with profit by young orators 
 and old politicians as examples of parliamentary politeness. It 
 was the good-natured and wise Franklin that helped him to this. 
 It is certain, too, that at some part of his earlier life he read 
 
HENBY CLAY. 13 
 
 translations of Demosthenes ; for of all modern orators Henry 
 Clay was the most Demosthenian. Calhoun purposely and con- 
 sciously imitated the Athenian orator; but Clay was a kindred 
 spirit with Demosthenes. "We could select passages from both 
 these orators, and no man could tell which was American and 
 which was Greek, unless he chanced to remember the passage. 
 Tell us, gentle reader, were the sentences following spoken by 
 Henry Clay after the war of 1812 at the Federalists who had 
 opposed that war, or by Demosthenes against the degenerate 
 Greeks who favored the designs of Philip? 
 
 " From first to last I have uniformly pursued the just and 
 virtuous course, — asserter of the honors, of the prerogatives, of 
 the glory of my country. Studious to support them, zealous to 
 advance them, my whole being is devoted to this glorious cause. 
 I was never known to walk abroad with a face of joy and exulta- 
 tion at the success of the enemy, embracing and announcing the 
 joyous tidings to those who I supposed would transmit it to the 
 proper place. I was never known to receive the successes of my 
 own country with trembling, with sighs, with my eyes bent to the 
 earth, like those impious men who are the defamers of their 
 country, as if by such conduct they were not defamers of 
 themselves." 
 
 Is it Clay, or is it Demosthenes? Or have we made a mis- 
 take, and copied a passage from the speech of a Unionist of 
 18G5? 
 
 After serving four years as clerk and amanuensis, barely earn- 
 ing a subsistence, Clay was advised by his venerable friend, the 
 Chancellor, to study law ; and a place was procured for him in 
 the office of the Attorney-General of the State. In less than a 
 year after formally beginning his studies he was admitted to the 
 bar. This seems a short preparation ; but the whole period of 
 his connection with Chancellor Wythe was a study of the law. 
 The Chancellor was what a certain other chancellor styles " a 
 full man," and Henry Clay was a receptive youth. 
 
 When he had obtained his license to practise he was twenty 
 years of age. Debating-society fame and drawing-room popular- 
 ity do not, in an old commonwealth like Virginia, bring practice 
 
14 HENRY CLAY. 
 
 to a lawyer of twenty. But, as a distinguished French author 
 has recently remarked of Julius Caesar, " In him was united the 
 elegance of manner which wins, to the energy of character which 
 commands." He sought, therefore, a new sphere of exertion far 
 from the refinements of Richmond. Kentucky, which Boone 
 explored in 1770, was a part of Virginia when Clay was a child, 
 and only became a State in 1792, when first he began to copy 
 Chancellor Wythe's decisions. The first white family settled in 
 it in 1775 ; but when our young barrister obtained his license, 
 twenty-two years after, it contained a white population of nearly 
 two hundred thousand. His mother, with five of her children 
 and a second husband, had gone thither five years before. In 
 1797 Henry Clay removed to Lexington, the new State's oldest 
 town and capital, though then containing, it is said, but fifty 
 houses. He was a stranger there, and almost penniless. He 
 took board, not knowing where the money was to come from to 
 pay for it. There were already several lawyers of repute in the 
 place. "I remember," said Mr. Clay, forty-five years after, 
 " how comfortable I thought I should be if I could make one 
 hundred pounds a year, Virginia money ; and with what delight 
 I received my first fifteen-shilling fee. My hopes were more 
 than realized. I immediately rushed into a successful and lucra- 
 tive practice." In a year and a half he was in a position to 
 marry the daughter of one of the first men of the State, Colonel 
 Thomas Hart, a man exceedingly beloved in Lexington. 
 
 It is surprising how addicted to litigation were the early set- 
 tlers of the Western States. The imperfect surveys of land, 
 the universal habit of getting goods on credit at the store, and 
 " difficulties " between individuals ending in bloodshed, filled the 
 court calendars with land disputes, suits for debt, and exciting 
 murder cases, which gave to lawyers more importance and better 
 chances of advancement than they possessed in the older States. 
 Mr. Clay had two strings to his bow. Besides being a man of 
 red tape and pigeon-holes, exact, methodical, and strictly attentive 
 to business, he had a power over a Kentucky jury such as no 
 other man has ever wielded. To this day nothing pleases aged 
 Kentuckians better than to tell stories which they heard their 
 
HENRY CLAY. 15 
 
 fathers tell, of Clay's happy repartees to opposing counsel, his 
 ingenious cross-questioning of witnesses, his sweeping torrents of 
 invective, his captivating courtesy, his melting pathos. Single 
 gestures, attitudes, tones, have come down to us through two or 
 three memories, and still please the curious guest at Kentucky 
 firesides. But when we turn to the cold records of this part of 
 his life, we find little to justify his traditional celebrity. It ap- 
 pears that the principal use to which his talents were applied 
 during the first years of his practice at the bar was in defending 
 murderers. He seems to have shared the feeling which then 
 prevailed in the Western country, that to defend a prisoner at 
 the bar is a nobler thing than to assist in defending the public 
 against his further depredations ; and he threw all his force into 
 the defence of some men who would have been " none the worse 
 for a hanging." One day, in the streets of Lexington, a drunken 
 fellow whom he had rescued from the murderer's doom cried out, 
 " Here comes Mr. Clay, who saved my life." " Ah ! my poor 
 fellow," replied the advocate, " I fear I have saved too many like 
 you, who ought to be hanged." The anecdotes printed of his 
 exploits in cheating the gallows of its due are of a quality which 
 shows that the power of this man over a jury lay much in his 
 manner. His delivery, which "bears absolute sway in oratory," 
 was bewitching and irresistible, and gave to quite commonplace 
 wit and very questionable sentiment an amazing power to please 
 and subdue. 
 
 We are far from thinking that he was not a very able lawyer. 
 Judge Story, we remember, before whom he argued a cause later 
 in life, was of opinion that he would have won a high position at 
 the bar of the Supreme Court, if he had not been early drawn 
 away to public life. In Kentucky he was a brilliant, successful 
 practitioner, such as Kentucky wanted and could appreciate. In 
 a very few years he was the possessor of a fine estate near Lex- 
 ington, and to the single slave who came to him as his share of 
 his father's property were added several others. His wife being 
 a skilful and vigorous manager, he was in independent circum- 
 stances, and ready to serve the public, if the public wished him, 
 when he had been but ten years in his Western home. Thus he 
 
16 HENRY CLAY. 
 
 had a basis for a public career, without which few men can long 
 serve the public with honor and success. And this was a prin- 
 cipal reason of the former supremacy of Southern men in Wash- 
 ington ; nearly all of them being men who owned land, which 
 slaves tilled for them, whether they were present or absent. 
 
 The young lawyer took to politics very naturally. Posterity, 
 which will judge the public men of that period chiefly by their 
 course with regard to slavery, will note with pleasure that Clay's 
 first public act was an attempt to deliver the infant State of 
 Kentucky from that curse. The State Constitution was to be 
 remodelled in 1799. Fresh from the society of Chancellor 
 Wythe, an abolitionist who had set free his own slaves, — fresh 
 from Richmond, where every man of note, from Jefferson and 
 Patrick Henry downwards, was an abolitionist, — Henry Clay 
 began in 1798, being then twenty -one years of age, to write a 
 series of articles for a newspaper, advocating the gradual aboli- 
 tion of slavery in Kentucky. He afterwards spoke on that side 
 at public meetings. Young as he was, he took the lead of the 
 public-spirited young men who strove to purge the State from 
 this iniquity ; but in the Convention the proposition was voted 
 down by a majority so decisive as to banish the subject from poli- 
 tics for fifty years. Still more honorable was it in Mr. Clay, 
 that, in 1829, when Calhoun was maturing nullification, he could 
 publicly say that among the acts of his life which he reflected 
 upon with most satisfaction was his youthful effort to secure 
 emancipation in Kentucky. 
 
 The chapter of our history most abounding in all the elements 
 of interest will be that one which will relate the rise and first 
 national triumph of the Democratic party. Young Clay came to 
 the Kentucky stump just when the country was at the crisis of 
 the struggle between the Old and the New. But in Kentucky 
 it was not a struggle ; for the people there, mostly of Virginian 
 birth, had been personally benefited by Jefferson's equalizing 
 measures, and were in the fullest sympathy with his political 
 doctrines. When, therefore, this brilliant and commanding youth, 
 with that magnificent voice of his, and large gesticulation, mount- 
 ed the wagon that usually served as platform in the open-air 
 
HENRY CLAY. 17 
 
 meetings of Kentucky, and gave forth, in fervid oratory, the 
 republican principles he had imbibed in Richmond, he won that 
 immediate and intense popularity which an orator always wins 
 who gives powerful expression to the sentiments of his hearers. 
 We cannot wonder that, at the close of an impassioned address 
 upon the Alien and Sedition Laws, the multitude should have 
 pressed about him, and borne him aloft in triumph upon their 
 shoulders ; nor that Kentucky should have hastened to employ 
 him in her public business as soon as he was of the requisite age. 
 At thirty he was, to use the language of the stump, " Kentucky's 
 favorite son," and incomparably the finest orator in the Western 
 country. Kentucky had tried him, and found him perfectly to 
 her mind. He was an easy, comfortable man to associate with, 
 wholly in the Jeffersonian taste. His wit was not of the highest 
 quality, but he had plenty of it; and if he said a good thing, he 
 had such a way of saying it as gave it ten times its natural force. 
 He chewed tobacco and took snuff, — practices which lowered 
 the tone of his health all his life. In familiar conversation he 
 used language of the most Western description ; and he had a 
 singularly careless, graceful way with him, that was in strong 
 contrast with the vigor and dignity of his public efforts. He was 
 an honest and brave young man, altogether above lying, hypoc- 
 risy, and meanness, — full of the idea of Republican America 
 and her great destiny. The splendor of his talents concealed his 
 defects and glorified his foibles; and Kentucky rejoiced in him, 
 loved him, trusted him, and sent him forth to represent her in the 
 national council. 
 
 During the first thirteen years of Henry Clay's active life as a 
 politician, — from his twenty-first to his thirty-fourth year, — he 
 appears in politics only as the eloquent champion of the policy 
 of Mr. Jefferson, whom he esteemed the first and best of living- 
 men. After defending him on the stump and aiding him in 
 the Kentucky Legislature, he was sent in 1806, when he was 
 scarcely thirty, to fill for one term a seat in the Senate of the 
 United States, made vacant by the resignation of one of tho 
 Kentucky Senators. Mr. Jefferson received his affectionate 
 young disciple with cordiality, and admitted him to his confi- 
 
 B 
 
18 HENRY CLAY. 
 
 dence. Clay had been recently defending Burr before a Ken- 
 tucky court, entirely believing that his designs were lawful and 
 sanctioned. Mr. Jefferson showed him the cipher letters of that 
 mysterious and ill-starred adventurer, which convinced Mr. Clay 
 that Burr was certainly a liar, if he was not a traitor. Mr. Jef- 
 ferson's perplexity in 1806 was similar to that of Jackson in 
 1833, — too much money in the treasury. The revenue then 
 was fifteen millions ; and, after paying all the expenses of the 
 government and the stipulated portion of the national debt, there 
 was an obstinate and most embarrassing surplus. What to do 
 with this irrepressible surplus was the question then discussed in 
 Mr. Jefferson's Cabinet. The President, being a free-trader, 
 would naturally have said, Reduce the duties. But the younger 
 men of the party, who had no pet theories, and particularly our 
 young Senator, who had just come in from a six weeks' horse- 
 back flounder over bridgeless roads, urged another solution of 
 the difficulty, — Internal Improvements. But the President was 
 a strict-constructionist, denied the authority of Congress to vote 
 money for public works, and was fully committed to that 
 opinion. 
 
 Mr. Jefferson yielded. The most beautiful theories will not 
 always endure the wear and tear of practice. The President, it 
 is true, still maintained that an amendment to the Constitution 
 ought to precede appropriations for public works ; but he said 
 this very briefly and without emphasis, while he stated at some 
 length, and with force, the desirableness of expending the surplus 
 revenue in improving the country. As time wore on, less and 
 less was said about the amendment, more and more about the im- 
 portance of internal improvements ; until, at last, the Republican 
 party, under Clay, Adams, Calhoun, and Rush, went as far in 
 this business of road-making and canal-digging as Hamilton him- 
 self could have desired. Thus it was that Jefferson rendered 
 true his own saying, " We are all Federalists, we are all Repub- 
 licans." Jefferson yielded, also, on the question of free-trade. 
 There is a passage of a few lines in Mr. Jefferson's Message of 
 1806, the year of Henry Clay's first appearance in Washington, 
 which may be regarded as the text of half the Kentuckian's 
 
HENRY CLAY. 19 
 
 speeches, and the inspiration of his public life. The President is 
 discussing the question, What shall we do with the surplus ? 
 
 " Shall we suppress the impost, and give that advantage to 
 foreign over domestic manufactures ? On a few articles of more 
 general and necessary use, the suppression, in due season, will 
 doubtless be right ; but the great mass of the articles upon which 
 impost is paid are foreign luxuries, purchased by those only who 
 are rich enough to afford themselves the use of them. Their 
 patriotism would certainly prefer its continuance, and application 
 to the great purposes of the public education, roads, rivers, ca- 
 nals, and such other objects of public improvement as it may be 
 thought proper to add to the constitutional enumeration of Fed- 
 eral powers. By these operations, new channels of communica- 
 tion will be opened between the States, the lines of separation 
 will disappear, their interests will be identified, and their union 
 cemented by new and indissoluble bonds." 
 
 Upon these hints, the young Senator delayed not to speak and 
 act ; nor did he wait for an amendment to the Constitution. His 
 first speech in the Senate was in favor of building a bridge over 
 the Potomac ; one of his first acts, to propose an appropriation of 
 lands for a canal round the Falls of the Ohio at Louisville ; and 
 soon he brought forward a resolution directing the Secretary o>" 
 the Treasury to report a system of roads and canals for the con- 
 sideration of Congress. The seed of the President's Message had 
 fallen into good ground. 
 
 Returning home at the end of the session, and re-entering the 
 Kentucky Legislature, we still find him a strict follower of Mr. 
 Jefferson. In support of the President's non-intercourse policy 
 (which was Franklin's policy of 1775 applied to the circum- 
 stances of 1808), Mr. Clay proposed that the members of the 
 Legislature should bind themselves to wear nothing that was not 
 of American manufacture. A Federalist, ignorant of the illus- 
 trious origin of this idea, ignorant that the homespun system had 
 caused the repeal of the Stamp Act, and would have postponed 
 the Revolution but for the accident of Lexington, denounced Mr. 
 Clay's proposition as the act of a shameless demagogue. Clay 
 challenged this ill-informed gentleman, and a duel resulted, in 
 
20 HENRY CLAY. 
 
 which two shots were exchanged, and both antagonists were 
 slightly wounded. Elected again to the Senate for an unexpired 
 term, he reappeared in that body in 1809, and sat during two 
 sessions. Homespun was again the theme of his speeches. His 
 ideas on the subject of protecting and encouraging American 
 manufactures were not derived from books, nor expressed in the 
 language of political economy. At his own Kentucky home, 
 Mrs. Clay, assisted by her servants, was spinning and weaving, 
 knitting and sewing, most of the garments required in her little 
 kingdom of six hundred acres, while her husband was away over 
 the mountains serving his country. " Let the nation do what we 
 Kentucky farmers are doing," said Mr. Clay to the Senate. 
 " Let us manufacture enough to be independent of foreign nations 
 in things essential, — no more." He discoursed on this subject 
 in a very pleasant, humorous manner, without referring to the 
 abstract principle involved, or employing any of the technical 
 language of economists. 
 
 His service in the Senate during these two sessions enhanced 
 his reputation greatly, and the galleries were filled when he was 
 expected to speak, little known as he was to the nation at laro-e. 
 We have a glimpse of him in one of Washington Irving's letters 
 of February, 1811: "Clay, from Kentucky, spoke against the 
 Bank. He is one of the finest fellows I have seen here, and one 
 of the finest orators in the Senate, though I believe, the youngest 
 man in it. The galleries, however, were so much crowded with 
 ladies and gentlemen, and such expectations had been expressed 
 concerning his speech, that he was completely frightened, and ac- 
 quitted himself very little to his own satisfaction. He is a man 
 I have great personal regard for." This was the anti-bank 
 speech which General Jackson used to say had convinced him of 
 the impolicy of a national bank, and which, with ingenious malice, 
 he covertly quoted in making up his Bank Veto Message of 1832. 
 
 Mr. Clay's public life proper began in November, 1811, when 
 he appeared in Washington as a member of the House of Rep- 
 resentatives, and was immediately elected Speaker by the war 
 party, by the decisive majority of thirty-one. He was then 
 thirty-four years of age. His election to the Speakership on his 
 
HENRY CLAY. 21 
 
 first appearance in the House gave him, at once, national stand- 
 ing. His master in political doctrine and his partisan chief, 
 Thomas Jefferson, was gone from the scene ; and Clay could now 
 be a planet instead of a satellite. Restive as he had been under 
 the arrogant aggressions of England, he had schooled himself to 
 patient waiting, aided by Jefferson's benign sentiments and great 
 example. But his voice was now for war ; and such was the 
 temper of the public in those months, that the eloquence of 
 Henry Clay, seconded by the power of the Speaker, rendered the 
 war unavoidable. 
 
 It is agreed that to Henry Clay, Speaker of the House of 
 Representatives, more than to any other individual, we owe the 
 war of 1812. When the House hesitated, it was he who, 
 descending from the chair, spoke eo as to reassure it. When 
 President Madison faltered, it was the stimulus of Clay's 
 resistless presence that put heart into him again. If the 
 people seemed reluctant, it was Clay's trumpet harangues 
 that fired their minds. And when the war was declared, 
 it was he, more than President or Cabinet or War Com- 
 mittee, that carried it along upon his shoulders. All our wars 
 begin in disaster; it was Clay who restored the country to con- 
 fidence when it was disheartened by the loss of Detroit and its 
 betrayed garrison. It was Clay alone who could encounter with- 
 out flinching the acrid sarcasm of John Randolph, and exhibit 
 the nothingness of his telling arguments. It was he alone who 
 could adequately deal with Quincy of Massachusetts, who allud- 
 ed to the Speaker and his friends as " young politicians, with their 
 pin-feathers yet unshed, the shell still sticking upon them, — per- 
 fectly unfledged, though they fluttered and cackled on the floor." 
 Clay it was whose clarion notes rang out over departing regi- 
 ments, and kindled within them the martial fire ; and it was 
 Clay's speeches which the soldiers loved to read by the camp-fire. 
 Fiery Jackson read them, and found them perfectly to his taste. 
 Gentle Harrison read them to his Tippecanoe heroes. When the 
 war was going all wrong in the first year, President Madison 
 wished to appoint Clay Commander-in-Chief of the land forces ; 
 but, said Gallatin, "What shall we do without him in the House 
 of Representatives ? " 
 
22 
 
 HENRY CLAY. 
 
 Henry Clay was not a man of blood. On the contrary, lie was 
 eminently pacific, both in his disposition and in his politics. Yet 
 he believed in the war of 1812, and his whole heart was in it. 
 The question occurs, then, Was it right and best for the United 
 States to declare war against Great Britain in 1812? The 
 proper answer to this question depends upon another : What 
 ought we to think of Napoleon Bonaparte ? If Napoleon was, 
 what English Tories and American Federalists said he was, the 
 enemy of mankind, — and if England, in warring upon him, urns 
 fighting the battle of mankind, — then the injuries received by 
 neutral nations might have been borne without dishonor. When 
 those giant belligerents were hurling continents at one another, 
 the damage done to bystanders from the flying off of fragments 
 was a thing to be expected, and submitted to as their share of the 
 general ruin, — to be compensated by the final suppression of the 
 common foe. To have endured this, and even to have submitted, 
 for a time, to the searching of ships, so that not one Englishman 
 should be allowed to skulk from such a fight, had not been pusil- 
 lanimity, but magnanimity. But if, as English Whigs and Amer- 
 ican Democrats contended, Napoleon Bonaparte was the armed 
 soldier of democracy, the rightful heir of the Revolution, the sole 
 alternative to anarchy, the legitimate ruler of France; if the 
 responsibility of those enormous desolating wars does not lie at 
 his door, but belongs to George III. and the Tory party of Eng- 
 land ; if it is a fact that Napoleon always stood ready to make a 
 just peace, which George III. and William Pitt refused, not in 
 the interest of mankind and civilization, but in that of the Tory 
 party and the allied dynasties, — then America was right in 
 resenting the searching and seizure of her ships, and right, after 
 exhausting every peaceful expedient, in declaring war. 
 
 That this was really the point in dispute between our two 
 parties is shown in the debates, newspapers, and pamphlets of the 
 time. The Federalists, as Mr. Clay observed in one of his 
 speeches, compared Napoleon to " every monster and beast, from 
 that mentioned in the Revelation down to the most insignificant 
 quadruped." The Republicans, on the contrary, spoke of him 
 always with moderation and decency, sometimes with commenda- 
 
HENRY CLAY. 23 
 
 tion, and occasionally he was toasted at their public dinners with 
 enthusiasm. Mr. Clay himself, while lamenting his enormous 
 power and the suspension of ancient nationalities, always had a 
 lurking sympathy with him. " Bonaparte," said he in his great 
 war speech of 1813, "has been called the scourge of mankind, 
 the destroyer of Europe, the great robber, the infidel, the modern 
 Attila, and Heaven knows by what other names. Really, gentle- 
 men remind me of an obscure lady, in a city not very far off, who 
 also took it into her head, in conversation with an accomplished 
 French gentleman, to talk of the affairs of Europe. She, too, 
 spoke of the destruction of the balance of power ; stormed and 
 raged about the insatiable ambition of the Emperor ; called him 
 the curse of mankind, the destroyer of Europe. The French- 
 man listened to her with perfect patience, and when she had 
 ceased said to her, with ineffable politeness, ' Madam, it would 
 give my master, the Emperor, infinite pain if he knew how hard- 
 ly you thought of him.' " This brief passage suffices to show 
 the prevailing tone of the two parties when Napoleon was the 
 theme of discourse. 
 
 It is, of course, impossible for us to enter into this question of 
 Napoleon's moral position. Intelligent opinion, ever since the 
 means of forming an opinion were accessible, has been constantly 
 judging Napoleon more leniently, and the Tory party more 
 severely. We can only say, that, in our opinion, the war of 1812 
 was just and necessary ; and that Henry Clay, both in supporting 
 Mr. Jefferson's policy of non-intercourse and in supporting Pres- 
 ident Madison's policy of war, deserved well of his country. 
 Postponed that war might have been. But, human nature being 
 what it is, and the English government being what it was, we do 
 not believe that the United States could ever have been distinctly 
 recognized as one of the powers of the earth without another 
 fight for it. . 
 
 The war being ended and the Federal party extinct, upon the 
 young Republicans, who had carried on the war, devolved the 
 task of "reconstruction." Before they had made much pro- 
 gress in it, they came within an ace of being consigned to pri- 
 vate life, — Clay himself having as narrow an escape as any 
 of them. 
 
24 HENRY CLAY. 
 
 And here we may note one point of superiority of the Ameri- 
 can government over others. In other countries it can some- 
 times be the interest of politicians to foment and declare war. 
 A war strengthens a tottering dynasty, an imperial parvenu, an 
 odious tyrant, a feeble ministry ; and the glory won in battle on 
 land and sea redounds to the credit of government, without 
 raising up competitors for its high places. But let American 
 politicians take note. It is never their interest to bring on a 
 war ; because a war is certain to generate a host of popular 
 heroes to outshine them and push them from their places. It 
 may sometimes be their duty to advocate war, but it is never 
 their interest. At this moment we see both parties striving 
 which shall present to the people the most attractive list of mil- 
 itary candidates ; and when a busy ward politician seeks his 
 reward in custom-house or department, he finds a dozen lame 
 soldiers competing for the place ; oue of whom gets it, — as he 
 ought. What city has presented Mr. Stanton with a house, or 
 Mr. Welles with fifty thousand dollars' worth of government 
 bonds ? Calhoun precipitated the country into a war with Mex- 
 ico ; but what did he gain by it but new bitterness of disap- 
 pointment, while the winner of three little battles was elected 
 President ? Henry Clay was the animating soul of the war 
 of 1812, and we honor him for it; but while Jackson, Brown, 
 Scott, Perry, and Decatur came out of that war the idols of the 
 nation, Clay was promptly notified that his footing in the public 
 councils, his hold of the public favor, was by no means stable. 
 
 His offence was that he voted for the compensation bill of 181 G, 
 which merely changed the pay of members of Congress from 
 the pittance of six dollars a day to the pittance of fifteen hun- 
 dred dollars a year. He who before was lord paramount 
 in Kentucky saved his seat only by prodigious efforts on the 
 stump, and by exerting all the magic of his presence in the 
 canvass. 
 
 No one ever bore cutting disappointment with an airier grace 
 than this high-spirited thorough-bred ; but he evidently felt this 
 apparent injustice. Some years later, when it was proposed 
 in Congress to pension Commodore Perry's mother, Mr. Clay, 
 
HENRY CLAY. 25 
 
 in a speech of five minutes, totally extinguished the proposi- 
 tion. Pointing to the vast rewards bestowed upon such success- 
 ful soldiers as Marlborough, Napoleon, and Wellington, he said, 
 with thrilling effect : " How different is the fate of the states- 
 man ! In his quiet and less brilliant career, after having ad- 
 vanced, by the wisdom of his measures, the national prosperity 
 to the highest point of elevation, and after having sacrificed 
 his fortune, his time, and perhaps his health, in the public ser- 
 vice, what, too often, are the rewards that await him ? Who 
 thinks of his family, impoverished by the devotion of his atten- 
 tion to his country, instead of their advancement ? Who pro- 
 poses to pension him, — much less his mother ? " He spoke the 
 more feelingly, because he, who could have earned more than 
 the President's income by the practice of his profession, was 
 often pinched for money, and was once obliged to leave Congress 
 for the sole purpose of taking care of his shattered fortune. 
 He felt the importance of this subject in a national point of view. 
 He wrote in 1817 to a friend : " Short as has been my service 
 in the public councils, I have seen some of the most valuable 
 members quitting the body from their inability to sustain the 
 weight of these sacrifices. And in process of time, I appre- 
 hend, this mischief will be more and more felt. Even now 
 there are few, if any, instances of members dedicating their 
 lives to the duties of legislation. Members stay a year or two ; 
 curiosity is satisfied; the novelty wears off; expensive habits 
 are brought or acquired ; their affairs at home are neglected ; 
 their fortunes are wasting away ; and they are compelled to 
 retire." 
 
 The eight years of Mr. Monroe's administration — from 1817 
 to 1825 — were the most brilliant period of Henry Clay's ca- 
 reer. His position as Speaker of the House of Representatives 
 would naturally have excluded him from leadership ; but the 
 House was as fond of hearing him speak as he could be of speak- 
 ing, and opportunities were continually furnished him by going 
 into Committee of the Whole. In a certain sense he was in op- 
 portion to the administration. When one party has so frequent- 
 ly and decidedly beaten the party opposed to it, that the defeated 
 2 
 
26 HENRY CLAY. 
 
 party goes out of existence, the conquering party soon divides. 
 The triumphant Eepublicans of 1816 obeyed this law of their 
 position ; — one wing of the party, under Mr. Monroe, being re- 
 luctant to depart from the old Jeffersonian policy; the other 
 wing, under Henry Clay, being inclined to go very far in internal 
 improvements and a protective tariff. Mr. Clay now appears as 
 the great champion of what he proudly styled the American Sys- 
 tem. He departed farther and farther from the simple doctrines 
 of the earlier Democrats. Before the war, he had opposed a 
 national bank ; now he advocated the establishment of one, and 
 handsomely acknowledged the change of opinion. Before the 
 war, he proposed only such a tariff as would render America in- 
 dependent of foreign nations in articles of the first necessity ; 
 now he contemplated , the establishment of a great manufacturing 
 system, which should attract from Europe skilful workmen, and 
 supply the people with everything they consumed, even to jewel- 
 ry and silver-ware. Such success had he with his American 
 System, that, before many years rolled away, we see the rival 
 wings of the Bepublican party striving which could concede most 
 to the manufacturers in the way of an increased tariff. Every 
 four years, when a President was to be elected, there was an inev- 
 itable revision of the tariff, each faction outbidding the other in 
 conciliating the manufacturing interest ; until at length the near 
 discharge of the national debt suddenly threw into politics a 
 prospective surplus, — one of twelve millions a year, — which 
 came near crushing the American System, and gave Mr. Calhoun 
 his pretext for nullification. 
 
 At present, with such a debt as we have, the tariff is no longer 
 a question with us. The government must have its million a day ; 
 and as no tax is less offensive to the people than a duty on im- 
 ported commodities, we seem compelled to a practically protective 
 system for many years to come. But, of all men, a citizen of the 
 United States should be the very last to accept the protective 
 system as final ; for when he looks abroad over the great assem- 
 blage of sovereignties which he calls the United States, and asks 
 himself the reason of their rapid and uniform prosperity for the 
 last eighty years, what answer can he give but this ? — There is 
 
HENRY CLAY. 27 
 
 free trade among them. And if he extends his survey over the 
 whole earth, he can scarcely avoid the conclusion that free trade 
 among all nations would be as advantageous to all nations as it is 
 to the thirty-seven States of the American Union. But nations are 
 not governed by theories and theorists, but by circumstances and 
 politicians. The most perfect theory must sometimes give way to 
 exceptional fact. We find, accordingly, Mr. Mill, the great 
 English champion of free trade, fully sustaining Henry Clay's 
 moderate tariff of 1816, but sustaining it only as a temporary 
 measure. The paragraph of Mr. Mill's Political Economy which 
 touches this subject seems to us to express so exactly the true 
 policy of the United States with regard to the tariff, that we will 
 take the liberty of emoting it. 
 
 " The only case in which, on mere principles of political economy, 
 protecting duties can be defensible, is when they are imposed tempora- 
 rily, (especially in a young and rising nation,) in hopes of naturalizing 
 a foreign industry, in itself perfectly suitable'to the circumstances of 
 the country. The superiority of one country over another in a branch 
 of production often arises only from having begun it sooner. There 
 may be no inherent advantage on one part, or disadvantage on the 
 other, but only a present superiority of acquired skill and experience. 
 A country which has this skill and experience yet to acquire may, in 
 other respects, be better adapted to the production than those which 
 were earlier in the field ; and, besides, it is a just remark of Mr. Rae, 
 that nothing has a greater tendency to promote improvement in any 
 branch of production, than its trial under a new set of conditions. 
 But it cannot be expected that individuals should, at their own risk, or 
 rather to their certain loss, introduce a new manufacture, and bear the 
 burden of carrying it on, until the producers have been educated up 
 to the level of those with whom the processes are traditional. A pro- 
 tecting duty, continued for a reasonable time, will sometimes be the 
 least inconvenient mode in which the nation can tax itself for the sup- 
 port of such an experiment. But the protection should be confined to 
 cases in which there is good ground of assurance that the industry 
 which it fosters will after a time be able to dispense with it ; nor 
 should the domestic producers ever be allowed to expect that it will be 
 continued to them beyond the time necessary for a fair trial of what 
 they are capable of accomplishing." * 
 
 * Mill's Principles of Political Economy, Book V. Ch. X. § 1- 
 
28 HENRY CLAY. 
 
 In the quiet of his library at Ashland, Mr. Clay, we believe, 
 would, at any period of his public life, have assented to the doc- 
 trines of this passage. But at Washington he was a party leader 
 and an orator. Having set the ball in motion, he could not stop 
 it ; nor does he appear to have felt the necessity of stopping it, 
 until, in 1831, he was suddenly confronted by three Gorgons at 
 once, — a coming Surplus, a President that vetoed internal im- 
 provements, and an ambitious Calhoun, resolved on using the 
 surplus either as a stepping-stone to the Presidency or a wedge 
 with which to split the Union. The time to have put down the 
 brakes was in 1828, when the national debt was within seven 
 years of being paid off; but precisely then it was that both divi- 
 sions of the Democratic party — one under Mr. Van Buren, the 
 other under Mr. Clay — were running a kind of tariff race, neck 
 and neck, in which Van Buren won. Mr. Clay, it is true, was 
 not in Congress then, — he was Secretary of State ; but he was 
 the soul of his party, and his voice was the voice of a master. 
 In all his letters and speeches there is not a word to show that he 
 then anticipated the surplus, or the embarrassments to which it 
 gave rise ; though he could not have forgotten that a very trifling 
 surplus was one of the chief anxieties of Mr. Jefferson's admin- 
 istration. Mr. Clay's error, we think, arose from his not per- 
 ceiving clearly that a protective tariff, though justifiable some- 
 times, is always in itself an evil, and is never to be accepted as 
 the permanent policy of any country ; and that, being an evil, it 
 must be reduced to the minimum that will answer the temporary 
 purpose. 
 
 In estimating Henry Clay, we are always to remember that he 
 was an orator. He had a genius for oratory. There is, we be- 
 lieve, no example of a man endowed with a genius for oratory who 
 also possessed an understanding of the first order. Mr. Clay's 
 oratory was vivified by a good heart and a genuine love of coun- 
 try ; and on occasions which required only a good heart, patriotic 
 feeling, and an eloquent tongue, he served his country well. But 
 as a party leader he had sometimes to deal with matters which 
 demanded a radical and far-seeing intellect; and then, perhaps, 
 he failed to guide his followers aright. At Washington, during 
 
HENRY CLAY. 29 
 
 the thirteen years of his Speakership, he led the gay life of a 
 popular hero and drawing-room favorite ; and his position was 
 supposed to compel him to entertain much company. As a young 
 lawyer in Kentucky, he was addicted to playing those games of 
 mere chance which alone at that day were styled gambling. He 
 played high and often, as was the custom then all over the world. 
 It was his boast, even in those wild days, that he never played at 
 home, and never had a pack of cards in his house ; but when the 
 lawyers and judges were assembled during court sessions, there 
 was much high play among them at the tavern after the day's 
 work was done. In 1806, when Mr. Clay was elected to the 
 Senate, he resolved to gamble no more, — that is, to play at haz- 
 ard and " brag " no more, — and he kept his resolution. Whist, 
 being a game depending partly on skill, was not included in this 
 resolution ; and whist was thenceforth a very favorite game with 
 him, and he greatly excelled in it. It was said of him, as it was 
 of Charles James Fox, that, at any moment of a hand, he could 
 name all the cards that remained to be played. He discounte- 
 nanced high stakes; and we believe he never, after 1806, played 
 for more than five dollars " a corner." These, we know, were the 
 stakes at Ghent, where he played whist for many months with 
 the British Commissioners during the negotiations for peace in 
 1815. We mention his whist-playing only as part of the evi- 
 dence that he was a gay, pleasant, easy man of the world, — not 
 a student, not a thinker, not a philosopher. Often, in reading 
 over his speeches of this period, we are ready to exclaim, ' ; Ah ! 
 Mr. Clay, if you had played whist a little less, and studied history 
 and statesmanship a great deal more, you would have avoided 
 some errors ! " A trilling anecdote related by Mr. Colton lets us 
 into the Speaker's way of life. " How can you preside over that 
 House to-day ? " asked a friend, as he set Mr. Clay down at his 
 own door, after sunrise, from a party. " Come up, and you shall 
 see how I will throw the reins over their necks," replied the 
 Speaker, as he stepped from the carriage.* 
 
 * Daniel Webster once said of him in conversation : " Mr. Clay is a great 
 man ; beyond all question a true patriot. He has done much for his country. 
 He ought long ago to have been elected President. I think, however, he was 
 
30 HENRY CLAY. 
 
 But when noble feeling and a gifted tongue sufficed for the 
 occasion, how grandly sometimes he acquitted himself in those 
 brilliant years, when, descending from the Speaker's lofty seat, 
 he held the House and the crowded galleries spellbound by his 
 magnificent oratory ! His speech of 1818, for example, favoring 
 the recognition of the South American republics, was almost as 
 wise as it was eloquent ; for, although the provinces of South 
 America are still far from being what we could wish them to be, 
 yet it is certain that no single step of progress was possible for 
 them until their connection with Spain was severed. Cuba, to- 
 day, proves Mr. Clay's position. Tiie amiable and intelligent 
 Creoles of that beautiful island are nearly ready for the abolition 
 of slavery and for regulated freedom ; but they lie languishing 
 under the hated incubus of Spanish rule, and dare not risk a war 
 of independence, outnumbered as they are by untamed or half- 
 tamed Africans. Mr. Clay's speeches in behalf of the young 
 republics of South America were read by Bolivar at the head of 
 his troops, and justly rendered his name dear to the struggling 
 patriots. He had a clear conviction, like his master, Thomas 
 Jefferson, that the interests of the United States lie chiefly in 
 America, not Europe ; and it was a favorite dream of his to see 
 the Western Continent occupied by flourishing republics, inde- 
 pendent, but closely allied, — a genuine Holy Alliance. 
 
 The supreme effort of Mr. Clay's Congressional life was in 
 connection with the Missouri Compromise of 1821. He did not 
 originate the plan of compromise, but it was certainly his influ- 
 ence and tact which caused the plan to prevail. Fortunately, 
 he had been absent from Congress during some of the earlier 
 
 never a man of books, a hard student; but he has displayed remarkable 
 genius. I never could imagine him sitting comfortably in his library, and read- 
 ing quietly out of the great books of the past. He has been too fond of the 
 world to enjoy anything like that. He has been too fond of excitement, — he 
 has lived upon it; he has been too fond of company, not enough alone; and has 
 had few resources within himself. Now a man who cannot, to some extent, 
 depend upon himself for happiness, is to my mind one of the unfortunate. But 
 Clay is a great man; and if he ever had animosities against me, I forgive him 
 and forget them." 
 
 These words were uttered at Marshfield when the news reached there that Mr. 
 Clay was dying. 
 
HENEY CLAY. 31 
 
 attempts to admit Missouri ; and thus he arrived in Washington 
 in January, 1821, calm, uncommitted, and welcome to both par- 
 ties. Fierce debate had wrought up the minds of members to 
 that point wbere useful discussion ceases to be possible. Almost 
 every man had given personal offence and taken personal offence; 
 the two sides seemed reduced to the most hopeless incompatibil- 
 ity ; and the affair was at a dead lock. No matter what the sub- 
 ject of debate, Missouri was sure, in some way, to get involved 
 in it ; and the mere mention of the name was like a spark upon 
 loose gunpowder. In February, for example, the House had to 
 go through the ceremony of counting the votes for President of 
 the United States, — a mere ceremony, since Mr. Monroe had 
 been re-elected almost unanimously, and the votes of Missouri 
 were of no importance. The tellers, to avoid giving cause of 
 contention, announced that Mr. Monroe had received two hun- 
 dred and thirty-one votes, including those of Missouri, and two 
 hundred and twenty-eight if they were excluded. At this an- 
 nouncement members sprang to their feet, and such a scene of 
 confusion arose that no man could make himself heard. After a 
 long struggle with the riot, the Speaker declared the House ad- 
 journed. 
 
 For six weeks Mr. Clay exerted his eloquence, his arts of 
 pacification, and all the might of his personality, to bring mem- 
 bers to their senses. He even had a long conference with his 
 ancient foe, John Randolph. He threw himself into this work 
 with such ardor, and labored at it so continuously, day and 
 night, that, when the final triumph was won, he declared that, 
 if Missouri had been kept out of the Union two weeks longer, 
 he should have been a dead man. Thirty-four years after these 
 events Mr. S. G. Goodrich wrote : " I was in the House of Rep- 
 resentatives but a single hour. While I was present there was 
 no direct discussion of the agitating subject which already filled 
 everybody's mind, but still the excitement flared out occasionally 
 in incidental allusions to it, like putfs of smoke and jets of flame 
 which issue from a house that is on fire within. I recollect that 
 Clay made a brief speech, thrilling the House by a single pas- 
 sage, in which he spoke of 'poor, unheard Missouri,' she being 
 
32 EENRY CLAY. 
 
 then without a representative in Congress. His tall, tossing 
 form, his long, sweeping gestures, and, above all, his musical yet 
 thrilling tones, made an impression upon me which I can never 
 forget." 
 
 Mr. Clay, at length, had completed his preparations. He 
 moved for a committee of the House to confer with a committee 
 of the Senate. He himself wrote out the list of members whom 
 he desired should be elected, and they were elected. At the last 
 conference of the joint committees, which was held on a Sunday, 
 Mr. Clay insisted that their report, to have the requisite effect 
 upon Congress and the country, must be unanimous ; and unan- 
 imous it was. Both Houses, with a surprising approach to 
 unanimity, adopted the compromise proposed ; and thus was 
 again postponed the bloody arbitrament to which the irrepres- 
 sible controversy has since been submitted. 
 
 Clay's masterly conduct on this occasion added his name to 
 the long list of gentlemen who were mentioned for the succes- 
 sion to Mr. Monroe in 1825. If the city of Washington had 
 been the United States, if the House of Representatives had 
 possessed the right to elect a President, Henry Clay might have 
 been its choice. During the thirteen years of his Speakership 
 not one of his decisions had been reversed ; and he had presided 
 over the turbulent and restive House with that perfect blending 
 of courtesy and firmness which at once restrains and charms. 
 The debates just before the war, during the war, and after the 
 war, had been violent and acrimonious ; but he had kept his own 
 temper, and compelled the House to observe an approach to de- 
 corum. On one occasion he came into such sharp collision with the 
 excitable Randolph, that the dispute was transferred to the news- 
 papers, and narrowly escaped degenerating from a war of "cards" 
 to a conflict with pistols. But the Speaker triumphed ; the 
 House and the country sustained him. On occasions of cere- 
 mony the Speaker enchanted every beholder by the superb dig- 
 nity of his bearing, the fitness of his words, and the tranquil 
 depth of his tones. "What could be more eloquent, more appro- 
 priate, than the Speaker's address of welcome to Lafayette, when 
 the guest of the nation was conducted to the floor of the House 
 
HENRY CLAY. 33 
 
 of Representatives ? The House and the galleries were proud 
 of the Speaker that day. No one who never heard this captiva- 
 tor of hearts can form the slightest conception of the penetrating 
 effect of the closing sentences, though they were spoken only in 
 the tone of conversation. 
 
 " The vain wish has been sometimes indulged, that Providence 
 ■would allow the patriot, after death, to return to his country, and to 
 contemplate the intermediate changes which had taken place ; to view 
 the forests felled, the cities built, the mountains levelled, the canals 
 cut, the highways constructed, the progress of the arts, the advance- 
 ment oflearning, and the increase of population. General, your pres- 
 ent visit to the United States is a realization of the consoling object of 
 that wish. You are in the midst of posterity. Everywhere you must 
 have been struck with the great changes, physical and moral, which 
 have occurred since you left us. Even this very city, bearing a vener- 
 ated name, alike endeared to you and to us, has since emerged from 
 the forest which then covered its site. In one respect you behold us 
 unaltered, and this is in the sentiment of continued devotion to liberty, 
 and of ardent affection and profound gratitude to your departed friend, 
 the father of his country, and to you, and to your illustrious associates 
 in the field and in the cabinet, for the multiplied blessings which sur- 
 round us, and for the very privilege of addressing you which I now 
 exercise. This sentiment, now fondly cherished by more than ten 
 millions of people, will be transmitted with unabated vigor down the 
 tide of time, through the countless millions who are destined to inhabit 
 this continent, to the latest posterity." 
 
 The appropriateness of these sentiments to the occasion and 
 to the man is evident to every one who remembers that Lafay- 
 ette's love of George Washington was a Frenchman's romantic 
 passion. Nor, indeed, did he need to have a sensitive French 
 heart to be moved to tears by such words and such a welcome. 
 
 From 1822 to 1848, a period of twenty-six years, Henry Clav 
 lived the strange life of a candidate for the Presidency. It was 
 enough to ruin any man, body and soul. To live always in the 
 gaze of millions ; to be the object of eulogy the most extrava- 
 gant and incessant from one half of the newspapers, and of vitu- 
 peration still more preposterous from the other half ; to be sur- 
 rounded by flatterers interested and disinterested, and to be 
 2* c 
 
34 HENRY CLAY. 
 
 confronted by another body intent on misrepresenting ever)' 
 act and word ; to have to stop and consider the effect of every 
 utterance, public and private, upon the next " campaign " ; not 
 to be able to stir abroad without having to harangue a depu- 
 tation of political friends, and stand to be kissed by ladies and 
 pump-handled by men, and hide the enormous bore of it beneath 
 a fixed smile till the very muscles of the face are rigid ; to receive 
 by every mail letters enough for a large town ; to have your life 
 written several times a year ; to be obliged continually to refute 
 calumnies and " define your position " ; to live under a horrid 
 necessity to be pointedly civil to all the world ; to find your most 
 casual remarks and most private conversations getting distorted 
 in print, — this, and more than this, it was to be a candidate for 
 the Presidency. The most wonderful thing that we have to say 
 of Henry Clay is, that, such were his native sincerity and health- 
 fulness of mind, he came out of this fiery trial still a patriot and 
 a man of honor. We believe it was a weakness in him, as it is in 
 any man, to set his heart upon living four years in the White 
 House ; but we can most confidently say, that, having entered the 
 game, he played it fairly, and bore his repeated disappointments 
 with genuine, high-bred composure. The closest scrutiny into the 
 life of this man still permits us to believe that, when he said, " I 
 would rather be right than be President," he spoke the real senti- 
 ments of his heart ; and that, when he said to one of his political 
 opponents, " Tell General Jackson that, if he will sign my Land 
 Bill, I will pledge myself to retire from public life and never to 
 re-enter it," he meant what he said, and would have stood to it. 
 It is our privilege to believe this of Henry Clay ; nor do we 
 think that there was ever anything morbidly excessive in his 
 desire for the Presidency. He was the head and choice of a 
 great political party ; in the principles of that party he fully 
 believed ; and we think he did truly desire an election to the 
 Presidency more from conviction than ambition. This may not 
 have been the case in 1824, but we believe it was in 1832 and 
 in 1844. 
 
 The history of Henry Clay's Presidential aspirations and de- 
 feats is little more than the history of a personal feud. In the 
 
HEXEY CLAY. 35 
 
 year 1819, it was his fortune to incur the hatred of the best 
 hater then living, — Andrew Jackson. They met for the first 
 time in November, 1815, when the hero of New Orleans came 
 to Washington to consult with the administration respecting the. 
 Indian and military affairs of his department. Each of these 
 eminent men truly admired the other. Jackson saw in Clay the 
 civil hero of the war, whose fiery eloquence had powerfully 
 seconded its military heroes. Clay beheld in Jackson the man 
 whose gallantly and skill had done most to justify the war in the 
 sight of the people. They became immediately and cordially in- 
 timate. Jackson engaged to visit Ashland in the course of the 
 next summer, and spend a week there. On every occasion when 
 Mr. Clay spoke of the heroes of the war, he bestowed on Jackson 
 the warmest praise. 
 
 In 1818 General Jackson invaded Florida, put to death two 
 Indian chiefs in cold blood, and executed two British subjects, 
 Arbuthnot and Armbrister.* During the twenty-seven days' 
 debate upon these proceedings, in 1819, the Speaker sided with 
 those who disapproved them, and he delivered a set speech 
 against Jackson. This speech, though it did full justice to Gen- 
 eral Jackson's motives, and contained a fine oulogium upon his 
 previous services, gave the General deadly offence. Such wa j 
 Jackson's self-love that he could not believe in the honesty of 
 any opposition to him, but invariably attributed such opposition 
 to low personal motives. Now it was a fact well known to Jack- 
 son, that Henry Clay had expected the appointment of Secretary 
 of State under Mr. Monroe ; and it was part of the gossip of the 
 time that Mr. Monroe's preference of Mr. Adams was the reason 
 of Clay's occasional opposition to measures favored by the ad- 
 ministration. We do not believe this, because the measures 
 which Mr. Clay opposed were such as he must have disapproved, 
 and which well-informed posterity will forever disapprove. Af- 
 ter much debate in the Cabinet, Mr. Monroe, who was peculiarly 
 bound to Jackson, and who had reasons of his own for not offend- 
 ing him, determined to sustain him in toto, both at home and in 
 
 * This is the correct spelling of the name, as we learn from a living relative 
 of the unfortunate man. It has been hitherto spelled Ambrister. 
 
36 HENRY CLAY. 
 
 the courts of Spain and England. Hence, in condemning Gen- 
 eral Jackson, Mr. Clay was again in opposition to the adminis- 
 tration ; and the General of course concluded, that the Speaker 
 designed, in ruining him, merely to further his own political 
 schemes. How he boiled with fury against Mr. Clay, his pub- 
 lished letters amusingly attest. " The hypocrisy and baseness of 
 Clay," wrote the General, " in pretending friendship to me, and 
 endeavoring to crush the Executive through me, makes me de- 
 spise the villain." 
 
 Jackson, as we all know, was triumphantly sustained by the 
 House. In fact, Mr. Clay's speech was totally unworthy of the 
 occasion. Instead of argument and fact, he gave the House and 
 the galleries beautiful declamation. The evidence was before 
 him ; he had it in his hands ; but, instead of getting up his case 
 with patient assiduity, and exhibiting the damning proofs of Jack- 
 son's misconduct, he merely glanced over the mass of papers, fell 
 into some enormous blunders, passed over some most material 
 points, and then endeavored to supply all deficiencies by an im- 
 posing eloquence. He even acknowledges that he had not ex- 
 amined the testimony. " It is possible" said he, " that a critical 
 examination of the evidence would show " that Arbuthnot was an 
 innocent trader. We have had occasion to examine that evidence 
 since, and we can testify that this conjecture was correct. But 
 why was it a conjecture ? Why did Mr. Clay neglect to convert 
 the conjecture into certainty? It fell to him, as representing the 
 civilization and humanity of the United States, to vindicate the 
 memory of an honorable old man, who had done all that was 
 possible to prevent the war, and who had been ruthlessly mur- 
 dered by men wearing the uniform of American soldiers. It fell 
 to him to bar the further advancement of a man most unfit for 
 civil rule. To this duty he was imperatively called, but he 
 only half did it, and thus exasperated the tiger without disabling 
 him. 
 
 Four years passed. In December, 1823, General Jackson re- 
 appeared in Washington to take his seat in the Senate, to which 
 he had been elected by his wire-pullers for the purpose of pro- 
 moting his interests as a candidate for the Presidency. Before 
 
HENRY CLAY. 37 
 
 he left home two or three of his friends had besought him to 
 assume a mild and conciliatory demeanor at the capitol. It would 
 never do, they told him, for a candidate for the Presidency to 
 threaten to cut off the ears of gentlemen who disapproved his 
 public conduct ; he must restrain himself and make friends. 
 This advice he followed. He was reconciled with General Win- 
 field Scott, whom, in 1817, he had styled an " assassin," a i£ hector- 
 ing bully," and an " intermeddling pimp and spy of the War Of- 
 fice." He made friends with Colonel Thomas H. Benton, with 
 whom he had fought in the streets of Nashville, while he still 
 carried in his body a bullet received in that bloody affray. With 
 Henry Clay, too, he resumed friendly intercourse, met him twice 
 at dinner-parties, rode and exchanged visits with him, and attend- 
 ed one of the Speaker's Congressional dinners. 
 
 When next these party chieftains met, in the spring of 1825, it 
 was about to devolve upon the House of Representatives to de- 
 cide which of three men should be the next President, — Jack- 
 son, Adams, or Crawford. They exchanged visits as before ; Mr. 
 Clay being desirous, as he said, to show General Jackson that, in 
 the vote which he had determined to give, he was influenced only 
 by public considerations. No reader needs to be informed that 
 Mr. Clay and his friends were able to decide the election, and 
 that they decided it in favor of Mr. Adams. We believe that 
 Mr. Clay was wrong in so doing. As a Democrat he ought, we 
 think, to have been willing to gratify the plurality of his fellow- 
 citizens, who had voted for General Jackson. His motives we 
 fully believe to have been disinterested. Indeed, it was plainly 
 intimated to him that, if he gave the Presidency to General 
 Jackson, General Jackson would make him his heir apparent, or, 
 in other words, his Secretary of State. 
 
 The auger of General Jackson at his disappointment was not 
 the blind and wild fury of his earlier days ; it was a deeper, a 
 deadlier wrath, which he governed and concealed in order to 
 wreak a feller vengeance. On the evening of the day on which 
 the election in the House occurred there was a levee at the 
 Presidential mansion, which General Jackson attended. Who, 
 that saw him dart forward and grasp Mr. Adams cordially by the 
 
38 HENRY CLAY. 
 
 hand, could have supposed that he then entirely believed that 
 Mr. Adams had stolen the Presidency from him by a corrupt 
 bargain with Mr. Clay ? Who could have supposed that he and 
 his friends had been, for fourteen days, hatching a plot to blast 
 the good name of Mr. Adams and Mr. Clay, by spreading abroad 
 the base insinuation that Clay had been bought over to the sup- 
 port of Adams by the promise of the first place in the Cabinet ? 
 Who could have supposed that, on his way home to Tennessee, 
 while the newspapers were paragraphing his magnanimity in de- 
 feat, as shown by his behavior at the levee, he would denounce 
 Adams and Clay, in bar-rooms and public places, as guilty of a 
 foul compact to frustrate the wishes of the people ? 
 
 It was calumny's masterpiece. It was a rare stroke of art to 
 get an old dotard of a member of Congress to publish, twelve 
 days before the election, that Mr. Clay had agreed to vote for Mr. 
 Adams, and that Mr. Adams had agreed to reward him by the 
 office of Secretary of State. When the vote had been given and 
 the office conferred, how plausible, how convincing, the charge of 
 bargain ! 
 
 It is common to censure Mr. Clay for accepting office under 
 Mr. Adams. We honor him for his courage in doing so. Hav- 
 ing made Mr. Adams President, it had been unlike the gallant 
 Kentuckian to shrink from the possible odium of the act by re- 
 fusing his proper place in the administration. The calumny 
 which anticipated his acceptance of office was a defiance : Take 
 office if you dare! It was simply worthy of Henry Clay to accept 
 the challenge, and brave all the consequences of what he had de- 
 liberately and conscientiously done. 
 
 In the office of Secretary of State Mr. Clay exhibited an ad- 
 mirable talent for the despatch of business. He negotiated an 
 unusual number of useful treaties. He exerted himself to secure 
 a recognition of the principles, that, in time of Avar, private 
 property should enjoy on the ocean the same protection as on 
 land, and that paper blockades are not to be regarded. He 
 seconded Mr. Adams in his determination not to remove from 
 office any man on account of his previous or present opposition 
 to the administration ; and he carried this policy so far, that, in 
 
HENRY CLAY. 39 
 
 selecting the newspapers for the publication of the laws, he re- 
 fused to consider their political character. This was in strict 
 accordance with the practice of all previous administrations ; but 
 it is so pleasant to recur to the times when that honorable policy 
 prevailed, that we cannot help alluding to it. In his intercourse 
 with foreign ministers, Mr. Clay had an opportunity to display 
 all the charms of an unequalled courtesy : they remained his 
 friends long after he had retired. His Wednesday dinners and 
 his pleasant evening receptions were remembered for many years. 
 How far he sympathized with Mr. Adams's extravagant dreams 
 of a system of national works that should rival the magnificent 
 structures of ancient Rome, or with the extreme opinions of his 
 colleague, Mr. Rush, as to the power and importance of govern- 
 ment, we do not know. He worked twelve hours a day in his 
 office, he tells us, and was content therewith. He was the last 
 high officer of the government to fight a duel. That bloodless 
 contest between the Secretary of State and John Randolph was 
 as romantic and absurd as a duel could well be. Colonel Ben- 
 ton's narrative of it is at once the most amusing and the most 
 affecting piece of gossip which our political annals contain. 
 Randolph, as the most unmanageable of members of Congress, 
 had been for fifteen years a thorn in Mr. Clay's side, and Clay's 
 later politics had been most exasperating to Mr. Randolph ; but 
 the two men loved one another in their hearts, aft it all. Noth- 
 ing has ever exceeded the thorough-bred courtesy and tender 
 consideration with which they set about the work of putting one 
 another to death ; and their joy was unbounded when, after the 
 second fire, each discovered that the other was unharmed. If 
 all duels could have such a result, duelling would be the prettiest 
 tiling in the world. 
 
 The election of 1828 swept the administration from power. 
 No man has ever bowed more gracefully to the decision of the 
 people than Henry Clay. His remarks at the public dinner 
 given him in Washington, on his leaving for home, were entirely 
 admirable. Andrew Jackson, he said, had wronged him, but he 
 was now the Chief Magistrate of his country, and, as such, he 
 should be treated with decorum, and his public acts judged with 
 
40 HENRY CLAY. 
 
 candor. His journey to Ashland was more like the progress of 
 a victor than the return homeward of a rejected statesman. 
 
 He now entered largely into his favorite branch of rural busi- 
 ness, the raising of superior animals. Fifty merino sheep were 
 driven over the mountains from Pennsylvania to his farm, and 
 he imported from England some Durham and Hertford cattle. 
 He had an Arabian horse in his stable. For the improvement 
 of the breed of mules, he imported an ass from Malta, and an- 
 other from Spain. Pigs, goats, and dogs he also raised, and 
 endeavored to improve. His slaves being about fifty in number, 
 he was able to carry on the raising of hemp and corn, as well as 
 the breeding of stock, and both on a considerable scale. Mrs. 
 Clay sent every morning to the principal hotel of Lexington 
 thirty gallons of milk, and her husband had large consignments 
 to make to his factor in New Orleans. His letters of this period 
 show how he delighted in his animals and his growing crops, and 
 how thoughtfully he considered the most trifling details of man- 
 agement. His health improved. He told his old friend, Wash- 
 ington Irving, that he found it was as good for men as for beasts 
 to be turned out to grass occasionally. Though not without 
 domestic afflictions, he was very happy in his home. One of his 
 sons graduated second at West Point, and two of his daughters 
 were happily married. He was, perhaps, a too indulgent father; 
 but his children loved him most tenderly, and were guided by his 
 opinion. It is pleasing to read in the letters of his sons to him 
 such passages as this : "You tell me that you wish me to receive 
 your opinions, not as commands, but as advice. Yet I must con- 
 sider them as commands, doubly binding ; for they proceed from 
 one so vastly my superior in all respects, and to whom I am un- 
 der such great obligations, that the mere intimation of an opinion 
 will be sufficient to govern my conduct." 
 
 The President, meanwhile, was paying such homage to the 
 farmer of Ashland as no President of the United States had ever 
 paid to a private individual. General Jackson's principal object 
 — the object nearest his heart — appears to have been to wound 
 and injure Henry Clay. His appointments, his measures, and his 
 vetoes seem to have been chiefly inspired by resentment against 
 
HENRY CLAY. 41 
 
 him. Ingliam of Pennsylvania, who had taken the lead in that 
 State in giving currency to the " bargain " calumny, was appoint- 
 ed Secretary of the Treasury. Eaton, who had aided in the 
 original concoction of that foul slander, was appointed Secretary 
 of War. Branch, who received the appointment of Secretary of 
 the Navy, was one of the few Senators who had voted and spok- 
 en against the confirmation of Henry Clay to the office of Secre- 
 tary of State in 1825 ; and Berrien, Attorney- General, was 
 another. Barry, appointed Postmaster-General, was the Ken- 
 tuckian who had done most to inflict upon Mr. Clay the mortifi- 
 cation of seeing his own Kentucky siding against him. John 
 Randolph, Clay's recent antagonist in a duel, and the most unfit 
 man in the world for a diplomatic mission, was sent Minister to 
 Russia. Pope, an old Kentucky Federalist, Clay's opponent and 
 competitor for half a lifetime, received the appointment of Gov- 
 ernor of the Territory of Arkansas. General Harrison, who had 
 generously defended Clay against the charge of bargain and cor- 
 ruption, was recalled from a foreign mission on the fourth day 
 after General Jackson's accession to power, though he had scarce- 
 ly reached the country to which he was accredited. In the place 
 of General Harrison was sent a Kentuckian peculiarly obnoxious 
 to Mr. Clay. In Kentucky itself there was a clean sweep from 
 office of Mr. Clay's friends ; not one man of them was left. His 
 brother-in-law, James Brown, was instantly recalled from a diplo- 
 matic post in Europe. Kendall, the chief of the Kitchen Cab- 
 inet, had once been tutor to Mr. Clay's children, and had won the 
 favor of Jackson by lending a dexterous hand in carrying Kentucky 
 against his benefactor. Francis Blair, editor of the Globe, had 
 also been the particular friend and correspondent of Mr. Clay, 
 but had turned against him. From the Departments in "Wash- 
 ington, all of Mr. Clay's known friends were immediately 
 removed, except a few who had made themselves indispensable, 
 and a few others whom Mr. Van Buren contrived to spare. 
 In nearly every instance, the men who succeeded to the best 
 •places had made themselves conspicuous by their vituperation of 
 Mr. Clay. He was strictly correct when he said, k< Every move- 
 ment of the President is dictated by personal hostility toward 
 
42 HENRY CLAY. 
 
 me " ; but he was deceived when he added that it all conduced to 
 his benefit. Every mind that was both just and well-informed 
 warmed toward the object of such pitiless and demoniac wrath ; 
 but in what land are minds just and well-informed a majority ? 
 
 It was not only the appointments and removals that were aimed 
 at Mr. Clay. The sudden expulsion of gray hairs from the offi- 
 ces they had honored, the precipitation of hundreds of families 
 into poverty, — this did not satisfy the President's vengeance. 
 He assailed Henry Clay in his first Message. In recommending 
 a change in the mode of electing the President, he said that, 
 when the election devolves upon the House of Representatives, 
 circumstances may give the power of deciding the election to one 
 man. " May he not be tempted," added the President, " to name 
 his reward ? " He vetoed appropriations for the Cumberland 
 Road, because the name and the honor of Henry Clay were pe- 
 culiarly identified with that work. He destroyed the Bank of 
 the United States, because he believed its power and influence 
 were to be used in favor of Mr. Clay's elevation to the Presiden- 
 cy. He took care, in his Message vetoing the recharter of the 
 Bank, to employ some of the arguments which Clay had used in 
 opposing the recharter of the United States Bank in 1811. Mis- 
 erably sick and infirm as he was, he consented to stand for re- 
 election, because there was no other candidate strong enough to 
 defeat Henry Clay ; and he employed all his art, and the whole 
 power of the administration, during his second term, to smooth 
 Mr. Van Buren's path to the Presidency, to the exclusion of 
 Henry Clay. Plans were formed, too, and engagements made, 
 the grand object of which was to keep Clay from the Presi- 
 dency, even after Mr. Van Buren should have served his 
 anticipated eight years. General Jackson left Washington in 
 1837, expecting that Martin Van Buren would be President until 
 1845, and that he would then be succeeded by Thomas H. Ben- 
 ton. Nothing prevented the fulfilment of this programme but 
 the financial collapse of 1837, the effects of which continued 
 during the whole of Mr. Van Buren's term, and caused his de- 
 feat in 1840. 
 
 Mr. Clay accepted the defiance implied in General Jackson's 
 
HENRY CLAY. 43 
 
 conduct. He reappeared in Washington in 1831, in the charac- 
 ter of Senator and candidate for the Presidency. His journey to 
 Washington was again a triumphal progress, and again the gal- 
 leries were crowded to hear him speak. A great and brilliant 
 party gathered round him, strong in talents, character, property, 
 and supposed to be strong in numbers. He at once proved him- 
 self to be a most unskilful party leader. Every movement of his 
 in that character was a mistake. He was precipitate when he 
 ought to have been cautious, and cautious when nothing but 
 audacity could have availed. The first subject upon which he 
 was called upon to act was the tariff. The national debt being 
 within two or three years of liquidation, Calhoun threatening nul- 
 lification, and Jackson vetoing all internal improvement bills, it 
 was necessary to provide against an enormous surplus. Clay 
 maintained that the protective duties should remain intact, and 
 that only those duties should be reduced which protected no 
 American interest. This was done ; the revenue was reduced 
 three millions ; and the surplus was as threatening as before. It 
 was impossible to save the protective duties entire without raising 
 too much revenue. Mr. Clay, as it seems to us, should have 
 plainly said this to the manufacturers, and compelled his party in 
 Congress to warn and save them by making a judicious cut 
 at the protective duties in 1832. This would have deprived Cal- 
 houn of his pretext, and prepared the way for a safe and gradual 
 reduction of duties in the years following. Such was the pros- 
 perity of the country in 1832, that the three millions lost to the 
 revenue by Mr. Clay's bill were likely to be made up to it in 
 three years by the mere increase in the imports and land sales. 
 
 Mr. Clay's next misstep was one of precipitation. General 
 Jackson, after a three years' war upon the Bank, was alarmed at 
 the outcry of its friends, and sincerely desired to make peace 
 with it. We know, from the avowals of the men who stood near- 
 est his person at the time, that he not only wished to keep the 
 Bank question out of the Presidential campaign of 1832, but that 
 he was willing to consent, on very easy conditions, to a recharter. 
 It was Mr. Clay's commanding influence that induced the direc- 
 tors of the Bank to press for a recharter in 1832, and force the 
 
44 HENRY CLAY. 
 
 President to retraction or a veto. So ignorant was this able and 
 high-minded man of human nature and of the American people, 
 that he supposed a popular enthusiasm could be kindled in behalf 
 of a bank! Such was the infatuation of some of his friends, that 
 they went to the expense of circulating copies of the veto message 
 gratis, for the purpose of lessening the vote for its author ! Mr. 
 Clay was ludicrously deceived as to his strength with the masses 
 of the people, — the dumb masses, — those who have no eloquent 
 orators, no leading newspapers, no brilliant pamphleteers, to speak 
 for them, but who assert themselves with decisive effect on elec- 
 tion clay. 
 
 It was another capital error in Mr. Clay, as the leader of a 
 party, to run at all against General Jackson. He should have 
 hoarded his prestige for 1836, when the magical name of Jackson 
 would no longer captivate the ignorant voter. Mr. Clay's defeat 
 in 1832, so unexpected, so overwhelming, lamed him for life as a 
 candidate for the Presidency. He lost faith in his star. In 1836, 
 when there was a chance of success, — just a chance, — he would 
 not suffer his name to appear in the canvass. The vote of the 
 opposition was divided among three candidates, — General Har- 
 rison, Hugh L. White, and Daniel Webster ; and Mr. Van Buren, 
 of course, had an easy victory. Fortunately for his own happi- 
 ness, Mr. Clay's desire for the Presidency diminished as his 
 chances of reaching it diminished. That desire had never been 
 morbid, it now became exceedingly moderate ; nor do we believe 
 that, after his crushing defeat of 1832, he ever had much expec- 
 tation of winning the prize. He knew too well the arts by which 
 success is assured, to believe that an honorable man could be 
 elected to the Presidency by honorable means only. 
 
 Three other attempts were made to raise him to the highest 
 office, and it was always Andrew Jackson who struck him down. 
 In 1840, he was set aside by his party, and General Harrison 
 nominated in his stead. This was Jackson's doing ; for it was 
 the great defeat of 1832 which had robbed Clay of prestige, and it 
 was General Jackson's uniform success that suggested the selec- 
 tion of a military candidate. Again, in 1844, when the Texas 
 issue was presented to the people, it was by the adroit use of 
 
HEXBY CLAY. 45 
 
 General Jackson's name that the question of annexation was pre- 
 cipitated upon the country. In 1848, a military man was again 
 nominated, to the exclusion of Henry Clay. 
 
 Mr. Clay used to boast of his consistency, averring that he had 
 never changed his opinion upon a public question but once. We 
 think he was much too consistent. A notable example of an ex- 
 cessive consistency was his adhering to the project of a United 
 States Bank, when there was scarcely a possibility of establishing 
 one, and his too steadfast opposition to the harmless expedient of 
 the Sub-treasury. The Sub-treasury system has now been in 
 operation for a quarter of a century. Call it a bungling and an- 
 tiquated system, if you will ; it has nevertheless answered its 
 purpose. The public money is taken out of politics. If the few 
 millions lying idle in the " Strong Box" do no good, they at least 
 do no harm ; and we have no overshadowing national bank to 
 compete with private capital, and to furnish, every few years, a 
 theme for demagogues." Mr. Clay saw in the Sub-treasury the 
 ruin of the Republic. In his great speech of 1838, in opposition 
 to it, he uttered, in his most solemn and impressive manner, the 
 following words : — 
 
 " Mr. President, a great, novel, and untried measure is perseveringly 
 urged upon the acceptance of Congress. That it is pregnant with tre- 
 mendous consequences, for good or evil, is undeniable, and admitted 
 by all. We firmly believe that it will be fatal to the best interests of 
 this country, and ultimately subversive of its liberties.'' 
 
 No one acquainted with Mr. Clay, and no man, himself sin- 
 cere, who reads this eloquent and most labored speech, can doubt 
 Mr. Clay's sincerity. Observe the awful solemnity of his first 
 sentences : — 
 
 "I have seen some public service, passed through many troubled 
 times, and often addressed public assemblies, in this Capitol and else- 
 where ; but never before have I risen in a deliberative body under 
 more oppressed feelings, or with a deeper sense of awful responsibility. 
 Never before have I risen to express my opinions upon any public 
 measure fraught with such tremendous consequences to the welfare and 
 prosperity of the country, and so perilous to the liberties of the people, 
 as I solemnly believe the bill under consideration will be. If you 
 
46 * HENRY CLAY. 
 
 knew, sir, what sleepless hours reflection upon it has cost me, if you 
 knew with what fervor and sincerity I have implored Divine assistance 
 to strengthen and sustain me in my opposition to it, I should have 
 credit with you, at least, for the sincerity of my convictions, if I shall 
 be so unfortunate as not to have your concurrence as to the dangerous 
 character of the measure. And I have thanked my God that he has 
 prolonged my life until the present time, to enable me to exert myself, 
 in the service of my country, against a project far transcending in per- 
 nicious tendency any that I have ever had occasion to consider. I 
 thank him for the health I am permitted to enjoy ; I thank him for the 
 soft and sweet repose which I experienced last night ; I thank him for 
 the bright and glorious sun which shines upon us this day." 
 
 And what tvas the question at issue? It was whether Nicholas 
 Biddle should have the custody of the public money at Philadel- 
 phia, and use the average balance in discounting notes ; or 
 whether Mr. Cisco should keep it at New York in an exceed- 
 ingly strong vault, and not use any of it in discounting notes. 
 
 As the leader of a national party Mr. Clay failed utterly ; for 
 he was neither bad enough to succeed by foul means, nor skilful 
 enough to succeed by fair means. But in his character of 
 patriot, orator, or statesman, he had some brilliant successes in 
 his later years. When Jackson was ready to concede all to the 
 Nullifiers, and that suddenly, to the total ruin of the protected 
 manufacturers, it was Clay's tact, parliamentary experience, and 
 personal power that interposed the compromise tariff, which re- 
 duced duties gradually instead of suddenly. The Compromise 
 of 1850, also, which postponed the Rebellion ten years, was 
 chiefly his Avork. That Compromise was the best then attain- 
 able ; and we think that the country owes gratitude to the man 
 who deferred the Rebellion to a time when the United States 
 was strong enough to subdue it. 
 
 Posterity, however, will read the speeches of Mr. Clay upon 
 the various slavery questions agitated from 1835 to 1850 with 
 mingled feelings of admiration and regret. A man compelled 
 to live in the midst of slavery must hate it and actively oppose it, 
 or else be, in some degree, corrupted by it. As Thomas Jeffer- 
 son came at length to acquiesce in slavery, and live contentedly 
 with it, so did Henry Clay lose some of his early horror of the 
 
HENRY CLAY. 47 
 
 system, and accept it as a necessity. True, he never lapsed into 
 the imbecility of pretending to think slavery right or best, but he 
 saw no way of escaping from it; and when asked his opinion as 
 to the final solution of the problem, he could only throw it upon 
 Providence. Providence, he said, would remove the evil in its 
 own good time, and nothing remained for men but to cease the 
 agitation of the subject. His first efforts, as his last, were directed 
 to the silencing of both parties, but most especially the Abolition- 
 ists, whose character and aims he misconceived. With John C. 
 Calhoun sitting near him in the Senate-chamber, and with fire- 
 eaters swarming at the other end of the Capitol, he could, as late 
 as 1843, cast the whole blame of the slavery excitement upon the 
 few individuals at the North who were beginning to discern the 
 ulterior designs of the Nullifiers. Among his letters of 1843 
 there is one addressed to a friend who was about to write a pam- 
 phlet against the Abolitionists. Mr. Clay gave him an outline 
 of what he thought the pamphlet ought to be. 
 
 " The great aim and object of your tract should be to arouse the la- 
 boring classes in the Free States against abolition. Depict the conse- 
 quences to them of immediate abolition. The slaves, being free, would 
 be dispersed throughout the Union ; they would enter into competition 
 with the free laborer, with the American, the Irish, the German ; re- 
 duce his wages ; be confounded with him, and ail'ect his moral and 
 social standing. And as the ultras go for both abolition and amalga- 
 mation, show that their object is to unite in marriage the laboring 
 white man and the laboring black man, and to reduce the white labor- 
 ing man to the despised and degraded condition of the black man. 
 
 " I would show their opposition to colonization. Show its humane, 
 religious, and patriotic aims ; that they are to separate those whom 
 God has separated. Why do the Abolitionists oppose colonization ? 
 To keep and amalgamate together the two races, in violation of God's 
 will, and to keep the blacks here, that they may interfere with, de- 
 grade, and debase the laboring whites. Show that the British nation 
 is co-operating with the Abolitionists, for the purpose of dissolving the 
 Union, etc." 
 
 This is so very absurd, that, if we did not know it to express 
 Mr. Clay's habitual feeling at that time, we should be compelled 
 to see in it, not Henry Clay, but the candidate for the Presi- 
 
48 HENRY CLAY. 
 
 dency. He really thought so in 1843. He was perfectly con- 
 vinced that the white race and the black could not exist together 
 on equal terms. One of his last acts was to propose emancipa- 
 tion in Kentucky; but it was an essential feature of his plan to 
 transport the emancipated blacks to Africa. When we look over 
 Mr. Clay's letters and speeches of those years, we meet with so 
 much that is short-sighted and grossly erroneous, that we are 
 obliged to confess that this man, gifted as he was, and dear as 
 his memory is to us, shared the judicial blindness of his order. 
 Its baseness and arrogance he did not share. His head was often 
 wrong, but his heart was generally right. It atones for all his 
 mere errors of abstract opinion, that he was never admitted to 
 the confidence of the Nullifiers, and that he uniformly voted 
 against the measures inspired by them. He was against the un- 
 timely annexation of Texas ; he opposed the rejection ' of the 
 anti-slavery petitions ; and he declared that no earthly power 
 should ever induce him to consent to the addition of one acre of 
 slave territory to the possessions of the United States. 
 
 It is proof positive of a man's essential soundness, if he im- 
 proves as he grows old. Henry Clay's last years were his best ; 
 he ripened to the very end. His friends remarked the moder- 
 ation of his later opinions, and his charity for those who had 
 injured him most. During the last ten years of his life no one 
 ever heard him utter a harsh judgment of an opponent. Domes- 
 tic afflictions, frequent and severe, had chastened his heart ; his 
 six affectionate and happy daughters were dead ; one son was a 
 hopeless lunatic in an asylum ; another was not what such a 
 father had a right to expect ; and, at length, his favorite and 
 most promising son, Henry, in the year 1847, fell at the battle 
 of Buena Vista. It was just after this last crushing loss, and 
 probably in consequence of it, that he was baptized and confirmed 
 a member of the Episcopal Church. 
 
 When, in 1849, he reappeared in the Senate, to assist, if possi- 
 ble, in removing the slavery question from politics, he was an in- 
 firm and serious, but not sad, old man of seventy-two. He never 
 lost his cheerfulness or his faith, but he felt deeply for his dis- 
 tracted country. During that memorable session of Congress he 
 
HEXEY CLAY. 49 
 
 spoke seventy times. Often extremely sick and feeble, scarcely 
 able, with the assistance of a friend's arm, to climb the steps of 
 the Capitol, he was never absent on the days when the Compro- 
 mise was to be debated. It appears to be well attested, that his 
 last great speech on the Compromise was the immediate cause of 
 his death. On the morning on which he began his speech, he 
 was accompanied by a clerical friend, to whom he said, on reach- 
 ing the long flight of steps leading to the Capitol, " Will you lend 
 me your arm, my friend ? for I find myself quite weak and ex- 
 hausted this morning." Every few steps he was obliged to stop 
 and take breath. " Had you not better defer your speech ? " 
 asked the clergyman. " My dear friend," said the dying orator, 
 " I consider our country in danger ; and if I can be the means, 
 in any measure, of averting that danger, my health or life is 
 of little consequence." When he rose to speak, it was but too 
 evident that he was unfit for the task he had undertaken. But, 
 as he kindled with his subject, his cough left him, and his bent 
 form resumed all its wonted erectness and majesty. lie may, in 
 the prime of his strength, have spoken with more energy, but 
 never with so much pathos and grandeur. His speech lasted two 
 days, and, though he lived two years longer, he never recovered 
 from the effects of the effort. Toward the close of the second 
 day, his friends repeatedly proposed an adjournment ; but he 
 would not desist until he had given complete utterance to his 
 feelings. He said afterwards that he was not sure, if he 
 gave way to an adjournment, that he should ever be able to 
 resume. 
 
 In the course of this long debate, Mr. Clay said some things to 
 which the late war has given a new interest. He knew, at last, 
 what the fire-eaters meant. He perceived now that it was not 
 the few abhorred Abolitionists of the Northern States from whom 
 danger to the Union was to be apprehended. On one occasion 
 allusion was made to a South Carolina hot-head, who had public- 
 ly proposed to raise the flag of disunion. Thunders of applause 
 broke from the galleries when Mr. Clay retorted by saying, that, 
 if Mr. Rhett had really made that proposition, and should follow 
 it up by corresponding acts, he would be a traitor ; " and," 
 3 D 
 
50 HENRY CLAY. 
 
 added Mr. Clay, " I hope he will meet a traitor's fate." When 
 the chairman had succeeded in restoring silence, Mr. Clay made 
 that celebrated declaration which was so frequently quoted in 
 1861 : " If Kentucky to-morrow should unfurl the banner of re- 
 sistance unjustly, I will never fight under that banner. I owe a 
 paramount allegiance to 'the whole Union, — a subordinate one to 
 my own State." He said also : " If any one State, or a portion 
 of the people of any State, choose to place themselves in military 
 array against the government of the Union, I am for trying the 
 strength of the government. I am for ascertaining whether we 
 have a government or not." Again : " The Senator speaks of 
 Virginia being my country. This Union, sir, is my country ; 
 the thirty States are my country ; Kentucky is my country, and 
 Virginia no more than any State in the Union." And yet again : 
 " There are those who think that the Union must be preserved 
 by an exclusive reliance upon love and reason. That is not my 
 opinion. I have some confidence in this instrumentality ; but, 
 depend upon it that no human government can exist without the 
 power of applying force, and the actual application of it in ex- 
 treme cases." 
 
 Who can estimate the influence of these clear and emphatic 
 utterances ten years after ? The crowded galleries, the number- 
 less newspaper reports, the quickly succeeding death of the great 
 orator, — all aided to give them currency and effect. We shall 
 never know how many wavering minds they aided to decide in 
 1861. Not that Mr. Clay really believed the conflict would 
 occur : he was mercifully permitted to die in the conviction that 
 the Compromise of 1850 had removed all immediate danger, and 
 greatly lessened that of the future. Far indeed was he from 
 foreseeing that the ambition of a man born in New England, 
 calling himself a disciple of Andrew Jackson, would, within five 
 years, destroy all compromises, and render all future compromise 
 impossible, by procuring the repeal of the first, — the Missouri 
 Compromise of 1821. 
 
 Henry Clay was formed by nature to please, to move, and to 
 impress his countrymen. Never was there a more captivating 
 presence. We remember hearing Horace Greeley say that, if a 
 
HENRY CLAY. 51 
 
 man only saw Henry Clay's back, he would know that it was the 
 back of a distinguished man. How his presence filled a drawing- 
 room ! With what an easy sway he held captive ten acres of 
 mass-meeting ! And, in the Senate, how skilfully he showed 
 himself respectfully conscious of the galleries, without appearing 
 to address them ! Take him for all in all, we must regard him 
 as the first of American orators ; but posterity will not assign 
 him that rank, because posterity will not hear that matchless 
 voice, will uot see those large gestures, those striking attitudes, 
 that grand manner, which gave to second-rate composition first- 
 rate effect. He could not have been a great statesman, if he had 
 been ever so greatly endowed. While slavery existed no states- 
 manship was possible, except that which was temporary and tem- 
 porizing. The thorn, we repeat, was in the flesh ; and the doctors 
 were all pledged to try and cure the patient without extracting it. 
 They could do nothing but dress the wound, put on this salve and 
 that, give the sufferer a little respite from anguish, and, after a 
 brief interval, repeat the operation. Of all these physicians 
 Henry Clay was the most skilful and effective. He both handled 
 the sore place with consummate dexterity, and kept up the con- 
 stitution of the patient by stimulants, which enabled him, at last, 
 to live through the appalling operation which removed the cause 
 of his agony. 
 
 Henry Clay was a man of honor and a gentleman. He kept 
 his word. He was true to his friends, his party, and his convic- 
 tions. He paid his debts and his son's debts. The instinct of 
 solvency was very strong in him. Pie had a religidn, of which 
 the main component parts were self-respect and love of country. 
 These were supremely authoritative with him ; he would not do 
 anything which he felt to be beneath Henry Clay, or which he 
 thought would be injurious to the United States. Five times a 
 candidate for the Presidency, no man can say that he ever pur- 
 chased support by the promise of an office, or by any other en- 
 gagement savoring of dishonor. Great talents and a great under- 
 standing are seldom bestowed on the same individual. Mr. 
 Clay's usefulness as a statesman was limited by his talent as an 
 orator. He relied too much on his oratory ; he was never such a 
 
52 HENRY CLAY. 
 
 student as a man intrusted with public business ought to be. 
 Hence be originated nothing and establisbed nothing. His 
 speeches will long be interesting as the relics of a magnificent 
 and dazzling personality, and for the light they cast upon the his- 
 tory of parties ; but they add scarcely anything to the intellectu- 
 al property of the nation. Of American orators he was the first 
 whose speeches were ever collected in a volume. Millions read 
 them with admiration in his lifetime ; but already they have sunk 
 to the level of the works "without which no gentleman's library 
 is complete," — works which every one possesses and no one 
 reads. 
 
 Henry Clay, regarded as a subject for biography, is still un- 
 touched. Campaign Lives of him can be collected by the score ; 
 and the Rev. Calvin Colton wrote three volumes purporting to be 
 the Life of Henry Clay. Mr. Colton was a very honest gentle- 
 man, and not wanting in ability ; but writing, as he did, in Mr. 
 Clay's own house, he became, as it were, enchanted by his sub- 
 ject. He was enamored of Mr. Clay to such a degree that his 
 pen ran into eulogy by an impulse which was irresistible, and 
 which he never attempted to resist. In point of arrangement, too, 
 his work is chaos come again. A proper biography of Mr. Clay 
 would be one of the most entertaining and instructive of works. 
 It would embrace the ever-memorable rise and first triumphs of 
 the Democratic party ; the wild and picturesque life of the early 
 settlers of Kentucky ; the war of 1812 ; Congress from 1806 to 
 1852 ; the fury and corruption of Jackson's reign ; and the three 
 great compromises which postponed the Rebellion. All the lead- 
 ing men and all the striking events of our history would con- 
 tribute something to the interest and value of the work. Why 
 go to antiquity or to the Old "World for subjects, when such a 
 subject as this remains unwritten ? 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER. 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER. 
 
 OF words spoken in recent times, few have touched so many- 
 hearts as those uttered by Sir Walter Scott on his death- 
 bed. There has seldom been so much of mere enjoyment crowded 
 into the compass of one lifetime as there was into his. Even his 
 work — all of his best work — was only more elaborate and 
 keenly relished play ; for story-telling, the occupation of his 
 maturity, had first been the delight of his childhood, and re- 
 mained always his favorite recreation. Triumph rewarded his 
 early efforts, and admiration followed him to the grave. Into no 
 human face could this man look, nor into any crowd of faces, 
 which did not return his glance with a gaze of admiring love. 
 He lived precisely where and how it was happiest for him to 
 live ; and he had above most men of his time that disposition of 
 mind which makes the best of bad fortune and the most of good. 
 But when his work and his play were all done, and he came 
 calmly to review his life, and the life of man on earth, this was 
 the sum of his reflections, this was what he had to say to the man 
 to whom he had confided his daughter's happiness : " Lockhart, 
 I may have but a minute to speak to you. My dear, be a good 
 man, — be virtuous, — be religious, — be a good man. Noth- 
 ing else will give you any comfort when you come to lie 
 here." 
 
 So do we all feel in view of the open coffin, much as we 
 may differ as to what it is to be good, virtuous, and religious. 
 Was this man, who lies dead here before us, faithful to his trust ? 
 Was he sincere, pure, just, and benevolent? Did he help civili- 
 zation, or was he an obstacle in its way ? Did he ripen and im- 
 prove to the end, or did he degenerate and go astray ? These are 
 
56 DANIEL WEBSTER. 
 
 the questions which are silently considered when we look upon 
 the still countenance of death, and especially when the departed 
 was a person who influenced his generation long and powerfully. 
 Usually it is only the last of these questions which mortals can 
 answer with any certainty ; but from the answer to that one we 
 infer the answers to all the others. As it is only the wise who 
 learn, so it is only the good who improve. When we see a man 
 gaining upon his faults as he advances in life, when we find him 
 more self-contained and cheerful, more learned and inquisitive, 
 more just and considerate, more single-eyed and noble in his 
 aims, at fifty than he was at forty, and at seventy than he was at 
 fifty, we have the best reason perceptible by human eyes for con- 
 cluding that he has been governed by right principles and good 
 feelings. We have a right to pronounce such a person good, and 
 he is justified in believing us. 
 
 The three men most distinguished in public life during the last 
 forty years in the United States were Henry Clay, John C. Cal- 
 houn, and Daniel Webster. Henry Clay improved as he grew 
 old. He was a venerable, serene, and virtuous old man. The 
 impetuosity, restlessness, ambition, and love of display, and the 
 detrimental habits of his earlier years, gave place to tranquillity, 
 temperance, moderation, and a patriotism without the alloy of 
 personal objects. Disappointment had chastened, not soured 
 him. Public life enlarged, not narrowed him. The city of 
 Washington purified, not corrupted him. He came there a 
 gambler, a driuker, a profuse consumer of tobacco, and a turner 
 of night into day. He overcame the worst of those habits very 
 early in his residence at the capital. He came to Washington 
 to exhibit his talents, he remained there to serve his country ; 
 nor of his country did he ever think the less, or serve her less 
 zealously, because she denied him the honor he coveted for thirty 
 years. We cannot say this of Calhoun. He degenerated fright- 
 fully during the last twenty years of his life. His energy degen- 
 erated into intensity, and his patriotism narrowed into section- 
 alism. He became unteachable, incapable of considering an 
 opinion opposite to his own, or even a fact that did not favor it. 
 Exempt by his bodily constitution from all temptation to physical 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER. 57 
 
 excesses, his body was worn out by the intense, unhealthy work- 
 ing of his mind. False opinions falsely held and intolerantly 
 maintained were the debauchery that sharpened the lines of his 
 face, and converted his voice into a bark. Peace, health, and 
 growth early became impossible to him, for there was a canker 
 in the heart of the man. His once not dishonorable desire of the 
 Presidency became at last an infuriate lust after it, which his 
 natural sincerity compelled him to reveal even while wrathfully 
 denying it. He considered that he had been defrauded of the 
 prize, and he had some reason for thinking so. Some men 
 avenge their wrongs by the pistol, others by invective ; but the 
 only weapons which this man could wield were abstract proposi- 
 tions. From the hills of South Carolina he hurled paradoxes at 
 General Jackson, and appealed from the dicta of Mrs. Eaton's 
 drawing-room to a hair-splitting theory of States' Rights. Fif- 
 teen hundred thousand armed men have since sprung up from 
 those harmless-looking dragon's teeth, so recklessly sown in the 
 hot Southern soil. 
 
 Of the three men whom we have named, Daniel Webster was 
 incomparably the most richly endowed by nature. In his life- 
 time it was impossible to judge him aright. His presence usu- 
 ally overwhelmed criticism ; his intimacy always fascinated it. 
 It so happened, that he grew to his full stature and attained his 
 utmost development in a community where human nature ap- 
 pears to be undergoing a process of diminution, — where people 
 are smaller-boned, less muscular, more nervous, and more sus- 
 ceptible than their ancestors. He possessed, in consequence, an 
 enormous physical magnetism, as we term it, over his fellow- 
 citizens, apart from the natural influence of his talents and un- 
 derstanding. Fidgety men were quieted in his presence, women 
 were spellbound by it, and the busy, anxious public contemplated 
 his majestic calm with a feeling of relief, as well as admiration. 
 Large numbers of people in New England, for many years, re- 
 posed upon Daniel Webster. He represented to them the maj- 
 esty and the strength of the government of the United States. 
 He gave them a sense of safety. Amid the flighty politics of the 
 time and the loud insincerities of Washington, there seemed one 
 3* 
 
58 DANIEL WEBSTER. 
 
 solid thing in America, so long as he sat in an arm-chair of the 
 Senate-chamber. When he appeared in State Street, slowly 
 pacing, with an arm behind him, business was brought to an ab- 
 solute stand-still. As the whisper passed along, the windows filled 
 with clerks, pen in mouth, peering out to catch a glimpse of the 
 man whom they had seen fifty times before ; while the bankers 
 and merchants hastened forth to give him salutation, or exchange 
 a passing word, happy if they could but catch his eye. At home, 
 and in a good mood, he was reputed to be as entertaining a man 
 as New England ever held, — a gambolling, jocund leviathan out 
 on the sea-shore, and in the library overflowing with every kind 
 of knowledge that can be acquired without fatigue, and received 
 without preparation. Mere celebrity, too, is dazzling to some 
 minds. While, therefore, this imposing person lived among us, 
 he was blindly worshipped by many, blindly hated by some, 
 calmly considered by very few. To this hour he is a great in- 
 fluence in the United States. Perhaps, with the abundant ma- 
 terial now accessible, it is not too soon to attempt to ascertain 
 how far he was worthy of the estimation in which his fellow- 
 citizens held him, and what place he ought to hold in the esteem 
 of posterity. At least, it can never be unpleasing to Americans 
 to recur to the most interesting specimen of our kind that has 
 lived in America since Franklin. 
 
 He could not have been born in a better place, nor of better 
 stock, nor at a better time, nor reared in circumstances more fa- 
 vorable to harmonious development. He grew up in the Swit- 
 zerland of America. From a hill on his father's New Hampshire 
 farm, he could see most of the noted summits of New England. 
 Granite-topped Kearsarge stood out in bold relief near by ; 
 Mount Washington and its attendant peaks, not yet named, 
 bounded the northern horizon like a low, silvery cloud ; and 
 the principal heights of the Green Mountains, rising near the 
 Connecticut River, were clearly visible. The Merrimack, most 
 serviceable of rivers, begins its course a mile or two oflf, formed 
 by the union of two mountain torrents. Among those hills, 
 high up, sometimes near the summits, lakes are found, broad, 
 deep, and still ; and down the sides run innumerable rills, which 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER. 59 
 
 form those noisy brooks that rush along the bottom of the hills, 
 where now the roads wind along, shaded by the mountain, and 
 enlivened by the music of the waters. Among these hills there 
 are, here and there, expanses of level country large enough for a 
 farm, with the addition of some fields upon the easier acclivities 
 and woodlands higher up. There was one field of a hundred 
 acres upon Captain Webster's mountain farm so level that a 
 lamb could be seen on any part of it from the windows of the 
 house. Every tourist knows that region now, — that wide, bil- 
 lowy expanse of dark mountains and vivid green fields, dotted 
 with white farm-houses, and streaked with silvery streams. It 
 was rougher, seventy years ago, secluded, hardly accessible, the 
 streams unbridged, the roads of primitive formation ; but the 
 worst of the rough work had been done there, and the production 
 of superior human beings had become possible, before the "Web- 
 ster boys were born. 
 
 Daniel Webster's father was the strong man of his neighbor- 
 hood ; the very model of a republican citizen and hero, — stal- 
 wart, handsome, brave, and gentle. Ebenezer Webster inherited 
 no worldly advantages. Sprung from a line of New Hampshire 
 farmers, he was apprenticed, in his thirteenth year, to another 
 New Hampshire farmer ; and when he had served his time, he 
 enlisted as a private soldier in the old French war, and came 
 back from the campaigns about Lake George a captain. He 
 never went to school. Like so many other New England boys, 
 he learned what is essential for the carrying on of business in 
 the chimney-corner, by the light of the fire. He possessed one 
 beautiful accomplishment : he was a grand reader. Unlettered 
 as he was, he greatly enjoyed the more lofty compositions of 
 poets and orators ; and his large, sonorous voice enabled him to 
 read them with fine effect. His sons read in his manner, even 
 to his rustic pronunciation of some words. Daniel's calm, clear- 
 cut rendering of certain noted passages — favorites in his early 
 home — was all his father's. There is a pleasing tradition in the 
 neighborhood, of the teamsters who came to Ebenezer Webster's 
 mill saying to one another, when they had discharged their load 
 and tied their horses, " Come, let us go in, and hear little Dan 
 
60 DANIEL WEBSTER. 
 
 read a psalm." The French war ended, Captain Webster, in 
 compensation for his services, received a grant of land in the 
 mountain wilderness at the head of the Merrimack, where, as miller 
 and farmer, he lived and reared his family. The Revolutionary 
 War summoned this noble yeoman to arms once more. He led 
 forth his neighbors to the strife, and fought at their head, with 
 his old rank of captain, at White Plains and at Bennington, and 
 served valiantly through the war. From that time to the end of 
 his life, though much trusted and employed by his fellow-citizens 
 as legislator, magistrate, and judge, he lived but for one object, — 
 the education and advancement of his children. All men were 
 poor then in New Hampshire, compared with the condition of 
 their descendants. Judge Webster was a poor, and even embar- 
 rassed man, to the day of his death. The hardships he had 
 endured as soldier and pioneer made him, as he said, an old man 
 before his time. Rheumatism bent his form, once so erect and 
 vigorous. Black care subdued his spirits, once so joyous and 
 elastic. Such were the fathers of fair New England. 
 
 This strong-minded, uncultured man was a Puritan and a 
 Federalist, — a catholic, tolerant, and genial Puritan, an intol- 
 erant and almost bigoted Federalist. Washington, Adams, and 
 Hamilton were the civilians highest in his esteem ; the good 
 Jefferson he dreaded and abhorred. The French Revolution 
 was mere blackness and horror to him ; and when it assumed the 
 form of Napoleon Bonaparte, his heart sided passionately with 
 England in her struggle to extirpate it. His boys were in the 
 fullest sympathy with him in all his opinions and feelings. They, 
 too, were tolerant and untheological Puritans ; they, too, were 
 most strenuous Federalists ; and neither of them ever recovered 
 from their father's influence, nor advanced much beyond him in 
 their fundamental beliefs. Readers have, doubtless, remarked, 
 in Mr. Webster's oration upon Adams and Jefferson, how the 
 stress of the eulogy falls upon Adams, while cold and scant jus- 
 tice is meted out to the greatest and wisest of our statesmen. It 
 was Ebenezer Webster who spoke that day, with the more melo- 
 dious voice of his son. There is a tradition in New Hampshire 
 that Judge Webster fell sick on a journey in a town of Republi- 
 
DAXIEL WEBSTER. 61 
 
 can politics, and besought the doctor to help him speedily on his 
 way home, saying that he was born a Federalist, had lived a 
 Federalist, and could not die in peace in any but a Federalist 
 town. 
 
 Among the ten children of this sturdy patriot and partisan, 
 eight were ordinary mortals, and two most extraordinary, — Eze- 
 kiel, born in 1780, and Daniel, born in 1782, — the youngest of 
 his boys. Some of the elder children were even less than ordi- 
 nary. Elderly residents of the neighborhood speak of one half- 
 brother of Daniel and Ezekiel as penurious and narrow ; and 
 the letters of others of the family indicate very plain, good, com- 
 monplace people. But these two, the sons of their father's prime, 
 inherited all his grandeur of form and beauty of countenance, 
 his taste for high literature, along with a certain energy of mind 
 that came to them, by some unknown law of nature, from their 
 father's mother. From her Daniel derived his jet-black hair and 
 eyes, and his complexion of burnt gunpowder; though all the 
 rest of the children except one were remarkable for fairness of 
 complexion, and had sandy hair. Ezekiel, who was considered 
 the handsomest man in the United States, had a skin of singular 
 fairness, and light hair. He is vividly remembered in New 
 Hampshire for his marvellous beauty of form and face, his courtly 
 and winning manners, the weight and majesty of his presence. 
 He was a signal refutation of Dr. Holmes's theory, that grand 
 manners and high breeding are the result of several generations 
 of culture. Until he was nineteen, this peerless gentleman 
 worked on a rough mountain farm on the outskirts of civilization, 
 as his ancestors had for a hundred and fifty years before him ; 
 but he was refined to the tips of his finger-nails and to the buttons 
 of his coat. Like his more famous brother, he had an artist's eye 
 for the becoming in costume, and a keen sense for all the proprie- 
 ties and decorums both of public and private life. Limited in 
 his view by the narrowness of his provincial sphere, as well as 
 by inherited prejudices, he was a better man and citizen than his 
 brother, without a touch of his genius. Nor was that half- 
 brother of Daniel, who had the black hair and eyes and gunpow- 
 der skin, at all like Daniel, or equal to him in mental power. 
 
62 DANIEL WEBSTER. 
 
 There is nothing in our literature more pleasing than the 
 glimpses it affords of the early life of these two brothers ; — Eze- 
 kiel, robust, steady-going, persevering, self-denying ; Daniel, 
 careless of work, eager for play, often sick, always slender and 
 weakly, and regarded rather as a burden upon the family than 
 a help to it. His feebleness early habituated him to being a re- 
 cipient of aid and favor, and it decided his destiny. It has been 
 the custom in New England, from the earliest time, to bring up 
 one son of a prosperous family to a profession, and the one se- 
 lected was usually the boy who seemed least capable of earning a 
 livelihood by manual labor. Ebenezer "Webster, heavily burdened 
 with responsibility all his life long, had most ardently desired to 
 give his elder sons a better education that he had himself enjoyed, 
 but could not. When Daniel was a boy, his large family was 
 beginning to lift his load a little ; the country was filling up ; his 
 farm was more productive, and he felt somewhat more at his ease. 
 His sickly youngest son, because he was sickly, and only for that 
 reason, he chose from his numerous brood to send to an academy, 
 designing to make a schoolmaster of him. We have no reason 
 to believe that any of the family saw anything extraordinary in 
 the boy. Except that he read aloud unusually well, he had 
 given no sign of particular talent, unless it might be that he ex- 
 celled in catching trout, shooting squirrels, and fighting cocks. 
 His mother, observing his love of play and his equal love of 
 books, said he " would come to something or nothing, she could 
 not tell which " ; but his father, noticing his power over the sym- 
 pathies of others, and comparing him with his bashful brother, 
 used to remark, that he had fears for Ezekiel, but that Daniel 
 would assuredly make his way in the world. It is certain that 
 the lad himself was totally unconscious of possessing extraordi- 
 nary talents, and indulged no early dream of greatness. He 
 tells us himself, that he loved but two things in his youth, — play 
 and reading. The rude schools which he trudged two or three 
 miles in the winter every day to attend, taught him scarcely any- 
 thing. His father's saw-mill, he used to say, was the real 
 school of his youth. When he had set the saw and turned on 
 the water, there would be fifteen minutes of tranquillity before 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER. 63 
 
 the log again required his attention, during which he sat and 
 absorbed knowledge. " We had so few books," he records in the 
 exquisite fragment of autobiography he has left us, " that to read 
 them once or twice was nothing. We thought they were all to 
 be got by heart." 
 
 How touching the story, so well known, of the mighty struggle 
 and long self-sacrifice it cost this family to get the youth through 
 college ! The whole expense did not average one hundred and 
 fifty dollars a year ; but it seemed to the boy so vast and unat- 
 tainable a good, that, when his father announced his purpose to 
 attempt it, he was completely overcome ; his head was dizzy ; 
 his tongue was paralyzed ; he could only press his father's hands 
 and shed tears. Slender indeed was his preparation for Dart- 
 mouth. From the day when he took his first Latin lesson to 
 that on which he entered college was thirteen months. He could 
 translate Cicero's orations with some ease, and make out with 
 difficulty and labor the easiest sentences of the Greek Reader, 
 and that was the whole of what was called his " preparation " for 
 college. In June, 1797, he did not know the Greek alphabet; 
 in August of the same year he was admitted to the Freshman 
 Class of Dartmouth on engaging to supply his deficiencies by 
 extra study. 
 
 Neither at college nor at any time could Daniel Webster b-' 
 properly called a student, and well he knew it. Many a time ho 
 has laughed, in his jovial, rollicking manner, at the preposterous 
 reputation for learning a man can get by bringing out a fragment 
 of curious knowledge at the right moment at college. He was 
 an absorbent of knowledge, never a student. The Latin of 
 Cicero and Virgil was congenial and easy to him, and he learned 
 more of it than the required portion. But even in Latin, he 
 tells us, he was excelled by some of his own class ; and " his 
 attainments were not such," he adds, " as told for much in the 
 recitation-room." Greek he never enjoyed : his curiosity was 
 never awakened on the edge of that boundless contiguity of 
 interesting knowledge, and he only learned enough Greek to 
 escape censure. He said, forty years after, in an after-dinner 
 speech : " When I was at school I felt exceedingly obliged to 
 
64 DANIEL WEBSTER. 
 
 Homer's messengers for the exact literal fidelity with which they 
 delivered their messages. The seven or eight lines of good 
 Homeric Greek in which they had received the commands of 
 Agamemnon or Achilles they recited to whomsoever the message 
 was to be carried ; and as they repeated them verbatim, some- 
 times twice or thrice, it saved me the trouble of learning so much 
 Greek." It was not at " school " that he had this experience, but 
 at Dartmouth College. For mathematics, too, he had not the 
 slightest taste. He humorously wrote to a fellow-student, soon 
 after leaving college, that " all that he knew about conterminous 
 arches or evanescent subtenses might be collected on the pupil of 
 a gnat's eye without making him wink." At college, in fact, he 
 was simply an omnivorous reader, studying only so much as to 
 pass muster in the recitation-room. Every indication we possess 
 of his college life, as well as his own repeated assertions, confirms 
 the conclusion that Nature had formed him to use the products 
 of other men's toil, not to add to the common fund. Those who 
 are conversant with college life know very well what it means 
 when a youth does not take to Greek, and has an aversion to 
 mathematics. Such a youth may have immense talent, and give 
 splendid expression to the sentiments of his countrymen, but he 
 is not likely to be one of the priceless few of the human race who 
 dicover truth or advance opinion. It is the energetic, the origi- 
 nating minds that are susceptible to the allurements of difficulty. 
 On the other hand, Daniel Webster had such qualities as made 
 every one feel that he was the first man in the College. Tall, 
 gaunt, and sallow, Avith an incomparable forehead, and those cav- 
 ernous and brilliant eyes of his, he had much of the large and 
 tranquil presence which was so important an element of his power 
 over others at all periods of his life. His letters of this time, as 
 well as the recollections of his fellow-students, show him the 
 easy, humorous, rather indolent and strictly correct " good-fellow," 
 whom professors and companions equally relished. He browsed 
 much in the College library, and had the habit of bringing to 
 bear upon the lesson of the hour the information gathered in his 
 miscellaneous reading, — a practice that much enlivens the mo- 
 notony of recitation. The half-dozen youths of his particular set, 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER. 65 
 
 it appears, plumed themselves upon resembling the early Chris- 
 tians in having all things in common. The first to rise in the 
 morning — and he must have been an early riser indeed who 
 was up before Daniel Webster — " dressed himself in the best 
 which the united apartments afforded " ; the next made the best 
 selection from what remained ; and the last was happy if he 
 found rags enough to justify his appearance in the chapel. The 
 relator of this pleasant reminiscence adds, that he was once the 
 possessor of an eminently respectable beaver hat, a costly article 
 of resplendent lustre. It was missing one day, could not be 
 found, and was given up for lost. Several weeks after " friend 
 Dan " returned from a distant town, where he had been teaching- 
 school, wearing the lost beaver, and relieving its proprietor from 
 the necessity of covering his head with a battered and long-dis- 
 carded hat of felt. How like the Daniel "Webster of later years, 
 who never could acquire the sense of meiim and tuum, supposed 
 to be the basis of civilization ! 
 
 Mr. Webster always spoke slightingly of his early oratorical 
 efforts, and requested Mr. Everett, the editor of his works, not 
 to search them out. He was not just to the productions of his 
 youth, if we may judge from the Fourth-of-July oration which he 
 delivered in 1800, when he was a Junior at Dartmouth, eighteen 
 years of age. This glowing psalm of the republican David is 
 perfectly characteristic, and entirely worthy of him. The times 
 that tried men's souls, — how recent and vivid they were to the 
 sons of Ebenezer Webster, who had led forth from the New- 
 Hampshire hills the neighbors at whose firesides Ezekiel and 
 Daniel had listened, open-mouthed, to the thousand forgotten in- 
 cidents of the war. Their professors of history were old John 
 Bowen, who had once been a prisoner with the Indians ; Robert 
 Wise, who had sailed round the world and fought in the Revolu- 
 tion on both sides ; George Bayly, a pioneer, who saw the first 
 tree felled in Northern New Hampshire ; women of the neigh- 
 borhood, who had heard the midnight yell of savages ; and, above 
 all, their own lion-hearted father, who had warred with French- 
 , men, Indians, wild nature, British troops, and French ideas. 
 " 0," wrote Daniel once, " I shall never hear such story -telling 
 
 E 
 
Q6 DANIEL WEBSTER. 
 
 again ! " It was not in the cold pages of Hildreth, nor in the 
 brief summaries of school-books, that this imaginative, sympathet- 
 ic youth had learned that part of the political history of the 
 United States — from 1787 to 1800 — which will ever be its 
 most interesting portion. He learned it at town-meetings, in the 
 newspapers, at his father's house, among his neighbors, on elec- 
 tion days ; he learned it as an intelligent youth, with a passion- 
 ately loyal father and mother, learned the history of the late war, 
 and is now learning the agonizing history of " reconstruction." 
 This oration is the warm and modest expression of all that the 
 receptive and unsceptical student had imbibed and felt during the 
 years of his formation, who saw before him a large company of 
 Revolutionary soldiers and a great multitude of Federalist parti- 
 sans. He saluted the audience as " Countrymen, brethren, and 
 fathers." The oration was chiefly a rapid, exulting review of the 
 history of the young Republic, with an occasional pomposity, and 
 a few expressions caught from the party discussions of the day. 
 It is amusing to hear this young Federalist of 1800 speak of 
 Napoleon Bonaparte as " the gasconading pilgrim of Egypt," and 
 the government of France as the " supercilious, five-headed Di- 
 rectory," and the President of the United States as " the firm, the 
 wise, the inflexible Adams, who with steady hand draws the dis- 
 guising veil from the intrigues of foreign enemies and the plots 
 of domestic foes." It is amusing to read, as the utterance of 
 Daniel "Webster, that " Columbia is now seated in the forum of na- 
 tions, and the empires of the world are amazed at the bright efful- 
 gence of her glory." But it is interesting to observe, also, that at 
 eighteen, not less fervently than at forty-eight, he felt the impor- 
 tance of the message with which he was charged to the American 
 people, — the necessity of the Union, and the value of the Con- 
 stitution as the uniting bond. The following passage has, per- 
 haps, more in it of the Webster of 1830 than any other in the 
 oration. The reader will notice the similarity between one part 
 of it and the famous passage in the Bunker Hill oration, begin- 
 ning " Venerable men," addressed to the survivors of the Revo- 
 lution. 
 
 " Thus, friends and citizens, did the kind hand of overruling Provi- 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER. 67 
 
 denee conduct us, through toils, fatigues, and dangers, to independence 
 and peace. If piety be the rational exercise of the human soul, if re- 
 ligion be not a chimera, and if the vestiges of heavenly assistance are 
 clearly traced in those events which mark the annals of our nation, it 
 becomes us on this day, in consideration of the great things which have 
 been done for us, to render the tribute of unfeigned thanks to that God 
 who superintends the universe, and holds aloft the scale that weighs the 
 destinies of nations. 
 
 " The conclusion of the Revolutionary War did not accomplish the 
 entire achievements of our countrymen. Their military character was 
 then, indeed, sufficiently established; but the time was coming which 
 should prove their political sagacity, their ability to govern them- 
 selves. 
 
 " No sooner was peace restored with England, (the first grand 
 article of which was the acknowledgment of our independence,) than 
 the old system of Confederation, dictated at first by necessity, and 
 adopted for the purposes of the moment, was found inadequate to the 
 government of an extensive empire. Under a full conviction of this, 
 we then saw the people of these States engaged in a transaction which 
 is undoubtedly the greatest approximation towards human perfection 
 the political world ever yet witnessed, and which, perhaps, will forever 
 stand in the history of mankind without a parallel. A great republic, 
 composed of different States, whose interest in all respects could not 
 be perfectly compatible, then came deliberately forward, discarded on' 1 , 
 system of government, and adopted another, without the loss of on.; 
 man's blood. 
 
 " There is not a single government now existing in Europe which 
 is not based in usurpation, and established, if established at all, by the 
 sacrifice of thousands. But in the adoption of our present sys- 
 tem of jurisprudence, we see the powers necessary for government 
 voluntarily flowing from the people, their only proper origin, and 
 directed to the public good, their only proper object. 
 
 " With peculiar propriety, we may now felicitate ourselves on that 
 happy form of mixed government under which we live. The advan- 
 tages resulting to the citizens of the Union are utterly incalculable, 
 and the day when it was received by a majority of the States shall 
 stand on the catalogue of American anniversaries second to none but 
 the birthday of independence. 
 
 " In consequence of the adoption of our present system of govern- 
 ment, and the virtuous manner in which it has been administered by a 
 Washington and an Adams, we are this day in the enjoyment of peace, 
 
68 DANIEL WEBSTER. 
 
 ■while war devastates Europe ! We can now sit down beneath tl 
 shadow of the olive, while her cities blaze, her streams run purp] 
 with blood, and her fields glitter with a forest of bayonets ! Th 
 citizens of America can this day throng the temples of freedom, an: 
 renew their oaths of fealty to independence ; while Holland, ou 
 once sister republic, is erased from the catalogue of nations ; whiL 
 Venice is destroyed, Italy ravaged, and Switzerland — the one' 
 happy, the once united, the once flourishing Switzerland — lie 
 bleeding at every pore ! " 
 
 He need not have been ashamed of this speech, despite thi 
 lumbering bombast of some of its sentences. All that made bin 
 estimable as a public man is contained in it, — the sentiment ot 
 nationality, and a clear sense of the only means by which th< 
 United States can remain a nation ; namely, strict fidelity to tin 
 Constitution as interpreted by the authority itself creates, anc 
 modified in the way itself appoints. "We have never read th( 
 production of a youth which was more prophetic of the man thai 
 this. It was young New England that spoke through him or 
 that occasion ; and in all the best part of his life he nevei 
 touched a strain which New England had not inspired, or could 
 not reach. 
 
 His success at college giving him ascendency at home, he 
 employed it for the benefit of his brother in a manner which few 
 sons would have dared, and no son ought to attempt. His father, 
 now advanced in years, infirm, " an old man before his time ,: 
 through hardship and toil, much in debt, depending chiefly upon 
 his salary of four hundred dollars a year as Judge of the Court 
 of Common Pleas, and heavily taxed to maintain Daniel in col- 
 lege, had seen all his other sons married and settled except 
 Ezekiel, upon whom he leaned as the staff of his declining years, 
 and the main dependence of his wife and two maiden daughters. 
 Nevertheless, Daniel, after a whole night of consultation with his 
 brother, urged the old man to send Ezekiel to college also. The 
 fond and generous father replied, that he had but little property, 
 and it would take all that little to carry another son through col- 
 lege to a profession ; but he lived only for his children, and, for 
 his own part, he was willing to run the risk ; but there was the 
 mother and two unmarried sisters, to whom the risk was far more 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER. 69 
 
 serious. If they consented, he was willing. The mother said : 
 * I have lived long in the world, and have been happy in my 
 children. If Daniel and Ezekiel will promise to take care of 
 me in my old age, I will consent to the sale of all our property 
 at once, and they may enjoy the benefit of that which remains 
 after our debts are paid." Upon hearing this, all the family, we 
 are told, were dissolved in tears, and the old man gave his assent. 
 This seems hard, — two stout and vigorous young men willing to 
 risk their aged parents' home and dignity for such a purpose, or 
 for any purpose ! In the early days, however, there was a sin- 
 gular unity of feeling and interest in a good New England 
 family, and there were opportunities for professional men which 
 rendered the success of two such lads as these nearly certain, if 
 they lived to establish themselves. Nevertheless, it was too 
 much to ask, and more than Daniel Webster would have asked 
 if he had been properly alive to the rights of others. Ezekiel 
 shouldered his bundle, trudged off to school, where he lived and 
 studied at the cost of one dollar a week, worked his way to the 
 position of the second lawyer in New Hampshire, and would early 
 have gone to Congress but for his stanch, inflexible Federalism. 
 
 Daniel Webster, schoolmaster and law-student, was assuredly 
 one of the most interesting of characters. Pinched by poverty, 
 as he tells us, till his very bones ached, eking out his income by 
 a kind of labor that he always loathed (copying deeds), his shoes 
 letting in, not water merely, but " pebbles and stones," — father, 
 brothei-, and himself sometimes all moneyless together, all dunned 
 at the same time, and writing to one another for aid, — he was 
 nevertheless as jovial a young fellow as any in New England. 
 How merry and affectionate his letters to his young friends ! 
 He writes to one, soon after leaving college : " You will natu- 
 rally inquire how I prosper in the article of cash ; finely, finely ! 
 I came here in January with a horse, watch, etc., and a few ras- 
 cally counters in my pocket. Was soon obliged to sell my horse, 
 and live on the proceeds. Still straitened for cash, I sold my 
 watch, and made a shift to get home, where my friends supplied 
 me with another horse and another watch. My horse is sold 
 again, and my watch goes, I expect, this week ; thus you see 
 
70 DANIEL WEBSTER. 
 
 how I lay up cash." How like him ! To another college friend, 
 James Hervey Bingham, whom he calls, by turns, " brother 
 Jemmy," "Jemmy Hervey," and "Bingham," he discourses thus: 
 " Perhaps you thought, as I did, that a dozen dollars would slide 
 out of the pocket in a Commencement jaunt much easier than 
 they would slide in again after you got home. That was the ex- 
 act reason why I was not there I flatter myself that none 
 
 of my friends ever thought me greatly absorbed in the sin of 
 avarice, yet I assure you, Jem, that in these days of poverty I 
 look upon a round dollar with a great deal of complacency. 
 These rascal dollars are so necessary to the comfort of life, that 
 next to a fine wife they are most essential, and their acquisition 
 an object of prime importance. O Bingham, how blessed it 
 would be to retire with a decent, clever bag of Rixes to a pleas- 
 ant country town, and follow one's own inclination without being 
 shackled by the duties of a profession ! " To the same friend, 
 whom he now addresses as " dear Squire," he announces joyfully 
 a wondrous piece of luck : " My expenses [to Albany] were all 
 amply paid, and on my return I put my hand in my pocket and 
 found one hundred and twenty dear delightfuls ! Is not that 
 good luck ? And these dear delightfuls were, 'pon honor, all my 
 own ; yes, every dog of them ! " To which we may add from an- 
 other source, that they were straightway transferred to his father, 
 to whom they were dear delightfuls indeed, for he was really 
 getting to the end of his tether. 
 
 The schoolmaster lived, it appears, on the easiest terms with 
 his pupils, some of whom were older than himself. He tells a 
 story of falling in with one of them on his journey to school, 
 who was mounted " on the ugliest horse I ever saw or heard of, 
 except Sancho Panza's pacer." The schoolmaster having two 
 good horses, the pupil mounted' one of them, strapped his bag to 
 his own forlorn animal and drove him before, where his odd cait 
 and frequent stumblings kept them amused. At length, arriving 
 at a deep and rapid river, " this satire on the animal creation, as 
 if to revenge herself on us for our sarcasms, plunged into the 
 river, then very high by the freshet, and was wafted down the 
 current like a bag of oats ! I could hardly sit on my horse for 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER. 71 
 
 laughter. I am apt to laugh at the vexations of my friends. 
 The fellow, who was of my own age, and my room-mate, half 
 checked the current by oaths as big as lobsters, and the old Rosi- 
 nante, who was all the while much at her ease, floated up among 
 the willows far below on the opposite side of the river." 
 
 At the same time he was an innocent young man. If he had 
 any wild oats in his composition, they were not sown in the days 
 of his youth. Expecting to pass his life as a country lawyer, 
 having scarcely a premonition of his coming renown, we find him 
 enjoying the simple country sports and indulging in the simple 
 village ambitions. He tried once for the captaincy of a company 
 of militia, and was not elected ; he canvassed a whole regiment 
 to get his brother the post of adjutant, and failed. At one time 
 he came near abandoning the law, as too high and perilous for 
 him, and settling down as schoolmaster and clerk of a court. 
 The assurance of a certain six hundred dollars a year, a house, 
 and a piece of land, with the prospect of the clerkship by and by, 
 was so alluring to him that it required all the influence of his 
 family and friends to make him reject the offer. Even then, in 
 the flush and vigor of his youth, he was led. So was it always. 
 He was never a leader, but always a follower. Nature made 
 him very large, but so stinted him in propelling force, that it is 
 doubtful if he had ever emerged from obscurity if his friends had 
 not urged him on. His modesty in these innocent days is most 
 touching to witness. After a long internal conflict, he resolved, 
 in his twentieth year, to "make one more trial" at mastering the 
 law. " If I prosecute the profession, I pray God to fortify me 
 against its temptations. To the wind I dismiss those light hopes 
 of eminence which ambition inspired and vanity fostered. To be 
 ' honest, to be capable, to be faithful ' to my client and my con- 
 science, I earnestly hope will be my first endeavor." How ex- 
 ceedingly astonished would these affectionate young friends have 
 been, if they could have looked forward forty years, and seen the 
 timid law-student Secretary of State, and his ardent young com- 
 rade a clerk in his department. They seemed equals in 1802; 
 in 1845, they had grown so far apart, that the excellent Bingham 
 writes to Webster as to a demigod. 
 
72 DANIEL WEBSTER. 
 
 In these pleasant early letters of Daniel Webster there are a 
 thousand evidences of a good heart and of virtuous habits, but 
 not one of a superior understanding. The total absence of the 
 sceptical spirit marks the secondary mind. For a hundred and 
 fifty years, no young man of a truly eminent intellect has ac- 
 cepted his father's creeds without having first called them into 
 question ; and this must be so in periods of transition. The 
 glorious light which has been coming upon Christendom for the 
 last two hundred years, and which is now beginning to pervade 
 the remotest provinces of it, never illumined the mind of Daniel 
 Webster. Upon coming of age, he joined the Congregational 
 Church, and was accustomed to open his school with an extem- 
 pore prayer. He used the word " Deist " as a term of reproach ; 
 he deemed it " criminal " in Gibbon to write his fifteenth and 
 sixteenth chapters, and spoke of that author as a " learned, proud, 
 ingenious, foppish, vain, self-deceived man," who " from Protes- 
 tant connections deserted to the Church of Rome, and thence to 
 the faith of Tom Paine." And he never delivered himself from 
 this narrowness and ignorance. In the time of his celebrity, he 
 preferred what Sir Walter Scott called " the genteeler religion of 
 the two," the Episcopal. In his old age, his idea of a proper 
 sermon was incredibly narrow and provincial. He is reported 
 to have said, late in life : — 
 
 " Many of the ministers of the present day take their text from St. 
 Paul, and preach from the newspapers. When they do so, I prefer to 
 enjoy my own thoughts rather than to listen. I want my pastor to 
 come to me in the spirit of the Gospel, saying, ' You are mortal ! your 
 probation is brief; your work must be done speedily; you are im- 
 mortal too. You are hastening to the bar of God ; the Judge standeth 
 before the door.' When I am thus admonished, I have no disposition 
 to muse or to sleep." 
 
 This does not accord with what is usually observed in our 
 churches, where sermons of the kind which Mr. Webster extolled 
 dispose many persons to sleep, though not to muse. 
 
 In the same unquestioning manner, he imbibed his father's 
 political prejudices. We hear this young Federalist call the 
 Republican party "the Jacobins," just as the reactionists and 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER. 73 
 
 tories of the present day speak of the present Republican party 
 as "the radicals." It is amusing to hear him, in 1802, predict 
 the speedy restoration to power of a party that was never again 
 to ta&te its sweets. " Jacobinism and iniquity," he wrote in his 
 twentieth year, " are so allied in signification, that the latter 
 always follows the former, just as in grammar ' the accusative 
 case follows the transitive verb.' " He speaks of a young friend 
 as " too honest for a Democrat." As late as his twenty-second 
 year, he was wholly unreconciled to Napoleon, and still wrote 
 with truly English scorn of " Gallic tastes and Gallic principles." 
 There is a fine burst in one of his letters of 1804, when he had 
 been propelled by his brother to Boston to finish his law studies: — 
 
 " Jerome, the brother of the Emperor of the Gauls, is here ; every 
 day you may see him whisking along Cornhill, with the true French air, 
 with his wife by his side. The lads say that they intend to prevail on 
 American misses to receive company in future after the manner of 
 Jerome's wife, that is, in bed. The gentlemen of Boston (i. e. we 
 Feds) treat Monsieur with cold and distant respect. They feel, and 
 every honest man feels, indignant at seeing this lordly grasshopper, this 
 puppet in prince's clothes, dashing through the American cities, luxuri- 
 ously rioting on the property of Dutch mechanics or Swiss peasants." 
 
 This last sentence, written when he was twenty-two years old, 
 is the first to be found in his published letters which tells any- 
 thing of the fire that was latent in him. He was of slow growth ; 
 he was forty-eight years of age before his powers had reached 
 their full development. 
 
 When he had nearly completed his studies for the bar, he was 
 again upon the point of abandoning the laborious career of a law- 
 yer for a life of obscurity and ease. On this occasion, it was the 
 clerkship of his father's court, salary fifteen hundred dollars a 
 year, that tempted him. He jumped at the offer, which promised 
 an immediate competency for the whole family, pinched and anx- 
 ious for so many years. He had no thought but to accept it. 
 With the letter in his hand, and triumphant joy in his face, he 
 communicated the news to Mr. Gore, his instructor in the law ; 
 thinking of nothing, he tells us, but of " rushing to the immediate 
 enjoyment of the pi-offered office." Mr. Gore, however, exhibited 
 
 4 
 
74 DANIEL WEBSTER. 
 
 a provoking coolness on the subject. He said it was very civil 
 in the judges to offer such a compliment to a brother on the 
 bench, and, of course, a respectful letter of acknowledgment must 
 be sent. The glowing countenance of the young man fell at these 
 most unexpected and unwelcome words. They were, to use his 
 own language, " a shower-bath of ice-water." The old lawyer, 
 observing his crestfallen condition, reasoned seriously with him, 
 and persuaded him, against his will, to continue his preparation 
 for the bar. At every turning-point of his life, whenever he 
 came to a parting of the ways, one of which must be chosen and 
 the other forsaken, he required an impulse from without to push 
 him into the path he was to go. Except once ! Once in his 
 long public life, he seemed to venture out alone on an unfamiliar 
 road, and lost himself. Usually, when great powers are conferred 
 on a man, there is also given him a strong propensity to exercise 
 them, sufficient to carry him through all difficulties to the suitable 
 sphere. Here, on the contrary, there was a Great Eastern with 
 only a Cunarder's engine, and it required a tug to get the great 
 ship round to her course. 
 
 Admitted to the bar in his twenty-third year, he dutifully went 
 home to his father, and opened an office in a New Hampshire vil- 
 lage near by, resolved never again to leave the generous old man 
 while he lived. Before leaving Boston, he wrote to his friend 
 Bingham, " If I am not earning my bread and cheese in exactly 
 nine days after my admission, I shall certainly be a bankrupt " ; 
 — and so, indeed, it proved. With great difficulty, he " hired " 
 eighty-five dollars as a capital to begin business with, and this 
 great sum was immediately lost in its transit by stage. To any 
 other young man in his situation, such a calamity would have 
 been, for the moment, crushing ; but this young man, indifferent 
 to meum as to tuum, informs his brother that he can in no con- 
 ceivable way replace the money, cannot therefore pay for the 
 books he had bought, believes he is earning his daily bread, and 
 as to the loss, he has " no uneasy sensations on that account" He 
 concludes his letter with an old song, beginning, 
 
 " Fol de dol, dol de dol, di dol, 
 I'll never make money my idol." 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER. 75 
 
 In the New Hampshire of 1805 there was no such thing pos- 
 sible as leaping at once into a lucrative practice, nor even of 
 slowly acquiring it. A country lawyer who gained a thousand 
 dollars a year was among the most successful, and the leader of 
 the bar in New Hampshire could not earn two thousand. The 
 chief employment of Daniel Webster, during the first year or 
 two of his practice, was collecting debts due in New Hampshire 
 to merchants in Boston. His first tin sign has been preserved 
 to the present day, to attest by its minuteness and brevity the . 
 humble expectations of its proprietor. " D. Webster, Attorney," 
 is the inscription it bears. The old Court-House still stands in 
 which he conducted his first suit, before his own father as pre- 
 siding judge. Old men in that part of New Hampshire were liv- 
 ing until within these few years, who remembered well seeing 
 this tall, gaunt, and large-eyed young lawyer rise slowly, as 
 though scarcely able to get upon his feet, and giving to every one 
 the impression that he would soon be obliged to sit down from 
 mere physical weakness, and saying to his father, for the first and 
 last time, " May it please your Honor." The sheriff of the coun- 
 ty, who was also a Webster, used to say that he felt ashamed to 
 see the family represented at the bar by so lean and feeble a 
 young man. The tradition is, that he acquitted himself so we-1 
 on this occasion that the sheriff was satisfied, and clients came, 
 with their little suits and smaller fees, in considerable numbers, 
 to the office of D. Webster, Attorney, who thenceforth in the 
 country round went by the name of " All-eyes." His father nev- 
 er heard him speak again. He lived to see Daniel in successful 
 practice, and Ezekiel a student of law, and died in 180G, prema- 
 turely old. Daniel Webster practised three years in the country, 
 and then, resigning his business to his brother, established him- 
 self at Portsmouth, the seaport of New Hampshire, then a place 
 of much foreign commerce. Ezekiel had had a most desperate 
 struggle with poverty. At one time, when the family, as Daniel 
 observed, was " heinously unprovided," we see the much-endur- 
 ing " Zeke " teaching an Academy by day, an evening school for 
 sailors, and keeping well up with his class in college besides. 
 But these preliminary troubles were now at an end, and both 
 
76 DANIEL WEBSTER. 
 
 the brothers took the places won by so much toil and self- 
 sacrifice. 
 
 Those are noble old towns on the New England coast, the 
 commerce of which Boston swallowed up forty years ago, while 
 it left behind many a large and liberally provided old mansion, 
 with a family in it enriched by ventures to India and China. 
 Strangers in Portsmouth are still struck by the largeness and 
 elegance of the residences there, and wonder how such establish- 
 • ments can be maintained in a place that has little "visible means 
 of support." It was while Portsmouth was an important seaport 
 that Daniel Webster learned and practised law there, and 
 acquired some note as a Federalist politician. 
 
 The once celebrated Dr. Buckminster was the minister of the 
 Congregational church at Portsmouth then. One Sunday morn- 
 ing in 1808, his eldest daughter sitting alone in the minister's 
 pew, a strange gentleman was shown into it, whose appearance 
 and demeanor strongly arrested her attention. The slenderness 
 of his frame, the pale yellow of his complexion, and the raven 
 blackness of his hair, seemed only to bring out into grander 
 relief his ample forehead, and to heighten the effect of his deep- 
 set, brilliant eyes. At this period of his life there was an air of 
 delicacy and refinement about his face, joined to a kind 
 of strength that women can admire, without fearing. Miss Buck- 
 minster told the family, when she went home from church, that 
 there had been a remarkable person with her in the pew, — one 
 that she was sure had " a marked character for good or evil." A 
 few days after, the remarkable person came to live in the neigh- 
 borhood, and was soon introduced to the minister's family as Mr. 
 Daniel "Webster, from Franklin, New Hampshire, who was about 
 to open a law office in Portsmouth. He soon endeared himself 
 to every person in the minister's circle, and to no one more than 
 to the minister himself, who, among other services, taught him 
 the art of preserving his health. The young man, like the old 
 clergyman, was an early riser, up with the dawn in summer, and 
 long before the dawn in winter ; and both were out of doors with 
 the sun, each at one end of a long saw, cutting wood for an appe- 
 tite. The joyous, uncouth singing and shouting of the new- 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER. 77 
 
 comer aroused the late sleepers. Then in to breakfast, where 
 the homely, captivating humor of the young lawyer kept the 
 table in a roar, and detained every inmate. " Never was there 
 such an actor lost to the stage," Jeremiah Mason, his only 
 rival at the New Hampshire bar, used to say, " as he would have 
 made." Returning in the afternoon from court, fatigued and 
 languid, his spirits rose again with food and rest, and the evening 
 was another festival of conversation and reading. A few months 
 after his settlement at Portsmouth he visited his native hills,, 
 saying nothing respecting the object of his journey ; and re- 
 turned with a wife, — that gentle and high-bred lady, a clergy- 
 man's daughter, who was the chief source of the happiness of 
 his happiest years, and the mother of all his children, fie im- 
 proved in health, his form expanded, his mind grew, his talents 
 ripened, his fame spread, during the nine years of his residence 
 at this thriving and pleasant town. 
 
 At Portsmouth, too, he had precisely that external stimulus to 
 exertion which his large and pleasure-loving nature needed. 
 Jeremiah Mason was, literally speaking, the giant of the Amer- 
 ican bar, for he stood six feet seven inches in his stockings. Like 
 Webster, he was the son of a valiant Revolutionary officer ; like 
 "Webster, he was an hereditary Federalist ; like Webster, he had 
 a great mass of brain : but his mind was more active and acquis- 
 itive than AVebster's, and his nineteen years of arduous practice 
 at the bar had stored his memory with knowledge and given him 
 dexterity in the use of it. Nothing shows the eminence of Web- 
 ster's talents more than this, that, very early in his Portsmouth 
 career, he should have been regarded at the bar of New Hamp- 
 shire as the man to be employed against Jeremiah Mason, and 
 his only fit antagonist. Mason was a vigilant, vigorous opponent, 
 — sure to be well up in the law and the facts of a cause, sure to 
 detect a flaw in the argument of opposing counsel. It was in 
 keen encounters with this wary and learned man that Daniel 
 Webster learned his profession; and this he always acknowl- 
 edged. "If," he said once in conversation, — " if anybody thinks 
 I am somewhat familiar with the law on some points, and should 
 be curious to know how it happened, tell him that Jeremiah 
 
78 DANIEL WEBSTEK. 
 
 Mason compelled me to study it. He was my master." It is 
 honorable, too, to both of them, that, rivals as they were, they 
 were fast and affectionate friends, each valuing in the other the 
 qualities in which he was surpassed by him, and each sincerely 
 believing that the other was the first man of his time and coun- 
 try. "They say," in Portsmouth, that Mason did not shrink 
 from remonstrating with his friend upon his carelessness with 
 regard to money; but, finding the habit inveterate and the man 
 irresistible, desisted. Webster himself says that two thousand 
 dollars a year was all that the best practice in New Hampshire 
 could be made to yield ; and that that was inadequate to the sup- 
 port of his family of a wife and three little children. Two 
 thousand dollars in Portsmouth, in 1812, was certainly equal, in 
 purchasing power, to six thousand of the ineffectual things that 
 now pass by the name of dollars ; and upon such an income large 
 families in a country town contrive to live, ride, and save. 
 
 He was a strenuous Federalist at Portsmouth, took a leading 
 part in the public meetings of the party, and won great distinc- 
 tion as its frequent Fourth-of-July orator. All those mild and 
 economical measures by which Mr. Jefferson sought to keep 
 the United States from being drawn into the roaring vortex of 
 the great wars in Europe, he opposed, and favored the policy of 
 preparing the country for defence, not by gunboats and embar- 
 goes, but by a powerful navy of frigates and ships of the line. 
 His Fourth-of-July orations, if we may judge of them by the 
 fragments that have been found, show that his mind had strength- 
 ened more than it had advanced. His style wonderfully improved 
 from eighteen to twenty-five ; and he tells us himself why it did. 
 He discovered, he says, that the value, as well as the force, of a 
 sentence, depends chiefly upon its meaning, not its language ; 
 and that great writing is that in which much is said in few words, 
 and those words the simplest that will answer the purpose. 
 Having made this notable discovery, he became a great eraser of 
 adjectives, and toiled after simplicity and directness. Mr. Everett 
 quotes a few sentences from his Fourth-of-July oration of 1806, 
 when he was twenty-four, which shows an amazing advance upon 
 the effort of his eighteenth year, quoted above : — 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER. 79 
 
 " Nothing is plainer than this : if we will have commerce, we must 
 protect it. This country is commercial as well as agricultural. Indis- 
 soluble bonds connect him who ploughs the land ivith him who ploughs the 
 sea. Nature has placed us in a situation favorable to commercial pur- 
 suits, and no government can alter the destination. Habits confirmed 
 by two centuries are not to be changed. An immense portion of our 
 property is on the waves. Sixty or eighty thousand of our most useful 
 citizens are there, and are entitled to such protection from the govern- 
 ment as their case requires." 
 
 How different this compact directness from the tremendous 
 fulmination of the Dartmouth junior, who said: — 
 
 " Columbia stoops not to tyrants ; her spirit will never cringe to 
 France ; neither a supercilious, five-headed Directory nor the gascon- 
 ading pilgrim of Egypt will ever dictate terms to sovereign America. 
 The thunder of our cannon shall insure the performance of our treaties, 
 and fulminate destruction on Frenchmen, till the ocean is crimsoned 
 with blood and gorged with pirates ! " 
 
 The Fourth-of-July oration, which afterwards fell into some 
 disrepute, had great importance in the earlier years of the Re- 
 public, when Revolutionary times and perils were fresh in the 
 recollection of the people. The custom arose of assigning this 
 duty to young men covetous of distinction, and this led in time 
 to the flighty rhetoric which made sounding emptiness and a 
 Fourth-of-July oration synonymous terms. The feeling that 
 was real and spontaneous in the sons of Revolutionary soldiers 
 was sometimes feigned or exaggerated in the young law students 
 of the next generation, who had merely read the history of the 
 Revolution. But with all the faults of those compositions, they 
 were eminently serviceable to the country. We believe that to 
 them is to be attributed a considerable part of that patriotic feel- 
 ing which, after a suspended animation of several years, awoke 
 in the spring of 18G1 and asserted itself with such unexpected 
 power, and which sustained the country during four years of a 
 peculiarly disheartening war. How pleasant and spirit-stirring 
 was a celebration of the Fourth of July as it was conducted in 
 Webster's early day ! Wa trust the old customs will be revived 
 and improved upon, and become universal. Nor is it any objec- 
 
80 DANIEL WEBSTER. 
 
 tion to the practice of having an oration, that the population is 
 too large to be reached in that way ; for if only a thousand hear, 
 a million may read. Nor ought we to object if the orator is a 
 little more flowery and boastful than becomes an ordinary occa- 
 sion. There is a time to exult ; there is a time to abandon our- 
 selves to pleasant recollections and joyous hopes. Therefore, we 
 say, let the young men reappear upon the platform, and show 
 what metal they are made of by giving the best utterance they 
 can to the patriotic feelings of the people on the national anniver- 
 sary. The Republic is safe so long as we celebrate that day in 
 the spirit of 1776 and 1861. 
 
 At least we may assert that it was Mr. "Webster's Fourth-of- 
 July orations, of which he delivered five in eleven years, that 
 first made him known to the people of New Hampshire. At 
 that period the two political parties could not unite in the cele- 
 bration of the day, and accordingly the orations of Mr. Webster 
 had much in them that could be agreeable only to Federalists. 
 He was an occasional speaker, too, in those years, at meetings of 
 Federalists, where his power as an orator was sometimes exerted 
 most effectively. No speaker could be better adapted to a New 
 England audience, accustomed from of old to weighty, argumen- 
 tative sermons, delivered with deliberate, unimpassioned earnest- 
 ness. There are many indications that a speech by Daniel Web- 
 ster in Portsmouth in 1810 excited as much expectation and 
 comment as a speech by the same person in the Senate twenty 
 years after. But he was a mere Federalist partisan, — no more. 
 It does not appear that he had anything to offer to his country- 
 men beyond the stately expression of party issues ; and it was as 
 a Federalist, pure and simple, that he was elected, in 1812, a 
 member of the House of Representatives, after a keenly con- 
 tested party conflict. His majority over the Republican candi- 
 date was 2,546, — the whole number of voters being 34,648. 
 
 The Federalists, from 1801 to 1825, were useful to the coun- 
 try only as an Opposition, — just as the present Tory party in 
 England can be only serviceable in its capacity of critic and hold- 
 back. The Federalists under John Adams had sinned past for- 
 giveness ; while the Republican party, strong in being right, in 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER. 81 
 
 the ability of its chiefs, in its alliance with Southern aristocrats, 
 and in having possession of the government, was strong also in 
 the odium and inconsistencies of its opponents. Nothing could 
 shake the confidence of the people in the administration of 
 Thomas Jefferson. But the stronger a party is, the more it needs 
 an Opposition, — as we saw last winter in Washington, when the 
 minority was too insignificant in numbers and ability to keep the 
 too powerful majority from doing itself such harm as might have 
 been fatal to it but for the President's well-timed antics. Next 
 to a sound and able majority, the great need of a free country is 
 a vigorous, vigilant, audacious, numerous minority. Better a 
 factious and unscrupulous minority than none at all. The Fed- 
 eralists, who could justly claim to have among them a very large 
 proportion of the rich men and the educated men of the country, 
 performed the humble but useful service of keeping an eye upon 
 the measures of the administration, and finding fault with every 
 one of them. Daniel Webster, however, was wont to handle 
 only the large topics. While Mr. Jefferson was struggling to 
 keep the peace with Great Britain, he censured the policy as 
 timorous, costly, and ineffectual ; but when Mr. Madison declared 
 war against that power, he deemed the act unnecessary and rash. 
 His opposition to the war was never carried to the point of giving 
 aid and comfort to the enemy ; it was such an opposition as patri- 
 otic " War Democrats " exhibited during the late Rebellion, who 
 thought the war might have been avoided, and ought to be con- 
 ducted more vigorously, but nevertheless stood by their country 
 without a shadow of swerving. 
 
 He could boast, too, that from his boyhood to the outbreak of 
 the war he had advocated the building of the very ships which 
 gave the infant nation its first taste of warlike glory. The Re- 
 publicans of that time, forgetful of what Paul Jones and others 
 of Dr. Franklin's captains had done in the war of the Revolution, 
 supposed that, because England had a thousand ships in commis- 
 sion, and America only seventeen, therefore an American ship 
 could not venture out of a harbor without being taken. We have 
 often laughed at Colonel Benton's ludicrous confession of his own 
 terrors on this subject. 
 
 4* r 
 
82 DANIEL WEBSTER. 
 
 " Political men," he says, "believed nothing could be done at sea but 
 to lose the few vessels which we had ; that even cruising was out of 
 the question. Of our seventeen vessels, the whole were in port but 
 one ; and it was determined to keep them there, and the one at sea 
 with them, if it had the luck to get in. I am under no obligation to 
 make the admission, but I am free to acknowledge that I was one of 
 those who supposed that there was no salvation for our seventeen men- 
 of-war but to run them as far up the creek as possible, place them un- 
 der the guns of batteries, and collect camps of militia about them to 
 keep off the British. This was the policy at the day of the declara- 
 tion of the war ; and I have the less concern to admit myself to have 
 been participator in the delusion, because I claim the merit of having 
 profited from experience, — happy if I could transmit the lesson to 
 posterity. Two officers came to Washington, — Bainbridge and Stew- 
 art. They spoke with Mr. Madison, and urged the feasibility of cruis- 
 ing. One half of the whole number of the British men-of-war were 
 under the class of frigates, consequently no more than matches for 
 some of our seventeen ; the whole of her merchant marine (many thou- 
 sands) were subject to capture. Here was a rich field for cruising ; 
 and the two officers, for themselves and brothers, boldly proposed to 
 enter it. 
 
 " Mr. Madison had seen the efficiency of cruising and privateering, 
 even against Great Britain, and in our then infantile condition, during 
 the war of the Revolution ; and besides was a man of sense, and amen- 
 able to judgment and reason. He listened to the two experienced and 
 valiant officers ; and without consulting Congress, which perhaps would 
 have been a fatal consultation (for multitude of counsellors is not the 
 counsel for bold decision), reversed the policy which had been resolved 
 upon ; and, in his supreme character of constitutional commander of 
 the army and navy, ordered every ship that could cruise to get to sea 
 as soon as possible. This I had from Mr. Monroe." 
 
 This is a curious example of the blinding effect of partisan 
 strife, and of the absolute need of an Opposition. It was the 
 hereditary prejudice of the Republicans against the navy, as an 
 " aristocratic " institution, and the hereditary love of the navy 
 cherished by the Federalists as being something stable and Brit- 
 ish, that enlivened the debates of the war. The Federalists had 
 their way, but failed to win a partisan advantage from the fact, 
 through their factious opposition to the military measures of the 
 administration. Because the first attempt at the seizure of Can- 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER. 83 
 
 ada had failed through the incompetency of General Hull, which 
 no wisdom of man could have foreseen, Daniel "Webster called 
 upon the government to discontinue all further attempts on the 
 land, and fight the war out on the sea. " Give up your futile 
 projects of invasion," said he in 1814. "Extinguish the fires 
 that blaze on your inland borders." " Unclench the iron grasp 
 of your embargo." " With all the war of the enemy on your 
 commerce, if you would cease to make war upon it yourselves, 
 you would still have some commerce. That commerce would 
 give you some revenue. Apply that revenue to the augmentation 
 of your navy. That navy, in turn, will protect your commerce." 
 In war time, however, there are two powers that have to do with 
 the course of events ; and very soon the enemy, by his own great 
 scheme of invasion, decided the policy of the United States. 
 Every port was blockaded so effectively that a pilot-boat could 
 not safely go out of sight of land, and a frigate was captured 
 within sight of it. These vigilant blockaders, together with the 
 threatening armament which finally attacked New Orleans, com- 
 pelled every harbor to prepare for defence, and most effectually 
 refuted Mr. Webster's speech. The " blaze of glory " with which 
 the war ended at New Orleans consumed all the remaining pres- 
 tige of the Federalist party, once so powerful, so respectable, and 
 so arrogant. 
 
 A member of the anti-war party during the existence of a war 
 occupies a position which can only cease to be insignificant by the 
 misfortunes of his country. But when we turn from the partisan 
 to the man, we perceive that Daniel Webster was a great pres- 
 ence in the House, and took rank immediately with the half- 
 dozen ablest debaters. His self-possession was perfect at all 
 times, and at thirty-three he was still in the spring and first lustre 
 of his powers. His weighty and deliberate manner, the brevity, 
 force, and point of his sentences, and the moderation of his ges- 
 tures, were all in strong contrast to the flowing, loose, impassioned 
 manner of the Southern orators, who ruled the House. It was 
 something like coming upon a stray number of the old Edinburgh 
 Review in a heap of novels and Ladies' Magazines. Chief-Jus- 
 tice Marshall, who heard his first speech, being himself a Feder- 
 
 • 
 
84 DANIEL WEBSTER. 
 
 alist, was so much delighted to hear his own opinions expressed 
 with such power and dignity, that he left the House, believing 
 that this stranger from far-off New Hampshire was destined to 
 become, as he said, " one of the very first statesmen of America, 
 and perhaps the very first." His Washington fame gave him new 
 eclat at home. He was re-elected, and came back to Congress in 
 1815, to aid the Federalists in preventing the young Republicans 
 from being too Federal. 
 
 This last sentence slipped from the pen unawares ; but, ridic- 
 ulous as it looks, it does actually express the position and voca- 
 tion of the Federalists after the peace of 1815. Clay, Calhoun, 
 Story, Adams, and the Republican majority in Congress, taught 
 by the disasters of the war, as they supposed, had embraced the 
 ideas of the old Federalist party, and were preparing to carry 
 some of them to an extreme. The navy had no longer an enemy. 
 The strict constructionists had dwindled to a few impracticables, 
 headed by John Randolph. The younger Republicans were dis- 
 posed to a liberal, if not to a latitudinarian construction of the 
 Constitution. In short, they were Federalists and Hamiltonians, 
 bank men, tariff men, internal-improvement men. Then was 
 afforded to the country the curious spectacle of Federalists 
 opposing the measures which had been among the rallying-cries 
 of their party for twenty years. It was not in Daniel Webster's 
 nature to be a leader ; it was morally impossible for him to dis- 
 engage himself from party ties. This exquisite and consummate 
 artist in oratory, who could give such weighty and brilliant 
 expression to the feelings of his hearers and the doctrines of his 
 party, had less originating power, whether of intellect or of will, 
 than any other man of equal eminence that ever lived. He ad- 
 hered to the fag end of the old party, until it was absorbed, 
 unavoidably, with scarcely an effort of its own, in Adams and 
 Clay. From 1815 to 1825 he was in opposition, and in opposi- 
 tion to old Federalism revived ; and, consequently, we believe 
 that posterity will decide that his speeches of this period are the 
 only ones relating to details of policy which have the slightest 
 permanent value. In fact, his position in Congress, as a member 
 of a very small band of Federalists who had no hope of regain- 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER. 85 
 
 ing power, was the next thing to being independent, and he made 
 an excellent use of his advantage. 
 
 That Bank of the United States, for example, of which, in 
 1832, he was the ablest defender, and for a renewal of which he 
 strove for ten years, he voted against in 1816; and for reasons 
 which neither he nor any other man ever refuted. His speeches 
 criticising the various bank schemes of 1815 and 1816 were 
 serviceable to the public, and made the bank, as finally estab- 
 lished, less harmful than it might have been. 
 
 So of the tariff. On this subject, too, he always followed, — 
 never led. So long as there was a Federal party, he, as a mem- 
 ber of it, opposed Mr. Clay's protective, or (as Mr. Clay de- 
 lighted to term it) "American system." When, in 1825, the few 
 Federalists in the House voted for Mr. Adams, and were merged 
 in the "conservative wing" of the Republican party, which 
 became, in time, the Whig party, then, and from that time for- 
 ward to the end of his life, he was a protectionist. His anti-pro- 
 tection speech of 1824 is wholly in the modern spirit, and takes 
 precisely the ground since taken by Ricardo, John Stuart Mill, 
 and others of the new schoolstf^It is so excellent a statement of 
 the true policy of the United States with regard to protection, 
 that we have often wondered it has been allowed to sleep so 
 long in the tomb of his works. And, oh ! from what evils might 
 we have been spared, — nullification, surplus-revenue embarrass- 
 ments, hot-bed manufactures, clothing three times its natural 
 price, — if the protective legislation of Congress had been 
 inspired by the Webster of 1824, instead of the Clay ! Unim- 
 portant as this great speech may now seem, as it lies uncut in 
 the third volume of its author's speeches, its unturned leaves 
 sticking together, yet we can say of it, that the whole course of 
 American history had been different if its counsels had been 
 followed. The essence of the speech is contained in two of its 
 phrases : " Freedom of trade, the general principle ; restriction, 
 the exception." Free trade, the object to bo aimed at; protec- 
 tion, a temporary expedient. Free trade, the interest of all 
 nations ; protection, the occasional necessity of one. Free trade, 
 the final and universal good; protection, the sometimes necessary 
 
8G DANIEL WEBSTER. 
 
 evil. Free trade, as soon as possible and as complete as possi- 
 ble ; protection, as little as possible and as short as possible. 
 
 The speech was delivered in reply to Mr. Clay ; and, viewed 
 merely as a reply, it is difficult to conceive of one more trium- 
 phant. Mr. Webster was particularly happy in turning Mr. 
 Clay's historical illustrations against him, especially those drawn 
 from the history of the English silk manufacture, and the Spanish 
 system of restriction and prohibition. Admitting fully that manu- 
 factures the most unsuited to the climate, soil, and genius of a 
 country could be created by protection, he showed that such man- 
 ufactures were not, upon the whole, and in the long run, a bene- 
 fit to a country; and adduced, for an illustration, the very instance 
 cited by Mr. Clay, — the silk manufacture of England, — which 
 kept fifty thousand persons in misery, and necessitated the con- 
 tinuance of a kind of legislation which the intelligence of Great 
 Britain had outgrown. Is not the following brief passage an al- 
 most exhaustive statement of the true American policy ? 
 
 " I know it would be very easy to promote manufactures, at least for 
 a time, but probably for a short time only, if we might act in disregard 
 of other interests. We could cause a sudden transfer of capital and a 
 violent change in the pursuits of men. We could exceedingly benefit 
 some classes by these means. But what then becomes of the interests 
 of others? The power of collecting revenue by duties on imports, 
 and the habit of the government of collecting almost its whole revenue 
 in that mode, will enable us, without exceeding the bounds of modera- 
 tion, to give great advantages to those classes of manufactures which 
 we may think most useful to promote at home." 
 
 One of his happy retorts upon Mr. Clay was the following : — 
 
 " I will be so presumptuous as to take up a challenge which Mr. 
 Speaker has thrown down. He has asked us, in a tone of interrogatory 
 indicative of the feeling of anticipated triumph, to niention any coun- 
 try in which manufactures have ilourished without the aid of prohibi- 
 tory laws Sir, I am ready to answer this inquiry. 
 
 " There is a country, not undistinguished among the nations, in 
 which the progress of manufactures has been more rapid than in any 
 other, and yet unaided by prohibitions or unnatural restrictions. That 
 country, the happiest which the sun shines on, is our own." 
 
 Again, Mr. Clay had made the rash remark that it would cost 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER. 87 
 
 the nation, as a nation, nothing to convert our ore into iron. Mr. 
 Webster's reply to this seems to us eminently worthy of consider- 
 ation at the present moment, and at every moment when the tariff 
 is a topic of debate. 
 
 " I think," said he, " it would cost us precisely what we can least 
 
 afford, that is, great labor Of manual labor no nation has more 
 
 than a certain quantity ; nor can it be increased at will A most 
 
 important question for every nation, as well as for every individual, to 
 propose to itself, is, how it can best apply that quantity of labor which 
 
 it is able to perform Now, with respect to the quantity of labor, 
 
 as we all know, different nations are differently circumstanced. Some 
 need, more than anything, work for hands ; others require hands for 
 work ; and if we ourselves are not absolutely in the latter class, we are 
 still, most fortunately, very near it." 
 
 The applicability of these observations to the present condition 
 of affairs in the United States — labor very scarce, and protec- 
 tionists clamoring to make it scarcer — must be apparent to every 
 reader. , _^ _ 
 
 But this was the last of Mr. Webster's efforts in behalf of the 
 freedom of trade. In the spring of 1825, when it devolved upon 
 the House of Representatives to elect a President, the few Fed- 
 eralists remaining in the House became, for a few days, an im- 
 portant body. Mr. Webster had an hereditary love for the house 
 of Adams ; and the aged Jefferson himself had personally warned 
 him against Andrew Jackson. Webster it was who, in an inter- 
 view with Mr. Adams, obtained such assurances as determined 
 the Federalists to give their vote for the New England candi- 
 date ; and thus terminated the existence of the great party which 
 Hamilton had founded, with which Washington had sympathized, 
 which had ruled the country for twelve years, and maintained a 
 vigorous and useful opposition for a quarter of a century. Daniel 
 Webster was in opposition no longer. He was a defender of the 
 administration of Adams and Clay, supported all their important 
 measures, and voted for, nay, advocated, the Tariff Bill of 1828, 
 which went far beyond that of 1824 in its protective provisions. 
 Taunted with such a remarkable and sudden change of opinion, 
 he said that, New England having been compelled by the act of 
 
88 DANIEL WEBSTER. 
 
 1824 to transfer a large part of her capital from commerce to 
 manufactures, he was bound, as her representative, to demand 
 the continuance of the system. Few persons, probably, who 
 heard him give this reason for his conversion, believed it was 
 the true one ; and few will ever believe it who shall intimately 
 know the transactions of that winter in Washington. But if it 
 was the true reason, Mr. Webster, in giving it, ruled himself out 
 of the rank of the Great, — who, in every age and land, lead, 
 not follow, their generation. In his speech of 1824 he objects to 
 the protective system on general principles, applicable to every 
 case not clearly exceptional ; and the further Congress was dis- 
 posed to carry an erroneous system, the more was he bound to 
 lift up his voice against it. It seems to us that, when he aban- 
 doned the convictions of his own mind and took service under 
 Mr. Clay, he descended (to use the fine simile of the author of 
 " Felix Holt") from the rank of heroes to that of the multitude 
 for whom heroes fight. He was a protectionist, thenceforth, as 
 long as he lived. If he was right in 1824, how wrong he was in 
 1846! In 1824 he pointed to the high wages of American me- 
 chanics as a proof that the protective system was unnecessary ; 
 and he might have quoted Adam Smith to show that, in 1770, 
 wages in the Colonies were just as high, compared with wages 
 in Europe, as in 1824. In 1846 he attributed high wages in 
 America to the operation of the protective system. In 1824 
 free trade was the good, and restriction the evil; in 1846 restric- 
 tion was the good, and free trade the evil. 
 
 Practical wisdom, indeed, was not in this man. He was not 
 formed to guide, but to charm, impress, and rouse mankind. 
 His advocacy of the Greek cause, in 1824, events have shown to 
 be unwise ; but his speech on this subject contains some passages 
 so exceedingly fine, noble, and harmonious, that we do not believe 
 they have ever been surpassed in extempore speech by any man 
 but himself. The passage upon Public Opinion, for example, is 
 always read with delight, even by those who can call to mind the 
 greatest number of instances of its apparent untruth. 
 
 " The time has been, indeed, when fleets, and armies, and subsidies 
 were the principal reliances, even in the best cause. But, happily for 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER. 89 
 
 mankind, a great change has taken place in this respect. Moral causes 
 come into consideration in proportion as the progress of knowledge is 
 advanced ; and the public opinion of the civilized world is rapidly 
 
 gaining an ascendency over mere brutal force It may be silenced 
 
 by military power, but it cannot be conquered. It is elastic, irrepressi- 
 ble, and invulnerable to the weapons of ordinary warfare. It is that 
 impassible, unextinguishable enemy of mere violence and arbitrary rule, 
 which, like Milton's angels, 
 
 ' Vital in every part 
 
 Cannot, but by annihilating, die.' 
 
 Until this be propitiated or satisfied, it is vain for power to talk 
 either of triumphs or of repose. No matter what fields are desolated, 
 what fortresses surrendered, what armies subdued, or what provinces 
 
 overrun There is an enemy that still exists to check the glory 
 
 of these triumphs. It follows the conqueror back to the very scene of 
 his ovations ; it calls upon him to take notice that Europe, though silent, 
 is yet indignant ; it shows him that the sceptre of his victory is a barren 
 sceptre ; that it shall confer neither joy nor honor ; but shall moulder 
 to dry ashes in his grasp. In the midst of his exultation, it pierces his 
 ear with the cry of injured justice ; it denounces against him the indig- 
 nation of an enlightened and civilized age ; it turns to bitterness the 
 cup of his rejoicing, and wounds him with the sting which belongs to 
 the consciousness of having outraged the opinion of mankind." — 
 Works, Vol. III. pp. 77, 78. 
 
 Yes : if the conqueror had the moral feeling which inspired 
 this passage, and if the cry of injured justice could pierce the 
 flattering din of office-seekers surrounding him. But, reading the 
 paragraph as the expression of a hope of what may one day be, 
 how grand and consoling it is ! The information given in this 
 fine oration respecting the condition of Greece and the history of 
 her struggle for independence was provided for him by the indus- 
 try of his friend, Edward Everett. 
 
 One of the minor triumphs of Mr. Webster's early Congres- 
 sional life was his conquest of the heart of John Randolph. In 
 the course of a debate on the sugar tax, in 1816, Mr. Webster 
 had the very common fortune of offending the irascible member 
 from Virginia, and Mr. Randolph, as his custom was, demanded 
 an explanation of the offensive words. Explanation was re- 
 fused by the member from Massachusetts ; whereupon Mr. Ran- 
 
90 DANIEL WEBSTER. 
 
 dolph demanded " the satisfaction which his insulted feelings re- 
 quired." Mr. Webster's reply to this preposterous demand was 
 everything that it ought to have been. He told Mr. Randolph 
 that he had no right to an explanation, and that the temper and 
 style of the demand were such as to forbid its being conceded as 
 a matter of courtesy. He denied, too, the right of any man to 
 call him to the field for what he might please to consider an in- 
 sult to his feelings, although he should be " always prepared to 
 repel in a suitable manner the aggression of any man who may 
 presume upon such a refusal." The eccentric Virginian was so 
 much pleased with Mr. Webster's bearing upon this occasion, that 
 he manifested a particular regard for him, and pronounced him a 
 very able man for a Yankee. 
 
 It was during these years that Daniel Webster became dear, 
 beyond all other men of his time, to the people of New England. 
 Removing to Boston in 1816, and remaining out of Congress for 
 some years, he won the first place at the New England bar, and 
 a place equal to the foremost at the bar of the Supreme Court 
 of the United States. Not one of his legal arguments has been 
 exactly reported, and some of the most important of them we 
 possess merely in outline ; but in such reports as we have, the 
 weight and clearness of his mind are abundantly apparent. In 
 almost every argument of his, there can be found digressions 
 which relieve the strained attention of the bench, and please the 
 unlearned hearer; and he had a happy way of suddenly crys- 
 tallizing his argument into one luminous phrase, which often 
 seemed to prove his case by merely stating it. Thus, in the 
 Dartmouth College case, he made a rare display of learning (fur- 
 nished him by associate counsel, he tells us) ; but his argument 
 is concentrated in two of his simplest sentences: — 1. The en- 
 dowment of a college is private property ; 2. The charter of a 
 college is that which constitutes its endowment private property. 
 The Supreme Court accepted these two propositions, and thus 
 secured to every college in the country its right to its endowment. 
 This seems too simple for argument, but it cost a prodigious and 
 powerfully contested lawsuit to reduce the question to this sim- 
 plicity; and it was Webster's large, calm, and discriminating 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER. 91 
 
 glance which detected these two fundamental truths in the moun- 
 tain mass of testimony, argument, and judicial decision. In ar- 
 guing the great steamboat case, too, he displayed the same quali- 
 ties of mind. New York having granted to Livingston and 
 Fulton the exclusive right to navigate her waters by steamboats, 
 certain citizens of New Jersey objected, and, after a fierce strug- 
 gle upon the waters themselves, transferred the contest to the 
 Supreme Court. Mr. "Webster said : " The commerce of the 
 United States, under the Constitution of 1787, is a unit," and 
 " what we call the waters of the State of New York are, for the 
 purposes of navigation and commerce, the waters of the United 
 States " ; therefore no State can grant exclusive privileges. The 
 Supreme Court affirmed this to be the true doctrine, and thence- 
 forth Captain Cornelius Vanderbilt ran his steamboat without 
 feeling it necessary, on approaching New York, to station a lady 
 at the helm and to hide himself in the hold. Along with this 
 concentrating power, Mr. "Webster possessed, as every school-boy 
 knows, a fine talent for amplification and narrative. His narra- 
 tion of the murder of Captain "White was almost enough of itself 
 to hang a man. 
 
 But it was not his substantial services to his country which 
 drew upon him the eyes of all New England, and made him dear 
 to every son of the Pilgrims. In 1820, the Pilgrim Society of 
 Plymouth celebrated the anniversary of the landing of their fore- 
 fathers in America. At the dinner of the Society, that day, 
 every man found beside his plate five kernels of corn, to remind 
 him of the time when that was the daily allowance of the set- 
 tlers, and it devolved upon Daniel "Webster to show how worthy 
 they were of better fare. His address on this anniversary is but 
 an amplification of his Junior Fourth-of-July oration of 1800 ; 
 but what an amplification ! It differed from that youthful essay 
 as the first flights of a young eagle, from branch to branch up- 
 on its native tree, differ from the sweep of his wings when he 
 takes a continent in his flight, and swings from mountain range 
 to mountain range. "We are awaro that eulogy is, of all the 
 kinds of composition, the easiest to execute in a tolerable 
 manner. What Mr. Everett calls " patriotic eloquence " should 
 
92 DANIEL WEBSTER. 
 
 usually be left to persons who are in the gushing time of life ; 
 for when men address men, they should say something, clear up 
 something, help forward something, accomplish something. It 
 is not becoming in a full-grown man to utter melodious wind. 
 Nevertheless, it can be truly said of this splendid and irresistible 
 oration, that it carries that kind of composition as far as we can 
 ever expect to see it carried, even in this its native land. What 
 a triumphant joy it must have been to an audience, accustomed 
 for three or four generations to regard preaching as the noblest 
 Avork of man, keenly susceptible to all the excellences of uttered 
 speech, and who now heard their plain old fathers and grand- 
 fathers praised in such massive and magnificent English ! Nor 
 can it be said that this speech says nothing. In 1820 it was still 
 part of the industry of New England to fabricate certain articles 
 required by slave-traders in their hellish business ; and there 
 were still descendants of the Pilgrims who were actually en- 
 gaged in the traffic. 
 
 " If there be," exclaimed the orator, " within the extent of our knowl- 
 edge or influence any participation in this traffic, let us pledge our- 
 selves here, upon the rock of Plymouth, to extirpate and destroy it. 
 It is not fit that the land of the Pilgrims should bear the shame longer. 
 I hear the sound of the hammer, I see the smoke of the furnaces where 
 manacles and fetters are still forged for human limbs. I see the visa- 
 ges of those who by stealth and at midnight labor in this work of hell, 
 foul and dark, as may become the artificers of such instruments of 
 misery and torture. Let that spot be purified, or let it cease to be of 
 New England."— Works, Vol. I. pp. 45, 46. 
 
 And he proceeds, in language still more energetic, to call upon 
 his countrymen to purge their land of this iniquity. This ora- 
 tion, widely circulated through the press, gave the orator uni- 
 versal celebrity in the Northern States, and was one of the many 
 causes which secured his continuance in the national councils. 
 
 Such was his popularity in Boston, that, in 1824, he was re- 
 elected to Congress by 4,990 votes out of 5,000 ; and such was 
 his celebrity in his profession, that his annual retainers from 
 banks, insurance companies, and mercantile firms yielded an in- 
 come that would have satisfied most lawyers even of great emi- 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER. 93 
 
 nence. Those were not the times of five-thousand-dollar fees. 
 As late as 1819, as we see in Mr. Webster's books, he gave "ad- 
 vice " in important cases for twenty dollars ; his regular retaining 
 fee was fifty dollars ; his " annual retainer," one hundred dollars ; 
 his whole charge for conducting a cause rarely exceeded five hun- 
 dred dollars; and the income of a whole year averaged about 
 twenty thousand dollars. Twenty years later, he has gained a 
 larger sum than that by the trial of a single cause ; but in 1820 
 such an income was immense, and probably not exceeded by that 
 of any other American lawyer. Most lawyers in the United 
 States, he once said, "live well, work hard, and die poor"; and 
 this is particularly likely to be the case with lawyers who spend 
 six months of the year in Congress. 
 
 Northern members of Congress, from the foundation of the 
 government, have usually gratified their ambition only by the 
 sacrifice of their interests. The Congress of the United States, 
 modelled upon the Parliament of Great Britain, finds in the 
 North no suitable class of men who can afford to be absent from 
 their affairs half the year. We should naturally choose to be 
 represented in Washington by men distinguished in their several 
 spheres ; but in the North, almost all such persons are so involved 
 in business that they cannot accept a seat in Congress, except at 
 the peril of their fortune ; and this inconvenience is aggravated 
 by the habits that prevail at the seat of government. In the case 
 of a lawyer like Daniel Webster, who has a large practice in the 
 Supreme Court, the difficulty is diminished, because he can usu- 
 ally attend the court without seriously neglecting his duties in 
 Congress, — usually, but not always. There was one year in the 
 Congressional life of Mr. Webster when he was kept out of the 
 Supreme Court for four months by the high duty that devolved 
 upon him of refuting Calhoun's nullification subtilties ; but even 
 in that year, his professional income was more than seven thou- 
 sand dollars ; and he ought by that time, after thirty years of 
 most successful practice, to have been independent of his profes- 
 sion. He was not, however ; and never would have been, if he 
 had practised a century. Those habits of profusion, that reck- 
 less disregard of pecuniary considerations, of which we noticed 
 
94 DANIEL WEBSTER. 
 
 indications in his early days, seemed to be part of his moral con- 
 stitution. He never appeared to know how much money he had, 
 nor how much he owed ; and, what was worse, he never appeared 
 to care. Pie was a profuse giver and a careless payer. It was 
 far easier for him to send a hundred-dollar note in reply to a beg- 
 ging letter, than it was to discharge a long-standing account ; and 
 when he had wasted his resources in extravagant and demoraliz- 
 ing gifts, he deemed it a sufficient answer to a presented bill to ask 
 his creditor how a man could pay money who had none. 
 
 It is not true, therefore, that the frequent embarrassments of 
 his later years were due to the loss of practice by his attendance 
 in Congress ; because, in the years when his professional gains 
 were smallest, his income was large enough for the wants of any 
 reasonable man. Nevertheless, we cannot deny that when, in 
 
 1827, by his acceptance of a seat in the Senate, he gave himself 
 permanently to public life, he made a sacrifice of his pecuniary 
 interests which, for a man of such vast requirements and uncalcu- 
 lating habits, was very great. 
 
 But his reward was also very great. On that elevated the- 
 atre he soon found an opportunity for the display of his talents, 
 which, while it honored and served his country, rendered him the 
 foremost man in that part of it where such talents as his could 
 be appreciated. 
 
 All wars of which we have any knowledge have consisted of 
 two parts : first, a war of words ; secondly, the conflict of arms. 
 The war of words which issued in the late Rebellion began, in 
 
 1828, by the publication of Mr. Calhoun's first paper upon Nullifi- 
 cation, called the South Carolina Exposition ; and it ended in 
 April, 1861, when President Lincoln issued his call for seventy- 
 five thousand troops, which excited so much merriment at Mont- 
 gomery. This was a period of thirty-three years, during which 
 every person in the United States who could use either tongue 
 or pen joined in the strife of words, and contributed his share 
 either toward hastening or postponing the final appeal to the 
 sword. Men fight with one another, says Dr. Franklin, because 
 they have not sense enough to settle their disputes in any other 
 way ; and when once they have begun, never stop killing one 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER. 95 
 
 another as long as they have money enough " to pay the hu tell- 
 ers." So it appeared in our ca-:e. Of all the men who took 
 part in this preliminary war of words, Daniel Webster was 
 incomparably the ablest. He seemed charged with a message 
 and a mission to the people of the United States ; and almost 
 everything that he said in his whole life of real value has refer- 
 ence to that message and that mission. The necessity of the 
 Union of these States, the nature of the tie that binds them 
 together, the means by which alone that tie can be kept strong, 
 — this was what he came charged to impart to us ; and when he 
 had fully delivered this message, he had done his work. His 
 numberless speeches upon the passing questions of the day, — 
 tariff, Bank, currency, Sub-treasury, and the rest, — in which 
 the partisan spoke rather than the man, may have had tlieir 
 value at the time, but there is little in them of durable worth. 
 Those of them which events have not refuted, time has rendered 
 obsolete. No general principles are established in them which 
 can be applied to new cases. Indeed, he used often to assert 
 that there iwere no general principles in practical statesmanship, 
 but that the government of nations is, and must be, a series of 
 expedients. Several times, in his published works, can be found 
 the assertion, that there is no such thing as a science of political 
 economy, though he says he had "turned over" all the authors 
 on that subject from Adam Smith to his own time. It is when 
 he speaks of the Union and the Constitution, and when he is 
 rousing the sentiment of nationality, that he utters, not, indeed, 
 eternal truths, but truths necessary to the existence of the United 
 States, and which can only become obsolete- when the nation is 
 no more. 
 
 The whole of his previous life had been an unconscious prep- 
 aration for these great debates. It was one of the recollections 
 of his childhood, that, in his eighth year, he had bought a hand- 
 kerchief upon which was printed the Constitution of 1787, which 
 he then read through ; and while he was a farmer's boy at home, 
 the great question of its acceptance or rejection had been decided. 
 His father's party was the party for the Constitution, whose only 
 regret concerning it was, that it was not so much of a constitution 
 
96 DANIEL WEBSTER. 
 
 as they wished it to be. The Kepublicans dwelt upon its defects 
 and dangers ; the Federalists, upon its advantages and beauties : 
 so that all that this receptive lad heard of it at his father's fire- 
 side was of its value and necessity. We see in his youthful 
 orations that nothing in the history of the continent struck his^ 
 imagination so powerfully as the spectacle of thirty-eight gentle- 
 men meeting in a quiet city, and peacefully settling the terms of 
 a national union between thirteen sovereign States, most of which 
 gave up, voluntarily, what the sword alone was once supposed 
 capable of extorting. In all his orations on days of national 
 festivity or mourning, we observe that his weightiest eulogy falls 
 upon those who were conspicuous in this great business. Because 
 Hamilton aided in it, he revered his memory ; because Madison 
 was its best interpreter, he venerated his name and deferred 
 absolutely to his judgment. It was clear to his mind that the 
 President can only dismiss an officer of the government as he 
 appoints him, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate ; 
 but he would not permit himself to think so against Mr. Madi- 
 son's decision. His own triumphs at the bar — those upon which 
 he plumed himself — were all such as resulted from his lonely 
 broodings over, and patient study of, the Constitution of his 
 country. A native of one of the smallest of the States, to which 
 the Union was an unmixed benefit and called for no sacrifice of 
 pride, he grew up into nationality without having to pass through 
 any probation of States' rights scruples. Indeed, it was as natu- 
 ral for a man of his calibre to be a national man as it is for his 
 own Monadnock to be three thousand feet above the level of the 
 sea. 
 
 The South Carolina Exposition of 1828 appeared to fall still- 
 born from the press. Neither General Jackson nor any of his 
 nearest friends seem to have been so much as aware of its ex- 
 istence ; certainly they attached no importance to it. Colonel 
 Benton assures us, that to him the Hayne debate, so far as it re- 
 lated to constitutional questions, seemed a mere oratorical display, 
 without adequate cause or object ; and we know that General 
 Jackson, intimately allied with the Hayne family and strongly 
 attached to Colonel Hayne himself, wished him success in the de- 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER. 97 
 
 bate, and heard with regret that Mr. Webster was " demolishing " 
 him. Far, indeed, was any one from supposing that a movement 
 had been set on foot which was to end only with the total destruc- 
 tion of the " interest " sought to be protected by it. Far was any 
 one from foreseeing that so poor and slight a thing as the Expo- 
 sition was the beginning of forty years of strife. It is evident 
 from the Banquo passage of Mr. Webster's principal speech, 
 when, looking at Vice-President Calhoun, he reminded that am- 
 bitious man that, in joining the coalition which made Jackson 
 President, he had only given Van Buren a push toward the 
 Presidency, — " No son of theirs succeeding," — it is evident, we 
 say, from this passage, and from other covert allusions, that he 
 understood the game of Nullification from the beginning, so far as 
 its objects were personal. But there is no reason for supposing 
 that he attached importance to it before that memorable afternoon 
 in December, 1830, when he strolled from the Supreme Court in- 
 to the Senate-chamber, and chanced to hear Colonel Hayne re- 
 viling New England, and repeating the doctrines of the South 
 Carolina Exposition. 
 
 Every one knows the story of this first triumph of the United 
 States over its enemies. Daniel Webster, as Mr. Everett re- 
 cords, appeared to be the only person in Washington who was 
 entirely at his ease ; and he was so remarkably unconcerned, that 
 Mr. Everett feared he was not aware of the expectations of the 
 public, and the urgent necessity of his exerting all his powers. 
 Another friend mentions, that on the day before the delivery of 
 the principal speech the orator lay down as usual, after dinner, 
 upon a sofa, and soon was heard laughing to himself. Being 
 asked what he was laughing at, he said he had just thought of a 
 way to turn Colonel ITayne's quotation about Banquo's ghost 
 against himself, and he was going to get up and make a note of 
 it. This he did, and then resumed his nap. 
 
 Notwithstanding these appearances of indifference, he was fully 
 roused to the importance of the occasion ; and, indeed, we have 
 the impression that only on this occasion, in his whole life, were 
 all his powers in full activity and his entire mass of being in full 
 glow. But even then the artist was apparent in all that he did, 
 5 G 
 
98 DANIEL WEBSTER. 
 
 and particularly in the dress which he wore. At that time, in 
 his forty-eighth year, his hair was still as black as an Indian's, and 
 it lay in considerable masses about the spacious dome of his fore- 
 head. His form had neither the slenderness of his youth nor the 
 elephantine magnitude of his later years ; it was fully, but finely, 
 developed, imposing and stately, yet not wanting in alertness and 
 grace. No costume could have been better suited to it than his 
 blue coat and glittering gilt buttons, his ample yellow waistcoat, 
 his black trousers, and snowy cravat. It was in some degree, per- 
 haps, owing to the elegance and daintiness of his dress that, while 
 the New England men among his hearers were moved to tears, 
 many Southern members, like Colonel Benton, regarded the 
 speech merely as a Fourth-of-July oration delivered on the Gth 
 of January. Benton assures us, however, that he soon discov- 
 ered his error, for the Nullifiers were not to be put down by a 
 speech, and soon revealed themselves in their true character, as 
 " irreconcilable " foes of the Union. This was Daniel Web- 
 ster's own word in speaking of that faction in 1830, — " irrecon- 
 cilable." 
 
 After this transcendent effort, — perhaps the greatest of its 
 kind ever made by man, — Daniel Webster had nothing to gain 
 in the esteem of the Northern States. He was indisputably our 
 foremost man, and in Massachusetts there was no one who could 
 be said to be second to him in the regard of the people : he was 
 a whole species in himself. In the subsequent winter of debate 
 with Calhoun upon the same subject, he added many details to 
 his argument, developed it in many directions, and accumulated a 
 great body of constitutional reasoning ; but so far as the people 
 were concerned, the reply to Hayne sufficed. In all those 
 debates we are struck with his colossal, his superfluous superiority 
 to his opponents ; and we wonder how it could have been that 
 such a man should have thought it worth while to refute such 
 puerilities. It ^was^ however, abundantly worth while. | The 
 assailed Constitution needed such a defender. It was necessary 
 that the patriotic feeling of the American . people, which was 
 destined to a trial so severe, should have an tinshakable basis of 
 intelligent conviction. It was necessary that all men should be 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER. 99 
 
 made distinctly to see that the Constitution was not a "compact" 
 to which the States "acceded," and from which they could 
 secede, hut the fundamental law, which the people had established 
 and ordained, from which there could be no secession but by 
 revolution. , It was necessary that the country should be made to 
 understand that Nullification and Secession were one and the 
 same ; [and that to admit the first, promising to stop short at the 
 -^cond", was as though a man " should take the plunge of-Niag- 
 ara and cry out that he would stop half-way down." /Mr. Web- 
 ster's principal speech on this subject, delivered in 1832, has, and 
 will ever have, with the people and the Courts of the United 
 States, the authority of a judicial decision ; and it might very 
 properly be added to popular editions of the Constitution as an 
 appendix. Into the creation of the feeling and opinion which 
 fought out the late war for the Union a thousand and ten thou- 
 sand causes entered ; every man who had ever performed a 
 patriotic action, and every man who ever from his heart had 
 spoken a patriotic word, contributed to its production ; but to no 
 man, perhaps, were we more indebted for it than to the Daniel 
 Webster of 1830 and 1832. 
 
 We cannot so highly commend his votes in 1832 as his 
 speeches. General Jackson's mode of dealing with nullification 
 seems to us the model for every government to follow which ha^ 
 to deal with discontented subjects: — 1. To take care that the 
 laws are obeyed ; 2. To remove the real grounds of discontent. 
 This was General Jackson's plan. This, also, was the aim of 
 Mr. Clay's compromise. Mr. Webster objected to both, on the 
 ground that nullification was rebellion, and that no legislation 
 respecting the pretext for rebellion should be entertained until 
 the rebellion was quelled. Thus he came out of the battle, dear 
 to the thinking people of the country, but estranged from the 
 three political powers, — Henry Clay and his friends, General 
 Jackson and his friends, Calhoun and his friends ; and though he 
 soon lapsed again under the leadership of Mr. Clay, there was 
 never again a cordial union between him and any interior circle 
 of politicians who could have gratified his ambition. Deceived 
 by the thunders of applause which greeted him wherever he 
 
100 DANIEL WEBSTER. 
 
 went, and the intense adulation of his own immediate circle, he 
 thought that he too could be an independent power in politics. 
 Two wild vagaries seemed to have haunted him ever after : first, 
 that a man could merit the Presidency ; secondly, that a man 
 could get the Presidency by meriting it. 
 
 From 1832 to the end of his life it appears to us that Daniel 
 Webster was undergoing a process of deterioration, moral and 
 mental. His material part gained upon his spiritual. Naturally 
 inclined to indolence, and having an enormous capacity for phys- 
 ical enjoyment, a great hunter, fisherman, and farmer, a lover of 
 good wine and good dinners, a most jovial companion, his phys- 
 ical desires and tastes were constantly strengthened by being 
 keenly gratified, while his mind was fed chiefly upon past ac- 
 quisitions. There is nothing in his later efforts which shows any 
 intellectual advance, nothing from which we can infer that he 
 had been browsing in forests before untrodden, or feeding in pas- 
 tures new. He once said, at Marshfield, that, if he could live 
 three lives in one, he would like to devote them all to study, — 
 one to geology, one to astronomy, and one to classical literature. 
 But it does not appear that he invigorated and refreshed the old 
 age of his mind, by doing more than glance over the great works 
 which treat of these subjects. A new language every ten years, 
 or a new science vigorously pursued, seems necessary to preserve 
 the freshness of the understanding, especially when the physical 
 tastes are superabundantly nourished. He could praise Rufus 
 Choate for reading a little Latin and Greek every day, — and 
 this was better than nothing, — but he did not follow his exam- 
 ple. There is an aged merchant in New York, who has kept his 
 mind from growing old by devoting exactly twenty minutes every 
 day to the reading of some abstruse book, as far removed from 
 his necessary routine of thought as he could find. Goethe's ad- 
 vice to every one to read every day a short poem, recognizes the 
 danger we all incur in taking systematic care of the body and I 
 letting the soul take care of itself. During the last ten years of 
 Daniel Webster's life, he spent many a thousand dollars upon his 
 library, and almost ceased to be an intellectual being. 
 
 His pecuniary habits demoralized him. It was wrong and 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER. 101 
 
 mean in him to accept gifts of money from the people of Boston ; 
 it was wrong in them to submit to his merciless exactions. What 
 need was there that their Senator should sometimes be a mendi- 
 cant and sometimes a pauper ? If he chose to maintain baronial 
 state without a baron's income ; if he chose to have two fancy 
 farms of more than a thousand acres each ; if he chose to keep 
 two hundred prize cattle and seven hundred choice sheep for his 
 pleasure ; if he must have about his house lamas, deer, and all 
 rare fowls ; if his flower-garden must be one acre in extent, and 
 his books worth thirty thousand dollars ; if he found it pleasant 
 to keep two or three yachts and a little fleet of smaller craft ; if 
 he could not refrain from sending money in answer to begging 
 letters, and pleased himself by giving away to his black man 
 money enough to buy a very good house ; and if he could not 
 avoid adding wings and rooms to his spacious mansion at Marsh- 
 field, and must needs keep open house there and have a dozen 
 guests at a time, — why should the solvent and careful business 
 men of Boston have been taxed, or have taxed themselves, to 
 pay any part of the expense ? 
 
 Mr. Lanman, his secretary, gives us this curious and contra- 
 dictory account of his pecuniary habits : — 
 
 "He made money with ease, and spent it without reflection. He 
 had accounts with various banks, and men of all parties were always 
 glad to accommodate him with loans, if he wanted them. He kept no 
 record of his deposits, unless it were on slips of paper hidden in his 
 pockets ; these matters were generally left with his secretary. His 
 notes were seldom or never regularly protested, and when they were, 
 they caused him an immense deal of mental anxiety. When the 
 writer has sometimes drawn a check for a couple of thousand dollars, 
 he has not even looked at it, but packed it away in his pockets, like so 
 much waste paper. During his long professional career, he earned 
 money enough to make a dozen fortunes, but he spent it liberally, and 
 gave it away to the poor by hundreds and thousands. Begging letters 
 from women and unfortunate men were received by him almost daily, 
 at certain periods ; and one instance is remembered where, on six suc- 
 cessive days, he sent remittances of fifty and one hundred dollars to 
 people with whom he was entirely unacquainted. He was indeed care- 
 less, but strictly and religiously honest, in all his money matters. He 
 
102 DANIEL WEBSTER. 
 
 knew not how to be otherwise. The last fee which he ever received 
 
 for a single legal argument was $11,000 
 
 " A sanctimonious lady once called upon Mr. Webster, in Washing- 
 ton, with a long and pitiful story about her misfortunes and poverty, 
 and asked him for a donation of money to defray her expenses to her 
 home in a Western city. He listened with all the patience he could 
 manage, expressed his surprise that she should have called upon him 
 for money, simply because he was an officer of the government, and 
 that, too, when she was a total stranger to him, reprimanded her in 
 very plain language for her improper conduct, and handed her a note 
 of fifty dollars. 
 
 • • ■ • • 
 
 " He had called upon the cashier of the bank where he kept an ac- 
 count, for the purpose of getting a draft discounted, when that gentle- 
 man expressed some surprise, and casually inquired why he wanted so 
 much money ? ' To spend ; to buy bread and meat,' replied Mr. Web- 
 ster, a little annoyed at this speech. 
 
 " ' But,' returned the cashier, ' you already have upon deposit in the 
 bank no less than three thousand dollars, and I was only wondering 
 why you wanted so much money.' 
 
 " This was indeed the truth, but Mr. Webster had forgotten it." 
 
 Mr. Lanman's assertion that Mr. Webster, with all this reck- 
 lessness, was religiously honest, must have excited a grim smile 
 upon the countenances of such of his Boston readers as had had 
 his name upon their books. No man can be honest long who is 
 careless in his expenditures. 
 
 It is evident from his letters, if we did not know it from other 
 sources of information, that his carelessness with regard to the 
 balancing of his books grew upon him as he advanced in life, 
 and kept pace with the general deterioration of his character. In 
 1824, before he had been degraded by the acceptance of pecuni- 
 ary aid, and when he was still a solvent person, one of his nephews 
 asked him for a loan. He replied : " If you think you can do 
 anything useful with a thousand dollars, you may have that sum 
 in the spring, or sooner, if need be, on the following conditions : — 
 1. You must give a note for it with reasonable security. 2. The 
 interest must be payable annually, and must be paid at the day 
 without fail. And so long as this continues to be done, the money 
 not to be called for — the principal — under six months' notice. 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER. 103 
 
 I am thus explicit with you, because you wish me to be so ; and 
 because also, having a little money, and but a little, I am resolved 
 on keeping it." This is sufficiently business-like. He had a lit- 
 tle money then, — enough, as he intimates, for the economical 
 maintenance of his family. During the land fever of 1835 and 
 1836, he lost so seriously by speculations in Western land, that 
 he was saved from bankruptcy only by the aid of that mystical 
 but efficient body whom he styled his " friends " ; and from that 
 time to the end of his life he was seldom at his ease. He earned 
 immense occasional fees, — two of twenty-five thousand dollars 
 each ; he received frequent gifts of money, as well as a regular 
 stipend from an invested capital ; but he expended so profusely, 
 that he was sometimes at a loss for a hundred dollars to pay his 
 hay-makers ; and he died forty thousand dollars in debt. 
 
 The adulation of which he was the victim at almost every hour 
 of his existence injured and deceived him. He was continually 
 informed that he was the greatest of living men, — the " godlike 
 Daniel " ; and when he escaped even into the interior of his 
 home, he found there persons who sincerely believed that making 
 such speeches as his was the greatest of all possible human 
 achievements. All men whose talents are of the kind which 
 enable their possessor to give intense pleasure to great multitudes 
 are liable to this misfortune ; and especially in a new and busy 
 country, little removed from the colonial state, where intellectual 
 eminence is rare, and the number of persons who can enjoy it is 
 exceedingly great. "We are growing out of this provincial pro- 
 pensity to abandon ourselves to admiration of the pleasure-giving 
 talents. The time is at hand, we trust, when we shall not be 
 struck with wonder because a man can make a vigorous speech, 
 or write a good novel, or play Hamlet decently, and when we 
 shall be able to enjoy the talent without adoring the man. The 
 talent is one thing, and the man another ; the talent may be 
 immense, and the man little ; the speech powerful and wise, the 
 speaker weak and foolish. Daniel Webster came at last to loathe 
 this ceaseless incense, but it was when his heart was set upon ho- 
 mage of another kind, which he was destined never to enjoy. 
 
 Another powerful cause of his deterioration was the strange, 
 
104 DANIEL WEBSTER. 
 
 strong, always increasing desire he had to be President. Any- 
 intelligent politician, outside of the circle of his own " friends," 
 could have told him, and proved to him, that he had little more 
 chance of being elected President than the most insignificant 
 man in the Whig party. And the marvel is, that he himself 
 should not have known it, — he who knew why, precisely why, 
 every candidate had been nominated, from Madison to General 
 Taylor. In the teeth of all the facts, he still cherished the amaz- 
 ing delusion that the Presidency of the United States, like the 
 Premiership of England, is the natural and just reward of long 
 and able public service. The Presidency, on the contrary, is not 
 merely an accident, but it is an accident of the last moment. It 
 is a game too difficult for mortal faculties to play, because some 
 of the conditions of success are as uncertain as the winds, and as 
 ungovernable. If dexterous playing could have availed, Douglas 
 would have carried off the stakes, for he had an audacious and a 
 mathematical mind ; while the winning man in 185G was a heavy 
 player, devoid of skill, whose decisive advantage was that he had 
 been out of the game for four years. Mr. Seward, too, was within 
 an ace of winning, when an old quarrel between two New York 
 editors swept his cards from the table. 
 
 No : the President of the United States is not prime minister, 
 but chief magistrate, and he is subject to that law of nature which 
 jdaces at the head of regular governments more or less respecta- 
 ble Nobodies. In Europe this law of nature works through the 
 hereditary principle, and in America through universal suffrage. 
 In all probability, we shall usually elect a person of the non-com- 
 mittal species, — one who will have lived fifty or sixty years in 
 the world without having formed an offensive conviction or uttered 
 a striking word, — one who will have conducted his life as those 
 popular periodicals are conducted, in which there are " no allusions 
 to politics or religion." And may not this be part of the exquis- 
 ite economy of nature, which ever strives to get into each place 
 the smallest man that can fill it ? How miserably out of place 
 would be a man of active, originating, disinterested spirit, at the 
 head of a strictly limited, constitutional government, such as ours 
 is in time of peace, in which the best President is he who does 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER. 105 
 
 the least ? Imagine a live man thrust out over the bows of a 
 ship, and compelled to stand as figure-head, lashed by the waves 
 and winds during a four years' voyage, and expected to be pleased 
 with his situation because he is gilt ! 
 
 Daniel Webster so passionately desired the place, that he could 
 never see how far he was from the possibility of getting it. He 
 was not such timber as either Southern fire-eaters or Northern 
 wire-pullers had any use for ; and a melancholy sight it was, this 
 man, once so stately, paying court to every passing Southerner, 
 and personally begging delegates to vote for him. He was not 
 made for that. An elephant does sometimes stand upon his head 
 and play a barrel-organ, but every one who sees the sorry sight 
 sees also that it was not the design of Nature that elephants 
 should do such things. 
 
 A Marshfield elm may be for half a century in decay without 
 exhibiting much outward change ; and when, in some tempestu- 
 ous night, half its bulk is torn away, the neighborhood notes with 
 surprise that what seemed solid wood is dry and crumbling pith. 
 During the last fifteen years of Daniel Webster's life, his wonder- 
 fully imposing form and his immense reputation concealed from 
 the public the decay of his powers and the degeneration of his 
 morals. At least, few said what perhaps many felt, that " he was 
 not the man he had been." People went away from one of his 
 ponderous and empty speeches disappointed, but not ill pleased 
 to boast that they too had " heard Daniel Webster speak," and 
 feeling very sure that he could be eloquent, though he had not 
 been. We heard one of the last of his out-of-door speeches. It 
 was near Philadelphia, in 1844, when he was " -tumping the 
 State" for Henry Clay, and when our youthful feelings were 
 warmly with the object of his speech. What a disappointment ! 
 How poor and pompous and pointless it seemed ! Nor could we 
 resist the impression that he was playing a part, nor help saying 
 to ourselves, as we turned to leave the scene, " This man is not 
 sincere in this : he is a humbug." And when, some years later, 
 we saw him present himself before a large audience in a state not 
 far removed from intoxication, and mumble incoherence for ten 
 minutes, and when, in the course of the evening, we saw him 
 
 5* 
 
106 DANIEL WEBSTER. 
 
 make a great show of approval whenever the clergy were com- 
 plimented, the impression was renewed that the man had ex- 
 pended his sincerity, and that nothing was real to him any more 
 except wine and office. And even then such were the might and 
 majesty of his presence, that he seemed to fill and satisfy the 
 people by merely sitting there in an arm-chair, like Jupiter, in a 
 spacious yellow waistcoat with two bottles of Madeira under it. 
 
 All this gradual, unseen deterioration of mind and character 
 was revealed to the country on the 7th of March, 1850. "What 
 a downfall was there ! That shameful speech reads worse in 
 1867 than it did in 1850, and still exerts perverting power over 
 timid and unformed minds. It was the very time for him to have 
 broken finally with the " irreconcilable " faction, who, after hav- 
 ing made President Tyler snub Daniel Webster from his dearly 
 loved office of Secretary of State, had consummated the scheme 
 which gave us Texas at the cost of war with Mexico, and Cali- 
 fornia as one of the incidents of peace. California was not down 
 in their programme ; and now, while claiming the right to make 
 four slave States out of Texas, they refused to admit California 
 to freedom. Then was it that Daniel Webster of Massachusetts 
 rose in the Senate of the United States and said in substance 
 this : These fine Southern brethren of ours have now stolen all 
 the land there is to steal. Let us, therefore, put no obstacle in 
 the way of their peaceable enjoyment of the plunder. 
 
 And" the spirit of the speech was worse even than its doctrine. 
 He went down upon the knees of his soul, and paid base homage 
 to his own and his country's irreconcilable foes. Who knew bet- 
 ter than Daniel Webster that John C. Calhoun and his followers 
 had first created and then systematically fomented the hostile 
 feeling which then existed between the North and the South ? 
 How those men must have chuckled among themselves when 
 they witnessed the willing degradation of the man who should 
 have arraigned them before the country as the conscious enemies 
 of its peace ! How was it that no one laughed outright at such 
 billing and cooing as this ? 
 
 Mr. Webster. — " An honorable member [Calhoun], whose health 
 does not allow him to be here to-day — " 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER. 107 
 
 A Senator, — " He is here." 
 
 Mr. Webster. — "I am very happy to hear that he is ; may he long 
 be here, and in the enjoyment of health to serve his country ! " 
 
 And this : — 
 
 Mr. Webster. — " The honorable member did not disguise his conduct 
 or his motives." 
 
 Mr. Calhoun. — " Never, never." 
 
 Mr. Webster. — " What he means he is very apt to say." 
 
 Mr. Calhoun. — " Always, always." 
 
 Mr. Webster. — "And I honor him for it." 
 
 And this : — 
 
 Mr. Webster. — "I see an honorable member of this body [Mason 
 of Virginia] paying me the honor of listening to my remarks ; he 
 brings to my mind, Sir, freshly and vividly, what I learned of his great 
 ancestor, so much distinguished in his day and generation, so worthy to 
 be succeeded by so worthy a grandson." 
 
 And this : — 
 
 Mr. Webster. — " An honorable member from Louisiana addressed 
 us the other day on this subject. I suppose there is not a more amiable 
 and worthy gentleman in this chamber, nor a gentleman who would be 
 more slow to give offence to anybody, and he did not mean in his re- 
 marks to give offence. But what did he say ? Why, Sir, he took pains 
 to run a contrast between the slaves of the South and the laboring peo- 
 ple of the North, giving the preference in all points of condition and 
 comfort and happiness to the slaves." 
 
 In the course of this speech there is one most palpable contra- 
 diction. In the beginning of it, the orator mentioned the change 
 of feeling and opinion that had occurred as to the institution of 
 slavery, — " the North growing much more warm and strong 
 against slavery, and the South growing much more warm and 
 strong in its support." "Once," he said, "the most eminent men, 
 and nearly all the conspicuous politicians of the South, held the 
 same sentiments, — that slavery was an evil, a blight, a scourge, 
 and a curse " ; but now it is " a cherished institution in that 
 quarter ; no evil, no scourge, but a great religious, social, and 
 moral blessing." He then asked how this change of opinion had 
 been brought about, and thus answered the question : " I suppose, 
 
108 DANIEL WEBSTER. 
 
 sir, this is owing to the rapid growth and sudden extension of the 
 cotton plantations in the South." And to make the statement 
 more emphatic, he caused the word cotton to be printed in capi- 
 tals in the authorized edition of his works. But later in the 
 speech, when he came to add his ponderous condemnation to the 
 odium in which the handful of Abolitionists were held, — the 
 elite of the nation from Franklin's day to this, — then he attrib- 
 uted this remarkable change to their zealous efforts to awaken 
 the nobler conscience of the country. After giving his own ver- 
 sion of their proceedings, he said : " Well, what was the result ? 
 The bonds of the slaves were bound more firmly than before, 
 their rivets were more strongly fastened. Public opinion, which 
 in Virginia had begun to be exhibited against slavery, and was 
 opening out for the discussion of the question, drew back and shut 
 itself up in its castle." 
 
 But all would not do. He bent the knee in vain. Vain too 
 were his personal efforts, his Southern tour, his Astor House woo- 
 ings, — the politicians would have none of him ; and he had the cut- 
 ting mortification of seeing himself set aside for a Winfield Scott. 
 
 Let us not, however, forget that on this occasion, though Dan- 
 iel Webster appeared for the first time in his life as a leader, he 
 was in reality still only a follower, — a follower, not of the public 
 opinion of the North, but of the wishes of its capitalists. And 
 probably many thousands of well-meaning men, not versed in the 
 mysteries of politics, were secretly pleased to find themselves pro- 
 vided with an excuse for yielding once more to a faction, who 
 had over us the immense advantage of having made up their 
 minds to carry their point or fight. If his was the shame of this 
 speech, ours was the guilt. He faithfully represented the portion 
 of his constituents whose wine he drank, who helped him out 
 with his notes, and who kept his atmosphere hazy with incense ; 
 and he faithfully represented, also, that larger number who wait 
 till the wolf is at their door before arming against him, instead of 
 meeting him afar off in the outskirts of the wood. Let us own it : 
 the North yearned for peace in 1850, — peace at almost any price. 
 
 One of the most intimate of Mr. Webster's friends said, in a 
 public address : " It is true that he desired the highest political 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER. 109 
 
 position in the country, — that he thought he had fairly earned a 
 claim to that position. And I solemnly believe that because that 
 claim was denied his days were shortened." No enemy of the 
 great orator ever uttered anything so severe against him as this, 
 and we are inclined to think it an error. It was probably the 
 strength of his desire for the Presidency that shortened his life, 
 not the mere disappointment. "When President Fillmore offered 
 him the post of Secretary of State, in 1850, it appears to have 
 been his preference, much as he loved office, to decline it. He 
 longed for his beautiful Marshfield, on the shore of the ocean, his 
 herds of noble cattle, his broad, productive fields, his yachts, his 
 fishing, his rambles in the forests planted by his own hand, his 
 homely chats with neighbors and beloved dependents. " Oh ! " 
 said he, " if I could have my own will, never, never would I leave 
 Marshfield again ! " But his " friends," interested and disinter- 
 ested, told him it was a shorter step from the office of Secretary 
 of State to that of President than from the Senate-chamber. He 
 yielded, as he always did, and spent a long, hot summer in "Wash- 
 ington, to the sore detriment of his health. And again, in 1852, 
 after he had failed to receive the nomination for the Presidency, 
 he was offered the place of Minister to England. His " friends " 
 again advised against his acceptance. His letter to the President, 
 declining the offer, presents him in a sorry light indeed. " I have 
 made up my mind to think no more about the English mission. 
 .My principal reason is, that I think it would be regarded as a 
 
 descent I have been accustomed to give instructions to 
 
 ministers abroad, and not to receive them." Accustomed ! Yes : 
 for two years ! It is probable enough that his acceptance of of- 
 fice, and his adherence to it, hastened his death. Four months 
 after the words were written which we have just quoted, he was 
 no more. 
 
 His last days were such as his best friends could have wished 
 them to be, — calm, dignified, affectionate, worthy of his lineage. 
 His burial, too, was singularly becoming, impressive, and touch- 
 ing. We have been exceedingly struck with the account of it 
 given by Mr. George S. Hillard, in his truly elegant and elo- 
 quent eulogy upon Mr. Webster, delivered in Faneuil Hall. In 
 
HO DANIEL WEBSTER. 
 
 his last will, executed a few days before his death, Mr. Webster 
 requested that he might be buried " without the least show or os- 
 tentation, but in a manner respectful to my neighbors, whose 
 kindness has contributed so much to the happiness of me and 
 mine." His wishes were obeyed ; and he was buried more as 
 the son of plain, brave Captain Ebenezer Webster, than as Secre- 
 tary of State. " No coffin," said Mr. Hillard, « concealed that 
 majestic frame. In the open air, clad as when alive, he lay ex- 
 tended in seeming sleep, with no touch of disfeature upon his 
 brow, — as noble an image of reposing strength as ever was seen 
 upon earth. Around him was the landscape that he had loved, 
 and above him was nothing but the dome of the covering heav- 
 ens. The sunshine fell upon the dead man's face, and the breeze 
 blew over it. A lover of Nature, he seemed to be gathered into 
 her maternal arms, and to lie like a child upon a mother's lap. 
 We felt, as we looked upon him, that death had never stricken 
 down, at one blow, a greater sum of life. And whose heart did 
 not swell when, from the honored and distinguished men there 
 gathered together, six plain Marshfield farmers were called forth 
 to carry the head of their neighbor to the grave. Slowly and 
 sadly the vast multitude followed, in mourning silence, and he 
 was laid down to rest among dear and kindred dust." 
 
 In surveying the life and works of this eminent and gifted 
 man, we are continually struck with the evidences of his ma<mi- 
 tude. He was, as we have said, a very large person. His brain 
 was within a little of being one third larger than the average, 
 . and it was one of the largest three on record. His bodily frame, 
 in all its parts, was on a majestic scale, and his presence was im- 
 mense. He liked large things, — mountains, elms, great oaks, 
 mighty bulls and oxen, wide fields, the ocean, the Union, and all 
 things of magnitude. He liked great Rome far better than refined 
 Greece, and revelled in the immense things of literature, such as 
 Paradise Lost, and the Book of Job, Burke, Dr. Johnson, and the 
 Sixth Book of the iEneid. Homer he never cared much for, — 
 nor, indeed, anything Greek. He hated, he loathed, the act of 
 writing. Billiards, ten-pins, chess, draughts, whist, he never 
 relished, though fond to excess of out-door pleasures, like hunt- 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER. Ill 
 
 ing, fishing, yachting. He liked to be alone with great Nature, 
 — alone in the giant woods or on the shores of the resounding 
 sea, — alone all day with his gun, his dog, and his thoughts, — 
 alone in the morning, before any one was astir but himself, look- 
 ing out upon the sea and the glorious sunrise. What a delicious 
 picture of this large, healthy Son of Earth' Mr. Lanman gives us, 
 where he describes him coming into his bedroom, at sunrise, and 
 startling him out of a deep sleep by shouting, " Awake, sluggard ! 
 and look upon this glorious scene, for the sky and the ocean are 
 enveloped in flames ! " He was akin to all large, slow things in 
 nature. A herd of fine cattle gave him a keen, an inexhaustible 
 enjoyment ; but he never " tasted " a horse : he had no horse 
 enthusiasm. In England he chiefly enjoyed these five things, 
 the Tower of London, Westminster Abbey, Smithfield Cattle 
 Market, English farming, and Sir Robert Peel. Sir Robert Peel 
 he thought was " head and shoulders above any other man " he 
 had ever met. He greatly excelled, too, in describing immense 
 things. In speaking of the Pyramids, once, he asked, " Who 
 can inform us by what now unknown machines mass was thus 
 aggregated to mass, and quarry piled on quarry, till solid granite 
 seemed to cover the earth and reach the skies." His peculiar 
 love of the Union of these States was partly due, perhaps, to this 
 habit of his mind of dwelling witli complacency on vastness. He 
 felt that he wanted and required a continent to live in : his mind 
 would have gasped for breath in New Hampshire. 
 
 But this enormous creature was not an exception to the law 
 which renders giants harmless by seaming them with weakness, 
 but for which the giants would possess the earth. If he had 
 been completed throughout on the plan on which he was 
 sketched, if he had been as able to originate as he was powerful 
 to state, if he had possessed will proportioned to his strength, 
 moral power equal to his moral feeling, intellect on a par with 
 his genius, and principle worthy of his intellect, he would have 
 subjugated mankind, and raised his country to a point from which 
 it would have dropped when the tyrannizing influence was 
 withdrawn. Every sphere of life has its peculiar temptations, 
 which there is only one thing that can enable a man to resist, — 
 
112 DANIEL WEBSTER. 
 
 a religious, i. e. a disinterested devotion to its duties. Daniel 
 "Webster was one of those who fell before the seductions of his 
 place. He was not one of those who find in the happiness and 
 prosperity of their country, and in the esteem of their fellow- 
 citizens, their own sufficient and abundant reward for serving her. 
 He pined for something lower, smaller, — something personal 
 and vulgar. He had no religion, — not the least tincture of it ; 
 and he seemed at last, in his dealings with individuals, to have no 
 conscience. What he called his religion had no effect whatever 
 upon the conduct of his life ; it made him go to church, talk 
 piously, puff the clergy, and " patronize Providence," — no more. 
 He would accept retaining fees, and never look into the bundles 
 of papers which accompanied them, in which were enclosed the 
 hopes and the fortune of anxious households. He would receive 
 gifts of money, and toss into his waste-paper basket the list of 
 the givers, without having glanced at its contents ; thus defraud- 
 ing them of the only recompense in his power to grant, and the 
 only one they wished. It shocked him if his secretary came to 
 the dinner-table in a frock-coat, and he would himself appear 
 drunk before three thousand people. And yet, such was the 
 power of his genius, such was the charm of his manner, such the 
 affectionateness of his nature, such the robust heartiness of his 
 enjoyment of life, that honorable men who knew his faults best 
 loved him to the last, — not in spite of them, but partly in con- 
 sequence of them. What in another man they would have pro- 
 nounced atrocious, appeared in him a kind of graceful rollicking 
 helplessness to resist. 
 
 Such, as it seems to our very imperfect judgment, was Daniel 
 "Webster, one of the largest and one of the weakest of men, of 
 admirable genius and deplorable character ; who began life well 
 and served his country well and often, but held not out faithful 
 to the end. American statesmen are called to a higher vocation 
 than those of other countries, and there is nothing in the politics 
 of America which can reward a man of eminent ability for pub- 
 lic service. If such a person feels that his country's happiness 
 and greatness will not be a satisfying recompense for anything he 
 can do for her, let him, as he values his peace and soul's health, 
 cling to the safe obscurity of private life. 
 
JOHN C. CALHOUN 
 
JOHN C. CALHOUN. 
 
 THERE were two ways of getting to South Carolina in Colonial 
 times. The first immigrants, many of whom were men of 
 capital, landed at Charleston, and, settling in the fertile low coun- 
 try along the coast, became prosperous planters of rice, indigo, and 
 corn, before a single white inhabitant had found his way to the 
 more salubrious upper country in the western part of the Prov- 
 ince. The settlers of the upper country were plain, poorer peo- 
 ple, who landed at Philadelphia or Baltimore, and travelled 
 southward along the base of the Alleghanies to the inviting table- 
 lands of the Carolinas. In the lower country, the estates were 
 large, the slaves numerous, the white inhabitants few, idle, and 
 profuse. The upper country was peopled by a sturdier race, 
 who possessed farms of moderate extent, hewn out of the wilder- 
 ness by their own strong arms, and tilled by themselves with the 
 aid of few slaves. Between the upper and the lower country 
 there was a waste region of sandy hills and rocky acclivities, un- 
 inhabited, almost uninhabitable, which rendered the two sections 
 of one Province separate communities scarcely known to one 
 another. Down almost to the beginning of the Revolutionary 
 "War, the farmers of the upper country were not represented in 
 the Legislature of South Carolina, though they were then as nu- 
 merous as the planters of the lower country. Between the peo- 
 ple of the two sections there was little unity of feeling. The 
 lordly planters of the lower country regarded their "Western fel- 
 low-citizens as provincial or plebeian ; the farmers of the upper 
 country had some contempt for the planters as effeminate, aristo- 
 cratic, and Tory. The Revolution abased the pride, lessened the 
 wealth, and improved the politics of the planters ; a revised Con- 
 
116 JOHN C. CALHOUN. 
 
 stitution, in 1790, gave preponderance to the up-country farmers 
 in the popular branch of the Legislature ; and thenceforth South 
 Carolina was a sufficiently homogeneous commonwealth. 
 
 Looking merely to the public career of Calhoun, the special 
 pleader of the Southern aristocracy, we should expect to find him 
 born and reared among the planters of the low country. The 
 Calhouns, on the contrary, were up-country people, — farmers, 
 Whigs, Presbyterians, men of moderate means, who wielded the 
 axe and held the plough with their own hands, until enabled to 
 buy a few " new negroes," cheap and savage ; called new, be- 
 cause fresh from Africa. A family party of them (parents, four 
 sons, and a daughter) emigrated from the North of Ireland early 
 in the last century, and settled first in Pennsylvania ; then re- 
 moved to Western Virginia ; whence the defeat of Braddock, in 
 1755, drove them southward, and they found a permanent abode 
 in the extreme west of South Carolina, then an unbroken wilder- 
 ness. Of those four sons, Patrick Calhoun, the father of the Nul- 
 lifier, was the youngest. He was six years old when the family 
 left Ireland ; twenty-nine, when they planted the " Calhoun Set- 
 tlement " in Abbeville District, South Carolina. 
 
 Patrick Calhoun was a strong-headed, wrong-headed, very 
 brave, honest, ignorant man. His whole life, almost, was a bat- 
 tle. When the Calhouns had been but five years in their forest 
 home, the Cherokees attacked the settlement, destroyed it ut- 
 terly, killed one half the men, and drove the rest to the lower 
 country ; whence they dared not return till the peace of 1763. 
 Patrick Calhoun was elected to command the mounted rangers 
 raised to protect the frontiers, a duty heroically performed by 
 him. After the peace, the settlement enjoyed several years of 
 tranquillity, during which Patrick Calhoun was married to Martha 
 Caldwell, a native of Virginia, but the daughter of an Irish Pres- 
 byterian emigrant. Dui-ing this peaceful interval, all the family 
 prospered with the settlement which bore its name ; and Patrick, 
 who in his childhood had only learned to read and write, availed 
 himself of such leisure as he had to increase his knowledge. Be- 
 sides reading the books within his reach, which were few, he 
 learned to survey land, and practised that vocation to advantage. 
 
JOHN C. CALHOUN. 117 
 
 He was especially fond of reading history to gather new proofs of 
 the soundness of his political opinions, which were Whig to the 
 uttermost. The war of the Revolution broke in upon the settle- 
 ment, at length, and made deadly havoc there ; for it was warred 
 upon by three foes at once, — the British, the Tories, and the 
 Cherokees. The Tories murdered in cold blood a brother of 
 Patrick Calhoun's wife. Another of her brothers fell at Cow- 
 pens under thirty sabre-wounds. Another was taken prisoner, 
 and remained for nine months in close confinement at one of the 
 British Andersonvilles of that day. Patrick Calhoun, in many a 
 desperate encounter with the Indians, displayed singular coolness, 
 courage, adroitness, and tenacity. On one memorable occasion, 
 thirteen of his neighbors and himself maintained a forest fight for 
 several hours with a force of Cherokees ten times their number. 
 When seven of the white men had fallen, the rest made their es- 
 cape. Returning three days after to bury their dead, they found 
 upon the field the bodies of twenty-three Indian warriors. At 
 another time, as his son used to relate, he had a very long com- 
 bat with a chief noted for the certainty of his aim, — the Indian 
 behind a tree, the white man behind a fallen log. Four times 
 the wily Calhoun drew the Indian's fire by elevating his hat upon 
 his ramrod. The chief, at last, could not refrain from looking to 
 see the effect of his shot ; when one of his shoulders was slightly 
 exposed. On the instant, the white man's rifle sent a ball 
 through it ; the chief fled into the forest, and Patrick Calhoun 
 bore off as a trophy of the fight his own hat pierced with four 
 bullets. 
 
 This Patrick Calhoun illustrates well the North-of-Ireland 
 character ; one peculiarity of which is the possession of will dis- 
 proportioned to intellect. Hence a man of this race frequently 
 appears to striking advantage in scenes which demand chiefly an 
 exercise of will ; while in other spheres, which make, larger de- 
 mands upon the understanding, the same man may be simply mis- 
 chievous. We see this in the case of Andrew Jackson, who at 
 New Orleans was glorious ; at Washington almost wholly perni- 
 cious ; and in the case of Andrew Johnson, who was eminently 
 useful to his country in 1861, but obstructive and perilous to it in 
 
118 JOHN C. CALHOUN. 
 
 1866. For these Scotch-Irishmen, though they are usually very 
 honest men, and often right in their opinions, are an uninstructa- 
 ble race, who stick to a prejudice as tenaciously as to a principle, 
 and really suppose they are battling for right and truth, when 
 they are only wreaking a private vengeance or aiming at a per- 
 sonal advantage. Patrick Calhoun was the most radical of Dem- 
 ocrats ; one of your despisers of conventionality ; an enemy of 
 lawyers, thinking the common sense of mankind competent to 
 decide what is right without their aid ; a particular opponent of 
 the arrogant pretensions of the low-country aristocrats. When 
 the up-country people began to claim a voice in the government, 
 long since due to their numbers, the planters, of course, opposed 
 their demand. To establish their right to vote, Patrick Calhoun 
 and a party of his neighbors, armed with rifles, marched across 
 the State to within twenty-three miles of Charleston, and there 
 voted in defiance of the plantation lords. Events like this led to 
 the admission of members from the up-country ; and Patrick Cal- 
 houn was the first to represent that section in the Legislature. 
 It was entirely characteristic of him to vote against the adoption 
 of the Federal Constitution, on the ground that it authorized other 
 people to tax Carolinians ; which he said was taxation without 
 representation. That was just like a narrow, cranky, opiniona- 
 tive, unmanageable Calhoun. 
 
 Devoid of imagination and of humor, a hard-headed, eager 
 politician, he brought up his boy upon politics. This was sorry 
 nourishment for a child's mind, but he had little else to give him. 
 Gambling, hunting, whiskey, and politics were all there was to 
 relieve the monotony of life in a Southern back settlement ; and 
 the best men naturally threw themselves upon politics. Calhoun 
 told Miss Martineau that he could remember standing between 
 his father's knees, when he was only five years old, and listening 
 to political conversation. He told Duff Green that he had a dis- 
 tinct recollection of hearing his father say, when he was only 
 nine, that that government is best which allows to each individual 
 the largest liberty compatible with order and tranquillity, and that 
 improvements in political science consist in throwing off needless 
 restraints. It was a strange child that could remember such a 
 
JOHN C. CALHOUN. 119 
 
 remark. As Patrick Calhoun died in 1795, when his son was 
 thirteen years old, the boy must have been very young when he 
 heard it, even if he were mistaken as to the time. Whether 
 Patrick Calhoun ever touched upon the subject of slavery in his 
 conversations with his children, is not reported. We only know 
 that, late in the career of Mr. Calhoun, he used to be taunted by 
 his opponents in South Carolina with having once held that 
 slavery was good and justifiable only so far as it was preparatory 
 to freedom. He was accused of having committed the crime of 
 saying, in a public speech, that slavery was like the " scaffolding " 
 of an edifice, which, after having served its temporary purpose, 
 would be taken down, of course. We presume he said this ; be- 
 cause everything in his later speeches is flatly contradicted in 
 those of his earlier public life. Patrick Calhoun was a man to 
 give a reason for everything. He was an habitual theorizer and 
 generalizer, without possessing the knowledge requisite for safe 
 generalization. It is very probable that this apology for slavery 
 was part of his son's slender inheritance. 
 
 John Caldwell Calhoun — born in 1782, the youngest but one 
 in a family of five children — was eighteen years old before he 
 had a thought of being anything but a farmer. His father had 
 been dead five years. His only sister was married to that famous 
 Mr. Waddell, clergyman and schoolmaster, whose academy in 
 North Carolina was for so many years a great light in a dark place. 
 One of his brothers was a clerk in a mercantile house at Charles- 
 ton ; another was settled on a farm near by ; another was still a 
 boy. His mother lived upon the paternal farm ; and with her 
 lived her son John, who ploughed, hunted, fished, and rode, in the 
 manner of the farmers' sons in that country. At eighteen he 
 could read, write, and cipher; he had read Rollin, Robertson, 
 Voltaire's Charles XII., Brown's Essays, Captain Cook, and parts 
 of Locke. This, according to his own account, was the sum of 
 his knowledge, except that he had fully imbibed his father's 
 decided republican opinions. He shared to some degree his fa- 
 ther's prejudice, and the general prejudice of the upper country, 
 against lawyers; although a cousin, John Ewing Calhoun, had 
 risen high in that profession, had long served in the Legislature 
 
120 JOHN C. CALHOUN. 
 
 of South Carolina, and was about to be elected United States 
 Senator on the Jeffersonian side. As late as May 1800, when he 
 was past eighteen, preference and necessity appeared to fix him 
 in the vocation of farmer. The family had never been rich. 
 Indeed, the great Nullifier himself was a comparatively poor 
 man all his life, the number of his slaves never much exceeding 
 thirty ; which is equivalent to a working force of fifteen hands or 
 less. 
 
 In May, 1800, Calhoun's elder brother came home from 
 Charleston to spend the summer, bringing with him his city no- 
 tions. He awoke the dormant ambition of the youth, urged him 
 to go to school and become a professional man. But how could 
 he leave his mother alone on the farm ? and how could the money 
 be raised to pay for a seven years' education ? His mother and 
 his brother conferred upon these points, and satisfied him upon 
 both ; and in June, 1800, he made his way to the academy of his 
 brother-in-law, Waddell, which was then in Columbia County, 
 Georgia, fifty miles from the home of the Calhouns. In two 
 years and a quarter from the day he first opened a Latin gram- 
 mar, he entered the Junior Class of Yale College. This was 
 quick work. Teachers, however, are aware that late beginners, 
 who have spent their boyhood in growing, often stride past stu- 
 dents who have passed theirs in stunting the growth of mind and 
 body at school. Calhoun, late in life, often spoke of the immense 
 advantage which Southern boys had over Northern in not going 
 so early to school, and being so much on horseback and out of 
 doors. He said one day, about the year 1845: "At the North 
 you overvalue intellect; at the South we rely upon character; 
 and if ever there should be a collision that shall test the strength 
 of the two sections, you will find that character is stronger than 
 intellect, and will carry the day." The prophecy has been ful- 
 filled. 
 
 Timothy Dwight, Calvinist and Federalist, was President of 
 Yale College during Calhoun's residence there, and Thomas Jef- 
 ferson, Democrat and freethinker, was President of the United 
 States. Yale was a stronghold of Federalism. A brother of the 
 President of the College, in his Fourth-of-July oration delivered 
 
 
JOHN C. CALHOUN. 121 
 
 at New Haven four months after the inauguration of Jefferson 
 and Burr, announced to the students and citizens, that " the great 
 object " of those gentlemen and their adherents was " to destroy 
 every trace of civilization in the world, and to force mankind 
 back into a savage state." He also used the following language : 
 " We have now reached the consummation of democratic blessed- 
 ness. We have a country governed by blockheads and knaves ; 
 the ties of marriage, with all its felicities, are severed and de- 
 stroyed ; our wives and daughters are thrown into the stews ; 
 our children are cast into the world from the breast forgotten ; 
 filial piety is extinguished ; and our surnames, the only mark of 
 distinction among families, are abolished. Can the imagination 
 paint anything more dreadful this side hell?" These remark- 
 able statements, so far from surprising the virtuous people of 
 New Haven, were accepted by them, it appears, as facts, and 
 published with general approval. From what we know of Pres- 
 ident Dwight, we may conclude that he would regard his brother's 
 oration as a pardonable flight of hyperbole, based on truth. He 
 was a Federalist of the deepest dye. 
 
 Transferred to a scene where such opinions prevailed, it cost 
 the young republican no great exertion either of his intellect or 
 his firmness or his family pride to hold his ground. Of all 
 known men, he had the most complete confidence in the infalli- 
 bility of his own mind. He used to relate, that in the Senior 
 year, when he was one of very few in a class of seventy who 
 maintained republican opinions, President Dwight asked him, 
 « What is the legitimate source of power ? " " The people," 
 answered the student. Dr. Dwight combated this opinion ; Cal- 
 houn replied ; and the whole hour of recitation was consumed in 
 the debate. Dr. Dwight was so much struck with the ability 
 displayed by the student, that he remarked to a friend that Cal- 
 houn had talent enough to be President of the United States, and 
 that we should see him President in due time. In those in- 
 nocent days, an observation of that nature was made of every 
 young fellow who showed a little spirit and a turn for debate. 
 Fathers did not then say to their promising offspring, Beware, my 
 son, of self-seeking and shallow speaking, lest you should be con- 
 6 
 
122 JOHN C. CALHOUN. 
 
 signed to the White House, and be devoured by office-seekers. 
 People then regarded the Presidency as a kind of reward of 
 merit, the first step toward which was to get " up head " in the 
 spelling-class. There is reason to believe that young Calhoun 
 took the prediction of the Doctor very seriously. He took every- 
 thing seriously. He never made a joke in his life, and was to- 
 tally destitute of the sense of humor. It is doubtful if he was 
 ever capable of unbending so far as to play a game of football. 
 
 The ardent political discussions then in vogue had one effect 
 which the late Mr. Buckle would have pronounced most salutary ; 
 they prevented Dr. Dwight's severe theology from taking hold of 
 the minds of many students. Calhoun wholly escaped it. In 
 his speeches we find, of course, the stock allusions of a religious 
 nature with which all politicians essay to flatter their constituents ; 
 but he was never interested in matters theological. A century 
 earlier, he might have been the Jonathan Edwards of the South, 
 if there had been a South then. His was just the mind to have 
 revelled in theological subtilties, and to have calmly, closely, un- 
 relentingly argued nearly the whole human race into endless and 
 hopeless perdition. His was just the nature to have contemplated 
 his argument with complacency, and its consequences without 
 emotion. 
 
 Graduating with credit in 1804, he repaired to the famous 
 Law School at Litchfield in Connecticut, where he remained a 
 year and a half, and won general esteem. Tradition reports him 
 a diligent student and an admirable debater there. As to his 
 moral conduct, that was always irreproachable. That is to say, 
 he was at every period of his life continent, temperate, orderly, 
 and out of debt. In 1806, being then twenty-four years of age, 
 he returned to South Carolina, and, after studying a short time 
 in a law office at Charleston, he went at last to his native Abbe- 
 ville to complete his preparation for the bar. He was still a law 
 student at that place when the event occurred which called him 
 into public life. 
 
 June 22d, 1807, at noon, the United States frigate Chesapeake, 
 thirty-eight guns, left her anchorage at Hampton Roads, and put 
 to sea, bound for the Mediterranean. The United States being 
 
JOHN C. CALHOUN. 123 
 
 at peace with all the world, the Chesapeake was very far from 
 being in proper man-of-war trim. Her decks were littered with 
 furniture, baggage, stores, cables, and animals. The guns were 
 loaded, but rammers, matches, wadding, cannon-balls, were all 
 out of place, and not immediately accessible. The crew were 
 merchant sailors and landsmen, all undrilled in the duties pecu- 
 liar to an armed ship. There had been lying for some time at 
 the same anchorage the British frigate Leopard, fifty guns ; and 
 this ship also put to sea at noon of the same day. The Leopard 
 being in perfect order, and manned by a veteran crew, took the 
 lead of the Chesapeake, and kept it until three in the afternoon, 
 when she was a mile in advance. Then she wore round, came 
 within speaking distance, lowered a boat, and sent a lieutenant 
 on board the American ship. This officer bore a despatch from 
 the admiral of the station, ordering any captain who should fall 
 in with the Chesapeake to search her for deserters. The Amer- 
 ican commander replied that he knew of no deserters on board 
 his ship, and could not permit a search to be made, his orders not 
 authorizing the same. The lieutenant returned. As soon as he 
 had got on board, and his boat was stowed away, the Leopard 
 fired a full broadside into the American frigate. The American 
 commodore, being totally unprepared for such an event, could n< t 
 return the fire ; and therefore, when his ship had received twenty- 
 one shot in her hull, when her rigging was much cut up, when 
 three of her crew were killed and eighteen wounded, the commo- 
 dore himself among the latter, he had no choice but to lower his 
 flag. Then the search was made, and four men, claimed as 
 deserters, were taken ; after which the Leopard continued her 
 course, and the crippled Chesapeake returned to Hampton Roads. 
 The American commander was sentenced by a court-martial to 
 five years' suspension for going to sea in such a condition. The 
 English government recalled the admiral who ordered, and de- 
 prived of his ship the captain who committed, this unparalleled 
 outrage, but made no other reparation. 
 
 No words of ours could convey any adequate idea of the rage 
 which this event excited in the people of the United States. For 
 a time, the Federalists themselves were ready for war. There 
 
124 JOHN C. CALHOUN. 
 
 were meetings everywhere to denounce it, and especially in the 
 Southern States, always more disposed than the Northern to be- 
 gin the shedding of blood, and already the main reliance of the 
 Republican party. Remote and rustic Abbeville, a very Repub- 
 lican district, was not silent on this occasion ; and who so proper 
 to draw and support the denunciatory resolutions as young Cal- 
 houn, the son of valiant Patrick, fresh from college, though now 
 in his twenty-sixth year? The student performed this duty, as 
 requested, and spoke so well that his neighbors at once concluded 
 that he was the very man, lawyer as he was, to represent them 
 in the Legislature, where for nearly thirty years his father had 
 served them. At the next election, in a district noted for its 
 aversion to lawyers, wherein no lawyer had ever been chosen to 
 the Legislature, though many had been candidates, he was elected 
 at the head of his ticket, His triumph was doubtless owing in a 
 great degree to the paramount influence of his family. Still, 
 even we, who knew him only in his gaunt and sad decline, can 
 easily imagine that at twenty-six he must have been an engag- 
 ing, attractive man. Like most of his race, he was rather slen- 
 der, but very erect, with a good deal of dignity and some grace 
 in his carriage and demeanor. His eyes were always remarkably 
 fine and brilliant, He had a well- developed and strongly set nose, 
 cheek-bones high, and cheeks rather sunken. His mouth was 
 large, and could never have been a comely feature. His early 
 portraits show his hair erect on his forehead, as we all remem- 
 ber it, unlike Jackson, whose hair at forty still fell low over his 
 forehead. His voice could never have been melodious, but it was 
 always powerful. At every period of his life, his manners, when 
 in company with his inferiors in age or standing, were extremely 
 agreeable, even fascinating. We have heard a well-known edi- 
 tor, who began life as a " page " in the Senate-chamber, say that 
 there was no Senator whom the pages took such delight in serv- 
 ing as Mr. Calhoun. " Why ? " — " Because he was so democra- 
 tic." — " How democratic ? " — " He was as polite to a page as to 
 the President of the Senate, and as considerate of his feelings." 
 We have heard another member of the press, whose first employ- 
 ment was to report the speeches of Clay, Webster, and Calhoun, 
 
JOHN C. CALHOUN. 127 
 
 bear similar testimony to the frank, engaging courtesy of his irfi 
 tercourse with the corps of reporters. It is fair, therefore, to con- 
 clude that his early popularity at home was due as much to his 
 character and manners as to his father's name and the influence 
 of his relatives. 
 
 He served two years in the Legislature, and in the intervals 
 between the sessions practised law at Abbeville. At once he took 
 a leading position in the Legislature. He had been in his seat 
 but a few days when the Republican members, as the custom 
 then was, met in caucus to nominate a President and Vice-Presi- 
 dent of the United States. For Mr. Madison the caucus was 
 unanimous, but there was a difference with regard to the Vice- 
 Presidency, then filled by the aged George Clinton of New York, 
 who represented the anti-Virginian wing of the party in power. 
 Mr. Calhoun, in a set speech, opposed the renomination of Gov- 
 ernor Clinton, on the ground that in the imminency of a war with 
 England the Republican party ought to present an unbroken 
 front. He suggested the nomination of John Langdon of New 
 Hampshire for the second office. At this late day we cannot de- 
 termine whether this suggestion was original with Mr. Calhoun. 
 We only know that the caucus affirmed it, and that the nomi- 
 nation was afterwards tendered to Mr. Langdon by the Republi- 
 can party, and declined by him. Mr. Calhoun's speech on this 
 occasion was the expression of Southern opinions as to the for- 
 eign policy of the country. The South was then nearly ready for 
 war with England, while Northern Republicans still favored Mr. 
 Jefferson's non-intercourse policy. In this instance, as in so 
 many others, we find the Slave States, which used to plume them- 
 selves upon being the conservative element in an else unrestrain- 
 able democracy, ready for war first, though far from being the 
 worst sufferers from England's piracies. We should have had no 
 war from 1782 to 1865, but for them. We also find Mr. Cal- 
 houn, in this his first utterance as a public man, the mouth-piece 
 of his " section." He has been styled the most inconsistent of 
 our statesmen ; but beneath the palpable contradictions of his 
 speeches, there is to be noticed a deeper consistency. Whatever 
 opinion, whatever policy, he may have advocated, he always 
 
124 
 
 JOHN C. CALHOUN. 
 
 c .poke the sense of what Mr. Sumner used to call the Southern 
 oligarchy. If it changed, he changed. If he appeared sometimes 
 to lead it, it was by leading it in the direction in which it wanted 
 to go. He was doubtless as sincere in this as any great special 
 pleader is in a cause in which all his powers are enlisted. Cal- 
 houn's mind was narrow and provincial. He could not have 
 been the citizen of a large place. As a statesman he was natu- 
 rally the advocate of something special and sectional, something 
 not the whole. 
 
 Distinguished in the Legislature, he was elected, late in 1810, 
 by a very great majority, to represent his district in Congress. 
 In May, 1811, he was married to a second-cousin, Floride Cal- 
 houn, who brought a considerable accession to his slender estate. 
 November 4, 1811, he took his seat in the House of Represen- 
 tatives. Thus, at the early age of twenty-nine, he was fairly 
 launched into public life, with the advantage, usually enjoyed 
 then by Southern members, of being independent in his circum- 
 stances. Though unknown to the country, his fame had preceded 
 him to Washington ; and the Speaker, Mr. Clay, gave him a 
 place on the Committee on Foreign Relations. This Committee, 
 considering that Congress had been summoned a month earlier 
 than usual for the express purpose of dealing with foreign rela- 
 tions, was at once the most important and the most conspicuous 
 committee of the House. 
 
 Mr. Calhoun's first session gave him national reputation, and 
 made him a leader of the war party in Congress. We could per- 
 haps say the leader, since Mr. Clay was not upon the floor. After 
 surveying the novel scene around him for six weeks, he delivered 
 his maiden speech, — a plain, forcible, not extraordinary argu- 
 ment in favor of preparing for war. It was prodigiously success- 
 ful, so far as the reputation of the speaker was concerned. Mem- 
 bers gathered round to congratulate the young orator ; and Fa- 
 ther Ritchie (if he was a father then) " hailed this young Caro- 
 linian as one of the master spirits who stamp their names upon 
 the age in which they live." This speech contains one passage 
 which savors of the " chivalric" taint, and indicates the provincial 
 mind. In replying to the objection founded on the expenses of a 
 
JOHN C. CALHOUN. 127 
 
 war, he said : " I enter my solemn protest against this low and 
 ' calculating avarice ' entering this hall of legislation. It is only Jit 
 for shops and counting-houses, and ought not to disgrace the seat 
 of power by its squalid aspect. Whenever it touches sovereign 
 power, the nation is ruined. It is too short-sighted to defend 
 itself. It is a compromising spirit, always ready to yield a part 
 to save the residue. It is too timid to have in itself the laws of 
 self-preservation. Sovereign power is never safe but under the 
 shield of honor." This was thought very fine talk in those sim- 
 ple days among the simple Southern country members. 
 
 As the session progressed, Mr. Calhoun spoke frequently, and 
 with greater effect. Wisely he never spoke. In his best efforts 
 we see that something which we know not what to name, un- 
 less we call it Southernism. If it were allowable to use a slan<* 
 expression, we should style the passages to which we refer ef- 
 fective bosh. The most telling passage in the most telling 
 speech which he delivered at this session may serve to illus- 
 trate our meaning. Imagine these short, vigorous sentences 
 uttered with great rapidity, in a loud, harsh voice, and with 
 energy the most intense : — 
 
 " Tic down a hero, and he feels the puncture of a pin ; throw him 
 into battle, and he is almost insensible to vital gashes. So in war. 
 Impelled alternately by hope and fear, stimulated by revenge, de- 
 pressed by shame, or elevated by victory, the people become invinci- 
 ble. No privation can shake their fortitude ; no calamity break their 
 spirit. Even when equally successful, the contrast between the two 
 systems is striking. War and restriction may leave the country equally 
 exhausted ; but the latter not only leaves you poor, but, even when 
 successful, dispirited, divided, discontented, with diminished patriotism, 
 and the morals of a considerable portion of your people corrupted. 
 Not so in war. In that state, the common danger unites all, streng- 
 thens the bonds of society, and feeds the flame of patriotism. The na- 
 tional character mounts to energy. In exchange for the expenses and 
 privations of war, you obtain military and naval skill, and a more per- 
 fect organization of such parts of your administration as are connected 
 with the science of national defence. Sir, are these advantages to be 
 countedras trifles in the present state of the world? Can they be 
 measured by moneyed valuation? I would prefer a single victory 
 over the enemy, by sea or land, to all the good we shall ever derive 
 
128 JOHN C. CALHOUN. 
 
 from the continuation of the Non-importation act. I know not that 
 a victory would produce an equal pressure on the enemy ; but I am 
 certain of what is of greater consequence, it would be accompanied by 
 more salutary effects to ourselves. The memory of Saratoga, Prince- 
 ton, and Eutaw is immortal. It is there you will find the country's 
 boast and pride, — the inexhaustible source of great and heroic senti- 
 ments. But what will history say of restriction ? What examples 
 worthy of imitation will it furnish to posterity ? What pride, what 
 pleasure will our children find in the events of such times? Let me 
 not be considered romantic. This nation ought to be taught to rely on 
 its courage, its fortitude, its skill and virtue, for protection. These are 
 the only safeguards in the hour of danger. Man was endued with 
 these great qualities for his defence. There is nothing about him that 
 indicates that he is to conquer by endurance. He is not incrusted in 
 a shell ; he is not taught to rely upon his insensibility, his passive suffer- 
 ing, for defence. No, sir; it is on the invincible mind, on a magnani- 
 mous nature, he ought to rely. Here is the superiority of our kind ; it 
 is these that render man the lord of the world. Nations rise above 
 nations, as they are endued in a greater degree with these brilliant 
 quabties." 
 
 This passage is perfectly characteristic of Calhoun, whose 
 speeches present hundreds of such inextricable blendings of truth 
 and falsehood. 
 
 We have the written testimony of an honorable man, still liv- 
 ing, Commodore Charles Stewart, U. S. K, that John C. Calhoun 
 was a conscious traitor to the Union as early as 1812. In De- 
 cember of that year, Captain Stewart's ship, the Constitution, was 
 refitting at the Washington Navy Yard, and the Captain was 
 boarding at Mrs. Bushby's, with Mr. Clay, Mr. Calhoun, and 
 many other Republican members. Conversing one evening with 
 the new member from South Carolina, he told him that he was 
 " puzzled " to account for the close alliance which existed between 
 the Southern planters and the Northern Democracy. 
 
 " You," said Captain Stewart, " in the South and Southwest, are de- 
 cidedly the aristocratic portion of this Union ; you are so in holding 
 persons in perpetuity in slavery ; you are so in every domestic quality, 
 so in every habit in your fives, living, and actions, so in habits, cus- 
 toms, intercourse, and manners ; you neither work with your hands, 
 heads, nor any machinery, but live and have your living, not in ac- 
 
JOHN C. CALHOUN. 129 
 
 cordance with the will of your Creator, but by the sweat of slavery, 
 and yet you assume all the attributes, professions, and advantages of 
 democracy." 
 
 Mr. Calhoun, aged thirty, replied thus to Captain Stewart, aged 
 thirty-four : — 
 
 " I see you speak through the head of a young statesman, and from 
 the heart of a patriot, but you lose sight of the politician and the sec- 
 tional policy of the people. I admit your conclusions in respect to us 
 Southrons. That we are essentially aristocratic, I cannot deny ; but 
 we can and do yield much to democracy. This is our sectional policy ; 
 we are from necessity thrown upon and solemnly wedded to that party, 
 however it may occasionally clash with our feelings, for the conserva- 
 tion of our interests. It is through our affiliation with that party in 
 the Middle and Western States that we hold power ; but when we 
 cease thus to control this nation through a disjointed democracy, or 
 any material obstacle in that party which shall tend to throw us out of 
 that rule and control, we shall then resort to the dissolution of the 
 Union. The compromises in the Constitution, under the circumstances, 
 were sufficient for our fathers, but, under the altered condition of our 
 country from that period, leave to the South no resource but dissolution ; 
 for no amendments to the Constitution could be reached through a 
 convention of the people under their three-fourths rule." 
 
 Probably all of our readers have seen this conversation in 
 print before. But it is well for us to consider it again and again. 
 It is the key to all the seeming inconsistencies of Mr. Calhoun's 
 career. He came up to Congress, and took the oath to support 
 the Constitution, secretly resolved to break up the country just 
 as soon as the Southern planters ceased to control it for the 
 maintenance of their peculiar interest. The reader will note, too, 
 the distinction made by this young man, who was never youthful, 
 between the " statesman " and the " politician," and between the 
 " heart of a patriot " and " the sectional policy of the people." 
 
 Turning from his loathsome and despicable exposition to the 
 Congressional career of Mr. Calhoun, we find no indication there 
 of the latent traitor. He was merely a very active, energetic 
 member of the Republican party ; supporting the war by assid- 
 uous labors in committee, and by intense declamation of the kind 
 of which we have given a specimen. In all his speeches there 
 6* i 
 
130 JOHN C. CALHOUN. 
 
 is not a touch of greatness. He declared that Demosthenes 
 was his model, — an orator who was a master of all the arts, 
 all the artifices, and all the tricks by which a mass of igno- 
 rant and turbulent hearers can be kept attentive, but who lias 
 nothing to impart to a member of Congress who honestly desires 
 to convince his equals. Mr. Calhoun's harangues in the sup- 
 posed Demosthenean style gave him, however, great reputation 
 out of doors, while his diligence, his dignified and courteous 
 manners, gained him warm admirers on the floor. He was a 
 messmate of Mr. Clay at this time. Besides agreeing in politics, 
 they were on terms of cordial personal intimacy. Henry Clay, 
 Speaker of the House, was but five years older than Calhoun, 
 and in everything but years much younger. Honest patriots 
 pointed to these young men with pride and hope, congratulating 
 each other that, though the Revolutionary statesmen were grow- 
 ing old and passing away, the high places of the Republic would 
 be filled, in due time, by men worthy to succeed them. 
 
 When the war was over, a strange tiling was to be noted in 
 the politics of the United States : the Federal party was dead, 
 but the Republican party had adopted its opinions. The disas- 
 ters of the war had convinced almost every man of the necessity 
 of investing the govei^nment with the power to wield the re- 
 sources of the country more readily ; and, accordingly, we find 
 leading Republicans, like Judge Story, John Quincy Adams, and 
 Mr. Clay, favoring the measures which had formerly been the 
 special rallying-cries of the Federalists. Judge Story spoke the 
 feeling of his party when he wrote, in 1815 : " Let us extend the 
 national authority over the whole extent of power given by the 
 Constitution. Let us have great military and naval schools, an 
 adequate regular army, the broad foundations laid of a permanent 
 navy, a national bank, a national bankrupt act," etc., etc. The 
 strict-constructionists were almost silenced in the general cry, 
 " Let us be a Nation." In the support of all the measures to 
 which this feeling gave rise, especially the national bank, inter- 
 nal improvements, and a protective tariff, Mr.« Calhoun went as 
 far as any man, and farther than most; for such at that time was 
 the humor of the planters. 
 
JOHN C. CALHOUN. 131 
 
 To the principle of a protective tariff he was peculiarly com- 
 mitted. It had not been his intention to take part in the debates 
 on the Tariff Bill of 1816. On the 6th of April, while he was 
 busy writing in a committee-room, Mr. Samuel D. Ingham of 
 Pennsylvania, his particular friend, and political ally, came to 
 him and said that the House had fallen into some confusion while 
 discussing the tariff bill, and added, that, as it was " difficult to 
 rally so large a body when once broken on a tax bill," he wished 
 Mr. Calhoun would speak on the question in order to keep the 
 House together. " What can I say ? " replied the member from 
 South Carolina. Mr. Ingham, however, persisted, and Mr. Cal- 
 houn addressed the House. An amendment had just been intro- 
 duced to leave cotton goods unprotected, a proposition which had 
 been urged on the ground that Congress had no authority to 
 impose any duty except for revenue. On rising to speak, Mr. 
 Calhoun at once, and most unequivocally, committed himself to 
 the protective principle. He began by saying, that, if the right 
 to protect had not been called in question, he woidd not have spoken 
 at all. It was solely to assist in establishing that right that he 
 had been induced, without previous preparation, to take part in 
 the debate. He then proceeded to deliver an ordinary protec- 
 tionist speech ; without, however, entering upon the question of 
 constitutional right. He merely dwelt upon the great benefits to 
 be derived from affording to our infant manufactures " immediate 
 and ample protection." That the Constitution interposed no 
 obstacle, was assumed by him throughout. He concluded by ob- 
 serving, that a flourishing manufacturing interest would "bind 
 together more closely our widely-spread republic," since "it will 
 greatly increase our mutual dependence and intercourse, and 
 excite an increased attention to internal improvements, — a sub- 
 ject every way so intimately connected with the ultimate attain- 
 ment of national strength and the perfection of our political 
 institutions." He further observed, that " the liberty and union 
 of this country are inseparable," and that the destruction of 
 either would involve the destruction of the other. He concluded 
 his speech with these words : '• Disunion, — this single word 
 comprehends almost the sum of our political dangers, and against 
 it we ought to be perpetually guarded." 
 
132 JOHN C. CALHOUN. 
 
 The time has passed for any public man to claim credit for 
 " consistency." A person who, after forty years of public life, 
 can truly say that he has never changed an opinion, must be 
 either a demigod or a fool. We do not blame Mr. Calhoun for 
 ceasing to be a protectionist and becoming a free-trader; for half 
 the thinking world has changed sides on that question during the 
 last thirty years. A growing mind must necessarily change its 
 opinions. But there is a consistency from which no man, public 
 or private, can ever be absolved, — the consistency of his state- 
 ments with fact. In the year 1833, in his speech on the Force 
 Bill, Mr. Calhoun referred to his tariff speech of 1816 in a man- 
 ner which excludes him from the ranks of men of honor. He 
 had the astonishing audacity to say : " I am constrained in can- 
 dor to acknowledge, for I wish to disguise nothing, that the pro- 
 tective principle was recognized by the Act of 1816. How this 
 was overlooked at the time, it is not in my power to say. It 
 escaped my observation, which I can account for only on the 
 ground that the principle was new, and that my attention was 
 engaged by another important subject." The charitable reader 
 may interpose here, and say that Mr. Calhoun may have for- 
 gotten his speech of 1816. Alas ! no. He had that speech be- 
 fore him at the time. Vigilant opponents had unearthed it, and 
 kindly presented a copy to the author. We do not believe that, 
 in all the debates of the American Congress, there is another in- 
 stance of flat falsehood as bad as this. It happens that the 
 speech of 1816 and that of 1833 are both published in the same 
 volume of the Works of Mr. Calhoun (Vol. II. pp. 163 and 197). 
 We advise our readers who have the time and opportunity to 
 read both, if they wish to see how a false position necessitates a 
 false tongue. Those who take our advice will also discover why 
 it was that Mr. Calhoun dared to utter such an impudent false- 
 hood : his speeches are such appallingly dull reading, that there 
 was very little risk of a busy people's comparing the interpreta- 
 tion with the text. 
 
 It was John C. Calhoun who, later in the same session, intro- 
 duced the bill for setting apart the dividends and bonus of the 
 United States Bank as a permanent fund for internal improve- 
 
JOHN C. CALHOUN. 133 
 
 merits. His speech on this bill, besides going all lengths in favor 
 of the internal improvement system, presents some amusing con- 
 trasts with his later speeches on the same subject. His hearers 
 of 1835 to 1850 must have smiled on reading in the speech of 
 1817 such sentences as these: — 
 
 "I am no advocate for refined arguments on the Constitution. The 
 instrument was not intended as a thesis for the logician to exercise his 
 ingenuity on. It ought to be construed -with plain good-sense." " If 
 we are restricted in the use of our money to the enumerated powers, 
 on what principle can the purchase of Louisiana be justified ? " " The 
 uniform sense of Congress and the country furnishes better evidence 
 of the true interpretation of the Constitution than the most refined and 
 subtle arguments." 
 
 Mark this, too : — 
 
 " In a country so extensive and so various in its interests, what is 
 necessary for the common interest may apparently be opposed to the 
 interest of particular sections. It must be submitted to as the condition 
 of our greatness." 
 
 Well might he say, in the same speech : — 
 
 " We may reasonably raise our eyes to a most splendid future, if we 
 only act in a manner worthy of our advantages. If, however, neglect- 
 ing them, we permit a low, sordid, selfish, sectional spirit to take pos- 
 session of this House, this happy scene will vanish. We will divide ; 
 and, in its consequences, will follow misery and despotism." 
 
 With this speech before him and before the country, Mr. Cal- 
 houn had not the candor to avow, in later years, a complete change 
 of opinion. He could only go so far as to say, when opposing the 
 purchase of the Madison Papers in 1837, that, "at his entrance 
 upon public life, he had inclined to that interpretation of the Con- 
 stitution which favored a latitude of powers." Inclined ! He was 
 a most enthusiastic and thorough-going champion of that inter- 
 pretation. His scheme of internal improvements embraced a net- 
 work of post-roads and canals from " Maine to Louisiana," and a 
 system of harbors for lake and ocean. He kindled, he glowed, 
 at the spectacle which his imagination conjured up, of the whole 
 country rendered accessible, and of the distant farmer selling his 
 produce at a price not seriously less than that which it brought 
 
134 JOHN C. CALHOUN. 
 
 on the coast. On this subject he became animated, interesting, 
 almost eloquent. And, so far from this advocacy being confined 
 to the period of his " entrance upon political life," he continued 
 to be its very warmest exponent as late as 1819, when he had 
 been ten years in public life. In that year, having to report upon 
 the condition of military roads and fortifications, his flaming zeal 
 for a grand and general system of roads and canals frequently 
 bursts the bounds of the subject he had to treat. He tells Con- 
 gress that the internal improvements which are best for peace are 
 best for war also ; and expatiates again upon his dazzling dream 
 of "connecting Louisiana by a durable and well-finished road 
 with Maine, and Boston with Savannah by a well-established 
 line of internal navigation." The United States, he said, with 
 its vast systems of lakes, rivers, and mountains, its treble line 
 of sea-coast, its valleys large enough for empires, was " a world 
 of itself," and needed nothing but to be rendered accessible. 
 From what we know of the way things are managed in Congress, 
 we should guess that he was invited to make this report for the 
 very purpose of affording to the foremost champion of internal 
 improvements an opportunity of lending a helping hand to pend- 
 ing bills. 
 
 Mr. Calhoun served six years in the House of Representa- 
 tives, and grew in the esteem of Congress and the country at 
 every session. As it is pleasing to see an old man at the theatre 
 entering into the merriment of the play, since it shows that his 
 heart has triumphed over the cares of life, and he has preserved 
 a little of his youth, so is it eminently graceful in a young man 
 to have something of the seriousness of age, especially when his 
 conduct is even more austere than his demeanor. Mr. Clay at 
 this time was addicted to gaming, like most of the Western and 
 Southern members, and he was not averse to the bottle. Mr. 
 Webster was reckless in expenditure, fond of his ease, and loved 
 a joke better than an argument. In the seclusion of Washington, 
 many members lived a very gay, rollicking life. Mr. Calhoun 
 never gambled, never drank to excess, never jested, never quar- 
 relled, cared nothing for his ease, and tempered the gravity of his 
 demeanor by an admirable and winning courtesy. A deep and 
 
JOHN C. CALHOUN. 135 
 
 serious ambition impelled and restrained bim. Like boys at 
 school, Clay and Webster were eager enougb to get to the head 
 of the class, but they did not brood over it all the time, and never 
 feel comfortable unless they were conning their spelling-book ; 
 while little Calhoun expended all his soul in the business, and 
 had no time or heart left for play. Consequently he advanced 
 rapidly for one of his size, and was universally pointed at as the 
 model scholar. Accidents, too, generally favor a rising man. Mr. 
 Calhoun made an extremely lucky hit in 1815, which gave mem- 
 bers the highest opinion of his sagacity. In opposing an ill- 
 digested scheme for a national bank, he told the House that the 
 bill was so obviously defective and unwise, that, if news of peace 
 should arrive that day, it would not receive fifteen votes. News 
 of peace, which was totally unexpected, did arrive that very 
 hour, and the bill was rejected the next day by about the major- 
 ity which he had predicted. At the next session, he won an im- 
 mense reputation for firmness. An act was passed changing the 
 mode of compensating members of Congress from six dollars a 
 day to fifteen hundred dollars a year. We were a nation of rus- 
 tics then ; and this harmless measure excited a disgust in the 
 popular mind so intense and general, that most of the members 
 who had voted for it declined to present themselves for re-elec- 
 tion. Calhoun was one of the guilty ones. Popular as he was 
 in his district, supported by two powerful family connections, — 
 his own and his wife's, — admired throughout the State as one 
 who had done honor to it upon the conspicuous scene of Congres- 
 sional debate, — even he was threatened with defeat. Formi- 
 dable candidates presented themselves. In these circumstances 
 he mounted the stump, boldly justified his vote, and defended the 
 odious bill. He was handsomely re-elected, and when the bill 
 was up for repeal in the House he again supported it with all his 
 former energy. At the conclusion of his speech, a member from 
 New York, Mr. Grosvenor, a political opponent, with whom Cal- 
 houn had not been on speaking terms for two years, sprang to 
 his feet, enraptured, and began to express his approval of the 
 speech in ordinary parliamentary language. But his feelings 
 could not be relieved in that manner. He paused a moment, and 
 then said : — 
 
136 JOHN C. CALHOUN. 
 
 " Mr. Speaker, I will not be restrained. No barrier shall exist which 
 I will not leap over for the purpose of offering to that gentleman my 
 thanks for the judicious, independent, and national course which he has 
 pursued in this House for the last two years, and particularly upon the 
 subject now before us. Let the honorable gentleman continue with the 
 same manly independence, aloof from party views and local prejudices, 
 to pursue the great interests of his country, and fulfil the high destiny 
 for which it is manifest he was born. The buzz of popular applause 
 may not cheer him on his way, but he will inevitably arrive at a high 
 and happy elevation in the view of his country and the world." 
 
 Such scenes as this enhance the prestige of a rising man. 
 Members weak at home envied at once and admired a man who 
 was strong enough to bring over his constituents to his opinion. 
 He was fortunate, too, in this, that a triumph so striking occurred 
 just before he left the House for another sphere of public life. 
 He had what the actors call a splendid exit.^ 
 
 The inauguration of Mr. Monroe on the 4th of March, 1817, 
 ushered in the era of good feeling, and gave to Henry Clay the 
 first of his long series of disappointments. As Secretaries of 
 State had usually succeeded their chiefs in the Presidency, the 
 appointment of Mr. Adams to that office by Mr. Monroe was re- 
 garded almost in the light of a nomination to the succession. To 
 add to Mr. Clay's mortification, he was tendered the post of Sec- 
 retary of War, which he had declined a year before, and now 
 again declined. The President next selected General Jackson, 
 then in the undimmed lustre of his military renown, and still 
 holding his Major-General's commission. He received, however, 
 a private notification that General Jackson would not accept a 
 place in the Cabinet. The President then offered the post to the 
 aged Governor Isaac Shelby of Kentucky, who had the good 
 sense to decline it. There appear to have been negotiations with 
 other individuals, but at length, in October, 1817, the place was 
 offered to Mr. Calhoun, who, after much hesitation, accepted it, 
 and entered upon the discharge of its duties in December. His 
 friends, we are told, unanimously disapproved his going into office, 
 as they believed him formed to shine in debate rather than in the 
 transaction of business. 
 
 Fortune favored him again. Entering the office after a long 
 
JOHN C. CALHOUN. 137 
 
 vacancy, and when it was filled with the unfinished business of 
 the war, — fifty million dollars of deferred claims, for one item, 
 — he had the same easy opportunity for distinction which a stew- 
 ard has who takes charge of an estate just out of chancery, and 
 under a new proprietor who has plenty of money. The sweep- 
 ing up of the dead leaves, the gathering of the fallen branches, and 
 the weeding out of the paths, changes the aspect of the place, and 
 gives the passer-by a prodigious idea of the efficiency of the new 
 broom. The country was alive, too, to the necessity of coast and 
 frontier defences, and there was much building of forts during the 
 seven years of Mr. Calhoun's tenure of place. Respecting the 
 manner in which he discharged the multifarious and unusual du- 
 ties of his office, we have never heard anything but commenda- 
 tion. He was prompt, punctual, diligent, courteous, and firm. 
 The rules which he drew up for the regulation of the War De- 
 partment remained in force, little changed, until the magnitude of 
 the late contest abolished or suspended all ancient methods. The 
 claims of the soldiers were rapidly examined and passed upon. 
 It was Mr. Calhoun who first endeavored to collect considerable 
 bodies of troops for instruction at one post. He had but six 
 thousand men in all, but he contrived to get together several com- 
 panies of artillery at Fortress Monroe for drill. He appeared to 
 take much interest in the expenditure of the ten thousand dollars 
 a year which Congress voted for the education of the Indians. 
 He reduced the expenses of his office, which was a very popular 
 thing at that day. He never appointed nor removed a clerk for 
 opinion's sake. In seven years he only removed two clerks, 
 both for cause, and to both were given in writing the reasons of 
 their removal. There was no special merit in this, for at that 
 day to do otherwise would have been deemed infamous. 
 
 Mr. Calhoun, as a member of Mr. Monroe's Cabinet, still 
 played the part of a national man, and supported the measures 
 of his party without exception. Scarcely a trace of the sectional 
 champion yet appears. In 1819, he gave a written opinion favor- 
 ing the cession of Texas in exchange for Florida ; the motive of 
 which was to avoid alarming the North by the prospective increase 
 of Slave States. In later years, Mr. Calhoun, of course, wished 
 
138 JOHN C. CALHOUN. 
 
 to deny this ; and' the written opinions of Mr. Monroe's Cabinet 
 on that question mysteriously disappeared from the archives of 
 the Stale Department. We have the positive testimony of Mr. 
 John Quincy Adams, that Calhoun, in common with most Southern 
 men of that day, approved the Missouri Compromise of 1820, 
 and gave a written opinion that it was a constitutional measure. 
 That he was still an enthusiast for internal improvements, we have 
 already mentioned. 
 
 The real difficulty of the War Department, however, as of the 
 State Department, during the Monroe administration, was a cer- 
 tain Major-General Andrew Jackson, commanding the Military 
 Department of the South. The popularity of the man who had 
 restored the nation's self-love by ending a disastrous war with a 
 dazzling and most unexpected victory, was something different 
 from the respect which we all now feel for the generals distin- 
 guished in the late war. The first honors of the late war are 
 divided among four chieftains, each of whom contributed to the 
 final success at least one victory that was essential to it. But in 
 1815, among the military heroes of the war that had just closed 
 General Jackson stood peerless and alone. His success in defend- 
 ing the Southwest, ending in a blaze of glory below New Orleans, 
 utterly eclipsed all the other achievements of the war, excepting 
 alone the darling triumphs on the ocean and the lakes. The defer- 
 ential spirit of Mr. Monroe's letters to the General, and the readi- 
 ness of every one everywhere to comply with his wishes, show 
 that his popularity, even then, constituted him a power in the Re- 
 public. It was said in later times, that " General Jackson's pop- 
 ularity could stand anything," and in one sense this was true : it 
 could stand anything that General Jackson was likely to do. 
 Andrew Jackson could never have done a cowardly act, or be- 
 trayed a friend, or knowingly violated a trust, or broken his word, 
 or forgotten a debt. He was always so entirely certain that he, 
 Andrew Jackson, was in the right, his conviction on this point was 
 so free from the least quaver of doubt, that he could always con- 
 vince other men that he was right, and carry the multitude with 
 him. His honesty, courage, and inflexible resolution, joined to 
 his ignorance, narrowness, intensity, and liability to prejudice, 
 
JOHN C. CALHOUN. 139 
 
 rendered him at once the idol of his countrymen and the plague 
 of all men with whom he had official connection. Drop an An- 
 drew Jackson from the clouds upon any spot of earth inhabited 
 by men, and he will have half a dozen deadly feuds upon his 
 hands in thirty days. 
 
 Mr. Calhoun inherited a quarrel with Jackson from George 
 Graham, his pro tempore predecessor in the War Department. 
 This Mr. Graham was the gentleman (" spy," Jackson termed 
 him) despatched by President Jefferson in 1806 to the Western 
 country to look into the mysterious proceedings of Aaron Burr, 
 which led to the explosion of Burr's scheme. This was enough 
 to secure the bitterest enmity of Jackson, who wholly and always 
 favored Burr's design of annihilating the Spanish power in North 
 America, and who, as President of the United States, rewarded 
 Burr's followers, and covertly assisted Houston to carry out part 
 of Burr's project. Graham had sent orders to Jackson's subor- 
 dinates directly, instead of sending them through the chief of the 
 Department. Jackson, after due remonstrance, ordered his offi- 
 cers not to obey any orders but such as were communicated by or 
 through himself. This was a high-handed measure ; but Mr. 
 Calhoun, on coming into power, passed it by without notice, and 
 conceded the substance of Jackson's demand, — as he ought. 
 This was so exquisitely pleasing to General Jackson, that he was 
 well affected by it for many years towards Mr. Calhoun. Among 
 the younger public men of that day, there was no one who stood 
 so high in Jackson's regard as the Secretary of War. 
 
 The Florida war followed in 1818. When the report of Gen- 
 eral Jackson's invasion of Florida, and of the execution of Ar- 
 buthnot and Armbrister reached Washington, Mr. Calhoun was 
 the only man in the Cabinet who expressed the opinion that 
 General Jackson had transcended his powers, and ought to be 
 brought before a court of inquiry. This opinion he supported 
 with ardor, until it was overruled by the President, who was 
 chiefly influenced by Mr. Adams, the Secretary of State. How 
 keenly General Jackson resented the course of Mr. Calhoun on 
 this occasion, when, eleven years afterwards, he discovered it, is 
 sufficiently well known. We believe, however, that the facts jus- 
 
140 JOHN C. CALHOUN. 
 
 tify Calhoun and condemn Jackson. Just before going to the seat 
 of war, the General wrote privately to the President, strongly 
 recommending the seizure of Florida, and added these words : 
 " This can be done without implicating the government. Let it 
 be signified to me through any channel (say, Mr. J. Rhea) that 
 the possession of the Floridas would be desirable to the United 
 States, and in sixty days it will be accomplished." General 
 Jackson dwells, in his " Exposition " of this matter, upon the fact 
 that Mr. Calhoun was the first man in Washington who read this 
 letter. But he does not say that Mr. Calhoun was aware that 
 Mr. Rhea had been commissioned to answer the letter, and had 
 answered it in accordance with General Jackson's wishes. And 
 if the Rhea correspondence justified the seizure of Florida, it did 
 not justify the execution of the harmless Scottish trader Arbuth- 
 not, who, so far from " instigating " the war, had exerted the 
 whole of his influence to prevent it. It is an honor to Mr. Cal- 
 houn to have been the only man in the Cabinet to call for an in- 
 quiry into proceedings which disgraced the United States and 
 came near involving the country in war. "We have always felt 
 it to be a blot upon the memory of John Quincy Adams, that he 
 did not join Mr. Calhoun in demanding the trial of General Jack- 
 son ; and we have not been able to attribute his conduct to any- 
 thing but the supposed necessities of his position as a candidate 
 for the succession. 
 
 Readers versed in political history need not be reminded that 
 nearly every individual in the Cabinet of Mr. Monroe had hopes 
 of succeeding him. Mr. Adams had, of course ; for he was the 
 premier. Mr. Crawford, of course; for it had been "arranged" 
 at the last caucus that he was to follow Mr. Monroe, to whose 
 claims he had deferred on that express condition. Henry Clay, 
 the Speaker of the House of Representatives, and De Witt 
 Clinton of New York, had expectations. All these gentlemen 
 had " claims " which both their party and the public could recog- 
 nize. Mr. Calhoun, too, who was forty-two years of age in Mr. 
 Monroe's last year of service, boldly entered the lists ; relying 
 upon the united support of the South and the support of the 
 manufacturing States of the North, led by Pennsylvania. That 
 
JOHN C. CALHOUN. 141 
 
 against such competitors he had any ground at all to hope for 
 success, shows how rapid and how real had been his progress 
 toward a first-rate national position. If our readers will turn to 
 the letters of Webster, Story, Wirt, Adams, Jackson, and others 
 of that circle of distinguished men, they will see many evidences 
 of the extravagant estimation in which he was held in 1824. 
 They appear to have all seen in him the material for a President, 
 though not yet quite mature for the position. They all deemed 
 him a man of unsullied honor, of devoted patriotism, of perfect 
 sincerity, and of immense ability, — so assiduously had he played 
 the part of the good boy. 
 
 How the great popularity of General Jackson was adroitly 
 used by two or three invisible wire-pullers to defeat the aspira- 
 tions of these too eager candidates, and how from the general 
 wreck of their hopes Mr. Calhoun had the dexterity to emerge 
 Vice-President of the United States, has been related with the 
 amplest detail, and need not be repeated here. Mr. Calhoun's 
 position seemed then to combine all the advantages which a poli- 
 tician of forty-three could desire or imagine. By withdrawing 
 his name from the list of candidates in such a way as to lead 
 General Jackson to suppose that he had done so in his favor, he 
 seemed to place the General under obligations to him. By 
 secretly manifesting a preference for Mr. Adams (which he 
 really felt) when the election devolved upon the House of Repre- 
 sentatives, he had gained friends among the adherents of the suc- 
 cessful candidate. His withdrawal was accepted by the public as 
 an evidence of modesty becoming the youngest candidate. Fi- 
 nally he was actually Vice-President, as John Adams had been, 
 as Jefferson had been, before their elevation to the highest place. 
 True, Henry Clay, as Secretary of State, was in the established 
 line of succession ; but, as time wore on, it became very manifest 
 that the re-election of Mr. Adams, upon which Mr. Clay's hopes 
 depended, was itself exceedingly doubtful ; and we accordingly 
 find Mr. Calhoun numbered in the ranks of the opposition. Tow- 
 ard the close of Mr. Adams's Presidency, the question of real 
 interest in the inner circle of politicians was, not who should suc- 
 ceed John Quincy Adams in 1829, but who should succeed 
 
142 JOHN C. CALHOUN. 
 
 Andrew Jackson in 1833 ; and already the choice was narrow- 
 ing to two men, — Martin Van Buren and John C. Calhoun. 
 
 During Mr. Calhoun's first term in the Vice-Presidency, — 
 1825 to 1829, — a most important change took place in his polit- 
 ical position, which controlled all his future career. While he 
 was Secretary of War, — 1817 to 1824, — he resided with his 
 family in Washington, and shared in the nationalizing influences 
 of the place. When he was elected Vice-President, he removed 
 to a plantation called Fort Hill, in the western part of South 
 Carolina, where he was once more subjected to the intense and 
 narrow provincialism of the planting States. And there was 
 nothing in the character or in the acquirements of his mind to 
 counteract that influence. Mr. Calhoun was not a Student ; he 
 probed nothing to the bottom ; his information on all subjects 
 was small in quantity, and second-hand in quality. Nor was he 
 a patient thinker. Any stray fact or notion that he met with in 
 his hasty desultory reading, which chanced to give apparent sup- 
 port to a favorite theory or paradox of his own, he seized upon 
 eagerly, paraded it in triumph, but pondered it little ; while the 
 weightiest facts which controverted his opinion he brushed aside 
 without the slightest consideration. His mind was as arrogant 
 as his manners were courteous. Every one who ever conversed 
 with him must remember his positive, peremptory, unanswerable 
 " Not at all, not at all" whenever one of his favorite positions was 
 assailed. He was wholly a special pleader; he never summed 
 up the testimony. We find in his works no evidence that 
 he had read the masters in political economy ; not even Adam 
 Smith, whose reputation was at its height during the first half of 
 his public life. In history he was the merest smatterer, though 
 it was his favorite reading, and he was always talking about 
 Sparta, Athens, and Rome. The slenderness of his fortune pre- 
 vented his travelling. He never saw Europe ; and if he ever 
 visited the Northern States, after leaving college, his stay was 
 short. The little that he knew of life was gathered in three 
 places, all of which were of an exceptional and artificial charac- 
 ter, — the city of Washington, the up-country of South Carolina, 
 and the luxurious, reactionary city of Charleston. His mind, 
 
JOHN C. CALHOUN. 143 
 
 naturally narrow and intense, became, by revolving always in 
 this narrow sphere and breathing a close and tainted atmosphere, 
 more and more fixed in its narrowness and more intense in its 
 operations. 
 
 This man, moreover, was consumed by a poor ambition : he 
 lusted after the Presidency. The rapidity of his progress in 
 public life, the high offices he had held, the extravagant eulo- 
 giums he had received from colleagues and the press, deceived 
 him as to the real nature of his position before the country, and 
 blinded him to the superior chances of other men. Five times in 
 his life he made a distinct clutch at the bawble, but never with 
 such prospect of success that any man could discern it but him- 
 self and those who used his eyes. It is a satisfaction to know 
 that, of the Presidency seekers, — Clay, Webster, Calhoun, 
 Douglas, Wise, Breckenridge, Tyler, Fillmore, Clinton, Burr, 
 Cass, Buchanan, and Van Buren, — only two won the prize, and 
 those two only by a series of accidents which had little to do with 
 their own exertions. We can almost lay it down as a law of this 
 Republic, that no man who makes the Presidency the principal 
 object of his public life will ever be President. The Presidency 
 is an accident, and such it will probably remain. 
 
 Mr. Vice-President Calhoun found his Carolina discontented 
 in 1821, when he took up his abode at Fort Hill. Since the 
 Revolution, South Carolina had never been satisfied, and had 
 never had reason to be. The cotton-gin had appeased her for a 
 while, but had not suspended the operation of the causes which 
 produced the stagnation of the South. Profuse expenditure, un- 
 skilful agriculture, the costliest system of labor in the world, and 
 no immigration, still kept Irelandizing the Southern States ; 
 while the North was advancing and improving to such a degree 
 as to attract emigrants from all lands. The contrast was painful 
 to Southern men, and to most of them it was mysterious. South- 
 ern politicians came to the conclusion that the cause at once of 
 Northern prosperity and Southern poverty was the protective 
 tariff and the appropriations for internal improvements, but 
 chiefly the tariff. In 1824, when Mr. Calhoun went home, the 
 tariff on some leading articles had been increased, and the South 
 
144 JOHN C. CALHOUN. 
 
 was in a ferment of opposition to the protective system. If Mr. 
 Calhoun had been a wise and honest man, he would have re- 
 minded his friends that the decline of the South had been a sub- 
 ject of remark from the peace of 1783, and therefore could not 
 have been caused by the tariff of 1816, or 1820, or 1824. He 
 would have told them that slavery, as known in the Southern 
 States, demands virgin lands, — must have, every few years, its 
 cotton-gin, its Louisiana, its Cherokee country, its something, to 
 give new value to its products or new scope for its operations. He 
 might have added that the tariff of 1824 was a grievance, did tend 
 to give premature development to a manufacturing system, and 
 was a fair ground for a national issue between parties. The thing 
 which he did was this : he adopted the view of the matter which 
 was predominant in the extreme South, and accepted the leader- 
 ship of the extreme Southern, anti-tariff, strict-constructionist wing 
 of the Democratic party. He echoed the prevailing opinion, that 
 the tariff and the internal improvement system, to both of which 
 he was fully committed, were the sole causes of Southern stagna- 
 tion ; since by the one their money was taken from them, and by 
 the other it was mostly spent where it did them no good. 
 
 He was, of course, soon involved in a snarl of contradictions, 
 from which he never could disentangle himself. Let us pass to 
 the year 1828, a most important one in the history of the country 
 and of Mr. Calhoun ; for then occurred the first of the long series 
 of events which terminated with the surrender of the last Rebel 
 army in 1865. The first act directly tending to a war between 
 the South and the United States bears date December 6, 1828 ; 
 and it was the act of John C. Calhoun. 
 
 It was the year of that Presidential election which placed An- 
 drew Jackson in the White House, and re-elected Mr. Calhoun to 
 the Vice-Presidency. It was the year that terminated the hon- 
 orable part of Mr. Calhoun's career and began the dishonorable. 
 His political position in the canvass was utterly false, as he him- 
 self afterwards confessed. On the one hand, he was supporting 
 for the Presidency a man committed to the policy of protection ; 
 and on the other, he became the organ and mouthpiece of the 
 Southern party, whose opposition to the protective principle was 
 
JOHN C. CALHOUN. 145 
 
 tending to the point of armed resistance to it. The tariff bill of 
 1828, which they termed the bill of abominations, had excited 
 the most heated opposition in the cotton States, and especially in 
 South Carolina. This act was passed in the spring of the very 
 year in which those States voted for a man who had publicly in- 
 dorsed the principle involved in it ; and we see Mr. Calhoun 
 heading the party who were electioneering for Jackson, and the 
 party who were considering the policy of nullifying the act which 
 he had approved. His Presidential aspirations bound him to the 
 support of General Jackson ; but the first, the fundamental ne- 
 cessity of his position was to hold possession of South Carolina. 
 
 The burden of Mr. Calhoun's later speeches was the reconcili- 
 ation of the last part of his public life with the first. The task 
 was difficult, for there is not a leading proposition in his speeches 
 after 1830 which is not refuted by arguments to be found in his 
 public utterances before 1828. In his speech on the Force Bill, 
 in 1834, he volunteered an explanation of the apparent inconsist- 
 ency between his support of General Jackson in 1828, and his 
 authorship of the " South Carolina Exposition " in the same year. 
 Falsehood and truth are strangely interwoven in almost every 
 sentence of his later writings ; and there is also that vagueness 
 in them which comes of a superfluity of words. He says, that 
 for the strict-constructionist party to have presented a candidate 
 openly and fully identified with their opinions would have been to 
 court defeat ; and thus they were obliged either to abandon the 
 contest, or to select a candidate " whose opinions were interme- 
 diate or doubtful on the subject which divided the two sections," 
 — a candidate "who, at best, was but a choice of evils." Be- 
 sides, General Jackson was a Southern man, and it was hoped 
 that, notwithstanding his want of experience, knowledge, and self- 
 control, the advisers whom he would invite to assist him would 
 compensate for those defects. Then Mr. Calhoun proceeds to 
 state, that the contest turned chiefly upon the question of protec- 
 tion or free trade ; and the strife was, which of the two parties 
 should go farthest in the advocacy of protection. The result was, 
 he says, that the tariff bill of 1828 was passed, — " that disas- 
 trous measure which has brought so many calamities upon us, 
 7 j 
 
146 JOHN C. CALHOUN. 
 
 and put in peril the liberty and union of the country," and 
 " poured millions into the treasury beyond the most extravagant 
 wants of the country." 
 
 The passage of this tariff bill was accomplished by the tact of 
 Martin Van Buren, aided by Major Eaton, Senator from Tennes- 
 see. Mr. Van Buren was the predestined chief of General Jack- 
 son's Cabinet, and Major Eaton was the confidant, agent, and 
 travelling manager of the Jacksonian wire-pullers, besides being 
 the General's own intimate friend. The events of that session 
 notified Mr. Calhoun that, however manageable General Jackson 
 might be, he was not likely to fall into the custody of the Vice- 
 President. General Jackson's election being considered certain, 
 the question was alone interesting, who should possess him for 
 the purposes of the succession. The prospect, as surveyed that 
 winter from the Vice-President's chair, was not assuring to the 
 occupant of that lofty seat. If General Jackson could not be 
 used as a fulcrum for the further elevation of Mr. Calhoun, would 
 it not be advisable to begin to cast about for another ? 
 
 The tariff bill of 1828 was passed before the Presidential can- 
 vass had set in with its last severity. There was time for Mr. 
 Calhoun to withdraw from the support of the man whose nearest 
 friends had carried it through the Senate under his eyes. He 
 did not do so. He went home, after the adjournment of Con- 
 gress, to labor with all his might for the election of a protection- 
 ist, and to employ his leisure hours in the composition of that 
 once famous paper called the " South Carolina Exposition," in 
 which protection was declared to be an evil so intolerable as to 
 justify the nullification of an act founded upon it. This Exposi- 
 tion was the beginning of our woe, — the baleful egg from which 
 were hatched nullification, treason, civil war, and the desolation 
 of the Southern States. Here is Mr. Calhoun's own account of 
 the manner in which what he 'correctly styles " the double opera- 
 tion " was " pushed on " in the summer of 1828 : — 
 
 " This disastrous event [the passage of the tariff bill of 1828] opened 
 our eyes (I mean myself and those immediately connected with me) 
 as to the full extent of the danger and oppression of the protective 
 system, and the hazard of failing to effect the reform intended through 
 
JOHN C. CALHOUN. 147 
 
 the election of General Jackson. With these disclosures, it became 
 necessary to seek some other ultimate, but more certain measure of 
 protection. We turned to the Constitution to find this remedy. We 
 directed a more diligent and careful scrutiny into its provisions, in or- 
 der to understand fully the nature and character of our political sys- 
 tem. We found a certain and effectual remedy in that great funda- 
 mental division of the powers of the system between this government 
 and its independent co-ordinates, the separate governments of the 
 States, — to be called into action to arrest the unconstitutional acts of 
 this government by the interposition of the States, — the paramount 
 source from which both governments derive their power. But in re- 
 lying on this our ultimate remedy, we did not abate our zeal in the 
 Presidential canvass ; we still hoped that General Jackson, if elect- 
 ed, would effect the necessary reform, and thereby supersede the ne- 
 cessity for calling into action the sovereign authority of the State, 
 which we were anxious to avoid. With these views the two were 
 pushed with equal zeal at the same time ; which double operation 
 commenced in the fall of 1828, but a few months after the passage of 
 the tariff act of that year ; and at the meeting of the Legislature of 
 the State, at the same period, a paper known as the South Carolina 
 Exposition was reported to that body, containing a full development, as 
 well on the constitutional point as on the operation of the protective 
 system, preparatory to a state of things which might eventually render 
 the action of the State necessary in order to protect her rights and in- 
 terest, and to stay a course of policy which we believed would, if not 
 arrested, prove destructive of liberty and the Constitution." — Worfc, 
 II. 396. 
 
 Mr. Calhoun omits, however, to mention that the Exposition 
 was not presented to the Legislature of South Carolina until 
 after the Presidential election had been decided. Nor did he 
 inform his hearers that the author of the paper was Mr. Vice- 
 President Calhoun. Either there was a great dearth of literary 
 ability in that body, or else Mr. Calhoun had little confidence in 
 it ; for nearly all the ponderous documents on nullification given 
 to the world in its name were penned by Mr. Calhoun, and ap- 
 pear in his collected works. If the Legislature addressed its 
 constituents or the people of the United States on this subject, it 
 was he who prepared the draft. The South Carolina Exposition 
 was found among his papers in his own handwriting, and it was 
 
148 JOHN C. CALHOUN. 
 
 adopted by the Legislature with only a few alterations and sup- 
 pressions. There never was a piece of mischief more completely 
 the work of one man than the nullification troubles of 1833 - 
 34. 
 
 The South Carolina Exposition, when Mr. Calhoun had com- 
 pleted it, was brought before the public by one of the usual 
 methods. The Legislature of South Carolina passed the follow- 
 ing resolutions : — 
 
 " Resolved, That it is expedient to protest against the unconstitu- 
 tional and oppressive operation of the system of protective duties, and 
 to have such protest entered on the journals of the Senate of the Unit- 
 ed States. Also, to make a public exposition of our wrongs, and of 
 the remedies within our power, to be communicated to our sister 
 States, with a request that they will co-operate with this State in pro- 
 curing a repeal of the tariff for protection, and an abandonment of the 
 principle ; and if the repeal be not procured, that they will co-operate 
 in such measures as may be necessary for averting the evil. 
 
 " Resolved, That a committee of seven be raised to carry the fore- 
 going resolution into effect." 
 
 The resolution having been carried, the following gentlemen 
 were appointed to father Mr. Calhoun's paper : James Gregg, D. 
 L. Wardlaw, Hugh S. Legare, Arthur P. Hayne, William C. 
 Preston, William Elliott, and R. Barnwell Smith. The duty of 
 this committee consisted in causing a copy of Mr. Calhoun's pa- 
 per to be made and presenting it to the Legislature. This was 
 promptly done ; and the Exposition was adopted by the Legisla- 
 ture on the 6th of December, 1828. Whether any protest was 
 forwai'ded to the Secretary of the United States Senate for in- 
 sertion in the journal does not appear. We only know that five 
 thousand copies of this wearisome and stupid Exposition were 
 ordered to be printed, and that in the hubbub of the incoming of 
 a new administration it attracted scarcely any attention beyond 
 the little knot of original nullifiers. Indeed, Mr. Calhoun's writ- 
 ings on this subject were " protected " by their own length and 
 dulness. No creature ever read one of them quite through, ex- 
 cept for a special purpose. 
 
 The leading assertions of this Exposition are these: — 1. Ev- 
 
JOHN C. CALHOUN. 149 
 
 ery duty imposed for protection is a violation of the Constitution, 
 which empowers Congress to impose taxes for revenue only. 2. 
 The whole burden of the protective system is borne by agricul- 
 ture and commerce. 3. The whole of the advantages of protec- 
 tion accrue to the manufacturing States. 4. In other words, the 
 South, the Southwest, and two or three commercial cities, support 
 the government, and pour a stream of treasure into the coffers of 
 manufacturers. 5. The result must soon be, that the people of 
 South Carolina will have either to abandon the culture of rice 
 and cotton, and remove to some other country, or else to become 
 a manufacturing community, which would only be ruin in another 
 form. 
 
 Lest the reader should find it impossible to believe that any 
 man out of a lunatic asylum could publish such propositions as 
 this last, we will give the passage. Mr. Calhoun is endeavoring 
 to show that Europe will at length retaliate by placing high duties 
 upon American cotton and rice. At least that appears to be what 
 he is aiming at. 
 
 B 
 
 " We already see indications of a commercial warfare, the termina- 
 tion of which no one can conjecture, though our fate may easily be. 
 The last remains of our great and once flourishing agriculture must be 
 annihilated in the conflict. In the first instance we will * be thrown on 
 the home market, which cannot consume a fourth of our products ; and, 
 instead of supplying the world, as we would with free trade, we would 
 be compelled to abandon the cultivation of three fourths of what we 
 now raise, and receive for the residue whatever the manufacturers, who 
 would then have their policy consummated by the entire possession of 
 our market, might choose to give. Forced to abandon our ancient and 
 favorite pursuit, to which our soil, climate, habits, and peculiar labor 
 are adapted, at an immense sacrifice of property, we would be com- 
 pelled, without capital, experience, or skill, and with a population un- 
 tried in such pursuits, to attempt to become the rivals, instead of the 
 customers, of the manufacturing States. The result is not doubtful. 
 If they, by superior capital and skill, should keep down successful com- 
 petition on our part, we would be doomed to toil at our unprofitable 
 agriculture, — selling at the prices which a single and very limited 
 
 * Mr. Calhoun had still Irish enough in his composition to use " will " for 
 " shall." 
 
150 JOHN C. CALHOUN. 
 
 market might give. But, on tbe contrary, if our necessity should tri- 
 umph over their capital and skill, if, instead of raw cotton we should 
 ship to the manufacturing States cotton yarn and cotton goods, the 
 thoughtful must see that it would inevitably bring about a state of 
 things which could not long continue. Those who now make war on 
 our gains would then make it on our labor. They would not tolerate 
 that those who now cultivate our plantations, and furnish them with 
 the material and the market for the product of their arts, should, by 
 becoming their rivals, take bread from the mouths of their wives and 
 children. The committee will not pursue this painful subject ; but as 
 they clearly see that the system if not arrested, must bring the coun- 
 try to this hazardous extremity, neither prudence nor patriotism would 
 permit them to pass it by without raising a warning voice against an 
 evil of so menacing a character." — Works, VI. 12. 
 
 The only question which arises in the mind of present readers 
 of such passages (which abound in the writings of Mr. Calhoun) 
 is this : Were they the chimeras of a morbid, or the utterances 
 of a false mind ? Those who knew him differ in opinion on this 
 point. For our part, we believe such passages to have been in- 
 serted for the sole purpose of alarming the people of South Car 
 olina, so as to render them the more subservient to his will. It 
 is the stale trick of the demagogue, as well as of the false priest, 
 to subjugate the mind by terrifying it. 
 
 Mr. Calhoun concludes his Exposition by bringing forward his 
 remedy for the frightful evils which he had conjured up. That 
 remedy, of course, was nullification. The State of South Caro- 
 lina, after giving due warning, must declare the protective acts 
 " null and void " in the State of South Carolina after a certain 
 date ; and then, unless Congress repealed them in time, refuse 
 obedience to them. Whether this should be done by the Legisla- 
 ture or by a convention called for the purpose, Mr. Calhoun would 
 not say ; but he evidently preferred a convention. He advised, 
 however, that nothing be done hastily ; that time should be af- 
 forded to the dominant majority for further reflection. Delay, he 
 remarked, was the more to be recommended, because of " the 
 great political revolution which will displace from power, on the 
 4th of March next, those who have acquired authority by setting 
 the will of the people at defiance, and which will bring in an em- 
 
JOHN C. CALHOUN. 151 
 
 inent citizen, distinguished for his services to his country and his 
 justice and patriotism " ; under whom, it was hoped, there would 
 be " a complete restoration of the pure principles of our govern- 
 ment." This passage Mr. Calhoun could write after witnessing 
 the manoeuvres of Mr. Van Buren and Mr. Eaton ! If the 
 friends of Mr. Adams had set the will of the people at defiance 
 on the tariff question, what had the supporters of General Jack- 
 son done ? In truth, this menace of nullification was the second 
 string to the bow of the Vice-President. It was not yet ascer- 
 tained which was going to possess and use General Jackson, — 
 the placid and flexible Van Buren, or the headstrong, short- 
 sighted, and uncomfortable Calhoun. Nullification, as he used 
 daily to declare, was a " reserved power." 
 
 At the time of General Jackson's inauguration, it would have 
 puzzled an acute politician to decide which of the two aspirants 
 had the best chance of succeeding the General. The President 
 seemed equally well affected toward both. One was Secretary 
 of State, the other Vice-President. Van Buren, inheriting the 
 political tactics of Burr, was lord paramount in the great State 
 of New York, and Calhoun was all-powerful in his own State 
 and very influential in all the region of cotton and rice. In the 
 Cabinet Calhoun had two friends, and one tried and devoted ally 
 (Ingham), while Van Buren could only boast of Major Eaton, 
 Secretary of War ; and the tie that bound them together was 
 political far more than personal. In the public mind, Calhoun 
 towered above his rival, for he had been longer in the national 
 councils, had held offices that drew upon him the attention of 
 the whole country, and had formerly been distinguished as an 
 orator. If any one had been rash enough in 1829 to intimate to 
 Mr. Calhoun that Martin Van Buren stood before the country on 
 a par with himself, he would have pitied the ignorance of that 
 rash man. 
 
 Under despotic governments, like those of Louis XIV. and 
 Andrew Jackson, no calculation can be made as to the future of 
 any public man, because his future depends upon the caprice 
 of the despot, which cannot be foretold. Six short weeks — 
 nay, not so much, not six — sufficed to estrange the mind of the 
 
152 JOHN C. CALHOUN. 
 
 President from Calhoun, and implant within him a passion to 
 promote the interests of Van Buren. Our readers, we presume, 
 all know how this was brought to pass. It was simply that Mr. 
 Calhoun would not, and Mr. Van Buren would, call upon Mrs. 
 Eaton. All the other influences that were brought to bear upon 
 the President's singular mind were nothing in comparison with 
 this. Daniel Webster uttered only the truth when he wrote, at 
 the time, to his friend Dutton, that the " Aaron's serpent among 
 the President's desires was a settled purpose of making out the 
 lady, of whom so much has been said, a person of reputation"; 
 and that this ridiculous affair would "probably determine who 
 should be the successor to the present chief magistrate." It had 
 precisely that effect. We have shown elsewhere the successive 
 manoeuvres by which this was effected, and how vigorously but 
 unskilfully Calhoun struggled to avert his fate. We cannot and 
 need not repeat the story ; nor can we go over again the history 
 of the Nullification imbroglio, which began with the South Caro- 
 lina Exposition in 1828, and ended very soon after Calhoun had 
 received a private notification that the instant news reached 
 Washington of an overt act of treason in South Carolina, the 
 author and fomenter of that treason would be arrested and held 
 for trial as a traitor. 
 
 One fact alone suffices to prove that, in bringing on the Nulli- 
 fication troubles, Calhoun's motive was factious. When General 
 Jackson saw the coming storm, he did two things. First, he 
 prepared to maintain the authority of the United States by force. 
 Secondly, he used all his influence with Congress to have the 
 cause of Southern discontent removed. General Jackson felt 
 that the argument of the anti-tariff men, in view of the speedy 
 extinction of the national debt, was unanswerable. He believed it 
 was absurd to go on raising ten or twelve millions a year more than 
 the government could spend, merely for the sake of protecting 
 Northern manufactures. Accordingly, a bill was introduced which 
 aimed to do just what the nullifiers had been clamoring for, that 
 is, to reduce the revenue to the amount required by the govern- 
 ment. If Mr. Calhoun had supported this measure, he could 
 have carried it. He gave it no support ,- but exerted all his 
 
JOHN C. CALHOUN. 153 
 
 influence in favor of the Clay Compromise, which was expressly 
 intended to save as much of the protective system as could be 
 saved, and which reduced duties gradually, instead of suddenly. 
 Rather than permit the abhorred administration to have the 
 glory of pacificating the country, this lofty Roman stooped to a 
 coalition with his personal enemy, Henry Clay, the champion 
 and the soul of the protectionist party. 
 
 No words can depict the bitterness of Calhoun's disappoint- 
 ment and mortification at being distanced by a man whom he 
 despised so cordially as he did Van Buren. To comprehend it, 
 his whole subsequent career must be studied. The numerous 
 covert allusions to the subject in his speeches and writings are 
 surcharged with rancor ; and it was observed that, whenever his 
 mind reverted to it, his manner, the tone of his voice, and every 
 gesture testified to the intensity of his feelings. " Every South- 
 ern man," said he on one occasion, " who is true to the interests 
 of his section, and faithful to the duties which Providence has 
 allotted him, will be forever excluded from the honors and 
 emoluments of this government, which will be reserved only for 
 those who have qualified themselves by political prostitution for 
 admission into the Magdalen Asylum." His face, too, from this 
 time, assumed that haggard, cast-iron, intense, introverted "aspect 
 which struck every beholder. 
 
 Miss Martineau, in her Retrospect of "Western Travel, has 
 given us some striking and valuable glimpses of the eminent 
 men of that period, particularly of the three most eminent, who 
 frequently visited her during her stay in Washington. This 
 passage, for example, is highly interesting. 
 
 " Mr. Clay sitting upright on the sofa, with his snuffbox ever in his 
 hand, would discourse for many an hour in his even, soft, deliberate 
 tone, on any one of the great subjects of American policy which we 
 might happen to start, always amazing us with the moderation of esti- 
 mate and speech which so impetuous a nature has been able to attain. 
 Mr. Webster, leaning back at his ease, telling stories, cracking jokes, 
 shaking the sofa with bm*st after burst of laughter, or smoothly dis- 
 coursing to the perfect felicity of the logical part of one's constitution, 
 would illuminate an evening now and then. Mr. Calhoun, the cast- 
 iron man, who looks as if he had never been born and could never be 
 7* 
 
154 JOHN C. CALHOUN. 
 
 extinguished, would come in sometimes to keep our understandings on 
 a painful stretch for a short while, and leave us to take, to pieces his 
 close, rapid, theoretical, illustrated talk, and see what we could make 
 of it. We found it usually more worth retaining as a curiosity, than 
 as either very just or useful. His speech abounds in figures, truly illus- 
 trative, if that which they illustrate were true also. But his theories 
 of government (almost the only subject upon which his thoughts are 
 employed), the squarest and compactest that ever were made, are com- 
 posed out of limited elements, and are not, therefore, likely to stand 
 service very well. It is at first extremely interesting to hear Mr. 
 Calhoun talk ; and there is a never-failing evidence of power in all 
 that he says and does, which commands intellectual reverence ; but the 
 admiration is too soon turned into regret, into absolute melancholy. It 
 is impossible to resist the conviction, that all this force can be at best 
 but useless, and is but too likely to be very mischievous. His mind 
 has long lost all power of communicating with any other. I know of no 
 man who lives in such utter intellectual solitude. He meets men and 
 harangues by the fireside as in the Senate ; he is wrought like a piece 
 of machinery, set going vehemently by a weight, and stops while you 
 answer ; he either passes by what you say, or twists it into a suitability 
 with what is in his head, and begins to lecture again. Of course, a 
 mind like this can have little influence in the Senate, except by virtue, 
 perpetually wearing out, of what it did in its less eccentric days ; but 
 its influence at home is to be dreaded. There is no hope that an intel- 
 lect so cast in narrow theories will accommodate itself to varying cir- 
 cumstances ; and there is every danger that it will break up all that it 
 can in order to remould the materials in its own way. Mr. Calhoun 
 is as full as ever of his Nullification doctrines ; and those who know 
 the force that is in him, and his utter incapacity of modification by 
 other minds, (after having gone through as remarkable a revolution 
 of political opinion as perhaps any man ever experienced,) will no 
 more expect repose and self-retention from him than from a volcano 
 in full force. Relaxation is no longer in the power of his will. I never 
 saw any one who so completely gave me the idea of possession. Half 
 an hour's conversation with him is enough to make a necessitarian of 
 anybody. Accordingly, he is more complained of than blamed by his 
 enemies. His moments of softness by his family, and when recurring 
 to old college days, are hailed by all as a relief to the vehement work- 
 ing of the intellectual machine, — a relief equally to himself and others. 
 These moments are as touching to the observer as tears on the face of 
 a soldier." 
 
JOHN C. CALHOUN. 155 
 
 Of his appearance in the Senate, and of his manner of speak- 
 ing, Miss Martineau records her impressions also : — 
 
 " Mr. Calhoun's countenance first fixed my attention ; the splendid 
 eye, the straight forehead, surmounted by a load of stiff, upright, dark 
 hair, the stern brow, the inflexible mouth, — it is one of the most re- 
 markable heads in the country." 
 
 " Mr. Calhoun followed, and impressed me very strongly. While 
 he kept to the question, what he said was close, good, and moderate, 
 though delivered in rapid speech, and with a voice not sufficiently 
 modulated. But when he began to reply to a taunt of Colonel Ben- 
 ton's, that he wanted to be President, the force of his speaking became 
 painful. He made protestations which it seemed to strangers had 
 better have been spared, ' that he would not turn on his heel to be 
 President,' and that ' he had given up all for his own brave, magnan- 
 imous little State of South Carolina.' While thus protesting, his eyes 
 flashed, his brow seemed charged with thunder, his voice became almost 
 a bark, and his sentences were abrupt, intense, producing in the audi- 
 tory a sort of laugh which is squeezed out of people by the application 
 of a very sudden mental force. I believe he knew not what a revela- 
 tion he made in a few sentences. They iccre to us strangers the key, 
 not only to all that was said and done by the South Carolina party dur- 
 ing the remainder of the session, but to many things at Charleston and 
 Columbia which would otherwise have passed unobserved and unex- 
 plained." 
 
 This intelligent observer saw the chieftain on his native 
 heath : — 
 
 " During my stay in Charleston, Mr. Calhoun and his family arrived 
 from Congress, and there was something very striking in the welcome 
 he received, like that of a chief returned to the bosom of his clan. 
 He stalked about like a monarch of the little domain, and there was 
 certainly an air of mysterious understanding between him and his 
 followers." 
 
 What Miss Martineau says of the impossibility of Calhoun's 
 mind communicating with another mind, is confirmed by an anec- 
 dote which we have heard related by Dr. Francis Lieber, who, 
 as Professor in the College of South Carolina, was for several 
 years the neighbor and intimate acquaintance of Mr. Calhoun. 
 The learned Professor, upon his return from a visit to Europe, 
 
156 JOHN C. CALHOUN. 
 
 called upon him, and in the course of the interview Mr. Calhoun 
 declared, in his positive manner, that the slaves in the Southern 
 States were better lodged, fed, and cared for than the mechanics 
 of Europe. Dr. Lieber, being fresh from that continent, assured 
 the Secretary of State that such was not the fact, as he could 
 testify from having resided in both lands. " Not at all, not at 
 all," cried Calhoun dogmatically, and repeated his wild assertion. 
 The Doctor saw that the poor man had reached the condition of 
 absolute unteachableness, and dropped the subject. There could 
 not well be a more competent witness on the point in dispute 
 than Dr. Lieber ; for, besides having long resided in both conti- 
 nents, it was the habit and business of his life to observe and 
 ponder the effect of institutions upon the welfare of those who 
 live under them. Calhoun pushed him out of the witness-box, 
 as though he were an idiot. 
 
 A survey of the last fifteen years of Calhoun's life discloses 
 nothing upon which the mind can dwell with complacency. On 
 the approach of every Presidential election, we see him making 
 what we can only call a grab at a nomination, by springing upon 
 the country some unexpected issue designed to make the South a 
 unit in his support. From 1830 to 1836, he exhausted all the 
 petty arts of the politician to defeat General Jackson's resolve to 
 bring in Mr. Van Buren as his successor ; and when all had 
 failed, he made an abortive attempt to precipitate the question of ' 
 the annexation of Texas. This, too, being foiled, Mr. Van 
 Buren was elected President. Then Mr. Calhoun, who had for 
 ten years never spoken of Van Buren except with contempt, 
 formed the notable scheme of winning over the President so far 
 as to secure his support for the succession. He advocated all the 
 test measures of Mr. Van Buren's administration, and finished 
 by courting a personal reconciliation with the man whom he had 
 a hundred times styled a fox and a political prostitute. This 
 design coming to naught, through the failure of Mr. Van Buren 
 to reach a second term, he made a wild rush for the prize by 
 again thrusting forward the Texas question. Colonel Benton, 
 who was the predetermined heir of Van Buren, has detailed the 
 manner in which this was done in a very curious chapter of 
 
JOHN C. CALHOUN. 157 
 
 his " Thirty Years." The plot was successful, so far as plunging 
 the country into a needless war was concerned ; but it was Polk 
 and Taylor, not Calhoun, who obtained the Presidency through 
 it. Mr. Calhoun's struggles for a nomination in 1844 were truly 
 pitiable, but they were not known to the public, who saw him, at 
 a certain stage of the campaign, affecting to decline a nomination 
 which there was not the slightest danger of his receiving. 
 
 We regret that we have not space to show how much the agi- 
 tation of the slavery question, from 1835 to 1850, was the work 
 of this one man. The labors of Mr. Garrison and Mr. Wendell 
 Phillips might have borne no fruit during their lifetime, if Cal- 
 houn had not made it his business to supply them with material. 
 "I mean to force the issue upon the North," he once wrote; and 
 he did force it. On his return to South Carolina after the termi- 
 nation of the Nullification troubles, he said to his friends there, 
 (so avers Colonel Benton, "Thirty Years," Vol. II. p. 786,) 
 " that the South could never be united against the North on the 
 tariff question ; that the sugar interest of Louisiana would keep 
 her out ; and that the basis of Southern union must be shifted to 
 the slave question." Here we have the key to the mysteries of all 
 his subsequent career. The denial of the right of petition, the 
 annexation of Texas, the forcing of slavery into the Territories, 
 — these were among the issues upon which he hoped to unite the 
 South in his favor, while retaining enough strength at the North 
 to secure his election. Failing in all his schemes of personal 
 advancement, he died in 1850, still protesting that slavery is 
 divine, and that it must rule this country or ruin it. This is 
 really the sum and substance of that last speech to the Senate, 
 which he had not strength enough left to deliver. 
 
 We have run rapidly over Mr. Calhoun's career as a public 
 man. It remains for us to notice his claims as a teacher of polit- 
 ical philosophy, a character in which he influenced his country- 
 men more powerfully after he was in his grave than he did while 
 living among them. 
 
 The work upon which his reputation as a thinker will rest with 
 posterity is his Treatise on the Nature of Government. Writ- 
 ten in the last year of his life, when at length all hope of further 
 
158 JOHN C. CALHOUN. 
 
 personal advancement must have died within him, it may be 
 taken as the deliberate record or summary of his political opin- 
 ions. He did not live to revise it, and the concluding portion he 
 evidently meant to enlarge and illustrate, as was ascertained from 
 notes and memoranda in pencil upon the manuscript. After the 
 death of the author in 1850, the work was published in a sub- 
 stantial and elegant form by the Legislature of South Carolina, 
 who ordered copies to be presented to individuals of note in 
 science and literature, and to public libraries. We are, there- 
 fore, to regard this volume, not merely as a legacy of Mr. Cal- 
 houn to his countrymen, but as conveying to us the sentiments 
 of South Carolina with regard to her rights and duties as a mem- 
 ber of the Union. Events since its publication have shown us 
 that it is more even than this. The assemblage of troublesome 
 communities which we have been accustomed to style " the 
 South," adopted this work as their political gospel. From this 
 source the politicians of the Southern States have drawn all they 
 have chosen to present to the world in justification of their course 
 which bears the semblance of argument ; for, in truth, Mr. Cal- 
 houn, since Jefferson and Madison passed from the stage, is al- 
 most the only thinking being the South has had. His was a very 
 narrow, intense, and untrustworthy mind, but he was an angel of 
 light compared with the men who have been recently conspicuous 
 in the Southern States. 
 
 This treatise on "-overnment belongs to the same class of works 
 as Louis Napoleon's Life of Caesar, having for its principal object 
 one that lies below the surface, and the effect of both is damaged 
 by the name on the title-page. The moment we learn that Louis 
 Napoleon wrote that Life of Caesar, the mind is intent upon dis- 
 covering allusions to recent history, which the author has an 
 interest in misrepresenting. The common conscience of mankind 
 condemns him as a perjured usurper, and the murderer of many 
 of his unoffending fellow-citizens. No man, whatever the power 
 and splendor of his position, can rest content under the scorn of 
 mankind, unless his own conscience gives him a clear acquittal, 
 and assures him that one day the verdict of his fellow-men will 
 be reversed ; and even in that case, it is not every man that can 
 
JOHN C. CALHOUN. 159 
 
 possess his soul in patience. Every page of the Life of Caesar 
 was composed with a secret, perhaps half-unconscious reference 
 to that view of Louis Napoleon's conduct which is expressed with 
 such deadly power in Mr. Kinglake's History of the Crimean 
 War, and which is so remarkably confirmed by an American 
 eyewitness, the late Mr. Goodrich, who was Consul at Paris in 
 1848. Published anonymously, the Life of Caesar might have 
 had some effect. Given to the world by Napoleon III., every 
 one reads it as he would a defence by an ingenious criminal of 
 his own cause. The highest praise that can be bestowed upon it 
 is, that it is very well done, considering the object the author had 
 in view. 
 
 So, in reading Mr. Calhoun's disquisition upon government, 
 we are constantly reminded that the author was a man who had 
 only escaped trial and execution for treason by suddenly arrest- 
 ing the treasonable measures which he had caused to be set on 
 foot. Though it contains but one allusion to events in South 
 Carolina in 1833, the work is nothing but a labored, refined jus- 
 tification of those events. It has been even coupled with Ed- 
 wards on the Will, as the two best examples of subtle reasoning 
 which American literature contains. Admit his premises, and 
 you are borne along, at a steady pace, in a straight path, to the 
 final inferences : that the sovereign State of, South Carolina pos- 
 sesses, by the Constitution of the United States, an absolute veto 
 upon every act of Congress, and may secede from the Union 
 whenever she likes ; and that these rights of veto and secession 
 do not merely constitute the strength of the Constitution, but are 
 the Constitution, — and do not merely tend to perpetuate the 
 Union, but are the Union's self, — the thing that binds the States 
 together. 
 
 Mr. Calhoun begins his treatise by assuming that government 
 is necessary. He then explains why it is necessary. It is neces- 
 sary because man is more selfish than sympathetic, feeling more 
 intensely what affects himself than what affects others. Hence 
 he will encroach on the rights of others ; and to prevent this, 
 government is indispensable. 
 
 But government, since it must be administered by selfish men, 
 
160 JOHN C. CALHOUN. 
 
 will feel more intensely what affects itself than what affects the 
 people governed. It is, therefore, the tendency of all govern- 
 ments to encroach on the rights of the people ; and they certainly 
 will do so, if they can. The same instinct of self-preservation, 
 the same love of accumulation, which tempts individuals to over- 
 reach their neighbors, inclines government to preserve, increase, 
 and consolidate its powers. Therefore, as individual selfishness 
 requires to be held in check by government, so government must 
 be restrained by something. 
 
 This something is the constitution, written or unwritten. A 
 constitution is to the government what government is to the 
 people : it is the restraint upon its selfishness. Mr. Calhoun 
 assumes here that the relation between government and gov- 
 erned is naturally and inevitably " antagonistic." He does 
 not perceive that government is the expression of man's love 
 of justice, and the means by which the people cause justice to be 
 done. 
 
 Government, he continues, must be powerful ; must have at 
 command the resources of the country; must be so strong that 
 it can, if it will, disregard the limitations of the constitution. 
 The question is, How to compel a government, holding such 
 powers, having an army, a navy, and a national treasury at 
 command, to obey the requirements of a mere piece of printed 
 paper ? 
 
 Power, says Mr. Calhoun, can only be resisted by power. 
 Therefore, a proper constitution must leave to the governed the 
 power to resist encroachments. This is done in free countries 
 by universal suffrage and the election of rulers at frequent and 
 fixed periods. This gives to rulers the strongest possible motive 
 to please the people, which can only be done by executing theii 
 will. 
 
 So far, most readers will follow the author without serious dif- 
 ficulty. But now we come to passages which no one could un- 
 derstand who was not acquainted with the Nullification imbroglio 
 of 1833. A philosophic Frenchman or German, who should read 
 this work with a view to enlightening his mind upon the nature 
 of government, would be much puzzled after passing the thir- 
 
JOHN C. CALHOUN. 161 
 
 teenth page ; for at that point the hidden loadstone begins to op- 
 erate upon the needle of Mr. Calhoun's compass, and he is as 
 Louis Napoleon writing the Life of Coesar. 
 
 Universal suffrage, he continues, and the frequent election of 
 rulers, are indeed the primary and fundamental principles of a 
 constitutional government ; and they are sufficient to give the 
 people an effective control over those whom they have elected. 
 But this is all they can do. They cannot make rulers good, or 
 just, or obedient to the constitution, but only faithful representa- 
 tives of the majority of the people and executors of the will of 
 that majority. The right of suffrage transfers the supreme au- 
 thority from the rulers to the body of the community, and the 
 more perfectly it does this, the more perfectly it accomplishes its 
 object. Majority is king. But this king, too, like all others, is 
 selfish, and will abuse his power if he can. 
 
 So, we have been arguing in a circle, and have come back to 
 the starting-point. Government keeps within bounds the selfish- 
 ness of the people ; the constitution restrains the selfishness of the 
 government ; but, in doing so, it has only created a despot as 
 much to be dreaded as the power it displaced. We are still, 
 therefore, confronted by the original difficulty. How are we to 
 limit the sway of tyrant Majority ? 
 
 If, says Mr. Calhoun, all the people had the same interests, so 
 that a law which oppressed one interest would oppress all inter- 
 ests, then the right of suffrage would itself be sufficient ; and the 
 only question would be as to the fitness of different candidates. 
 But this is not the case. Taxation, for example : no system of 
 taxation can be arranged that will not bear oppressively upon 
 some interests or section. Disbursements, also : some portions 
 of the country must receive back, in the form of governmental 
 disbursements, more money than they pay in taxes, and others 
 less ; and this may be carried so far, that one region may be ut- 
 terly impoverished, while others are enriched. King Majority 
 may have his favorites. He may now choose to favor agriculture ; 
 now, commerce ; now, manufactures ; and so arrange the imports 
 as to crush one for the sake of promoting the others. " Crush " 
 is Mr. Calhoun's word. " One portion of the community," he 
 
162 JOHN C. CALHOUN. 
 
 says, "may be crushed, and another elevated on its ruins, by 
 systematically perverting the power of taxation and .disbursement, 
 for the purpose of aggrandizing or building up one portion of the 
 community at the expense of the other." May be. But has not 
 the most relentless despot an interest in the prosperity of his 
 subjects? And can one interest be crushed without manifest 
 and immediate injury to all the others ? Mr. Calhoun says : 
 That this fell power to crush important interests will be used, is 
 exactly as certain as that it can be. 
 
 All this would be unintelligible to our foreign philosopher, but 
 American citizens know very well what it means. Through this 
 fine lattice-work fence they discern the shining countenance of 
 the colored person. 
 
 But now, what remedy ? Mr. Calhoun approaches this part 
 of the subject with the due acknowledgment ,of its difficulty. 
 The remedy, of course, is Nullification ; but he is far from using 
 a word so familiar. There is but one mode, he remarks, by 
 which the majority of the whole people can be prevented from 
 oppressing the minority, or portions of the minority, and that is 
 this: "By taking the sense of each interest or portion of the 
 community, which may be unequally and injuriously affected by 
 the action of the government, separately, through its own major- 
 ity, or in some other way by which its voice can be expressed ; 
 and to require the consent of each interest, either to put or to 
 keep the government in motion." And this can only be done by 
 such an "organism" as will "give to each division or interest 
 either a concurrent voice in making and executing the laws or a 
 veto on their execution." 
 
 This is perfectly intelligible when read by the light of the 
 history of 1833. But no human being unacquainted with that 
 history could gather Mr. Calhoun's meaning. Our studious 
 foreigner would suppose by the word " interest," that the author 
 meant the manufacturing interest, the commercial and agricultu- 
 ral interests, and that each of these should have its little congress 
 concurring in or vetoing the acts of the Congress sitting at 
 "Washington. We, however, know that Mr. Calhoun meant that 
 South Carolina should have the power to nullify act3 of Congress 
 
JOHN C. CALHOUN. 163 
 
 and give law to the Union. He does not tell us how South 
 Carolina's tyrant Majority is to be kept within bounds ; but only 
 how that majority is to control the majority of the whole country. 
 He has driven his problem into a corner, and there he leaves it. 
 
 Having thus arrived at the conclusion, that a law, to be binding 
 on all "interests," i. e. on all the States of the Union, must be 
 concurred in by all, he proceeds to answer the obvious objection, 
 that " interests " so antagonistic could never be brought to unani- 
 mous agreement. He thinks this would present no difficulty, 
 and adduces some instances of unanimity to illustrate his point. 
 
 First, trial by jury. Here are twelve men, of different char- 
 acter and calibre, shut up in a room to agree upon a verdict, in 
 a cause upon which able men have argued upon opposite sides. 
 How unlikely that they should be able to agree unanimously! 
 Yet they generally do, and that speedily. Why is this ? Be- 
 cause, answers Mr. Calhoun, they go into their room knowing 
 that nothing short of unanimity will answer; and consequently 
 every man is disposed to agree with his fellows, and, if he cannot 
 agree, to compromise. " Not at all." The chief reason why 
 juries generally agree is, that they are not interested in the 
 matter in dispute. The law of justice is so plainly written in the 
 human heart, that the fair thing is usually obvious to disinterested 
 minds, or can be made so. It is interest, it is rivalry, that blinds 
 us to what is right ; and Mr. Calhoun's problem is to render 
 " antagonistic " interests unanimous. We cannot, therefore, ac- 
 cept this illustration as a case in point. 
 
 Secondly, Poland. Poland is not the country which an 
 American would naturally visit to gain political wisdom. Mr. 
 Calhoun, however, repairs thither, and brings home the fact, that 
 in the turbulent Diet of that unhappy kingdom every member 
 had an absolute veto upon every measure. Nay, more : no king 
 could be elected without the unanimous vote of an assembly of 
 one hundred and fifty thousand persons. Yet Poland lasted two 
 centuries! The history of those two centuries is a sufficient 
 comment upon Mr Calhoun's system, to say nothing of the final 
 catastrophe, which Mr. Calhoun confesses was owing to " the 
 extreme to which the principle was carried." A sound principle 
 
164 JOHN C. CALHOUN. 
 
 cannot be carried to an unsafe extreme ; it is impossible for a 
 man to be too right. If it is right for South Carolina to control 
 and nullify the United States, it is right for any one man in South 
 Carolina to control and nullify South Carolina. One of the tests 
 of a system is to ascertain where it will carry us if it is pushed 
 to the uttermost extreme. Mr. Calhoun gave his countrymen 
 this valuable information when he cited the lamentable case of 
 Poland. 
 
 From Poland the author descends to the Six Nations, the fed- 
 eral council of which was composed of forty-two members, each 
 of whom had an absolute veto upon every measure. Neverthe- 
 less, this confederacy, he says, became the most powerful and the 
 most united of all the Indian nations. He omits to add, that it 
 was the facility with which this council could be wielded by the 
 French and English in turn, that hastened the grinding of the 
 Six Nations to pieces between those two millstones. 
 
 Rome is Mr. Calhoun's next illustration. The Tribunus 
 Plebis, he observes, had a veto upon the passage of all laws and 
 upon the execution of all laws, and thus prevented the oppression 
 of the plebeians by the patricians. To show the inapplicability of 
 this example to the principle in question, to show by what steps 
 this tribunal, long useful and efficient, gradually absorbed the 
 power of the government, and became itself, first oppressive, and 
 then an instrument in the overthrow of the constitution, would 
 be to write a history of Rome. Niebuhr is accessible to the pub- 
 lic, and Niebuhr knew more of the Tribunus Plebis than Mr. 
 Calhoun. "We cannot find in Niebuhr anything to justify the 
 author's aim to constitute patrician Carolina the Tribunus Plebis 
 of the United States. 
 
 Lastly, England. England, too, has that safeguard of liberty, 
 " an organism by which the voice of each order or class is taken 
 through its appropriate organ, and which requires the concurring 
 voice of all to constitute that of the whole community." These 
 orders are King, Lords, and Commons. They must all concur 
 in every law, each having a veto upon the action of the two 
 others. The government of the United States is also so arranged 
 that the President and the two Houses of Congress must concur 
 
JOHN C. CALHOUN. 165 
 
 in every enactment ; but then they all represent the same order 
 or interest, the people of the United States. The English gov- 
 ernment, says Mr. Calhoun, is so exquisitely constituted, that the 
 greater the revenues of the government, the more stable it is ; 
 because those revenues, being chiefly expended upon the lords 
 and gentlemen, render them exceedingly averse to any radical 
 change. Mr. Calhoun does not mention that the majority of the 
 people of England are not represented in the government at all. 
 Perhaps, however, the following passage, in a previous part of 
 the work, was designed to meet their case: — 
 
 " It is a great and dangerous error to suppose that all people are 
 equally entitled to liberty. It is a reward to be earned, not a blessing 
 to be gratuitously lavished on all alike ; — a reward reserved for the 
 intelligent, the patriotic, the virtuous, and deserving ; and not a boon 
 to be bestowed on a people too ignorant, degraded, and vicious to be 
 capable either of appreciating or of enjoying it." 
 
 Mr. Calhoun does not tell us who is to bestow this precious 
 boon. He afterwards remarks, that the progress of a people 
 " rising " to the point of civilization which entitles them to free- 
 dom, is " necessarily slow." How very slow, then, it must be, 
 when the means of civilization are forbidden to them by law ! 
 
 "With his remarks upon England, Mr. Calhoun terminates his 
 discussion of the theory of government. Let us grant all that he 
 claims for it, and see to what it conducts us. Observe that his 
 grand position is, that a " numerical majority," like all other sov- 
 ereign powers, will certainly tyrannize if it can. His remedy for 
 this is, that a local majority, the majority of each State, shall 
 have a veto upon the acts of the majority of the whole country. 
 But; he omits to tell us how that local majority is to be kept within 
 bounds. According to his reasoning, South Carolina should have 
 a veto upon acts of Congress. Very well ; then each county of 
 South Carolina should have a veto upon the acts of the State 
 Legislature ; each town should have a veto upon the behests of 
 the county ; and each voter upon the decisions of the town. Mr. 
 Calhoun's argument, therefore, amounts to this : that one voter 
 in South Carolina should have the constitutional right to nullify 
 
166 JOHN C. CALHOUN. 
 
 an act of Congress, and no law should be binding which has not 
 received the assent of every citizen. 
 
 Having completed the theoretical part of his subject, the author 
 proceeds to the practical. In his first essay he describes the 
 " organism " that is requisite for the preservation of liberty ; and 
 in his second, he endeavors to show that the United States is 
 precisely such an organism, since the Constitution, rightly inter- 
 preted, does confer upon South Carolina the right to veto the de- 
 crees of the numerical majority. Mr. Calhoun's understanding 
 appears to much better advantage in this second discourse, which 
 contains the substance of all his numerous speeches on nullifica- 
 tion. It is marvellous how this morbid and intense mind had 
 brooded over a single subject, and how it had subjugated all his- 
 tory and all law to its single purpose. But we cannot follow Mr. 
 Calhoun through the tortuous mazes of his second essay ; nor, if 
 we could, should we be able to draw readers after us. We can 
 only say this : Let it be granted that there are two ways in which 
 the Constitution can be fairly interpreted ; — one, the "Websterian 
 method ; the other, that of Mr. Calhoun. On one of these inter- 
 pretations the Constitution will work, and on the other it will 
 not. We prefer the interpretation that is practicable, and leave 
 the other party to the enjoyment of their argument. Nations 
 cannot be governed upon principles so recondite and refined, that 
 not one citizen in a hundred will so much as follow a mere state- 
 ment of them. The fundamental law must be as plain as the ten 
 commandments, — as plain as the four celebrated propositions in 
 which Mr. Webster put the substance of his speeches in reply to 
 Mr. Calhoun's ingenious defence of his conduct in 1833. 
 
 The author concludes his essay by a prophetic glance at the 
 future. He remarks, that with regard to the future of the 
 United States, as then governed, only one thing could be pre- 
 dicted with absolute certainty, and that was, that the Republic 
 could not last. It might lapse into a monarchy, or it might be 
 dismembered, — no man could say which ; but that one of these 
 things would happen was entirely certain. The rotation-in-office 
 system, as inti-oduced by General Jackson, and sanctioned by his 
 subservient Congress, had rendered the Presidential office a prize 
 
JOHN C. CALHOUN. 167. 
 
 so tempting, in which so large a number of men had an interest, 
 that the contest would gradually cease to be elective, and would 
 finally lose the elective form. The incumbent would appoint his 
 successor ; and " thus the absolute form of a popular, would end 
 in the absolute form of a monarchical government," and there 
 would be no possibility of even rendering the monarchy limited 
 or constitutional. Mr. Calhoun does not mention here the name 
 of General Jackson or of Martin Van Buren, but American 
 readers know very well what he was thinking of when he wrote 
 the passage. 
 
 Disunion, according to Mr. Calhoun, was another of our perils. 
 In view of recent events, our readers may be interested in read- 
 ing his remarks on this subject, written in 1849, among the last 
 words he ever deliberately put upon paper : — 
 
 " The conditions impelling the government toward disunion are very 
 powerful. They consist chiefly of two ; — the one arising from the 
 great extent of tho country ; the other, from its division into separate 
 States, having local institutions and interests. The former, under the 
 operation of the numerical majority, has necessarily given to the two 
 great parties, in their contest for the honors and emoluments of the 
 government, a geographical character, for reasons which have been 
 fully stated. This contest must finally settle down into a struggle on 
 the part of the stronger section to obtain the permanent control ; and 
 on the part of the weaker, to preserve its independence and equality 
 as members of the Union. The conflict will thus become one between 
 the States occupying the different sections, — that is, between organ- 
 ized bodies on both sides, — each, in the event of separation, having 
 the means of avoiding the confusion and anarchy to which the parts 
 would be subject without such organization. This would contribute 
 much to increase the power of resistance on the part of the weaker sec- 
 tion against the stronger in possession of the government. With these 
 great advantages and resources, it is hardly possible that the parties 
 occupying the weaker section would consent quietly, under any circum- 
 stances, to break down from independent and equal sovereignties into 
 a dependent and colonial condition ; and still less so, under circum- 
 stances that would revolutionize them internally, and put their very 
 existence as a people at stake. Never was there an issue between 
 independent States that involved greater calamity to the conquered, 
 than is involved in that between the States which compose the two 
 
.168 JOHN C. CALHOUN. 
 
 sections of the Union. The condition of the weaker, should it sink 
 from a state of independence and equality to one of dependence and 
 subjection, would be more calamitous than ever before befell a civilized 
 people. It is vain to think that, with such consequences before them, 
 they will not resist ; especially, when resistance may save them, and 
 cannot render their condition worse. That this will take place, unless 
 the stronger section desists from its course, may be assumed as certain ; 
 and that, if forced to resist, the weaker section would prove successful, 
 and the system end in disunion, is, to say the least, highly probable. 
 But if it should fail, the great increase of power and patronage which 
 must, in consequence, accrue to the government of the United States, 
 would but render certain and hasten the termination in the other al- 
 ternative. So that, at all events, to the one or to the other — to mon- 
 archy or disunion — it must come, if not prevented by strenuous or 
 timely efforts." 
 
 This is a very instructive passage, and one that shows well the 
 complexity of human motives. Mr. Calhoun betrays the secret 
 that, after all, the contest between the two sections is a " contest 
 for the honors and emoluments of the government," and that all 
 the rest is but pretext and afterthought, — as General Jackson 
 said it was. He plainly states that the policy of the South is 
 rule or ruin. Besides this, he intimates that there is in the Unit- 
 ed States an " interest," an institution, the development of which 
 is incompatible with the advancement of the general interest ; 
 and either that one interest must overshadow and subdue all other 
 interests, or all other interests must unite to crush that one. The 
 latter has been done. 
 
 Mr. Calhoun proceeds to suggest the measures by which these 
 calamities can be averted. The government must be " restored 
 to its federal character " by the repeal of all laws tending to the 
 annihilation of State sovereignty, and by a strict construction of 
 the Constitution. The President's power of removal must be 
 limited. In earlier times, these would have sufficed ; but at that 
 day the nature of the disease was such that nothing could reach it 
 short of an organic change, which should give the weaker section 
 a negative on the action of the government. Mr. Calhoun was 
 of opinion that this could best be done by our having two Presi- 
 dents, — one elected by the North and the other by the South, — 
 
JOHN C. CALHOUN. 169 
 
 the assent of both to be necessary to every act of Congress. Un- 
 der such a system, he thought, — 
 
 " The Presidential election, instead of dividing the Union into hos- 
 tile geographical parties, the stronger struggling to enlarge its powers, 
 and the weaker to defend its rights, as is now the case, would become 
 the means of restoring harmony and concord to the country and the 
 government. It would make the Union a union in truth, — a bond 
 of mutual affection and brotherhood : and not a mere connection used 
 by the stronger as the instrument of dominion and aggrandizement, 
 and submitted to by the weaker only from the lingering remains 
 of former attachment, and the fading hope of being able to restore 
 the government to what it was originally intended to be, — a blessing 
 to all." 
 
 The utter misapprehension of the purposes and desires of the 
 Northern people which this passage betrays, and which pervades 
 all the later writings of Mr. Calhoun, can only be explained by 
 the supposition that he judged them out of his own heart. It is 
 astounding to hear the author of the annexation of Texas charg- 
 ing the North with the lust of dominion, and the great Nullifier 
 accusing Northern statesmen of being wholly possessed by the 
 mania to be President. 
 
 Webster, Clay, and Calhoun, — these were great names in their 
 day. When the last of them had departed, the country felt a 
 sense of bereavement, and even of self-distrust, doubting if ever 
 again such men would adorn the public councils. A close scru- 
 tiny into the lives of either of them would, of course, compel us to 
 deduct something from his contemporary renown, for they were 
 all, in some degree, at some periods, diverted from their true path 
 by an ambition beneath an American statesman, whose true glory 
 alone consists in serving his country well in that sphere to which 
 his fellow-citizens call him. From such a scrutiny the fame of 
 neither of those distinguished men would suffer so much as that 
 of Calhoun. His endowments were not great, nor of the most val- 
 uable kind; and his early education, hasty and very incomplete, was 
 not continued by maturer study. He read rather to confirm his 
 impressions than to correct them. It was impossible that he 
 should ever have been wise, because he refused to admit his lia- 
 8 
 
170 JOHN C. CALHOUN. 
 
 bility to error. Never was mental assurance more complete, and 
 seldom less warranted by innate or acquired superiority. If his* 
 knowledge of books was slight, his opportunities of observing men 
 were still more limited, since he passed his whole life in places as 
 exceptional, perhaps, as any in the world, — Washington and 
 South Carolina. From the beginning of his public career there 
 was a canker in the heart of it ; for, while his oath, as a member 
 of Congress, to support the Constitution of the United States, was 
 still fresh upon his lips, he declared that his attachment to the 
 Union was conditional and subordinate. He said that the alliance 
 between the Southern planters and Northern Democrats was a 
 false and calculated compact, to be broken when the planters 
 could no longer rule by it. While he resided in Washington, and 
 acted with the Republican party in the flush of its double triumph, 
 he appeared a respectable character, and won golden opinions 
 from eminent men in both parties. But when he was again sub- 
 jected to the narrowing and perverting influence of a residence 
 in South Carolina, he shrunk at once to his original proportions, 
 and became thenceforth, not the servant of his country, but the 
 special pleader of a class and the representative of a section. 
 And yet, with that strange judicial blindness which has ever been 
 the doom of the defenders of wrong, he still hoped to attain the 
 Presidency. There is scarcely any example of infatuation more 
 remarkable than this. Here we have, lying before us at this mo- 
 ment, undeniable proofs, in the form of " campaign lives " and 
 " campaign documents," that, as late as 1844 there was money 
 spent and labor done for the purpose of placing him in nomina- 
 tion for the highest office. 
 
 Calhoun failed in all the leading objects of his public life, 
 except one ; but in that one his success will be memorable for- 
 ever. He has left it on record (see Benton, II. 698) that his 
 great aim, from 1835 to 1847, was to force the slavery issue on 
 the North. "It is our duty," he wrote in 1847, " to force the 
 issue on the North." " Had the South," he continued, " or even 
 my own State, backed me, I would have forced the issue on the 
 North in 1835 " ; and he welcomed the Wilmot Proviso in 1847, 
 because, as he privately wrote, it would be the means of " ena- 
 
JOHN C. CALHOUN. 171 
 
 bling us to force the issue on the North." In this design, at 
 length, when he had been ten years in the grave, he succeeded. 
 Had there been no Calhoun, it is possible — nay, it is not im- 
 probable — that that issue might have been deferred till the 
 North had so outstripped the South in accumulating all the ele- 
 ments of power, that the fire-eaters themselves would have shrunk 
 from submitting the question to the arbitrament of the sword. It 
 was Calhoun who forced tho issue upon the United States, and 
 compelled us to choose between annihilation and war. 
 
JOHN RANDOLPH 
 
JOHN RANDOLPH. 
 
 IN June, 1861, Dr. Eussell, the correspondent of the London 
 Times, was ascending the Mississippi in a steamboat, on board 
 of which was a body of Confederate troops, several of whom were 
 sick, and lay along the deck helpless. Being an old campaigner, 
 he had his medicine-chest with him, and he was thus enabled to 
 administer to these men the medicines which he supposed their 
 cases required. One huge fellow, attenuated to a skeleton by 
 dysentery, who appears to have been aware of his benefactor's 
 connection with the press, gasped out these words : " Stranger, 
 remember, if I die, that I am Robert Tallon of Tishimingo 
 County, and that I died for States' Rights. See, now, they put 
 that in the papers, won't you ? Robert Tallon died for States' 
 Rights." Having thus spoken, he turned* over on his blanket, 
 and was silent. Dr. Russell assures his readers that this man 
 only expressed the nearly unanimous feeling of the Southern 
 people at the outbreak of the war. He had been ten weeks 
 travelling in the Southern States, and he declared that the people 
 had but one battle-cry, — " States' Rights, and death to those who 
 make war upon them ! " About the same time, we remember, 
 there was a paragraph going the rounds of the newspapers which 
 related a conversation said to have taken place between a 
 Northern man and a Southern boy. The boy happening to use 
 the word " country," the Northerner asked him, " What is your 
 country ? " To which the boy instantly and haughtily replied, 
 " South Carolina ! " 
 
 Such anecdotes as these were to most of us here at the North 
 a revelation. The majority of the Northern people actually did 
 not know of the existence of such a feeling as that expressed by 
 
176 JOHN RANDOLPH. 
 
 the Carolina boy, nor of the doctrine enunciated by the dying 
 soldier. If every boy in the Northern States old enough to un- 
 derstand the question had been asked, What is your country ? 
 every one of them, without a moment's hesitation, would have 
 quietly answered in substance thus : " Why, the United States, of 
 course " ; — and the only feeling excited by the question would 
 have been one of surprise that it should have been asked. And 
 with regard to that " battle-cry " of States' Eights, seven tenths 
 of the voters of the North hardly knew what a Southern man 
 meant when he pronounced the words. Thus we presented to 
 the world the curious spectacle of a people so ignorant of one 
 another, so little homogeneous, that nearly all on one side of an 
 imaginary line were willing to risk their lives for an idea which 
 the inhabitants on the other side of the line not only did not 
 entertain, but knew nothing about. We observe something simi- 
 lar in the British empire. The ordinary Englishman does not 
 know what it is of which Ireland complains, and if an Irishman 
 is asked the name of his country, he does not pronounce any of 
 the names which imply the merging of his native isle in the 
 realm of Britain. 
 
 Few of us, even now, have a " realizing sense," as it is called, 
 of the strength of the. States' Rights feeling among the Southern 
 people. Of all the Southern States in which we ever sojourned, 
 the one that seemed to us most like a Northern State was North 
 Carolina. We stayed some time at Raleigh, ten years ago, 
 during the session of the Legislature, and we were struck with 
 the large number of reasonable, intelligent, upright men who 
 were members of that body. Of course, we expected to find 
 Southern men all mad on one topic ; but in the Legislature of 
 North Carolina there were several individuals who could con- 
 verse even on that in a rational and comfortable manner. We 
 were a little surprised, therefore, the other day, to pick up at a 
 book-stall in Nassau Street a work entitled: "The North Caro- 
 lina Reader, Number III. Prepared with Special Reference to 
 the Wants and Interests of North Carolina. Under the Auspices 
 of the Superintendent of Common Schools. Containing Selec- 
 tions in Prose and Verse. By C. II. Wiley. New York : A. S. 
 
JOHN RANDOLPH. 177 
 
 Barnes and Burr." The acute reader will at once surmise that 
 the object of this series of school readers was to instil into the 
 minds of the youth of North Carolina a due regard for the 
 sacredness and ble?sed effects of our peculiar institution. But 
 for once the acute reader is mistaken. No such purpose appears, 
 at least not in Number III. ; in which there are only one or two 
 even distant allusions to that dread subject. Onesimus is not 
 mentioned ; there is no reference to Ham, nor is there any dis- 
 course upon long heels and small brains. The great, the only 
 object of this Reader was to nourish in the children of the State 
 the feeling which the boy expressed when he proudly said that 
 his country was South Carolina. Nothing can exceed the inno- 
 cent, childlike manner in which this design is carried out in Num- 
 ber III. First, the children are favored with a series of chap- 
 ters descriptive of North Carolina, written in the style of a 
 school geography, with an occasional piece of poetry on a North 
 Carolina subject by a North Carolina poet. Once, however, the 
 compiler ventures to depart from his plan by inserting the lines 
 by Sir William Jones, "What constitutes a State?" To this 
 poem he appends a note apologizing for " breaking the thread of 
 his discourse," upon the ground that the lines were so " applicable 
 to the subject," that it seemed as if the author " must have been 
 describing North Carolina." When the compiler has done cata- 
 loguing the fisheries, the rivers, the mountains, and the towns of 
 North Carolina, he proceeds to relate its history precisely in the 
 style of our school history books. The latter half of the volume 
 is chiefly occupied by passages from speeches, and poems from 
 newspapers, written by natives of North Carolina. It is impos- 
 sible for us to convey an idea of the innutritiousness and the 
 inferiority of most of these pieces. North Carolina is the great 
 theme of orator and poet. 
 
 " We live," says one of the legislators quoted, " in the most beautiful 
 land that the sun of heaven ever shone upon. Yes, sir, I have heard 
 the anecdote from Mr. Clay, that a preacher in Kentucky, when speak- 
 ing of the beauties of paradise, when he desired to make his audience 
 believe it was a place of bliss, said it was a Kentucky of a place. Sir, 
 this preacher had never visited the western counties of North Carolina. 
 8* h 
 
178 JOHN RANDOLPH. 
 
 I have spent days of rapture in looking at her scenery of unsurpassed 
 grandeur, in hearing the roar of her magnificent waterfalls, second only 
 to the great cataract of the North ; and while I gazed for hours, lost in 
 admiration at the power of Him who by his word created such a coun- 
 try, and gratitude for the blessings He had scattered upon it, I thought 
 that if Adam and Eve, when driven from paradise, had been near this 
 land, they would have thought themselves in the next best place to that 
 they had left." 
 
 We do not aver that the contents of this collection are gen- 
 erally as ludicrous as this specimen ; but we do say that the pas- 
 sage quoted gives a very fair idea of the spirit and quality of the 
 book. There is scarcely one of the North Carolina pieces which 
 a Northern man would not for one reason or another find ex- 
 tremely comic. One of the reading lessons is a note written fif- 
 teen years ago by Solon Robinson, the agricultural editor of the 
 Tribune, upon the use of the long leaves of the North Carolina 
 pine for braiding or basket-work ; another is a note written to 
 accompany a bunch of North Carolina grapes sent to an editor ; 
 and there are many other newspaper cuttings of a similar char- 
 acter. The editor seems to have thought nothing too trivial, 
 nothing too ephemeral, for his purpose, provided the passage 
 contained the name of his beloved State. 
 
 How strange all this appears to a Northern mind ! Every- 
 where else in Christendom, teachers strive to enlarge the mental 
 range of their pupils, readily assenting to Voltaire's well-known 
 definition of an educated man : " One who is not satisfied to sur- 
 vey the universe from his parish belfry." Everywhere else, the 
 intellectual class have some sense of the ill-consequences of 
 " breeding in and in," and take care to infuse into their minds the 
 vigor of new ideas and the nourishment of strange knowledge. 
 How impossible for a Northern State to think of doing what 
 Alabama did last winter, pass a law designed to limit the circu- 
 lation in that State of Northern newspapers and periodicals ! 
 What Southern men mean by " State pride " is really not known 
 in the Northern States. All men of every land are fond of their 
 native place ; but the pride that Northern people may feel in the 
 State wherein they happened to be born is as subordinate to 
 
JOIIN RANDOLPH. 179 
 
 their national feeb'ng, as the attachment of a Frenchman to his 
 native province is to his pride in France. 
 
 Why this difference ? It did not always exist. It cost New- 
 York and Massachusetts as severe a struggle to accept the Con- 
 stitution of 1787 as it did Virginia. George Clinton, Governor 
 of New York, had as much State pride as Patrick Henry, orator 
 of Virginia, and parted as reluctantly with a portion of the sov- 
 ereignty which he wielded. If it required "Washington's influence 
 and Madison's persuasive reasoning to bring Virginia into the 
 new system, the repugnance of Massachusetts was only overcome 
 by the combined force of Hancock's social rank and Samuel 
 Adams's late, reluctant assent. 
 
 On this subject let us hear Samuel Adams for a moment as he 
 wrote to a friend in 1788 : — 
 
 " I confess, as I enter the building I stumble at the threshold. I 
 meet with a national government instead of a federal union of sover- 
 eign states. I am not able to conceive why the wisdom of the Con- 
 vention led them to give the preference to the former before the latter. 
 If the several States in the Union are to be one entire nation under one 
 Legislature, the powers of which shall extend to every subject of leg- 
 islation, and its laws be supreme and control the whole, the idea of 
 sovereignty in these States must be lost. Indeed, I think, upon such a 
 supposition, those sovereignties ought to be eradicated from the mind, 
 for they would be imperia in unperio, justly deemed a solecism in poli- 
 tics, and they would be highly dangerous and destructive of the peace, 
 union, and safety of the nation. 
 
 " And can this National Legislature be competent to make laws for 
 the free internal government of one people, living in climates so re- 
 mote, and whose habits and particular interests are, and probably al- 
 ways will be, so different? Is it to be expected that general laws can 
 be adapted to the feelings of the more eastern and the more southern 
 parts of so extensive a nation ? It appears to me difficult, if practica- 
 ble. Hence, then, may we not look for discontent, mistrust, disaffec- 
 tion to government, and frequent insurrections, which will require 
 standing armies to suppress them in one place and another, where they 
 may happen to arise. Or, if laws could be made adapted to the local 
 habits, feelings, views, and interests of those distant parts, would they 
 not cause jealousies of partiality in government, which would excite 
 envy and other malignant passions productive of wars and fighting ? 
 
180 JOHN EANDOLPH. 
 
 But should we continue distinct sovereign States, confederated for the 
 purpose of mutual safety and happiness, each contributing to the fed- 
 eral head such a part of its sovereignty as would render the govern- 
 ment fully adequate to those purposes and no more, the people would 
 govern themselves more easily, the laws of each State being well adapt- 
 ed to its own genius and circumstances, and the liberties of the United 
 States would be more secure than they can be, as I humbly conceive, 
 under the proposed new constitution." — Life of Samuel Adams, Vol. 
 III., p. 251. 
 
 This passage is one of the large number in the writings of that 
 time to which recent events have given a new interest ; nor is it 
 now without salutary meaning for us, though we quote it only to 
 show the reluctance of some of the best citizens of the North to 
 come into a national system. Suppose, to-day, that the United 
 States were invited to merge their sovereignty into a confedera- 
 tion of all the nations of America, which would require us to 
 abolish the city of Washington, and send delegates to a general 
 congress on the Isthmus of Darien ! A sacrifice of pride like 
 that was demanded of the leading States of the Union in 1787. 
 Severe was the struggle, but the sacrifice was made, and it cost 
 the great States of the North as painful a throe as it did the 
 great States of the South. Why, then, has State pride died 
 away in the North, and grown stronger in the South? Why is 
 it only in the Southern States that the doctrine of States' Rights 
 is ever heard of? Why does the Northern man swell with na- 
 tional pride, and point with exultation to a flag bearing thirty- 
 seven stars, feeling the remotest State to be as much his country 
 as his native village, while the Southern man contracts to an ex- 
 clusive love for a single State, and is willing to die on its fron- 
 tiers in repelling from its sacred soil the national troops, and can 
 see the flan; under which his fathers fought torn down without 
 
 -»• 
 
 regret ? 
 
 The study of John Randolph of Virginia takes us to the heart 
 of this mystery. He could not have correctly answered the 
 question we have proposed, but he was an answer to it. Born 
 when George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, George Mason, and 
 James Madison were Virginia farmers, and surviving to the time 
 
JOHN RANDOLPH. 181 
 
 when Andrew Jackson was President of the United States, he 
 lived through the period of the decline of his race, and he was of 
 that decline a conscious exemplification. He represented the 
 decay of Virginia, himself a living ruin attesting by the strength 
 and splendor of portions of it what a magnificent structure it was 
 once. " Poor old Virginia ! Poor old Virginia ! " This was 
 the burden of his cry for many a year. Sick, solitary, and half 
 mad, at his lonely house in the wilderness of Roanoke, suffering 
 from inherited disease, burdened with inherited debt, limited by 
 inherited errors, and severed by a wall of inherited prejudice 
 from the life of the modern world, he stands to us as the type of 
 the palsied and dying State. Of the doctrine of States' Rights 
 he was the most consistent and persistent champion ; while of 
 that feeling which the North Carolina Reader No. III." styles 
 " State pride," we may call him the very incarnation. " When I 
 speak of my country," he would say, " I mean the Commonwealth 
 of Virginia." He was the first eminent man in the Southern 
 States who was prepared in spirit for war against the government 
 of the United States ; for during the Nullification imbroglio of 
 1833, he not only was in the fullest accord with Calhoun, but he 
 used to say, that, if a collision took place between the nullifiers 
 and the forces of the United States, he, John Randolph of Roan- 
 oke, old and sick as he was, would have himself buckled on his 
 horse, Radical, and fight for the South to his last breath. 
 
 Rut then he was a man of genius, travel, and reading. We 
 find him, therefore, as we have said, a conscious witness of his 
 Virginia's decline. Along with a pride in the Old Dominion 
 that was fanatical, there was in this man's heart a constant and 
 most agonizing sense of her inferiority to lands less beloved. By 
 no tongue or pen — not by Sumner's tongue nor Olmstead'a pen 
 — have more terrible pictures been drawn of Virginia's lapse 
 into barbarism, than are to be found in John Randolph's letters. 
 At a time (1831) when he would not buy a pocket-knife made 
 in New England, nor send a book to be bound north of the Poto- 
 mac, we find him writing of his native State in these terms : — 
 
 " I passed a night in Farrarville, in an apartment which, in England, 
 would not have been thought fit for my servant ; nor on the Continent 
 
182 JOHN RANDOLPH. 
 
 did he ever occupy so mean a one. Wherever I stop it is the same : 
 Avails black and filthy ; bed and furniture sordid ; furniture scanty and 
 mean, generally broken ; no mirror ; no fire-irons ; in short, dirt and 
 discomfort universally prevail ; and in most private houses the matter 
 is not mended. The cows milked a half a mile off", or not got up, and 
 no milk to be had at any distance, — no Jordan ; — in fact, all the old 
 gentiy are gone, and the nouveaux riches, when they have the inclina- 
 tion, do not know how to live. Biscuit, not half cuit; everything 
 animal and vegetable smeared with butter and lard. Poverty stalking 
 through the land, while we are engaged in political metaphysics, and, 
 amidst our filth and vermin, like the Spaniard and Portuguese, look 
 down with contempt on other nations, — England and France espe- 
 cially. We hug our lousy cloak around us, take another chaw of tub- 
 backer, float the room with nastiness, or ruin the grate and fire-irons, 
 where they happen not to be rusty, and try conclusions upon constitu- 
 tional points." 
 
 What truth and painting in this passage ! But if we had 
 asked this suffering genius as to the cause of his " country's " 
 decline, he would have given us a mad answer indeed. He 
 would have said, in his wild way, that it was all Tom Jefferson's 
 doing, sir. Tom Jefferson abolished primogeniture in Virginia, 
 and thus, as John Randolph believed, destroyed the old families, 
 the life and glory of the State. Tom Jefferson was unfaithful to 
 the States' Rights and strict-constructionist creed, of which he 
 was the expounder and trustee, and thus let in the " American 
 system " of Henry Clay, with its protective tariff, which completed 
 the ruin of the agricultural States. This was his simple theory 
 of the situation. These were the reasons why he despaired of 
 ever again seeing, to use his own language, " the Nelsons, the 
 Pages, the Byrds, and Fairfaxes, living in their palaces, and 
 driving their coaches and sixes, or the good old Virginia gentle- 
 men in the Assembly drinking their twenty and forty bowls of 
 rack punches, and madeira and claret, in lieu of a knot of deputy 
 sheriffs and hack attorneys, each with his cruet of whiskey before 
 him, and puddle of tobacco-spittle between his legs." He was as 
 far from seeing any relation of cause and effect between the 
 coaches, palaces, and bowls of punch, and the " knot of deputy 
 sheriffs," as a Fenian is from discerning any connection between 
 
JOHN RANDOLPH. 183 
 
 the Irish rackrenting of the last century, and the Irish beggary 
 of this. Like conditions produce like characters. How interest- 
 ing to discover in this republican, this native Virginian of Eng- 
 lish stock, a perfect and splendid specimen of a species of tory 
 supposed to exist only in such countries as Poland, Spain, Ire- 
 land, and the Highlands of Scotland, but which in reality does 
 abound in the Southern States of this Union, — the tory, con- 
 scious of his country's ruin, but clinging with fanatical and proud 
 tenacity to the principles that ruined it. 
 
 Dear tobacco, virgin land, and cheap negroes gave the several 
 families in Virginia, for three generations, a showy, delusive 
 prosperity, which produced a considerable number of dissolute, 
 extravagant men, and educated a few to a high degree of knowl- 
 edge and wisdom. Of these families, the Randolphs were the 
 most numerous, and among the oldest, richest, and most in- 
 fluential. The soldiers of the late army of the Potomac know 
 well the lands which produced the tobacco that maintained them 
 in baronial state. It was on Turkey Island (an island no more), 
 twenty miles below Richmond, close to Malvern Hill of immortal 
 memory, that the founder of the family settled in 1660, — a Cav- 
 alier of ancient Yorkshire race ruined in the civil wars. Few of 
 our troops, perhaps, who rambled over Turkey Bend, were 
 aware that the massive ruins still visible there, and which served 
 as negro quarters seven years ago, are the remains of the great 
 and famous mansion built by this Cavalier, turned tobacco-plant- 
 er. This home of the Randolphs was so elaborately splendid, 
 that a man served out the whole term of his apprenticeship to 
 the trade of carpenter in one of its rooms. The lofty dome was 
 for many years a beacon to the navigator. Such success had 
 this Randolph in raising tobacco during the fifty-one years of his 
 residence upon Turkey Island, that, to each of his six sons he 
 gave or left a large estate, besides portioning liberally his two 
 daughters. Five of these sons reared families, and the sons of 
 those sons were also thriving and prolific men ; so that, in the 
 course of three generations, Virginia was full of Randolphs. 
 There was, we believe, not one of the noted controlling families 
 that was not related to them by blood or marriage. 
 
184 JOHN RANDOLPH. 
 
 In 1773, when John Randolph was born, the family was still 
 powerful ; and the region last trodden by the Army of the Po- 
 tomac was still adorned by the seats of its leading members. 
 Cawsons, the mansion in which he was born, was situated at 
 the junction of the James and Appomattox, in full view of City 
 Point and Bermuda Hundred, and only an after-breakfast walk 
 from Dutch Gap. The mansion long ago disappeared, and 
 nothing now marks its site but negro huts. Many of those ex- 
 quisite spots on the James and Appomattox, which we have seen 
 men pause to admire while the shells were bursting overhead, 
 were occupied sixty years ago by the sumptuous abodes of the 
 Randolphs and families related to them. Mattoax, the house in 
 which John Randolph passed much of his childhood, was on a 
 bluff of the Appomattox, two miles above Petersburg; and 
 Bizarre, the estate on which he spent his boyhood, lay above, 
 on both sides of the same river. Over all that extensive and en- 
 chanting region, trampled and torn and laid waste by hostile 
 armies in 1864 and 1865, John Randolph rode and hunted from 
 the time he could sit a pony and handle a gun. Not a vestige 
 remains of the opulence and splendor of his early days. Not one 
 of the mansions inhabited or visited by him in his youth fur- 
 nished a target for our cannoneers or plunder for our camps. A 
 country better adapted to all good purposes of man, nor one 
 more pleasing to the eye, hardly exists on earth ; but before it 
 was trodden by armies, it had become little less than desolate. 
 The James River is as navigable as the Hudson, and flows 
 through a region far more fertile, longer settled, more inviting, 
 and of more genial climate ; but there are upon the Hudson's 
 banks more cities than there are rotten landings upon the James. 
 The shores of this beautiful and classic stream are so unexpect- 
 edly void of even the signs of human habitation, that our soldiers 
 were often ready to exclaim : " Can this be the river of Captain 
 John Smith and Pocahontas? Was it here that Jamestown 
 stood ? Is it possible that white men have lived in this delight- 
 ful land for two hundred and fifty-seven years ? Or has not the 
 captain of the steamboat made a mistake, and turned into the 
 wrong river ? " 
 
JOHN RANDOLPH. 185 
 
 One scene of John Eandolph's boyhood reveals to us the entire 
 political economy of the Old Dominion. He used to relate it 
 himself, when denouncing the manufacturing system of Henry 
 Clay. One ship, he would say, sufficed, in those happy days, for 
 all the commerce of that part of Virginia with the Old World, 
 and that ship was named the London Trader. When this ship 
 was about to sail, all the family were called together, and each 
 member was invited to mention the articles which he or she 
 wanted from London. First, the mother of the family gave in 
 her list ; next the children, in the order of their ages ; next, the 
 overseer ; then the mammy, the children's black nurse ; lastly, the 
 house servants, according to their rank, down even to their chil- 
 dren. When months had passed, and the time for the ship's return 
 was at hand, the weeks, the days, the hours were counted ; and 
 when the signal was at last descried, the whole household burst 
 into exclamations of delight, and there was festival in the family 
 for many days. 
 
 How picturesque and interesting! How satisfactory to the 
 tory mind ! But alas ! this system of exhausting the soil in the 
 production of tobacco by the labor of slaves, and sending for all 
 manufactured articles to England, was more ruinous even than it 
 was picturesque. No middle class could exist, as in England, to 
 supply the waste of aristocratic blood and means ; and in three 
 generations, rich and beautiful Virginia, created for empire, was 
 only another Ireland. But it was a picturesque system, and John 
 Randolph, poet and tory, revelled in the recollection of it. " Our 
 Egyptian taskmasters," he would say, meaning the manufacturers 
 of Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, and New England, 
 " only wish to leave us the recollection of past times, and insist 
 upon our purchasing their vile domestic stuffs ; but it won't do : 
 no wooden nutmegs for old Virginia." 
 
 His own pecuniary history was an illustration of the working 
 of the system. His father left forty thousand acres of the best 
 land in the world, and several hundred slaves, to his three boys; 
 the greater part of which property, by the early death of the two 
 elder brothers, fell to John. As the father died when John was 
 but three years old, there was a minority of eighteen years, dur- 
 
186 JOHN RANDOLPH. 
 
 iug which the boy's portion should have greatly increased. So 
 far from increasing, an old debt of his father's — a London debt, 
 incurred for goods brought to a joyous household in the London 
 Trader — remained undiminished at his coming of age, and hung 
 about his neck for many years afterward. Working two large 
 estates, with a force of negroes equivalent to one hundred and eigh- 
 ty full field hands, he could not afford himself the luxury of a trip 
 to Europe until he was fifty years old. The amount of this debt 
 we do not know, but he says enough about it for us to infer that 
 it was not of very large amount in comparison with his great re- 
 sources. One hundred and eighty stalwart negroes working the ' 
 best land in the world, under a man so keen and vigilant as this 
 last of the noble Randolphs, and yet making scarcely any head- 
 way for a quarter of a century ! 
 
 The blood of this fine breed of men was also running low. 
 Both the parents of John Randolph and both of his brothers died 
 young, and he himself inherited weakness which early developed 
 into disease. One of his half-brothers died a madman. " My 
 whole name and race," he would say, " lie under a curse. I feel 
 the curse clinging to me." He was a fair, delicate child, more 
 bke a girl than a boy, and more inclined, as a child, to the sports 
 of girls than of boys. His mother, a fond, tender, gentle lady, 
 nourished his softer qualities, powerless to govern him, and prob- 
 ably never attempting it. Nevertheless, he was no girl ; he was 
 a genuine son of the South. Such was the violence of his pas- 
 sions, that, before he was four years old, he sometimes in a fit of 
 anger fell senseless upon the floor, and was restored only after 
 much effort. His step-father, who was an honorable man, seems 
 never to have attempted either to control his passions or develop 
 his intellect. He grew up, as many boys of Virginia did, and 
 do, unchecked, unguided, untrained. Turned loose in a miscel- 
 laneous library, nearly every book he read tended to intensify his 
 feelings or inflame his imagination. His first book was Voltaire's 
 Charles XII., and a better book for a boy has never been writ- 
 ten. Then he fell upon the Spectator. Before he was twelve 
 he had read the Arabian Nights, Orlando, Robinson Crusoe, 
 Smollett's Works, Reynard the Fox, Don Quixote, Gil Bias, 
 
JOHN EANDOLPH. 187 
 
 Tom Jones, Gulliver, Shakespeare, Plutarch's Lives, Pope's 
 Homer, Goldsmith's Rome, Percy's Reliques, Thomson's Sea- 
 sons, Young, Gray, and Chatterton, — a gallon of sack to a pen- 
 ny's worth of bread. A good steady drill in arithmetic, geogra- 
 phy, and language might have given his understanding a chance ; 
 but this ill-starred boy never had a steady drill in anything. He 
 never remained longer at any one school than a year, and he 
 learned at school very little that he needed most to know. In 
 the course of his desultory schooling he picked up some Latin, a 
 little Greek, a good deal of French, and an inconceivable medley 
 of odds and ends of knowledge, which his wonderful memory 
 enabled him to use sometimes with startling effect. 
 
 Everywhere else, in the whole world, children are taught that 
 virtue is self-control. In the Southern States, among these 
 tobacco-lords, boys learned just the opposite lesson, — that virtue 
 is self-indulgence. This particular- youth, thin-skinned, full of 
 talent, fire, and passion, the heir to a large estate, fatherless, 
 would have been in danger anywhere of growing up untrained, 
 — a wild beast in broadcloth. In the Virginia of that day, in the 
 circle in which he lived, there was nothing for him in the way 
 either of curb or spur. He did what he pleased, and nothing 
 else. All that was noble in his life, — those bursts of really fine 
 oratory, his Hashes of good sense, his occasional generosities, his 
 hatred of debt, and his eager haste to pay it, — all these things 
 were due to the original excellence of his race. In the very 
 dregs of good wine there is flavor. We cannot make even good 
 vinegar out of a low quality of wine. 
 
 His gentle mother taught him all the political economy he ever 
 took to heart. " Johnny," said she to him one day, when they 
 had reached a point in their ride that commanded an extensive 
 view, " all this land belongs to you and your brother. It is your 
 father's inheritance. When you get to be a man, you must not 
 sell your land : it is the first step to ruin for a boy to part with 
 his father's home. Be sure to keep it as long as you live. Keep 
 your land, and your land will keep you." There never came a 
 time when his mind was mature and masculine enough to con- 
 sider this advice. He clung to his land as Charles Stuart clung 
 to his prerogative. 
 
188 JOHN RANDOLPH. 
 
 All the early life of this youth was wandering and desultory. 
 At fourteen, we find him at Princeton College in New Jersey, 
 where, we are told, he fought a duel, exchanged shots twice with 
 his adversary, and put a ball into his body which he carried all his 
 life. By this time, too, the precocious and ungovernable boy had 
 become, as he flattered himself, a complete atheist. One of his 
 favorite amusements at Princeton was to burlesque the precise 
 and perhaps ungraceful Presbyterians of the place. The library 
 of his Virginian home, it appears, was furnished with a great 
 supply of what the French mildly call the literature of incredu- 
 lity, — Helvetius, Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot, DAlembert, and 
 the rest. The boy, in his rage for knowledge, had read vast 
 quantities of this literature, and, of course, embraced the theory 
 of the writers that pushed denial farthest. For twenty-two years, 
 he says in one of his letters, he never entered a church. Great 
 pleasure it gave him to show how superior the Mahometan re- 
 ligion was to the Christian, and to recite specimens of what he 
 took delight in styling Hebrew jargon. The Psalms of David 
 were his special aversion. 
 
 Almost all gifted and fearless lads that have lived in Christen- 
 dom during the last hundred years have had a fit of this kind be- 
 tween fifteen and twenty-five. The strength of the tendency to 
 question the grounds of belief must be great indeed to bear away 
 with it a youth like this, formed by Nature to believe. John 
 Randolph had no more intellectual right to be a sceptic, than he 
 had a moral right to be a republican. A person whose imagina- 
 tion is quick and warm, whose feelings are acute, and whose in- 
 tellect is wholly untrained, can find no comfort except in belief. 
 His scepticism is a mere freak of vanity or self-will. Coming 
 upon the stage of life when unbelief was fashionable in high 
 drawing-rooms, he became a sceptic. But Nature will have her 
 way with us all, and so this atheist at fifteen was an Evangelical 
 at forty-five. 
 
 His first political bias was equally at war with his nature. 
 John Randolph was wholly a tory ; there was not in his whole 
 composition one republican atom. But coming early under the 
 direct personal influence of Thomas Jefferson, whose every fibre 
 
JOHN RANDOLPH. 189 
 
 was republican, he, too, the sympathetic tory of genius, espoused 
 the people's cause. He was less than twenty-two years, however, 
 in recovering from this false tendency. 
 
 Summoned from Princeton, after only a few months' residence, 
 by the death of his mother, he went next to Columbia College, 
 in the city of New York, where for a year or two he read Greek 
 with a tutor, especially Demosthenes. At New York he saw the 
 first Congress under the new Constitution assemble, and was one 
 of the concourse that witnessed the scene of General Washing- 
 ton's taking the oath on the balcony of the old City Hall. It 
 seemed to this Virginia boy natural enough that a Virginian 
 should be at the head of the government ; not so, that a Yankee 
 should hold the second place and preside over the Senate. Forty 
 years after, he recalled with bitterness a trifling incident, which, 
 trifling as it was, appears to have been the origin of his intense 
 antipathy to all of the blood of John Adams. The coachman of 
 the Vice-Proident, it seems, told the brother of this little repub- 
 lican tory to stand back ; or, as the orator stated it, forty years 
 after, " I remember the manner in which my brother was spurned 
 by the coachman of the Vice-President for coming too near the 
 arms emblazoned on the vice-regal carriage." 
 
 Boy as he was, he had already taken sides with those who 
 opposed the Constitution. The real ground of his opposition to 
 it was, that it reduced the importance of Virginia, — great Vir- 
 ginia! Under the new Constitution, there was a man on the 
 Western Continent of more consequence than the Governor of 
 Virginia, there were legislative bodies more powerful than the 
 Legislature of Virginia. This was the secret of the disgust with 
 which he heard it proposed to style the President " His High- 
 ness" and " Ilis Majesty." This was the reason why it kindled 
 his ire to read, in the newspapers of 1789, that " the most honor- 
 able Rufus King " had been elected Senator. It was only Jef- 
 ferson and a very few other of the grand Virginians who objected 
 for higher and larger reasons. 
 
 In March, 1790, Mr. Jefferson reached New York, after his 
 return from France, and entered upon his new office of Secretary 
 of State under General Washington. He was a distant relative 
 
190 JOHN RANDOLPH. 
 
 of our precocious student, then seventeen years of age ; and the 
 two families had just been brought nearer together by the mar- 
 riage of one of Mr. Jefferson's daughters to a Randolph. The 
 reaction against republican principles was at full tide ; and no 
 one will ever know to what lengths it would have gone, had not 
 Thomas Jefferson so opportunely come upon the scene. At his 
 modest abode, No. 57 Maiden Lane, the two Randolph lads — 
 John, seventeen, Theodorick, nineteen — were frequent visitors. 
 Theodorick was a roistering blade, much opposed to his younger 
 brother's reading habits, caring himself for nothing but pleasure. 
 John was an eager politician. During the whole period of the 
 reaction, first at New York, afterward at Philadelphia, finally in 
 Virginia, John Randolph sat at the feet of the great Democrat 
 of America, fascinated by his conversation, and generally con- 
 vinced by his reasoning. It is a mistake, however, to suppose 
 that he was a blind follower of Mr. Jefferson, even then. On the 
 question of States' Rights, he was in the most perfect accord with 
 him. But when, in 1791, the eyes of all intelligent America 
 were fixed upon the two combatants, Edmund Burke and Thomas 
 Paine, Burke condemning, Paine defending, the French Revolu- 
 tion, the inherited instincts of John Randolph asserted themselves, 
 and he gave all his heart to Burke. Lord Chatham and Edmund 
 Burke were the men who always held the first place in the esteem 
 of this kindred spirit. Mr. Jefferson, of course, sympathized with 
 the view of his friend Paine, and never wavered in his belief 
 that the French Revolution was necessary and beneficial. A 
 generous and gifted nation strangled, moved him to deeper com- 
 passion than a class proscribed. He dwelt more upon the long 
 and bitter provocation, than upon the brief frenzy which was only 
 one of its dire results. Louis XIV. and Louis XV., picturesque 
 as they were, excited within him a profounder horror than ugly 
 Marat and Robespierre. He pitied haggard, distracted France 
 more than graceful and high-bred Marie Antoinette. In other 
 words, he was not a tory. 
 
 There was a difference, too, between Mr. Jefferson and his 
 young kinsman on the points upon which they agreed. Jefferson 
 was a States' Rights man, and a strict constructionist, because he 
 
JOHN RANDOLPH. 191 
 
 was a republican ; Randolph, because he was a Virginian. Jef- 
 ferson thought the government should be small, that the people 
 might be great ; John Randolph thought the government should 
 be small, that Virginia might be great. Pride in Virginia 
 was John Randolph's ruling passion, not less in 1790 than 
 in 1828. The welfare and dignity of man were the darling 
 objects of Thomas Jefferson's great soul, from youth to hoary 
 age. 
 
 Here we have the explanation of the great puzzle of American 
 politics, — the unnatural alliance, for sixty years, between the 
 plantation lords of the South and the democracy of the North, 
 both venerating the name of Jefferson, and both professing his 
 principles. It was not, as many suppose, a compact of scurvy 
 politicians for the sake of political victory. Every great party, 
 whether religious or political, that has held power long in a coun- 
 try, has been founded upon conviction, — disinterested conviction. 
 Some of the cotton and tobacco lords, men of intellect and cul- 
 ture, were democrats and abolitionists, like Jefferson himself. 
 Others took up with republicanism because it was the reigning 
 affectation in their circle, as it was in the chateaux and drawing- 
 rooms of France. But their State pride it was that bound them 
 as a class to the early Republican party. The Southern aristo- 
 crat saw in Jefferson the defender of the sovereignty of his State : 
 the " smutched artificer " of the North gloried in Jefferson as the 
 champion of the rights of man. While the Republican party was 
 in opposition, battling with unmanageable John Adams, with Brit- 
 ish Hamilton, and with a foe more powerful than both of those 
 men together, Robespierre, — while it had to contend with Wash- 
 ington's all but irresistible influence, and with the nearly unani- 
 mous opposition of educated and orthodox New England, — this 
 distinction was not felt. Many a tobacco aristocrat cut off his 
 pig-tail and wore trousers down to his ankles, which were then 
 the outward signs of the inward democratic grace. But time 
 tries all. It is now apparent to every one that the strength of the 
 original Democratic party in the South was the States' Rights 
 portion of its platform, while in the North it was the sentiment 
 of republicanism that kept the party together. 
 
192 JOHN RANDOLPH. 
 
 
 Young politicians should study this period of their country's 
 history. If ever again a political party shall rule the United 
 States for sixty years, or for twenty years, it will be, we think, a 
 party resembling the original Republican party, as founded in 
 America by Franklin, and organized under Jefferson. Its plat- 
 form will be, perhaps, something like this : simple, economical 
 government machinery ; strict construction of the Constitution ; 
 the rights of the States scrupulously observed ; the suffrage open 
 to all, without regard to color or sex, — open to all, but conferred 
 only upon men and women capable of exercising it. 
 
 John Randolph agreed upon another point with Mr. Jefferson : 
 he was an abolitionist. But for the English debt which he in- 
 herited, it is extremely probable that he would have followed the 
 example of many of the best Virginians of his day, and emanci- 
 pated his slaves. He would, perhaps, have clone so when that 
 debt was discharged, instead of waiting to do it by his last will, 
 but for the forlorn condition of freedmen in a Slave State. His 
 eldest brother wrote, upon the division of the estate, in 1794: "I 
 want not a single negro for any other purpose than his immediate 
 emancipation. I shudder when I think that such an insignificant 
 animal as I am is invested with this monstrous, this horrid pow- 
 er." He told his guardian that he would give up all his land 
 rather than own a slave. There was no moment in the whole life 
 of John Randolph when he did not sympathize with this view of 
 slavery, and he died expressing it. But though he was, if possi- 
 ble, a more decided abolitionist than Jefferson, he never for a 
 moment doubted the innate superiority of a Virginia gentleman to 
 all the other inhabitants of America. He had not even the com- 
 plaisance to take his hair out of queue, nor hide his thin legs in 
 pantaloons. He was not endowed by nature with understanding 
 enough to rise superior to the prejudices that had come down to 
 him through generations of aristocrats. He was weak enough, 
 indeed, to be extremely vain of the fact that a grandfather of his 
 had married one of the great-granddaughters of Pocahontas, who, 
 it was believed, performed the act that renders her famous at 
 Point of Rocks on the Appomattox, within walking distance of 
 one of the Randolph mansions. It is interesting to observe what 
 
JOHN RANDOLPH. 193 
 
 an unquestioning, childlike faith he always had in the superiority 
 of his caste, of his State, and of his section. He once got so far 
 as to speak favorably of the talents of Daniel Webster ; but he 
 was obliged to conclude by saying that he was the best debater 
 he had ever known north of the Potomac. 
 
 This singular being was twenty-six years of age before any 
 one suspected, least of all himself, that he possessed any of the 
 talents which command the attention of men. His life had been 
 desultory and purposeless. He had studied law a little, attended 
 a course or two of medical lectures, travelled somewhat, dipped 
 into hundreds of books, read a few with passionate admiration, 
 had lived much with the ablest men of that day, — a familiar 
 guest at Jefferson's fireside, and no stranger at President Wash- 
 ington's stately table. Father, mother, and both brothers were 
 dead. He was lonely, sad, and heavily burdened with property, 
 with debt, and the care of many dependants. His appearance 
 was even more singular than his situation. At twenty-three he 
 had still the aspect of a boy. He actually grew half a head 
 after he was twenty-three years of age. " A tall, gawky-looking, 
 flaxen-haired stripling, apparently of the age of sixteen or 
 eighteen, with complexion of a good parchment color, beardless 
 ehin, and as much assumed self-consequence as any two-footed 
 animal I ever saw." So he was described by a Charleston book- 
 seller, who saw him in his store in 1796, carelessly turning over 
 books. " At length," continues this narrator, " he hit upon some- 
 thing that struck his fancy ; and never did I witness so sudden, 
 so perfect a change of the human countenance. That which was 
 before dull and heavy in a moment became animated, and flashed 
 with the brightest beams of intellect. He stepped up to the old 
 gray-headed gentleman (his companion), and giving him a thun- 
 dering slap on the shoulder, said, ' Jack, look at this ! ' " Thus 
 was he described at twenty-three. At twenty-six he was half a 
 head taller, and quite as slender as before. His light hair was 
 then combed back into an elegant queue. His eye of hazel was 
 bright and restless. His chin was still beardless. He wore a 
 frock-coat of light blue cloth, yellow breeches, silk stockings, and 
 top-boots. Great was the love he bore his horses, which were 
 
 9 M 
 
194 JOHN RANDOLPH. 
 
 numerous, and as good as Virginia could boast. It is amusing to 
 notice that the horse upon which this pattern aristocrat used to 
 scamper across the country, in French-Revolution times, was 
 named Jacobin ! 
 
 It was in March, 1799, the year before the final victory of the 
 Republicans over the Federal party, that the neighbors of John 
 Randolph and John Randolph himself discovered, to their great 
 astonishment, that he was an orator. He had been nominated 
 for Representative in Congress. Patrick Henry, aged and in- 
 firm, had been so adroitly manipulated by the Federalists, that he 
 had at length agreed to speak to the people in support of the 
 hateful administration of John Adams. John Randolph, who had 
 never in his life addressed an audience, nor, as he afterwards 
 declared, had ever imagined that he could do so, suddenly deter- 
 mined, the very evening before the day named for the meeting, 
 to reply to Patrick Henry. It was an open-air meeting. No 
 structure in Virginia could have contained the mullitude that 
 thronged to hear the transcendent orator, silent for so many 
 years, and now summoned from his retirement by General Wash- 
 ington himself to speak for a Union imperilled and a government 
 assailed. He spoke with the power of other days, for he was 
 really alarmed for his country ; and when he had finished his im- 
 passioned harangue, he sunk back into the arms of his friends, as 
 one of them said, " like the sun setting in his glory." For the 
 moment he had all hearts with him. The sturdiest Republican 
 in Virginia could scarcely resist the spell of that amazing oratory. 
 
 John Randolph rose to reply. His first sentences showed not 
 only that he could speak, but that he knew the artifices of an old 
 debater ; for he began by giving eloquent expression to the vene- 
 ration felt by his hearers for the aged patriot who had just ad- 
 dressed them. He spoke for three hours, it is said ; and if we 
 may judge from the imperfect outline of his speech that has come 
 down to us, he spoke as well that day as ever he did. States' 
 Rights was the burden of his speech. That the Alien and Sedi- 
 tion Law was an outrage upon human nature, he may have be- 
 lieved ; but what he felt was, that it was an outrage upon the 
 Commonwealth of Virginia. He may have thought it desirable 
 
JOHN RANDOLPH. 195 
 
 that all governments should confine themselves to the simple 
 business of compelling the faithful performance of contracts ; but 
 what he insisted upon was, that the exercise by the government 
 of the United States of any power not expressly laid down in 
 the letter of the Constitution was a wrong to Virginia. If John 
 Adams is right, said he, in substance, then Virginia has gained 
 nothing by the Revolution but a change of masters, — New En- 
 land for Old England, — which he thought was not a change for 
 the better. 
 
 It was unnecessary, in the Virginia of 1799, for the head of the 
 house of Randolph to be an orator in order to secure an election to 
 the House of Representatives. He was elected, of course. When 
 he came forward to be sworn in, his appearance was so youthful, 
 that the Clerk of the House asked him, with the utmost polite- 
 ness, whether he had attained the legal age. His reply was emi- 
 nently characteristic of the tobacco lord : " Go, sir, and ask my 
 constituents : they sent me here." As there was no one present 
 authorized by the Constitution to box the ears of impudent boys 
 on the floor of the House, he was sworn without further question. 
 It has often occurred to us that this anecdote, which John Ran- 
 dolph used to relate with much satisfaction, was typical of much 
 that has since occurred. The excessive courtesy of the officer, 
 the insolence of the Virginia tobacconist, the submission of the 
 Clerk to that insolence, — who has not witnessed such scenes in 
 the Capitol at "Washington ? 
 
 It was in December, 1799, that this fiery and erratic genius 
 took his seat in the House of Representatives. John Adams had 
 still sixteen months to serve as target for the sarcasm of the 
 young talent of the nation. To calm readers of the present day, 
 Mr. Adams does really seem a strange personage to preside over 
 a government; but the calm reader of the present day cannot 
 realize the state of things in the year 1800. We cannot conceive 
 what a fritrht the world had had in the excesses of the Frencli 
 Revolution, and the recent usurpation of General Bonaparte. 
 France had made almost every timid man in Christendom a tory. 
 Serious and respectable people, above forty, and enjoying a com- 
 fortable income, felt that there was only one thing left for a de- 
 
196 J0 HN RANDOLPH. 
 
 cent person to do, — to assist in preserving the authority of gov- 
 ernment. John Adams, by the constitution of his mind, was as 
 much a tory as John Randolph ; for he too possessed imagination 
 and talent disproportioned to his understanding. To be a demo- 
 crat it is necessary to have a little pure intellect ; since your dem- 
 ocrat is merely a person who can, occasionally, see things and 
 men as they are. New England will always be democratic 
 enough as long as her boys learn mental arithmetic ; and Ireland 
 will always be the haunt of tories as long as her children are 
 brought up upon songs, legends, and ceremonies. To make a dem- 
 ocratic people, it is only necessary to accustom them to use their 
 
 minds. 
 
 Nothing throws such light upon the state of things in the 
 United States in 1800, as the once famous collision between these 
 two natural tories, John Adams and John Randolph, which gave 
 instantaneous celebrity to the new member, and made him an idol 
 of the Republican party. In his maiden speech, which was in 
 opposition to a proposed increase of the army, he spoke disparag- 
 ingly of the troops already serving, using the words ragamuffins 
 and mercenaries. In this passage of his speech, the partisan 
 spoke, not the man. John Randolph expressed the real feeling 
 of his nature toward soldiers, when, a few years later, on the 
 same floor, he said : " If I must have a master, let him be one with 
 epaulets ; something which I can look up to ; but not a master 
 with a quill behind his ear." In 1800, however, it pleased him 
 to style the soldiers of the United States ragamuffins and merce- 
 naries ; which induced two young officers to push, hustle, and 
 otherwise discommode and insult him at the theatre. Strange to 
 relate, this hot Virginian, usually so prompt with a challenge to 
 mortal combat, reported the misconduct of these officers to the 
 President of the United States. This eminently proper act he 
 did in an eminently proper manner, thanks to his transient con- 
 nection with the Republican party. Having briefly stated the 
 case, he concluded his letter to the President thus : " The inde- 
 pendence of the legislature has been attacked, and the majesty of 
 the people, of which you are the principal representative, insulted, 
 and your authority contemned. In their name, I demand that a 
 
JOHN RANDOLPH. 197 
 
 provision commensurate with the evil be made, and which will be 
 calculated to deter others from any future attempt to introduce 
 the reign of terror into our country. In addressing you in this 
 plain language of man, I give you, sir, the best proof I can afford 
 of the estimation in which I hold your office and your understand- 
 ing ; and I assure you with truth, that I am, with respect, your 
 fellow-citizen, John Randolph." 
 
 This language so well accords with our present sense of the 
 becoming, that a person unacquainted with that period would be 
 unable to point to a single phrase calculated to give offence. In 
 the year 1800, however, the President of the United States saw 
 in every expression of the letter contemptuous and calculated in- 
 sult. " The majesty of the people," forsooth ! The President 
 merely their " representative " ! " plain language of man " ! and 
 " with respect, your fellow-citizen " ! To the heated imaginations 
 of the Federalists of 1800, language of this kind, addressed to 
 the President, was simply prophetic of the guillotine. So amazed 
 and indignant was Mr. Adams, that he submitted the letter to his 
 Cabinet, requesting their opinion as to what should be done with 
 it. Still more incredible is it, that four members of the Cabinet, 
 in writing, declared their opinion to be, that " the contemptuous 
 language therein adopted requires a public censure." They 
 further said, that, " if such addresses remain unnoticed, we are 
 apprehensive that a precedent will be established which must ne- 
 cessarily destroy the ancient, respectable, and urbane usages of 
 this country." Some lingering remains of good-sense in the other 
 member of the Cabinet prevented the President from acting 
 upon their advice ; and he merely sent the letter to the House, 
 with the remark that he " submitted the whole letter and its ten- 
 dencies " to their consideration, " without any other comments on 
 its matter and style." 
 
 This affair, trivial as it was, sufficed in that mad time to lift the 
 young member from Virginia into universal notoriety, and caused 
 him to be regarded as a shining light of the Republican party. 
 The splendor of his talents as an orator gave him at once the ear 
 of the House and the admiration of the Republican side of it ; 
 while the fury of his zeal against the President rendered him 
 
198 JOHN RANDOLPH. 
 
 most efficient in the Presidential canvass. No young man, per- 
 haps, did more than he toward the election of Jefferson and Burr 
 in 1800. He was indeed, at that time, before disease had wasted 
 him, and while still enjoying the confidence of the Republican 
 leaders and subject to the needed restraints of party, a most effec- 
 tive speaker, whether in the House or upon the stump. He had 
 something of Burke's torrent-like fluency, and something of 
 Chatham's spirit of command, with a piercing, audacious sarcasm 
 all bis own. He was often unjust and unreasonable, but never 
 dull. He never spoke in his life without being at least atten- 
 tively listened to. 
 
 Mr. Jefferson came into power ; and John Randolph, triumph- 
 antly re-elected to Congress, was appointed Chairman of the 
 Committee of Ways and Means, — a position not less important 
 then than now. He was the leader of the Republican majority 
 in the House. His social rank, his talents, his position in the 
 House of Representatives, the admiration of the party, the confi- 
 dence of the President, all united to render him the chief of the 
 young men of the young nation. It was captivating to the popu- 
 lar imagination to behold this heir of an ancient house, this pos- 
 sessor of broad lands, this orator of genius, belonging to the party 
 of the people. He aided to give the Republican party the only 
 element of power which it lacked, — social consideration. The 
 party had numbers and talent ; but it had not that which could 
 make a weak, rich man vain of the title of Republican. At the 
 North, clergy, professors, rich men, were generally Federalists, 
 and it was therefore peculiarly pleasing to Democrats to point to 
 this eminent and brilliant Virginian as a member of their party. 
 He discharged the duties of his position well, showing ability as 
 a man of business, and living in harmony with his colleagues. 
 As often as he reached Washington, at the beginning of a ses- 
 sion, he found the President's card (so Colonel Benton tells us) 
 awaiting him for dinner the next day at the White House, when 
 the great measures of the session were discussed. It was he who 
 moved the resolutions of respect for the memory of that consum- 
 mate republican, that entire and perfect democrat, Samuel Adams 
 of Massachusetts. It was he who arranged the financial measures 
 
JOHN RANDOLPH. 199 
 
 required for the purchase of Louisiana, and made no objection 
 to the purchase. During the first six years of Mr. Jefferson's 
 Presidency, he shrank from no duty which his party had a right 
 to claim from him. "Whatever there might be narrow or erro- 
 neous in his political creed was neutralized by the sentiment of 
 nationality which the capital inspires, and by the practical views 
 which must needs be taken of public affairs by the Chairman of 
 the Committee of "Ways and Means. 
 
 These were the happy years of his life, and the most honora- 
 ble ones. Never, since governments have existed, has a country 
 been governed so wisely, so honestly, and so economically as the 
 United States was governed during the Presidency of Thomas 
 Jefferson. Randolph himself, after twenty years of opposition to 
 the policy of this incomparable ruler, could still say of his admin- 
 istration, that it was the only one he had ever known which 
 "seriously and in good faith was disposed to give up its patron- 
 age," and which desired to go further in depriving itself of power 
 than the people themselves had thought. " Jefferson," said John 
 Randolph in 1828, " was the only man I ever knew or heard of 
 who really, truly, and honestly, not only said, Nolo episcopari, 
 but actually refused the mitre." 
 
 For six years, as we have said, Mr. Randolph led the Repub- 
 lican party in the House of Representatives, and supported the 
 measures of the administration, — all of them. In the spring of 
 1807, without apparent cause, he suddenly went into opposition, 
 and from that time opposed the policy of the administration, — 
 the whole of it. 
 
 "Why this change ? If there were such a thing as going ap- 
 prentice to the art of discovering truth, a master in that art could 
 not set an apprentice a better preliminary lesson than this : WI13- 
 did John Randolph go into opposition in 1807? The gossips of 
 that day had no difficulty in answering the question. Some said 
 he had asked Mr. Jefferson for a foreign mission, and been re- 
 fused. Others thought it was jealousy of Mr. Madison, who was 
 known to be the President's choice for the succession. Others 
 surmised that an important state secret had been revealed to 
 other members of the House, but not to him. These opinions 
 
200 JOHN EANDOLPH. 
 
 our tyro would find very positively recorded, and he would also, 
 in the course of his researches, come upon the statement that Mr. 
 Randolph himself attributed the breach to his having beaten the 
 President at a game of chess, which the President could not forgive. 
 The truth is, that John Randolph bolted for the same reason 
 that a steel spring resumes its original bent the instant the re- 
 straining force is withdrawn. His position as leader of a party 
 was irksome, because it obliged him to work in harness, and he 
 had never been broken to harness. His party connection bound 
 him to side with France in the great contest then raging between 
 France and England, and yet his whole soul sympathized with 
 England. This native Virginian was more consciously and posi- 
 tively English than any native of England ever was. English 
 literature had nourished his mind ; English names captivated his 
 imagination ; English traditions, feelings, instincts, habits, preju- 
 dices, were all congenial to his nature. How hard for such a 
 man to side officially with Napoleon in those gigantic wars ! Ab- 
 horring Napoleon with all a Randolph's force of antipathy, it was 
 nevertheless expected of him, as a good Republican, to interpret 
 leniently the man who, besides being the armed soldier of democ- 
 racy, had sold Louisiana to the United States. Randolph, more- 
 over, was an absolute aristocrat. He delighted to tell the House 
 of Representatives that he, being a Virginian slaveholder, was 
 not obliged to curry favor with his coachman or his shoeblack, 
 lest when he drove to the polls the coachman should dismount 
 from his box, or the shoeblack drop his brushes, and neutralize 
 their master's vote by voting on the other side. How he exulted 
 in the fact that in Virginia none but freeholders could vote ! 
 How happy he was to boast, that, in all that Commonwealth, 
 there was no such thing as a ballot-box ! " May I never live to 
 see the day," he would exclaim, " when a Virginian shall be 
 ashamed to declare aloud at the polls for whom he casts his 
 vote ! " What pleasure he took in speaking of his Virginia wilder- 
 ness as a " barony," and signing his name " John Randolph of 
 Roanoke," and in wearing the garments that were worn in Vir- 
 ginia when the great tobacco lords were running through their 
 estates in the line old picturesque and Irish fashion ! 
 
JOHN RANDOLPH. 201 
 
 ■ 
 
 Obviously, an antique of this pattern was out of place as a 
 leader in the Republican party. For a time the spell of Jeffer- 
 son's winning genius, and the presence of a powerful opposition, 
 kept him in some subjection ; but in 1807 that spell had spent its 
 force, and the Federal party was not formidable. John Randolph 
 was himself again. The immediate occasion of the rupture was, 
 probably, Mr. Jefferson's evident preference of James Madison 
 as his successor. We have a right to infer this, from the ex- 
 treme and lasting rancor which Randolph exhibited toward Mr. 
 Madison, who he used to say was as mean a man for a Virginian 
 as John Quincy Adams was for a Yankee. Nor ought we ever 
 to speak of this gifted and unhappy man without considering his 
 physical condition. It appears froni the slight notices we have 
 of this vital matter, that about the year 1807 the stock of vigor 
 which his youth had acquired was gone, and he lived thenceforth 
 a miserable invalid, afflicted with diseases that sharpen the 
 temper and narrow the mind. John Randolph ivell might have 
 outgrown inherited prejudices and limitations, and attained to the 
 stature of a modern, a national, a republican man. John Randolph 
 sick — radically and incurably sick — ceased to grow just when 
 his best growth would naturally have begun. 
 
 The sudden defection of a man so conspicuous and considera- 
 ble, at a time when the Republican party was not aware of its 
 strength, struck dismay to many minds, who felt, with Jefferson, 
 that to the Republican party in the United States were confided 
 the best interests of human nature. Mr. Jefferson was not in the 
 least alarmed, because he knew the strength of the party and the 
 weakness of the man. The letter which he wrote on this subject 
 to Mr. Monroe ought to be learned by heart by every politician 
 in the country, — by the self-seekers, for the warning which it 
 gives them, and by the patriotic, for the comfort which it affords 
 them in time of trouble. Some readers, perhaps, will be re- 
 minded by it of events which occurred at Washington not longer 
 ago than last winter.* 
 
 " Our old friend Mercer broke off from us some time ago ; at first, 
 professing to disdain joining the Federalists ; yet, from the habit of 
 
 * 1865 -C. 
 9* 
 
202 JOHN RANDOLPH. 
 
 voting together, becoming soon identified with them. Without carry- 
 in"- over with him one single person, he is now in a state of as perfect 
 obscurity as if his name had never been known. Mr. J. Randolph is 
 in the same track, and will end in the same way. His course has ex- 
 cited considerable alarm. Timid men consider it as a proof of the 
 weakness of our government, and that it is to be rent in pieces by 
 demagogues and to end in anarchy. I survey the scene with a differ- 
 ent eye, and draw a different augury from it. In a House of Repre- 
 sentatives of a great mass of good sense, Mr. Randolph's popular elo- 
 quence gave him such advantages as to place him unrivalled as the 
 leader of the House ; and, although not conciliatory to those whom he 
 led, principles of duty and patriotism induced many of them to swallow 
 humiliations he subjected them to, and to vote as was right, as long as 
 he kept the path of right himself. The sudden departure of such a 
 man could not but produce a momentary astonishment, and even dis- 
 may ; but for a moment only. The good sense of the House rallied 
 around its principles, and, without any leader, pursued steadily the busi- 
 ness of the session, did it well, and by a strength of vote which has 
 
 never before been seen The augury I draw from this is, that 
 
 there is a steady good sense in the legislature and in the body of the 
 nation, joined with good intentions, which will lead them to discern 
 and to pursue the public good under all circumstances which can arise, 
 and that no ignis fatuus will be able to lead them long astray." 
 
 Mr. Jefferson predicted that the lost sheep of the Republican 
 fold would wander off to the arid wastes of Federalism ; but he 
 never did so. His defection was not an inconsistency, but a return 
 to consistency. He presented himself in his true character 
 thenceforth, which was that of a States' Rights fanatic. He op- 
 posed the election of Mr. Madison to the Presidency, as he 'said, 
 because Mr. Madison was weak on the sovereignty of the States. 
 Pie opposed the war of 1812 for two reasons : — 1. Offensive 
 war was in itself unconstitutional, being a national act. 2. War 
 was nationalizing. A hundred times before the war, he foretold 
 that, if war occurred, the sovereignty of the States was gone for- 
 ever, and we should lapse into nationality. A thousand times 
 after the war, he declared that this dread lapse had occurred. 
 At a public dinner, after the return of peace, he gave the once 
 celebrated toast, " States' Rights, — De mortuis nil nisi bonum." 
 As before the war he sometimes affected himself to tears while 
 
JOHN RANDOLPH. 203 
 
 dwelling upon the sad prospect of kindred people imbruing their 
 hands in one another's blood, so during the war he was one of the 
 few American citizens who lamented the triumphs of their coun- 
 try's arms. In his solitude at Roanoke he was cast down at the 
 news of Perry's victory on the lake, because he thought it would 
 prolong the contest ; and he exulted in the banishment of Napo- 
 leon to Elba, although it let loose the armies and fleets of 
 Britain upon the United States. " That insolent coward," said 
 he, "has met his deserts at last." This Virginia Englishman 
 would not allow that Napoleon possessed even military talent ; 
 but stoutly maintained, to the last, that he was the merest sport 
 of fortune. When the work of restoration was in progress, under 
 the leadership of Clay and Calhoun, John Randolph was in his 
 element, for he could honestly oppose every movement and sug- 
 gestion of those young orators, — national bank, protective tariff- 
 internal improvements, everything. He was one of the small 
 number who objected to the gift of land and money to Lafayette, 
 and one of the stubborn minority who would have seen the Union 
 broken up rather than assent to the Missouri Compromise, or to 
 any Missouri compromise. The question at issue in all these 
 measures, he maintained, was the same, and it was this : Are we 
 a nation or a confederacy ? 
 
 Talent, too, is apt to play the despot over the person that 
 possesses it. This man had such a power of witty vituperation 
 in him, with so decided a histrionic gift, that his rising to speak 
 was always an interesting event ; and he would occasionally hold 
 both the House and the galleries attentive for three or four 
 hours. He became accustomed to this homage ; he craved it ; 
 it became necessary to him. As far back as 1811, Wa-hington 
 Irving wrote of him, in one of his letters from "Washington : 
 " There is no speaker in either House that excites such universal 
 attention as Jack Randolph. But they listen to him more to be 
 delighted by his eloquence and entertained by his ingenuity and 
 eccentricity, than to be convinced by sound doctrine and close 
 argument." As he advanced in age, this habit of startling the 
 House by unexpected dramatic exhibitions grew upon him. 
 One of the most vivid pictures ever painted in words of a par- 
 
204 JOHN RANDOLPH. 
 
 liamentary scene is that in which the late Mr. S. G. Goodrich 
 records his recollection of one of these displays. It occurred in 
 1820, during one of the Missouri debates. A tall man, with a 
 little head and a small oval face, like that of an aged boy, rose 
 and addressed the chairman. 
 
 " He paused a moment," wrote Mr. Goodrich, " and I had time to 
 study his appearance. His hair was jet-black, and clubbed in a queue ; 
 his eye was black, small, and painfully penetrating. His complexion 
 was a yellowish-brown, bespeaking Indian blood. I knew at once that 
 it must be John Randolph. As he uttered the words, ' Mr. Speaker ! ' 
 every member turned in his seat, and, facing him, gazed as if some 
 portent had suddenly appeared before them. 'Mr. Speaker,' said 
 he, in a shrill voice, which, however, pierced every nook and corner of 
 the hall, ' I have but one word to say, — one word, sir, and that is to 
 state a fact. The measure to which the gentleman has just alluded 
 originated in a dirty trick ! ' These were his precise words. The sub- 
 ject to which he referred I did not gather, but the coolness and impu- 
 dence of the speaker were admirable in their way. I never saw better 
 acting, even in Kean. His look, his manner, his long arm, his elvish 
 fore-finger, — like an exclamation-point, punctuating his bitter thought, 
 — showed the skill of a master. The effect of the whole was to startle 
 everybody, as if a pistol-shot had rung through the hall." — Recollec- 
 tions, Vol. II. p. 395. 
 
 Such anecdotes as these, which are very numerous, both in 
 and out of print, convey an inadequate idea of his understand- 
 ing ; for there was really a great fund of good sense in him and 
 in his political creed. Actor as he was, he was a very honest 
 man, and had a hearty contempt for all the kinds of falsehood 
 which he had no inclination to commit. No man was more res- 
 tive under debt than he, or has better depicted its horrors. 
 Speaking once of those Virginia families who gave banquets and 
 kept up expensive establishments, while their estates were cov- 
 ered all over with mortgages, he said : " I always think I can see 
 the anguish under the grin and grimace, like old Mother Cole's 
 dirty flannel peeping out beneath her Brussels lace." He was 
 strong in the opinion that a man who is loose in money matters 
 is not trustworthy in anything, — an opinion which is shared by 
 every one who knows either life or history. " The time was," 
 
JOHN RANDOLPH. 205 
 
 he wrote, " when I was fool enough to believe that a man might 
 be negligent of pecuniary obligations, and yet be a very good fel- 
 low ; but long experience has convinced me that he who is lax in 
 this respect is utterly unworthy of trust in any other." He dis- 
 criminated well between those showy, occasional acts of so-called 
 generosity which such men perform, and the true, habitual, self- 
 denying benevolence of a solvent and just member of society. 
 " Despise the usurer and the miser as much as you will," he 
 would exclaim, "but the spendthrift is more selfish than they." 
 But his very honesty was most curiously blended with his toryism. 
 One of his friends relates the following anecdote : — 
 
 " Just before we sailed, the Washington papers were received, an- 
 nouncing the defeat of the Bankrupt Bill by a small majority. At 
 that moment, I forgot that Randolph had been one of its most deter- 
 mined opponents, and I spoke with the feelings of a merchant when I 
 said to him, — 
 
 " ' Have you heard the very bad news from Washington this 
 morning ? ' 
 
 " ' No, sir,' replied he, with eagerness ; ' what is it ? ' 
 
 " ' Why, sir, I am sorry to tell you that the House of Representa- 
 tives has thrown out the Bankrupt Bill by a small majority.' 
 
 " ' Sorry, sir ! ' exclaimed he ; and then, taking off his hat and look- 
 ing upwards, he added, most emphatically, ' Thank God for all his 
 mercies ! ' 
 
 " After a short pause he continued : ' How delighted I am to think 
 that I helped to give that hateful bill a kick. Yes, sir, this very day 
 week I spoke for three hours against it, and my friends, who forced me 
 to make the effort, were good enough to say that I never had made a 
 more successful speech ; it must have had some merit, sir ; for I assure 
 you, whilst I was speaking, although the Northern mail was announced, 
 not a single member left his seat to look for letters, — a circumstance 
 which had not occurred before during the session ! ' 
 
 " I endeavored to combat his objections to a Bankrupt Bill subse- 
 quently, but, of course, without any success : he felt as a planter, and 
 teas very jealous of the influence of merchants as legislators." 
 
 There are flashes of sense and touches of pathos in some of 
 his most tory passages. As he was delivering in the House one 
 of his emphatic predictions of the certain failure of our experi- 
 ment of freedom on this continent, he broke into an apology for 
 
206 JOHN KANDOLPH. 
 
 so doing, that brought tears to many eyes. " It is an infirmity 
 of my nature," said he, " to have an obstinate constitutional pref- 
 erence of the true over the agreeable ; and I am satisfied, that, 
 if I had had an only son, or what is dearer, an only daughter, — 
 which God forbid ! — I say, God forbid, for she might bring her 
 father's gray hairs with sorrow to the grave ; she might break 
 my heart, or worse than that — what ? Can anything be worse 
 than that ? Yes, sir, I might break hers ! " His fable, too, of 
 the caterpillar and the horseman was conceived in arrogance, but 
 it was pretty and effective. Every tory intellect on earth is 
 pleased to discourse in that way of the labors of the only men 
 who greatly help their species, — the patient elaborators of truth. 
 A caterpillar, as we learn from this fable, had crawled slowly 
 over a fence, which a gallant horseman took at a single leap. 
 " Stop," says the caterpillar, "you are too flighty ; you want con- 
 nection and continuity; it took me an hour to get over; you 
 can't be as sure as I am that you have really overcome the 
 difficulty, and are indeed over the fence." To which, of course, 
 the gallant horseman makes the expected contemptuous reply. 
 This is precisely in the spirit of Carlyle's sneers at the politi- 
 cal economists, — the men who are not content to sit down and 
 howl in this wilderness of a modern world, but bestir them- 
 selves to discover methods by which it can be made less a wil- 
 derness. 
 
 There is so much truth in the doctrines of the original States' 
 Hights party, — the party of Jefferson, Madison, and Patrick 
 Henry, — that a very commonplace man, who learned his politics 
 in that school, is able to make a respectable figure in the public 
 counsels. The mere notion that government, being a necessary 
 evil, is to be reduced to the minimum that will answer the pur- 
 poses of government, saves from many false steps. The doctrine 
 that the central government is to confine itself to the duties as- 
 signed it in the Constitution, is a guiding principle suited to the 
 limited human mind. A vast number of claims, suggestions, and 
 petitions are excluded by it even from consideration. If an elo- 
 quent Hamiltonian proposes to appropriate the public money for 
 the purpose of enabling American manufacturers to exhibit their 
 
 
JOHN RANDOLPH. 207 
 
 products at a Paris Exhibition, the plainest country member of 
 the Jeffcrsonian school perceives at once the inconsistency of such 
 a proposition with the fundamental principle of his political creed. 
 He has a compass to steer by, and a port to sail to, instead of 
 being afloat on the waste of waters, the sport of every breeze 
 that blows. It is touching to observe that this unhappy, sick, and 
 sometimes mad John Randolph, amid all the vagaries of his later 
 life, had always a vein of soundness in him, derived from his 
 early connection with the enlightened men who acted in politics 
 with Thomas Jeffer.-on. The phrase " masterly inactivity " is 
 Randolph's ; and it is something only to have given convenient 
 expression to a system of conduct so often wise. He used to say 
 that Congress could scarcely do too little. His ideal of a session 
 was one in which members should make speeches till every man 
 had fully expressed and perfectly relieved his mind, then pass 
 the appropriation bills, and go home. And we ought not to 
 forgot that, when President John Quincy Adams brought for- 
 ward his schemes for covering the continent with magnificent 
 works at the expense of the treasury of the United States, and 
 of uniting the republics of both Americas into a kind of holy 
 alliance, it was Randolph's piercing sarcasm which, more than 
 anything else, made plain to new members the fallacy, the peril, 
 of such a system. His opposition to this wild federalism in- 
 volved his support of Andrew Jackson ; but there was no other 
 choice open to him. 
 
 Seldom did he display in Congress so much audacity and in- 
 genuity as in defending General Jackson while he was a candi- 
 date for the Presidency against Mr. Adams. The two objections 
 oftenest urged against Jackson were that he was a military chief- 
 tain, and that he could not spell. Mr. Randolph discoursed on 
 these two points in a most amusing manner, displaying all the im- 
 pudence and ignorance of the tory, inextricably mingled with the 
 good sense and wit of the man. " General Jackson cannot write," 
 said a friend. " Granted," replied he. " General Jackson can- 
 not write because he was never taught; but his competitor 
 cannot write because he was not teachable." He made a bold 
 remark in one of his Jacksonian harangues. " The talent which 
 
208 JOHN RANDOLPH. 
 
 enables a man to write a book or make a speech has no more 
 relation to the leading of an army or a senate, than it has to the 
 dressing of a dinner." He pronounced a fine eulogium on the 
 Duke of Marlborough, one of the worst spellers in Europe, and 
 then asked if gentlemen would have had that illustrious man 
 "superseded by a Scotch schoolmaster." It was in the same 
 ludicrous harangue that he uttered his famous joke upon those 
 schools in which young ladies were said to be " finished." " Yes," 
 he exclaimed, "finished indeed ; finished for all the duties of a 
 wife, or mother, or mistress of a family." Again he said : " There 
 is much which it becomes a second-rate man to know, which a first- 
 rate man ought to be ashamed to know. No head was ever clear 
 and sound that was stuffed with book-learning. My friend, TV, 
 R. Johnson, has many a groom that can clean and dress a race- 
 horse, and ride him too, better than he can." He made the 
 sweeping assertion, that no man had ever presided over a govern- 
 ment with advantage to the country governed, who had not in 
 him the making of a good general; for, said he, "the talent for 
 government lies in these two things, — sagacity to perceive, and 
 decision to act." Really, when we read this ingenious apology 
 for, or rather eulogy of, ignorance, we cease to wonder that Gen- 
 eral Jackson should have sent him to Russia. 
 
 The religious life of Randolph is a most curious study. He 
 experienced in his lifetime four religious changes, or conversions. 
 His gentle mother, whose name he seldom uttered without add- 
 ing with tender emphasis, " God bless her ! " was such a member 
 of the Church of England as gentle ladies used to be before an 
 " Evangelical " party was known in it. She taught his infant 
 lips to pray; and, being naturally trustful and affectionate, he 
 was not an unapt pupil. But in the library of the old mansion 
 on the Appomattox, in which he passed his forming years, there 
 was a " wagon-load " of what he terms " French infidelity," 
 though it appears there were almost as many volumes of Hobbes, 
 Shaftesbury, Collins, Hume, and Gibbon, as there were of 
 Diderot, DAlembert, Helvetius, and Voltaire. These works he 
 read in boyhood ; and when he came to mingle among men, he 
 found that the opinions of such authors prevailed in the circles 
 
JOHN RANDOLPH. 209 
 
 which he most frequented. Just as he, a natural tory, caught 
 some tincture of republicanism from Jefferson and his friends, so 
 he, the natural believer, adopted the fashion of scepticism, which 
 then ruled the leading minds of all lands ; and just as he lapsed 
 back into toryism wben the spell which drew him away from it 
 had spent its force, so he became, in the decline of his powers, a 
 prey to religious terrors. For twenty-two years, as we have 
 said, he held aloof from religion, its ministers, and its temples. 
 The disease that preyed upon him so sharpened his temper, and 
 so perverted his perceptions of character, that, one after another, 
 he alienated all the friends and relations with whom he ou<dit to 
 have lived ; and he often found himself, between the sessions of 
 Congress, the sole white tenant of his lonely house at Roanoke, — 
 the sick and solitary patriarch of a family of three hundred per- 
 sons. He sought to alleviate this horrid solitude by adopting 
 and rearing the orphaned sons of old friends ; to whom, when he 
 was himself, he was the most affectionate and generous of guar- 
 dians. But even they could not very long endure him ; for, in 
 his adverse moods, he was incarnate Distrust, and, having con- 
 ceived a foul suspicion, his genius enabled him to give it such 
 withering expression that it was not in the nature of a youn"- 
 man to pass it by as the utterance of transient madness. So they 
 too left him, and he was utterly alone in the midst of a crowd of 
 black dependants. We see from his letters, that, while he saw 
 the impossibility of his associating with his species, he yet longed 
 and pined for their society and love. Perhaps there never lived 
 a more unhappy person. Revering women, and formed to find 
 his happiness in domestic life, he was incapable of being a hus- 
 band ; and if this had not been the case, no woman could have 
 lived with him. Yearning for companionship, but condemned to 
 be alone, his solace was the reflection that, so long as there was 
 no one near him, he was a torment only to himself. " Often," he 
 writes in one of his letters, " I mount my horse and sit upon him 
 for ten or fifteen minutes, wishing to go somewhere, but not 
 knowing where to ride ; for I would escape anywhere from the 
 incubus that weighs me down, body and soul ; but the fiend fol- 
 lows me en croupe The strongest considerations of duty 
 
 N 
 
210 JOHN RANDOLPH. 
 
 are barely sufficient to prevent me from absconding to some dis- 
 tant country, where I might live and die unknown." 
 
 A mind in such a state as this is the natural prey of super- 
 stition. A dream, he used to say, first recalled his mind to the 
 consideration of religion. This was about the year 1810, at the 
 height of those hot debates that preceded the war of 1812. For 
 nine years, he tells us, the subject gradually gained upon him, so 
 that, at last, it was his first thought in the morning and his last at 
 night. From the atheism upon which he had formerly plumed 
 himself, he went to the opposite extreme. For a long time he 
 was plunged into the deepest gloom, regarding himself as a sinner 
 too vile to be forgiven. He sought for comfort in the Bihle, in 
 the Prayer-book, in conversation and correspondence with re- 
 ligious friends, in the sermons of celebrated preachers. He 
 formed a scheme of retiring from the world into some kind of 
 religious retreat, and spending the rest of his life in prayers and 
 meditation. Rejecting this as a cowardly desertion of the post 
 of duty, he had thoughts of setting up a school for children, and 
 becoming himself a teacher in it. This plan, too, he laid aside, 
 as savoring of enthusiasm. Meanwhile, this amiable and honest 
 gentleman, whose every error was fairly attributable to the natu- 
 ral limitations of his mind or to the diseases that racked his body, 
 was tormented by remorse, which would have been excessive if 
 he had been a pirate. He says that, after three years of contin- 
 ual striving, he still dared not partake of the Communion, feeling 
 himself "unworthy." "I was present," he writes, "when Mr. 
 Hoge invited to the table, and I would have given all I was 
 worth to have been able to approach it." Some inkling of his 
 condition, it appears, became known to the public, and excited 
 great good-will towards him on the part of many persons of similar 
 belief. 
 
 Some of his letters written during this period contain an almost 
 ludicrous mixture of truth and extravagance. He says in one of 
 them, that his heart has been softened, and he " thinks he has 
 succeeded in forgiving all his enemies"; then he adds, "There is 
 not a human being that I would hurt if it were in my power, — 
 not even Bonaparte." In another place he remarks that the 
 
JOHN RANDOLPH. 211 
 
 world is a vast mad-house, and, " if what is to come be anything 
 like what has passed, it would be wise to abandon the hulk to the 
 underwriters, — the worms." In the whole of his intercourse 
 with mankind, he says he never met with but three persons whom 
 he did not, on getting close to their hearts, discover to be unhap- 
 py ; and they were the only three he had ever known who had 
 a religion. He expresses this truth in language which limits it 
 to one form or kind of religion, the kind which he heard expound- 
 ed in the churches of Virginia in 1819. Give it broader expres- 
 sion, and every observer of human life will assent to it. It is 
 indeed most true, that no human creature gets much out of life 
 who has no religion, no sacred object, to the furtherance of which 
 his powers are dedicated. 
 
 He obtained some relief at length, and became a regular com- 
 municant of the Episcopal Church. But although he ever after 
 manifested an extreme regard for religious things and persons, 
 and would never permit either to be spoken against in his pres- 
 ence without rebuke, he was very far from edifying his brethren 
 by a consistent walk. At Washington, in the debates, he was as 
 incisive and uncharitable as before. His denunciations of the 
 second President Adams's personal character were as outrageous 
 as his condemnation of parts of his policy was just. Mr. Clay, 
 though removed from the arena of debate by his appointment to 
 the Department of State, was still the object of his bitter sarcasm ; 
 and at length he included the President and the Secretary in that 
 merciless philippic in which he accused Mr. Clay of forgery, 
 and styled the coalition of Adams and Clay as " the combination 
 of the Puritan and the Blackleg." He used language, too, in 
 the course of this speech, which was understood to be a defiance 
 to mortal combat, and it was so reported to Mr. Clay. The re- 
 porters, however, misunderstood him, as it was not his intention 
 nor his desire to fight. Nevertheless, to the astonishment and 
 sorrow of his religious friends, he accepted Mr. Clay's challenge 
 with the utmost possible promptitude, and bore himself through- 
 out the affair like (to use the poor, lying, tory cant of the last 
 generation) "a high-toned Virginia gentleman." Colonel Benton 
 tells us that Mr. Randolph invented an ingenious excuse for the 
 
212 JOHN RANDOLPH. 
 
 enormous inconsistency of his conduct on this occasion. A duel, 
 he maintained, was private war, and was justifiable on the same 
 ground as a war between two nations. Both were lamentable, 
 but both were allowable when there was no other way of getting 
 redress for insults and injuries. This was plausible, but it did 
 not deceive him. He knew very well that his offensive language 
 respecting a man whom he really esteemed was wholly devoid of 
 excuse. He had the courage requisite to expiate the offence by 
 standing before Mr. Clay's pistol ; but he could not stand before 
 his countrymen and confess that his abominable antithesis was 
 but the spurt of mingled ill-temper and the vanity to shine. Any 
 good tory can fight a duel with a respectable degree of com- 
 posure ; but to own one's self, in the presence of a nation, to have 
 outraged the feelings of a brother-man, from the desire to startle 
 and amuse an audience, requires the kind of valor which tories 
 do not know. " Whig and tory," says Mr. Jefferson, " belong to 
 natural history." But then there is such a thing, we are told, 
 as the regeneration of the natural man ; and we believe it, and 
 cling to it as a truth destined one day to be resuscitated and pu- 
 rified from the mean interpretations which have made the very 
 word sickening to the intelligence of Christendom. Mr. Ran- 
 dolph had not achieved the regeneration of his nature. He was 
 a tory still. In the testing hour, the " high-toned Virginia gen- 
 tleman" carried the day, without a struggle, over the communicant. 
 During the last years of his life, the monotony of his anguish 
 was relieved by an occasional visit to the Old "World. It is in- 
 teresting to note how thoroughly at home he felt himself among 
 the English gentry, and how promptly they recognized him as a 
 man and a brother. He was, as we have remarked, more Eng- 
 lish than an Englishman ; for England does advance, though 
 slowly, from the insular to the universal. Dining at a great 
 house in London, one evening, he dwelt with pathetic eloquence 
 upon the decline of Virginia. Being asked what he thought was 
 the reason of her decay, he startled and pleased the lords and 
 ladies present by attributing it all to the repeal of the law of pri- 
 mogeniture. One of the guests tells us that this was deemed " a 
 strange remark from a Republican" and that, before the party 
 
JOHN RANDOLPH. 213 
 
 broke up, the company had " almost taken him for an aristocrat." 
 It happened sometimes, when he was conversing with English 
 politicians, that it was the American who defended the English 
 system against the attacks of Englishmen ; and so full of British 
 prejudice was he, that, in Paris, he protested that a decent dinner 
 could not be bought for money. "Westminster Abbey woke all 
 his veneration. He went into it, one morning, just as service 
 was about beginning, and took his place among the worshippers. 
 Those of our readers who have attended the morning service at 
 an English cathedral on a week-day cannot have forgotten the 
 ludicrous smallness of the congregation compared with the impos- 
 ing array of official assistants. A person who has a little tincture 
 of the Yankee in him may even find himself wondering how it 
 can " pay " the British empire to employ half a dozen reverend 
 clergymen and a dozen robust singers to aid seven or eight unim- 
 portant members of the community in saying their prayers. But 
 John Randolph of Roanoke had not in him the least infusion of 
 Yankee. Standing erect in the almost vacant space, he uttered 
 the responses in a tone that was in startling contrast to the low 
 mumble of the clergyman's voice, and that rose above the melo- 
 dious amens of the choir. He took it all in most serious earnest. 
 When the service was over, he said to his companion, after la- 
 menting the hasty and careless manner in which the service had 
 been performed, that he esteemed it an honor to have worshipped 
 God in Westminster Abbey. As he strolled among the tombs, 
 he came, at last, to the grave of two men who had often roused 
 his enthusiasm. He stopped, and spoke : " I will not say, Take 
 off your shoes, for the ground on which you stand is holy ; but, 
 look, sir, do you see those simple letters on the flagstones beneath 
 your feet, — W. P. and C. J. F. Here lie, side by side, the re- 
 mains of the two great rivals, Pitt and Fox, whose memory so 
 completely lives in history. No marble monuments are neces- 
 sary to mark the spot where their bodies repose. There is more 
 simple grandeur in those few letters than in all the surrounding 
 monuments, sir." How more than English was all this! Eng- 
 land had been growing away from and beyond Westminster 
 Abbey, William Pitt, and Charles James Fox ; but this Virginia 
 
214 JOHN EANDOLPH. i 
 
 Englishman, living alone in his woods, with his slaves and his 
 overseers, severed from the progressive life of his race, was liv- 
 ing still in the days when a pair of dissolute young orators could 
 be deemed, and with some reason too, the most important persons 
 in a great empire. A friend asked him how he was pleased with 
 England. He answered with enthusiasm, — " There never was 
 such a country on the face of the earth as England, and it is 
 utterly impossible that there can be any combination of circum- 
 stances hereafter to make such another country as Old England 
 now is ! " 
 
 We ought not to have been surprised at the sympathy which 
 the English Tories felt during the late war for their brethren in 
 the Southern States of America. It was as natural as it was for 
 the English Protestants to welcome the banished Huguenots. It 
 was as natural as it was for Louis XIV. to give an asylum to the 
 Stuarts. The traveller who should have gone, seven years ago, 
 straight from an English agricultural county to a cotton district 
 of South Carolina, or a tobacco county of Virginia, would have 
 felt that the differences between the two places were merely ex- 
 ternal. The system in both places and the spirit of both were 
 strikingly similar. In the old parts of Virginia, the Carolinas, 
 Tennessee, and Kentucky, you had only to get ten miles from 
 a railroad to find yourself among people who were English in 
 their feelings, opinions, habits, and even in their accent. New 
 England differs from Old England, because New England has 
 grown : Virginia was English, because she had been stationary. 
 Happening to be somewhat familiar with the tone of feeling in 
 the South, — the real South, or, in other words, the South ten 
 miles from a railroad, — we were fully prepared for Mr. Rus- 
 sell's statement with regard to the desire so frequently expressed 
 in 1861 for one of the English princes to come and reign over ai 
 nascent Confederacy. Sympathies and antipathies are always 
 mutual when they are natural ; and never was there a sympathy 
 more in accordance with the nature of things, than that which so 
 quickly manifested itself between the struggling Southern people 
 and the majority of the ruling classes of Great Britain. 
 
 Mr. Randolph took leave of public life, after thirty years of 
 
JOHN RANDOLPH. 215 
 
 service, not in the most dignified manner. He furnished another 
 illustration of the truth of a remark made by a certain queen of 
 Denmark, — " The lady doth protest too much." Like many 
 other gentlemen in independent circumstances, he had been par- 
 ticularly severe upon those of his fellow-citizens who earned their 
 subsistence by serving the public. It pleased him to speak of 
 members of the Cabinet as " the drudges of the departments," 
 and to hold gentlemen in the diplomatic service up to contempt 
 as forming " the tail of the corps diplomatique in Europe." He 
 liked to declaim upon the enormous impossibility of his ever ex- 
 changing a seat in Congress for u the shabby splendors " of an 
 office in Washington, or in a foreign mission " to dance attendance 
 abroad instead of at home." When it was first buzzed about in 
 Washington, in 1830, that General Jackson had tendered the 
 Russian mission to John Randolph, the rumor was not credited. 
 An appointment so exquisitely absurd was supposed to be beyond 
 even Andrew Jackson's audacity. The offer had been made, 
 however. Mr. Randolph's brilliant defence of General Jackson's 
 bad spelling, together with Mr. Van Buren's willingness to place 
 an ocean between the new administration and a master of sar- 
 casm, to whom opposition had become an unchangeable habit, had 
 dictated an offer of the mission, couched in such seductive lan- 
 guage that Mr. Randolph yielded to it as readily as those ladies 
 accept an offer of marriage who have often announced their inten- 
 tion never to marry. Having reached the scene of his diplomatic 
 labors at the beginning of August, he began to perform them with 
 remarkable energy. In a suit of black, the best, he declared, that 
 London could furnish, he was presented to the Emj)eror and to the 
 Empress, having first submitted his costume to competent inspec- 
 tion. Resolute to do his whole duty, he was not content to send 
 his card to the diplomatic corps, but, having engaged a handsome 
 coach and four, he called upon each member of the diplomatic body, 
 from the ambassadors to the secretaries of legation. Having per- 
 formed these labors, and having discovered that a special object 
 with which he was charged could not then be accomplished, he 
 had leisure to observe that St. Petersburg, in the month of Au- 
 gust, is not a pleasant residence to an invalid of sixty. He de- 
 scribes the climate in these terms : — 
 
216 JOHN EANDOLPH. 
 
 " Heat, dust impalpable, pervading every part and pore. . . . Insects 
 of all nauseous descriptions, bugs, fleas, mosquitoes, flies innumerable, 
 gigantic as the empire they inhabit, who will take no denial. This is 
 the land of Pharaoh and his plagues, — Egypt and its ophthalmia and 
 vermin, without its fertility, — Holland, without its wealth, improve- 
 ments, or cleanliness." 
 
 Pie endured St. Petersburg for the space of ten days, then 
 sailed for England, and never saw Russia again. When the ap- 
 propriation bill was before Congress at the next session, opposi- 
 tion members did not fail to call in question the justice of requir- 
 ing the people of the United States to pay twenty thousand dol- 
 lars for Mr. Randolph's ten days' work, or, to speak more exactly, 
 for Mr. Randolph's apology for the President's bad spelling ; but 
 the item passed, nevertheless. During the reign of Andrew 
 Jackson, Congress was little more than a board of registry for the 
 formal recording of his edicts. There are those who think, at the 
 present moment, that what a President hath done, a President 
 may do again. 
 
 It was fortunate that John Randolph was in retirement when 
 Calhoun brought on his Nullification scheme. The presence in 
 Congress of a" man so eloquent and so reckless, whose whole 
 heart and mind were with the Nullifiers, might have prevented 
 the bloodless postponement of the struggle. He was in con- 
 stant correspondence with the South Carolina leaders, and was 
 fully convinced that it was the President of the United States, 
 not "the Hamiltons and Haynes " of South Carolina, who ought 
 to seize the first pretext to concede the point in dispute. No cit- 
 izen of South Carolina was more indignant than he at General 
 Jackson's Proclamation. He said that, if the people did not 
 rouse themselves to a sense of their condition, and " put down 
 this wretched old man," the country was irretrievably ruined ; 
 and he spoke of the troops despatched to Charleston as " merce- 
 naries," to whom he hoped " no quarter would be given." The 
 " wretched old man " whom the people were to " put down " was 
 Andrew Jackson, not John C. Calhoun. 
 
 We do not forget that, when John Randolph uttered these 
 words, he was scarcely an accountable being. Disease had re- 
 
JOHN RANDOLPH. 217 
 
 duced him to a skeleton, and robbed him of almost every attri- 
 bute of man except his capacity to suffer. But even in his mad- 
 ness he was a representative man, and spoke the latent feeling 
 of his class. The diseases which sharpened his temper unloosed 
 his tongue ; he revealed the tendency of the Southern mind, as a 
 petulant child reveals family secrets. In his good and in his evil 
 he was an exaggerated Southerner of the higher class. He was 
 like them, too, in this : they are not criminals to be punished, but 
 patients to be cured. Sometimes, of late, we have feared that 
 they resemble him also in being incurable. 
 
 As long as Americans take an interest in the history of their 
 country, they will read with interest the strange story of this sick 
 and suffering representative of sick and suffering Virginia. To 
 the last, old Virginia wore her ragged robes with a kind of gran- 
 deur which was not altogether unbecoming, and which to the 
 very last imposed upon tory minds. Scarcely any one could 
 live among the better Southern people without liking them ; and 
 few will ever read Hugh Garland's Life of John Randolph, with- 
 out more than forgiving all his vagaries, impetuosities, and foibles. 
 How often, upon riding away from a Southern home, have we 
 been ready to exclaim, " "What a pity such good people should be 
 so accursed ! " Lord Russell well characterized the evil to which 
 we allude as " that fatal gift of the poisoned garment which was 
 flung around them from the first hour of their establishment." 
 
 The last act of John Randolph's life, done when he lay dying 
 at a hotel in Philadelphia, in June, 1833, was to express once 
 more his sense of this blighting system. Some years before, he 
 had made a will by which all his slaves were to be freed at his 
 death. He would probably have given them their freedom be- 
 fore his death, but for the fact, too evident, that freedom to a 
 black man in a Slave State was not a boon. Tbe slaves freed 
 by his brother, forty years before, had not done well, because (as 
 he supposed) no land had been bequeathed for their support. 
 Accordingly, he left directions in his will that a tract of land, 
 which might be of four thousand acres, should be set apart for tbe 
 maintenance of his slaves, and that they should be transported 
 to it and established upon it at the expense of his estate. " I 
 10 
 
218 JOHN RANDOLPH. 
 
 give my slaves their freedom," said he in his will, " to which my 
 conscience tells me they are justly entitled." On the last day of 
 his life, surrounded by strangers, and attended by two of his old 
 servants, his chief concern was to make distinctly known to as 
 many persons as possible that it was really his will that his slaves 
 should be free. Knowing, as he did, the aversion which his fel- 
 low-citizens had to the emancipation of slaves, and even to the 
 presence in the State of free blacks, he seemed desirous of taking 
 away every pretext for breaking his will. A few hours before 
 his death, he said to the physician in attendance : " I confirm 
 every disposition in my will, especially that concerning my slaves 
 whom I have manumitted, and for whom I have made provision." 
 The doctor, soon after, took leave of him, and was about to de- 
 part. " You must not go," said he, " you cannot, you shall not 
 leave me." He told his servant not to let the doctor go, and 
 the man immediately locked the door and put the key in his pock- 
 et. The doctor remonstrating, Mr. Randolph explained, that, 
 by the laws of Virginia, in order to manumit slaves by will, it 
 was requisite that the master should declare his will in that par- 
 ticular in the presence of a white witness, who, after hearing the 
 declaration, must never lose sight of the party until he is dead. 
 The doctor consented, at length, to remain, but urged that more 
 witnesses should be sent for. This was done. At ten in the 
 morning, four gentlemen were ranged in a semicircle round his 
 bed. He was propped up almost in a sitting posture, and a blan- 
 ket was wrapped round his head and shoulders. His face was 
 yellow, and extremely emaciated ; he was very weak, and it re-" 
 quired all the remaining energy of his mind to endure the exer- 
 tion he was about to make. It was evident to all present that 
 his whole soul was in the act, and his eye gathered fire as he 
 pei'formed it. Pointing toward the witnesses with that gesture 
 which for so many years had been familiar to the House of Rep- 
 resentatives, he said, slowly and distinctly : " I confirm all the 
 directions in my will respecting my slaves, and direct them to be 
 enforced, particularly in regard to a provision for their support." 
 Then, raising his hand and placing it upon the shoulder of his 
 servant, he added, " Especially for this man." Having performed 
 
JOHN RANDOLPH. 219 
 
 this act, his mind appeared relieved, but his strength immediate- 
 ly left him, and in two hours he breathed his last. 
 
 The last of the Randolphs, and one of the best representatives 
 of the original masters of Virginia, the high-toned Virginia gentle- 
 man, was no more. Those men had their opportunity, but they 
 had not strength of character equal to it. They were tried and 
 found wanting. The universe, which loves not the high-toned, 
 even in violins, disowned them, and they perished. Cut off from 
 the life-giving current of thought and feeling which kept the rest 
 of Christendom advancing, they came to love stagnation, and 
 looked out from their dismal, isolated pool with lofty contempt at 
 the gay and active life on the flowing stream. They were not 
 teachable, for they despised the men who could have taught 
 them. But we are bound always to consider that they were sub- 
 jected to a trial under which human virtue has always given 
 way, and will always. Sudden wealth is itself sufficient to spoil 
 any but the very best men, — those who can instantly set it at 
 work for the general good, and continue to earn an honest liveli- 
 hood by faithful labor. But those tobacco lords of Virginia, be- 
 sides making large fortunes in a few years, were the absolute, 
 irresponsible masters of a submissive race. And when these two 
 potent causes of effeminacy and pride had worked out their prop- 
 er result in the character of the masters, then, behold ! their 
 resources fail. Vicious agriculture exhausts the soil, false politi- 
 cal economy prevents the existence of a middle class, and the 
 presence of slaves repels emigration. Proud, ignorant, indolent, 
 dissolute, and in debt, the dominant families, one after another, 
 passed away, attesting to the last, by an occasional vigorous shoot, 
 the original virtue of the stock. All this poor John Randolph 
 represented and was. 
 
 Virginia remains. Better men will live in it than have ever 
 yet lived there ; but it will not be in this century, and possibly 
 not in the next. It cannot be that so fair a province will not be 
 one day inhabited by a race of men who will work according to 
 the laws of nature, and whom, therefore, the laws of nature will 
 co-operate with and preserve. How superior will such Virgini- 
 ans be to what Dr. Francis Lieber styles the "provincial ego- 
 tism" of State sovereignty ! 
 
STEPHEN GIRARD 
 
 AND HIS COLLEGE 
 
STEPHEN GIRARD AND HIS COLLEGE. 
 
 WITHIN the memory of many persons still alive, "old 
 Girard," as the famous banker was usually styled, a 
 short, stout, brisk old gentleman, used to walk, in his swift, 
 awkward way, the streets of the lower part of Philadelphia. 
 Though everything about him indicated that he had very little in 
 common with his fellow-citizens, he was the marked man of the 
 city for more than a generation. His aspect was rather insig- 
 nificant and quite unprepossessing. His dress was old-fashioned 
 and shabby ; and he wore the pig-tail, the white neck-cloth, the 
 wide-brimmed hat, and the large-skirted coat of the last century. 
 He was blind of one eye ; and though his bushy eyebrows gave 
 some character to his countenance, it was curiously devoid of 
 expression. He had also the absent look of a man who either 
 had no thoughts or was absorbed in thought; and he shuffled 
 along on his enormous feet, looking neither to the right nor to 
 the left. There was always a certain look of the old mariner 
 about him, though he had been fifty years an inhabitant of the 
 town. When he rode it was in the plainest, least comfortable 
 gig in Philadelphia, drawn by an ancient and ill-formed horse, 
 driven always by the master's own hand at a good pace. He 
 chose still to live where he had lived for fifty years, in Water 
 Street, close to the wharves, in a small and inconvenient house, 
 darkened by tall storehouses, amid the bustle, the noise, and the 
 odors of commerce. His sole pleasure was to visit once a day a 
 little farm which he possessed a few miles out of town, where he 
 was wont to take off his coat, roll up his shirt-sleeves, and per- 
 sonally labor in the field and in the barn, hoeing corn, pruning 
 trees, tossing hay, and not disdaining even to assist in butchering 
 
22-1 STEPHEN GIRARD 
 
 the animals which he raised for market. It was no mere orna- 
 mental or experimental farm. He made it pay. All of its prod- 
 uce was carefully, nay, scrupulously husbanded, sold, recorded, 
 and accounted for. He loved his grapes, his plums, his pigs, and 
 especially his rare breed of Canary-birds ; but the people of 
 Philadelphia had the full benefit of their increase, — at the high- 
 est market rates. 
 
 Many feared, many served, but none loved this singular and 
 lonely old man. If there was among the very few who habitually 
 conversed with him one who understood and esteemed him, there 
 was but one ; and he was a man of such abounding charity, that, 
 like Uncle Toby, if he had heard that the Devil was hopelessly 
 damned, he would have said, " I am sorry for it." Never was 
 there a person more destitute than Girard of the qualities which 
 win the affection of others. His temper was violent, his presence 
 forbidding, his usual manner ungracious, his will inflexible, his 
 heart untender, his imagination dead. He was odious to many 
 of his fellow-citizens, who considered him the hardest and mean- 
 est of men. He had lived among them for half a century, but 
 he was no more a Philadelphian in 1830 than in 1776. He still 
 spoke with a French accent, and accompanied his words with a 
 French shrug and French gesticulation. Surrounded with Chris- 
 tian churches which he had helped to build, he remained a sturdy 
 unbeliever, and possessed the complete works of only one man, 
 Voltaire. He made it a point of duty to labor on Sunday, as a 
 good example to others. He made no secret of the fact, that he 
 considered the idleness of Sunday an injury to the people, moral 
 and economical. He would have opened his bank on Sundays, 
 if any one would have come to it. For his part, he required no 
 rest, and would have none. He never travelled. He never at- 
 tended public assemblies or amusements. He had no affections 
 to gratify, no friends to visit, no curiosity to appease, no tastes to 
 indulge. What he once said of himself appeared to be true, that 
 he rose in the morning with but a single object, and that was to 
 labor so hard all day as to be able to sleep all night. The world 
 was absolutely nothing to him but a working-place. He scorned 
 and scouted the opinion, that old men should cease to labor, and 
 
AND HIS COLLEGE. 225 
 
 should spend the evening of their days in tranquillity. " No," he 
 would say, " labor is the price of life, its happiness, its every- 
 thing ; to rest is to rust ; every man should labor to the last hour 
 of his ability." Such was Stephen Girard, the richest man who 
 ever lived in Pennsylvania. 
 
 This is an unpleasing picture of a citizen of polite and amiable 
 Philadelphia. It were indeed a grim and dreary world in which 
 should prevail the principles of Girard. But see what this man 
 has done for the city that loved him not ! Vast and inqoosing 
 structures rise on the banks of the Schuylkill, wherein, at this 
 hour, six hundred poor orphan boys are fed, clothed, trained, and 
 taught, upon the income of the enormous estate which he won by 
 this entire consecration to the work of accumulating property. In 
 the ample grounds of Girard College, looking up at its five mass- 
 ive marble edifices, strolling in its shady walks or by its verdant 
 play-grounds, or listening to the cheerful cries of the boys at 
 play, the most sympathetic and imaginative of men must pause 
 before censuring the sterile and unlovely life of its founder. And 
 if he should inquire closely into the character and career of the 
 man who willed this great institution into being, he would per- 
 haps be willing to admit that there was room in the world for 
 one Girard, though it were a pity there should ever be another. 
 Such an inquiry would perhaps disclose that Stephen Girard was 
 endowed by nature with a great heart as well as a powerful 
 mind, and that circumstances alone closed and hardened the one, 
 cramped and perverted the other. It is not improbable that he 
 was one of those unfortunate beings who desire to be loved, but 
 whose temper and appearance combine to repel affection. His 
 marble s'tatue, which adorns the entrance to the principal build- 
 ing, if it could speak, might say to us, " Living, you could not 
 understand nor love me ; dead, I compel at least your respect." 
 Indeed, he used to say, when questioned as to his career, " Wait 
 till I am dead ; my deeds will show what I was." 
 
 Girard's recollections of his childhood were tinned with bitter- 
 ness. He was born at Bordeaux in 1750. He was the eldest 
 of the five children of Captain Pierre Girard, a mariner of sub- 
 stance and respectability. He used to complain that, while his 
 10* o 
 
226 STEPHEN GIRAED 
 
 younger brothers were taught at college, his own education was 
 neglected, and that he acquired at home little more than the abil- 
 ity to read and write. He remembered, too, that at the age of 
 eight years he discovered, to his shame and sorrow, that one of 
 his eyes was blind, — a circumstance that exposed him to the 
 taunts of his companions. The influence of a personal defect, 
 and of the ridicule it occasions, upon the character of a sensitive 
 child, can be understood only by those whose childhood was em- 
 bittered from that cause ; but such cases as those of Byron and 
 Girard should teach those who have the charge of youth the 
 crime it is to permit such defects to be the subject of remark. 
 Girard also early lost his mother, an event which soon brought 
 him under the sway of a step-mother. Doubtless he was a wil- 
 ful, arbitrary, and irascible boy, since we know that he was a wil- 
 ful, arbitrary, and irascible man. Before he was fourteen, having 
 chosen the profession of his father, he left home, with his father's 
 consent, and went to sea in the capacity of cabin-boy. He used 
 to boast, late in life, that he began the world with sixpence in his 
 pocket. Quite enough for a cabin-boy. 
 
 For nine years he sailed between Bordeaux and the French 
 West Indies, returning at length with the rank of first mate, or, 
 as the French term it, lieutenant of his vessel. He had well im- 
 proved his time. Some of the defects of his early education he 
 had supplied by study, and it is evident that he had become a 
 skilful navigator. It was then the law of France that no man 
 should command a vessel who was not twenty-five years old, and. 
 had not sailed two cruises in a ship of the royal navy. Girard 
 was but twenty-three, and had sailed in none but merchant-ves- 
 sels. His father, however, had influence enough to procure him 
 a dispensation ; and in 1773 he was licensed to command. He 
 appears to have been scarcely just to his father when he wrote, 
 sixty-three years after : " I have the proud satisfaction of know- 
 ing that my conduct, my labor, and my economy have enabled 
 me to do one hundred times more for my relations than they all 
 together have ever done for me since the day of my birth." In 
 the mere amount of money expended, this may have been true ; 
 but it is the start toward fortune that is so difficult. His father, 
 
AND HIS COLLEGE. 227 
 
 besides procuring the dispensation, assisted him to purchase goods 
 for his first commercial venture. At the age of twenty-four, we 
 find him sailing to the West Indies ; not indeed in command of 
 the vessel, but probably as mate and supercargo, and part owner 
 of goods to the value of three thousand dollars. He never trod 
 his native land again. Having disposed of his cargo and taken 
 on board another, he sailed for New York, which he reached in 
 July, 1774. The storm of war, which was soon to sweep com- 
 merce from the ocean, was already muttering below the horizon, 
 when Stephen Girard, " mariner and merchant," as he' always 
 delighted to style himself, first saw the land wherein his lot was 
 to be cast. For two years longer, however, he continued to 
 exercise his twofold vocation. An ancient certificate, preserved 
 among hU papers, informs the curious explorer, that, "in the 
 year 1774, Stephen Girard sailed as mate of a vessel from New 
 York to [New] Orleans, and that he continued to sail out of the 
 said port until May, 1776, when he arrived in Philadelphia com- 
 mander of a sloop," of which the said Stephen Girard was part 
 owner. 
 
 Lucky was it for Girard that he got into Philadelphia just 
 when he did, with all his possessions with him. He had the nar- 
 rowest escape from capture. On his way from New Orleans t'> 
 a Canadian port, he had lost himself in a fog at the entrance 
 of Delaware Bay, swarming then with British cruisers, of whose 
 presence Captain Girard had heard nothing. His flag of distress 
 brought alongside an American captain, who told him where he 
 was, and assured him that, if he ventured out to sea, he would 
 never reach port except as a British prize. " Mon Dieu!" ex- 
 claimed Girard in great panic, " what shall I do?" "You have 
 no chance but to push right up to Philadelphia," replied the cap- 
 tain. " How am I to get there ? " said Girard ; " I have no 
 pilot, and I don't know the way." A pilot was found, who, how- 
 ever, demanded a preliminary payment of five dollars, which 
 Girard had not on board. In great distress, he implored the 
 captain to be his security for the sum. He consented, a pilot 
 took charge of the sloop, the anchor was heaved, and the vessel 
 sped on her way. An hour later, while they were still in sight 
 
228 STEPHEN GIRAED 
 
 of the anchorage, a British man-of-war came within the capes. 
 But Dr. Franklin, with his oared galleys, his chevaux de /rise, 
 his forts, and his signal-stations, had made the Delaware a safe 
 harbor of refuge ; and Girard arrived safely at Philadelphia on 
 one of the early days of May, 1776. Thus it was a mere chance 
 of war that gave Girard to the Quaker City. In the whole world 
 he could not have found a more congenial abode, for the Quakers 
 were the only religious sect with which he ever had the slightest 
 sympathy. Quakers he always liked and esteemed, partly be- 
 cause they had no priests, partly because they disregarded orna- 
 ment and reduced life to its simplest and most obvious utilities, 
 partly because some of their opinions were in accord with his 
 own. He had grown up during the time when Voltaire was sov- 
 ereign lord of the opinions of Continental Europe. Before land- 
 ing at Philadelphia, he was already a republican and an unbe- 
 liever, and such he remained to the last. The Declaration of 
 Independence was impending : he was ready for it. The " Com- 
 mon Sense " of Thomas Paine had appeared : he was the man of 
 all others to enjoy it. It is, however, questionable if at that time 
 he had English enough to understand it in the original, since the 
 colloquy just reported with the American captain took place in 
 French. He was slow in becoming familiar with the English 
 language, and even to the end of his life seemed to prefer con- 
 versing in French. 
 
 He was a mariner no more. The great fleet of Lord Howe 
 arrived at New York in July. Every harbor was blockaded, 
 and all commerce was suspended. Even the cargoes of tobacco 
 despatched by Congress to their Commissioners in France, for 
 the purchase of arms and stores, were usually captured before 
 they had cleared the Capes. Captain Girard now rented a small 
 store in Water Street, near the spot where he lived for nearly 
 sixty years, in which he carried on the business of a grocer and 
 wine-bottler. Those who knew him at this time report' that he 
 was a taciturn, repulsive young man, never associating with men 
 of his own age and calling, devoted to business, close in his deal- 
 ings, of the most rigorous economy, and preserving still the 
 rough clothing and general appearance of a sailor. Though but 
 
AND HIS COLLEGE. 229 
 
 twenty-six years of age, he was called "old Girard." He 
 seemed conscious of his inability to please, but bore the derision of 
 his neighbors with stoical equanimity, and plodded on. 
 
 War favors the skilful and enterprising business-man. Girard 
 had a genius for business. He was not less bold in his operations 
 than prudent ; and his judgment as a man of business was well- 
 nigh infallible. Destitute of all false pride, he bought whatever 
 he thought he could sell to advantage, from a lot of damaged cord- 
 age to a pipe of old port ; and he labored incessantly with his 
 own hands. He was a thriving man during the first year of his 
 residence in Philadelphia ; his chief gain, it is said, being de- 
 rived from his favorite business of bottling wine and cider. 
 
 The romance, the mystery, the tragedy of his life now occurred. 
 Walking along Water Street one day, near the corner of Vine 
 Street, the eyes of this reserved and ill-favored man were caught 
 by a beautiful servant-girl going to the pump for a pail of water. 
 She was an enchanting brunette of sixteen, with luxuriant black 
 locks curling and clustering about her neck. As she tripped 
 along with bare feet and empty pail, in airy and unconscious 
 grace, she captivated the susceptible Frenchman, who saw in her 
 the realization of the songs of the forecastle and the reveries of 
 the quarter-deck. He sought her acquaintance, and made him- 
 self at home in her kitchen. The family whom she served, mis- 
 interpreting the designs of the thriving dealer, forbade him the 
 house ; when he silenced their scruples by offering the girl his 
 hand in marriage. Ill-starred Polly Lumm ! Unhappy Girard ! 
 She accepted his offer ; and in July, 1777, the incongruous two, 
 being united in matrimony, attempted to become one. 
 
 The war interrupted their brief felicity. Philadelphia, often 
 threatened, fell into the hands of Lord Howe in September, 
 1777 ; and among the thousands who needlessly fled at his ap- 
 proach were " old Girard " and his pretty young wife. He 
 bought a house at Mount Holly, near Burlington, in New Jersey, 
 for five hundred dollars, to which he removed, and there con- 
 tinued to bottle claret and sell it to the British officers, until the 
 departure of Lord Howe, in June, 1778, permitted his return to 
 Philadelphia. The gay young officers, it is said, who came to his 
 
230 STEPHEN GIRAED 
 
 house at Mount HoHy to drink his claret, were far from being in- 
 sensible to the charms of Mrs. Girard ; and tradition further re- 
 ports that on one occasion a dashing colonel snatched a kiss, 
 which the sailor resented, and compelled the officer to apologize 
 for. 
 
 Of all miserable marriages this was one of the most miserable. 
 Here was a young, beautiful, and ignorant girl united to a close, 
 ungracious, eager man of business, devoid of sentiment, with a 
 violent temper and an unyielding will. She was an American, 
 he a Frenchman ; and that alone was an immense incompatibili- 
 ty. She was seventeen, he twenty-seven. She was a woman ; 
 he was a man without imagination, intolerant of foibles. She 
 was a beauty, with the natural vanities of a beauty ; he not 
 merely had no taste for decoration, he disapproved it on princi- 
 ple. These points of difference would alone have sufficed to en- 
 danger their domestic peace ; but time developed something that 
 was fatal to it. Their abode was the scene of contention for 
 eight years ; at the expiration of which period Mrs. Girard 
 showed such symptoms of insanity that her husband was obliged 
 to place her in the Pennsylvania Hospital. In these distressing 
 circumstances, he appears to have spared no pains for her resto- 
 ration. He removed her to a place in the country, but without 
 effect. She returned to his house only to render life insupport- 
 able to him. He resumed his old calling as a mariner, and made 
 a voyage to the Mediterranean ; but on his return he found his 
 wife not less unmanageable than before. In 1790, thirteen 
 years after their marriage, and five after the first exhibition of 
 insanity, Mrs. Girard was placed permanently in the hospital; 
 where, nine months after, she gave birth to a female child. The 
 child soon died ; the mother never recovered her reason. For 
 twenty-five years she lived in the hospital, and, dying in 1815, 
 was buried in the hospital grounds after the manner of the Qua- 
 kers. The coffin was brought to the grave, followed by the hus- 
 band and the managers of the institution, who remained standing 
 about it in silence for several minutes. It was then lowered to 
 its final resting-place, and again the company remained motion- 
 less aud silent for a while. Girard looked at the coffin once 
 
AND HIS COLLEGE. 231 
 
 more, then turned to an acquaintance and said, as he walked 
 away, " It is very well." A green mound, without headstone or 
 monument, still marks the spot where the remains of this unhap- 
 py woman repose. Girard, hoth during his lifetime and after his 
 death, was a liberal, though not lavish, benefactor of the institu- 
 tion which had so long sheltered his wife. 
 
 Fortunes were not made rapidly in the olden time. After the 
 Revolution, Girard engaged in commerce with the "West Indies, 
 in partnership with his brother John ; and he is described in an 
 official paper of the time as one who " carried on an extensive 
 business as a merchant, and is a considerable owner of real 
 estate." But on the dissolution of the partnership in 1790, 
 when he had been in business, as mariner and merchant, for six- 
 teen years, his estate was valued at only thirty thousand dollars. 
 The times were troubled. The French Revolution, the massacre 
 at St. Domingo, our disturbed relations with England, and after- 
 wards with France, the violence of our party contests, all tended 
 to make merchants timid, and to limit their operations. Girard, 
 as his papers indicate, and as he used to relate in conversation, 
 took more than a merchant's interest in the events of the time. 
 From the first, he had formally cast in his lot with the struggling 
 Colonists, as we learn from a yellow and faded document left 
 among his papers : — 
 
 " I do hereby certify that Stephen Girard, of the city of Philadelphia, 
 
 merchant, hath voluntarily taken the oath of allegiance and fidelity, as 
 
 directed by an act of the General Assembly of Pennsylvania, passed 
 
 the 13th day of June, A. D. 1777. Witness my hand and seal, the 
 
 27th day of October, A. D. 1778. 
 
 "Jno. Ord. 
 
 "No. 1678." 
 
 The oath was repeated the year following. When the 
 French Revolution had divided the country into two parties, 
 the Federalists and the Republicans, Girard was a Republican 
 of the radical school, lie remembered assisting to raise a liber- 
 ty-pole in the Presidency of John Adams ; and he was one of 
 Mr. Jefferson's most uncompromising adherents at a time when 
 men of substance were seldom found in the ranks of the Democ- 
 
232 STEPHEN GIRARD 
 
 racy. As long as he lived, he held the name of Thomas Jeffer- 
 son in veneration. 
 
 We have now to contemplate this cold, close, ungainly, ungra- 
 cious man in a new character. We are to see that a man may 
 Beem indifferent to the woes of individuals, but perform sublime 
 acts of devotion to a community. We are to observe that there 
 are men of sterling but peculiar metal, who only shine when the 
 furnace of general affliction is hottest. In 1793, the malignant 
 yellow-fever desolated Philadelphia. The consternation of the 
 people cannot be conceived by readers of the present day, be- 
 cause we cannot conceive of the ignorance which then prevailed 
 respecting the laws of contagion, because we have lost in some 
 degree the habit of panic, and because no kind of horror can be 
 as novel to us as the yellow-fever was to the people of Philadel- 
 phia in 1793. One half of the population fled. Those who re- 
 mained left their houses only when compelled. Most of the 
 churches, the great Coffee-House, the Library, were closed. 
 Of four daily newspapers, only one continued to be published. 
 Some people constantly smoked tobacco, — even women and 
 children did so; others chewed garlic; others exploded gun- 
 powder ; others burned nitre or sprinkled vinegar ; many as- 
 siduously whitewashed every surface within their reach ; some 
 carried tarred rope in their hands, or bags of camphor round 
 their necks ; others never ventured abroad without a handker- 
 chief or a sponge wet with vinegar at their noses. No one ven- 
 tured to shake hands. Friends who met in the streets gave each 
 other a wide berth, eyed one another askance, exchanged nods, 
 and strode on. It was a custom to walk in the middle of the 
 street, to get as far from the houses as possible. Many of the 
 sick died without help, and the dead were buried without cere- 
 mony. The horrid silence of the streets was broken only by the 
 tread of litter-bearers and the awful rumble of the dead-wagon. 
 Whole families perished, — perished without assistance, their fate 
 unknown to their neighbors. Money was powerless to buy at- 
 tendance, for the operation of all ordinary motives was sus- 
 pended. From the 1st of August to the 9th of November, in 
 a population of twenty-five thousand, there were four thousand 
 and thirty-one burials, — about one in six. 
 
 
AND HIS COLLEGE. 233 
 
 Happily for the honor of human nature, there are always, in 
 times like these, great souls whom base panic cannot prostrate. 
 A few brave physicians, a few faithful clergymen, a few high- 
 minded citizens, a few noble women, remembered and practised 
 what is due to humanity overtaken by a calamity like this. On 
 the 10th of September, a notice, without signature, appeared in 
 the only paper published, stating that all but three of the Visit- 
 ors of the Poor were sick, dead, or missing, and calling upon all 
 who were willing to help to meet at the City Hall on the 12th. 
 From those who attended the meeting, a committee of twenty- 
 seven was appointed to superintend the measures for relief, of 
 whom Stephen Girard was one. On Sunday, the loth, the com- 
 mittee met ; and the condition of the great hospital at Bush Hill 
 was laid before them. It was unclean, ill-regulated, crowded, and 
 ill-supplied. Nurses could not be hired at any price, for even to 
 approach it was deemed certain death. Then, to the inexpressi- 
 ble astonishment and admiration of the committee, two men of 
 wealth and importance in the city offered personally to take 
 charge of the hospital during the prevalence of the disease. 
 Girard was one of these, Peter Helm the other. Girard appears 
 to have been the first to offer himself. " Stephen Girard," re- 
 cords Matthew Carey, a member of the committee, " sympathiz- 
 ing with the wretched situation of the sufferers at Bush Hill, 
 voluntarily and unexpectedly offered himself as a manager to su- 
 perintend that hospital. The surprise and satisfaction excited by 
 this extraordinary effort of humanity can be better conceived than 
 expressed." 
 
 That very afternoon, Girard and Helm went out to the hospi- 
 tal, and entered upon their perilous and repulsive duty. Girard 
 chose the post of honor. He took charge of the interior of the 
 hospital, while Mr. Helm conducted its out-door affairs. For 
 sixty days he continued to perform, by day and night, all the dis- 
 tressing and revolting offices incident to the situation. In the 
 great scarcity of help, he used frequently to receive the sick and 
 dying at the gate, assist in carrying them to their beds, nurse 
 them, receive their last messages, watch for their last breath, and 
 then, wrapping them in the sheet they had died upon, carry them 
 
234 STEPHEN GIRARD 
 
 out to the burial-ground, and place them in the trench. He had 
 a vivid recollection of the difficulty of finding any kind of fabric 
 in which to wrap the dead, when the vast number of interments 
 had exhausted the supply of sheets. " I would put them," he 
 would say, "in any old rag I could find." If he ever left the 
 hospital, it was to visit the infected districts, and assist in remov- 
 ing the sick from the houses in which they were dying without 
 help. One scene of this kind, witnessed by a merchant, who was 
 hurrying past with camphored handkerchief pressed to his mouth, 
 affords us a vivid glimpse of this heroic man engaged in his sub- 
 lime vocation. A carriage, rapidly driven by a black man, broke 
 the silence of the deserted and grass-grown street. It stopped 
 before a frame house ; and the driver, first having bound a hand- 
 kerchief over his mouth, opened the door of the carriage, and 
 quickly remounted to the box. A short, thick-set man stepped 
 from the coach and entered the house. In a minute or two, the 
 observer, who stood at a safe distance watching the proceedings, 
 heard a shuffling noise in the entry, and soon saw the stout little 
 man supporting with extreme difficulty a tall, gaunt, yellow- 
 visaged victim of the pestilence. Girard held round the waist 
 the sick man, whose yellow- face rested against his own ; his long, 
 damp, tangled hair mingled with Girard's ; his feet dragging 
 helpless upon the pavement. Thus he drew him to the carriage 
 door, the driver averting his face from the spectacle, far from 
 offering to assist. Partly dragging, partly lifting, he succeeded, 
 after long and severe exertion, in getting him into the vehicle. 
 He then entered it himself, closed the door, and the carriage 
 drove away towards the hospital. 
 
 A man who can do such things at such a time may commit 
 ^ errors and cherish erroneous opinions, but the essence of that 
 which makes the difference between a good man and a bad man 
 must dwell within him. Twice afterwards Philadelphia was 
 visited by yellow-fever, in 1797 and 1798. On both occasions, 
 Girard took the lead, by personal exertion or gifts of money, in 
 relieving the poor and the sick. He had a singular taste for 
 nursing the sick, though a sturdy unbeliever in medicine. Ac- 
 cording to him, nature, not doctors, is the restorer, — nature, 
 
AND HIS COLLEGE. 235 
 
 aided by good nursing. Thus, after the yellow-fever of 1798, he 
 wrote to a friend in France : " During all this frightful time, I 
 have constantly remained in the city ; and, without neglecting my 
 public duties, I have played a part which will make you smile. 
 Would you believe it, my friend, that I have visited as many as 
 fifteen sick people in a day ? and what will surprise you still 
 more, I have lost only one patient, an Irishman, who would drink 
 a little. I do not flatter myself that I have cured one single 
 person ; but you will think with me, that in my quality of Phila- 
 delphia physician I have been very moderate, and that not one of 
 my confreres has killed fewer than myself." 
 
 It is not by nursing the sick, however, that men acquire 
 colossal fortunes. We revert, therefore, to the business career 
 of this extraordinary man. Girard, in the ancient and honorable 
 acceptation of the term, was a merchant ; i. e. a man who sent 
 his own ships to foreign countries, and exchanged their products 
 for those of his own. Beginning in the West India trade, with 
 one small schooner built with difficulty and managed with cau- 
 tion, he expanded his business as his capital increased, until he 
 was the owner of a fleet of merchantmen, and brought home to 
 Philadelphia the products of every clime. Beginning with single 
 voyages, his vessels merely sailing to a foreign port and back 
 asain, he was accustomed at length to project great mercantile 
 cruises, extending over long periods of time, and embracing many 
 ports. A ship loaded with cotton and grain would sail, for 
 example, to Bordeaux, there discharge, and take in a cargo of 
 wine and fruit ; thence to St. Petersburg, where she would ex- 
 change her wine and fruit for hemp and iron ; then to Amster- 
 dam, where the hemp and iron would be sold for dollars ; to Cal- 
 cutta next for a cargo of tea and silks, with which the ship would 
 return to Philadelphia. Such were the voyages so often success- 
 fully made by the Voltaire, the Rousseau, the Helvetius, and the 
 Montesquieu ; ships long the pride of Girard and the boast of 
 Philadelphia, their names being the tribute paid by the merchant 
 to the literature of his native land. He seldom failed to make 
 very large profits. He rarely, if ever, lost a ship. 
 
 His neighbors, the merchants of Philadelphia, deemed him a 
 
236 STEPHEN GIRAED 
 
 lucky man. Many of them thought they could do as well as he, 
 if they only had his luck. But the great volumes of his letters 
 and papers, preserved in a room of the Girard College, show that 
 his success in business was not due, in any degree whatever, to 
 good fortune. Let a money-making generation take note, that 
 Girard principles inevitably produce Girard results. The grand, 
 the fundamental secret of his success, as of all success, was that 
 he understood his business. He had a personal, familiar knowl- 
 edge of the ports with which he traded, the commodities in which 
 he dealt, the vehicles in which they were carried, the dangers to 
 which they were liable, and the various kinds of men through 
 whom he acted. He observed everything, and forgot nothing. 
 He had done everything himself which he had occasion to re- 
 quire others to do. His directions to his captains and super- 
 cargoes, full, minute, exact, peremptory, show the hand of a 
 master. Every possible contingency was foreseen and provided 
 for ; and he demanded the most literal obedience to the maxim, 
 " Obey orders, though you break owners." He would dismiss a 
 captain from his service forever, if he saved the whole profits of 
 a voyage by departing from his instructions. He did so on one 
 occasion. Add to this perfect knowledge of his craft, that he had 
 a self-control which never permitted him to anticipate his gains 
 or spread too wide his sails ; that his industry knew no pause ; 
 that he was a close, hard bargainer, keeping his word to the let- 
 ter, but exacting his rights to the letter ; that he had no vices 
 and no vanities ; that he had no toleration for those calamities 
 which result from vices and vanities ; that his charities, though 
 frequent, were bestowed only upon unquestionably legitimate 
 objects, and were never profuse ; that he was as wise in invest- 
 ing as skilful in gaining money ; that he made his very pleasures 
 profitable to himself in money gained, to his neighborhood in im- 
 proved fruits and vegetables ; that he had no family to maintain 
 and indulge; that he held in utter aversion and contempt the 
 costly and burdensome ostentation of a great establishment, fine 
 equipages, and a retinue of servants ; that he reduced himself to 
 a money-making machine, run at the minimum of expense ; — 
 and we have an explanation of his rapidly acquired wealth. He 
 
AND HIS COLLEGE. 237 
 
 used to boast, after he was a millionnaire, of wearing the same 
 overcoat for fourteen winters ; and one of his clerks, who saw 
 him every day for twenty years, declares that he never remem- 
 bered having seen him wear a new-looking garment but once. 
 Let us note, too, that he was an adept in the art of getting men 
 to serve him with devotion. He paid small salaries, and was 
 never known in his life to bestow a gratuity upon one who served 
 him ; but he knew how to make his humblest clerk feel that the 
 master's eye was upon him always. Violent in his outbreaks of 
 anger, his business letters are singularly polite, and show con- 
 sideration for the health and happiness of his subordinates. 
 
 Legitimate commerce makes many men rich ; but in Girard's 
 day no man gained by it ten millions of dollars. It was the war 
 of 1812, which suspended commerce, that made this merchant so 
 enormously rich. In 1811, the charter of the old United States 
 Bunk expired; and the casting-vote of Vice-President George 
 Clinton negatived the bill for rechartering it. When war was 
 imminent, Girard had a million dollars in the bank of Baring 
 Brothers in London. This large sum, useless then for purposes 
 of commerce, — in peril, too, from the disturbed condition of 
 English finance, — he invested in United States stock and in 
 stock of the United States Bank, both being depreciated in Eng- 
 land. Being thus a large holder of the stock of the bank, the 
 charter having expired, and its affairs being in liquidation, he 
 bought out the entire, concern ; and, merely changing the name to 
 Girard's Bank, continued it in being as a private institution, iu 
 the same building, with the same coin in its vaults, the same 
 bank-notes, the same cashier and clerks. The banking-house and 
 the house of the cashier, which cost three hundred and fifty thou- 
 sand dollars, he bought for one hundred and twenty thousand. 
 The stock, which he bought at four hundred and twenty, proved 
 to be worth, on the winding up of the old bank, four hundred and 
 thirty-four. Thus, by this operation, he extricated his property 
 iu England, invested it wisely in America, established a new 
 business in place of one that could no longer be carried on, and 
 saved the mercantile community from a considerable part of the 
 loss and embarrassment which the total annihilation of the bank 
 would have occasioned. 
 
233 STEPHEN GIRARD 
 
 His management of the bank perfectly illustrates his singular 
 and apparently contradictory character. Hamilton used to say of 
 Burr, that he was great in little things, and little in great things. 
 Girard in little things frequently seemed little, but in great things 
 he was often magnificently great. For example : the old bank 
 had been accustomed to present an overcoat to its watchman 
 every Christmas ; Girard forbade the practice as extravagant ; — 
 the old bank had supplied penknives gratis to its clerks ; Girard 
 made them buy their own ; — the old bank had paid salaries 
 which were higher than those given in other banks ; Girard cut 
 them down to the average rate. To the watchman and the clerks 
 this conduct, doubtless, seemed little. Without pausing to argue 
 the question with them, let us contemplate the new banker in his 
 great actions. He was the very sheet-anchor of the government 
 credit during the whole of that disastrous war. If advances were 
 required at a critical moment, it was Girard who was promptest 
 to make them. "When all other banks and houses were contract- 
 ing, it was Girard who stayed the panic by a timely and liberal 
 expansion. When all other paper was depreciated, Girard's 
 notes, and his alone, were as good as gold. In 1814, when the 
 credit of the government was at its lowest ebb, when a loan of 
 five millions, at seven per cent interest and twenty dollars bonus, 
 was up for weeks, and only procured twenty thousand dollars, it 
 was " old Girard " who boldly subscribed for the whole amount ; 
 which at once gave it market value, and infused life into the 
 paralyzed credit of the nation. Again, in 181 G, when the sub- 
 scriptions lagged for the new United States Bank, Girard waited 
 until the last day for receiving subscriptions, and then quietly 
 subscribed for the whole amount not taken, which was three mil- 
 lion one hundred thousand dollars. And yet again, in 1829, 
 when the enormous expenditures of Pennsylvania upon her ca- 
 nals had exhausted her treasury and impaired her credit, it was 
 Girard who prevented the total suspension of the public works 
 by a loan to the Governor, which the assembling Legislature 
 might or might not reimburse. 
 
 Once, during the war, the control of the coin in the bank pro- 
 cured him a signal advantage. In the spring of 1813, his fine 
 
AND HIS COLLEGE. 239 
 
 ship, the Montesquieu, crammed with tea and fabrics from China, 
 was captured by a British shallop when she was almost within 
 Delaware Bay. News of the disaster reaching Girard, he sent 
 orders to his supercargo to treat for a ransom. The British 
 admiral gave, up the vessel for one hundred and eighty thousand 
 dollars in coin ; and, despite this costly ransom, the cargo yielded 
 a larger profit than that of any ship of Girard's during the whole 
 of his mercantile career. Tea was then selling at war prices. 
 Much of it brought, at auction, two dollars and fourteen cents a 
 pound, more than four times its cost in China. He appears to 
 have gained about half a million of dollars. 
 
 From the close of the war to the end of his life, a period of 
 sixteen years, Girard pursued the even tenor of his way, as keen 
 and steady in the pursuit of wealth, and as careful in preserving 
 it, as though his fortune were still insecure. Why was this ? 
 "We should answer the question thus : Because his defective edu- 
 cation left him no other resource. "We frequently hear the " suc- 
 cess " of such men as Astor and Girard adduced as evidence of 
 the uselessness of early education. On the contrary, it is precise- 
 ly such men Who prove its necessity ; since, when they have 
 conquered fortune, they know not how to avail themselves of its 
 advantages. "When Franklin had, at the age of forty-two, won a 
 moderate competence, he could turn from business to science, and 
 from science to the public service, using money as a means to the 
 noblest ends. Strong-minded but unlettered men, like Girard, 
 who cannot be idle, must needs plod on to the end, adding super- 
 fluous millions to their estates. In Girard's case, too, there was 
 another cause of this entire devotion to business. His domestic 
 sorrows had estranged him from mankind, and driven him into 
 himself. Mr. Henry W. Arey, the very able and high-minded 
 Secretary of Girard College, in whose custody are Girard's pa- 
 pers, is convinced that it was not the love of money which kept 
 him at work early and late to the last days of his life. 
 
 " No one," he remarks, " who has had access to his private papers, 
 can fail to become impressed with the belief that these early disap- 
 pointments furnish the true key to his entire character. Originally 
 of warm and generous impulses, the belief in childhood that he had not 
 
240 STEPHEN GIRARD 
 
 been <nven his share of the love and kindness which were extended to 
 others changed the natural current of his feelings, and, acting on a 
 warm and passionate temperament, alienated him from his home, his 
 parents, and his friends. And when in after time there were super- 
 added the years of bitter anguish resulting from his unfortunate and 
 ill-adapted marriage, rendered even more poignant by the necessity of 
 concealment, and the consequent injustice of public sentiment, and 
 marring all his cherished expectations, it may be readily understood 
 why constant occupation became a necessity, and labor a pleasure." 
 
 Girard himself confirms this opinion. In one of his letters of 
 1820, to a friend in New Orleans, he says : — 
 
 " I observe with pleasure that you'have a numerous family, that you 
 are happy and in the possession of an honest fortune. This is all that 
 a wise man has the right to wish for. As to myself, I live like a gal- 
 ley-slave, constantly occupied, and often passing the night without sleep- 
 ing. I am wrapped up in a labyrinth of affairs, and worn out with 
 care. I do not value fortune. The love of labor is my highest ambi- 
 tion. You perceive that your situation is a thousand times preferable 
 to mine." 
 
 In his lifetime, as we have remai-ked, few men loved Girard, 
 still fewer understood him. He was considered mean, hard, 
 avaricious. If a rich man goes into a store to buy a yard of 
 cloth, no one expects that he will give five dollars for it when the 
 price is four. But there is a universal impression that it is 
 " handsome " in him to give higher wages than other people to 
 those who serve him, to bestow gratuities upon them, and, espe- 
 cially, to give away endless sums in charity. The truth is, how- 
 ever, that one of the duties which a rich man owes to society is to 
 be careful not to disturb the law of supply and demand by giving 
 more money for anything than a fair price, and not to encourage 
 improvidence and servility by inconsiderate and profuse gifts. 
 Girard rescued his poor relations in France from want, and edu- 
 cated nieces and nephews in his own house ; but his gifts to them 
 were not proportioned to his own wealth, but to their circum- 
 stances. His design evidently was to help them as much as 
 would do them good, but not so much as to injure them as self- 
 sustaining members of society. And surely it was well for every 
 clerk in his bank to know that all he had to expect from the rich 
 
AND HIS COLLEGE. 241 
 
 Girard was only what lie would have received if he had served 
 another bank. The money which in loose hands might have re- 
 laxed the arm of industry and the spirit of independence, which 
 might have pampered and debased a retinue of menials, and 
 drawn around the dispenser a crowd of cringing beggars and ex- 
 pectants, was invested in solid houses, which Girard's books show 
 yielded him a profit of three per cent, but which furnished to 
 many families comfortable abodes at moderate rents. To the 
 most passionate entreaties of failing merchants for a loan to help 
 them over a crisis, he was inflexibly deaf. They thought it 
 meanness. But we can safely infer from Girard's letters and 
 conversation that he thought it an injury to the community to 
 avert from a man of business the consequences of extravagance 
 and folly, which, in his view, were the sole causes of failure. If 
 there was anything that Girard utterly despised and detested, it 
 was that vicious mode of doing business which, together with ex- 
 travagant living, causes seven business men in ten to fail every 
 ten years. "We are enabled to state, however, on the best au- 
 thority, that he was substantially just to those whom he employed, 
 and considerately kind to his own kindred. At least he meant to 
 be kind ; he did for them what he really thought was for their 
 good. To little children, and to them only, he was gracious and 
 affectionate in mauner. He was never so happy as when he had 
 a child to caress and play with. 
 
 After the peace of 1815, Girard began to consider what he 
 should do with his millions after his death. He was then sixty- 
 five, but he expected and meant to live to a good age. " The 
 Russians," he would say, when he was mixing his-o//« podrida of 
 a Russian salad, " understand best how to eat and drink ; and I 
 am going to see how long, by following their customs, I can live." 
 He kept an excellent table ; but he became abstemious as he 
 grew older, and lived chiefly on his salad and his good claret. En- 
 joying perfect health, it was not until about the year 1828, when 
 he was seventy-eight years of age, that he entered upon the se- 
 rious consideration of a plan for the final disposal of his immense 
 estate. Upon one point his mind had been long made up. " No 
 man," said he, " shall be a gentleman on my money." He often, 
 11 p 
 
242 STEPHEN GIEAED 
 
 said that, even if he had had a son, he should have been brought 
 up to labor, and should not, by a great legacy, be exempted from 
 the necessity of labor. " If I should leave him twenty thousand 
 dollars," he said, " he would be lazy or turn gambler." Very 
 likely. The son of a man like Girard, who was virtuous without 
 being able to make virtue engaging, whose mind was strong but 
 rigid and ill-furnished, commanding but uninstructive, is likely to 
 have a barren mind and rampant desires, the twin causes of de- 
 bauchery. His decided inclination was to leave the bulk of his 
 property for the endowment of an institution of some kind for the 
 benefit of Philadelphia. The only question was, what kind of in- 
 stitution it should be. 
 
 William J. Duane* was his legal adviser then, — that honest 
 and intrepid William J. Duane who, a few years later, stood 
 calmly his ground on the question of the removal of the deposits 
 against the infuriate Jackson, the Kitchen Cabinet, and the 
 Democratic party. Girard felt all the worth of this able and 
 honorable lawyer. With him alone he conversed upon the pro- 
 jected institution ; and Mr. Duane, without revealing his purpose, 
 made inquiries among his travelled friends respecting the endowed 
 establishments of foreign countries. For several months before 
 sitting down to prepare the will, they never met without convers- 
 ing upon this topic, which was also the chief subject of discourse 
 between them on Sunday afternoons, when Mr. Duane invariably 
 dined at Mr. Girard's country-house. A home for the education 
 of orphans was at length decided upon, and then the will was 
 drawn. For three weeks the lawyer and his client were closeted, 
 toiling at the multifai'ious details of that curious document. 
 
 The minor bequests were speedily arranged, though they were 
 numerous and well considered. He left to the Pennsylvania 
 Hospital, thirty thousand dollars ; to the Deaf and Dumb Asylum, 
 twenty thousand ; to the Orphan Asylum, ten thousand ; to the 
 Lancaster public schools, the same sum ; the same for providing 
 fuel for the poor in Philadelphia ; the same to the Society for the 
 Relief of Distressed Sea-Captains and their families ; to the l 
 
 * The facts which follow I received from the lips and from the papers of this 
 revered man, now no more. — J. P. 
 
AND HIS COLLEGE. 243 
 
 Freemasons of Pennsylvania, for the relief of poor members 
 twenty thousand ; six thousand for the establishment of a free 
 school in Passyunk, near Philadelphia ; to his surviving brother, 
 and to his eleven nieces, he left sums varying from five thousand 
 dollars to twenty thousand ; but to one of his nieces, who had a 
 very large family, he left sixty thousand dollars. To each of the 
 captains who had made two voyages in his service, and who should 
 bring his ship safely into port, he gave fifteen hundred dollars ; 
 and to each of his apprentices, five hundred. To his old servants, 
 he left annuities of three hundred and five hundred dollars each. 
 A portion of his valuable estates in Louisiana he bequeathed to 
 the corporation of New Orleans, for the improvement of that city. 
 Haifa million he left for certain improvements in the city of 
 Philadelphia ; and to Pennsylvania, three hundred thousand dol- 
 lars for her canals. The whole of the residue of his property, 
 worth then about six millions of dollars, he devoted to the con- 
 struction and endowment of a College for Orphans. 
 
 Accustomed all his life to give minute directions to those 
 whom he selected to execute his designs, he followed the same 
 system in that part of his will which related to the College. The 
 whole will was written out three times, and some parts of it more 
 than three. He strove most earnestly, and so did Mr. Duane, to 
 make every paragraph so clear that no one could misunderstand 
 it. No candid person, sincerely desirous to understand his inten- 
 tions, has ever found it difficult to do so. He directed that the 
 buildings should be constructed of the most durable materials, 
 " avoiding useless ornament, attending chiefly to the strength, 
 convenience, and neatness of the whole." That, at least, is plain. 
 He then proceeded to direct precisely what materials should be 
 used, and how they should be used ; prescribing the number of 
 buildings, their size, the number and size of the apartments in 
 each, the thickness of each wall, giving every detail of construc- 
 tion, as he would have given it to a builder. He then gave 
 briefer directions as to the management of the institution. The 
 orphans were to be plainly but wholesomely fed, clothed, and 
 lodged ; instructed in the English branches, in geometry, natural 
 philosophy, the French and Spanish languages, and whatever else 
 
244 STEPHEN GERARD 
 
 mi Hit be deemed suitable and beneficial to them. "I would have 
 them," says the will, " taught facts and things, rather than words 
 or si^ns." At the conclusion of the course, the pupils were to be 
 apprenticed to "suitable occupations, as those of agriculture, nav- 
 igation, arts, mechanical trades, and manufactures." 
 
 The most remarkable passage of the will is the following. 
 The Italics are those of the original document. 
 
 " I enjoin and require that no ecclesiastic, missionary, or minister of 
 any sect whatsoever, shall ever hold or exercise any station or duty ivhat- 
 ever in the said College ; nor shall any such person ever be admitted for 
 any purpose, or as a visitor, within the jjremises appropriated to the pur- 
 poses of the said College. In making this restriction, I do not mean to i 
 cast any reflection upon any sect or person whatsoever ; but as there is 
 such a multitude of sects, and such a diversity of opinion amongst them, 
 I desire to keep the tender minds of the orphans, who are to derive 
 advantage from this bequest, free from the excitement which clashing 
 doctrines and sectarian controversy are so apt to produce ; my desire is, 
 that all the instructors and teachers in the College shall take pains to I 
 instil into the minds of the scholars (he purest principles of morality, so 
 that, on their entrance into active life, they may, from inclination and 
 habit, evince benevolence toward their fellow-creatures, and a love of 
 truth, sobriety, and industry, adopting at the same time such religious 
 tenets as their matured reason may enable them to prefer." 
 
 When Mr. Duane had written this passage at Girard's dicta- 
 tion, a conversation occurred between them, which revealed, per- 
 haps, one of the old gentleman's reasons for inserting it. " What 
 do you think of that ? " asked Girard. Mr. Duane, being unpre- 
 pared to comment upon such an unexpected injunction, replied, 
 after a long pause, " I can only say now, Mr. Girard, that I think 
 it will make a great sensation." Girard then said, " I can tell 
 you something else it will do, — it will please the Quakers." He 
 gave another proof of his regard for the Quakers by naming three 
 of them as the executors of his will ; the whole number of the 
 executors being five. 
 
 In February, 1830, the will was executed, and deposited in 
 Mr. Girard's iron safe. None but the two men who had drawn 
 the will, and the three men who witnessed the signing of it, 
 were aware of its existence ; and none but Girard and Mr. Du- 1 
 
AND HIS COLLEGE. 245 
 
 ane had the least knowledge of its contents. There never was 
 such a keeper of his own secrets as Girard, and never a more 
 faithful keeper of other men's secrets than Mr. Duane. And 
 here we have another illustration of the old man's character. 
 He had just signed a will of unexampled liberality to the public ; 
 and the sum which he gave the able and devoted lawyer for his 
 three weeks' labor in drawing it was three hundred dollars ! 
 
 Girard lived nearly two years longer, always devoted to busi- 
 ness, and still investing his gains with care. An accident in the 
 street gave a shock to his constitution, from which he never fully 
 recovered; and in December, 1831, when he was nearly eighty- 
 two years of age, an attack of influenza terminated his life. 
 True to his principles, he refused to be cupped, or to take drugs 
 into his system, though both were prescribed by a physician 
 whom he respected. 
 
 Death having dissolved the powerful spell of a presence which 
 few men had been able to resist, it was to be seen how far his 
 will would be obeyed, now that he was no longer able personally 
 to enforce it. The old man lay dead in his house in Water 
 Street. While the public out of doors were curious enough to 
 learn what he had done with his money, there was a smaller 
 number within the house, the kindred of the deceased, in whom 
 this curiosity raged like a mania. They invaded the cellars of 
 the house, and, bringing up bottles of the old man's choice wine, 
 kept up a continual carouse. Surrounding Mr. Duane, who had 
 been present at Mr. Girard's death, and remained to direct his 
 funeral, they demanded to know if there was a will. To silence 
 their indecent clamor, he told them there was, and that he was 
 one of the executors. On hearing this, their desire to learn its 
 contents rose to fury. In vain the executors reminded them 
 that decency required that the will should not be opened till after 
 the funeral. They even threatened legal proceedings if the will 
 were not immediately produced ; and at length, to avoid a public 
 scandal, the executors consented to have it read. These affec- 
 tionate relatives being assembled in a parlor of the house in 
 which the body of their benefactor lay, the will was taken from 
 the iron safe by one of the executors.* 
 
 * Mr. Duane. 
 
24G STEPHEN GIRAED 
 
 When he had opened it, and was about to begin to read, he 
 chanced to look over the top of the document at the company 
 seated before him. No artist that ever held a brush could depict 
 the passion of curiosity, the frenzy of expectation, expressed in 
 that group of pallid faces. Every individual among them ex- 
 pected to leave the apartment the conscious possessor of millions, 
 for no one had dreamed of the probability of his leaving the bulk 
 of his estate to the public. If they had ever heard of his saying 
 that no one should be gentleman upon his money, they had for- 
 gotten or disbelieved it. The opening paragraphs of the will all 
 tended to confirm their hopes, since the bequests to existing insti- 
 tutions were of small amount. But the reader soon reached the 
 part of the will which assigned to ladies and gentlemen present 
 such trifling sums as five thousand dollars, ten thousand, twenty 
 thousand ; and he arrived erelong at the sections which disposed 
 of millions for the benefit of great cities and poor children. Some 
 of them made not the slightest attempt to conceal their disap- 
 pointment and disgust. Men were there who had married with 
 a view to share the wealth of Girard, and had been waiting years 
 for his death. Women were there who had looked to that event 
 as the beginning of their enjoyment of life. The imagination of 
 the reader must supply the details of a scene which we might 
 think dishonored human nature, if we could believe that human 
 nature was meant to be subjected to such a strain. It had been 
 better, perhaps, if the rich man, in his own lifetime, had made 
 his kindred partakers of his superabundance, especially as he had 
 nothing else that he could share with them. They attempted, on 
 grounds that seem utterly frivolous, to break the will, and em- 
 ployed the most eminent counsel to conduct their cause, but with- 
 out effect. They did, however, succeed in getting the property 
 acquired after the execution of the will; which Girard, disregard- 
 ing the opinion of Mr. Duane, attempted by a postscript to include 
 in the will. " It will not stand," said the lawyer. " Yes it will," 
 said Girard. Mr. Duane, knowing his man, was silent ; and the 
 courts have since decided that his opinion was correct. 
 
 Thirty-three years have passed since the city of Philadelphia 
 entered upon the possession of the enormous and growing estate 
 
AND HIS COLLEGE. 247 
 
 with which Mr. Girard intrusted it. It is a question of general 
 interest how the trust has been administered. No citizen of Phil- 
 adelphia needs to be informed, that, in some particulars, the gov- 
 ernment of their city has shown little more regard to the manifest 
 will of Girard than his nephews and nieces did. If he were to 
 revisit the banks of the Schuylkill, would he recognize, in the 
 splendid Grecian temple that stands in the centre of the College 
 grounds, the home for poor orphans, devoid of needless ornament, 
 which he directed should be built there ? It is singular that the 
 very ornaments which Girard particularly disliked are those 
 which have been employed in the erection of this temple ; name- 
 ly, pillars. He had such an aversion to pillars, that he had at 
 one time meditated taking down those which supported the por- 
 tico of his bank. Behold his College surrounded with thirty-four 
 Corinthian columns, six feet in diameter and fifty-nine in height, 
 of marble, with capitals elaborately carved, each pillar having 
 cost thirteen thousand dollars, and the whole colonnade four 
 hundred and forty thousand ! And this is the abode of poor 
 little boys, who will leave the gorgeous scene to labor in shops, 
 and to live in such apartments as are usually assigned to appren- 
 tices ! 
 
 Now there is probably no community on earth where the num- 
 ber of honorable men bears a larger proportion to the whole pop- 
 ulation than in Philadelphia. Philadelphia is a community of 
 honest dealers and faithful workmen. It is a matter of the high- 
 est interest to know how it could happen that, in such a city, a 
 bequest for such a purpose should be so monstrously misappro- 
 priated. 
 
 The magnitude of the bequest was itself one cause of its mis- 
 appropriation, and the habits of the country were another. When 
 we set about founding an institution, our first proceeding is to 
 erect a vast and imposing edifice. "When we pronounce the word 
 College, a vision of architecture is called up. It was natural, 
 therefore, that the people of Philadelphia, bewildered by the un- 
 precedented amount of the donation, should look to see the mo- 
 notony of their city relieved by something novel and stupendous 
 in the way of a building ; and there appears to have been no one 
 
248 STEPHEN GIRARD 
 
 to remind them that the value of a school depends wholly upon 
 the teachers who conduct it, provided those teachers are free to 
 execute their plans. The immediate cause, however, of the re- 
 markable departure from the will in the construction of the prin- 
 cipal edifice was this : the custody of the Girard estate fell into 
 the hands of the politicians of the city, who regarded the patron- 
 age appertaining thereunto as part of the " spoils " of victory at 
 the polls. As we live at a time when honest lovers of their 
 country frequently meditate on the means of rescuing important 
 public interests from the control of politicians, we shall not deem 
 a little of our space ill bestowed in recounting the history of the 
 preposterous edifice which Girard's money paid for, and which 
 Girard's will forbade. 
 
 On this subject we can avail ourselves of the testimony of the 
 late Mr. Duane. During his own lifetime he would not per- 
 mit the following narrative to be published, though he allowed it 
 to be used as a source of information. We can now give it in his 
 own words : — 
 
 " In relation to the Girard College, the whole community of Philadel- 
 phia, and all political parties in it, are culpable. At the time of Mr. 
 Girard's death there was a mixture of Democrats and Federalists in our 
 Councils : the former preponderating in number. It is said that of all 
 steps the first is the most important, and that the first proceeding has 
 either a good or a bad influence in all that follow. Now, what was 
 the first step of the Democratic Councils, after Mr. Girard's death, in re- 
 lation to the College ? Were they satisfied with the plan of it as de- 
 scribed in his will ? Did they scout the project of building a palace 
 for poor orphans ? Were there no views to offices and profits under 
 the trust ? As I was in the Select Council at the time myself, I can 
 partly answer these questions. Instead of considering the plan of a 
 College given in the will a good one, the Democratic Councils offered 
 rewards to architects for other plans. And as to offices, some members 
 of Councils looked forward to them, to say nothing of aspirants out of 
 doors. 
 
 " I have ever been a Democrat in principle myself, but not so much 
 of a modern one in practice as to pretend that the Democratic party 
 are free from blame as to the College. If they had been content with 
 Mr. Girard's plain plan, would they have called in architects for others ? 
 
AND HIS COLLEGE. 249 
 
 If they had been opposed to pillars and ornaments, why did they invite 
 scientific men to prepare pictures and plans almost inevitably orna- 
 mental ? If they had been so careful of the trust funds, why did they 
 stimulate the community, by presenting to them architectural drawings, 
 to prefer some one of them to the simple plan of Girard himself ? Be- 
 sides, after they had been removed from power, and saw preparations 
 made for a temple surrounded with costly columns, why did they not 
 invoke the Democratic Legislature to arrest that proceeding ? If they 
 at any time whatever did make such an appeal, I have no recollection 
 of it. For party effect, much may have been said and done on an 
 election day, but I am not aware that otherwise any resistance was 
 made. No doubt there were many good men in the Democratic party 
 in 1831-2, and there always have been many good men in it ; but I 
 doubt whether those who made the most noise about the College on 
 election days were either the best Democrats or the best men. The 
 leaders, as they are called, were just as factious as the leaders of their 
 opponents. The struggle of both for the Girard Fund icas mainly ivlth 
 a view to party influence. How much at variance with Mr. Girard's 
 wishes this course was, may readily be shown. 
 
 " Immediately after his death in 1831, his will was published in the 
 newspapers, in almanacs, and in other shapes likely to make its contents 
 universally known. In it he said : 'In relation to the organization of 
 the College and its appurtenances, I leave necessarily many details to 
 the mayor, aldermen, and citizens of Philadelphia, and their successors ; 
 and I do so with the more confidence, as, from the nature of my be- 
 quests and the benefit to result from them, I trust that my fellow-citi- 
 zens will observe and evince especial care and anxiety in selecting 
 members for their City Councils and other agents.' 
 
 " What appeal could have been more emphatic than this ? How 
 could the testator have more delicately, but clearly, indicated his anx- 
 iety that his estate should be regarded as a sacred provision for poor 
 orphans, and not 'spoils' for trading politicians? 
 
 "In this city, however, as almost everywhere else, to the public dis- 
 credit and injury, our social affairs had been long mingled with the 
 party questions of the Republic. At each rise or fall of one or the 
 other party, the ' spoils ' were greedily sought for. Even scavengers, 
 unless of the victorious party, were deemed unworthy to sweep our 
 streets. Mr. Girard's estate, therefore, very soon became an object of 
 desire with each party, in order to increase its strength and favor its 
 adherents. Instead of selecting for the Councils the best men of the 
 whole community, as Mr. Girard evidently desired, the citizens of Phil- 
 11* 
 
250 STEPHEN GIEARD 
 
 adrlphia persisted in preserving factious distinctions, and in October, 
 1832, the Federal candidates prevailed. 
 
 "The triumphant party soon manifested a sense of their newly ac- 
 quired power. Without making any trial whatever of the efficiency 
 of the rules prepared by their predecessors for the management of the 
 Girard trusts, they at once abolished them ; and there were various 
 other analogous evidences of intolerance. 
 
 " Without asserting that party passions actuated them, certain it is, 
 that those who were now in power placed none of Mr. Girard's inti- 
 mate friends in any position where they could aid in carrying out his 
 views. No serious application was ever made, to my knowledge, to 
 one of them for explanation on any point deemed doubtful. On the 
 contrary, objections made by myself and others to the erection of a 
 gorgeous temple, instead of a plain building for orphans, were utterly 
 disregarded. 
 
 " A majority of the citizens of Philadelphia as a political class, and 
 not a majority as a social community, as trustees of a fund for orphans, 
 having thus got entire control of the Girard estate, they turned their 
 attention to the plans of a College collected by their Democratic pre- 
 decessors. Neither of the parties appears to have originally considered 
 whether the plan described in the will ought not to be followed, if that 
 could be done practically. The main desire of both so far seems to 
 have been to build in the vicinity of this city a more magnificent 
 edifice than any other in the Union. 
 
 " At this time, Mr. Nicholas Biddle was in the zenith of his power. 
 Hundreds of persons, who at the present day find fault with him, were 
 then his worshippers. He could command any post which he was will- 
 ing to fill. I do not pretend that he sought any post, but it suited his 
 inclinations to be at the head of those who were intrusted by Coun- 
 cils with the construction of the College. Over his colleagues in this, 
 as in another memorable instance, he seems to have had an absolute 
 control. The architect, also, whose plan had been preferred, appears' 
 to have considered himself bound to adapt it to Mr. Biddle's concep- 
 tions of true excellence. And you now behold the result, — a splendid 
 temple in an unfinished state, instead of the unostentatious edifice con- 
 templated by Mr. Girard. 
 
 " Is all this surprising ? Why should Democrats think it so ? It was 
 by them that plans and pictures of architects were called for. Why 
 should their opponents be astonished? It was by them that a carte 
 blanche seems to have been given to Mr. Biddle in relation to the plans 
 and the College. Is Mr. Biddle culpable ? Is there no excuse for one 
 
AND HIS COLLEGE. 251 
 
 bo strongly tempted as he was, not merely to produce a splendid edi- 
 fice, but to connect his name, in some measure, with that of its found- 
 er ? While I am not an apologist for Mr. Biddle, I am not willing to 
 cast blame upon him alone for the waste of time and money that we 
 have witnessed. As a classical scholar, a man of taste, and a traveller 
 abroad, it was not unnatural that he should desire to see near his na- 
 tive city the most magnificent edifice in North America. Having all 
 the pride and sense of power which adulation is calculated to produce, 
 the plain house described in his will may have appeared to him a prof- 
 anation of all that is beautiful in architecture, and an outrage at once 
 against all the Grecian orders. In short, the will of Mr. Girard to the 
 contrary, Mr. Biddle, like another distinguished person, may have 
 said, ' I take the responsibility ! ' 
 
 " It is true that this responsibility was a serious one, but less so to 
 Mr. Biddle than to the City Councils. They were the trustees, and 
 ought to have considered Mr. Girard's will as law to them. They 
 should have counted the cost of departing from it. They ought to 
 have reflected that by departing from it many orphans would be ex- 
 cluded from the benefits of education. They should have considered 
 whether a Grecian temple would be such a place as poor orphans 
 destined to labor ought to be reared in. The Councils of 1832-3, 
 therefore, have no apology to offer. But Mr. Biddle may well say to 
 all our parties : ' You are all more in fault than I am. You Demo- 
 crats gave rewards for plans. You Federalists submitted those plans 
 to me, and I pointed out the one I thought the best, making improve- 
 ments upon it. A very few persons, Mr. Ronaldson, Mr. Duane, and 
 one or two others alone objected ; while the majority of my fellow- 
 citizens, the Councils, and the Legislature, all looked on at what I was 
 doing, and were silent.' " 
 
 While erecting an edifice the most opposite to Girard's inten- 
 tions that could be contrived by man, the architect was permitted 
 to follow the directions of the will in minor particulars, that ren- 
 dered the building as inconvenient as it was magnificent. The 
 vaulted ceilings of those spacious rooms reverberated to such a 
 degree, that not a class could say its lesson in them till they were 
 hung with cotton cloth. The massive walls exuded dampness 
 continually. The rooms of the uppermost story, lighted only 
 from above, were so hot in the summer as to be useless ; and the 
 lower rooms were so cold in winter as to endanger the health of 
 
252 STEPHEN GIEARD 
 
 the inmates. It has required ingenuity and expense to render 
 the main building habitable ; but even now the visitor cannot but 
 smile as he compares the splendor of the architecture with the 
 homely benevolence of its purpose. The Pai'thenon was a suit- 
 able dwelling-place for a marble goddess, but the mothers of 
 Athens would have shuddered at the thought of consigning their 
 little boys to dwell in its chilling grandeurs. 
 
 We can scarcely overstate the bad effect of this first mistake. 
 It has constantly tended to obscure Mr. Girard's real purpose, 
 which was to afford a plain, comfortable home, and a plain, sub- 
 stantial education to poor orphans, destined to gain their livelihood 
 by labor. Always there have been two parties in the Board of 
 Directors : one favoring a scheme which would make the College 
 a college ; the other striving to keep it down to the modest level 
 of the founder's intentions. That huge and dazzling edifice 
 seems always to have been exerting a powerful influence against 
 the stricter constructionists of the will. It is only within the last 
 two years that this silent but ponderous argument has been par- 
 tially overcome by the resolute good-sense of a majority of the 
 Directors. Not the least evil consequent upon the erection of 
 this building was, that the delay in opening the College caused 
 the resignation of its first President, Alexander D. Bache, a gen- 
 tleman who had it in him to organize the institution aright, and 
 give it a fair start. It is a curious fact, that the extensive report 
 by this gentleman of his year's observation of the orphan schools 
 of Europe has not been of any practical use in the organization 
 of Girard College. Either the Directors have not consulted it, 
 or they have found nothing in it available for their purpose. 
 
 The first class of one hundred pupils was admitted to the Col- 
 lege on the first day of the year 1848. The number of inmates 
 is now six hundred. The estate will probably enable the Direc- 
 tors to admit at length as many as fifteen hundred. It will be 
 seen, therefore, that Girard College, merely from the number of 
 its pupils, is an institution of great importance. 
 
 Sixteen years have gone by since the College was opened, 
 but it cannot yet be said that the policy of the Directors is fixed. 
 These Directors, appointed by the City Councils, are eighteen in 
 
AND HIS COLLEGE. 253 
 
 number, of whom six go out of office every year, while the Coun- 
 cils themselves are annually elected. Hence the difficulty of set- 
 tling upon a plan, and the greater difficulty of adhering to one. 
 Sometimes a majority has favored the introduction of Latin or 
 Greek ; again, the manual-labor system has had advocates ; some 
 have desired a liberal scale of living for the pupils ; others have 
 thought it best to give them Spartan fare. Four times the Pres- 
 ident has been changed, and there have been two periods of con- 
 siderable length when there was no President. There have been 
 dissensions without and trouble within. As many as forty-four 
 boys have run away in a single year. Meanwhile, the Annual 
 Reports of the Directors have usually been so vague and so ret- 
 icent, that the public was left utterly in the dark as to the condi- 
 tion of the institution. Letters from masters to whom pupils 
 have been apprenticed were published in the Reports, but only 
 the letters which had nothing but good to say of the apprentices. 
 Large numbers of the boys, it is true, have done and are doing 
 credit to the College ; but the public have no means of judging 
 whether, upon the whole, the training of the College has been 
 successful. 
 
 Nevertheless, we believe we may say with truth that invalu- 
 able experience has been gained, and genuine progress has been 
 made. To maintain and educate six hundred boys, even if those 
 boys had enlightened parents to aid in the work, is a task which 
 would exhaust the wisdom and the tact of the greatest educator 
 that ever lived. But these boys are all fatherless, and many of 
 them motherless ; the mothers of many are ignorant and unwise, 
 of some are even vicious and dissolute. A large number of the 
 boys are of very inferior endowments, have acquired bad habits, 
 have inherited evil tendencies. It would be hard to overstate 
 the difficulty of the work which the will of Girard has devolved 
 upon the Directors and teachers of Girard College. Mistakes 
 have been made, but perhaps they have not been more serious or 
 more numerous than we ought to expect in the forming of an in- 
 stitution absolutely unique, and composed of material the most 
 unmanageable. 
 
 There are indications, too, that the period of experiment draws 
 
254 STEPHEN GIRAED 
 
 to an end, and that the final plan of the College, on the basis of 
 common-sense, is about to be settled. Mr. Richard Vaux, the 
 present head of the Board of Directors, writes Reports in a style 
 most eccentric, and not always intelligible to remote readers ; but 
 it is evident that his heart is in the work, and that he belongs to 
 the party who desire the College to be the useful, unambitious 
 institution that Girard wished it to be. His Reports are not 
 written with rose-water. They say something. They confess 
 some failures, as well as vaunt some successes. "We would ear- 
 nestly advise the Directors never to shrink from taking the public 
 into their confidence. The public is wiser and better than any 
 man or any board. A plain statement every year of the real 
 condition of the College, the real difficulties in the way of its 
 organization, would have been far better than the carefully 
 uttered nothings of which the Annual Reports have generally 
 consisted. It was to Philadelphia that Girard left his estate. 
 The honor of Philadelphia is involved in its faithful adminis- 
 tration. Philadelphia has a right to know how it is adminis- 
 tered. 
 
 The President of the College is Major Richard Somers Smith, 
 a graduate of West Point, where he was afterwards a Professor. 
 He has served with distinction in the Army of the Potomac, in 
 which he commanded a brigade. To learn how to be an effi- 
 cient President of Girard College is itself a labor of years ; 
 and Major Smith is only in the second year of his incumbency. 
 The highest hopes are indulged, however, that under his energetic 
 rule, the College will become all that the public ought to expect. 
 He seems to have perceived at once the weak point of the insti- 
 tution. 
 
 " I find in the College," he says in one of his monthly reports, "a 
 certain degree of impatience of study, an inertness, a dragging along, 
 an infection of ' young- Americanism,' a disposition to flounder along 
 through duties half done, hurrying to reach — what is never attained 
 — an ' easy success ' ; and I observe that this state of things is confined 
 to the higher departments of study. In the elementary departments 
 there is life ; but as soon as the boy has acquired the rudiments of his 
 English or common-school education, he begins to chafe, and to feel 
 
AND HIS COLLEGE. 255 
 
 that it is time for him to go out, and to make haste to ' finish ( ! ) his 
 studies,' — which of course he does without much heart." 
 
 And again : — 
 
 " The ' poor white male orphan,' dwelling for eight or ten years in 
 comfort almost amounting to luxury, waited upon by servants and ma- 
 chinery in nearly all his domestic requirements, unused to labor, or la- 
 boring only occasionally, with some reward in view in the form of ex- 
 tra privileges, finds it hard to descend from his fancied elevation to the 
 lot of a simple apprentice ; and his disappointment is not soothed by 
 the discovery that with all his learning he has not learned wherewithal 
 to give ready satisfaction to his master." 
 
 It lias been difficult, also, to induce the large manufacturers to 
 take apprentices ; they are now accustomed to place boys at once 
 upon the footing of men, paying them such wages as they are 
 worth. Men who employ forty boys will not generally undertake 
 the responsibilities involved in receiving them as bound appren- 
 tices for a term of years. 
 
 To remedy all these evils, Major Smith proposes to add to the 
 College a Manual Labor Department, in which the elder boys 
 shall acquire the rudiments of the arts and trades to which they 
 are destined. This will alleviate the tedium of the Colleee rou- 
 tine, assist the physical development of the boys, and send them 
 forth prepared to render more desirable help to their employers. 
 The present Board of Directors favor the scheme. 
 
 In one particular the College has fulfilled the wishes of its 
 founder. He said in his will, " I desire that by every proper 
 means, a pure attachment to our republican institutions, and to 
 the sacred rights of conscience, as guaranteed by our happy Con- 
 stitution, shall be formed and fostered in the minds of the schol- 
 ars." Three fourths of the whole number of young men, out of 
 their time, who were apprenticed from Girard College, have 
 joined the Union army. "We must confess, also, that a consid- 
 erable number of its apprentices, not out of their time, have run 
 away for the same purpose. With regard to the exclusion of 
 ecclesiastics, it is agreed on all hands that no evil has resulted 
 from that singular injunction of the will. On the contrary, it has 
 served to call particular attention to the religious instruction of 
 
2o(j STEPHEN GIRARD 
 
 the pupils. The only effect of the clause is, that the morning 
 prayers and the Sunday services are conducted by gentlemen 
 who have not undergone the ceremony of ordination. 
 
 The income of the Girard estate is now about two hundred 
 thousand dollars a year, and it is increasing. Supposing that 
 only one half of this revenue is appropi'iated to the College, it is 
 still, we believe, the largest endowment in the country for an 
 educational purpose. The means of the College are therefore 
 ample. To make those means effective in the highest degree, 
 some mode must be devised by which the politics of the city shall 
 cease to influence the choice of Directors. In other words, 
 " Girard College must be taken out of politics." The Board of 
 Directors should, perhaps, be a more permanent body than it 
 now is. At the earliest possible moment a scheme of instruction 
 should be agreed upon, which should remain unchanged, in its 
 leading features, long enough for it to be judged by its results. 
 The President must be clothed with ample powers, and held re- 
 sponsible, not for methods, but results. He must be allowed, at 
 least, to nominate all his assistants, and to recommend the re- 
 moval of any for reasons given ; and both his nominations and 
 his recommendations of removal, so long as the Directors desire 
 to retain his services, should be ratified by them. He must be 
 made to feel strong in his place ; otherwise, he will be tempted 
 to waste his strength upon the management of committees, and 
 general whitewashing. Human nature is so constituted, that a 
 gentleman with a large family will not willingly give up an in- 
 come of three thousand dollars a year, with lodging in a marble 
 palace. If he is a strong man and an honorable, he will do it, 
 rather than fill a post the duties of which an ignorant or officious 
 committee prevent his discharging. If he is a weak or dishonest 
 man, he will cringe to that committee, and expend all his inge- 
 nuity in making the College show well on public days. It might 
 even be well, in order to strengthen the President, to give him 
 the right of appeal to the Mayor and Councils, in case of an 
 irreconcilable difference of opinion between him and the Directors. 
 Everything depends upon the President. Given the right Pres- 
 ident, with power enough and time enough, and the success of 
 
AND HIS COLLEGE. 257 
 
 the College is assured. Given a bad President, or a good one 
 hampered by committees, or too dependent upon a board, and 
 the College will be the reproach of Philadelphia. 
 
 It is a question with political economists, whether, upon the 
 whole, such endowments as this are a good or an evil to a com- 
 munity. There is now a considerable party in England, among 
 whom are several clergymen of the Established Church, who 
 think it would be better for England if every endowment were 
 swept away, and thus to each succeeding generation were re- 
 stored the privilege of supporting all its poor, caring for all its 
 sick, and educating all its young. Dr. Chalmers appears to have 
 been inclined to an opinion like this. It will be long, however, 
 before this question becomes vital in America. Girard College 
 must continue for generations to weigh heavily on Philadelphia, 
 or to lighten its burdens. The conduct of those who have charge 
 of it in its infancy will go far to determine whether it shall be an 
 argument for or against the utility of endowments. Meanwhile, 
 we advise gentlemen who have millions to leave behind them not 
 to impose difficult conditions upon the future, which the future 
 may be unable or unwilling to fulfil ; but either to bestow their 
 wealth for some object that can be immediately and easily accom- 
 plished, or else imitate the conduct of that respectable and public- 
 spirited man who left five pounds towards the discharge of his 
 country's debt. 
 
JAMES GORDON BENNETT 
 
 AND 
 
 THE NEW YORK HERALD 
 
JAMES GORDON BENNETT AND THE 
 NEW YORK HERALD. 
 
 AFEW years ago it seemed probable that the people of the 
 United States would be supplied with news chiefly through 
 the agency of newspapers published in the city of New York. 
 We were threatened with a paper despotism similar to that former- 
 ly exercised in Great Britain by the London Times ; since, when 
 one city furnishes a country with newspapers, one newspaper is 
 sure, at length, to gain such a predominance over others that its pro- 
 prietor, if he is equal to his position, wields a power greater than 
 ought to be intrusted to an individual. There have been periods 
 when the director of the London Times appeared to be as truly 
 the monarch of Great Britain as Henry VIII. once was, or as 
 William Pitt during the Seven Years' War. It was, we believe, 
 the opinion of the late Mr. Cobden, which Mr. Kinglake con- 
 firms, that the editor of the London Times could have prevented 
 the Crimean War. Certainly he conducted it. Demosthenes 
 did not more truly direct the resources of Athens against Philip, 
 than did this invisible and anonymous being those of the British 
 Empire against Russia. The first John Walter, who was to jour- 
 nalism what James Watt was to the steam-engine, had given this 
 man daily access to the ear of England ; and to that ear he ad- 
 dressed, not the effusions of his own mind, but the whole purchas- 
 able eloquence of his country. He had relays of Demosthenes. 
 The man controlling such a press, and fit to control it, can bring 
 the available and practised intellect of his country to bear upon 
 the passions of his countrymen ; for it is a fact, that nearly the 
 whole literary talent of a nation is at the command of any honor- 
 able man who has money enough, with tact enough. The editor 
 
2G2 JAMES GORDON BENNETT 
 
 who expends fifty guineas a day in the purchase of three short 
 essays can have them written by the men who can do them best. 
 What a power is this, to say three things every morning to a 
 whole nation, — to say them with all the force which genius, 
 knowledge, and practice united can give, — and to say them with- 
 out audible contradiction ! Fortunate for England is it that this 
 power is no longer concentrated in a single man, and that the 
 mighty influence once wielded by an individual will henceforth be 
 exerted by a profession. 
 
 We in America have escaped all danger of ever falling under 
 the dominion of a paper despot. There will never be a Times in 
 America. Twenty years ago the New York news and the New 
 York newspaper reached distant cities at the same moment ; but 
 since the introduction of the telegraph, the news outstrips the 
 newspaper, and is given to the public by the local press. It is 
 this fact which forever limits the circulation and national impor- 
 tance of the New York press. The New York papers reach a 
 village in Vermont late in the afternoon, — six, eight, ten hours 
 after a carrier has distributed the Springfield Republican ; and 
 nine people in ten will be content with the brief telegrams of the 
 local centre. At Chicago, the New York paper is forty hours 
 behind the news ; at San Francisco, thirty days ; in Oregon, forty. 
 Before California had been reached by the telegraph, the New 
 York newspapers, on the arrival of a steamer, were sought with 
 an avidity of which the most ludicrous accounts have been given. 
 If the news was important and the supply of papers inadequate, 
 nothing was more common than for a lucky newsboy to dispose 
 of his last sheets at five times their usual price. All this has 
 changed. A spirited local press has anticipated the substance of 
 the news, and most people wait tranquilly for the same local press 
 to spread before them the particulars when the tardy mail 
 arrives. Even the weekly and semi-weekly editions issued by 
 the New York daily press have probably reached their maximum 
 of importance ; since the local daily press also publishes weekly 
 and semi-weekly papers, many of which are of high excellence 
 and are always improving, and have the additional attraction of 
 full local intelligence. If some bold Yankee should invent a 
 
AND THE NEW YORK HERALD. 263 
 
 method by which a bundle of newspapers could be shot from 
 New York to Chicago in half an hour, it would certainly enhance 
 the importance of the New York papers, and diminish that of the 
 rapidly expanding and able press of Chicago. Such an inven- 
 tion is possible ; nay, we think it a probability. But even in that 
 case, the local news, and, above all, the local advertising, would 
 still remain as the basis of a great, lucrative, honorable, and very 
 attractive business. 
 
 We believe, however, that if the local press were annihilated, 
 and this whole nation lived dependent upon the press of a single 
 city, still we should be safe from a paper despotism ; because the 
 power of the editorial lessens .as the intelligence of the people in- 
 creases. The prestige of the editorial is gone. Just as there is 
 a party in England who propose the omission of the sermon from 
 the church service as something no longer needed by the people, 
 so there are journalists who think the time is at hand for the aboli- 
 tion of editorials, and the concentration of the whole force of 
 journalism upon presenting to the public the history and picture 
 of the day. The time for this has not come, and may never 
 come ; but our journalists already know that editorials neither 
 make nor mar a daily paper, that they do not much influence the 
 public mind, nor change many votes, and that the power and suc- 
 cess of a newspaper depend finally upon its success in getting and 
 its skill in exhibiting the news. The word newspaper is the 
 exact and complete description of the thing which the true jour- 
 nalist aims to produce. The news is his work ; editorials are his 
 play. The news is the point of rivalry ; it is that for which 
 nineteen twentieths of the people buy newspapers ; it is that 
 which constitutes the power and value of the daily press ; it is 
 that which determines the rank of every newspaper in every free 
 country. 
 
 No editor, therefore, will ever reign over the United States, 
 and the newspapers of no one city will attain universal currency. 
 Hence the importance of journalism in the United States. By 
 the time a town has ten thousand inhabitants, it usually has a 
 daily paper, and in most large cities there is a daily paper for 
 every twenty thousand people. In many of the Western cities 
 
264 JAMES GORDON BENNETT 
 
 there are daily newspapers conducted with great energy, and on 
 a scale of expenditure which enables them to approximate real 
 excellence. Many of our readers will live to see the day when 
 there will be in Chicago, St. Louis, New Orleans, Cincinnati, and 
 San Francisco daily newspapers more complete, better executed, 
 and produced at greater expense than any newspaper now existing 
 in the United States. This is a great deal to say, in view of the 
 fact, that, during the late war, one of the New York papers ex 
 pended in war correspondence alone two thousand dollars a week. 
 Nevertheless, we believe it. There will never be two newspapers 
 in any one city that can sustain such an expenditure ; but in fif- 
 teen years from to-day there will be one, we think, in each of our 
 great cities, and besides that one there will be four or five strug- 
 gling to supplant it, as well as one or two having humbler aims 
 and content with a lowlier position. 
 
 It is plain that journalism will henceforth and forever be an 
 important and crowded profession in the United States. The 
 daily newspaper is one of those things which are rooted in the ne- 
 cessities of modern civilization. The steam-engine is not more 
 essential to us. The newspaper is that which connects each in- 
 dividual with the general life of mankind, and makes him part and 
 parcel of the whole ; so that we can almost say, that those who 
 neither read newspapers nor converse with people who do read 
 them are not members of the human family; — though, like the 
 negroes of Guinea, they may become such in time. They are 
 beyond the pale ; they have no hold of the electric chain, and 
 therefore do not receive the shock. 
 
 There are two mornings of the year on which newspapers have 
 not hitherto been published in the city of New York, — the 5 th 
 of July, and the 2d of January. A shadow appears to rest on 
 the world during those days, as when there is an eclipse of the 
 sun. We are separated from our brethren, cut off, lost, alone ; 
 vague apprehensions of evil creep over the mind. We feel, in 
 some degree, as husbands feel who, far from wife and children, 
 say to themselves, shuddering, " What things may have happened, 
 and I not know it ! " Nothing quite dispels the gloom until the 
 Evening Post — how eagerly seized — assures us that nothing 
 
AND THE NEW YORK HERALD. 265 
 
 very particular has happened since our last. It is amusing to 
 notice how universal is the habit of reading a morning paper. 
 Hundreds of vehicles and vessels convey the business men of New 
 York to that extremity of Manhattan Island which may be re- 
 garded as the counting-house of the "Western Continent. It is 
 not uncommon for every individual in a cabin two hundred feet 
 long to be sitting absorbed in his paper, like boys conning their 
 lessons on their way to school. Still more striking is it tc ob- 
 serve the torrent of workingmen pouring down town, many of 
 them reading as they go, and most of them provided with a news- 
 paper for dinner-time, not less as a matter of course than the tin 
 kettle which contains the material portion of the repast. Notice, 
 too, the long line of hackney-coaches on a stand, nearly every 
 driver sitting on his box reading his paper. Many of our Boston 
 friends have landed in New York at five o'clock in the morning, 
 and ridden up town in the street cars, filled, at that hour, with 
 women and boys, folding newspapers and throwing off bundles 
 of them from time to time, which are caught by other boys and 
 women in waiting. Carriers are flitting in every direction, and 
 the town is alive with the great business of getting two hundred 
 thousand papers distributed before breakfast. 
 
 All this is new, but it is also permanent. Having once had 
 daily papers, we can never again do without them ; so perfectly 
 does this great invention accord with the genius of modern life. 
 The art of journalism is doubtless destined to continuous improve- 
 ment for a long time to come ; the newspapers of the future will 
 be more convenient, and better in every way, than those of the 
 present day ; but the art remains forever an indispensable auxili- 
 ary to civilization. And this is so, not by virtue of editorial 
 essays, but because journalism brings the events of the time to 
 bear upon the instruction of the time. An editorial essayist is a 
 man addressing men : but the skilled and faithful journalist, re- 
 cording with exactness and power the thing that has come to 
 pass, is Providence addressing men. The thing that has actually 
 happened, — to know that is the beginning of wisdom. All else 
 is theory and conjecture, which may be right and may be wrong. 
 
 While it is true that the daily press of the city of New York 
 12 
 
2G6 JAMES GORDON BENNETT 
 
 is limited by the telegraph, it has nevertheless a very great, an 
 unapproached, national importance. We do not consider it cer- 
 tain that New York is always to remain the chief city of the 
 United States ; but it holds that rank now, and must for many 
 years. Besides being the source of a great part of our news, it 
 was the first city that afforded scope for papers conducted at the 
 incredible expense which modern appliances necessitate. Conse- 
 quently its daily papers reach the controlling minds of the conn- 
 try. They are found in all reading-rooms, exchanges, bank par- 
 lors, insurance-offices, counting-rooms, hotels, and wherever else 
 the ruling men of the country congregate. But, above all, they 
 are, and must be, in all newspaper offices, subject to the scissors. 
 This is the chief source of their importance. Not merely that in 
 this way their contents are communicated to the whole people. 
 The grand reason why the New York papers have national im- 
 portance is, that it is chiefly through them that the art of journal- 
 ism in the United States is to be perfected. They set daily copies 
 for all editors to follow. The expenditure necessary for the car- 
 rying on of a complete daily newspaper is so immense, that the 
 art can only be improved in the largest cities. New York is first 
 in the field ; it has the start of a quarter of a century or more ; 
 and it therefore devolves upon the journalists of that city to teach 
 the journalists of the United States their vocation. It is this fact 
 which invests the press of New York with such importance, and 
 makes it so well worth considering. 
 
 It is impossible any longer to deny that the chief newspaper 
 of that busy city is the New York Herald. No matter how much 
 we may regret this fact, or be ashamed of it, no journalist can 
 deny it. We do not attach much importance to the fact that 
 Abraham Lincoln, the late lamented President of the United 
 States, thought it worth while, during the dark days of the sum- 
 mer of 18G4, to buy its support at the price of the offer of the 
 French mission. He was mistaken in supposing that this paper 
 had any considerable power to change votes ; which was shown 
 by the result of the Presidential election in the city of New York, 
 where General McClellan had the great majority of thirty-seven 
 thousand. Influence over opinion no paper can have which has 
 
AND THE NEW YORK HERALD. 267 
 
 itself no opinion, and cares for none. It is not as a vehicle of opin- 
 ion that the Herald has importance, but solely as a vehicle of 
 news. It is for its excellence, real or supposed, in this particular, 
 that eighty thousand people buy it every morning. Mr. Lincoln 
 committed, as we cannot help thinking, a most egregious error 
 and fault in his purchase of the editor of this paper, though he is 
 in some degree excused by the fact that several leading Repub- 
 licans, who were in a position to know better, advised or sanc- 
 tioned the bargain, and leading journalists agreed not to censure 
 it. Mr. Lincoln could not be expected to draw the distinction 
 between the journalist and the writer of editorials. He perceived 
 the strength of this carrier-pigeon's pinions, but did not note the 
 trivial character of the message tied to its leg. Thirty or forty 
 war correspondents in the field, a circulation larger than any of 
 its rivals, an advertising patronage equalled only by that of the 
 London Times, the popularity of the paper in the army, the fre- 
 quent utility of its maps and other elucidations, — these things 
 imposed upon his mind; and his wife could tell him from personal 
 observation, that the proprietor of this paper lived in a style of 
 the most profuse magnificence, — maintaining costly establish- 
 ments in town and country, horses, and yachts, to say nothing 
 of that most expensive appendage to a reigning house, an heir 
 apparent. 
 
 Our friends in the English press tell us, that the Herald was 
 one of the principal obstacles in their attempts to guide English 
 opinions aright during the late struggle. Young men in the press 
 would point to its editorials and say : " This is the principal 
 newspaper in the Northern States; this is the Times of America; 
 can a people be other than contemptible who prefer such a news- 
 paper as this to journals so respectable and so excellent as the 
 Times and Tribune, published in the same city ? " " As to 
 (American) journalism," says Professor Goldwin Smith, " the 
 New York Herald is always kept before our eyes." That is to 
 say, the editorial articles in the Herald; not that variety and ful- 
 ness of intelligence which often compelled men who hated it most 
 to get up at the dawn of day to buy it. A paper which can de- 
 tach two or three men, after a battle, to collect the names of the 
 
2G8 JAMES GORDON BENNETT 
 
 killed and wounded, with orders to do only that, cannot lack pur- 
 chasers in w r ar time. Napoleon assures us that the whole art of 
 war consists in having the greatest force at the point of contact. 
 This rule applies to the art of journalism ; the editor of the 
 Herald knew it, and had the means to put it in practice. 
 
 Even here, at home, we find two opinions as to the cause of 
 the Herald's vast success as a business. One of these opinions is 
 this, — the Herald takes the lead because it is such a bad paper. 
 The other opinion is, — the Herald takes the lead because it is 
 such a good paper. It is highly important to know which of 
 these two opinions is correct ; or, in other words, whether it is 
 the Herald's excellences as a newspaper, or its crimes as a public 
 teacher, which give it such general currency. Such success as 
 this paper has obtained is a most influential fact upon the journal- 
 ism of the whole country, as any one can see who looks over a file 
 of our most flourishing daily papers. It is evident that our daily 
 press is rapidly becoming Heraldized ; and it is well known that 
 the tendency of imitation is to reproduce all of the copy except- 
 ing alone that which made it worth copying. It is honorable to 
 the American press that this rule has been reversed in the pres- 
 ent instance. Some of the more obvious good points of the 
 Herald have become universal, while as yet no creature has been 
 found capable of copying the worst of its errors. 
 
 If there are ten bakers in a town, the one that gives the best 
 loaf for sixpence is sure, at last, to sell most bread. A man 
 may puff up his loaves to a great size, by chemical agents, and 
 so deceive the public for a time ; another may catch the crowd 
 for a time by the splendor of his gilt sheaf, the magnitude of his 
 signs, and the bluster of his advertising ; and the intrinsically 
 best baker may be kept down, for a time, by want of tact, or 
 capital, or some personal defect. But let the competition last 
 thirty years ! The gilt sheaf fades, the cavities in the big loaf 
 are observed ; but the ugly little man round the corner comes 
 steadily into favor, and all the town, at length, is noisy in the 
 morning with the rattle of his carts. The particular caterer for 
 our morning repast, now under consideration, has achieved a 
 success of this kind, against every possible obstacle, and under 
 
 
AND THE NEW YORK HERALD. 269 
 
 every possible disadvantage. He had no friends at the start, he 
 has made none since, and he has none now. He has had the 
 support of no party or sect. On the contrary, he has won his 
 object in spite of the active opposition of almost every organized 
 body in the country, and the fixed disapproval of every public- 
 spirited human being who has lived in the United States since 
 he began his career. What are we to say of this ? Are we to 
 say that the people of the United States are competent to judge 
 of bread, but not of newspapers ? Are we to say that the people 
 of the United States prefer evil to good ? We cannot assent to 
 such propositions. 
 
 Let us go back to the beginning, and see how this man made 
 his way to his present unique position. We owe his presence 
 in this country, it seems, to Benjamin Franklin ; and he first 
 smelt printer's ink in Boston, near the spot where young Ben 
 Franklin blackened his fingers with it a hundred years before. 
 Born and reared on the northeastern coast of Scotland, in a 
 Roman Catholic family of French origin, he has a French intel- 
 lect and Scotch habits. Frenchmen residing among us can 
 seldom understand why this man should be odious, so French is 
 he. A French naval officer was once remonstrated with for 
 having invited him to a ball given on board a ship of war in 
 New York harbor. "Why, what has he done?" inquired the 
 officer. " Has he committed murder ? Has he robbed, forged, 
 or run away with somebody's wife?" "No." "Why then 
 should we not invite him ? " " He is the editor of the New York 
 Herald." "Ah!" exclaimed the Frenchman, — "the Herald! 
 it is a delightful paper, — it reminds me of my gay Paris." This, 
 however, was thirty years ago, when Bennett was almost as 
 French as Voltaire. He was a Frenchman also in this : though 
 discarding, in his youth, the doctrines of his Church, and laughing 
 them to scorn in early manhood, he still maintained a kind of 
 connection with the Catholic religion. The whole of his power 
 as a writer consists in his detection of the evil in things that are 
 good, and of the falsehood in things that are true, and of the ri- 
 diculous in things that are important. He began with the Roman 
 Catholic Church, — " the holy Roman Catholic Church," as he 
 
270 JAMES GORDON BENNETT 
 
 once styled it, — adding in a parenthesis, " all of us Catholics are 
 devilish holy." Another French indication is, that his early 
 tastes were romantic literature and political economy, — a con- 
 junction very common in France from the days of the " philoso- 
 phers" to the present time. During our times of financial col- 
 lapse, we have noticed, among the nonsense which he daily 
 poured forth, some gleams of a superior understanding of the 
 fundamental laws of finance. He appears to have understood 
 1837 and 1857 better than most of his contemporaries. 
 
 In a Catholic seminary he acquired the rudiments of knowl- 
 edge, and advanced so far as to read Virgil. He also picked up 
 a little French and Spanish in early life. The real instructors 
 of his mind were Napoleon, Byron, and Scott. It was their 
 fame, however, as much as their works, that attracted and daz- 
 zled him. It is a strange thing, but true, that one of the strong- 
 est desires of one of the least reputable of living men was, and 
 is, to be admired and held in lasting honor by his fellow-men. 
 Nor has he now the least doubt that he deserves their admiration, 
 and will have it. In 1817, an edition of Franklin's Autobiogra- 
 phy was issued in Scotland. It was his perusal of that little 
 book that first directed his thoughts toward America, and which 
 finally decided him to try his fortune in the New World. In 
 May, 1819, being then about twenty years of age, he landed at 
 Halifax, with less than five pounds in his purse, without a friend 
 on the Western Continent, and knowing no vocation except that 
 of book-keeper. 
 
 Between his landing at Halifax and the appearance of the first 
 number of the Herald sixteen years elapsed ; during most of 
 which he was a very poor, laborious, under-valued, roving writer 
 for the daily press. At Halifax, he gave lessons in book-keeping 
 for a few weeks, with little profit, then made his way along the 
 coast to Portland, whence a schooner conveyed him to Boston. 
 He was then, it appears, a soft, romantic youth, alive to the his- 
 toric associations of the place, and susceptible to the varied, en- 
 chanting loveliness of the scenes adjacent, on land and sea. He 
 even expressed his feelings in verse, in the Childe Harold man- 
 ner, — verse which does really show a poetic habit of feeling, 
 
AND THE NEW YORK HERALD. 271 
 
 with an occasional happiness of expression. At Boston he ex- 
 perienced the last extremity of want. Friendless and alone he 
 wandered about the streets, seeking work and finding none ; until, 
 his small store of money being all expended, he passed two whole 
 days without food, and was then only relieved by finding a shil- 
 ling on the Common. He obtained at length the place of sales- 
 man in a bookstore, from which he was soon transferred to the 
 printing-house connected therewith, where he performed the 
 duties of proof-reader. And here it was that he received his 
 first lesson in the art of catering for the public mind. The firm 
 in whose employment he was were more ambitious of glory than 
 covetous of profit, and consequently published many works that 
 were in advance of the general taste. Bankruptcy was their re- 
 ward. The youth noted another circumstance at Boston. The 
 newspaper most decried was Buckingham's Galaxy ; but it was 
 also the most eagerly sought and the most extensively sold. 
 Buckingham habitually violated the traditional and established 
 decorums of the press ; he was familiar, chatty, saucy, anecdoti- 
 cal, and sadly wanting in respect for the respectabilities of the 
 most respectable town in the universe. Every one said that he 
 was a very bad man, but every one was exceedingly curious every 
 Saturday to see " what the fellow had to say this week." If the 
 youth could have obtained a sight of a file of James Franklin's 
 Courant, of 1722, in which the youthful Benjamin first addressed 
 the public, he would have seen a still more striking example of a 
 journal generally denounced and universally read. 
 
 Two years in Boston. Then he went to New York, where he 
 soon met the publisher of a Charleston paper, who engaged him 
 as translator from the Spanish, and general assistant. During 
 the year spent by him at Charleston he increased his knowledge 
 of the journalist's art. The editor of the paper with which he 
 was connected kept a sail-boat, in which he was accustomed to 
 meet arriving vessels many miles from the coast, and bring in his 
 files of newspapers a day in advance of his rivals. The young 
 assistant remembered this, and turned it to account in after years. 
 At Charleston he was confronted, too, with the late peculiar insti- 
 tution, and saw much to approve in it, nothing to condemn. From 
 
272 JAMES GORDON BENNETT. 
 
 that da) 7 to this he has been but in one thing consistent, — con- 
 tempt for the negro and for all white men interested in his wel- 
 fare, approving himself in this a thorough Celt. If, for one brief 
 period, he forced himself, for personal reasons, to veil this feeling, 
 the feeling remained rooted within him, and soon resumed its 
 wonted expression. He liked the South, and the people of the 
 South, and had a true Celtic sympathy with their aristocratic pre- 
 tensions. The salary of an assistant editor at that time was some- 
 thing between the wages of a compositor and those of an office- 
 boy. Seven dollars a week would have been considered rather 
 liberal pay ; ten, munificent ; fifteen, lavish. 
 
 Returning to New York, he endeavored to find more lucrative 
 employment, and advertised his intention to open, near the site 
 of the present Herald office, a " Permanent Commercial School," 
 in which all the usual branches were to be taught " in the indue- 
 tive method." His list of subjects was extensive, — " reading, 
 elocution, penmanship, and arithmetic; algebra, astronomy, his- 
 tory, and geography ; moral philosophy, commercial law, and po- 
 litical economy ; English grammar, and composition ; and also, 
 if required, the French and Spanish languages, by natives of 
 those countries." Application was to be made to " J. G. B., 
 148 Fulton Street." Applications, however, were not made in 
 sufficient number, and the school, we believe, never came into ex- 
 istence. Next, he tried a course of lectures upon Political Econ- 
 omy, at the old Dutch Church in Ann Street, then not far from 
 the centre of population. The public did not care to hear the 
 young gentleman upon that abstruse subject, and the pecuniary 
 result of the enterprise was not encouraging. He had no re- 
 source but the ill-paid, unhonored drudgery of the press. 
 
 For the next few years he was a paragraphist, reporter, scis- 
 sorer, and man-of-all-work for the New York papers, daily and 
 weekly, earning but the merest subsistence. He wrote then in 
 very much the same style as when he afterwards amused and 
 shocked the town in the infant Herald ; only he was under re- 
 straint, being a subordinate, and was seldom allowed to violate 
 decorum. In point of industry, sustained and indefatigable in- 
 dustry, he had no equal, and has never since had but one. One 
 
AND THE NEW YORK HERALD. 273 
 
 thing is to be specially noted as one of the chief and indispensable 
 causes of his success. He had no vices. He never drank to ex- ' 
 cess, nor gormandized, nor gambled, nor even smoked, nor in any 
 other way wasted the vitality needed for a long and tough grap- 
 ple with adverse fortune. What he once wrote of himself in the 
 early • Herald was strictly true : " I eat and drink to live, — 
 not live to eat and drink. Social glasses of wine are my aversion ; 
 public dinners are my abomination ; all species of gormandizing, 
 my utter scorn and contempt. "When I am hungry, I eat ; when 
 thirsty, drink. Wine or viands taken for society, or to stimulate 
 conversation, tend only to dissipation, indolence, poverty, con- 
 tempt, and death." This was an immense advantage, which he 
 had in common with several of the most mischievous men of 
 modern times, — Calhoun, Charles XII., George III., and others. 
 Correct bodily habits are of themselves such a source of power, 
 that the man who has them will be extremely likely to gain the 
 day over competitors of ten times his general worth who have 
 them not. Dr. Franklin used to say, that if Jack Wilkes had 
 been as exemplary in this particular as George III., he would 
 have turned the king out of his dominions. In several of the 
 higher kinds of labor, such as law, physic, journalism, authorship, 
 art, when the competition is close and keen, and many able men 
 are near the summit, the question, who shall finally stand upon 
 it, often resolves itself into one of physical endurance. This man 
 Bennett would have lived and died a hireling scribe, if he had 
 had even one of the common vices. Everything was against his 
 rising, except alone an enormous capacity for labor, sustained by 
 strictly correct habits. 
 
 He lived much with politicians during these years of laborious 
 poverty. Gravitating always towards the winning side, he did 
 much to bring into power the worst set of politicians we ever 
 had, — those who "availed" themselves of the popularity of 
 Andrew Jackson, and who were afterwards used by him for the 
 purpose of electing Martin Van Buren. He became perfectly 
 familiar with all that was petty and mean in the political strifes 
 of the day, but without ever suspecting that there was anything 
 in politics not petty and mean. He had no convictions of his 
 12* R 
 
274 JAMES GORDON BENNETT 
 
 own, and therefore not the least belief that any politician had. 
 • If the people were in earnest about the affairs of their country, 
 (their country, not his.) it was because the people were not be- 
 hind the scenes, were dupes of their party leaders, were a parcel 
 of fools. In short, he acquired his insight into political craft in 
 the school of Tammany Hall and the Kitchen Cabinet. His 
 value was not altogether unappreciated by the politicians. He 
 was one of those whom they use and flatter during the heat of 
 the contest, and forget in the distribution of the spoils of victory. 
 He made his first considerable hit as a journalist in the spring 
 of 1828, when he filled the place of Washington correspondent 
 to the New York Enquirer. In the Congressional Library, one 
 day, he found an edition of Horace Walpole's Letters, which 
 amused him very much. " Why not," said he to himself, " try a 
 lew letters on a similar plan from this city, to be published in 
 New York ? " The letters appeared. Written in a lively man- 
 ner, full of personal allusions, and describing individuals respect- 
 ing whom the public are always curious, — free also from offen- 
 sive personalities, — the letters attracted much notice and were 
 generally copied in the press. It is said that some of the ladies 
 whose charms were described in those letters were indebted to 
 them for husbands. Personalities of this kind were a novelty 
 then, and mere novelty goes a great way in journalism. At this 
 period he produced almost every kind of composition known to 
 periodical literature, — paragraphs and leading articles, poetry 
 and love-stories, reports of trials, debates, balls, and police cases ; 
 his earnings ranging from five dollars a week to ten or twelve. 
 If there had been then in New York one newspaper publisher 
 who understood his business, the immense possible value of this 
 man as a journalist would have been perceived, and he would: 
 have been secured, rewarded, and kept under some restraint. 
 But there was no such man. There were three or four forcible 
 writers for the press, but not one journalist. 
 
 During the great days of " The Courier and Inquirer," from i 
 1829 to 1832, when it was incomparably the best newspaper on 
 the continent, James Gordon Bennett was its most efficient hand. 
 It lost him in 1832, when the paper abandoned General Jackson 
 
AND THE NEW YORK HERALD. 275 
 
 and took up Nicholas Biddle ; and in losing him lost its chance 
 of retaining the supremacy among American newspapers to this 
 day. We can truly say, that at that time journalism, as a thing 
 by itself and for itself, had no existence in the United States. 
 Newspapers were mere appendages of party ; and the darling ob- 
 ject of each journal was to be recognized as the organ of the party 
 it supported. As to the public, the great public, hungry for in- 
 ter.' sting news, no one thought of it. Forty years ago, in the 
 city of New York, a copy of a newspaper could not be bought 
 for money. If any one wished to see a newspaper, he had either 
 to go to the office and subscribe, or repair to a bar-room and buy 
 a class of something to drink, or bribe a carrier to rob one of his 
 customers. The circulation of the Courier and Inquirer was con- 
 sidered something marvellous when it printed thirty-live hundred 
 copies a day, and its business was thought immense when its daily 
 advertising averaged fifty-five dollars. It is not very unusual for 
 a newspaper now to receive for advertising, in one day, six hun- 
 dred times that sum. Bennett, in the course of time, had a 
 chance been given to him, would have made the Courier apd In- 
 quirer powerful enough to cast off all party ties; and this he 
 would have done merely by improving it as a vehicle of news. 
 But he was kept down upon one of those ridiculous, tantalizing, 
 corrupting salaries, which are a little more than a single man 
 need-, hut not enough for him to marry upon. This salary was 
 increased by the proprietors giving him a small share in the 
 small profits of the printing-office ; so that, after fourteen years 
 of hard labor and Scotch economy, he found himself, on leaving 
 the great, paper, a capitalist to the extent of a few hundred dol- 
 lars. The chief editor of the paper which he now abandoned 
 sometimes lost as much in a single evening at the card-table. It 
 probably never occurred to him that this poor, ill-favored Scotch- 
 man was destined to destroy his paper and all the class of papers 
 to which it belonged. Any one who now examines a file of the 
 Courier and Inquirer of that time, and knows its interior circum- 
 stances, will see plainly enough that the possession of this man 
 was the vital element in its prosperity. He alone knew the rudi- 
 ments of his trade. He alone had the physical stamina, the inde- 
 
276 JAMES GORDON BENNETT 
 
 fatigable industry, the sleepless vigilance, the dexterity, tact, and 
 audacity, needful for keeping up a daily newspaper in the face of 
 keen competition. 
 
 Unweaned yet from the politicians, he at once started a cheap 
 party paper, "The Globe," devoted to Jackson and Van Buren. 
 The party, however, did not rally to its support, and it had to 
 contend with the opposition of party papers already existing, upon 
 whose manor it was poaching. The Globe expired after an ex- 
 istence of thirty days. Its proprietor, still untaught by such long 
 experience, invested the wreck of his capital in a Philadelphia 
 Jackson paper, and struggled desperately to gain for it a footing 
 in the party. He said to Mr. Van Buren and to other leaders, 
 Help me to a loan of twenty-five hundred dollars for two years, 
 and I can establish my Pennsylvanian on a' self-supporting basis. 
 The application was politely refused, and he was compelled to 
 give up the struggle. The truth is, he was not implicitly trusted 
 by the Jackson party. They admitted the services he had ren- 
 dered ; but, at the same time, they were a little afraid of the vein 
 of mockery that broke out so frequently in his writings. He 
 was restive in harness. He was devoted to the party, but he 
 was under no party illusions. He was fighting in the ranks as an 
 adventurer or soldier of fortune. He fought well ; but would it 
 do to promote a man to high rank who knew the game so well, 
 and upon whom no man could get any hold ? To him, in his 
 secret soul, Martin Van Buren was nothing (as he often said) but 
 a country lawyer, who, by a dexterous use of the party machinery, , 
 the well-timed death of De Witt Clinton, and General Jackson's 
 frenzy in behalf of Mrs. Eaton, had come to be the chosen suc- 
 cessor of the fiery chieftain. The canny Scotchman saw this 
 with horrid clearness, and saw nothing more. Political chiefs do 
 not like subalterns of this temper. Underneath the politician in 
 Martin Van Buren there was the citizen, the patriot, the gentle- J 
 man, and the man, whose fathers were buried in American soil, 
 whose children were to live under American institutions, who 
 had, necessarily, an interest in the welfare and honor of the 
 country, and whose policy, upon the whole, was controlled by 
 that natural interest in his country's welfare and honor. To our 
 mocking Celt nothing of this was apparent, nor has ever been. 
 
AND THE NEW YORK HERALD. 277 
 
 His education as a journalist was completed by the failure of 
 his Philadelphia scheme. Returning to New York, he resolved 
 to attempt no more to rise by party aid, but henceforth have 
 no master but the public. On the 6th of May, 1835, appeared 
 the first number of the Morning Herald, price one cent. It was 
 born in a cellar in Wall Street, — not a basement, but a verita- 
 ble cellar. Some persons are still doing business in that region 
 who remember going down into its subterranean office, and buy- 
 ing copies of the new paper from its editor, who used to sit at a 
 desk composed of two flour-barrels and a piece of board, and who 
 occupied the only chair in the establishment. For a considerable 
 time his office contained absolutely nothing but his flour-barrel 
 desk, one wooden chair, and a pile of Heralds. " I remember," 
 writes Mr. William Gowans, the well-known bookseller of Nassau 
 Street, " to have entered the subterranean office of its editor early 
 in its career, and purchased a single copy of the paper, for which 
 I paid the sum of one cent United States currency. On this occa- 
 sion the proprietor, editor, and vendor was seated at his desk, 
 busily engaged writing, and appeared to pay little or no attention 
 to me as I entered. On making known my object in coming in, 
 he requested me to put my money down on the counter, and help 
 myself to a paper ; all this time he continuing his writing opera- 
 tions The office was a single oblong underground room ; its 
 furniture consisted of a counter, which also served as a desk, con- 
 structed from two flour-barrels, perhaps empty, standing apart 
 from each other about four feet, with a single plank covering 
 both ; a chair, placed in the centre, upon which sat the editor 
 busy at his vocation, with an inkstand by his right hand ; on the 
 end nearest the door were placed the papers for sale." 
 
 Everything appeared to be against his success. It was one 
 poor man in a cellar against the world. Already he had failed 
 three times ; first, in 1825, when he attempted to establish a 
 Sunday paper ; next, in 1832, when he tried a party journal ; 
 recently, in Philadelphia. With great difficulty, and after many 
 rebuffs, he had prevailed upon two young printers to print his pa- 
 per and share its profits or losses, and he possessed about enough 
 money to start the enterprise and sustain it ten days. The cheap- 
 
278 JAMES GORDON BENNETT 
 
 ness of his paper was no longer a novelty, for there was already 
 a penny paper with a paying circulation. He had cut loose from 
 all party ties, and he had no influential friends except those who 
 had an interest in his failure. The great public, to which he 
 made this last desperate appeal, knew him not even by name. 
 The newsboy system scarcely existed ; and i.ll that curious ma- 
 chinery by which, in these days, a " new candidate for public 
 favor " is placed, at no expense, on a thousand news-stands, had 
 not been thought of. There he was alone in his cellar, without 
 clerk, errand-boy, or assistant of any kind. For many weeks he 
 did with his own hands everything, — editorials, news, reporting, 
 receiving advertisements, and even writing advertisements for 
 persons " unaccustomed to composition." Pie expressly an- 
 nounced that advertisers could have their advertisements written 
 for them at the office, and this at a time when there was no one 
 to do it but himself. The extreme cheapness of the paper ren- 
 dered him absolutely dependent upon his advertisers, and yet 
 he dared not charge more than fifty cents for sixteen lines, and 
 he offered to insert sixteen lines for a whole year for thirty dol- 
 lars. 
 
 He at once produced an eminently salable article. If just 
 such a paper were to appear to-day, or any day, in any large 
 city of the world, it would instantly find a multitude of readers. 
 It was a very small sheet, — four little pages of four columns 
 each, — much better printed than the Herald now is, and not a 
 waste line in it. Everything drew, as the sailors say. There 
 was not much scissoring in it, — the scissors have never been 
 much esteemed in the Herald office, — but the little that there 
 was all told upon the general effect of the sheet. There is a 
 story current in newspaper offices that the first few numbers of 
 the Herald were strictly decorous and " respectable," but that the 
 editor, finding the public indifferent and his money running low, 
 changed his tactics, and filled his paper with scurrility and inde- 
 cency, which immediately made it a paying enterprise. No such 
 thing. The first numbers were essentially of the same character 
 as the number published this morning. They had the same ex- 
 cellences and the same defects : in the news department, immense 
 
AND THE NEW YORK HERALD. 279 
 
 industry, vigilance, and tact ; in the editorial columns, the vein 
 of Mephistophelean mockery which has puzzled and shocked so 
 many good people at home and abroad. A leading topic then 
 was a certain Matthias, one of those long-bearded religious impos- 
 tors who used to appear from time to time. The first article in 
 the first number of the Herald was a minute account of the origin 
 and earlier life of the fellow, — just the thing for the paper, and 
 the sure method of exploding him. The first editorial article, 
 too, was perfectly in character : — 
 
 " In debuts of this kind," said the editor, " many talk of principle — 
 political principle, party principle — as a sort of steel-trap to catch the 
 public. We mean to be perfectly understood on this point, and there- 
 fore openly disclaim all steel-traps, — all principle, as it is called, — 
 all party, — all politics. Our only guide shall be good, sound, practi- 
 cal common-sense, applicable to the business and bosoms of men en- 
 gaged in every-day life. We shall support no party, be the organ of 
 no faction or coterie, and care nothing for any election or any candi- 
 date, from President down to constable. We shall endeavor to record 
 facts on every public and proper subject, stripped of verbiage and 
 coloring, with comments, when suitable, just, independent, fearless, and 
 good-tempered. If the Herald wants the mere expansion which many 
 journals possess, we shall try to make it up in industry, good taste, 
 brevity, variety, point, piquancy, and cheapness." 
 
 lie proceeded immediately to give a specimen of the " com- 
 ments" thus described, in the form of a review of an Annual 
 Register just published. The Register informed him that there 
 were 1,492 "rogues in the State Prison." His comment was: 
 " But God only knows how many out of prison, preying upon 
 the community, in the shape of gamblers, blacklegs, speculators, 
 and politicians." He learned from the Register that the poor- 
 house contained 6,547 paupers ; to which he added, "and double 
 the number going there as fast as indolence and intemperance can 
 carry them." The first numbers were filled with nonsense and 
 gossip about the city of New York, to which his poverty confined 
 him. He had no boat with which to board arriving ships, no 
 share in the pony express from Washington, and no correspond- 
 ents in other cities. All he could do was to catch the floating 
 gossip, scandal, and folly of the town, and present as much of 
 
280 JAMES GORDON BENNETT 
 
 them every day as one man could get upon paper by sixteen 
 hours' labor. He laughed at everything and everybody, — not 
 excepting himself and his squint eye, — and, though his jokes 
 were not always good, they were generally good enough. People 
 laughed, and were willing to expend a cent the next day to see 
 what new folly the man would commit or relate. We all like 
 to read about our own neighborhood: this paper gratified the 
 propensity. 
 
 The man, we repeat, really had a vein of poetry in him, and 
 the first numbers of the Herald show it. He had occasion to 
 mention, one day, that Broadway was about to be paved with 
 wooden blocks. This was not a very promising subject for a 
 poetical comment ; but he added : " When this is done, every 
 vehicle will have to wear sleigh-bells as in sleighing times, and 
 Broadway will be so quiet that you can pay a compliment to a 
 lady, in passing, and she will hear you." This was nothing in 
 itself; but here was a man wrestling with fate in a cellar, who 
 could turn you out two hundred such paragraphs a week, the 
 year round. Many men can growl in a cellar ; this man could 
 laugh, and keep laughing, and make the floating population of a 
 city laugh with him. It must be owned, too, that he had a little 
 real insight into the nature of things around him, — a little 
 Scotch sense, as well as an inexhaustible fund of French vivacity. 
 Alluding, once, to the "hard money" cry, by which the lying 
 politicians of the day carried elections, he exploded that nonsense 
 in two lines: "If a man gets the wearable or the eatable he 
 wants, what cares he whether he has gold or paper-money?" 
 He devoted two sentences to the Old School and New School 
 Presbyterian controversy : " Great trouble among the Presbyte- 
 rians just now. The question in dispute is, whether or not a man 
 can do anything towards saving his own soul." He had, also, an 
 article upon the Methodists, in which he said that the two relig- 
 ions nearest akin were the Methodist and the Roman Catholic. 
 We should add to these trifling specimens the fact, that he uni- 
 formly maintained, from 1835 to the crash of 1837,' that the 
 prosperity of the country was unreal, and would end in disaster. 
 Perhaps we can afford space for a single specimen of his way of 
 
AND THE NEW YORK HERALD. 281 
 
 treating this subject ; although it can be fully appreciated only 
 by those who are old enough to remember the rage for land 
 speculation which prevailed in 1836: — 
 
 " Tiie Rich Poor — the Poor Rich. — ' I have made $ 50,000 
 since last January,' said one of these real-estate speculators to a 
 friend. 
 
 " ' The deuse you have,' said the other, looking up in astonishment. 
 1 Why, last January you were not worth a twenty-dollar bill.' 
 
 " ' I know that ; but I now calculate I 'm worth full $ 50,000, if not 
 $ 60,000.' 
 
 " ' How have you made it ? ' 
 
 " ' By speculating in real estate. I bought three hundred lots at 
 Goose Island at $ 150 apiece ; they are now worth $ 400. I would not 
 sell them for $ 350 apiece, I assure you.' 
 
 " ' Do you think so ? ' 
 
 " ' Sartain. I have two hundred and fifty lots at Blockhead's Point, 
 worth S 150 a piece ; some on them are worth $ 200. I have one hun- 
 dred lots at Jackass Inlet, worth at least $ 100, at the very lowest cal- 
 culation. In short, I 'm worth a hull $ 60,000.' 
 
 " ' Well, I 'm glad to hear it. You can pay me now the $ 500 you 
 have owed me for these last four years. There 's your note, I believe,' 
 said he, handing the speculator a worn piece of paper that had a piece 
 of writing upon it. 
 
 " The speculator looked blank at this. ' Oh ! yes — my — now — 
 I 'd like — suppose,' but the words could not form themselves into a 
 perfect sentence. 
 
 " ' I want the money very much,' said the other ; ' I have some pay- 
 ments to make to-morrow.' 
 
 " ' Why, you don't want cash for it surely.' 
 
 " ' Yes, but I do. You say you are worth $ 60,000, — surely $ 500 
 is but a trifle to pay ; do let me have the cash on the nail, if you 
 please.' 
 
 " ' Oh ! — by — well — now — do tell — really, I have not got the 
 money at present.' 
 
 "' So you can't pay it, eh? A man worth $ 60,000, and can't pay 
 an old debt of $500?' 
 
 '"Oh! yes I can — I'll — I'll — just give you my note for it at 
 ninety days.' 
 
 " ' The D— 1 you will ! A man worth $ 60,000, and can't pay $ 500 
 for ninety days ! what do you mean ? ' 
 
282 JAMES GORDON BENNETT 
 
 " ' Well now, my dear sir, I 'in worth what I say. I can pay you. 
 There 's my property,' spreading out half a dozen very beautiful litho- 
 graphs ; ' but really I can't raise that amount at present. Yesterday, 
 I bad to give three per cent a month for $ 4,000 to save my whole for- 
 tune. I had to look out for the mortgages. Take my note ; you can 
 get it discounted for three per cent.' 
 
 " ' No, I can't. If you will give me $ 250 for the debt, I shall give 
 the other half to pay the interest on your mortgages.' .... 
 
 " Whether the proposition has been accepted we shall know to-mor- 
 row; but we have many such rich people." — Herald, Oct. 28, 1836. 
 
 But it was not such things as these that established the Herald. 
 Confined as he was to the limits of a single town, and being com- 
 pelled to do everything with his own hands, he could not have 
 much in his columns that we should now call " news." But what 
 is news ? The answer to that question involves the whole art, 
 mystery, and history of journalism. The time was when news 
 signified the doings of the king and his court. This was the 
 staple of the first news-letter writers, who were employed by 
 great lords, absent from court, to send them court intelligence. 
 To this was soon added news of the doings of other kings and 
 courts ; and from that day to this the word news has been con- 
 tinually gaining increase of meaning, until now it includes all 
 that the public are curious to know, which may be told without 
 injury to the public or injustice to individuals. While this man 
 was playing fantastic tricks before high Heaven, his serious 
 thoughts were absorbed in schemes to make his paper the great 
 vehicle of news. Early in the second month, while he was still 
 losing money every day, he hit upon a new kind of news, which 
 perhaps had more to do with the final success of the Herald than 
 any other single thing. His working day, at that time, was six- 
 teen or seventeen hours. In the morning, from five to eight, he 
 was busy, in the quiet of his room, with those light, nonsensical 
 paragraphs and editorials which made his readers smile in spite 
 of themselves. During the usual business hours of the morning, 
 he was in his cellar, over his flour-barrel desk, engaged in the or- 
 dinary routine of editorial work ; Sot disdaining to sell the morn- 
 ing paper, write advertisements, and take the money for them. 
 
AND THE NEW YORK HERALD. 283 
 
 About one o'clock, having provided abundant copy for the com- 
 positor.-, he sallied forth into "Wall Street, picking up material for 
 his stock-tables and subjects for paragraphs. From four to six 
 he was at his office again, winding up the business of the day. 
 In the evening he was abroad, — at theatre, concert, ball, or pub- 
 lic meeting, — absorbing fresh material for his paper. He con- 
 verted himself, as it were, into a medium through which the gos- 
 sip, scandal, fun, and nonsense of this great town were daily 
 conveyed back to it for its amusement; just as a certain popular 
 preacher is reported to do, who spends six days in circulating 
 among his parishioners, and on the seventh tells them all that 
 they have taught him. 
 
 Now Wall Street, during the years that General Jackson was 
 disturbing the financial system by his insensate fury against the 
 United States Hunk, was to journalism what the Army of the 
 Potomac was in the year 18G4. The crash of 1837 was full two 
 years in coming on, during which the money market was always 
 deranged, and moneyed men were anxious and puzzled. The 
 public mind, too, was gradually drawn to the subject, until Wall 
 Street was the point upon which all eyes were fixed. The editor 
 of the Herald was the first American journalist to avail himself 
 of this state of things. It occurred to him, when his paper had 
 been five weeks in existence, to give a little account every day 
 of the state of affairs in Wall Street, — the fluctuations of the 
 money market and their causes, — the feeling and gossip of the 
 street. He introduced this feature at the moment when General 
 Jackson's embroilment with the French Chambers was at its 
 height, and when the return of the American Minister was hour- 
 ly expected. Some of our readers may be curious to see the 
 first " money article " ever published in the United States. It 
 was as follows : — 
 
 " Commercial. 
 
 " Stocks yesterday maintained their prices during the session of the 
 Board, several going up. Utica went up 2 per cent ; the others sta- 
 tionary. Large quantities were sold. After the Board adjourned and 
 the news from France was talked*over, the fancy stocks generally went 
 down 1 to l£ per cent ; other stocks quite firm. A rally was made by 
 
284 JAMES GORDON BENNETT 
 
 the bulls in the evening, under the trees, but it did not succeed. There 
 will be a great fight in the Board to-day. The good people up town 
 are anxious to know what the brokers think of Mr. Livingston. We 
 shall find out, and let them know. 
 
 " The cotton and flour market rallied a little. The rise of cotton in 
 Liverpool drove it up here a cent or so. The last shippers will make 
 2£ per cent. Many are endeavoring to produce a belief that there 
 will be a war. If the impression prevails, naval stores will go up a 
 good deal. Every eye is outstretched for the Constitution. Hudson, 
 of the Merchants' News Room, says he will hoist out the first flag. 
 Gilpin, of the Exchange News Room, says he will have her name 
 down in his Room one hour before his competitor. The latter claims 
 having beat Hudson yesterday by an hour and ten minutes in chroni- 
 cling the England." — Herald, June 13, 1835. 
 
 This was his first attempt. The money article constantly 
 lengthened and increased in importance. It won for the little 
 paper a kind of footing in brokers' offices and bank parlors, and 
 provided many respectable persons with an excuse for buying it. 
 
 At the end of the third month, the daily receipts equalled the 
 daily expenditures. A cheap police reporter was soon after en 
 gaged. In the course of the next month, the printing-office was 
 burnt, and the printers, totally discouraged, abandoned the enter- 
 prise. The editor — who felt that he had caught the public ear, as 
 he had — contrived, by desperate exertions, to " rake the Herald 
 out of the fire," as he said, and went on alone. Four months 
 after, the great fire laid Wall Street low, and all the great busi- 
 ness streets adjacent. Here was his first real opportunity as a 
 journalist ; and how he improved it ! — spending one half of 
 every day among the ruins, note-book in hand, and the other half 
 over his desk, writing out what he had gathered. He spread be- 
 fore the public reports so detailed, unconventional, and graphic, 
 that a reader sitting at his ease in his own room became, as it 
 were, an eyewitness of those appalling scenes. His accounts of 
 that fire, and of the events following it, are such as Defoe would 
 have given if he had been a New York reporter. Still strug- 
 gling for existence, he went to the expense (great then) of pub- 
 lishing a picture of the burning Exchange, and a map of the burnt 
 district. American journalism was born amid the roaring flames 
 
AND THE NEW YORK HERALD. 285 
 
 of the great fire of 1835 ; and no true journalist will deny, that 
 from that day to this, whenever any very remarkable event has 
 taken place in the city of New York, the Herald reports of it 
 have generally been those which cost most money and exhibited 
 most of the spirit and detail of the scene. For some years every 
 dollar that the Herald made was expended in news, and, to this 
 hour, no other journal equals it in daily expenditure for intelli- 
 gence. If, to-morrow, we were to have another great fire, like 
 that of thirty years ago, this paper would have twenty-five men 
 in the streets gathering particulars. 
 
 But so difficult is it to establish a daily newspaper, that at the 
 end of a year it was not yet certain that the Herald could con- 
 tinue. A lucky contract with a noted pill-vender gave it a great 
 lift about that time ; * and in the fifteenth month, the editor ven- 
 
 * We copy the following from Mr. Gowan's narrative : " Dr. Benjamin Bran- 
 dreth, of well and wide-spread reputation, and who has made more happy and 
 comfortable, for a longer or shorter time, as the case may be, by his prescrip- 
 tions than any other son of iEsculapius, hailed me one day as I jumped from a 
 railroad car passing up and along the shores of the Hudson River, and immedi- 
 ately commenced the following narrative. He held in his hand a copy of the 
 New York Herald. ' Do you know,' said he, holding up the paper to my face, 
 ' that it was by and through your agency that this paper ever became success- 
 ful? ' I replied in the negative. ' Then,' continued he, ' I will unfold the secret 
 to you of how you became instrumental in this matter. Shortly after my 
 arrival in America, I began looking about me how I was to dispose of my pills 
 by agents and other means. Among others, I called upon you, then a bookseller 
 in Chatham Street. After some conversation on the subject of my errand, a 
 contract was soon entered into between us, — you to sell and I to furnish the 
 said pills ; but,' continued he, ' these pills will be of no use to me or any one else 
 unless they can be made known to the public, or rather the great herd of the 
 people; and that can only be done by advertising through some paper which 
 goes into the hands of the many. Can you point out to me any such paper, 
 published in the city? ' After a short pause I in substance said that there had 
 lately started a small penny paper, which had been making a great noise during 
 its existence ; and I had reason to believe it had obtained a very considerable 
 circulation among that class of people which he desired to reach by advertising, 
 and so concluded that it would be the best paper in the city for his purpose, 
 provided he could make terms with the owner, who, I had no doubt, would be 
 well disposed, as in all probability he stood in need of patronage of this kind. 
 'I immediately,' continued the doctor, 'adopted your advice, went directly to 
 Mr. Bennett, made terms with him for advertising, and for a long time paid him 
 a very considerable sum weekly for the use of his columns, which tended 
 greatly to add to both his and my own treasury. The editor of the Herald 
 
286 JAMES GORDON BENNETT 
 
 tured to raise his price to two cents. From that day he had a 
 business, and nothing remained for him but to go on as he had 
 bcnm. He did so. The paper exhibits now the same qualities 
 as it did then, — immense expenditure and vigilance in getting 
 news, and a reckless disregard of principle, truth, and decency 
 in its editorials. 
 
 Almost from the first month of its existence, this paper was 
 deemed infamous by the very public that supported it. We can 
 well remember when people bought it on the sly, and blushed 
 when they were caught reading it, and when the man in a 
 country place who subscribed for it intended by that act to dis- 
 tinctly enroll himself as one of the ungodly. Journalists should 
 thoroughly consider this most remarkable fact. We have had 
 plenty of infamous papers, but they have all been short-lived but 
 this. This one has lasted. After thirty-one years of life, it 
 appears to be almost as flourishing to-day as ever. The fore- 
 most of its rivals has a little more than half its circulation, and 
 less than half its income. A marble palace is rising to receive it, 
 and its proprietor fares as sumptuously every day as the ducal 
 family who furnished him with his middle name. 
 
 Let us see how the Herald acquired its ill name. We shall 
 then know why it is still so profoundly odious ; for it has never 
 changed, and can never change, while its founder controls it. 
 Its peculiarities are his peculiarities. 
 
 He came into collision, first of all, with the clergy and people 
 of his own Church, the Roman Catholic. Thirty years ago, as 
 fome of our readers may remember, Catholics and Protestants 
 had not yet learned to live together in the same community with 
 perfect tolerance of one another's opinions and usages ; and there 
 were still some timid persons who feared the rekindling of the 
 fagot, and the supremacy of the Pope in the United States. A 
 controversy growing out of these apprehensions had been pro- 
 
 nftenvimls acknowledged to me that but for his advertising patronage he would 
 have been compelled to collapse. Hence,' said he, 'had I never called on you, 
 in all probability I should not have had my attention turned to the New York 
 Herald; and, as a consequence, that sheet would never have had my advertis- 
 ing; and that paper would have been a thing of the past, and perhaps entirely 
 forgotten.' " 
 
AND THE NEW YORK HERALD. 287 
 
 ceeding for some time in the newspapers when this impudent 
 little Herald first appeared. The new-comer joined in the fray, 
 and sided against the Church in which he was born; but laid 
 about him in a manner which disgusted both parties. For ex- 
 ample : — 
 
 "As a Catholic, we call upon the Catholic Bishop and clergy of New 
 York to come forth from the darkness, folly, and superstition of the 
 tenth century. They live in the nineteenth. There can be no mis- 
 take about it, — they will be convinced of this fact if they look into 
 the almanac 
 
 " But though we want a thorough reform, we do not wish them to 
 discard their greatest absurdities at the first breath. We know the 
 difficulty of the task. Disciples, such as the Irish are, will stick with 
 greater pertinacity to absurdities and nonsense than to reason and 
 common sense. We have no objection to the doctrine of Transubstan- 
 tiation being tolerated for a few years to come. We may for a while 
 indulge ourselves in the delicious luxury of creating and eating our 
 Divinity. A peculiar taste of this kind, like smoking tobacco or drink- 
 ing whiskey, cannot be given up all at once. The ancient Egyptians, 
 for many years after they had lost every trace of the intellectual char- 
 acter of their religion, yet worshipped and adored the ox, the bull, and 
 the crocodile. They had not discovered the art, as we Catholics have 
 done, of making a God out of bread, and of adoring and eating him at 
 one and the same moment. This latter piece of sublimity or religious 
 cookery (we don't know which) was reserved for the educated and 
 talented clergy from the tenth up to the nineteenth century. Yet we 
 do not advise the immediate disturbance of this venerable piece of 
 rottenness and absurdity. It must be retained, as we would retain 
 carefully the tooth of a saint or the jawbone of a martyr, till the natu- 
 ral progress of reason in the Irish mind shall be able, silently and 
 imperceptibly, to drop it among the forgotten rubbish of his early 
 loves, or his more youthful riots and rows. 
 
 " There must be a thorough reformation and revolution in the 
 American Catholic Church. Education must be more attended to. 
 We never knew one priest who believed that he ate the Divinity when 
 he took the Eucharist. If we must have a Pope, let us have a Pope 
 of our own, — an American Pope, an intellectual, intelligent, and 
 moral Pope, — not such a decrepit, licentious, stupid, Italian blockhead 
 as the College of Cardinals at Home condescends to give the Christian 
 world of Europe." 
 
288 JAMES GORDON BENNETT 
 
 This might be good advice ; but no serious Protestant, at that 
 day, could relish the tone in which it was given. Threatening 
 letters were sent in from irate and illiterate Irishmen ; the Her- 
 ald was denounced from a Catholic pulpit ; its carriers were 
 assaulted on their rounds ; but the paper won no friends from the 
 side which it affected to espouse. Every one felt that to this 
 man nothing was sacred, or august, or venerable, or even serious. 
 He was like an unbeliever in a party composed of men of various 
 sects. The Baptist could fairly attack an Episcopalian, because 
 he had convictions of his own that could be assaulted ; but this 
 stranger, who believed nothing and respected nothing, could not 
 be hit at all. The result would naturally be, that the whole 
 company would turn upon him as upon a common foe. 
 
 So in politics. Perhaps the most serious and sincere article he 
 ever wrote on a political subject was one that appeared in No- 
 vember, 1836, in which he recommended the subversion of re- 
 publican institutions and the election of an emperor. If he ever 
 had a political conviction, we believe he expressed it then. After 
 a rigmarole of Roman history and Augustus Caesar, he proceeded 
 thus : — 
 
 " Shall we not profit by these examples of history ? Let us, for the 
 sake of science, art, and civilization, elect at this election General Jack- 
 son, General Harrison, Martin Van Buren, Hugh White, or Anybody, 
 we care not whom, the Emperor of this great Republic for life, and 
 have done with this eternal turmoil and confusion. • Perhaps Mr. Van 
 Buren would be the best Augustus Csesar. He is sufficiently corrupt, 
 selfish, and heartless for that dignity. He has a host of favorites that 
 will easily form a Senate. He has a court in preparation, and the 
 Praetorian bands in array. He can pick up a Livia anywhere. He 
 has violated every pledge, adopted and abandoned every creed, been 
 for and against every measure, is a believer in all religions by turns, 
 and, like the first Caesar, has always been a republican and taken care 
 of number one. He has called into action all the ragged adventurers 
 from every class, and raised their lands, stocks, lots, and places without 
 end. He is smooth, agreeable, oily, as Octavianus was. He has a couple 
 of sons, also, who might succeed him and preserve the imperial line. 
 We may be better off under an Emperor, — we could not be worse off 
 as a nation than we are now. Besides, who knows but Van Buren is 
 of the blood of the great Julius himself? That great man conquered 
 
AND THE NEW YOEK HEBALD. 289 
 
 all Gaul and Helvetia, which in those days comprised Holland. Cains 
 Julius Caesar may thus have laid the foundation of a royal line to be 
 transmitted to the West. There is a prophecy in Virgil's ' Pollio ' evi- 
 dently alluding to Van. But of this another day. 
 
 A man who writes in this way may have readers, but he can 
 have no friends. An event occurred in his first year which re- 
 vealed this fact to him in an extremely disagreeable manner. 
 There was then upon the New York stage a notoriously dissolute 
 actor, who, after outraging the feelings of his wife in all the usual 
 modes, completed his infamy by denouncing her from the stage 
 of a crowded theatre. The Herald took her part, which would 
 naturally have been the popular side. But when the actor re- 
 torted by going to the office of the Herald and committing upon 
 its proprietor a most violent and aggravated assault, accompany- 
 ing his blows with acts of peculiar indecency, it plainly appeared, 
 that the sympathies of the public were wholly with the actor, — 
 not with the champion of an injured woman. His hand had been 
 against every man, and in his hour of need, when he was greatly 
 in the right, every heart was closed against him. Not the less, 
 however, did the same public buy his paper, because it contained 
 what the public wanted, i. e. the news of the day, vividly ex- 
 hibited. 
 
 The course of this curious specimen of our kind during the 
 late war was perfectly characteristic. During the first two years 
 }f the war he was inclined to think that the Rebels would be suc- 
 cessful so far as to win over the Democratic party to their side, 
 ind thus constitute Jefferson Davis President of the United 
 States. If he had any preference as to the result of the contest, 
 t was probably this. If the flag of the United States had been 
 railed in the mud of Nassau Street, followed by hooting ruffians 
 rom the Sixth Ward, and the symbol of the Rebellion had floated 
 n its stead from the cupola of the City Hall, saluted by Captain 
 iynders's gun, it would not have cost this isolated alien one pang, 
 — unless, perchance, a rival newspaper had been the first to an- 
 lounce the fact. 77iat, indeed, would have cut him to the heart. 
 Acting upon the impression that the Rebellion, in some way, 
 rould triumph, he gave it all the support possible, and continued 
 13 s 
 
290 JAMES GOKDON BENNETT 
 
 to do so until it appeared certain that, whatever the issue of the 
 strife, the South was lost for a long time as a patron of New 
 York papers. 
 
 The key to most of the political vagaries of this paper is given 
 in a single sentence of one of its first numbers : " We have never 
 been in a minority, and we never shall be." In his endeavors to 
 act upon this lofty principle, he was sadly puzzled during the war, 
 — so difficult was it to determine which way the cat would finally 
 jump. He held himself ready, however, to jump with it, which- 
 ever side the dubious animal might select. At the same time, he 
 never for an instant relaxed his endeavors to obtain the earliest 
 and fullest intelligence from the seat of war. Never perhaps did 
 any journal in any country maintain so great an expenditure for 
 news. Every man in the field representing that paper was more 
 than authorized — he was encouraged and commanded — to in- 
 cur any expense whatever that might be necessary either in get- 
 ting or forwarding intelligence. There were no rigid or grudg- 
 ing scrutiny of reporters' drafts ; no minute and insulting inquiries 
 respecting the last moments of a horse ridden to death in the ser- 
 vice ; no grumbling about the precise terms of a steamboat 
 charter, or a special locomotive. A reporter returning from the 
 army laden with information, procured at a lavish expense, was 
 received in the office like a conqueror coming home from a victo- 
 rious campaign, and he went forth again full of courage and zeal, 
 knowing well that every man employed on the Herald was ad- 
 vancing himself when he served the paper well. One great se- 
 cret of success the proprietor of the Herald knows better than 
 most ; — he knows how to get out of those who serve him all 
 there is in them ; he knows how to reward good service ; he 
 knows a man's value to him. There is no newspaper office in 
 the world where real journalistic efficiency is more certain to 
 meet prompt recognition and just reward than in this. Not much 
 may be said to a laborious reporter about the hits he is making ; 
 but, on some Saturday afternoon, when he draws his salary, he 
 finds in his hands a larger amount than usual. He hands it 
 back to have the mistake corrected, and he is informed that his 
 salary is raised. 
 
AND THE NEW YORK HERALD. 291 
 
 The Herald, too, systematically prepares the way for its re- 
 porters. Some of our readers may remember how lavishly this 
 paper extolled General McClellan during the time of his glory, 
 and indeed as long as he held the chief command. One of the 
 results of this policy was, that, while the reporters of other papers 
 were out in the cold, writing in circumstances the most incon- 
 venient, those of the Herald, besides being supplied with the best 
 information, were often writing in a warm apartment or commo- 
 dious tent, not far from head-quarters or at head-quarters. As 
 long as General Butler held a command which gave him control 
 over one of the chief sources of news, the Herald hoarded its 
 private grudge against him ; but the instant he was removed from 
 command, the Herald was after him in full cry. If, to-morrow, 
 the same General should be placed in a position which should 
 render his office a source of important intelligence, we should prob- 
 ably read in the Herald the most glowing eulogiums of his career 
 and character. 
 
 What are we to think of a man who is at once so able and so 
 false ? It would be incorrect to call him a liar, because he is 
 wanting in that sense of truth by violating which a man makes 
 himself a liar. We cannot call him a traitor, for his heart knows 
 no country ; nor an infidel, for all the serious and high concern- 
 of man are to him a jest. Defective is the word to apply to sue'; 
 as he. As far as he goes, he is good ; and if the commodity in 
 which he deals were cotton or sugar, we could commend his en- 
 terprise and tact. He is like the steeple of a church in New 
 York, which was built up to a certain height, when the material 
 gave out, and it was hastily roofed in, leaving the upper half of 
 the architect's design unexecuted. That region of the mind where 
 conviction, the sense of truth and honor, public spirit and patriot- 
 ism have their sphere, is in this man mere vacancy. But, we re- 
 peat, as far as he is built up, he is very well constructed. Visit 
 him : you see before you a quiet-mannered, courteous, and good- 
 natured old gentleman, who is on excellent terms with himself 
 and with the world. If you are a poor musician, about to give a 
 concert, no editor is more likely than he to lend a favorable ear 
 to your request for a few lines of preliminary notice. The per- 
 
292 JAMES GORDON BENNETT 
 
 sons about him have been very long in his employment, and to 
 some of them he has been munificently liberal. The best of them 
 appear to be really attached to his person, as well as devoted to 
 his service, and they rely on him as sailors rely on a captain who 
 has brought them safe through a thousand storms. He has the 
 Celtic virtue of standing by those who stand by him developed to 
 the uttermost degree. Many a slight favor bestowed upon him 
 in his days of obscurity he has recompensed a thousand-fold since 
 he has had the power to do so. We cannot assign a very exalted 
 rank in the moral scale to a trait which some of the lowest races 
 possess in an eminent degree, and which easily runs into narrow- 
 ness and vice ; nevertheless, it is akin to nobleness, and is the 
 nearest approach to a true generosity that some strong natures 
 can attain. 
 
 What are we to say of the public that has so resolutely sus- 
 tained this paper, which the outside world so generally condemns? 
 We say this. Every periodical that thrives supplies the public 
 with a certain description of intellectual commodity, which the 
 public is willing to pay for. The New York Ledger, for exam- 
 ple, exists by furnishing stories and poetry adapted to the taste of 
 the greatest number of the people. Our spirited friends of The 
 Nation and Round Table supply criticism and that portion of the 
 news which is of special interest to the intellectual class. The 
 specialty of the daily newspaper is to give that part of the news 
 of the day which interests the whole public. A complete news- 
 paper contains more than this ; but it ranks in the world of jour- 
 nalism exactly in the degree to which it does this. The grand 
 object of the true journalist is to be fullest, promptest, and most 
 correct on the one uppermost topic of the hour. That secured, 
 he may neglect all else. The paper that does this oftenest is the 
 paper that will find most purchasers ; and no general excellence, 
 no array of information on minor or special topics, will ever atone 
 for a deficiency on the subject of most immediate and universal 
 interest. During the war this fundamental truth of journalism { 
 was apparent to every mind. In time of peace, it is less appar 
 ent, but not less a truth. In the absence of an absorbing topic, 
 general news rises in importance, until, in the dearth of the dog 
 
AND THE NEW YORK HERALD. 293 
 
 days, the great cucumber gets into type ; but the great point of 
 competition is still tbe same, — to be fullest, quickest, and most 
 correct upon the subject most interesting at the moment. 
 
 But every periodical, besides its specialty on which it lives, 
 gives its readers something more. It need not, but it does. The 
 universal Ledger favors its readers with many very excellent es- 
 says, written for it by distinguished clergymen, editors, and au- 
 thors, and gives its readers a great deal of sound advice in other 
 departments of the paper. It need not do this ; these features do 
 not materially affect the sale of the paper, as its proprietor well 
 knows. The essays of such men as Mr. Everett and Mr. Ban- 
 croft do not increase the sale of the paper one hundred copies a 
 week. Those essays are read and admired, and contribute their 
 quota toward the education of the people, and reflect honor upon 
 the liberal and enterprising man who publishes them; but scarcely 
 any one buys the paper for their sake. People almost univer- 
 sally buy a periodical for the special thing which it has under- 
 taken to furnish ; and it is by supplying this special thing that an 
 editor attains his glorious privilege and opportunity of addressing 
 a portion of the people on other topics. This opportunity he may 
 neglect ; he may abuse it to the basest purposes, or improve it to 
 the noblest, but whichever of these things he does, it does not 
 materially affect the prosperity of his paper, — always supposing 
 that his specialty is kept up with the requisite vigor. We have 
 gone over the whole history of journalism, and we find this to be 
 its Law of Nature, to which there are only apparent exceptions. 
 
 All points to this simple conclusion, which we firmly believe to 
 be the golden rule of journalism: — that daily newspaper which 
 has the best corps of reporters, and handles them best, necessarily 
 takes the lead of all competitors. 
 
 There are journalists who say (we have often heard them in 
 conversation) that this is a low view to take of their vocation. 
 It is of no importance whether a view is high or low, provided it 
 is correct. But we cannot agree with them that this is a low 
 view. We think it the highest possible. Regarded as instruc- 
 tors of the people, they wield for our warning and rebuke, for 
 our encouragement and reward, an instrument which is like the 
 
294 JAMES GORDON BENNETT 
 
 dread thunderbolt of Jove, at once the most terrible and the most 
 beneficent, — publicity. Some years ago, a number of ill-favored 
 and prurient women and a number of licentious men formed 
 themselves into a kind of society for the purpose of devising and 
 promulgating a theory to justify the gratification of unbridled 
 lust. They were called Free-Lovers. To have assailed their 
 nightly gatherings in thundering editorial articles would have 
 only advertised them ; but a detailed report of their proceedings 
 in the Tribune scattered these assemblies in a few days, to meet 
 no more except in secret haunts. Recently, we have seen the 
 Fenian wind-bag first inflated, then burst, by mere publicity. 
 The Strong Divorce Case, last year, was a nauseous dose, which 
 we would have gladly kept out of the papers ; but since it had to 
 appear, it was a public benefit to have it given, Herald-fashion, 
 with all its revolting particulars. What a punishment to the 
 guilty ! what a lesson to the innocent ! what a warning to the un- 
 detected ! How much beneficial reflection and conversation it ex- 
 cited ! How necessary, in an age of sensation morals and free- 
 love theories, to have self-indulgence occasionally exhibited in all 
 its hideous nastiness, and without any of its fleeting, deceptive, 
 imaginary charms ! The instantaneous detection of the Otero 
 murderers last autumn, and of the robbers of Adams's express- 
 car last winter, as related in the daily papers, and the picture 
 presented by them of young Ketchum seated at work in the shoe- 
 shop of Sing-Sing Prison, were equivalent to the addition of a 
 thousand men to the police force. Herein lies the power of such 
 a slight person as the editor of the Herald. It is not merely that 
 he impudently pulls your nose, but he pulls it in the view of a 
 million people. 
 
 Nor less potent is publicity as a means of reward. How many 
 brave hearts during the late war felt themselves far more than 
 repaid for all their hardships in the field and their agony in the 
 hospital by reading their names in despatches, or merely in the 
 list of wounded, and thinking of the breakfast-tables far away at 
 which that name had been spied out and read with mingled ex- 
 ultation and pity. " Those who love me know that I did my 
 duty, — it is enough." 
 
AND THE NEW YORK HERALD. 295 
 
 Our whole observation of the daily press convinces us that its 
 power to do good arises chiefly from its giving the news of the 
 day ; and its power to do harm chiefly from its opportunity to 
 comment upon the news. Viewed only as a vehicle of intelli- 
 gence, the Herald has taught the journalists of the United States 
 the greater part of all that they yet know of their profession ; re- 
 garded as an organ of opinion, it has done all that it was ever 
 possible for a newspaper to do in perverting public opinion, de- 
 bauching public taste, offending public morals, and dishonoring 
 the national character. 
 
 The question arises, Why has not this paper been long ago out- 
 done in giving the news ? It has always been possible to sup- 
 press it by surpassing it. Its errors have given its rivals an im- 
 mense advantage over it ; for it has always prospered, not in 
 consequence of its badness, but of its goodness. We are ac- 
 quainted with two foolish young patriots who were wrought up to 
 such a frenzy of disgust by its traitorous course during the first 
 half of our late war, that they seriously considered whether there 
 was any way in which thoy could so well serve their country in 
 its time of need, as by slaying that pernicious and insolent editor ; 
 but both of those amiable lunatics were compelled occasionally to 
 buy the paper. Of late, too, we have seen vast audiences break 
 forth into wild hootings at the mention of its name ; but not the 
 less did the hooters buy it the next morning. Nevertheless, as 
 soon as there exists a paper which to the Herald's good points 
 adds the other features of a compdete newspaper, and avoids its 
 faults, from that hour the Herald wanes and falls speedily to the 
 second rank. 
 
 Two men have had it in their power to produce such a news- 
 paper, — Horace Greeley and Henry J. Raymond. In 1841, 
 when the Herald was six years old, the Tribune appeared, edited 
 by Mr. Greeley, with Mr. Raymond as his chief assistant. Mr. 
 Greeley was then, and is now, the best writer of editorials in the 
 United States ; that is, he can produce a greater quantity of tell- 
 ing editorial per annum than any other individual. There never 
 lived a man capable of working more hours in a year than he. 
 Strictly temperate in his habits, and absolutely devoted to his 
 
296 JAMES GORDON BENNETT 
 
 work, he threw himself into this enterprise with an ardor never 
 surpassed since Adam first tasted the sweets of honorable toil. 
 Mr. Raymond, then recently from college, very young, wholly 
 inexperienced, was endowed with an admirable aptitude for the 
 work of journalism, and a power of getting through its routine 
 labors, — a sustained, calm, swift industry, — unsurpassed at that 
 time in the American press. The business of the paper was also 
 well managed by Mr. McElrath. In the hands of these able men, 
 the new paper made such rapid advances, that, in the course of 
 a few months, it was fairly established, and in a year or two it 
 had reached a circulation equal to that of the Herald. One after 
 another, excellent writers were added to its corps ; — the vigor- 
 ous, prompt, untiring Dana ; George Ripley, possessing that blend- 
 ing of scholarship and tact, that wisdom of the cloister and knowl- 
 edge of the world, which alone could fit a man of great learning 
 and talent for the work of a daily newspaper ; Margaret Fuller, 
 whose memory is still green in so many hearts ; Bayard Taylor, 
 the versatile, and others, less universally known. 
 
 Why, then, did not this powerful combination supplant the 
 Herald ? If mere ability in the writing of a newspaper ; if to 
 have given an impulse to thought and enterprise ; if to have won 
 the admiration and gratitude of a host of the best men and wom- 
 en in America; if to have inspired many thousands of youn^ 
 men with better feelings and higher purposes than they would 
 else have attained ; if to have shaken the dominion of supersti- 
 tion, and made it easier for men to think freely, and freely utter 
 their thought; if to have produced a newspaper more interesting 
 than any other in the world to certain classes in the community ; 
 — if all these things had sufficed to give a daily paper the first 
 position in the journalism of a country, then the Tribune would 
 long ago have attained that position ; for all these things, and 
 many more, the Tribune did. But they do not suffice. Such 
 things may be incidental to a great success : they cannot cause it. 
 Great journalism — journalism pure and simple — alone can give 
 a journal the first place. If Mr. Raymond had been ten years 
 older, and had founded and conducted the paper, with Mr. Gree- 
 ley as his chief writer of editorials, — that is, if the journalist 
 
AND THE NEW YORK HERALD. 297 
 
 had been the master of the journal, instead of the writer, the pol- 
 itician, and the philanthropist, — the Tribune might have won 
 the splendid prize. Mr. Greeley is not a great journalist. He has 
 regarded journalism rather as a disagreeable necessity of his vo- 
 cation, and uniformly abandoned the care of it to others. An able 
 man generally gets what he ardently seeks. Mr. Greeley pro- 
 duced just such a paper as he himself would have liked to take, 
 but not such a paper as the public of the island of Manhattan 
 prefers. He regards this as his glory. We cannot agree with 
 him, because his course of management left the field to the 
 Herald, the suppression of which was required by the interests of 
 civilization. 
 
 The Tribune has done great and glorious things for us. Not 
 free, of course, from the errors which mark all things human, it 
 has been, and is, a civilizing power in this land. "We hope to have 
 the pleasure of reading it every day for the rest of our lives. 
 One thing it lias failed to do, — to reduce the Herald to insignifi- 
 cance by surpassing it in the particulars in which it is excellent. 
 We have no right to complain. We only regret that the paper 
 representing the civilization of the country should not yet have 
 attained the position which would have given it the greatest 
 power. 
 
 Mr. Raymond, also, has had it in his power to render this great 
 service to the civilization and credit of the United States. The 
 Daily Times, started in 1852, retarded for a while by a financial 
 error, has made such progress toward the goal of its proprietors' 
 ambition, that it is now on the home stretch, only a length or two 
 behind. The editor of this paper is a journalist ; he sees clearly 
 the point of competition ; he knows the great secret of his trade. 
 The prize within his reach is splendid. The position of chief 
 journalist gives power enough to satisfy any reasonable ambition 
 wealth enough to glut the grossest avarice, and opportunity of 
 doing good sufficient for the most public-spirited citizen. What is 
 there in political life equal to it? We have no right to remark 
 upon any man's choice of a career ; but this we may say, — that 
 the man who wins the first place in the journalism of a free coun- 
 try must concentrate all his powers upon that one work, and, 
 13* 
 
298 JAMES GORDON BENNETT 
 
 as an editor, owe no allegiance to party. He must stand above 
 all parties, and serve all parties, by spreading before the public 
 that full and exact information upon which sound legislation is 
 
 based. 
 
 During the present (1865-6) session of Congress we have had 
 daily illustration of this truth. The great question has been, 
 What is the condition of the Southern States and the feeling of 
 the Southern people ? All the New York morning papers have 
 expended money and labor, each according to its means and en- 
 terprise, in getting information from the South. This was well. 
 But every one of these papers has had some party or personal 
 bias, which has given it a powerful interest to make out a case. 
 The World and News excluded everything which tended to show 
 the South dissatisfied and disloyal. The Tribune, on the other 
 hand, diligently sought testimony of that nature. The Times, 
 also, being fully committed to a certain theory of reconstruction, 
 naturally gave prominence to every fact which supported that 
 theory, and was inclined to suppress information of the opposite 
 tendency. The consequence was, that an inhabitant of the city 
 of New York who simply desired to know the truth was com- 
 pelled to keep an eye upon four or five papers, lest something 
 material should escape him. This is pitiful. This is utterly be- 
 neath the journalism of 1866. The final pre-eminent newspaper 
 of America will soar far above such needless limitations as these, 
 and present the truth in all its aspects, regardless of its effects 
 upon theories, parties, factions, and Presidential campaigns. 
 
 Presidential campaigns, — that is the real secret. The editors 
 of most of these papers have selected their candidate for 1868 ; 
 and, having done that, can no more help conducting their journals 
 with a view to the success of that candidate, than the needle of a 
 compass can help pointing awry when there is a magnet hidden 
 in the binnacle. Here, again, we have no right to censure or 
 complain. Yet we cannot help marvelling at the hallucination 
 which can induce able men to prefer the brief and illusory honors 
 of political station to the substantial and lasting power within the 
 grasp of the successful journalist. He, if any one, — he more 
 than any one else, — is the master in a free country. Have we 
 
AND THE NEW YORK HERALD. 299 
 
 not seen almost every man who has held or run for the Presiden- 
 cy during the last ten or fifteen years paying assiduous and servile 
 court, directly or indirectly, or both, to the editor of the Herald ? 
 If it were proper to relate to the public what is known on this 
 subject to a few individuals, the public would be exceedingly as- 
 tonished. And yet this reality of power an editor is ready to 
 jeopard for the sake of gratifying his family by exposing them in 
 Paris ! Jeopard, do we say ? He has done more : he has thrown 
 it away. He has a magnet in his binnacle. He has, for the time, 
 sacrificed what it cost him thirty years of labor and audacity to 
 gain. Strange weakness of human nature ! 
 
 The daily press of the United States has prodigiously improved 
 in every respect during the last twenty years. To the best of 
 our recollection, the description given of it, twenty-three years 
 a"-o, by Charles Dickens, in his American Notes, was not much 
 exaggerated ; although that great author did exaggerate its ef- 
 fects upon the morals of the country. His own amusing account 
 of the rival editors in Pickwick might have instructed him on 
 this latter point. It does not appear that the people of Eatans- 
 will were seriously injured by the fierce language employed in 
 " that false and scurrilous print, the Independent," and in " that 
 vile and slanderous calumniator, the Gazette." Mr. Dickens, 
 however, was too little conversant with our politics to take the 
 atrocious language formerly so common in our newspapers " in a 
 Pickwickian sense " ; and we freely confess that in the alarm- 
 ing picture which he drew of our press there was only too much 
 truth. 
 
 " The foul growth of America," wrote Mr. Dickens, " strikes its fibres 
 deep in its licentious press. 
 
 " Schools may be erected, east, west, north, and south ; pupils be 
 taught, and masters reared, by scores upon scores of thousands ; col- 
 leges may thrive, churches may be crammed, temperance may be dif- 
 fused, and advancing knowledge in all other forms walk through the 
 land -with giant strides ; but while the newspaper press of America is 
 in or near its present abject state, high moral improvement in that 
 country is hopeless. Year by year it must and will go back ; year by 
 year the tone of public feeling must sink lower down ; year by year 
 the Congress and the Senate must become of less account before all 
 
300 JAMES GOKDON BENNETT 
 
 decent men ; and, year by year, the memory of the great fathers of the 
 Revolution must be outraged more and more in the bad life of their 
 degenerate child. 
 
 " Among the herd of journals which are published in the States, 
 there are some, the reader scarcely need be told, of character and 
 credit. From personal intercourse with accomplished gentlemen con- 
 nected with publications of this class I have derived both pleasure and 
 profit. But the name of these is Few, and of the others Legion ; and 
 the influence of the good is powerless to counteract the mortal poison 
 of the bad. 
 
 " Among the gentry of America, among the well-informed and 
 moderate, in the learned professions, at the bar and on the bench, 
 there is, as there can be, but one opinion in reference to the vicious 
 character of these infamous journals. It is sometimes contended — 
 I will not say strangely, for it is natural to seek excuses for such a 
 disgrace — that their influence is not so great as a visitor would sup- 
 pose. I must be pardoned for saying that there is no warrant for this 
 plea, and that every fact and circumstance tends directly to the oppo- 
 site conclusion. 
 
 " When any man, of any grade of desert in intellect or character, 
 can climb to any public distinction, no matter what, in America, with- 
 out first gi-ovelling down upon the earth, and bending the knee before 
 this monster of depravity ; when any private excellence is safe from 
 its attacks, and when any social confidence is left unbroken by it, or 
 any tie of social decency and honor is held in the least regard ; when 
 any man in that free country has freedom of opinion, and presumes to 
 think for himself, and speak for himself, without humble reference to a 
 censorship which, for its rampant ignorance and base dishonesty, he 
 utterly loathes and despises in his heart ; when those who most acutely 
 feel its infamy and the reproach it casts upon the nation, and who 
 most denounce it to each other, dare to set their heels upon and crush 
 it openly, in the sight of all men, — then I will believe that its influ- 
 ence is lessening, and men are returning to their manly senses. But 
 while that Press has its evil eye in every house, and its black hand in 
 every appointment in the state, from a President to a postman, — 
 while, with ribald slander for its only stock in trade, it is the stand- 
 ard literature of an enormous class, who must find their reading in a 
 newspaper, or they will not read at all, — 60 long must its odium be 
 upon the country's head, and so long must the evil it works be plainly 
 visible in the Republic. 
 
 " To those who are accustomed to the leading English journals, or to 
 
AND THE NEW YORK HERALD. 301 
 
 the respectable journals of the Continent of Europe, to those who are 
 accustomed to anything else in print and paper, it would be impossi- 
 ble, without an amount of extract for which I have neither space nor 
 inclination, to convey an adequate idea of this frightful engine in 
 America. But if any man desire confirmation of my statement on this 
 head, let him repair to any place in this city of London where scat- 
 tered numbers of these publications are to be found, and there let him 
 form his own opinion." 
 
 From a note appended to this passage, we infer that the news- 
 paper which weighed upon the author's mind when he wrote it 
 was the New York Herald. The direct cause, however, of the 
 general license of the press at that time, was not the Herald's 
 bad example, but Andrew Jackson's debauching influence. The 
 same man who found the government pure, and left it corrupt, 
 made the press the organ of his own malignant passions by be- 
 stowing high office upon the editors who lied most recklessly 
 about his opponents. In 1843 the press had scarcely begun to 
 recover from this hateful influence, and was still the merest tool 
 of politicians. The Herald, in fact, by demonstrating that a 
 newspaper can flourish in the United States without any aid from 
 politicians, has brought us nearer the time when no newspaper of 
 any importance will be subject to party, which has been the prin- 
 cipal cause of the indecencies of the press. 
 
 The future is bright before the journalists of America. The 
 close of the war, by increasing their income and reducing their ex- 
 penses, has renewed the youth of several of our leading journals, 
 and given them a better opportunity than they have ever had be- 
 fore. The great error of the publishers of profitable journals 
 hitherto has been the wretched compensation paid to writers and 
 reporters. To this hour there is but one individual connected 
 with the daily press of New York, not a proprietor, who receives 
 a salary sufficient to keep a tolerable house and bring up a family 
 respectably and comfortably ; and if any one would find that in- 
 dividual, he must look for him, alas ! in the office of the Herald. 
 To be plainer : decent average housekeeping in the city of New 
 York now costs a hundred dollars a week ; and there is but one 
 salary of that amount paid in New York to a journalist who owns 
 
C02 JAMES GORDON BENNETT 
 
 no property in his journal. The consequence is, that there is 
 scarcely an individual connected with a daily paper who is not 
 compelled or tempted to eke out his ridiculous salary by other 
 writing, to the injury of his health and the constant deterioration 
 of his work. Every morning the public comes fresh and eager 
 to the newspaper : fresh and eager minds should alone minister 
 to it. No work done on this earth consumes vitality so fast as 
 carefully executed composition, and consequently one of the main 
 conditions of a man's writing his best is that he should write little 
 and rest often. A good writer, moreover, is one of Nature's pe- 
 culiar and very rare products. There is a mystery about the 
 art of composition. Who shall explain to us why Charles Dick- 
 ens can write about a three-legged stool in such a manner that 
 the whole civilized world reads with pleasure ; while another man 
 of a hundred times his knowledge and five times his quantity of 
 mind cannot write on any subject so as to interest anybody ? 
 The laws of supply and demand do not apply to this rarity ; for 
 one man's writing cannot be compared with another's, there being 
 no medium between valuable and worthless. How many over- 
 worked, under-paid men have we known in New York, really 
 gifted with this inexplicable knack at writing, who, well com- 
 manded and justly compensated, lifted high and dry out of the 
 slough of poor-devilism in which their powers were obscured and 
 impaired, could almost have made the fortune of a newspaper ! 
 Some of these Reporters of Genius are mere children in all the 
 arts by which men prosper. A Journalist of Genius would know 
 their value, understand their case, take care of their interest, se- 
 cure their devotion, restrain their ardor, and turn their talent to 
 rich account. We are ashamed to say, that for example of this 
 kind of policy we should have to repair to the office named a mo- 
 ment since. 
 
 Tins subject, however, is beginning to be understood, and of 
 late there has been some advance in the salaries of members of 
 the press. Just as fast as the daily press advances in real inde- 
 pendence and efficiency, the compensation of journalists will in- 
 crease, until a great reporter will receive a reward in some slight 
 degree proportioned to the rarity of the species and to the great- 
 
AND THE NEW YORK HERALD. 303 
 
 ness of the services of which he is the medium. By reporters, 
 we mean, of course, the entire corps of news-givers, from the 
 youth who relates the burning of a stable, to the philosopher who 
 chronicles the last vagary of a German metaphysician. These 
 laborious men will be appreciated in due time. By them all the 
 great hits of journalism have been made, and the whole future of 
 journalism is theirs. 
 
 So difficult is the reporter's art, that we can call to mind only 
 two series of triumphant efforts in this department, — Mr. Rus- 
 sell's letters from the Crimea to the London Times, and N. P. 
 Willis's " Pencillings by the Way," addressed to the New York 
 Mirror. Each of these masters chanced to have a subject per- 
 fectly adapted to his taste and talents, and each of them made the 
 most of his opportunity. Chavles Dickens has produced a few 
 exquisite reports. Many ignorant and dull men employed on the 
 New York Herald have written good reports because they were 
 dull and ignorant. In fact, there are two kinds of good report- 
 ers, — those who know too little, and those who know too much, 
 to wander from the point and evolve a report from the depths of 
 their own consciousness. The worst possidle reporter is one who 
 has a little talent, and depends upon that to make up for the 
 meagreness of his information. The best reporter is he whose 
 sole object is to relate his event exactly as it occurred, and de- 
 scribe his scene just as it appeared ; and this kind of excellence 
 is attainable by an honest plodder, and by a man of great and 
 well-controlled talent. If we were forming a corps of twenty-live 
 reporters, we should desire to have five of them men of great and 
 highly trained ability, and the rest indefatigable, unimaginative, 
 exact short-hand chroniclers, caring for nothing but to get their 
 fact and relate it in the plainest English. 
 
 There is one custom, a relic of the past, still in vogue in the 
 offices of daily papers, which is of an absurdity truly exquisite. 
 It is the practice of paying by the column, or, in other words, 
 paying a premium for verbosity, and imposing a fine upon con- 
 ciseness. It will often happen that information which cost three 
 days to procure can be well related in a paragraph, and which, if 
 related in a paragraph, would be of very great value to the news- 
 
304 JAMES GORDON BENXETT 
 
 paper printing it. But if the reporter should compress his facts 
 into that space, he would receive for his three days' labor about 
 what he expended in omnibus fare. Like a wise man, therefore, 
 he spreads them out into three columns, and thus receives a com- 
 pensation upon which life can be supported. If matter must be 
 paid for by the column, we would respectfully suggest the follow- 
 ing rates : For half a column, or less, twenty dollars ; for one 
 column, ten dollars ; for two columns, five dollars ; for three 
 columns, nothing ; for any amount beyond three columns, no in- 
 sertion. 
 
 To conclude with a brief recapitulation : — 
 
 The commodity in which the publishers of daily newspapers 
 deal is news, i. e. information respecting recent events in which 
 the public take an interest, or in which an interest can be 
 excited. 
 
 Newspapers, therefore, rank according to their excellence as 
 newspapers; and no other kind of excellence can make up for 
 any deficiency in the one thing for which they exist. 
 
 Consequently, the art of editorship consists in forming, hand- 
 ling, and inspiring a corps of reporters ; for inevitably that news- 
 paper becomes the chief and favorite journal which has the best 
 corps of reporters, and uses them best. 
 
 Editorial articles have their importance. They can be a pow- 
 erful means of advancing the civilization of a country, and of 
 hastening the triumph of good measures and good men; and upon 
 the use an editor makes of his opportunity of addressing the pub- 
 lic in this way depends his title to our esteem as a man and fel- 
 low-citizen. But, in a mere business point of view, they are of 
 inferior importance. The best editorials cannot make, nor the 
 worst editorials mar, the fortune of a paper. Burke and Macau- 
 lay would not add a tenth part as many subscribers to a daily 
 paper as the addition to its corps of two well-trained, ably-com- 
 manded reporters. 
 
 It is not law which ever renders the press free and independent. 
 Nothing is free or independent in this world which is not power- 
 ful. Therefore, the editor who would conquer the opportunity 
 of speaking his mind freely, must do it by making his paper so 
 
AND THE NEW YORK HERALD. 305 
 
 excellent ns a vehicle of news that the public will buy it though 
 it is a daily disgust to them. 
 
 The Herald has thriven beyond all its competitors, because its 
 proprietor comprehended these simple but fundamental truths of 
 his vocation, and, upon the whole, has surpassed his rivals both 
 in the getting and in the display of intelligence. We must pro- 
 nounce him the best journalist and the worst editorialist this con- 
 tinent has ever known ; and accordingly his paper is generally 
 read and its proprietor universally disapproved. 
 
 And finally, this bad, good paper cannot be reduced to second- 
 ary rank except by being outdone in pure journalism. The 
 interests of civilization and the honor of the United States re- 
 quire that this should be done. There are three papers now ex- 
 isting — the Times, the Tribune, and the World — which ought 
 to do it; but if the conductors of neither of these able and spirited 
 papers choose to devote themselves absolutely to this task, then 
 we trust that soon another competitor may enter the field, con- 
 ducted by a journalist proud enough of his profession to be satis- 
 fied with its honors. There were days last winter on which it 
 seemed as if the whole force of journalism in the city of New 
 York was expended in tingeing and perverting intelligence on 
 the greatest of all the topics of the time. We have read numbers 
 of the World (which has talent and youthful energy enough for 
 a splendid career) of which almost the entire contents — corre- 
 spondence, telegrams, and editorials — were spoiled for all useful 
 purposes by the determination of the whole corps of writers to 
 make the news tell in favor of a political party. We can truly 
 aver, that journalism, pure and simple, — journalism for its own 
 sake, — journalism, the dispassionate and single-eyed servant of 
 the whole public, — does not exist in New York during a session 
 of Congress. It ought to exist. 
 
CHARLES GOODYEAR 
 
CHARLES GOODYEAR. 
 
 THE copy before us, of Mr. Goodyear's work upon " Gum- 
 Elastic and its Varieties," presents at least something unique 
 in the art of book-making. It is self-illustrating ; inasmuch as, 
 treating of India-rubber, it is made of India-rubber. An unob- 
 servant reader, however, would scarcely suspect the fact before 
 reading the Preface, for the India-rubber covers resemble highly 
 polished ebony, and the leaves have the appearance of ancient 
 paper worn soft, thin, and dingy by numberless perusals. The 
 volume contains six hundred and twenty pages ; but it is not 
 as thick as copies of the same work printed on paper, though it is 
 a little heavier. It is evident that the substance of which this book 
 is composed cannot be India-rubber in its natural state. Those 
 leaves, thinner than paper, can be stretched only by a strong pull, 
 and resume their shape perfectly when they are let go. There is 
 no smell of India-rubber about them. We first saw this book in 
 a cold room in January, but the leaves were then as flexible as 
 old paper ; and when, since, we have handled it in warm weather, 
 they had grown no softer. 
 
 Some of our readers may have heard Daniel Webster relate 
 the story of the India-rubber cloak and hat which one of his 
 New York friends sent him at Marshfield in the infancy of the 
 manufacture. He took the cloak to the piazza one cold morning, 
 when it instantly became as rigid as sheet-iron. Finding that it 
 stood alone, he placed the hat upon it, and left the articles stand- 
 ing near the front door. Several of his neighbors who passed, 
 seeing a dark and portly figure there, took it for the lord of the 
 mansion, and gave it respectful salutation. The same articles 
 were liable to an objection still more serious. In the sun, even in 
 
310 CHARLES GOODYEAR. 
 
 cool weather, they became sticky, while on a hot day they would 
 melt entirely away to the consistency of molasses. Every one 
 remembers the thick and ill-shaped India-rubber shoes of twenty 
 years ago, which had to be thawed out under the stove before 
 they could be put on, and which, if left under the stove too long, 
 would dissolve into gum that no household art could ever harden 
 again. Some decorous gentlemen among us can also remember 
 that, in the nocturnal combats of their college days, a flinty India- 
 rubber shoe, in cold weather, was a missive weapon of a highly 
 effective character. 
 
 This curious volume, therefore, cannot be made of the unman- 
 ageable stuff which Daniel Webster set up at his front door. So 
 much is evident at a glance. But the book itself tells us that it 
 can be subjected, without injury, to tests more severe than sum- 
 mer's sun and winter's cold. It can be soaked six months in a 
 pail of water, and still be as good a book as ever. It can be 
 boiled ; it can be baked in an oven hot enough to cook a turkey ; 
 it can be soaked in brine, lye, camphene, turpentine, or oil ; it can 
 be dipped into oil of vitriol, and still no harm done. To crown 
 its merits, no rat, mouse, worm, or moth has ever shown the 
 slightest inclination to make acquaintance with it. The office of 
 a Review is not usually provided with the means of subjecting 
 literature to such critical tests as bye, vitriol, boilers, and hot 
 ovens. But we have seen enough elsewhere of the ordeals to 
 which India-rubber is now subjected to believe Mr. Goodyear's 
 statements. Remote posterity will enjoy the fruit of his labors, 
 unless some one takes particular pains to destroy this book ; for 
 it seems that time itself produces no effect upon the India-rubber 
 which bears the familiar stamp, " Goodyear's Patent." In 
 the dampest corner of the dampest cellar, no mould gathers upon 
 it, no decay penetrates it. In the hottest garret, it never warps 
 or cracks. 
 
 The principal object of the work is to relate how this remark- 
 able change was effected in the nature of the substance of which 
 it treats. It cost more than two millions of dollars to do it. 'It 
 cost Charles Goodyear eleven most laborious and painful years. 
 Ilia book is written without art or skill, but also without guile. 
 
CHARLES GOODYEAR. 311 
 
 He was evidently a laborious, conscientious, modest man, neither 
 learned nor highly gifted, but making no pretence to learning or 
 gifts, doing the work which fell to him with all his might, and 
 with a perseverance never surpassed in all the history of inven- 
 tion and discovery. Who would have thought to find a romance 
 in the history of India-rubber ? "We are familiar with the stories 
 of poor and friendless men, possessed with an idea and pursuing 
 their object, amid obloquy, neglect, and suffering, to the final tri- 
 umph ; of which final triumph other men reaped the substantial 
 reward, leaving to the discoverer the barren glory of his achieve- 
 ment, — and that glory obscured by detraction. Columbus is 
 the representative man of that illustrious order. We trust to be 
 able to show that Charles Goodyear is entitled to a place in it. 
 Whether we consider the prodigious and unforeseen importance 
 of fcis discovery, or his scarcely paralleled devotion to his object, 
 in fllie face of the most disheartening obstacles, we feel it to be 
 due to his memory, to his descendants, and to the public, that 
 his story should be told. Few persons will ever see his book, 
 of which only a small number of copies were printed for private 
 circulation. Still fewer will be at the pains to pick out the ma- 
 terial facts from the confused mass of matter in which they are 
 hidden. Happily for our purpose, no one now has an interest 
 to call his merits in question. He rests from his labors, and 
 the patent, which was the glory and misery of his life, has 
 expired. 
 
 Our great-grandfathers knew India-rubber only as a curiosity, 
 and our grandfathers only as a means of erasing pencil-marks. 
 The first specimens were brought to Europe in 1730 ; and as late 
 as 1770 it was still so scarce an article, that in London it was 
 only to be found in one shop, where a piece containing half a 
 cubic inch was sold for three shillings. Dr. Priestley, in his 
 work on perspective, published in 1770, speaks of it as a new 
 article, and recommends its use to draughtsmen. This substance, 
 however, being one of those of which nature has provided an in- 
 exhaustible supply, greater quantities found their way into the 
 commerce of the world ; until, in 1820, it was a drug in all mar- 
 kets, and was frequently brought as ballast merely. About this 
 
C12 CHARLES GOODYEAR. 
 
 time it began to be subjected to experiments with a view to ren- 
 dering it available in the arts. It was found useful as an ingre- 
 dient of blacking and varnish. Its elasticity was turned to ac- 
 count in France in the manufacture of suspenders and garters, — 
 threads of India-rubber being inserted in the web. In England, 
 Mackintosh invented his still celebrated water-proof coats, which 
 are made of two thin cloths with a paste of India-rubber between 
 them. In chemistry, the substance was used to some extent, and 
 its singular properties were much considered. In England and 
 France, the India-rubber manufacture had attained considerable 
 importance before the material had attracted the attention of 
 American experimenters. The Europeans succeeded in render- 
 ing it useful because they did not attempt too much. The French 
 cut the imported sheets of gum into shreds, without ever attempt- 
 ing to produce the sheets themselves. Mackintosh exposed no 
 surface of India-rubber to the air, and brought no surfaces of In- 
 dia-rubber into contact. No one had discovered any process by 
 which India-rubber once dissolved could be restored to its original 
 consistency. Some of our readers may have attempted, twenty 
 years ago, to fill up the holes in the sole of an India-rubber shoe. 
 Nothing was easier than to melt a piece of India-rubber for the 
 purpose ; but, when applied to the shoe, it would not harden. 
 There was the grand difficulty, the complete removal of which 
 cost so much money and so many years. 
 
 The ruinous failure of the first American manufacturers arose 
 from the fact that they began their costly operations in ignorance 
 of the existence of this difficulty. They were too fast. They 
 proceeded in the manner of the inventor of the caloric engine, 
 who began by placing one in a ship of great magnitude, involving 
 an expenditure which ruined the owners. 
 
 It was in the year 1820 that a pair of India-rubber shoes was 
 seen for the first time in the United States. They were covered 
 with gilding, and resembled in shape the shoes of a Chinaman. 
 They were handed about in Boston only as a curiosity. Two or 
 three years after, a ship from South America brought to Boston 
 five hundred pairs of shoes, thick, heavy, and ill-shaped, which 
 sold so readily as to invite further importations. The business 
 
CHARLES GOODYEAR. 813 
 
 increased until the annual importation reached half a million 
 pairs, and India-rubber shoes had become an article of general 
 use. The manner in which these shoes were made by the natives 
 of South America was frequently described in the newspapers, 
 and seemed to present no difficulty. They were made much as 
 farmers' wives made candles. The sap being collected from the 
 trees, clay lasts were dipped into the liquid twenty or thirty 
 times, each layer being smoked a little. The shoes were then 
 hung up to harden for a few days ; after which the clay was re- 
 moved, and the shoes were stored for some months to harden 
 them still more. Nothing was more natural than to suppose that 
 Yankees could do this as well as Indians, if not far better. The 
 raw India-rubber could then be bought in Boston for five cents a 
 pound, and a pair of shoes made of it brought from three to five 
 dollars. Surely here was a promising basis for a new branch of 
 manufacture in New England. It happened too, in 1830, that 
 vast quantities of the raw gum reached the United States. It 
 came covered with hides, in masses, of which no use could be 
 made in America ; and it remained unsold, or was sent to Eu- 
 rope. 
 
 Patent-leather suggested the first American attempt to turn 
 India-rubber to account. Mr. E. M. Chaffee, foreman of a Bos- 
 ton patent-leather factory conceived the idea, in 1830, of spread- 
 ing India-rubber upon cloth, hoping to produce an article which 
 should possess tlie good qualities of patent-leather, with the ad- 
 ditional one of being water-proof. In the deepest secrecy he 
 experimented for several months. By dissolving a pound of In- 
 dia rubber in three quarts of spirits of turpentine, and adding 
 lampblack enough to give it the desired color, he produced a com- 
 position which he supposed would perfectly answer the purpose. 
 He invented a machine for spreading it, and made some speci- 
 mens of cloth, which had every appearance of being a very use- 
 ful article. The surface, after being dried in the sun, was firm 
 and smooth ; and Mr. Chaffee supposed, and his friends agreed 
 with him, that he had made an invention of the utmost value. 
 At this point he invited a few of the solid men of Roxbury to 
 look at his specimens and listen to his statements. He convinced 
 14 
 
314 CHARLES GOODYEAR. 
 
 them. The result of the conference was the Roxbury India-rub- 
 ber Company, incorporated in February, 1833, with a capital of 
 thirty thousand dollars. 
 
 The progress of this Company was amazing. Within a year 
 its capital was increased to two hundred and forty thousand dollars. 
 Before another year had expired, this was increased to three hun- 
 dred thousand; and in the year following, to four hundred thousand. 
 The Company manufactured the cloth invented by Mr. Chaffee, 
 and many articles made of that cloth, such as coats, caps, wagon- 
 curtains and coverings. Shoes, made without fibre, were soon in- 
 troduced. Nothing could be better than the appearance of these 
 articles when they were new. They were in the highest favor, 
 and were sold more rapidly than the Company could manufacture 
 them. The astonishing prosperity of the Roxbury Company had 
 its natural effect in calling into existence similar establishments in 
 other towns. Manufactories were started at Boston, Framing- 
 ham, Salem, Lynn, Chelsea, Troy, and Staten Island, with capi- 
 tals rallying from one hundred thousand dollars to half a million ; 
 and all of them appeared to prosper. There was an India-rub- 
 ber mania in those years similar to that of petroleum in 1864. 
 Not to invest in India-rubber stock was regarded by some shrewd 
 men as indicative of inferior business talents and general dulness 
 of comprehension. The exterior facts were certainly well calcu- 
 lated to lure even the most wary. Here was a material worth 
 only a few cents a pound, out of which shoes were quickly made, 
 which brought two dollars a pair ! It was a plain case. Besides, 
 there were the India-rubber Companies, all working to their ex- 
 treme capacity, and selling all they could make. 
 
 It was when the business had reached this flourishing stage 
 that Charles Goodyear, a bankrupt hardware merchant of Phila- 
 delphia, first had his attention directed to the material upon which 
 it was founded. In 1834, being in New York on business, he 
 chanced to observe the sign of the Roxbury Company, which then 
 had a depot in that city. He had been reading in the news- 
 papers, not long before, descriptions of the new life-preservers 
 made of India-rubber, an application of the gum that was much 
 extolled. Curiosity induced him to enter the store to examine 
 
CHAELES GOODYEAR. 315 
 
 the life-preservers. He bought one and took it home with him. 
 A native of Connecticut, he possessed in full measure the Yankee 
 propensity to look at a new contrivance, first with a view to un- 
 derstand its principle, and next to see if it cannot be improved. 
 Already he bad had some experience both of the difficulty of in- 
 troducing an improved implement, and of the profit to be derived 
 from its introduction. His father, the head of the firm of A. 
 Goodyear and Sons, of which he was a member, was the first to 
 manufacture hay-forks of spring steel, instead of the heavy, 
 wrought-iroil forks made by the village blacksmith; and Charles 
 Goodyear could remember the time when his father reckoned it 
 a happy day on which he had persuaded a farmer to accept a few 
 of the new forks as a gift, on the condition of giving them a trial. 
 But it was also very fresh in his recollection that those same 
 forks had made their way to almost universal use, had yielded 
 huge profits to his firm, and were still a leading article of its trade, 
 when, in 1830, the failure of Southern houses had compelled it to 
 suspend. He was aware, too, that, if anything could extricate 
 the house of A. Goodyear and Sons from embarrassment, it was 
 their possession of superior methods of manufacturing and their 
 sale of articles improved by their own ingenuity. 
 
 Upon examining his life-preserver, an improvement in the in- 
 flating apparatus occurred to him. When he was next in New 
 York he explained his improvement to the agent of the Eoxbury 
 Company, and offered to sell it. The agent, struck with the in- 
 genuity displayed in the new contrivance, took the inventor into 
 his confidence, partly by way of explaining why the Company 
 could not then buy the improved tube, but principally with a view 
 to enlist the aid of an ingenious mind in overcoming a difficulty 
 that threatened the Company with ruin. He told him that the 
 prosperity of the India-rubber Companies in the United States 
 was wholly fallacious. The Roxbury Company had manufac- 
 tured vast quantities of shoes and fabrics in the cool months of 
 1833 and 1834, which had been readily sold at high prices; but 
 during the following summer, the greater part of them had 
 melted. Twenty thousand dollars' worth had been returned, re- 
 duced to the consistency of common gum, and emitting an odor 
 
316 CHARLES GOODYEAR. 
 
 so offensive that they had been obliged to bury it. New ingredi- 
 ents had been employed, new machinery applied, but still the ar- 
 ticles would dissolve. In some cases, shoes had borne the heat of 
 one summer, and melted the next. The wagon-covers became 
 sticky in the sun, and rigid in the cold. The directors were at 
 their wits' end ; — since it required two years to test a new pro- 
 cess, and meanwhile they knew not whether the articles made by 
 it were valuable or worthless. If they stopped manufacturing, 
 that was certain ruin. If they went on, they might find the prod- 
 uct of a whole winter dissolving on their hands. The capital of 
 the Company was already so far exhausted, that, unless the true 
 method were speedily discovered, it would be compelled to wind 
 up its affairs. The agent urged Mr. Goodyear not to waste time 
 upon minor improvements, but to direct all his efforts to finding 
 out the secret of successfully working the material itself. The 
 Company could not buy his improved inflator ; but let him learn 
 how to make an India-rubber that would stand the summer's heat, 
 and there was scarcely any price which it would not gladly give 
 for the secret. 
 
 The worst apprehensions of the directors of this Company 
 were realized. The public soon became tired of buying India- 
 rubber shoes that could only be saved during the summer by 
 putting them into a refrigerator. In the third year of the ma- 
 nia, India-rubber stock began to decline, and Roxbury itself 
 finally fell to two dollars and a half. Before the close of 183G, 
 all the Companies had ceased to exist, their fall involving many 
 hundreds of families in heavy loss. The clumsy, shapeless shoes 
 from South America were the only ones which the people would 
 buy. It was generally supposed that the secret of their resisting 
 heat was that they were smoked with the leaves of a certain tree, 
 peculiar to South America, and that nothing else in nature would 
 answer the purpose. 
 
 The two millions of dollars lost by these Companies had one 
 result which has proved to be worth many times that sum ; it led 
 Charles Goodyear to undertake the investigation of India-rubber. 
 That chance conversation with the agent of the Roxbury Com- 
 pany fixed his destiny. If he were alive to read these lines, he 
 
CHARLES GOODYEAR. 317 
 
 would, however, protest against the use of such a word as chance 
 in this connection. He really appears to have felt himself "called" 
 to study India-rubber. He says himself: — 
 
 " From the time that his attention was first given to the subject, a 
 strong and abiding impression was made upon his mind, that an object 
 so desirable and important, and so necessary to man's comfort, as the 
 making of gum-elastic available to his use, was most certainly placed 
 within his reach. Having this presentiment, of which he could not di- 
 vest himself under the most trying adversity, he was stimulated with 
 the hope of ultimately attaining this object. 
 
 " Beyond this he would refer the whole to the great Creator, who 
 directs the operations of mind to the development of the properties of 
 matter, in his own way, at the time when they are specially needed, 
 
 influencing some mind for every work or calling Were he to 
 
 refrain from expressing his views thus briefly, he would ever feel that 
 he had done violence to his sentiments." 
 
 This is modestly said, but his friends assure us that he felt it 
 earnestly and habitually. It was, indeed, this steadfast conviction 
 of the possibility of attaining his object, and his religious devotion 
 to it, that constituted his capital in his new business. He had 
 little knowledge of chemistry, and an aversion to complicated cal- 
 culations. He was a ruined man ; for, after a long struggle with 
 misfortune, the firm of A. Goodyear and Sons had surrendered 
 their all to their creditors, and still owed thirty thousand dollars. 
 He had a family, und his health was not robust. Upon returning 
 home after converging with the agent of the Roxbury Company, 
 he was arrested for debt, and compelled to reside within the prison 
 limits. He melted his first pound of India-rubber while he was 
 living within those limits, and struggling to keep out of the jail 
 itself. Thus he began his experiments in circumstances as little 
 favorable as can be imagined. There were only two things in 
 his favor. One was his conviction that India-rubber could be 
 subjugated, and that he was the man destined to subjugate it. 
 The other was, that, India-rubber having fallen to its old price, 
 he could continue his labors as long as he could raise five cents 
 and procure access to a fire. The very odium in which business- 
 men held India-rubber, though it long retarded his final triumph, 
 placed an abundance of the native gum within the means even of 
 
318 CHARLES GOODYEAE. 
 
 an inmate of the debtor's prison, in which he often was during 
 the whole period of his experimenting. He was seldom out of 
 jail a whole year from 1835 to 1841, and never out of danger of 
 arrest. 
 
 In a small house in Philadelphia, in the winter of 1834-35, 
 he began his investigations. He melted his gum by the domestic 
 fire, kneaded it with his own hands, spread it upon a marble slab, 
 and rolled it with a rolling-pin. A prospect of success flattered 
 him from the first and lured him on. He was soon able to pro- 1 
 duce sheets of India-rubber which appeared as firm as those im- 
 ported, and which tempted a friend to advance him a sum of 
 money sufficient to enable him to manufacture several hundred 
 pairs of shoes. He succeeded in embossing his shoes in vari- 
 ous patterns, which gave them a novel and elegant appearance. 
 Mindful, however, of the disasters of the Roxbury Company, he 
 had the prudence to store his shoes until the summer. The hot 
 days of June reduced them all to soft and stinking paste. His 
 friend was discouraged, and refused him further aid. For his 
 own part, such experiences as this, though they dashed his spirits 
 for a while, stimulated him to new efforts. 
 
 It now occurred to him, that perhaps it was the turpentine 
 used in dissolving the gum, or the lampblack employed to color 
 it, that spoiled his product. He esteemed it a rare piece of luck 
 to procure some barrels of the sap not smoked, and still liquid. 
 On going to the shed where the precious sap was deposited, he 
 was accosted by an Irishman in his employ, who, in high glee, 
 informed him that he had discovered the secret, pointing to his 
 overalls, which he had dipped into the sap, and which were nicely 
 coated with firm India-rubber. For a moment he thought that 
 Jerry might have blundered into the secret. The man, however, 
 sat down on a barrel near the fire, and, on attempting to rise, 
 found himself glued to his seat and his legs stuck together. He 
 had to be cut out of his overalls. The master proceeded to ex- 
 periment with the sap, but soon discovered that the handsome 
 white cloth made of it bore the heat no better than that which 
 was produced in the usual manner. 
 
 It is remarkable, that inventors seldom derive direct aid from 
 
CHARLES GOODYEAR. 319 
 
 the science of their day. James Watt modestly ascribes to 
 Professor Black part of the glory of his improvements in the 
 steam-engine ; but it seems plain from his own narrative, that 
 he made his great invention of the condenser without any assist- 
 ance. Professor Black assisted to instruct and form him ; but 
 the flash of genius, which made the steam-engine what we now 
 see it, was wholly his own. The science of Glasgow was dili- 
 gently questioned by him upon the defects of the old engine, but 
 it gave him no hint of the remedy. It was James Watt, mathe- 
 matical-instrument maker, earning fourteen shillings a week, who 
 brooded over his little model until the conception of the condenser 
 burst upon him, as he was taking his Sunday afternoon stroll on 
 Glasgow Green. Goodyear had a similar experience. Phila- 
 delphia has always been noted for its chemists and its chemical 
 works, and that city still supplies the greater part of the country 
 with manufactured drugs and chemists' materials. Nevertheless, 
 though Goodyear explained his difficulties to professors, physi- 
 cians, and chemists, hone of them could give him valuable infor- 
 mation ; none suggested an experiment that produced a useful 
 result. We know not, indeed, whether science has ever explained 
 his final success. 
 
 Satisfied that nothing could be done with India-rubber pure 
 and simple, he concluded that a compound of some substance 
 with India-rubber could alone render the gum available. He 
 was correct in this conjecture, but it remained to be discovered 
 whether there was such a substance in nature. He tried every- 
 thing he could think of. For a short time he was elated with 
 the result of his experiments with magnesia, mixing half a pound 
 of magnesia with a pound of gum. This compound had the 
 advantage of being whiter than the pure sap. It was so firm 
 that he used it as leather in the binding of a book. In a few 
 weeks, however, he had the mortification of seeing his elegant 
 white book-covers fermenting and softening. Afterwards, they 
 grew as hard and brittle as shell, and so they remain to this day. 
 
 By this time, the patience of his friends and his own little fund 
 of money were both exhausted ; and, one by one, the relics of 
 his former prosperity, even to his wife's trinkets, found their way 
 
320 CHARLES GOODYEAR. 
 
 to the pawnbroker. He was a sanguine man, as inventors need 
 to be, always feeling that he was on the point of succeeding. 
 The very confidence with which he announced a new conception 
 served at length to close all ears to his solicitations. In the second 
 year of his investigation he removed his family to the country, 
 and went to New York, in quest of some one who had still a 
 little faith in India-rubber. His credit was then at so low an ebb 
 that he was obliged to deposit with the landlord a quantity of 
 linen, spun by his excellent wife. It was never redeemed. It 
 was sold at auction to pay the first quarter's rent ; and his furni- 
 ture also would have been seized, but that he had taken the pre- 
 caution to sell it himself in Philadelphia, and had placed in his 
 cottage articles of too little value to tempt the hardest creditor. 
 
 In New York, — the first resort of the enterprising and the 
 last refuge of the unfortunate, — he found two old friends; one 
 of whom lent him a room in Gold Street for a laboratory, and 
 the other, a druggist, supplied him with materials on credit. 
 Again his hopes were flattered by an apparent success. By boil- 
 ing his compound of gum and magnesia in quicklime and water, 
 an article was produced which seemed to be all that he could 
 desire. Some sheets of India-rubber made by this process drew 
 a medal at the fair of the American Institute in 1835, and were 
 much commended in the newspapers. Nothing could exceed the 
 smoothness and firmness of the surface of these sheets ; nor have 
 they to this day been surpassed in these particulars. He obtained 
 a patent for the process, manufactured a considerable quantity, 
 sold his product readily, and thought his difficulties were at an 
 end. In a few weeks his hopes were dashed to the ground. He 
 found that a drop of weak acid, such as apple-juice or vinegar 
 and water, instantly annihilated the effect of the lime, and made 
 the beautiful surface of his cloth sticky. 
 
 Undaunted, he next tried the experiment of mixing quicklime 
 with pure gum. He tells us that, at this time, he used to prepare 
 a gallon jug of quicklime at his room in Gold Street, and carry it 
 on his shoulder to Greenwich Village, distant three miles, where 
 he had access to horse-power for working his compound. This ex- 
 periment, too, was a failure. The lime in a short time appeared 
 
CHARLES GOODYEAR. 321 
 
 to consume the gurn with which it was mixed, leaving a substance 
 that crumbled to pieces. 
 
 Accident suggested his next process, which, though he knew it 
 not, was a itep toward his final success. Except his almost un- 
 paralleled perseverance, the most marked trait in the character of 
 this singular man was his love for beautiful forms and colors. An 
 incongruous garment or decoration upon a member of his family, 
 or anything tawdry or ill-arranged in a room, gave him positive 
 distress. Accordingly, we always find him endeavoring to deco- 
 rate his India-rubber fabrics. It was in bronzing the surface of 
 some India-rubber drapery that the accident happened to which 
 we have referred. Desiring to remove the bronze from a piece 
 of the drapery, he applied aquafortis for the purpose, which did 
 indeed have the effect desired, but it also discolored the fabric 
 and appeared to spoil it. He threw away the piece as useless. 
 Several days after, it occurred to him that he had not sufficiently 
 examined the effect of the aquafortis, and, hurrying to his room, 
 he was fortunate enough to find it again. A remarkable change 
 appeared to have been made in the India-rubber. He does not 
 seem to have been aware that aquafortis is two fifths sulphuric acid. 
 Still less did he ever suspect that the surface of his drapery had 
 really been " vulcanized." All he knew was, that India-rubber 
 cloth " cured," as he termed it, by aquafortis, was incomparably 
 superior to any previously made, and bore a degree of heat that 
 rendered it available for many valuable purposes. 
 
 He was again a happy man. A partner, with ample capital, 
 joined him. He went to Washington and patented his process. 
 He showed his specimens to President Jackson, who expressed in 
 writing his approval of them. Returning to New York, he pre- 
 pared to manufacture on a great scale, hired the abandoned India- 
 rubber works on Staten Island, and engaged a store in Broadway 
 for the sale of his fabrics. In the midst of these grand prepara- 
 tions, his zeal in experimenting almost cost him his life. Having 
 generated a large quantity of poisonous gas in his close room, he 
 was so nearly suffocated that it was six weeks before he recov- 
 ered his health. Before he had begun to produce his fabrics in 
 any considerable quantity, the commercial storm of 1836 swept 
 14* v 
 
322 CHARLES GOODYEAR. 
 
 away the entire property of his partner, which put a complete 
 stop to the operations in India-rubber, and reduced poor Good- 
 year to his normal condition of beggary. Beggary it literally 
 was ; for he was absolutely dependent upon others for the means 
 of sustaining life. He mentions that, soon after this crushing 
 blow, his family having previously joined him in New York, he 
 awoke one morning to discover that he had neither an atom of 
 food for them, nor a cent to buy it with. Putting in his pocket 
 an article that he supposed a pawnbroker would value, he set out 
 in the hope of procuring enough money to sustain them for one 
 day. Before reaching the sign, so familiar to him, of the three 
 Golden Balls, he met a terrible being to a man in his situation, — 
 a creditor ! Hungry and dejected, he prepared his mind for a 
 torrent of bitter reproaches ; for this gentleman was one whose 
 patience he felt he had abused. What was his relief when his 
 creditor accosted him gayly with, " Well, Mr. Goodyear, what 
 can I do for you to-day ? " His first thought was, that an insult 
 was intended, so preposterous did it seem that this man could 
 really desire to aid him further. Satisfied that the offer was well 
 meant, he told his friend that he had come out that morning in 
 search of food for his family, and that a loan of fifteen dollars 
 would greatly oblige him. The money was instantly produced, 
 which enabled him to postpone his visit to the pawnbroker for 
 several days. The pawnbroker was still, however, his frequent 
 resource all that year, until the few remains of his late brief pros- 
 perity had all disappeared. 
 
 But he never for a moment let go his hold upon India-rubber. 
 A timely loan of a hundred dollars from an old friend enabled 
 him to remove his family to Staten Island, near the abandoned 
 India-rubber factory. Having free access to the works, he and 
 his wife contrived to manufacture a few articles of his improved 
 cloth, and to sell enough to provide daily bread. His great ob- 
 ject there was to induce the directors of the suspended Company 
 to recommence operations upon his new process. But so com- 
 pletely sickened were they of the very name of a material which 
 had involved them in so much loss and discredit, that during the 
 six months of his residence on the Island he never succeeded in 
 
CHAKLES GOODYEAR. 323 
 
 persuading one man to do so much as come to the factory and 
 look at his specimens. There were thousands of dollars' worth 
 of machinery there, but not a single shareholder cared even to 
 know the condition of the property. This was the more remark- 
 able, since he was unusually endowed by nature with the power 
 to inspire other men with his own confidence. The magnates of 
 Staten Island, however, involved as they were in the general 
 shipwreck of property and credit, were inexorably deaf to his 
 elocmence. 
 
 As he had formerly exhausted Philadelphia, so now New 
 York seemed exhausted. He became even an object of ridi- 
 cule. He was regarded as an India-rubber monomaniac. One 
 of his New York friends having been asked how Mr. Goodyear 
 could be recognized in the street, replied : " If you see a man 
 with an India-rubber coat on, India-rubber shoes, an India- 
 rubber cap, and in his pocket an India-rubber purse, with not a 
 cent in it, that is he." He was in the habit then of wearing his 
 material in every form, with the twofold view of testing and ad- 
 vertising it. 
 
 In September, 183G, aided again by a small loan, he packed a 
 few of his best specimens in his carpet-bag, and set out alone for 
 the cradle of the India-rubber manufacture, — Roxbury. Th- 
 rum of the great Company there was then complete, and the 
 factory was abandoned. All that part of Massachusetts was 
 suffering from the total depreciation of the India-rubber stocks. 
 There were still, however, two or three persons who could not 
 quite give up India-rubber. Mr. Chaffee, the originator of the 
 manufacture in America, welcomed warmly a brother experi- 
 menter, admired his specimens, encouraged him to persevere, 
 procured him friends, and, what was more important, gave him 
 the use of the enormous machinery standing idle in the factory. 
 A brief, delusive prosperity again relieved the monotony of 
 mi-fortune. By his new process, he made shoes, piano-covers, 
 and carriage-cloths, so superior to any previously produced in the 
 United States as to cause a temporary revival of the business, 
 which enabled him to sell rights to manufacture under his 
 patents. His profits in a single year amounted to four or five 
 
324 CHARLES GOODYEAR. 
 
 thousand dollars. Again he had his family around him, and felt a 
 boundless confidence in the future. 
 
 An event upon which he had depended for the completeness 
 of his triumph plunged him again into ruin. He received an 
 order from the government for a hundred and fifty India-rubber 
 mail-bags. Having perfect confidence in his ability to execute 
 this order, he gave the greatest possible publicity to it. All the 
 world should now see that Goodyear's India-rubber was all that 
 Goodyear had represented it. The bags were finished ; and 
 beautiful bags they were, — smooth, firm, highly polished, well- 
 shaped, and indubitably water-proof. He had them hung up all 
 round the factory, and invited every one to come and inspect 
 them. They were universally admired, and the maker was 
 congratulated upon his success. It was in the summer that 
 these fatal bags were finished. Having occasion to be absent 
 for a month, he left them hanging in the factory. Judge of his 
 consternation when, on his return, he found them softening, 
 fermenting, and dropping off their handles. The aquafortis did 
 indeed " cure " the surface of his India-rubber, but only the sur- 
 face. Very thin cloth made by this process was a useful and 
 somewhat durable article ; but for any other purpose, it was 
 valueless. The public and signal failure of the mail-bags, 
 together with the imperfection of all his products except his 
 thinnest cloth, suddenly and totally destroyed his rising busi- 
 ness. Everything he possessed that was salable was sold at 
 auction to pay his debts. He was again penniless and destitute, 
 with an increased family and an aged father dependent upon 
 him. 
 
 His friends, his brothers, and his wife now joined in dissuad- 
 ing him from further experiments. Were not four years of 
 such vicissitude enough? Who had ever touched India-rubber 
 without loss? Could he hope to succeed, when so many able 
 and enterprising men had failed ? Had he a right to keep his j 
 family in a condition so humiliating and painful ? He had 
 succeeded in the hardware business; why not return to it? 
 There were those who would join him in any rational under- 
 taking; but how could he expect that any one would be will- 
 
CHARLES GOODYEAR. 325 
 
 ing to throw more money into a bottomless pit that had already 
 ingulfed millions without result? These arguments he could 
 not answer, and we cannot ; the friends of all the great inventors 
 have had occasion to use the same. It seemed highly absurd to 
 the friends of Fitch, Watt, Fulton, "Wedgwood, Whitney, Ark- 
 wright, that they should forsake the beaten track of business to 
 pursue a path that led through the wilderness to nothing but 
 wilderness. Not one of these men, perhaps, could have made a 
 reasonable reply to the remonstrances of their friends. They 
 only felt, as poor Goodyear felt, that the steep and thorny path 
 which they were treading was the path they must pursue. A 
 power of which they could give no satisfactory account urged 
 them on. And when we look closely into the lives of such men, 
 we observe that, in their dark days, some trifling circumstance 
 was always occurring that set them upon new inquiries and gave 
 them new hopes. It might be an ignis fatuus that led them 
 farther astray, or it might be genuine light which brought them 
 into the true path. 
 
 Goodyear might have yielded to his friends on this occasion, for 
 he was an affectionate man, devoted to his family, had not one of 
 those trilling events occurred which inflamed his curiosity anew. 
 During his late transient prosperity, he had employed a man, Na- 
 thaniel Hay ward by name, who had been foreman of one of the 
 extinct India-rubber companies. He found him in charge of the 
 abandoned factory, and still making a few articles on his own ac- 
 count by a new process. To harden his India-rubber, he put a 
 very small quantity of sulphur into it, or sprinkled sulphur upon 
 the surface and dried it in the sun. Mr. Goodyear was surprised 
 to observe that this process seemed to produce the same effect as 
 tin' application of aquafortis. It does not appear to have occurred 
 to him that Ilayward's process and his own were essentially the 
 same. A chemical dictionary would have informed him that sul- 
 phuric acid enters largely into the composition of aquafortis, from 
 ■which he might have inferred that the only difference between 
 the two methods was, that Hay ward employed the sun, and Good- 
 year nitric acid, to give the sulphur effect. Hayward's goods, 
 however, were liable to a serious objection : the smell of the sul- 
 
326 CHARLES GOODYEAR. 
 
 phur, in warm weather, was intolerable. Hayward, it appears, 
 was a very illiterate man ; and the only account he could give of 
 his invention was, that it was revealed to him in a dream. His 
 process was of so little use to him, that Goodyear bought his pat- 
 ent for a small sum, and gave him employment at monthly wages 
 until the mail-bag disaster deprived him of the means of doing so. 
 
 In combining sulphur with India-rubber, Goodyear had ap- 
 proached so near his final success that one step more brought him 
 to it. He was certain that he was very close to the secret. He 
 saw that sulphur had a mysterious power over India-rubber when 
 a union could be effected between the two substances. True, 
 there was an infinitesimal quantity of sulphur in his mail-bags, 
 and they had melted in the shade ; but the surface of his cloth, 
 powdered with the sulphur and dried in the sun, bore the sun's 
 heat. Here was a mystery. The problem was, how to produce 
 in a mass of India-rubber the change effected on the surface 
 by sulphur and sun ? He made numberless experiments. He 
 mixed with the gum large quantities of sulphur, and small quanti- 
 ties. He exposed his compound to the sun, and held it near a 
 fire. He felt that he had the secret in his hands ; but for many 
 weary months it eluded him. 
 
 And, after all, it was an accident that revealed it ; but an acci- 
 dent that no man in the world but Charles Goodyear could have 
 interpreted, nor he, but for his five years' previous investigation. 
 At Woburn one day, in the spring of 1839, he was standing with 
 his brother and several other persons near a very hot stove. He 
 held in his hand a mass of his compound of sulphur and gum, 
 upon which he was expatiating in his usual vehement manner, — 
 the company exhibiting the indifference to which he was accus- 
 tomed. In the crisis of his argument he made a violent gesture, 
 which brought the mass in contact with the stove, which was hot 
 enough to melt India-rubber instantly ; upon looking at it a 
 moment after, he perceived that his compound had not melted in 
 the least degree ! It had charred as leather chars, but no part of 
 the surface had dissolved. There was not a sticky place upon it. 
 To say that he was astonished at this would but faintly express his 
 ecstasy of amazement. The result was absolutely new to all ex- 
 
CHARLES GOODYEAR. 327 
 
 perience, — India-rubber not melting in contact with red-hot 
 iron ! A man must have been five years absorbed in the pursuit 
 of an object to comprehend his emotions. He felt as Columbus 
 felt when he saw the land-bird alighting upon his ship, and the 
 drift-wood floating by. But, like Columbus, he was surrounded 
 with an unbelieving crew. Eagerly he showed his charred India- 
 rubber to his brother, and to the other bystanders, and dwelt 
 upon the novelty and marvellousness of his fact. They regarded 
 it with complete indifference. The good man had worn them all 
 out. Fifty times before, he had run to them, exulting in some 
 new discovery, and they supposed, of course, that this was another 
 of his chimeras. 
 
 He followed the new clew with an enthusiasm which his 
 friends would have been justified in calling frenzy, if success had 
 not finally vindicated him. He soon discovered that his com- 
 pound would not melt at any degree of heat. It next occurred 
 to him to ascertain at how low a temperature it would char, and 
 whether it was not possible to arrest the combustion at a point 
 that would leave the India-rubber elastic, but deprived of its 
 adhesiveness. A single experiment proved that this was possible. 
 After toasting a piece of his compound before an open fire, he 
 found that, while part of it was charred, a rim of India-rubber 
 round the charred portion was elastic still, and even more elastic 
 than pure gum. In a few days he had established three facts ; — 
 first, that this rim of India-rubber would bear a temperature of 
 two hundred and seventy-eight degrees without charring ; second, 
 that it would not melt or soften at any heat ; third, that, placed 
 between blocks of ice and left out of doors all night, it would not 
 stiffen in the least degree. He had triumphed, and he knew it. 
 1 le tells us that he now " felt himself amply repaid for the past, 
 and quite indifferent as to the trials of the future." It was well 
 he was so, for his darkest days were before him, and he was still 
 six years from a practicable success. He had, indeed, proved that 
 a compound of sulphur and India-rubber, in proper proportions 
 and in certain conditions, being subjected for a certain time to a 
 certain degree of heat, undergoes a change which renders it per- 
 fectly available for all the uses to which he had before attempted 
 
328 CHARLES GOODYEAR. 
 
 in vain to apply it. But it remained to be ascertained what were 
 those proper proportions, what were those conditions, what was 
 that degree of heat, what was that certain time, and by what 
 means the heat could be best applied. 
 
 The difficulty of all this may be inferred when we state that 
 at the present time it takes an intelligent man a year to learn 
 how to conduct the process with certainty, though he is provided, 
 from the start, with the best implements and appliances which 
 twenty years' experience has suggested. And poor Goodyear 
 had now reduced himself, not merely to poverty, but to isolation. 
 No friend of his could conceal his impatience when he heard 
 him pronounce the word India-rubber. Business-men recoiled 
 from the name of it. He tells us that two entire years passed, 
 after he had made his discovery, before he had convinced one 
 human being of its value. Now, too, his experiments could no 
 longer be carried on with a few pounds of India-rubber, a quart 
 of turpentine, a phial of aquafortis, and a little lampblack. He 
 wanted the means of producing a high, uniform, and controllable 
 degree of heat, — a matter of much greater difficulty than he 
 anticipated. We catch brief glimpses of him at this time in the 
 volumes of testimony. "We see him waiting for his wife to draw 
 the loaves from her oven, that he might put into it a batch of 
 India-rubber to bake, and watching it all the evening, far into the 
 night, to see what effect was produced by one hour's, two hours', 
 three hours', six hours' baking. We see him boiling it in his 
 wife's saucepans, suspending it before the nose of her teakettle, 
 and hanging it from the handle of that vessel to within an inch 
 of the boiling water. We see him roasting it in the ashes and 
 in hot sand, toasting it before a slow fire and before a quick fire, 
 cooking it for one hour and for twenty-four hours, changing the 
 proportions of his compound and mixing them in different ways. 
 No success rewarded him while he employed only domestic uten- 
 sils. Occasionally, it is true, he produced a small piece of per- 
 fectly vulcanized India-rubber ; but upon subjecting other pieces 
 to precisely the same process, they would blister or char. 
 
 Then we see him resorting to the shops and factories in the 
 neighborhood of Woburn, asking the privilege of using an oven 
 
CHARLES GOODYEAB. S29 
 
 after working hours, or of hanging a piece of India-rubher in the 
 " man-hole " of the boiler. The foremen testify that he was a 
 great plague to them, and smeared their works with his sticky 
 compound ; but, though they all regarded him as little better 
 than a troublesome lunatic, they all appear to have helped him 
 very willingly. He frankly confesses that he lived at this time 
 on charity ; for, although he felt confident of being able to repay 
 the small sums which pity for his family enabled him to borrow, 
 his neighbors who lent him the money were as far as possible 
 from expecting payment. Pretending to lend, they meant to 
 give. One would pay his butcher's bill or his milk bill ; another 
 would send in a barrel of flour ; another would take in payment 
 some articles of the old stock of India-rubber ; and some of the 
 farmers allowed his children to gather sticks in their fields to 
 heat his hillocks of sand containing masses of sulphui'ized India- 
 rubber. If the people of New England were not the most 
 " neighborly " people in the world, his family must have starved, 
 or he must have given up his experiments. But, with all the 
 generosity of his neighbors, his children were often sick, hungry, 
 and cold, without medicine, food, or fuel. One witness testifies : 
 " I found (in 1839) that they had not fuel to burn nor food to 
 eat, and did not know where to get a morsel of food from one 
 day to another, unless it was sent in to them." "We can neither 
 justify nor condemn their father. Imagine Columbus within 
 sight of the new world, and his obstinate crew declaring it was 
 only a mirage, and refusing to row him ashore ! Never was 
 mortal man surer that he had a fortune in his hand, than Charles 
 Goodyear was when he would take a piece of scorched and dingy 
 India-rubber from his pocket and expound its marvellous proper- 
 ties to a group of incredulous villagers. Sure also was he that 
 he was just upon the point of a practicable success. Give him but 
 an oven, and would he not turn you out fire-proof and cold-proof 
 India-rubber, as fast as a baker can produce loaves of bread ? 
 Nor was it merely the hope of deliverance from his pecuniary 
 straits that urged him on. In all the records of his career, we 
 perceive traces of something nobler than this. His health being 
 always infirm, he was haunted with the dread of dying before he 
 
830 CHARLES GOODYEAR. 
 
 had reached a point in his discoveries where other men, influ- 
 enced by ordinary motives, could render them available. 
 
 By the time that he had exhausted the patience of the foremen 
 of the works near Woburn, he had come to the conclusion that 
 an oven was the proper means of applying heat to his compound. 
 An oven he forthwith determined to build. Having obtained the 
 use of a corner of a factory yard, his aged father, two of his 
 brothers, his little son, and himself sallied forth, with . pickaxe 
 and shovels, to begin the work : and when they had done all that 
 unskilled labor could effect towards it, he induced a mason to 
 complete it, and paid him in bricklayers' aprons made of aqua- 
 fortized India-rubber. This first oven was a tantalizing failure. 
 The heat was neither uniform nor controllable. Some of the 
 pieces of India-rubber would come out so perfectly " cured " as 
 to demonstrate the utility of his discovery ; but others, prepared 
 in precisely the same manner, as far as he could discern, were 
 spoiled, either by blistering or charring. He was puzzled and 
 distressed beyond description ; and no single voice consoled or 
 encouraged him. Out of the first piece of cloth which he suc- 
 ceeded in vulcanizing he had a coat made for himself, which was 
 not an ornamental garment in its best estate ; but, to prove to 
 the unbelievers that it would stand fire, he brought it so often in 
 contact with hot stoves, that at last it presented an exceedingly 
 dingy appearance. His coat did not impress the public favorably, 
 and it served to confirm the opinion that he was laboring under 
 a mania. 
 
 In the midst of his first disheartening expei'iments with sul- 
 phur, he had an opportunity of escaping at once from his troubles. 
 A house in Paris made him an advantageous offer for the use of 
 his aquafortis process. From the abyss of his misery the honest 
 man promptly replied, that that process, valuable as it was, was 
 about to be superseded by a new method, which he was then 
 perfecting, and as soon as he had developed it sufficiently he 
 should be glad to close with their offers. Can we wonder that 
 his neighbors thought him mad ? 
 
 It was just after declining the French proposal that he endured 
 his worst extremity of want and humiliation. It was in the win- 
 
CHAKLES GOODYEAR. 331 
 
 ter of 1839 - 40. One of those long and terrible snow-storms for 
 which New England is noted had been raging for many hours, 
 and he awoke one morning to find his little cottage half buried in 
 snow, the storm still continuing, and in his house not an atom of 
 fuel nor a morsel of food. His children were very young, and 
 he was himself sick and feeble. The charity of his neighbors 
 was exhausted, and he had not the courage to face their re- 
 proaches. As he looked out of the window upon the dreary and 
 tumultuous scene, " fit emblem of his condition," he remarks, he 
 called to mind that, a few days before, an acquaintance, a mere 
 acquaintance, who lived some miles off, had given him upon the 
 road a more friendly greeting than he was then accustomed to 
 receive. It had cheered his heart as he trudged sadly by, and it 
 now returned vividly to his mind. To this gentleman he deter- 
 mined to apply for relief, if he could reach his house. Terrible 
 was his struggle with the wind and the deep drifts. Often he 
 was ready to faint with fatigue, sickness, and hunger, and he 
 would be obliged to sit down upon a bank of snow to rest. He 
 reached the house and told his story, not omitting the oft-told tale 
 of his new discovery, — that mine of wealth, if only he could 
 procure the means of working it ! The eager eloquence of the 
 inventor was seconded by the gaunt and yellow face of the man. 
 His generous acquaintance entertained him cordially, and lent 
 him a sum of money, which not only carried his family through 
 the worst of the winter, but enabled him to continue his experi- 
 ments on a small scale. O. B. Coolidge, of Woburn, was the 
 name of this benefactor. 
 
 On another occasion, when he was in the most urgent need of 
 materials, he looked about his house to see if there was left one 
 relic of better days upon which a little money could be borrowed. 
 There was nothing except his children's school-books, — the last 
 tilings from which a New-Englander is willing to part. There 
 was no other resource. He gathered them up and sold them for 
 five dollars, with which he laid in a fresh stock of gum and sul- 
 phur, and kept on experimenting. 
 
 Seeing no prospect of success in Massachusetts, he now resolved 
 to make a desperate effort to get to New York, feeling confident 
 
332 CHARLES GOODYEAR. 
 
 that the specimens he could take with him would convince some 
 one of the superiority of his new method. He was beginning to 
 understand the causes of his many failures, but he saw clearly 
 that his compound could not be worked with certainty without 
 expensive apparatus. It Avas a very delicate operation, requiring 
 exactness and promptitude. The conditions upon which success 
 depended were numerous, and the failure of one spoiled all. To 
 vulcanize India-rubber is about as difficult as to make perfect 
 bread ; but the art of bread-making was the growth of ages, and 
 Charles Goodyear was only ten years and a half in perfecting 
 his process. Thousands of ingenious men and women, aided by 
 many happy accidents, must have contributed to the successive 
 invention of bread ; but he was only one man, poor and sick. It 
 cost him thousands of failures to learn that a little acid in his 
 sulphur caused the blistering ; that his compound must be heated 
 almost immediately after being mixed, or it would never vulcan- 
 ize ; that a portion of white lead in the compound greatly facili- 
 tated the operation and improved the result ; and when he had 
 learned these facts, it still required costly and laborious experi- 
 ments to devise the best methods of compounding his ingredients, 
 the best proportions, the best mode of heating, the proper dura- 
 tion of the heating, and the various useful effects that could be 
 produced by varying the proportions and the degree of heat. He 
 tells us that many times, when, by exhausting every resource, he 
 had prepared a quantity of his compound for heating, it was 
 spoiled because he could not, with his inadequate apparatus, ap- 
 ply the heat soon enough. 
 
 To New York, then, he directed his thoughts. Merely to get 
 there cost him a severer and a longer effort than men in general 
 are capable of making. First he walked to Boston, ten miles 
 distant, where he hoped to be able to borrow from an old ac- 
 quaintance fifty dollars, with which to provide for his family and 
 pay his fare to New York. He not only failed in this, but he 
 was arrested for debt and thrown into prison. Even in prison, 
 while his father was negotiating to secure his release, he labored 
 to interest men of capital in his discovery, and made proposals for 
 founding a factory in Boston. Having obtained his liberty, he 
 
CHARLES GOODYEAR. 333 
 
 went to a hotel, and spent a week in vain efforts to effect a small 
 loan. Saturday night came, and with it his hotel bill, which he 
 had no means of discharging. In an agony of shame and anxie- 
 ty, he went to a friend, and entreated the sum of five dollars to 
 enable him to return home. He was met with a point-blank re- 
 fusal. In the deepest dejection, he walked the streets till late in 
 the night, and strayed at length, almost beside himself, to Cam- 
 bridge, where he ventured to call upon a friend and ask shelter 
 for the night. He was hospitably entertained, and the next morn- 
 ing walked wearily home, penniless and despairing. At the door 
 of his house a member of his family met him with the news that 
 his youngest child, two years of age, whom he had left in perfect 
 health, was dying. In a few hours he had in his house a dead 
 child, but not the means of burying it, and five living dependants 
 without a morsel of food to give them. A storekeeper near by 
 had promised to supply the family, but, discouraged by the un- 
 foreseen length of the father's absence, he had that day refused 
 to trust them further. In these terrible circumstances, he ap- 
 plied to a friend upon whose generosity he knew he could rely, 
 one who had never failed him. He received in reply a letter of 
 severe and cutting reproach, enclosing seven dollars, which bis 
 friend explained was given only out of pity for his innocent and 
 suffering family. A stranger, who chanced to be present when 
 this letter arrived, sent them a barrel of flour, — a timely and 
 blessed relief. The next day the family followed on foot the re- 
 mains of the little child to the grave. 
 
 A relation in a distant part of the country, to whom Goodyear 
 revealed his condition, sent him fifty dollars, which enabled him 
 to e;et to New York. He had touched bottom. The worst of 
 his trials were over. In New York, he had the good fortune to 
 make the acquaintance of two brothers, William Rider and Emory 
 Rider, men of some property and great intelligence, who exam- 
 ined his specimens, listened to his story, believed in him, and 
 agreed to aid him to continue his experiments, and to supply his 
 family until he had rendered his discovery available. Fiom that 
 time, though he was generally embarrassed in his circumstances, 
 his family never wanted bread, and he was never obliged to sus- 
 
334 CHARLES GOODYEAR. 
 
 pend his experiments. Aided by tbe capital, tbe sympathy, and 
 tbe ingenuity of tbe brotbers Rider, be spent a year in New York 
 in the most patient endeavors to overcome the difficulties in 
 beating bis compound. Before he had succeeded, their resources 
 failed. But he had made such progress in demonstrating the 
 practicability of his process, that his brother-in-law, William De 
 Forrest, a noted woollen manufacturer, took hold of the project 
 in earnest, and aided him to bring it to perfection. Once more, 
 however, he was imprisoned for debt. This event conquered his 
 scruples against availing himself of the benefit of the bankrupt 
 act, which finally delivered bim from the danger of arrest. We 
 should add, however, that, as soon as he began to derive income 
 from bis invention, he reassumed his obligations to his old credit- 
 ors, and discharged them gradually. 
 
 It was not till the year 1844, more than ten years after he 
 began to experiment, and more tban five } 7 ears after discovering 
 tbe secret of vulcanization, that he was able to conduct his pro- 
 cess with absolute certainty, and to produce vulcanized India- 
 rubber with the requisite expedition and economy. We can form 
 some conception of the difficulties overcome by the fact, tbat tbe 
 advances of Mr. De Forrest in aid of the experiment reached 
 the sum of forty-six thousand dollars, — an amount tbe inventor 
 did not live long enough to repay. 
 
 His triumph had been long deferred, and we have seen in part 
 how much it had cost him. But his success proved to be richly 
 worth its cost. lie had added to the arts, not a new material 
 merely, but a new class of materials, applicable to a thousand 
 diverse uses. His product had more than the elasticity of India- 
 rubber, while it was divested of all those properties which had 
 lessened its utility. It was still India-rubber, but its surfaces 
 would not adhere, nor would it harden at any degree of cold, nor 
 soften at any degree of heat. It was a cloth impervious to water. 
 It was paper tbat would not tear. It was parchment that would 
 not crease. It was leather which neither rain nor sun would in- 
 jure. It was ebony that could be run into a mould. It was ivory 
 that could be worked like wax. It was wood that never cracked, 
 shrunk, nor decayed. It was metal, " elastic metal," as Daniel 
 
CHARLES GOODYEAR. 335 
 
 Webster termed it, that could be wound round the finger or tied 
 into a knot, and which preserved its elasticity almost like steel. 
 Trifling variations in the ingredients, in the proportions, and in 
 the heating, made it either as pliable as kid, tougher than ox-hide, 
 as elastic as whalebone, or as rigid as flint. 
 
 All this is stated in a moment, but each of these variations in 
 the material, as well as every article made from them, cost this 
 indefatigable man days, weeks, months, or years of experiment. 
 It cost him, for example, several years of most expensive trial to 
 obviate the objection to India-rubber fabrics caused by the liabil- 
 ity of the gum to peel from the cloth. He tried every known 
 textile fabric, and every conceivable process before arriving at 
 the simple expedient of mixing fibre with the gum, by which, 
 at length, the perfect India-rubber cloth was produced. This in- 
 vention he considered only second in value to the discovery of 
 vulcanization. The India-rubber shoe, as we now have it, is an 
 admirable article, — light, strong, elegant in shape, with a fibrous 
 sole that does not readily wear, cut, or slip. As the shoe is made 
 and joined before vulcanization, a girl can make twenty-five pairs 
 in a day. They are cut from the soft sheets of gum and joined 
 by a slight pressure of the hand. But almost every step of this 
 process, now so simple and easy, was patiently elaborated by 
 Charles Goodyear. A million and a half of pairs per annum is 
 now the average number made in the United States by his pro- 
 cess, though the business languishes somewhat from the high 
 price of the raw materials. The gum, which, when Goodyear 
 began his experiments, was a drug at five cents a pound, has 
 recently been sold at one dollar and twenty cents a pound, with 
 all its impurities. Even at this high price the annual import 
 ranges at from four to five millions of pounds. 
 
 Poor Richard informs us that Necessity never makes a good 
 bargain. Mr. Goodyear was always a prey to necessity. Nor 
 was he ever a good man of business. He was too entirely an 
 inventor to know how to dispose of his inventions to advantage; 
 and he could never feel that he had accomplished his mission 
 with regard to India-rubber. As soon as he had brought his 
 shoemaking process to the point where other men could make it 
 
33G CHARLES GOODYEAR. 
 
 profitable, he withdrew from manufacturing, and sold rights to 
 manufacture for the consideration of half a cent per pair. Five 
 cents had been reasonable enough, and would have given him 
 ample means to continue his labors. Half a cent kept him sub- 
 ject to necessity, which seemed to compel him to dispose 
 of other rights at rates equally low. Thus it happened 
 that, when the whole India-rubber business of the country paid 
 him tribute, or ought to have paid it, he remained an embarrassed 
 man. He had, too, the usual fate of inventors, in having to con- 
 tend with the infringers of his rights, — men who owed their all 
 to his ingenuity and perseverance. We may judge, however, of 
 the rapidity with which the business grew, by the fact that, six 
 years after the completion of his vulcanizing process, the holders 
 of rights to manufacture shoes by that process deemed it worth 
 while to employ Daniel Webster to plead their cause, and to 
 stimulate his mind by a fee of twenty-five thousand dollars. It is 
 questionable if Charles Goodyear ever derived that amount from 
 his patents, if we deduct from his receipts the money spent in 
 further developing his discovery. His ill-health obliged him to 
 be abstemious, and he had no expensive tastes. It was only in 
 Ins laboratory that he was lavish, and there he was lavish indeed. 
 His friends still smiled at his zeal, or reproached him for it. 
 It has been only since the mighty growth of the business in his 
 products that they have acknowledged that he was right and that 
 they were wrong. They remember him, sick, meagre, and yel- 
 low, now coming to them with a walking-stick of India-rubber, 
 exulting in the new application of his material, and predicting its 
 general use, while they objected that his stick had cost him fifty 
 dollars ; now running about among the comb factories, trying to 
 get reluctant men to try their tools upon hard India-rubber, and 
 producing at length a set of combs that cost twenty times the 
 price of ivory ones ; now shutting himself up for months, endeav- 
 oring to make a sail of India-rubber fabric, impervious to water, 
 that should never freeze, and to which no sleet or ice should ever 
 cling ; now exhibiting a set of cutlery with India-rubber handles, 
 or a picture set in an India-rubber frame, or a book with India- 
 rubber covers, or a watch with an India-rubber case ; now exper- 
 
CHARLES GOODYEAR. 337 
 
 imenting with India-rubber tiles for floors, which he hoped to 
 make as brilliant in color as those of mineral, as agreeable to the 
 tread as carpet, and as durable as an ancient floor of oak. There 
 is nothing in the history of invention more remarkable than the 
 devotion of this man to his object. No crusader was ever so 
 devoted to his vow, no lover to his mistress, as he was to his 
 purpose of showing mankind what to do with India-rubber. The 
 doorplate of his office was made of it ; his portrait was painted 
 upon and framed with it; his book, as we have seen, was wholly 
 composed of it ; and his mind, by night and day, was surcharged 
 with it. He never went to sleep without having within reach 
 writing materials and the means of making a light, so that, if he 
 should have an idea in the night, he might be able to secure it. 
 Some of his best ideas, he used to say, were saved to mankind 
 by this precaution. 
 
 It is not well for any man to be thus absorbed in his object. 
 To Goodyear, whose infirm constitution peculiarly needed repose 
 and recreation, it was disastrous, and at length fatal. It is well 
 with no man who does not play as well as work. Fortunately, 
 we are all beginning to understand this. We are beginning to 
 see that a devotion to the business of life which leaves no reserve 
 of force and time for social pleasures and the pursuit of knowl- 
 edge, diminishes even our power to conduct business with the 
 sustained and intelligent energy requisite for a safe success. That 
 is a melancholy passage in one of Theodore Parker's letters, 
 written in the premature decline of his powers, in which he la- 
 ments that he had not, like Franklin, joined a club, and taken an 
 occasional ramble with young companions in the country, and 
 played billiards with them in the evening. He added, that he in- 
 tended to lead a better life in these particulars for the future ; but 
 who can reform at forty-seven ? And the worst of it is, that ill- 
 health, the natural ally of all evil, favors intensity, lessening 
 both our power and our inclination to get out of the routine that 
 is destroying us. Goodyear, always sick, had been for so many 
 years the slave of his pursuit, he had been so spurred on by ne- 
 cessity, and lured by partial success, that, when at last he might 
 have rested, he could not. 
 
 15 v 
 
338 CHARLES GOODYEAR. 
 
 It does not become us, however, who reap the harvest, to cen- 
 sure him who wore himself out in sowing the seed. The harvest 
 is great, — greater than any but he anticipated. His friends 
 know now that he never over-estimated the value of his invention. 
 They know now what he meant when he said that no one but 
 himself would take the trouble to apply his material to the thou- 
 sand uses of which it was capable, because each new application 
 demanded a course of experiments that would discourage any one 
 who entered upon it only with a view to profit. The India-rub- 
 ber manufacture, since his death, has increased greatly in extent, 
 but not much in other respects, and some of the ideas which he 
 valued most remain undeveloped. He died, for example, in the 
 conviction that sails of India-rubber cloth would finally supersede 
 all others. He spent six months and five thousand dollars in pro- 
 ducing one or two specimens, which were tried and answered their 
 purpose well ; but he was unable to bring his sail-making process* 
 to an available perfection. The sole difficulty was to make his 
 sails as light as those of cloth. He felt certain of being able to 
 accomplish this ; but in the multiplicity of his objects and the 
 pressure of his embarrassments, he was compelled to defer the 
 completion of his plans to a day that never came. 
 
 The catalogue of his successful efforts is long and striking. 
 The second volume of his book is wholly occupied with that cat- 
 alogue. He lived to see his material applied to nearly five hun- 
 dred uses, to give employment in England, France, Germany, 
 and the United States to sixty thousand persons, who annually 
 produced merchandise of the value of eight millions of dollars. 
 A man does much who only founds a new kind of industry ; and 
 he does more when that industry gives value to a commodity that 
 before was nearly valueless. But we should greatly undervalue 
 the labors of Charles Goodyear, if we regarded them only as 
 opening a new source of wealth ; for there have been found many 
 uses of India-rubber, as prepared by him, which have an impor- 
 tance far superior to their commercial value. Art, science, and 
 humanity are indebted to him for a material which serves the 
 purposes of them all, and serves them as no other known mate- 
 rial could. 
 
CHARLES GOODYEAR. 339 
 
 Some of our readers have been out on the picket-line during 
 the war. They know what it is to stand motionless in a wet and 
 miry rifle-pit, in the chilling rain of a Southern winter's night. 
 Protected by India-rubber boots, blanket, and cap, the picket- 
 man performs in comparative comfort a duty which, without that 
 protection, would make him a cowering and shivering wretch, and 
 plant in his bones a latent rheumatism to be the torment of his 
 old age. Goodyear's India-rubber enables him to come in from 
 his ]>it as dry as he was when he went into it, and he comes in to 
 lie down with an India-rubber blanket between him and the damp 
 earth. If he is wounded, it is an India-rubber stretcher, or an 
 ambulance provided with India-rubber springs, that gives him 
 least pain on his way to the hospital, where, if his wound is seri- 
 ous, a water-bed of India-rubber gives ease to his mangled frame, 
 and enables him (o endure the wearing tedium of an unchanged 
 posture. Bandages and supporters of India-rubber avail him much 
 when first he begins to hobble about his ward. A piece of India- 
 rubber at the end of his crutch lessens the jar and the noise of 
 his motions, and a cushion of India-rubber is comfortable to his 
 armpit The springs which close the hospital door, the bands 
 which exclude the drafts from doors and windows, his pocket- 
 comb and cup and thimble, are of the same material. From jars 
 hermetically closed with India-rubber he receives the fresh fruit 
 that is so exquisitely delicious to a fevered mouth. The instru- 
 ment-case of his surgeon and the store-room of his matron con- 
 tain many articles whose utility is increased by the use of it, and 
 some that could be made of nothing else. His shirts and sheets 
 pass through an India-rubber clothes-wringer, which saves the 
 Btrength of the washerwoman and the fibre of the fabric. When 
 the government presents him with an artificial leg, a thick heel and 
 elastic sole of India-rubber give him comfort every time he puts 
 it to the ground. An India-rubber pipe with an inserted bowl 
 of clay, a billiard-table provided with India-rubber cushions and 
 balls, can solace his long convalescence. 
 
 In the field, this material is not less strikingly useful. During 
 this war, armies have marched through ten days of rain, and slept 
 through as many rainy nights, and come out dry into the return- 
 
340 CHARLES GOODYEAR. 
 
 ing sunshine, with its artillery untarnished and its ammunition un- 
 injured, because men and munitions were all under India-rubber. 
 When Goodyear's ideas are carried out, it will be by pontoons of 
 inflated India-rubber that rivers will be crossed. A pontoon-train 
 will then consist of one wagon drawn by two mules ; and if the 
 march is through a country that furnishes the wooden part of the 
 bridge, a man may carry a pontoon on his back in addition to his 
 knapsack and blanket. 
 
 In the naval service we meet this material in a form that at- 
 tracts little attention, though it serves a purpose of perhaps un- 
 equalled utility. Mechanics are aware, that, from the time of 
 James Watt to the year 1850, the grand desideratum of the en- 
 gine-builder was a perfect joint, — a joint that would not admit 
 the escape of steam. A steam-engine is all over joints and valves, 
 from most of which some steam sooner or later would escape, 
 since an engine in motion produces a continual jar that finally 
 impaired the best joint that art could make. The old joint-mak- 
 ing process was exceedingly expensive. The two surfaces of 
 iron had to be most carefully ground and polished, then screwed 
 together, and the edges closed with white lead. By the use of a 
 thin sheet of vulcanized India-rubber, placed between the iron 
 surfaces, not only is all this expense saved, but a joint is produced 
 that is absolutely and permanently perfect. It is not even neces- 
 sary to rub off" the roughness of the casting, for the rougher the 
 surface, the better the joint. Goodyear's invention supplies an 
 article that Watt and Fulton sought in vain, and which would 
 seem to put the finishing touch to the steam-engine, — if, in these 
 days of improvement, anything whatever could be considered 
 finished. At present, all engines are provided with these joints 
 and valves, which save steam, diminish jar, and facilitate the 
 separation of the parts. It is difficult to compute the value of 
 this improvement, in money. We are informed, however, by 
 competent authority, that a steamer of two thousand tons saves 
 ten thousand dollars a year by its use. Such is the demand for 
 the engine-packing, as it is termed, that the owners of the factory 
 where it is chiefly made, after constructing the largest water- 
 wheel in the world, found it insufficient for their growing business, 
 
 
CHARLES GOODYEAR. 341 
 
 and were obliged to add to it a steam-engine of two hundred 
 horse-power. The New York agent of this company sells about 
 a million dollars' worth of packing per annum. 
 
 Belting for engines is another article for which Goodyear's 
 compound is superior to any other, inasmuch as the surface of 
 the India-rubber clings to the iron wheel better than leather or 
 fabric. Leather polishes and slips ; India-rubber does not polish, 
 and holds to the iron so firmly as to save a large percentage of 
 power. It is no small advantage merely to save leather for other 
 uses, since leather is an article of which the supply is strictly 
 limited. It is not uncommon for India-rubber belts to be fur- 
 nished, which, if made of leather, would require more than a 
 hundred hides. Emery-wheels of this material have been recent- 
 ly introduced. They were formerly made of wood coated with 
 emery,' which soon wore off. In the new manufacture, the emery 
 is kneaded into the entire mass of the wheel, which can be worn 
 down till it is all consumed. On the same principle the instru- 
 ments used to sharpen scythes are also made. Of late we hear 
 excellent accounts of India-rubber as a basis for artificial teeth. 
 It is said to be lighter, more agreeable, less expensive, than gold 
 or platina, and not less durable. We have seen also some very 
 pretty watch-cases of this material, elegantly inlaid with gold. 
 
 It thus appears, that the result of Mr. Goodyear's long and 
 painful struggles was the production of a material which now 
 ranks with the leading compounds of commerce and manufacture, 
 such as glass, brass, steel, paper, porcelain, paint. Considering 
 its peculiar and varied utility, it is perhaps inferior in value only 
 to paper, steel, and glass. We see, also, that the use of the new 
 compound lessens the consumption of several commodities, such 
 as ivory, bone, ebony, and leather, which it is desirable to save, 
 because the demand for them tends to increase faster than the 
 supply. When a set of ivory billiard-balls costs fifty dollars, and 
 civilization presses upon the domain of the elephant, it is well to 
 make our combs and our paper-knives of something else. 
 
 That inventions so valuable should be disputed and pirated 
 was something which the history of all the great inventions might 
 have taught Mr. Goodyear to expect. We need not revive those 
 
842 CHARLES GOODYEAR. 
 
 disputes which embittered his life and wasted his substance and 
 his time. The Honorable Joseph Holt, the Commissioner who 
 granted an extension to the vulcanizing patent in 1858, has suffi- 
 ciently characterized them in one of the most eloquent papers 
 ever issued from the Patent Office : — 
 
 " No inventor probably has ever been so harassed, so trampled upon, 
 po plundered by that sordid and licentious class of infringers known in 
 the parlance of the world, with no exaggeration of phrase, as ' pirates.' 
 The spoliations of their incessant guerilla warfare upon his defenceless 
 rights have unquestionably amounted to millions. In the very front 
 rank of this predatory band stands one who sustains in this case the 
 double and most convenient character of contestant and witness ; and 
 it is but a subdued expression of my estimate of the deposition he has 
 lodged, to say that this Parthian shaft — the last that he could hurl at 
 an invention which he has so long and so remorselessly pursued — is a 
 fitting finale to that career which the public justice of the country has 
 so signally rebuked." 
 
 Mr. Holt paid a noble tribute to the class of men of whose 
 rights he was the official guardian : — 
 
 "All that is glorious in our past or hopeful in our future is indissolu- 
 bly linked with that cause of human progress of which inventors are 
 the preux chevaliers. It is no poetic translation of the abiding senti- 
 ment of the country to say, that they are the true jewels of the nation 
 to which they belong, and that a solicitude for the protection of their 
 rights and interests should find a place in every throb of the national 
 heart. Sadly helpless as a class, and offering, in the glittering creations 
 of their own genius, the strongest temptations to unscrupulous cupidity, 
 they, of all men, have most need of the shelter of the public law, while, 
 in view of their philanthropic labors, they are of all men most entitled 
 to claim it. The schemes of the politician and of the statesman may 
 6ubserve the purposes of the hour, and the teachings of the moralist 
 may remain with the generation to which they are addressed, but all 
 this must pass away ; while the fruits of the inventor's genius will 
 endure as imperishable memorials, and, surviving the wreck of creeds 
 and systems, alike of politics, religion, and philosophy, will diffuse 
 their blessings to all lands and throughout all ages." 
 
 When Mr. Goodyear had seen the manufacture of shoes and 
 fabrics well established in the United States, and when his rights 
 appeared to have been placed beyond controversy by the Trenton 
 
CHARLES GOODYEAR. 343 
 
 decision of 1852, being still oppressed with debt, he went to 
 Europe to introduce his material to the notice of capitalists there. 
 The great manufactories of vulcanized India-rubber in England, 
 Scotland, France, and Germany are the result of his labors ; but 
 the peculiarities of the patent laws of those countries, or else his 
 own want of skill in contending for his rights, prevented him 
 from reaping the reward of his labors. He spent six laborious 
 years abroad. At the Great Exhibitions of London and Paris, 
 he made brilliant displays of his wares, which did honor to his 
 country and himself, and gave an impetus to the prosperity of the 
 men who have grown rich upon his discoveries. At the London 
 Exhibition, he had a suite of three apartments, carpeted, furnished, 
 and decorated only with India-rubber. At Paris, he made a 
 lavish display of India-rubber jewelry, dressing-cases, work-box- 
 es, picture-frames, which attracted great attention. His reward 
 was, a four days' sojourn in the debtors' prison, and the cross of 
 the Legion of Honor. The delinquency of his American li- 
 censees procured him the former, and the favor of the Emperor 
 the latter. 
 
 We have seen that his introduction to India-rubber was 
 through the medium of a life-preserver. His last labors, also, 
 were consecrated to life-saving apparatus, of which he invented 
 or suggested a great variety. His excellent wife was reading 
 to him one evening, in London, an article from a review, in 
 which it was stated that twenty persons perished by drowning 
 every hour. The company, startled at a statement so unex- 
 pected, conversed upon it for some time, while Mr. Goodyear 
 himself remained silent and thoughtful. For several nights he 
 was restless, as was usually the case with him when he was med- 
 itating a new application of his material. As these periods of 
 incubation were usually followed by a prostrating sickness, his 
 wife urged him to forbear, and endeavor to compose his mind 
 to sleep. "Sleep!" said he, "how can I sleep while twenty 
 human beings are drowning every hour, and I am the man who 
 can save them ? " It was long his endeavor to invent some ar- 
 ticle which every man, woman, and child would necessarily 
 wear, and which would make it impossible for them to sink. 
 
344 CHARLES GOODYEAR. 
 
 He experimented with hats, cravats, jackets, and petticoats ; 
 and, though he left his principal object incomplete, he contrived 
 many of those means of saving life which now puzzle the oc- 
 cupants of state-rooms. He had the idea that every article on 
 board a vessel seizable in the moment of danger, every chair, 
 table, sofa, and stool, should be a life-preserver. 
 
 He returned to his native land a melancholy spectacle to his 
 friends, — yellow, emaciated, and feeble, — but still devoted to 
 his work. He lingered and labored until July, 1860, when he 
 died in New York, in the sixtieth year of his age. Almost to 
 the last day of his life he was busy with new applications of his 
 discovery. After twenty-seven years of labor and investigation, 
 after having founded a new branch of industry, which gave em- 
 ployment to sixty thousand persons, he died insolvent, leaving 
 to a wife and six children only an inheritance of debt. Those 
 who censure him for this should consider that his discovery was 
 not profitable to himself for more than ten years, that he was 
 deeply in debt when he began his experiments, that his investi- 
 gations could be carried on only by increasing his indebtedness, 
 that all his bargains were those of a man in need, that the guile- 
 lessness of his nature made him the easy prey of greedy, dishon- 
 orable men, and that his neglect of his private interests was due, 
 in part, to his zeal for the public good. 
 
 Dr. Dutton of New Haven, his pastor and friend, in the Ser- 
 mon dedicated to his memory, did not exaggerate when he spoke 
 of him as 
 
 " one who recognized his peculiar endowment of inventive genius as 
 a divine gift, involving a special and defined responsibility, and consid- 
 ered himself called of God, as was Bezaleel, to that particular course 
 of invention to which he devoted the chief part of his life. This he 
 often expressed, though with his characteristic modesty, to his friends, 
 especially his religious friends His inventive work was his re- 
 ligion, and was pervaded and animated by religious faith and devotion. 
 He felt like an apostle commissioned for that work ; and he said to his 
 niece and her husband, who went, with his approbation and sympathy, 
 as missionaries of the Gospel to Asia, that he was God's missionary as 
 truly as they were." 
 
 Nothing more true. The demand for the raw gum, almost 
 
CHAELES GOODYEAR. 845 
 
 created by him, is introducing abundance and developing in- 
 dustry in the regions which produce it. As the culture of cot- 
 ton seems the predestined means of improving Africa, so the 
 gathering of caoutchouc may procure for the inhabitants of the 
 equatorial regions of both continents such of the blessings of 
 civilization as they are capable of appropriating. 
 
 An attempt was made last winter to procure an act of Con- 
 gress extending the vulcanizing patent for a further period of 
 seven years, for the benefit of the creditors and the family of the 
 inventor. The petition seemed reasonable. The very low tariff 
 paid by the manufacturers could have no perceptible effect upon 
 the price of articles, and the extension would provide a compe- 
 tence for a worthy family who had claims upon the gratitude of 
 the nation, if not upon its justice. The manufacturers generally 
 favored the extension, since the patent protected them, in the 
 deranged condition of our currency, from the competition of the 
 foreign manufacturer, who pays low wages and enjoys a sound 
 currency. The extension of the patent would have harmed no 
 one, and would have been an advantage to the general interests 
 of the trade. The son of the inventor, too, in whose name the 
 petition was offered, had spent his whole life in assisting his 
 father, and had a fair claim upon the consideration of Congress. 
 But the same unscrupulous and remorseless men who had plun- 
 dered poor Goodyear living, hastened to Washington to oppose 
 the petition of his family. A cry of " monopoly " was raised in 
 the newspapers to which they had access. The presence in 
 Washington of Mrs. Goodyear, one of the most retiring of women, 
 and of her son, a singularly modest young man, who were aided 
 by one friend and one professional agent, was denounced as " a 
 powerful lobby, male and female," who, having despoiled the 
 public of " twenty millions," were boring Congress for a grant of 
 twenty millions more, — all to be wrung from an India-rubber- 
 consuming public. The short session of Congress is unfavorable 
 to private bills, even when they are unopposed. These arts 
 sufficed to prevent the introduction of the bill desired, and the 
 patent has since expired. 
 
 The immense increase in the demand for the gum has fre- 
 15* 
 
346 CHARLES GOODYEAR. 
 
 quently suggested the inquiry whether there is any danger of 
 the supply becoming unequal to it. There are now in Europe 
 and America more than a hundred and fifty manufactories of 
 India-rubber articles, employing^ from five to five hundred opera- 
 tives each, and consuming more than ten millions of pounds of gum 
 per annum. The business, too, is considered to be still in its infan- 
 cy. Certainly, it is increasing. Nevertheless, there is no possibility 
 of the demand exceeding the supply. The belt of land round the 
 globe, five hundred miles north and five hundred miles south of 
 the equator, abounds in the trees producing the gum, and they can 
 be tapped, it is said, for twenty successive seasons. Forty-three 
 thousand of these trees were counted in a tract of country thirty 
 miles long and eight wide. Each tree yields an average of three 
 table-spoonfuls of sap daily, but the trees are so close together 
 that one man can gather the sap of eighty in a day. Starting at 
 daylight, with his tomahawk and a ball of clay, he goes from tree 
 to tree, making five or six incisions in each, and placing under 
 each incision a cup made of the clay which he carries. In three 
 or four hours he has completed his circuit and comes home to 
 breakfast. In the afternoon he slings a large gourd upon his 
 shoulder, and repeats his round to collect the sap. The cups are 
 covered up at the roots of the tree, to be used again on the fol- 
 lowing day. In other regions the sap is allowed to exude from 
 the tree, and is gathered from about the roots. But, however it 
 is collected, the supply is superabundant; and the countries which 
 produce it are those in which the laborer needs only a little tapi- 
 oca, a little coffee, a' hut, and an apron. In South America, from 
 which our supply chiefly comes, the natives subsist at an expense 
 of three cents a day. The present high price of the gum in the 
 United States is principally due to the fact that greenbacks are 
 not current in the tropics ; but in part, to the rapidity with which 
 the demand has increased. Several important applications of the 
 vulcanized gum have been deferred to the time when the raw 
 material shall have fallen to what Adam Smith would style its 
 " natural price." 
 
 Charles Goodyear's work, therefore, is a permanent addition 
 to the resources of man. The latest posterity will be indebted to 
 him. 
 
HENRY WARD BEECHER 
 
 AND HIS CHURCH. 
 
HENRY WARD BEECHER AND HIS 
 CHURCH. 
 
 IS there anything in America more peculiar to America, or 
 more curious in itself, than one of our " fashionable " Protes- 
 tant churches, — such as we see in New York, on the Fifth Ave- 
 nue and in the adjacent streets ? The lion and the lamb in the 
 Millennium will not lie down together more lovingly than the 
 Church and the World have blended in these singular establish- 
 ments. We are far from objecting to the coalition, but note it only 
 as something curious, new, and interesting. 
 
 We enter an edifice, upon the interior of which the upholsterer 
 and the cabinet-maker have exhausted the resources of their 
 trades. The word " subdued " describes the effect at which those 
 artists have aimed. The woods employed are costly and rich, but 
 usually of a sombre hue, and, though elaborately carved, are fre- 
 quently unpolished. The light which comes through the stained 
 windows, or through the small diamond panes, is of that descrip- 
 tion which is eminently the " dim, religious." Every part of the 
 floor is thickly carpeted. The pews differ little from sofas, except 
 in being more comfortable, and the cushions for the feet or the 
 knees are as soft as hair and cloth can make them. It is a fash- 
 ion, at present, to put the organ out of sight, and to have a clock 
 so unobtrusive as not to be observed. Galleries are now viewed 
 with an unfriendly eye by the projectors of churches, and they 
 are going out of use. Everything in the way of conspicuous 
 lighting apparatus, such as the gorgeous and dazzling chandeliers 
 of fifteen years ago, and the translucent globes of later date, is 
 discarded, and an attempt is sometimes made to hide the vulgar 
 fact that the church is ever open in the evening. In a word 
 the design of the fashionable church-builder of the present mo- 
 
350 HENEY WARD BEECHEE 
 
 ment is to produce a richly furnished, quietly adorned, dimly il- 
 luminated, ecclesiastical parlor, in which a few hundred ladies 
 and gentlemen, attired in kindred taste, may sit perfectly at their 
 ease, and see no object not in harmony with the scene around 
 them. 
 
 To say that the object of these costly and elegant arrange- 
 ments is to repel poor people would be a calumny. On the con- 
 trary, persons who show by their dress and air that they exercise 
 the less remunerative vocations are as politely shown to seats as 
 those who roll up to the door in carriages, and the presence of 
 such persons is desired, and, in many instances, systematically 
 sought. Nevertheless, the poor are repelled. They know they 
 cannot pay their proportion of the expense of maintaining such 
 establishments, and they do not wish to enjoy what others pay 
 for. Everything in and around the church seems to proclaim it 
 a kind of exclusive ecclesiastical club, designed for the accommo- 
 dation of persons of ten thousand dollars a year, and upward. 
 Or it is as though the carriages on the Road to Heaven were di- 
 vided into first-class, second-class, and third-class, and a man 
 either takes the one that accords with his means, or denies him- 
 self the advantage of travelling that road, or prefers to trudge 
 along on foot, an independent wayfarer. 
 
 It is Sunday morning, and the doors of this beautiful drawing- 
 room are thrown open. Ladies dressed with subdued magnifi- 
 cence glide in, along with some who have not been able to leave 
 at home the showier articles of their wardrobe. Black silk, black 
 velvet, black lace, relieved by intimations of brighter colors, and 
 by gleams from half-hidden jewelry, are the materials most em- 
 ployed. Gentlemen in uniform of black cloth and white linen 
 announce their coming by the creaking of their boots, quenched 
 in the padded carpeting. It cannot "be said of these churches, as 
 Mr. Carlyle remarked of certain London ones, that a pistol could 
 be fired into a window across the church without much danger of 
 hitting a Christian. The attendance is not generally very large ; 
 but as the audience is evenly distributed over the whole surface, 
 it looks larger than it is. In a commercial city everything is apt 
 to be measured by the commercial standard, and accordingly a 
 
AND HIS CHURCH. 351 
 
 church numerically weak, but financially strong, ranks, in the es- 
 timation of the town, not according to its number of souls, but its 
 number of dollars. We heard a fine young fellow, last summer, 
 full of zeal for everything high and good, conclude a glowing ac- 
 count of a sermon by saying that it was the direct means of add- 
 ing to the church a capital of one hundred and seventy-five thou- 
 sand dollars. He meant nothing low or mercenary ; he honestly 
 exulted in the fact that the power and influence attached to the 
 possession of one hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars were 
 thenceforward to be exerted on behalf of objects which he es- 
 teemed the highest. If therefore the church before our view can- 
 not boast of a numerous attendance, it more than consoles itself 
 by the reflection, that there are a dozen names of talismanic 
 power in Wall Street on its list of members. 
 
 " But suppose the Doctor should leave you ? " objected a friend 
 of ours to a trustee, who had been urging him to buy a pew in a 
 fashionable church. 
 
 " Well, my dear sir," was the business-like reply ; " suppose 
 . he should. We should immediately engage the very first talent 
 which money can command." 
 
 We can hardly help taking this simple view of things in rich 
 commercial cities. Our worthy trustee merely put the thing on 
 the correct basis. He frankly scurf what every church does, ought 
 to do, and must do. He stated a universal fact in the plain and 
 sensible language to which he was accustomed. In the same way 
 these business-like Christians have borrowed the language of the 
 Church, and speak of men who are "good" for a million. 
 
 The consrrefiration j s assembled. The low mumble of the onjan 
 ceases. A female voice rises melodiously above the rustle of 
 dry-goods and the whispers of those who wear them. So sweet 
 and powerful is it, that a stranger might almost suppose it bor- 
 rowed from the choir of heaven ; but the inhabitants of the town 
 recognize it as one they have often heard at concerts or at the 
 opera ; and they listen critically, as to a professional performance, 
 which it is. It is well that highly artificial singing prevents 
 the hearer from catching the words of the song ; for it would 
 have rather an odd effect to hear rendered, in the modern Italian 
 style, such plain straightforward words as these : — 
 
352 HENRY WARD BEECHER 
 
 " Can sinners hope for heaven 
 Who love this world so well ? 
 Or dream of future happiness 
 While ou the road to hell? " 
 
 The performance, however, is so exquisite that we do not think 
 of these things, but listen in rapture to the voice alone. When 
 the lady has finished her stanza, a noble barytone, also recognized 
 as professional, takes up the strain, and performs a stanza, solo ; 
 at the conclusion of which, four voices, in enchanting accord 
 breathe out a third. It is evident that the "first talent that 
 money can command" has been "engaged" for the entertainment 
 of the congregation ; and we are not surprised when the informa- 
 tion is proudly communicated that the music costs a hundred and 
 twenty dollars per Sunday. 
 
 What is very surprising and well worthy of consideration is, 
 that this beautiful music does not " draw." In our rovings about 
 among the noted churches of New York, — of the kind which 
 " engage the first talent that money can command," — we could 
 never see that the audience was much increased by expensive 
 professional music. On the contrary, we can lay it down as a 
 general rule, that the costlier the music, the smaller is the aver- 
 age attendance. The afternoon service at Trinity Church, for 
 example, is little more than a delightful gratuitous concert of 
 boys, men, and organ ; and the spectacle of the altar brilliantly 
 lighted by candles is novel and highly picturesque. The sermon 
 also is of the fashionable length, — twenty minutes ; and yet the 
 usual afternoon, congregation is about two hundred persons. 
 Those celestial strains of music, — well, they enchant the ear, 
 if the ear happens to be within hearing of them ; but somehow 
 they do not furnish a continuous attraction. 
 
 When this fine prelude is ended, the minister's part begins ; 
 and, unless he is a man of extraordinary bearing and talents, 
 every one present is conscious of a kind of lapse in the tone of 
 the occasion. Genius composed the music ; the " first talent " 
 executed it ; the performance has thrilled the soul, and exalted 
 expectation ; but the voice now heard may be ordinary, and the 
 words uttered may be homely, or even common. No one unac- 
 
AND HIS CHURCH. 353 
 
 cu.-tomed to the place can help feeling a certain incongruity be- 
 tween the language heard and the scene witnessed. Everything 
 we see is modern ; the words we hear are ancient. The preacher 
 speaks of " humble believers," and we look around and ask, 
 Where are they ? Are these costly and elegant persons humble 
 believers ? Far be it from us to intimate that they are not ; we 
 are speaking only of their appearance, and its effect upon a cas- 
 ual beholder. The clergyman reads, 
 
 " Come let us join in sweet accord," 
 
 and straightway four hired performers execute a piece of difficult 
 music to an audience sitting passive. He discourses upon the 
 " pleasures of the world," as being at war with the interests of 
 the soul ; and while a severe sentence to this effect is coming 
 from his lips, down the aisle marches the sexton, showing some 
 stranger to a seat, who is a professional master of the revels. He 
 expresses, perchance, a fervent desire that the heathen may be 
 converted to Christianity, and we catch ourselves saying, " Does 
 he mean (Ins sort of thing ? " When we pronounce the word 
 Christianity, it calls up recollections and associations that do not 
 exactly harmonize with the scene around us. We think rather 
 of the fishermen of Palestine, on the lonely sea-shore ; of the 
 hunted fugitives of Italy and Scotland ; we think of it as some- 
 thing lowly, and suited to the lowly, — a refuge for the forsaken 
 and the defeated, not the luxury of the rich and the ornament of 
 the strong. It may be an infirmity of our mind ; but we experi- 
 ence a certain difficulty in realizing that the sumptuous and costly 
 apparatus around us has anything in common with what we have 
 been accustomed to think of as Christianity. 
 
 Sometimes, the incongruity reaches the point of the ludicrous. 
 We recently heard a very able and well-intentioned preacher, 
 near the Fifth Avenue, ask the ladies before him whether they 
 were in the habit of speaking to their female attendants about 
 their souls' salvation, — particularly those who dressed their hair, 
 lie especially mentioned the hair-dressers; because, as he truly 
 remarked, ladies are accustomed to converse with those artistes, 
 during the operation of hair-dressing, on a variety of topics; and 
 
 w 
 
354 HENRY WARD BEECHER + 
 
 the opportunity was excellent to say a word on the one most im- 
 portant. This incident perfectly illustrates what we mean by the 
 seeming incongruity between the ancient cast of doctrine and the 
 modernized people to whom it is preached. We have heard ser- 
 mons in fashionable churches in New York, laboriously prepared 
 and earnestly read, which had nothing in them of the modern 
 spirit, contained not the most distant allusion to modern modes of 
 living and sinning, had no suitableness whatever to the people or 
 the time, and from which everything that could rouse or interest 
 a human soul living on Manhattan Island in the year 1867 
 seemed to have been purposely pruned away. And perhaps, if a 
 clergyman really has no message to deliver, his best course is to 
 utter a jargon of nothings. 
 
 Upon the whole, the impression left upon the mind of the visit- 
 or to the fashionable church is, that he has been looking, not 
 upon a living body, but a decorated image. 
 
 It may be, however, that the old conception of a Christian 
 church, as the one place where all sorts and conditions of men 
 came together to dwell upon considerations interesting to all 
 equally, is not adapted to modern society, wherein one man dif- 
 fers from another in knowledge even more than a king once dif- 
 fered from a peasant in rank. When all were ignorant, a mass 
 chanted in an unknown tongue, and a short address warning 
 against the only vices known to ignorant people, sufficed for the, 
 whole community. But what form of service can be even 
 imagined, that could satisfy Bridget, who cannot read, and her 
 mistress, who comes to church cloyed with the dainties of half a 
 dozen literatures ? Who could preach a sermon that would hold 
 attentive the man saturated with Buckle, Mill, Spencer, Thacke- 
 ray, Emerson, Humboldt, and Agassiz, and the man whose only 
 literary recreation is the dime novel ? In the good old times, 
 when terror was latent in every soul, and the preacher had only 
 to deliver a very simple message, pointing out the one way to 
 escape endless torture, a very ordinary mortal could arrest and 
 retain attention. But this resource is gone forever, and the mod- 
 ern preacher is thrown upon the resources of his own mind and 
 talent. There is great difficulty here, and it does not seem likely 
 
AND HIS CHURCH. 355 
 
 to diminish. It may be, that never again, as long as time shall 
 endure, will ignorant and learned, masters and servants, poor and 
 rich, feel themselves at home in the same church. 
 
 At present we are impressed, and often oppressed, with the too 
 evident fact, that neither the intelligent nor the uninstructed souls 
 are so well ministered to, in things spiritual, as we could imagine 
 they might be. The fashionable world of New York goes to 
 church every Sunday morning with tolerable punctuality, and yet 
 it seems to drift rapidly toward Paris. What it usually hears at 
 church does not appear to exercise controlling influence over its 
 conduct or its character. 
 
 Among the churches about New York to which nothing we 
 have said applies, the one that presents the strongest contrast to 
 the fashionable church is Henry Ward Beecher's. Some of the 
 difficulties resulting from the altered state of opinion in recent 
 times have been overcome there, and an institution has been 
 created which appears to be adapted to the needs, as well as to 
 the tastes, of the people frequenting it. We can at least say of 
 it, that it is a living body, and not a decorated image. 
 
 For many years, this church upon Brooklyn Heights has been, 
 to the best of the visitors to the metropolis, the most interesting 
 object in or near it. Of Brooklyn itself, — a great assemblage of 
 residences, without much business or stir, — it seems the animat- 
 ing soul. We have a fancy, that we can tell by the manner and 
 bearing of an inhabitant of the place whether he attends this 
 church or not; for there is a certain joyousness, candor, and dem- 
 ocratic simplicity about the members of that congregation, which 
 might be styled Beecherian, if there were not a better word. 
 This church is simply the most characteristic thing of America. 
 If we had a foreigner in charge to whom we wished to reveal 
 this country, we should like to push him in, hand him over to 
 one of the brethren who perform the arduous duty of providing 
 seats for visitors, and say to him : " There, stranger, you have 
 arrived ; this is the United States. The New Testament, Plym- 
 outh Rock, and the Fourth of July, — this is what they have 
 brought us to. What the next issue will be, no one can tell ; but 
 this is about what we are at present." 
 
356 HENRY WARD BEECHER 
 
 We cannot imagine what the brethren could have been think- 
 ing about when they ordered the new bell that hangs in the tower 
 of Plymouth Church. It is the most superfluous article in the 
 known world. The New-Yorker who steps on board the Fulton 
 ferry-boat about ten o'clock on Sunday morning finds himself 
 accompanied by a large crowd of people who bear the visible 
 stamp of strangers, who are going to Henry Ward Beecher's 
 church. You can pick them out with perfect certainty. You 
 see the fact in their countenances, in their dress, in their demean- 
 or, as well as hear it in words of eager expectation. They are 
 the kind of people who regard wearing-apparel somewhat in the 
 light of its utility, and are not crushed by their clothes. They 
 are the sort of people who take the " Tribune," and get up courses 
 of lectures in the country towns. From every quarter of Brook- 
 lyn, in street cars and on foot, streams of people are converging 
 toward the same place. Every Sunday morning and evening, 
 rain or shine, there is the same concourse, the same crowd at the 
 gates before they are open, and the same long, laborious effort to 
 get thirty-five hundred people into a building that will seat but 
 twenty-seven hundred. Besides the ten or twelve members of 
 the church who volunteer to assist in this labor, there is employed 
 a force of six policemen at the doors, to prevent the multitude 
 from choking all ingress. Seats are retained for their proprietors 
 until ten minutes before the time of beginning ; after that the 
 strangers are admitted. Mr. Buckle, if he were with us still, 
 would be pleased to know that his doctrine of averages holds 
 good in this instance ; since every Sunday about a churchful of 
 persons come to this church, so that not many who come fail to 
 get in. 
 
 There is nothing of the ecclesiastical drawing-room in the ar- 
 rangements of this edifice. It is a very plain brick building, in 
 a narrow street of small, pleasant houses, and the interior is only 
 striking from its extent and convenience. The simple, old-fash- 
 ioned design of the builder was to provide seats for as many peo- 
 ple as the space would hold ; and in executing this design, he 
 constructed one of the finest interiors in the country, since the 
 most pleasing and inspiriting spectacle that human eyes ever be- 
 
AND HIS CHURCH. 857 
 
 bold in (his world is such an assembly as fills this church. The 
 audience is grandly displayed in those wide, rounded galleries, 
 surging up high against the white walls, and scooped out deep in 
 the slanting floor, leaving the carpeted platform the vortex of an 
 arrested whirlpool. Often it happens that two or three little 
 children get lodged upon the edge of the platform, and sit there 
 on the carpet among the flowers during the service, giving to the 
 picture a singularly pleasing relief, as though they and the bou- 
 quets had been arranged by the same skilful hand, and for the 
 same purpose. And it seems quite natural and proper that child- 
 ren should form part of so bright and joyous an occasion. Behind 
 the platform rises to the ceiling the huge organ, of dark wood 
 and silvered pipes, with fans of trumpets pointing heavenward 
 from the top. This enormous toy occupies much space that 
 could be better filled, and is only less superfluous than the 
 bell ; but we must pardon and indulge a foible. We could never 
 see that Mr. Forrest walked any better for having such thick 
 legs ; yet they have their admirers. Blind old Handel played 
 on an instrument very different from this, but the sexton had to 
 eat a cold Sunday dinner ; for not a Christian would stir as long 
 as the old man touched the keys after service. But not old Han- 
 del nor older Gabriel could make such music as swells and roars 
 from three thousand human voices, — the regular choir of Ply- 
 mouth Church. It is a decisive proof of the excellence and hearti- 
 ness of this choir, that the great organ has not lessened its effec- 
 tiveness. 
 
 It is not clear to the distant spectator by what aperture Mr. 
 Beecher enters the church. He is suddenly discovered to be 
 present, seated in his place on the platform, — an under-sized 
 gentleman in a black stock. His hair combed behind his ears, 
 and worn a little longer than usual, imparts to his appearance 
 something of the Puritan, and calls to mind his father, the cham- 
 pion of orthodoxy in heretical Boston. In conducting the opening 
 exercises, and, indeed, on all occasions of ceremony, Mr. Beecher 
 shows himself an artist, — both his language and his demeanor 
 being marked by the most refined decorum. An elegant, finished 
 simplicity characterizes all he does and says : not a word too 
 
858 HENRY WARD BEECHER 
 
 much, nor a word misused, nor a word waited for, nor an unhar- 
 monious movement, mars the satisfaction of the auditor. , The 
 habit of living for thirty years in the view of a multitude, togeth- 
 er with a natural sense of the becoming, and a quick sympathy 
 with men and circumstances, has wrought up his public demeanor 
 to a point near perfection. A candidate for public honors could 
 not study a better model. This is the more remarkable, because 
 it is a purely spiritual triumph. Mr. Beecher's person is not im- 
 posing, nor his natural manner graceful. It is his complete ex- 
 tirpation of the desire of producing an illegitimate effect ; it is 
 his sincerity and genuineness as a human being ; it is the dignity 
 of his character, and his command of his powers, — which give 
 him this easy mastery over every situation in which he finds him- 
 self. 
 
 Extempore prayers are not, perhaps, a proper subject for 
 comment. The grand feature of the preliminary services of 
 this church is the singing, which is not executed by the first 
 talent that money can command. "When the prelude upon the 
 organ is finished, the whole congregation, almost every individual 
 in it, as if by a spontaneous and irresistible impulse, stands up 
 and sings. We are not aware that anything has ever been done 
 or said to bring about this result ; nor does the minister of the 
 church set the example, for he usually remains sitting and silent. 
 It seems as if every one in the congregation was so full of some- 
 thing that he felt impelled to get up and sing it out. In other 
 churches where congregational singing is attempted, there are 
 usually a number of languid Christians who remain seated, and 
 a large number of others who remain silent ; but here there is 
 a strange unanimity about the performance. A sailor might as 
 well try not to join in the chorus of a forecastle song as a mem- 
 ber of this joyous host not to sing. When the last preliminary 
 singing is concluded, the audience is in an excellent condition to 
 sit and listen, their whole corporeal system having been pleasant- 
 ly exercised. 
 
 The sermon which follows is new wine in an old bottle. Up 
 to the moment when the text has been announced and briefly 
 explained, the service, has all been conducted upon the ancient 
 
AND HIS CHURCH. 359 
 
 model, and chiefly in the ancient phraseology ; but from the 
 moment when Mr. Beecher swings free from the moorings of his 
 text, and gets fairly under way, his sermon is modern. No 
 matter how fervently he may have been praying supernaturalism, 
 he preaches pure cause and effect. His text may savor of old 
 Palestine ; but his sermon is inspired by New York and Brook- 
 lyn ; and nearly all that he says, when he is most himself, finds 
 an approving response in the mind of every well-disposed person, 
 whether orthodox or heterodox in his creed. % 
 
 What is religion ? That, of course, is the great question. Mr. 
 Beecher says: Religion is the slow, laborious, self-conducted 
 education of the whole man, from grossness to refinement, from 
 sickliness to health, from ignorance to knowledge, from selfishness 
 to justice, from justice to nobleness, from cowardice to valor. In 
 treating this topic, whatever he may pray or read or assent to, 
 he preaches cause and effect, and nothing else. Regeneration he 
 does not represent to be some mysterious, miraculous influence ex- 
 erted upon a man from without, but the man's own act, wholly and 
 always, and in every stage of its progress. His general way of 
 discoursing upon this subject would satisfy the most rationalized 
 mind ; and yet it does not appear to offend the most orthodox. 
 
 This apparent contradiction between the spirit of his preaching 
 and the facts of his position is a severe puzzle to some of our 
 thorough-going friends. They ask, How can a man demonstrate 
 that the fall of rain is so governed by unchanging laws that the 
 si lower of yesterday dates back in its causes to the origin of 
 things, and, having proved this to the comprehension of every 
 soul present, finish by praying for an immediate outpouring upon 
 the thirsty fields ? We confess that, to our modern way of think- 
 ing, there is a contradiction here, but there is none at all to an 
 heir of the Puritans. We reply to our impatient young friends, 
 that Henry Ward Beecher at once represents and assists the 
 American Christian of the present time, just because of this 
 seeming contradiction. He is a bridge over which we are pass- 
 ing from the creed-enslaved past to the perfect freedom of the 
 future. Mr. Lecky, in his " History of the Spirit of Rational- 
 ism," has shown the process by which truth is advanced. Old 
 
360 HENRY WARD BEECHER 
 
 errors, he says, do not die because they are refuted, but fade out 
 because they are neglected. One hundred and fifty years ago, 
 our ancestors were perplexed, and even distressed, by something 
 they called the doctrine of Original Sin. No one now concerns 
 himself either to refute or assert the doctrine ; few people know 
 what it is ; we all simply let it alone, and it fades out. John 
 Wesley not merely believed in witchcraft, but maintained that a 
 belief in witchcraft was essential to salvation. All the world, 
 except here and there an enlightened and fearless person, be- 
 lieved in witchcraft as late as the year 1750. That belief has 
 not perished because its folly was demonstrated, but because the 
 average human mind grew past it, and let it alone until it faded 
 out in the distance. Or we might compare the great body of 
 beliefs to a banquet, in which every one takes what he likes best ; 
 and the master of the feast, observing what is most in demand, 
 keeps an abundant supply of such viands, but gradually with- 
 draws those which are neglected. Mr. Beecher has helped him- 
 self to such beliefs as are congenial to him, and shows an exqui- 
 site tact in passing by those which interest him not, and which 
 have lost regenerating power. There are minds which cannot be 
 content with anything like vagueness or inconsistency in their 
 opinions. They must know to a certainty whether the sun and 
 moon stood still or not. His is not a mind of that cast ; he can 
 " hover on the confines of truth," and leave the less inviting parts 
 of the landscape veiled in mist unexplored. Indeed, the great 
 aim of his preaching is to show the insignificance of opinion com- 
 pared with right feeling and noble living, and he prepares the 
 way for the time when every conceivable latitude of mere opinion 
 shall be allowed and encouraged. 
 
 One remarkable thing about his preaching is, that he has not, 
 like so many men of liberal tendencies, fallen into milk-and- 
 waterism. He often gives a foretaste of the terrific power 
 which preachers will wield when they draw inspiration from 
 science and life. Without ever frightening people with horrid 
 pictures of the future, he has a sense of the perils which beset 
 human life here, upon this bank and shoal of time. How need- 
 less to draw upon the imagination, in depicting the consequences 
 
AND HIS CHURCH. 361 
 
 of violating natural law ! Suppose a preacher should give a 
 plain, cold, scientific exhibition of the penalty which Nature 
 exacts for the crime, so common among church-going ladies and 
 others, of murdering their unborn offspring! It would appall 
 the Devil. Scarcely less terrible are the consequences of the 
 most common vices and meannesses when they get the mastery. 
 Mr. Beecher has frequently shown, by powerful delineations of 
 this kind, how large a part legitimate terror must ever play in 
 the services of a true church, when the terrors of superstition 
 have wholly faded out. It cannot be said of his preaching, that 
 he preaches " Christianity with the bones taken out." He does 
 not give " twenty minutes of tepid exhortation," nor amuse his 
 auditors with elegant and melodious essays upon virtue. 
 
 We need not say tbat-his power as a public teacher is due, in 
 a great degree, to his fertility in illustrative similes. Three or 
 four volumes, chiefly filled with these, as they have been caught 
 from his lip-, are before the public, and are admired on both con- 
 tinents. Many of them are most strikingly happy, and flood his 
 subject with light. The smiles that break out upon the sea of 
 upturned faces, and the laughter that whispers round the as- 
 sembly, are often due as much to the aptness as to the humor of 
 the illustration : the mind receives an agreeable shock of surprise 
 at finding a resemblance where only the widest dissimilarity had 
 before been perceived. 
 
 Of late years, Mr. Beecher never sends an audience away half 
 satisfied ; for he has constantly grown with the growth of his 
 splendid opportunity. How attentive the great assembly, and 
 how quickly responsive to the points he makes ! That occasional 
 ripple of laughter, — it is not from any want of seriousness in the 
 speaker, in the subject, or in the congregation, nor is it a Row- 
 land Hill eccentricity. It is simply that it has pleased Heaven 
 to endow this genial soul with a quick perception of the likeness 
 there is between things unlike ; and, in the heat and torrent of 
 his speech, the suddenly discovered similarity amuses while it in- 
 structs. Pbilosophers and purists may cavil at parts of these 
 sermons, and, of course, they are not perfect ; but who can deny 
 that their general effect is civilizing, humanizing, elevating, and 
 16 
 
362 HENRY WARD BEECHER 
 
 regenerating, and that this master of preaching is the true brother 
 of all those high and bright spirits, on both sides of the ocean, 
 who are striving to make the soul of this age fit to inhabit and 
 nobly impel its new body ? 
 
 The sermon over, a livelier song brings the service to a happy 
 conclusion ; and slowly, to the thunder of the new organ, the great 
 assembly dissolves and oozes away. 
 
 The Sunday services are not the whole of this remarkable 
 church. It has not yet adopted Mrs. Stowe's suggestion of pro- 
 viding billiard-rooms, bowling-alleys, and gymnastic apparatus for 
 the development of Christian muscle, though these may come in 
 time. The building at present contains eleven apartments, among 
 which are two large parlors, wherein, twice a month, there is a 
 social gathering of the church and congregation, for conversation 
 with the pastor and with one another. Perhaps, by and by, 
 these will be always open, so as to furnish club conveniences to 
 young men who have no home. Doubtless, this fine social or- 
 ganization is destined to development in many directions not yet 
 contemplated. 
 
 Among the ancient customs of New England and its colonies 
 (of which Brooklyn is one) is the Friday-evening prayer-meet- 
 ing. Some of our readers, perhaps, have dismal recollections of 
 their early compelled attendance on those occasions, when, with 
 their hands firmly held in the maternal grasp, lest at the last 
 moment they should bolt under cover of the darkness, they glided 
 round into the back parts of the church, lighted by one smoky 
 lantern hung over the door of the lecture-room, itself dimly 
 lighted, and as silent as the adjacent chambers of the dead. 
 Female figures, demure in dress and eyes cast down, flitted noise- 
 lessly in, and the awful stillness was only broken by the heavy 
 boots of the few elders and deacons who constituted the male 
 portion of the exceedingly slender audience. With difficulty, 
 and sometimes, only after two or three failures, a hymn was 
 raised, which, when in fullest tide, was only a dreary wail, — 
 how unmelodious to the ears of unreverential youth, gifted with 
 a sense of the ludicrous ! How long, how sad, how pointless the 
 prayers ! How easy to believe, down in that dreary cellar, that 
 
AND HIS CHURCH. 363 
 
 this world was but a wilderness, and man "a feeble piece"! 
 Deacon Jones could speak up briskly enough when he was selling 
 two yards of shilling calico to a farmer's wife sharp at a bargain ; 
 but in that apartment, contiguous to the tombs, it s,eemed natural 
 that he should utter dismal views of life in bad grammar through 
 his nose. Mrs. Jones was cheerful when she gave her little tea- 
 party the evening before ; but now she appeared to assent, with- 
 out surprise, to the statement that she was a pilgrim travelling 
 through a vale of tears. Veritable pilgrims, who do actually 
 meet in an oasis of the desert, have a merry time of it, travellers 
 tell us. It was not so with these good souls, inhabitants of a 
 pleasant place, and anticipating an eternal abode in an inconceiv- 
 ably delightful paradise. But then there was the awful chance 
 of missing it ! And the reluctant youth, dragged to this melan- 
 choly scene, who avenged themselves by giving select imitations 
 of deaconian eloquence for the amusement of young friends, — 
 what was to become of them? It was such thoughts, doubtless, 
 that gave to those excellent people their gloomy habit of mind ; 
 and if their creed expressed the literal truth respecting man's 
 destiny, character, and duty, terror alone was rational, and laugh- 
 ter was hideous and defiant mockery. What room in a benevo- 
 lent heart for joy, when a point of time, a moment's space 
 removed us to that heavenly place, or shut us up in hell ? 
 
 From the time when we were accustomed to attend such meet- 
 ings, long ago, we never saw a Friday-evening meeting till the 
 other night, when we found ourselves in the lecture-room, of 
 Plymouth Church. 
 
 The room is large, very lofty, brilliantly lighted by reflectors 
 atfixed to the ceiling, and, except the scarlet cushions on the 
 settees, void of upholstery. It was filled full with a .cheerful 
 company, not one of whom seemed to have on more or richer 
 clothes than she had the moral strength to wear. Content and 
 pleasant expectation sat on every countenance, as when people 
 have come to a festival, and await the summons to the banquet. 
 No pulpit, or anything like a pulpit, cast a shadow over the scene ; 
 but in its stead there was a rather large platform, raised two 
 steps, covered with dark green canvas, and having upon it a verv 
 
36-4 HENRY WARD BEECHER 
 
 small table and one chair. The red-cushioned settees were so 
 arranged as to enclose the green platform all about, except on 
 one side ; so that he who should sit upon it would appear to be 
 in the midst of the people, raised above them that all might see 
 him, yet still among them and one of them. At one side of the 
 platform, but on the floor of the room, among the settees, there 
 was a piano open. Mr. Beecher sat near by, reading what ap- 
 peared to be a letter of three or four sheets. The whole scene 
 was so little like what we commonly understand by the word 
 " meeting," the people there were so little in a " meeting " state 
 of mind, and the subsequent proceedings were so informal, un- 
 studied, and social, that, in attempting to give this account of 
 them, we almost feel as if we were reporting for print the 
 conversation of a private evening party. Anything more unlike 
 an old-fashioned prayer-meeting it is not possible to conceive. 
 
 Mr. Beecher took his seat upon the platform, and, after a short 
 pause, began the exercises by saying, in a low tone, these words: 
 " Six twenty-two." 
 
 A rustling of the leaves of hymn-books interpreted the mean- 
 ing of this mystical utterance, which otherwise might have been 
 taken as announcing a discourse upon the prophetic numbers. 
 The piano confirmed the interpretation ; and then the company 
 burst into one of those joyous and unanimous singings which are 
 so enchanting a feature of the services of this church. Loud rose 
 the beautiful harmony of voices, constraining every one to join in 
 the song, even those most unused to sing. When it was ended, 
 the pastor, in the same low tone, pronounced a name ; upon which 
 one of the brethren rose to his feet, and the rest of the assembly 
 slightly inclined their heads. It would not, as we have remarked, 
 be becoming in us to say anything upon this portion of the pro- 
 ceedings, except to note that the prayers were all brief, perfectly 
 quiet and simple, and free from the routine or regulation expres- 
 sions. There were but two or three of them, alternating with 
 singing; and when that part of the exercises was concluded, Mr. 
 Beecher had scarcely spoken. The meeting ran alone, in the 
 most spontaneous and pleasant manner ; and, with all its hearti- 
 ness and simplicity, there was a certain refined decorum pervad- 
 
AND HIS CHURCH. 365 
 
 ing all that was done and said. There was a pause after the last 
 hymn died away, and then Mr. Beecher, still seated, began, in 
 the tone of conversation, to speak, somewhat after this manner. 
 
 " When," said he, " I first began to walk as a Christian, in my 
 youthful zeal I made many resolutions that were well meant, but 
 indiscreet. Among others, I remember I resolved to pray, at 
 least once, in some way, every hour that I was awake. I tried 
 faithfully to keep this resolution, but never having succeeded a 
 single day, I suffered the pangs of self-reproach, until reflection 
 satisfied me that the only wisdom possible, with regard to such a 
 resolve, was to break it. I remember, too, that I made a resolu- 
 tion to speak upon religion to every person with whom I con- 
 versed, — on steamboats, in the streets, anywhere. In this, also, 
 I failed, as I ought ; and I soon learned that, in the sowing of 
 such seed, as in other sowings, times and seasons and methods 
 must be considered and selected, or a man may defeat his own 
 object, and make religion loathsome." 
 
 In language like this he introduced the topic of the evening's 
 conversation, which was, How far, and on what occasions, and in 
 what manner, one person may invade, so to speak, the personality 
 of another, and speak to him upon his moral condition. The pas- 
 tor expressed his own opinion, always in the conversational tone, 
 in a talk of ten minutes' duration ; in the course of which he ap- 
 plauded, not censured, the delicacy which causes most people to 
 shrink from doing it. He said that a man's personality was not 
 a macadamized road for every vehicle to drive upon at will ; but 
 rather a sacred enclosure, to be entered, if at all, with the consent 
 of the owner, and with deference to his feelings and tastes. He 
 maintained, however, that there were times and modes in which 
 this might properly be done, and that every one had a duty to 
 perform of this nature. When he had finished his observations, 
 he said the subject was open to the remarks of others ; whereupon 
 a brother instantly rose and made a very honest confession. 
 
 He said that he had never attempted to perform the duty in 
 question without having a palpitation of the heart and a complete 
 " turning over " of his inner man. He had often reflected upon 
 this curious fact, but was not able to account for it. He had not 
 
366 HENRY WARD BEECHER 
 
 allowed this repugnance to prevent his doing the duty ; but he 
 always had to rush at it and perform it by a sort of coup de main; 
 for if he allowed himself to think about the matter, he could not 
 do it at all. He concluded by saying that he should be very 
 much obliged to any one if he could explain this mystery. 
 
 The pastor said : " May it not be the natural delicacy we feel, 
 and ought to feel, in approaching the interior consciousness of 
 another person ? " 
 
 Another brother rose. There was no nankins; back at this 
 meeting ; there were no awkward pauses ; every one seemed full 
 of matter. The new speaker was not inclined to admit the ex- 
 planation suggested by the pastor. " Suppose," said he, " wo 
 were to see a man in imminent danger of immediate destruction, 
 and there was one way of escape, and but one, which tve saw and 
 he did not, should we feel any delicacy in running up to him and 
 urging him to fly for his life ? Is it not a want of faith on our 
 part that causes the reluctance and hesitation we all feel in urging 
 others to avoid a peril so much more momentous ? " 
 
 Mr. Beecher said the cases were not parallel. Irreligious 
 persons, he remarked, were not in imminent danger of immediate 
 death ; they might die to-morrow ; but in all probability they 
 would not, and an ill-timed or injudicious admonition might for- 
 ever repel them. We must accept the doctrine of probabilities, 
 and act in accordance with it in this particular, as in all others. 
 
 Another brother had a puzzle to present for solution. He 
 said that he too had experienced the repugnance to which allu- 
 sion had been made ; but what surprised him most was, that the 
 more ho loved a person, and the nearer he was related to him, 
 the more difficult he found it to converse with him upon his spir- 
 itual state. Why is this? "I should like to have this question 
 answered," said he, "if there is an answer to it." 
 
 Mr. Beecher observed that this was the universal experience, 
 and lie was conscious himself of a peculiar reluctance and embar- 
 rassment in approaching one of his own household on the subject 
 in question. He thought it was due to the fact that we respect 
 more the personal rights of those near to us than we do those of 
 others, and it was more difficult to break in upon the routine of 
 
AND HIS CHURCH. 367 
 
 our ordinary familiarity with them. We are accustomed to a 
 certain tone, which it is highly embarrassing to jar upon. 
 
 Captain Duncan related two amusing anecdotes to illustrate 
 the right way and the wrong way of introducing religious con- 
 versation. In his office there was sitting one day a sort of lay 
 preacher, who was noted for lugging in his favorite topic in the 
 most forbidding and abrupt manner. A sea-captain came in, who 
 was introduced to this individual. 
 
 " Captain Porter," said he, with awful solemnity, " are you a 
 captain in Israel ? " 
 
 The honest sailor was so abashed and confounded at this novel 
 salutation, that he could only stammer out an incoherent reply ; 
 and he was evidently much disposed to give the tactless zealot a 
 piece of his mind expressed in the language of the quarter-deck. 
 When the solemn man took his leave, the disgusted captain said, 
 " If ever I should be coming to your office again, and that man 
 should be here, I wish you would send me word, and I '11 stay 
 away." 
 
 A few days after, another clergyman chanced to be in the 
 office, no other than Mr." Beecher himself, and another captain 
 came in, a roistering, swearing, good-hearted fellow. The con- 
 versation fell upon sea-sickness, a malady to which Mr. Beecher 
 is peculiarly liable. This captain also was one of the few sailors 
 who are always sea-sick ingoing to sea, and gave a moving 
 account of his sufferings from that cause. Mr. Beecher, after 
 listening attentively to his tale, said, " Captain Duncan, if I 
 was a preacher to such sailors as your friend here, I should rep- 
 resent hell as an eternal voyage, with every man on board in the 
 agonies of sea-sickness, the crisis always imminent, but never 
 coming." 
 
 This ludicrous and most unprofessional picture amused the old 
 salt exceedingly, and won his entire good- will toward the author 
 of it ; so that, after Mr. Beecher left, he said, " That 's a good 
 fellow, Captain Duncan. I like him, and I 'd like to hear him 
 talk more." 
 
 Captain Duncan contended that this free-and-easy way of ad- 
 dress was just the thing for such characters. Mr. Beecher had 
 
368 HENRY WARD EEECHER 
 
 shown him, to his great surprise, that a man could be a decent 
 and comfortable human being, although he was a minister, and 
 had so gained his confidence and good-will that he could say any- 
 thing to him at their next interview. Captain Duncan finished 
 his remarks by a decided expression of his disapproval of the 
 canting regulation phrases so frequently employed by religious 
 people, which are perfectly nauseous to men of the world. 
 
 This interesting conversation lasted about three quarters of an 
 hour, and ended, not because the theme seemed exhausted, but 
 because the time was up. We have only given enough of it to 
 convey some little idea of its spirit. The company again broke 
 into one of their cheerful hymns, and the meeting was dismissed 
 in the usual manner. 
 
 During the whole evening not a canting word nor a false tone 
 had been uttered. Some words were used, it is true, and some 
 forms practised, which are not congenial to " men of the world," 
 and some doctrines were assumed to be true which have become 
 incredible to many of us. These, however, were not conspicuous 
 nor much dwelt upon. The subject, too, of the conversation was 
 less suitable to our purpose than most of the topics discussed at 
 these meetings, which usually have a more direct bearing upon 
 the conduct of life. Nevertheless, is it not apparent that such 
 meetings as this, conducted by a man of tact, good sense, and ex- 
 perience, must be an aid to good living ? Here were a number 
 of people, — parents, business-men, and others, — most of them 
 heavily burdened with responsibility, having notes and rents to 
 pay, customers to get and keep, children to rear, — busy people, 
 anxious people, of extremely diverse characters, but united by a 
 common desire to live nobly. The difficulties of noble living are 
 very great, — never so great, perhaps, as now and here, — and 
 these people assemble every week to converse upon them. What 
 more rational thing could they do ? If they came together to 
 snivel and cant, and to support one another in a miserable conceit 
 of being the elect of the human species, we might object. But 
 no description can show how far from that, how opposite to that, 
 is the tone, the spirit, the object, of the Friday-evening meeting 
 at Plymouth Church. 
 
AND HIS CHURCH. 369 
 
 Have we " Liberals " — as we presume to call ourselves — ever 
 devised an) r thing so well adapted as this to the needs of average 
 mortals struggling with the ordinary troubles of life ? We know 
 of nothing. Philosophical treatises, and arithmetical computations 
 respecting the number of people who inhabited Palestine, may have 
 their use, but they cannot fill the aching void in the heart of a 
 lone widow, or teach an anxious father how to manage a trouble- 
 some boy. There was an old lady near us at this meeting, — a 
 good soul in a bonnet four fashions old, — who sat and cried for 
 joy, as the brethren carried on their talk. She had come in 
 alone from her solitary room, and enjoyed all the evening long a 
 blended moral and literary rapture. It was a banquet of delight 
 to her, the recollection of which would brighten all her week, and 
 it cost her no more than air and sunlight. To the happy, the 
 strong, the victorious, Shakespeare and the Musical Glasses may 
 appear to suffice ; but the world is full of the weak, the wretched, 
 and the vanquished. 
 
 There was an infuriate heretic in Boston once, whose antipathy 
 to what he called " superstition " was something that bordered upon 
 lunacy. But the time came when he had a child, his only child, 
 and the sole joy of his life, dead in the house. It had to be 
 buried. The broken-hearted father could not endure the thought 
 of his child's being carried out and placed in its grave without 
 some outward mark of respect, some ceremonial which should 
 recognize the difference between a dead child and a dead kitten ; 
 and he was fiiin,at last, to go out and bring to his house a poor 
 lame cobbler, who was a kind of Methodist preacher, to say and 
 read a few words that should break the fall of the darling object 
 into the tomb. The occurrence made no change in his opinions, 
 but it revolutionized his feelings. He is as untheological as 
 ever ; but he would subscribe money to build a church, and he 
 esteems no man more than an honest clergyman. 
 
 If anything can be predicated of the future with certainty, it is, 
 that the American people will never give up that portion of their 
 heritage from the past which we call Sunday, but will always 
 devote its hours to resting the body and improving the soul. All 
 our theologies will pass away, but this will remain. Nor less 
 16* x 
 
370 HENRY WARD BEECHER 
 
 certain is it, that there will always be a class of men who will do, 
 professionally and as their settled vocation, the work now done 
 by the clergy. That work can never be dispensed with, either 
 in civilized or in barbarous communities. The great problem of 
 civilization is, how to bring the higher intelligence of the com- 
 munity, and its better moral feeling, to bear upon the mass 
 of people, so that the lowest grade of intelligence and morals 
 shall be always approaching the higher, and the higher still 
 rising. A church purified of superstition solves part of this 
 problem, and a good school system does the rest. 
 
 All things improve in this world very much in the same way. 
 The improvement originates in one man's mind, and, being carried 
 into effect with evident good results, it is copied by others. "We 
 are all apt lazily to run in the groove in which we find ourselves ; 
 we are creatures of habit, and slaves of tradition. Now and 
 then, however, in every profession and sphere, if they are untram- 
 melled by law, an individual appears who is discontented with 
 the ancient methods, or sceptical of the old traditions, or both, 
 and he invents better ways, or arrives at more rational opinions. 
 Other men look on and approve the improved process, or listen 
 and imbibe the advanced belief. 
 
 Now, there appears to be a man upon Brooklyn Heights who 
 has found out a more excellent way of conducting a church than 
 has been previously known. He does not waste the best hours 
 of every day in writing sermons, but employs those hours in ab- 
 sorbing the knowledge and experience which should be the matter 
 of sermons. He does not fritter away the time of a public in- 
 structor in " pastoral visits," and other useless visitations. His 
 mode of conducting a public ceremonial reaches the finish of high 
 art, which it resembles also in its sincerity and simplicity. He 
 has known how to banish from his church everything that savors 
 of cant and sanctimoniousness, — so loathsome to honest minds. 
 Without formally rejecting time-honored forms and usages, he has 
 infused into his teachings more and more of the modern spirit, 
 drawn more and more from science and life, less and less from 
 tradition, until he has acquired the power of preaching sermons j 
 which Edwards and Voltaire, Whitefield and Tom Paine, would j 
 
AND HIS CHURCH. 371 
 
 heartily and equally enjoy. Surely, there is something in all 
 this which could be imitated. The great talents with which he is 
 endowed cannot be imparted, but we do not believe that his 
 power is wholly derived from his talent. A man of only respect- 
 able abilities, who should catch his spirit, practise some of his 
 methods, and spend his strength in getting knowledge, and not in 
 coining sentences, would be able anywhere to gather round him a 
 concourse of hearers. The great secret is, to let orthodoxy 
 slide, as something which is neither to be maintained nor refuted, 
 — insisting only on the spirit of Christianity, and applying it to 
 the life of the present day in this land. 
 
 There are some reasons for thinking that the men and the or- 
 ganizations that have had in charge the moral interests of the 
 people of the United States for the last fifty years have not been 
 quite equal to their trust. What are we to think of such results 
 of New England culture as Douglas, Cass, Webster, and many 
 other men of great ability, but strangely wanting in moral power? 
 What are we to think of the great numbers of Southern Yankees 
 who were, and are, the bitterest foes of all that New England 
 represents ? What are we to think of the Rings that seem now- 
 a-days to form themselves, as it were, spontaneously in every 
 great corporation ? What of the club-houses that spring up at 
 every corner, for the accommodation of husbands and fathers 
 who find more attractions in wine, supper, and equivocal stories 
 than in the society of their wives and children ? What are we 
 to think of the fact, that among the people who can afford to adver- 
 tise at the rate of a dollar and a half a line are those who pro- 
 vide women with the means of killing their unborn children, — 
 a double crime, murder and suicide ? What are we to think of 
 the moral impotence of almost all women to resist the tyranny of 
 fashion, and the necessity that appears to rest upon them to copy 
 every disfiguration invented by the harlots of Paris ? What are 
 we to think of the want both of masculine and moral force in 
 men, which makes them helpless" against the extravagance of 
 their households, to support which they do fifty years' work in 
 twenty, and then die ? What are we to think of the fact, that 
 
* 
 
 372 HENRY WARD BEECHER AND HIS CHURCH. 
 
 all the creatures living in the United States enjoy good health, 
 except the human beings, who are nearly all ill ? 
 
 When we consider such things as these, we cannot help calling 
 in question a kind of public teaching which leaves the people in 
 ignorance of so much that they most need to know. Henry 
 Ward Beecher is the only clergyman we ever heard who habit- 
 ually promulgates the truth, that to be ill is generally a sin, and 
 always a shame. We never heard him utter the demoralizing 
 falsehood, that this present life is short and of small account, and 
 that nothing is worthy of much consideration except the life to 
 come. He dwells much on the enormous length of this life, and 
 the prodigious revenue of happiness it may yield to those who 
 comply with the conditions of happiness. It is his habit, also, to 
 preach the duty which devolves upon every person, to labor for 
 the increase of his knowledge and the general improvement of 
 his mind. We have heard him say on the platform of his 
 church, that it was disgraceful to any mechanic or clerk to let 
 such a picture as the Heart of the Andes be exhibited for twen- 
 ty-five cents, and not go and see it. Probably there is not one 
 honest clergyman in the country who does not fairly earn his 
 livelihood by the good he does, or by the evil he prevents. But 
 not enough good is done, and not enough evil prevented. The 
 sudden wealth that has come upon the world since the improve- 
 ment of the steam-engine adds a new difficulty to the life of mil- 
 lions. So far, the world does not appear to have made the best 
 use of its too rapidly increased surplus. "We cannot sell a 
 twelve-dollar book in this country," said a bookseller to us the 
 other day. But how easy to sell two-hundred-dollar garments ! 
 There seems great need of something that shall have power to 
 spiritualize mankind, and make head against the reinforced influ- 
 ence of material things. It may be that the true method of 
 dealing with the souls of modern men has been, in part, dis- 
 covered by Mr. Beecher, and that it would be well for persons 
 aspiring to the same vocation to begin their preparation by mak- 
 ing a pilgrimage to Brooklyn Heights. 
 
COMMODORE VANDERBILT. 
 
COMMODORE VANDERBILT.* 
 
 THE Staten Island ferry, on a fine afternoon in summer, is one 
 of the pleasantest scenes which New York affords. The 
 Island, seven miles distant from the city, forms one of the sides of 
 the Narrows, through which the commerce of the city and the emi- 
 grant ships enter the magnificent bay that so worthily announces 
 the grandeur of the New World. The ferry-boat, starting from 
 the extremity of Manhattan Island, first gives its passengers a 
 view of the East River, all alive with every description of craft ; 
 then, gliding round past Governor's Island, dotted with camps and 
 crowned with barracks, with the national flag floating above all, 
 it affords a view of the lofty bluffs which rise on one side of the 
 Hudson and the long line of the mast-fringed city on the other ; 
 then, rounding Governor's Island, the steamer pushes its way 
 towards the Narrows, disclosing to view Fort Lafayette, so cele- 
 brated of late, the giant defensive works opposite to it, the um- 
 brageous and lofty sides of Staten Island, covered with villas, 
 and, beyond all, the Ocean, lighted up by Coney Island's belt of 
 snowy sand, glistening in the sun. 
 
 Change the scene to fifty-five years ago : New York was then 
 a town of eighty thousand people, and Staten Island was inhab- 
 ited only by farmers, gardeners, and fishermen, who lived by sup- 
 plying the city with provisions. No elegant seats, no picturesque 
 villas adorned the hillsides, and pleasure-seekers found a nearer 
 
 * This narrative of the business-life of Commodore Vanderbilt was written 
 immediately after I had heard him tell the story himself. It was written at the 
 request of Robert Bonner, Esq., and published by him in the New York Ledger 
 of April 8, 1865. I should add, that several of the facts given were related 
 to me at various times by members of Mr. Vanderbilt's family. 
 
376 COMMODORE VANDERBILT. 
 
 resort in Hoboken. The ferry then, if ferry it could be called, 
 consisted of a few sail-boats, which left the island in the morning 
 loaded with vegetables and fish, and returned, if wind and tide 
 permitted, at night. If a pleasure party occasionally visited 
 Staten Island, they considered themselves in the light of bold 
 adventurers, who had gone far beyond the ordinary limits of an 
 excursion. There was only one thing in common between the 
 ferry at that day and this : the boats started from the same spot. 
 Where the ferry-house now stands at Whitehall was then the 
 beach to which the boatmen brought their freight, and where they 
 remained waiting for a return cargo. That was, also, the general 
 boat-stand of the city. Whoever wanted a boat, for business or 
 pleasure, repaired to Whitehall, and it was a matter of indiffer- 
 ence to the boatmen from Staten Island, whether they returned 
 home with a load, or shared in the general business of the port. 
 
 It is to one of those Whitehall boatmen of 1810, that we have 
 to direct the reader's attention. He was distinguished from his 
 comrades on the stand in several ways. Though master of a 
 Staten Island boat that would carry twenty passengers, he was 
 but sixteen years of age, and he was one of the handsomest, the 
 most agile and athletic, young fellows that either Island could 
 show. Young as he was, there was that in his face and bearing 
 which gave assurance that he was abundantly competent to his 
 work. He was always at his post betimes, and on the alert for a 
 job. He always performed what he undertook. This summer 
 of 1810 was his first season, but he had already an ample share 
 of the best of the business of the harbor. 
 
 Cornelius Vanderbilt was the name of this notable youth, — 
 the same Cornelius Vanderbilt who has since built a huudred 
 steamboats, who has since made a present to his country of a 
 steamship of five thousand tons' burden, who has since bought 
 lines of railroad, and who reported his income to the tax commis- 
 sioners, last year at something near three quarters of a million. 
 The first money the steamboat-king ever earned was by carrying 
 passengers between Staten Island and New York at eighteen 
 cents each. 
 
 His father, who was also named Cornelius, was the founder of 
 
COMMODORE VANDERBILT. 377 
 
 the Staten Island ferry. He was a thriving farmer on the 
 Island as early as 1794, tilling his own land near the Quarantine 
 Ground, and conveying his produce to New York in his own 
 boat. Frequently he would carry the produce of some of his 
 neighbors, and, in course of time, he ran his boat regularly, leav- 
 ing in the morning and returning at night, during the whole of 
 the summer, and thus he established a ferry which has since be- 
 come one of the most profitable in the world, carrying sometimes 
 more than twelve thousand passengers in a day. He was an in- 
 dustrious, enterprising, liberal man, and early acquired a proper- 
 ty which for that time was affluence. His wife was a singularly 
 wise and energetic woman. She was the main stay of the family, 
 since her husband was somewhat too liberal for his means, and 
 not always prudent in his projects. Once, when her husband 
 had fatally involved himself, and their farm was in danger of be- 
 ing sold for a debt of three thousand dollars, she produced, at the 
 last extremity, her private store, and counted out the whole sum 
 in gold pieces. She lived to the great age of eighty-seven, and 
 left an estate of fifty thousand dollars, the fruit of her own indus- 
 try and prudence. Her son, like many other distinguished men, 
 loves to acknowledge that whatever he has, and whatever he is 
 that is good, he owes to the precepts, the example, and the judi- 
 cious government of his mother. 
 
 Cornelius, the eldest of their family of nine children, was born 
 at the old farm-house on Staten Island, May 27, 1794. A 
 healthy, vigorous boy, fond of out-door sports, excelling his com- 
 panions in all boyish feats, on land and water, he had an uncon- 
 querable aversion to the confinement of the school-room. At that 
 day, the school-room was, indeed, a dull and uninviting place, the 
 lessons a tedious routine of learning by rote, and the teacher a 
 tyrant, enforcing them by the terrors of the stick. The boy went 
 to school a little, now and then, but learned little more than to 
 read, write, and cipher, and these imperfectly. The only books 
 he remembers using at school were the spelling-book and Testa- 
 ment. His real education was gained in working on his father's 
 farm, helping to sail his father's boat, driving his father's horses, 
 swimming, riding, rowing, sporting with his young friends. He 
 
378 COMMODORE VANDEEBILT. 
 
 was a bold rider from infancy, and passionately fond of a fine 
 horse. He tells his friends sometimes, that he rode a race-horse 
 at full speed when he was but six years old. That he regrets not 
 having acquired more school knowledge, that he values what is 
 commonly called education, is shown by the care he has taken to 
 have his own children well instructed. 
 
 There never was a clearer proof than in his case that the child 
 is father of the man. He showed in boyhood the very quality 
 which has most distinguished him as a man, — the power of accom- 
 plishing things in spite of difficulty and opposition. He was a 
 born conqueror. 
 
 When he was twelve years old, his father took a contract for 
 getting the cargo out of a vessel stranded near Sandy Hook, and 
 transporting it to New York in lighters. It was necessary to 
 carry the cargo in wagons across a sandy spit. Cornelius, with 
 a little fleet of lighters, three wagons, their horses and drivers, 
 started from home solely charged with the management of this 
 difficult affair. After loading the lighters and starting them for 
 the city, he had to conduct his wagons home by land, — a long 
 distance over Jersey sands. Leaving the beach with only six 
 dollars, he reached South Amboy penniless, with six horses and 
 three men, all hungry, still far from home, and separated from 
 Staten Island by an arm of the sea half a mile wide, that could 
 be crossed only by paying the ferryman six dollars. This was a 
 puzzling predicament for a boy of twelve, and he pondered long 
 how he could get out of it. At length he went boldly to the only 
 innkeeper of the place, and addressed him thus : — 
 
 " I have here three teams that I want to get over to Staten 
 Island. If you will put us across, I '11 leave with you one of my 
 horses in pawn, and if I don't send you back the six dollars with- 
 in forty-eight hours you may keep the horse." 
 
 The innkeeper looked into the bright, honest eyes of the boy 
 for a moment and said: — 
 
 « I '11 do it." 
 
 And he did it. The horse in pawn was left with the ferryman 
 on the Island, and he was redeemed in time. 
 
 Before he was sixteen he had made up his mind to earn his 
 
COMMODORE VANDERBILT. 379 
 
 livelihood by navigation of some kind, and often, when tired of 
 farm work, he had cast wistful glances at the outward-bound 
 ships that passed his home. Occasionally, too, he had alarmed 
 his mother by threatening to run away and go to sea. His pref- 
 erence, however, was to become a boatman of New York harbor. 
 On the first of May, 1810, — an important day in his history, — 
 he made known his wishes to his mother, and asked her to ad- 
 vance him a hundred dollars for the purchase of a boat. She 
 replied : — 
 
 "My son, on the twenty-seventh of this month you will be 
 sixteen years old. If, by your birthday, you will plough, harrow, 
 and plant with corn that lot," pointing to a field, " I will advance 
 you the money." 
 
 The field was one of eight acres, very rough, tough, and stony. 
 He informed his young companions of his mother's conditional 
 promise, and several of them readily agreed to help him. For 
 the next two weeks the field presented the spectacle of a continu- 
 ous " bee " of boys, picking up stones, ploughing, harrowing, and 
 planting. To say that the work was done in time, and done 
 thoroughly, is only another way of stating that it was undertaken 
 and conducted by Cornelius Vanderbilt. On his birthday he 
 claimed the fulfilment of his mother's promise. Reluctantly she 
 gave him the money, considering his project only less wild than 
 that of running away to sea. He hurried off to a neighboring 
 village, bought his boat, hoisted sail, and started for home one 
 of the happiest youths in the world. His first adventure seemed 
 to justify his mother's fears, for he struck a sunken wreck on his 
 way, and just managed to run his boat ashore before she filled 
 and sunk. 
 
 Undismayed at this mishap, he began his new career. His 
 success, as we have intimated, was speedy and great. He made 
 a thousand dollars during each of the next three summers. Often 
 he worked all night, but he was never absent from his post by 
 i day, and he soon had the cream of the boating business of the 
 port. 
 
 At that day parents claimed the services and the earnings of 
 their children till they were twenty-one. In other words, families 
 
380 COMMODORE VANDERBILT. 
 
 made common cause against the common enemy, "Want. The 
 arrangement between this young boatman and his parents was 
 that he should give them all his day earnings and half his night 
 earnings. He fulfilled his engagement faithfully until his parents 
 released him from it, and with his own half of his earnings by 
 night he bought all his clothes. He had forty competitors in the 
 business, who, being all grown men, could dispose of their gains 
 as they chose ; but of all the forty, he alone has emerged to 
 prosperity and distinction. Why was this ? There were several 
 reasons. He soon came to be the best boatman in the port. He 
 attended to his business more regularly and strictly than any 
 other. He had no vices. His comrades spent at night much of 
 what they earned by day, and when the winter suspended their 
 business, instead of living on the last summer's savings, they were 
 obliged to lay up debts for the next summer's gains to discharge. 
 In those three years of willing servitude to his parents, Cornelius 
 Vanderbilt added to the family's common stock of wealth, and 
 gained for himself three things, — a perfect knowledge of his 
 business, habits of industry and self-control, and the best boat in 
 the harbor. 
 
 The war of 1812 suspended the commerce of the port, but 
 gave a great impulse to boating. There were men-of-war in the 
 harbor and garrisons in the forts, which gave to the boatmen of 
 Whitehall and Staten Island plenty of business, of which Corne- 
 lius Vanderbilt had his usual share. In September, 1813, during a 
 tremendous gale, a British fleet attempted to run past Fort Rich- 
 mond. After the repulse, the commander of the fort, expecting 
 a renewal of the attempt, was anxious to get the news to the 
 city, so as to secure a reinforcement early the next day. Every 
 one agreed that, if the thing could be done, there was but one 
 man who could do it ; and, accordingly, young Vanderbilt was 
 sent for. 
 
 " Can you take a party up to the city in this gale ? " 
 
 " Yes," was the reply ; " but I shall have to carry them part 
 of the way under water." 
 
 When he made fast to CofFee-House slip, an hour or two after, 
 every man in the boat was drenched to the skin. But there they 
 were, and the fort was reinforced the next morning. 
 
COMMODORE VANDERBILT. 381 
 
 About this time, the young man had another important conver- 
 sation with his mother, which, perhaps, was more embarrassing 
 than the one recorded above. He was in love. Sophia Johnson 
 was the maiden's name, — a neighbor's lovely and industrious 
 daughter, whose affections he had wooed and won. He asked 
 his mother's consent to the match, and that henceforth he might 
 have the disposal of his own earnings. She approved his choice, 
 and released him from his obligations. During the rest of that 
 season he labored with new energy, saved five hundred dollars, 
 and, in December, 1813, when he laid up his boat for the winter, 
 became the happy husband of the best of wives. 
 
 In the following spring, a great alarm pervaded all the sea- 
 board cities of America. Rumors were abroad of that great ex- 
 pedition which, at the close of the year, attacked New Orleans ; 
 but, in the spring and summer, no one knew upon which port the 
 blow would fall. The militia of New York were called out for 
 three months, under a penalty of ninety-six dollars to whomso- 
 ever should fail to appear at the rendezvous. The boatmen, in 
 the midst of a flourishing business, and especially our young hus- 
 band, were reluctant to lose the profits of a season's labor, which 
 were equivalent, in their peculiar case, to the income of a whole 
 year. An advertisement appeared one day in the papers which 
 gave them a faint prospect of escaping this disaster. It was is- 
 sued from the office of the commissary-general, Matthew L. Da- 
 vis, inviting bids from the boatmen for the contract of conveying 
 provisions to the posts in the vicinity of New York during the 
 three months, the contractor to be exempt from military duty. 
 The boatmen caught at this, as a drowning man catches at a 
 straw, and put in bids at rates preposterously low, — all except 
 Cornelius Vanderbilt. 
 
 " Why don't you send in a bid ? " asked his father. 
 
 " Of what use would it be ? " replied the son. " They are of- 
 fering to do the work at half-price. It can't be done at such 
 rates." 
 
 " Well," added the father, " it can do no harm to try for it." 
 
 So, to please his father, but without the slightest expectation of 
 getting the contract, he sent in an application, offering to trans- 
 
382 COMMODORE VANDERBILT. 
 
 port the provisions at a price which would enable him to do it 
 with the requisite certainty and promptitude. His offer was sim- 
 ply fair to both parties. 
 
 On the day named for the awarding of the contract, all the 
 boatmen but him assembled in the commissary's office. He re- 
 mained at the boat-stand, not considering that he had any in- 
 terest in the matter. One after another, his comrades returned 
 with long faces, sufficiently indicative of their disappointment ; 
 until, at length, all of them had come in, but no one bringing the 
 prize. Puzzled at this, he strolled himself to the office, and 
 asked the commissary if the contract had been given. 
 
 " O yes," said Davis ; " that business is settled. Cornelius 
 Vanderbilt is the man." 
 
 He was thunderstruck. 
 
 " What ! " said the commissary, observing ' his astonishment, 
 " is it you ? " 
 
 " My name is Cornelius Vanderbilt." 
 
 " Well," said Davis, " don't you know why we have given the 
 contract to you ? " 
 
 " No." 
 
 " Why, it is because we want this business done, and we know 
 you '11 do it." 
 
 Matthew Lc Davis, as the confidant of Aaron Burr, did a good 
 many foolish things in his life, but on this occasion he did a wise 
 one. The contractor asked him but one favor, which was, that 
 the daily load of stores might be ready for him every evening at 
 six o'clock. There were six posts to be supplied : Harlem, Hurl 
 Gate, Ward's Island, and three others in the harbor or at the 
 Narrows, each of which required one load a week. Young Van- 
 derbilt did all this work at night ; and although, during the 
 whole period of three months, he never once failed to perform 
 his contract, he was never once absent from his stand in the day- 
 time. He slept when he could, and when he could not sleep he 
 did without it. Only on Sunday and Sunday night could he be 
 said to rest. There was a rare harvest for boatmen that sum- 
 mer. Transporting sick and furloughed soldiers, naval and mil- 
 itary officers, the friends of the militia men, and pleasure-seekers 
 
COMMODORE VANDERBILT. 383 
 
 visiting the forts, kept those of the boatmen who had " escaped 
 the draft," profitably busy. It was not the time for an enterpris- 
 ing man to be absent from his post. 
 
 From the gains of that summer he built a superb little schooner, 
 the Dread ; and, the year following, the joyful year of peace, he 
 and his brother-in-law, Captain De Forrest, launched the Char- 
 lotte, a vessel large enough for coasting service, and the pride of 
 the harbor for model and speed. In this vessel, when the sum- 
 mer's work was over, he voyaged sometimes along the Southern 
 coast, bringing home considerable freights from the Carolinas. 
 Knowing the coast thoroughly, and being one of the boldest and 
 most expert of seamen, he and his vessel were always ready 
 when there was something to be done of difficulty and peril. 
 During the three years succeeding the peace of 1815, he saved 
 three thousand dollars a year; so that, in 1818, he possessed two 
 or three of the nicest little craft in the harbor, and a cash capital 
 of nine thousand dollars. 
 
 The next step of Captain Vanderbilt astonished both his rivals 
 and his friends. He deliberately abandoned his flourishing busi- 
 ness, to accept the post of captain of a small steamboat, at a 
 salary of a thousand dollars a year. By slow degrees, against 
 the opposition of the boatmen, and the terrors of the publir, 
 steamboats had made their way ; until, in 1817, ten years after 
 Fulton's experimental trip, the long head of Captain Vanderbilt 
 clearly comprehended that the supremacy of sails was gone for- 
 ever, and he resolved to ally himself to the new power before 
 being overcome by it. Besides, he protests, that in no enterprise 
 of his life has his chief object been the gain of money. Being 
 in the business of carrying passengers, he desired to carry them 
 in the best manner, and by the best means. Business has ever 
 been to him a kind of game, and his ruling motive was and is, to 
 play it so as to win. To carry his point, that has been the mo- 
 tive of his business career; but then his point has generally 
 been one which, being carried, brought money with it. 
 
 At that day, passengers to Philadelphia were conveyed by 
 steamboat from New York to New Brunswick, where they re- 
 mained all night, and the next morning took the stage for Tren- 
 
384 COMMODORE VANDERBILT. 
 
 ton, whence they were carried to Philadelphia by steamboat. 
 The proprietor of part of this line was the once celebrated 
 Thomas Gibbons, a man of enterprise and capital. It was in his 
 service that Captain Vanderbilt spent the next twelve years of 
 his life, commanding the steamer plying between New York and 
 New Brunswick. The hotel at New Brunswick, where the pas- 
 sengers passed the night, which had never paid expenses, was let 
 to him rent free, and under the efficient management of Mrs. 
 Vanderbilt, it became profitable, and afforded the passengers such 
 excellent entertainment as to enhance the popularity of the line. 
 
 In engaging with Mr. Gibbons, Captain Vanderbilt soon found 
 that he had put his head into a hornet's nest. The State of New 
 York had granted to Fulton and Livingston the exclusive right 
 of running steamboats in New York waters. Thomas Gibbons, 
 believing the grant unconstitutional, as it was afterwards declared 
 by the Supreme Court, ran his boats in defiance of it, and thus 
 involved himself in a long and fierce contest with the authorities 
 of New York. The brunt of this battle fell upon his new captain. 
 There was one period when for sixty successive days an attempt 
 was made to arrest him ; but the captain baffled every attempt. 
 Leaving his crew in New Jersey (for they also were liable to 
 arrest), he would approach the New York wharf with a lady at 
 the helm, while he managed the engine ; and as soon as the boat 
 was made fast he concealed himself in the depths of the vessel. 
 At the moment of starting, the officer (changed every day to 
 avoid recognition) used to present himself and tap the wary 
 captain on the shoulder. 
 
 " Let go the line," was his usual reply to the summons. 
 
 The officer, fearing to be carried off to New Jersey, where a 
 retaliatory act threatened him with the State's prison, would jump 
 ashore as for life ; or, if carried off, would beg to be put ashore. 
 In this way, and in many others, the captain contrived to evade 
 the law. He fought the State of New York for seven years, 
 until, in 1824, Chief Justice Marshall pronounced New York 
 wrong and New Jersey right. The opposition vainly attempted 
 to buy him off by the offer of a larger boat. 
 
 " No," replied the captain, " I shall stick to Mr. Gibbons till he 
 is through his troubles." 
 
COMMODORE VANDERBILT. 385 
 
 That was the reason why he remained so long in the sen ice 
 of Mr. Gibbons. 
 
 After this war was over, the genius of Captain Vanderbilt had 
 full play, and he conducted the line with so much energy and 
 good sense, that it yielded an annual profit of forty thousand 
 dollars. Gibbons offered to raise his salary to five thousand 
 dollars a year, but he declined the offer. An acquaintance once 
 asked him why he refused a compensation that was so manifestly 
 just. 
 
 " I did it on principle," was his reply. " The other captains 
 had but one thousand, and they were already jealous enough of 
 me. Besides, I never cared for money. All I ever have cared 
 for was to carry my point." 
 
 A little incident of these years he has sometimes related to his 
 children. In the cold January of 1820, the ship Elizabeth — the 
 first ship ever sent to Africa by the Colonization Society — lay at 
 the foot of Rector Street, with the negroes all on board, frozen in. 
 For many days, her crew, aided by the crew of the frigate Siam, 
 her convoy, had been cutting away at the ice ; but, as more ice 
 formed at night than could be removed by day, the prospect of 
 getting to sea was unpromising. One afternoon, Captain Vander- 
 bilt joined the crowd of spectators. 
 
 " They are going the wrong way to work," he carelessly re- 
 marked, as he turned to go home. " I could get her out in one 
 day." 
 
 These words, from a man -who was known to mean all he said, 
 made an impression on a bystander, who reported them to the 
 anxious agent of the Society. The agent called upon him. 
 
 " What did you mean, Captain, by saying that you could get 
 out the ship in one day ? " 
 
 " Just what I said." 
 
 " What will you get her out for ? " 
 
 " One hundred dollars." 
 
 " I '11 give it. When will you do it ? " 
 
 " Have a steamer to-morrow, at twelve o'clock, ready to tow 
 her out. I '11 have her clear in time." 
 
 That same evening, at six, he was on the spot with five men, 
 17 v 
 
386 COMMODORE VANDEBBILT. 
 
 three pine boards, and a small anchor. The difficulty was that 
 beyond the ship there were two hundred yards of ice too thin to 
 bear a man. The captain placed his anchor on one of his 
 boards, and pushed it out as far as he could reach ; then placed 
 another board upon the ice, laid down upon it, and gave his an- 
 chor another push. Then he put down his third board, and used 
 that as a means of propulsion. In this way he worked forward to 
 near the edge of the thin ice, where the anchor broke through 
 and sunk. With the line attached to it, he hauled a boat to the 
 outer edge, and then began cutting a passage for the ship. 
 
 At eleven the next morning she was clear. At twelve she was 
 towed into the stream. 
 
 In 1829, after twelve years of service as captain of a steam- 
 boat, being then thirty-five years of age, and having saved thirty 
 thousand dollars, he announced to his employer his intention to 
 set up for himself. Mr. Gibbons was aghast. He declared that 
 he could not carry on the line without his aid, and finding him 
 resolute, said : — 
 
 " There, Vanderbilt, take all this property, and pay me for it 
 as you make the money." 
 
 This splendid offer he thankfully but firmly declined. He did 
 so chiefly because he knew the men with whom he would have 
 had to co-operate, and foresaw, that he and they could never 
 work comfortably together. He wanted a free field. 
 
 The little Caroline, seventy feet long, that afterward plunged 
 over Niagara Falls, was the first steamboat ever built by him. 
 His progress as a steamboat owner was not rapid for some years. 
 The business was in the hands of powerful companies and 
 wealthy individuals, and he, the new-comer, running a few small 
 boats on short routes, labored under serious disadvantages. 
 Formidable attempts were made to run him off the river ; but, 
 prompt to retaliate, he made vigorous inroads into the enemy's 
 domain, and kept up an opposition so keen as to compel a com- 
 promise in every instance. There was a time, during his famous 
 contest with the Messrs. Stevens of Hoboken, when he had spent 
 every dollar he possessed, and when a few days more of opposi- 
 tion would have compelled him to give up the strife. Nothing 
 
COMMODORE VAXDERBILT. 887 
 
 saved him but the belief, on the part of his antagonists, that 
 Gibbons was backing him. It was not the case ; he had no 
 backer. But this error, in the very nick of time, induced his 
 opponents to treat for a compromise, and he was saved. 
 
 Gradually he made his way to the control of the steamboat in- 
 terest. He has owned, in whole or in part, a hundred steam 
 vessels. His various opposition lines have permanently reduced 
 fares one half. Superintending himself the construction of every 
 boat, having a perfect practical knowledge of the business in its 
 every detail, selecting his captains well and paying them justly, he 
 has never lost a vessel by fire, explosion, or wreck. He possesses, 
 in a remarkable degree, the talent of selecting the right man 
 for a place, and of inspiring him with zeal. Every man who 
 serves him knows that he will be sustained against all intrigue 
 and all opposition, and that he has nothing to fear so long as he 
 does his duty. 
 
 The later events in his career are, in some degree, known to 
 the public. Every one remembers his magnificent cruise in the 
 North Star, and how, on returning to our harbor, his first salute 
 was to the cottage of his venerable mother on the Staten Island 
 shore. To her, also, on landing, he first paid his respects. 
 Every one knows that he presented to the government the 
 steamer that bears his name, at a time when she was earning him 
 two thousand dollars a day. He has given to the war something 
 more precious than a ship : his youngest son, Captain Vander- 
 bilt, the most atldetic youth that ever graduated at West Point, 
 and one of the finest young men in the country. His friends tell 
 us that, on his twenty-second birthday he lifted nine hundred and 
 eight pounds. But his giant strength did not save him. The 
 fatigues and miasmas of the Corinth campaign planted in his 
 magnificent frame the seeds of death. He died a year ago, after a 
 long struggle with disease, to the inexpressible grief of his family. 
 
 During the last two or three years, Commodore Vanderbilt has 
 been withdrawing his capital from steamers and investing it in 
 railroads. It is this fact that has given rise to the impression 
 that he has been playing a deep game in stock speculation. 
 No such thing. He has never speculated; he disapproves of, 
 
3S8 COMMODORE VANDERBILT. 
 
 and despises speculation ; and has invariably warned his sons 
 against it as the pursuit of adventurers and gamblers. " Why, 
 then," Wall Street may ask, " has he bought almost the whole 
 stock of the Harlem railroad, which pays no dividends, run- 
 ning it up to prices that seem ridiculous ? " We can answer 
 this question very simply : he bought the Harlem railroad to 
 keep. He bought it as an investment. Looking several inches 
 beyond his nose, and several days ahead of to-day, he deliberately 
 concluded that the Harlem road, managed as he could manage it, 
 would be, in the course of time, what Wall Street itself would call 
 "a good thing." We shall see, by and by, whether he judged 
 correctly. What was the New Jersey railroad worth when he 
 and a few friends went over one day and bought it at auction ? 
 Less than nothing. The stock is now held at one hundred and 
 seventy-five. 
 
 After taking the cream of the steamboat business for a quarter 
 of a century, Commodore Vanderbilt has now become the largest 
 holder of railroad stock in the country. If to-morrow balloons 
 should supersede railroads, we should doubtless find him " in " 
 balloons. 
 
 Nothing is more remarkable than the ease with which great 
 business men conduct the most extensive and complicated affairs. 
 At ten or eleven in the morning, the Commodore rides from his 
 mansion in Washington Place in a light wagon, drawn by one of 
 his favorite horses, to his office in Bowling Green, where, in two 
 hours, aided by a single clerk, he transacts the business of the 
 day, returning early in the afternoon to take his drive on the 
 road. He despises show and ostentation in every form. No 
 lackey attends him ; he holds the reins himself. With an estate 
 of forty millions to manage, nearly all actively employed in iron 
 works and railroads, he keeps scarcely any books, but carries all 
 his affairs in his head, and manages them without the least anxi- 
 ety or apparent effort. 
 
 We are informed by one who knows him better almost than 
 any one else, that he owes his excellent health chiefly to his love 
 of horses. He possesses the power of leaving his business in his 
 office, and never thinking of it during his hours of recreation. 
 
COMMODORE VANDEBBILT. 389 
 
 Out on the road behind a fast team, or seated at whist at the 
 Club-House, he enters gayly into the humors of the hour. He is 
 rigid on one point only ; — not to talk or hear of business out of 
 business hours. 
 
 Being asked one day what he considered to be the secret of 
 success in business, he replied : — 
 
 " Secret ? There is no secret about it. All you have to do is 
 to attend to your business and go ahead." 
 
 With all deference to such an eminent authority, we must be 
 allowed to -think that that is not the whole of the matter. Three 
 things seem essential to success in business: 1. To know your 
 business. 2. To attend to it. 3. To keep down expenses until 
 your fortune is safe from business perils. 
 
 On another occasion he replied with more point to a similar 
 question : — 
 
 " The secret of my success is this : I never tell what I am 
 going to do till I have done it." 
 
 He is, indeed, a man of little speech. Gen. Grant himself is 
 not more averse to oratory than he. Once, in London, at a 
 banquet, his health was given, and he was urged to respond. 
 All that could be extorted from him was the following : — 
 
 " Gentlemen, I have never made a fool of myself in my life, 
 and I am not going to begin now. Here is a friend of mine (his 
 lawyer) who can talk all day. He will do my speaking." 
 
 Nevertheless, he knows how to express his meaning with sin- 
 gular clearness, force, and brevity, both by the tongue and by the 
 pen. Some of his business letters, dictated by him to a clerk, are 
 models of that kind of composition. He is also master of an art 
 still more dilficult, — that of not saying what he does not wish to 
 say. 
 
 As a business man he is even more prudent than he is bold. 
 He has sometimes remarked, that it has never been in the power 
 of any man or set of men to prevent his keeping an engagement. 
 If, for example, he should bind himself to pay a million of dollars 
 on the first of May, he would at once provide for fulfilling his en- 
 gagement in such a manner that no failure on the part of others, 
 no contingency, private or public, could prevent his doing it. In 
 
390 COMMODORE VANDERBILT. 
 
 other words, he would have the money where he could be sure 
 of finding it on the day. 
 
 No one ever sees the name of Cornelius Vanderbilt on a sub- 
 scription paper, nor ever will. In his charities, which are numer- 
 ous and liberal, he exhibits the reticence which marks his con- 
 duct as a man of business. His object is to render real and per- 
 manent service to deserving objects ; but to the host of miscella- 
 neous beggars that pervade our places of business he is not acces- 
 sible. The last years of many a good old soul, whom he knew 
 in his youth, have been made happy by a pension from him. But 
 of all this not a syllable ever escapes his lips. 
 
 He has now nearly completed his seventy-first year. His 
 frame is still erect and vigorous ; and, as a business man, he has 
 not a living superior. Every kind of success has attended him 
 through life. Thirteen children have been born to him, — nine 
 daughters and four sons, — nearly all of whom are living and are 
 parents. One of his grandsons has recently come of age. At the 
 celebration of his golden wedding, three years ago, more than a 
 hundred and forty of his descendants and relations assembled at 
 his house. On that joyful occasion, the Commodore presented to 
 his wife a beautiful little golden steamboat, with musical works in- 
 stead of an engine, — emblematic at once of his business career 
 and the harmony of his home. If ever he boasts of anything ap- 
 pertaining to him, it is when he is speaking of the manly virtues 
 of his son lost in the war, or when he says that his wife is the 
 finest woman of her age in the city. 
 
 Commodore Vanderbilt is one of the New World's strong men. 
 His career is one which young men who aspire to lead in practi- 
 cal affairs may study with profit. 
 
THEODOSIA BURR. 
 
THEODOSIA BURR. 
 
 NEW YORK does well to celebrate the anniversary of the 
 day when the British troops evacuated the city ; for it was 
 in truth the birthday of all that we now mean by the City oi 
 New York. One hundred and seventy-four years had elapsed 
 since Hendrick Hudson landed upon the shores of Manhattan ; 
 but the town could only boast a population of twenty-three thou- 
 sand. In ten years the population doubled ; in twenty years 
 trebled. Washington Irving was a baby seven months old, at his 
 father's house in William Street, on Evacuation Day, the 25th of 
 November, 1783. On coming of age he found himself the inhabi- 
 tant of a city containing a population of seventy thousand. When 
 he died, at the age of seventy -five, more than a million of people 
 inhabited the congregation of cities which form the metropolis of 
 America. 
 
 The beginnings of great things are always interesting to us. 
 New-Yorkers, at least, cannot read without emotion the plain, 
 matter-of-fact accounts in the old newspapers of the manner in 
 which the city of their pride changed masters. Journalism has 
 altered its modes of procedure since that memorable day. No 
 array of headings in large type called the attention of readers to 
 the details of this great event in the history of their town, and no 
 editorial article in extra leads commented upon it. The news- 
 papers printed the merest programme of the proceedings, with 
 scarcely a oomment of their own ; and, having done that, they 
 felt that their duty was done, for no subsequent issue contains an 
 allusion to the subject. Perhaps the reader will be gratified by 
 a perusal of the account of the evacuation as given in Itivington's 
 Gazette of November 26, 1783. 
 
394 THEODOSIA BURR. 
 
 New York, November 26 : — Yesterday in the Morning the American 
 Troops marched from Haerlem, to the Bowery-Lane — They remained 
 there until about One o'Clock, when the British Troops left the Posts 
 in the Bowery, and the American Troops marched into and took Pos- 
 session of the City, in the following Order, viz. 
 
 1. A Corps of Dragoons. 
 
 2. Advance Guard of Light Infantry. 
 
 3. A Corps of Artillery. 
 
 4. Battalion of Light Infantry. 
 
 5. Battalion of Massachusetts Troops. 
 
 6. Rear Guard. 
 
 After the Troops had taken Possession of the City, the General 
 [Washington] and Governor [George Clinton] made their Public 
 Entry in the following Manner : 
 
 1. Their Excellencies the General and Governor, with their Suites, 
 on Horseback. 
 
 2. The Lieutenant-Governor, and the Members of the Council, for 
 the Temporary Government of the Southern District, four a-breast. 
 
 3. Major General Knox, and the Officers of the Army, eight a-breast. 
 
 4. Citizens on Horseback, eight a-breast. 
 
 5. The Speaker of the Assembly, and Citizens, on Foot, eight a- 
 breast. 
 
 Their Excellencies the Governor and Commander in Chief were es- 
 corted by a Body of West-Chester Light Horse, under the command 
 of Captain Delavan. 
 
 The Procession proceeded down Queen Street [now Pearl], and 
 through the Broadway, to Cape's Tavern. 
 
 The Governor gave a public Dinner at Fraunces's Tavern ; at 
 which the Commander in Chief and other General Officers were pres- 
 ent. 
 
 After Dinner, the following Toasts were drank by the Company : 
 
 1. The United States of America. 
 
 2. His most Christian Majesty. 
 
 3. The United Netherlands. 
 
 4. The king of Sweden. 
 
 5. The American Army. 
 
 6. The Fleet and Armies of France, which have served in America. 
 
 7. The Memory of those Heroes who have fallen for our Freedom. 
 
 8. May our Country be grateful to her military children. 
 
 9. May Justice support what Courage has gained. 
 
 10. The Vindicators of the Bights of Mankind in every Quarter of 
 the Globe. 
 
THEODOSIA BURR. 395 
 
 11. May America be an Asylum to the persecuted of the Earth. 
 
 12. May a close Union of the States guard the Temple they have 
 erected to Liberty. 
 
 13. May the Remembrance of This DAY be a Lesson to Princes. 
 
 The arrangement and whole conduct of this march, with the tran- 
 quillity which succeeded it, through the day and night, was admirable ! 
 and the grateful citizens will ever feel the most affectionate impressions, 
 from that elegant and efficient disposition which prevailed through the 
 whole event. 
 
 Such was the journalism of that primitive day. The sedate 
 Rivington, for so many years the Tory organ, was in no humor, 
 we may suppose, to chronicle the minor events of the occasion, 
 even if he had not considered them beneath the dignity of his 
 vocation. He says nothing of the valiant matron in Chatham 
 Row who, in the impatience of her patriotism, hoisted the Ameri- 
 can flag over her door two hours before the stipulated moment, 
 noon, and defended it against a British provost officer with her 
 broomstick. Nor does he allude to the great scene at the princi- 
 pal flag-staff, which the retiring garrison had plentifully greased, 
 and from which they had removed the blocks and halyards, in 
 order to retard the hoisting of the stars and stripes. He does 
 not tell us how a sailor-boy, with a line around his waist and a 
 pocket full of spikes, hammered his way to the top of the staff, 
 and restored the tackling by which the flag was flung to the 
 breeze before the barges containing the British rear-guard had 
 reached the fleet. It was a sad day for Mr. Rivington, and he 
 may be excused for not dwelling upon its incidents longer than 
 stern duty demanded. 
 
 The whole State of New York had been waiting impatiently 
 I for the evacuation of the City. Many hundreds of the old Whig 
 inhabitants, who had fled at the entrance of the English troops 
 seven years before, w r ere eager to come again into possession of 
 their homes and property, and resume their former occupations. 
 Many new enterprises waited only for the departure of the troops 
 to be entered upon. A large number of young men were look- 
 ing to New York as the scene of their future career. Albany, 
 which had served as the temporary capital of the State, was full 
 
 
396 THEODOSIA BURR. 
 
 of lawyers, law-students, retired soldiers, merchants, and mechan- 
 ics, who were prepared to remove to New York as soon as Riv- 
 ington's Gazette should inform them that the British had really 
 left, and General Washington taken possession. As in these 
 days certain promises to pay are to he fulfilled six months after 
 the United States shall have acknowledged the independence of 
 a certain Confederacy, so at that time it was a custom for leases 
 and other compacts to be dated from " the day on which the Brit- 
 ish troops shall leave New York." Among the young men in 
 Albany who were intending to repair to the city were two retired 
 officers of distinction, Alexander Hamilton, a student at law, 
 and Aaron Burr, then in the second year of his practice at the 
 bar. James Kent and Edward Livingston were also stu- 
 dents of law in Albany at that time. The old Tory lawyers be- 
 ing all exiled or silenced, there was a promising field in New 
 York for young advocates of talent, and these two young gentle- 
 men had both contracted marriages which necessitated speedy 
 professional gains. Hamilton had won the daughter of General 
 Schuyler. Burr was married to the widow of a British officer, 
 whose fortune was a few hundred pounds and two fine strapping 
 boys fourteen and sixteen years of age. 
 
 And Burr was himself a father. Theodosia, " his only child," 
 was born at Albany in the spring of 1783. When the family re- 
 moved to New York in the following winter, and took up their 
 abode in Maiden Lane, — " the rent to commence when the troops 
 leave the city, " — she was an engaging infant of seven or eight 
 months. We may infer something of the circumstances and 
 prospects of her father, when we know that he had ventured upon 
 a house of which the rent was two hundred pounds a year. We 
 find him removing, a year or two after, to a mansion at the cor- 
 ner of Cedar and Nassau streets, the garden and grapery of which 
 were among the finest in the thickly settled portion of the city. 
 Fifty years after, he had still an office within a very few yards of 
 the same spot, though all trace of the garden of Theodosia's child- 
 hood had long ago disappeared. She was a child of affluence. 
 Not till she had left her father's house did a shadow of misfor- 
 tune darken its portals. Abundance and elegance surrounded 
 
THEODOSIA BURR. 397 
 
 her from her infancy, and whatever advantages in education and 
 training wealth can produce for a child she had in profusion. At 
 the same time her father's vigilant stoicism guarded her from the 
 evils attendant upon a too easy acquisition of things pleasant and 
 desirable. 
 
 She was born into a happy home. Even if we had not the 
 means of knowing something of the character of her mother, we 
 might still infer that she must have possessed qualities singularly 
 attractive to induce a man in the position of Burr to undertake 
 the charge of a family at the outset of his career. She was 
 neither handsome nor young, nor had she even the advantage of 
 good health. A scar disfigured her face. Burr, — the brilliant 
 and celebrated Burr, — heir of an honored name, had linked his 
 rising fortunes with an invalid and her boys. The event most 
 abundantly justified his choice, for in all the fair island of Man- 
 hattan there was not a happier family than his, nor one in which 
 happiness was more securely founded in the diligent discharge of 
 duty. The twelve years of his married life were his brightest 
 and best ; and among the last words he ever spoke were a pointed 
 declaration that his wife was the best woman and the finest lady 
 he had ever known. It was her cultivated mind that drew him 
 to her. "It was a knowledge of your mind," he once wrote he , 
 " which first inspired me with a respect for that of your sex, 
 and with some regret I confess, that the ideas you have often 
 heard me express in favor of female intellectual power are founded 
 in what I have imagined more than in what I have seen, except 
 in you." 
 
 In those days an educated woman was among the rarest of 
 rarities. The wives of many of our most renowned revolutionary 
 leaders were surprisingly illiterate. Except the noble wife of 
 John Adams, whose letters form so agreeable an oasis in the pub- 
 lished correspondence of the time, it would be difficult to men 
 tion the name of one lady of the revolutionary period wJio could 
 have been a companion to the mind of a man of culture. Mrs. 
 Burr, on the contrary, was the equal of her husband in literary 
 discernment, and his superior in moral judgment. Her remarks, 
 in her letters to her husband, upon the popular authors of the 
 
Q 
 
 98 THEODOSIA BURR. 
 
 da)', Chesterfield, Rousseau, Voltaire, and others, show that she 
 could correct as well as sympathize with her husband's taste. 
 She relished all of Chesterfield except the " indulgence," which 
 Burr thought essential. She had a weakness for Rousseau, but 
 was not deluded by his sentimentality. She enjoyed Gibbon 
 without stumbling at his fifteenth and sixteenth chapters. 
 
 The home of Theodosia pi-esents to us a pleasing scene of vir- 
 tuous industry. The master of the house, always an indomitable 
 worker, was in the full tide of a successful career at the bar. 
 His two step-sons were employed in his office, and one of them 
 frequently accompanied him in his journeys to distant courts as 
 clerk or amanuensis. No father could have been more generous 
 or more thoughtful than he was for these fatherless youths, and 
 they appeared to have cherished for him the liveliest affection. 
 Mrs. Burr shared in the labors of the office during the absence 
 of her lord. All the affairs of this happy family moved in har- 
 mony, for love presided at their board, inspired their exertions, 
 and made them one. One circumstance alone interrupted their 
 felicity, and that was the frequent absence of Burr from home on 
 business at country courts ; but even these journeys served to 
 call forth from all the family the warmest effusions of affection. 
 
 " What language can express the joy, the gratitude of Theodosia ! " 
 writes Mrs. Burr to her absent husband, in the fifth year of their mar- 
 riage. " Stage after stage without a line. Thy usual punctuality gave 
 room for every fear ; various conjectures filled every breast. One of 
 our sons was to have departed to-day in quest of the best of friends 
 and fathers. This morning we waited the stage with impatience. 
 Shrouder went frequently before it arrived ; at length returned — no 
 letter. We were struck dumb with disappointment. Barton [eldest 
 son] set out to inquire who were the passengers ; in a very few minutes 
 returned exulting — a packet worth the treasures of the universe. 
 Joy brightened every face ; all expressed their past anxieties, their 
 present happiness. To enjoy was the first result. Each made choice 
 of what they could best relish. Porter, sweet wine, chocolate, and 
 sweetmeats made the most delightful repast that could be enjoyed 
 without thee. The servants were made to feel their lord was well ; are 
 at this instant toasting his health and bounty. While the boys are 
 obeying thy dear commands, thy Theodosia flies to speak her heartfelt 
 
THEODOSIA BURR. 399 
 
 joy — her Aaron safe — mistress of the heart she adores, can she ask 
 more ? Has Heaven more to grant ? " 
 
 What a pleasing picture of a happy family circle is this, and 
 how rarely are the perils of a second marriage so completely 
 overcome ! It was in such a warm and pleasant nest as this that 
 Theodosia Burr passed the years of her childhood. 
 
 Charles Lamb used to say that babies had no right to our regard 
 merely as babies, but that every child had a character of its own 
 by which it must stand or fall in the esteem of disinterested ob- 
 servers. Theodosia was a beautiful and forward child, formed to 
 be the pet and pride of a household. " Your dear little Theo," 
 wrote her mother in her third year, " grows the most engaging 
 child you ever saw. It is impossible to see her with indifference." 
 From her earliest years she exhibited that singular fondness for 
 her father which afterward became the ruling passion of her life, 
 and which was to undergo the severest tests that filial affection 
 has ever known. "When she was but three years of age her moth- 
 er would write : " Your dear little daughter seeks you twenty 
 times a day ; calls you to your meals, and will not suffer your 
 chair to be filled by any of the family." And again : " Your 
 dear little Theodosia cannot hear you spoken of without an ap- 
 parent melancholy ; insomuch that her nurse is obliged to exert 
 her invention to divert her, and myself avoid to mention you in 
 her presence. She was one whole day indifferent to everything 
 but your name. Her attachment is not of a common nature." 
 
 Here was an inviting opportunity for developing an engaging 
 infant into that monstrous thing, a spoiled child. She was an 
 only daughter in a family of which all the members but herself 
 were adults, and the head of which was among the busiest of men. 
 
 But Aaron Burr, amidst all the toils of his profession, and in 
 pite of the distractions of political strife, made the education of 
 lis daughter the darling object of his existence. Hunters tell us 
 hat pointers and hounds inherit the instinct which renders them 
 such valuable allies in the pursuit of game ; so that the offspring 
 )f a trained dog acquires the arts of the chase with very little in- 
 truction. Burr's father was one of the most zealous and skilful 
 )f schoolmasters, and from him he appears to have derived that 
 
 
400 THEODOSIA BURR. 
 
 pedagogic cast of character which led him, all his life, to take so 
 much interest in the training of proteges. There was never a 
 time in his whole career when he had not some youth upon his 
 hands to whose education he was devoted. His system of train- 
 ing, with many excellent points, was radically defective. Its de- 
 fects are sufficiently indicated when we say that it was pagan, 
 not Christian. Plato, Socrates, Cato, and Cicero might have 
 pronounced it good and sufficient: St. John, St. Augustine, and 
 all the Christian host would have lamented it as fatally defective. 
 But if Burr educated his child as though she were a Roman girl, 
 her mother was with her during the first eleven years of her life, 
 to supply, in some degree, what was wanting in the instructions 
 of her father. 
 
 Burr was a stoic. He cultivated hardness. Fortitude and 
 fidelity were his favorite virtues. The seal which he used in his 
 correspondence with his intimate friends, and with them only, was 
 descriptive of his character and prophetic of his destiny. It was 
 a Rock, solitary in the midst of a tempestuous ocean, and bore the 
 inscription, " Nee flatu nee fluctu" — neither by wind nor by 
 wave. It was his principle to steel himself against the inevitable 
 evils of life. If we were asked to select from his writings the 
 sentence which contains most of his characteristic way of think- 
 ing, it would be one which he wrote in his twenty-fourth year to 
 his future wife : " That mind is truly great which can bear with 
 equanimity the trifling and unavoidable vexations of life, and be 
 affected only by those which determine our substantial bliss." 
 He utterly despised all complaining, even of the greatest calam- 
 ities. He even expei'ienced a kind of proud pleasure in endur- 
 ing the fierce obloquy of his later years. One day, near the 
 close of his life, when a friend had told him of some new scandal 
 respecting his moral conduct, he said: "That's right, my child, 
 tell me what they say. I like to know what the public say of 
 me, — the great public!" Such words he would utter without 
 the slightest bitterness, speaking of the great public as a humor- 
 ous old grandfather might of a wayward, foolish, good little child. 
 
 So, at the dawn of a career which promised nothing but glory 
 and prosperity, surrounded by all the appliances of ease and 
 
THEODOSIA BURR. 401 
 
 pleasure, he was solicitous to teach his child to do and to endure. 
 He would have her accustomed to sleep alone, and to go about 
 the house in the dark. Her breakfast was of bread and milk. 
 He was resolute in exacting the less agreeable tasks, such as 
 arithmetic. He insisted upon regularity of hours. Upon going 
 away upon a journey he would leave written orders for her 
 tutors, detailing the employments of each day ; and, during his 
 absence, a chief topic of his letters was the lessons of the chil- 
 dren. Children, — for, that his Theodosia might have the ad- 
 vantage of a companion in her studies, he adopted the little Na- 
 talie, a French child, whom he reared to womanhood in his 
 house. "The letters of our dear children," he would write, 
 " are a feast. To hear that they are employed, that no time is 
 absolutely wasted, is the most flattering of anything that could 
 be told me of them. It insures their affection, or is the best 
 evidence of it. It insures in its consequences everything I am 
 ambitious of in them. Endeavor to preserve regularity of hours ; 
 it conduces exceedingly to industry." And his wife would an- 
 swer : " I really believe, my dear, that few parents can boast 
 of children whose minds are so prone to virtue. I see the re- 
 ward of our assiduity with inexpressible delight, with a gratitude 
 few experience. My Aaron, they have grateful hearts." Or 
 thus : " Theo [seven years old] ciphers from five in the morning 
 until eight, and also the same hours in the evening. This pre- 
 vents our riding at those hours." 
 
 When Theodosia was ten years old, Mary Wollstonecraft's 
 eloquent little book, " A Vindication of the Rights of Woman," 
 fell into Burr's hands. He was so powerfully struck by it that 
 he sat up nearly all night reading it. He showed it to all his 
 friends. " Is it owing to ignorance or prejudice," he wrote, 
 "that I have not yet met a single person who had discovered or 
 would allow the merit of this work?" The work, indeed, was 
 fifty years in advance of the time ; for it anticipated all that is 
 rational in the opinions respecting the position and education of 
 women which are now held by the ladies who are stigmatized as 
 the Strong-minded, as well as by John Mill, Herbert Spencer, 
 and other economists of the modern school. It demanded fair 
 
402 THEODOSIA BURR. 
 
 play for the understanding of women. It proclaimed the essen- 
 tial equality of the sexes. It denounced the awful libertinism of 
 that age, and showed that the weakness, the ignorance, the vanity, 
 and the seclusion of women prepared them to become the tool and 
 minion of bad men's lust. It criticised ably the educational sys- 
 tem of Rousseau, and, with still more severity, the popular works 
 of bishops and priests, who chiefly strove to inculcate an abject 
 submission to man as the rightful lord of the sex. It demon- 
 strated that the sole possibility of woman's elevation to the rank 
 of man's equal and friend was in the cultivation of her mind, and 
 in the thoughtful discharge of the duties of her lot. It is a really 
 noble and brave little book, undeserving of the oblivion into which 
 it has fallen. No intelligent woman, no wise parent with daugh- 
 ters to rear, could read it now without pleasure and advantage. 
 
 " Meekness," she says, " may excite tenderness, and gratify the ar- 
 rogant pride of man ; but the lordly caresses of a protector will not 
 gratify a noble mind that pants and deserves to be respected. Fond- 
 ness is a poor substitute for friendship A girl whose spirits 
 
 have not been damped by inactivity, or innocence tainted by false 
 shame, will always be a romp, and the doll will never excite attention 
 unless confinement allows her no alternative Most of the wom- 
 en, in the circle of my observation, who have acted like rational 
 creatures, have accidentally been allowed to run wild, as some of the 
 
 elegant formers of the fair sex would insinuate Men have better 
 
 tempers than women because they are occupied by pursuits that inter- 
 est the head as well as the heart. I never knew a weak or ignorant 
 
 person who had a good temper Why are girls to be told that they 
 
 resemble angels, but to sink them below women ? They are told that 
 they are only like angels when they are young and beautiful ; conse- 
 quently it is their persons, not their virtues, that procure them this 
 
 homage It is in vain to attempt to keep the heart pure unless 
 
 the head is furnished with ideas "Would ye, O my sisters, 
 
 really possess modesty, ye must remember that the possession of vir- 
 tue, of any denomination, is incompatible with ignorance and vanity ! 
 Ye must acquire that soberness of mind which the exercise of duties 
 and the pursuit of knowledge alone inspire, or ye will still remain in a 
 doubtful, dependent situation, and only be loved while ye are fair ! 
 The downcast eye, the rosy blush, the retiring grace, are all proper in 
 their season ; but modesty being the child of reason cannot long exist 
 
THEODOSIA BURR. 403 
 
 with the sensibility that is not tempered by reflection With -what 
 
 disgust have I heard sensible women speak of the wearisome confinement 
 which they endured at school. Not allowed, perhaps, to step out of 
 one broad path in a superb garden, and obliged to pace, with steady 
 deportment, stupidly backward and forward, holding up their heads 
 and turning out their toes, with shoulders braced back, instead of 
 bounding forward, as Nature directs to complete her own design, in the 
 various attitudes so conducive to health. The pure animal spirits, 
 which make both mind and body shoot out and unfold the tender blos- 
 soms of hope, are turned sour and vented in vain wishes or pert repin- 
 ings, that contract the faculties and spoil the temper ; else they mount 
 to the brain, and, sharpening the understanding before it gains propor- 
 tionable strength, produce that pitiful cunning which disgracefully 
 characterizes the female mind, — and, I fear, will ever characterize it 
 while women remain the slaves of power." 
 
 In the spirit of this book Theodosia's education was conducted. 
 Her mind had fair play. Her father took it for granted that she 
 could learn what a boy of the same age could learn, and gave her 
 precisely the advantages which he would have given a son. Be- 
 sides the usual accomplishments, French, music, dancing, and 
 riding, she learned to read Virgil, Horace, Terence, Lucian, Ho- 
 mer, in the original. She appears to have read all of Terence 
 and Lucian, a great part of Horace, all the Iliad, and large por- 
 tions of the Odyssey. " Cursed effects," exclaimed her father 
 once, " of fashionable education, of which both sexes are the ad- 
 vocates, and yours eminently the victims. If I could foresee that 
 Theo would become a mere fashionable woman, with all the 
 attendant frivolity and vacuity of mind, adorned with whatever 
 grace and allurement, I would earnestly pray God to take her 
 forthwith hence. But I yet hope by her to convince the world 
 what neither sex appears to believe, that women have souls." 
 
 How faithfully, how skilfully he labored to kindle and nourish 
 the intelligence of his child his letters to her attest. He was 
 never too busy to spare a half-hour in answering her letters. In 
 jia country court-room, in the Senate-chamber, he wrote her brief 
 and sprightly notes, correcting her spelling, complimenting her 
 style, reproving her indolence, praising her industry, commenting 
 on her authors. Rigorous taskmaster as he was, he had a strong 
 
404 THEODOSIA BURE. 
 
 sense of the value of just commendation, and he continued to 
 mingle praise very happily with reproof. A few sentences from 
 his letters to her will serve to show his manner. 
 
 (In her tenth year.) — "I rose up suddenly from the sofa, and rub- 
 bing my head, ' What book shall I buy for her ? ' said I to myself. 
 1 She reads so much and so rapidly that it is not easy to find proper 
 and amusing French books for her ; and yet I am so flattered with her 
 progress in that language that I am resolved she shall, at all events, be 
 gratified. Indeed I owe it to her.' So, after walking once or twice 
 briskly across the floor, I took my hat and sallied out, determined not 
 to return till I had purchased something. It was not my first attempt. 
 I went into one bookseller's shop after another. I found plenty of 
 fairy tales and such nonsense, fit for the generality of children nine or 
 ten years old. ' These,' said I, ' will never do. Her understanding 
 begins to be above such things ' ; but I could see nothing that I would 
 offer with pleasure to an intelligent, well-informed girl nine years old. 
 I began to be discouraged. The hour of dining was come. ' But I 
 will search a little longer.' I persevered. At last I found it. I found 
 the very thing I sought. It is contained in two volumes octavo, hand- 
 somely bound, and with prints and registers. It is a work of fancy, 
 but replete with instruction and amusement. I must present it with 
 my own hand." 
 
 He advised her to keep a diary ; and to give her an idea of 
 what she should record, he wrote for her such a journal of one 
 dav as he should like to receive. 
 
 Plan of the Journal. — " Learned 230 lines, which finished Horace. 
 Heigh-ho for Terence and the Greek Grammar to-morrow. Practised 
 two hours less thirty-five minutes, which I begged off. Howlett 
 (dancing-master) did not come. Began Gibbon last evening. I find 
 he requires as much study and attention as Horace ; so I shall not 
 rank the reading of him among amusements. Skated an hour ; fell 
 twenty times, and find the advantage of a hard head. Ma better, - 
 dined with us at table, and is still sitting up and free from pain." 
 
 She was remiss in keeping her journal ; remiss, too, in writing 
 to her father, though he reminded her that he never let one of 
 her letters remain unanswered a day. He reproved her sharply. 
 " What ! " said he, " can neither affection nor civility induce you 
 to devote to me the small portion of time which I have required ? 
 
THEODOSIA BURR. 405 
 
 Are authority and compulsion then the only engines by which 
 you can be moved ? For shame, Theo. Do not give me reason 
 to think so ill of you." 
 
 She reformed. In her twelfth year, her father wrote : " Io 
 triumphe ! there is not a word misspelled either in your journal 
 or letter, which cannot be said of one you ever wrote before." 
 And again : " When you want punctuality in your letters, I am 
 sure you want it in everything ; for you will constantly observe 
 that you have the most leisure when you do the most business. 
 Negligence of one's duty produces a self-dissatisfaction which 
 unfits the mind for everything, and ennui and peevishness are the 
 never-failing consequence." 
 
 His letters abound in sound advice. There is scarcely a pas- 
 sage in them which the most scrupulous and considerate parent 
 could disapprove. Theodosia heeded well his instructions. She 
 became nearly all that his heart or his pride desired. 
 
 During the later years of her childhood, her mother was griev- 
 ously afflicted with a cancer, which caused her death in 1794, 
 before Theodosia had completed her twelfth year. From that 
 time, such was the precocity of her character, that she became 
 the mistress of her father's house and the companion of his leisure 
 hours. Continuing her studies, however, we find her in her six- 
 teenth year translating French comedies, reading the Odyssey at 
 the rate of two hundred lines a day, and about to begin the Iliad. 
 " The happiness of my life," writes her father, " depends upon 
 your exertions ; for what else, for whom else, do I live ? " And, 
 later, when all the world supposed that his whole soul was ab- 
 sorbed in getting New York ready to vote for Jefferson and Burr, 
 he told her that the ideas of which she was the subject that 
 passed daily through his mind would, if committed to writing, fill 
 an octavo volume. 
 
 Who so happy as Theodosia ? Who so fortunate ? The 
 young ladies of New York, at the close of the last century, might 
 have been pardoned for envying the lot of this favorite child of 
 one who then seemed the favorite child of fortune. Burr had 
 been a Senator of the United States as soon as he had attained 
 the age demanded by the Constitution. As a lawyer he was 
 
406 THEODOSIA BURR. 
 
 second in ability and success to no man ; in reputation, to none 
 but Hamilton, whose services in the Cabinet of General Wash- 
 ington had given him great celebrity. Aged members of the 
 New York bar remember that Burr alone was the antagonist 
 who could put Hamilton to his mettle. When other lawyers 
 were employed against him, Hamilton's manner was that of a 
 man who felt an easy superiority to the demands upon him ; he 
 took few notes ; he was playful and careless, relying much upon 
 the powerful declamation of his summing up. But when Burr 
 was in the case, — Burr the wary, the vigilant, who was never 
 careless, never inattentive, who came into court only after an 
 absolutely exhaustive preparation of his case, who held declama- 
 tion in contempt, and knew how to quench its effect by a stroke 
 of polite satire, or the quiet citation of a fact, — then Hamilton was 
 obliged to have all his wits about him, and he was observed to be 
 restless, busy, and serious. There are now but two or three 
 venerable men among us who remember the keen encounters of 
 these two distinguished lawyers. The vividness of their recol- 
 lection of those scenes of sixty years ago shows what an impres- 
 sion must have been made upon their youthful minds. 
 
 If Hamilton and Burr divided equally between them the 
 honors of the bar, Burr had the additional distinction of being a 
 leader of the rising Democratic Party ; the party to which, at 
 that day, the youth, the genius, the sentiment, of the country were 
 powerfully drawn ; the party which, by his masterly tactics, was 
 about to place Mr. Jefferson in the Presidential chair after ten 
 years of ineffectual struggle. 
 
 All this enhanced the eclat of Theodosia's position. As she 
 rode about the island on her pony, followed at a respectful dis 
 tance, as the custom then was, by one of her father's slaves 
 mounted on a coach-horse, doubtless many a fair damsel of the 
 city repined at her own homelier lot, while she dwelt upon the 
 many advantages which nature and circumstances had bestowed 
 upon this gifted and happy maiden. 
 
 She was a beautiful girl. She inherited all her father's refined 
 beauty of countenance ; also his shortness of stature ; the dignity, 
 grace, and repose of his incomparable manner, too. She was a 
 
THEODOSIA BURR. 407 
 
 plump, petite, and rosy girl ; but there was that in her demeanor 
 which became the daughter of an affluent home, and a certain 
 assured, indescribable expression of face which seemed to say, 
 Here is a maiden who to the object of her affection could be 
 faitbful against an execrating world, — faithful even unto death. 
 Burr maintained at tbat time two establishments, one in the 
 city, the other a mile and a half out of town on the banks of the 
 Hudson. Richmond Hill was the name of his country seat, 
 where Theodosia resided during the later years of her youth. It 
 was a large, massive, wooden edifice, with a lofty portico of Ionic 
 columns, and stood on a hill facing the river, in the midst of a 
 lawn adorned with ancient trees and trained shrubbery. The 
 grounds, which extended to the water's edge, comprised about a 
 hundred and sixty acres. Those who now visit the site of Burr's 
 abode, at the corner of Charlton and Varick streets, behold a 
 wilderness of very ordinary houses covering a dead level. The 
 hill has been pared away, the ponds filled up, the river pushed 
 away a long distance from the ancient shore, and every one of the 
 venerable trees is gone. The city shows no spot less suggestive 
 of rural beauty. But Richmond Hill, in the days of Hamilton 
 and Burr, was the finest country residence on the island of Man- 
 hattan. The wife of John Adams, who lived there in 1790, just 
 before Burr bought it, and who had recently travelled in the love- 
 liest counties of England, speaks of it as a situation not inferior 
 in natural beauty to the most delicious spot she ever saw. "The 
 house," she says, " is situated upon an eminence ; at an agreeable 
 distance flows the noble Hudson, bearing upon its bosom the 
 fruitful productions of the adjacent country. On my right hand 
 are fields beautifully variegated with grass and grain, to a great 
 extent, like the valley of Honiton, in Devonshire. Upon my left 
 the city opens to view, intercepted here and there by a rising 
 ground and an ancient oak. In front, beyond the Hudson, the 
 Jersey shores present the exuberance of a rich, well-cultivated 
 soil. The venerable oaks and broken ground, covered with wild 
 shrubs, which surround me, give a natural beauty to the spot, 
 which i3 truly enchanting. A lovely variety of birds serenade 
 me morning and evening, rejoicing in their liberty and security ; 
 
408 THEODOSIA BURR. 
 
 for I have, as much as possible, prohibited the grounds from in- 
 vasion, and sometimes almost wished for game-laws, when my 
 orders have not been sufficiently regarded. The partridge, the 
 woodcock, and the pigeon are too great temptations to the sports- 
 men to withstand." 
 
 Indeed the whole Island was enchanting in those early days. 
 There were pleasant gardens even in Wall Street, Cedar Street, 
 Nassau Street ; and the Battery, the place of universal resort, 
 was one of the most delightful public grounds in the world, — as 
 it will be again when the Spoiler is thrust from the places of 
 power, and the citizens of New York come again into the owner- 
 ship of their city. The banks of the Hudson and of the East 
 River were forest-crowned bluffs, lofty and picturesque, and on 
 every favorable site stood a cottage or a mansion surrounded with 
 pleasant grounds. The letters of Theodosia Burr contain many 
 passages expressive of her intense enjoyment of the variety, the 
 vivid verdure, the noble trees, the heights, the pretty lakes, the 
 enchanting prospects, the beautiful gardens, which her daily rides 
 brought to her view. She was a dear lover of her island home. 
 The city had not then laid waste the beauty of Manhattan. 
 There was only one bank in New York, the officers of which 
 shut the bank at one o'clock and went home to dinner, returned 
 at three, and kept the bank open till five. Much of the business 
 life of the town partook of this homely, comfortable, easy-going, 
 rural spirit. There was a mail twice a week to the North, and 
 twice a week to the South, and many of the old-fashioned people 
 had time to live. 
 
 Not so the younger and newer portion of the population. We 
 learn from one of the* letters of the ill-fated Blennerhassett, who 
 arrived in New York from Ireland in 1796, that the people were 
 so busy there in making new docks, filling in the swamps, and 
 digging cellars for new buildings, as to bring on an epidemic fever 
 and ague that drove him from the city to the Jersey shore. He 
 mentions, also, that land in the State doubled in value every two 
 years, and that commercial speculation was carried on with such 
 avidity that it was more like gambling than trade. It is he that 
 relates the story of the adventurer, who, on learning that the yel- 
 
THEODOSIA BURR. 409 
 
 low-fever prevailed fearfully in the West Indies, sent thither 
 a cargo of coffins in nests, and, that no room might be lost, 
 filled the smallest with gingerbread. The speculation, he assures 
 us, was a capital hit ; for the adventurer not only sold his coffins 
 very profitably, but loaded his vessel with valuable woods, which 
 yielded a great profit at New York. At that time, also, the 
 speculation in lots, corner lots, and lands near the city, was prose- 
 cuted with all the recklessness which we have been in the habit 
 of supposing was peculiar to later times. New York was New 
 York even in the days of Burr and Hamilton. 
 
 As mistress of Richmond Hill, Theodosia entertained distin- 
 guished company. Hamilton was her father's occasional guest. 
 Burr preferred the society of educated Frenchmen and French- 
 women to any other, and he entertained many distinguished ex- 
 iles of the French Revolution. Talleyrand, Volney, Jerome 
 Bonaparte, and Louis Philippe were among his guests. Colonel 
 Stone mentions, in his Life of Brant, that Theodosia, in her four- 
 teenth year, in the absence of her father, gave a dinner to that 
 chieftain of the forest, which was attended by the Bishop of New 
 York, Dr. Hosack, Volney, and several other guests of distinction, 
 who greatly enjoyed the occasion. Burr was gratified to hear 
 with how much grace and good-nature his daughter acquitted 
 herself in the entertainment of her company. The chief himself 
 was exceedingly delighted, and spoke of the dinner with great 
 animation many years after. 
 
 We have one pleasant glimpse of Theodosia in these happy 
 years, in a trifling anecdote preserved by the biographer of Ed- 
 ward Livingston, during whose mayoralty the present City Hall 
 was begun. The mayor had the pleasure, one bright day, of 
 escorting the young lady on board a French frigate lying in the 
 harbor. " You must bring none of your sparks on board, Theo- 
 dosia," exclaimed the pun-loving magistrate ; " for they have a 
 magazine here, and we shall all be blown up." Oblivion here 
 drops the curtain upon the gay party and the brilliant scene. 
 
 A suitor appeared for the hand of this fair and accomplished 
 girl. It was Joseph Alston of South Carolina, a gentleman of 
 twenty-two, possessor of large estates in rice plantations and 
 18 
 
410 THEODOSIA BURR. 
 
 slaves, and a man of much spirit and talent. He valued his 
 estates at two hundred thousand pounds sterling. Their court- 
 ship was not a long one; for though she, as became her sex, 
 checked the impetuosity of his advances and argued for delay, she 
 was easily convinced by the reasons which he adduced for haste. 
 She reminded him that Aristotle was of opinion that a man 
 should not marry till he was thirty-six. "A fig for Aristotle," he 
 replied ; " let us regard the ipse dixit of no man. It is only want 
 of fortune or want of discretion," he continued, " that could justify 
 such a postponement of married joys. But suppose," he added, 
 " {merely for instance,) a young man nearly two-and-twenty, 
 already of the greatest discretion, with an ample fortune, were to 
 be passionately in love with a young lady almost eighteen, equally 
 discreet with himself, and who had a ' sincere friendship ' for him, 
 do you think it would be necessary to make him wait till thirty ? 
 particularly where the friends on both sides were pleased with 
 the match." 
 
 She told him, also, that some of her friends who had visited 
 Charleston had described it as a city where the yellow-fever and 
 the " yells of whipped negroes, which assail your ears from every 
 house," and the extreme heat, rendered life a mere purgatory. 
 She had heard, too, that in South Carolina the men were ab- 
 sorbed in hunting, gaming, and racing ; while the women, robbed 
 of their society, had no pleasures but to come together in large 
 parties, sip tea, and look prim. The ardent swain eloquently de- 
 fended his native State : — 
 
 " What ! " he exclaimed, " is Charleston, the most delightfully situ- 
 ated city in America, which, entirely open to the ocean, twice in every 
 twenty-four hours is cooled by the refreshing sea-breeze, the Montpel- 
 ier of the South, which annually affords an asylum to the planter and 
 the West Indian from every disease, accused of heat and unhealthi- 
 ness ? But this is not all, unfortunate citizens of Charleston ; the 
 scream, the yell of the miserable unresisting African, bleeding under 
 the scourge of relentless power, affords music to your ears ! Ah ! from 
 what unfriendly cause does this arise ? Has the God of heaven, in 
 anger, here changed the order of nature ? In every other region, 
 without exception, in a similar degree of latitude, the same sun which 
 ripens the tamarind and the anana, ameliorates the temper, and dis- 
 
THEODOSIA BURR. 411 
 
 poses it to gentleness and kindness. In India and other countries, not 
 very different in climate from the southern parts of the United States, 
 the inhabitants are distinguished for a softness and inoffensiveness of 
 manners, degenerating almost to effeminacy ; it is here then, only, 
 that we are exempt from the general influence of climate : here only 
 that, in spite of it, we are cruel and ferocious ! Poor Carolina ! " 
 
 And with regard to the manners of the Carolinians he assured 
 the young lady that if there was one State in the Union which 
 could justly claim superiority to the rest, in social refinement and 
 the art of elegant living, it was South Carolina, where the divi- 
 sion of the people into the very poor and the very rich left to the 
 latter class abundant leisure for the pursuit of literature and the 
 enjoyment of society. 
 
 " The possession of slaves," he owns, " renders them proud, impa- 
 tient of restraint, and gives them a haughtiness of manner which, to 
 those unaccustomed to them, is disagreeable ; but we find among them 
 a high sense of honor, a delicacy of sentiment, and a liberality of mind, 
 which we look for in vain in the more commercial citizens of the 
 Northern States. The genius of the Carolinian, like the inhabitants 
 of all southern countries, is quick, lively, and acute ; in steadiness and 
 perseverance he is naturally inferior to the native of the North ; but 
 this defect of climate is often overcome by his ambition or necessity ; 
 and, whenever this happens, he seldom fails to distinguish himself. In 
 his temper he is gay and fond of company, open, generous, and unsus- 
 picious ; easily irritated, and quick to resent even the appearance of 
 insult ; but his passion, like the fire of the flint, is lighted up and ex- 
 tinguished in the same moment." 
 
 Such discussions end only in one way. Theodosia yielded the 
 points in dispute. At Albany, on the 2d of February, 1801, 
 while the country was ringing with the names of Jefferson and 
 Burr, and while the world supposed that Burr was intriguing 
 with all his might to defeat the wishes of the people by securing 
 his own election to the Presidency, his daughter was married. 
 The marriage was thus announced in the New York Commercial 
 Advertiser of February 7 : — 
 
 " MARRIED. — At Albany, on the 2d instant, by the Rev. Mr. 
 Johnson, Joseph Alston, of South Carolina, to Theodosia Burr, 
 only child of Aaron Burr, Esq." 
 
412 THEODOSIA BURR. 
 
 They were married at Albany, because Colonel Burr, being a 
 member of the Legislature, was residing at the capital of the 
 State. One week the happy pair passed at Albany. Then to 
 New York ; whence, after a few days' stay, they began their 
 long journey southward. Rejoined at Baltimore by Colonel 
 Burr, they travelled in company to Washington, where, on the 
 4th of March, Theodosia witnessed the inauguration of Mr. Jef- 
 ferson, and the induction of her father into the Vice-Presidency. 
 Father and child parted a day or two after the ceremony. The 
 only solid consolation, he said in his first letter to her, that he had 
 for the loss of her dear companionship, was a belief that she 
 would be happy, and the certainty that they should often meet. 
 And, on his return to New York, he told her that he had ap- 
 proached his home as he would " the sepulchre of all his friends." 
 " Dreary, solitary, comfortless. It was no longer homer Hence 
 his various schemes of a second marriage, to which Theodosia 
 urged him. He soon had the comfort of hearing that the recep- 
 tion of his daughter in South Carolina was as cordial and affec- 
 tionate as his heart could have wished. 
 
 Theodosia now enjoyed three as happy years as ever fell to the 
 lot of a young wife. Tenderly cherished by her husband, whom 
 she devotedly loved, caressed by society, surrounded by affection- 
 ate and admiring relations, provided bountifully with all the 
 means of enjoyment, living in the summer in the mountains of 
 Carolina, or at the home of her childhood, Richmond Hill, pass- 
 ing the winters in .gay and luxurious Charleston, honored for her 
 own sake, for her father's, and her husband's, the years glided 
 rapidly by, and she seemed destined to remain to the last For- 
 tune's favorite child. One summer she and her husband visited 
 Niagara, and penetrated the domain of the chieftain Brant, who 
 gave them royal entertainment. Once she had the great happi- 
 ness of receiving her father under her own roof, and of seeing 
 the honors paid by the people of the State to the Vice-President. 
 Again she spent a summer at Richmond Hill and Saratoga, leav- 
 ing her husband for the first time. She told him on this occasion 
 that every woman must prefer the society of the North to that 
 of the South, whatever she might say. " If she denies it, she is 
 
THEODOSIA BURR. 413 
 
 set down in my mind as insincere and weakly prejudiced." But, 
 like a fond and loyal wife, she wrote, " Where you are, there is 
 my country, and in you are centred all my wishes." 
 
 She was a mother too. That engaging and promising hoy, 
 Aaron Burr Alston, the delight of his parents and of his grand- 
 father, was born in the second year of the marriage. This event 
 seemed to complete her happiness. For a time, it is true, she 
 paid dearly for it by the loss of her former robust and joyous 
 health. But the boy was worth the price. " If I can see with- 
 out prejudice," wrote Colonel Burr, " there never was a finer 
 boy " ; and the mother's letters are full of those sweet, trifling 
 anecdotes which mothers love to relate of their offspring. Her 
 father still urged her to improve her mind, for her own and her 
 son's sake, telling her that all she could learn would necessarily 
 find its way to the mind of the boy. " Pray take in hand," he 
 writes, " some book which requires attention and study. You 
 will, I fear, lose the habit of study, which would be a greater mis- 
 fortune than to lose your head." He praised, too, the ease, good- 
 sense, and sprightliness of her letters, and said truly that her 
 style, at its best, was not inferior to that of Madame de Sevigne\ 
 
 Life is frequently styled a checkered scene. But it was the 
 peculiar lot of Theodosia to experience during the first twenty- 
 one years of her life nothing but prosperity and happiness, and 
 during the remainder of her existence nothing but misfortune 
 and sorrow. Never had her father's position seemed so strong 
 and enviable as during his tenure of the office of Vice-President ; 
 but never had it been in reality so hollow and precarious. Hold- 
 ing property valued at two hundred thousand dollars, he was so 
 deeply in debt that nothing but the sacrifice of his landed estate 
 could save him from bankruptcy. At the age of thirty he had 
 permitted himself to be drawn from a lucrative and always in- 
 creasing professional business to the fascinating but most costly 
 pursuit of political honors. And now, when he stood at a distance 
 of only one step from the highest place, he was pursued by a 
 clamorous host of creditors, and compelled to resort to a hundred 
 expedients to maintain the expensive establishments supposed to 
 be necessary to a Vice-President's dignity. His political posi- 
 
414 THEODOSIA BUEE. 
 
 tion was as hollow as his social eminence. Mr. Jefferson was 
 firmly resolved that Aaron Burr should not be his 'successor; 
 and the great families of New York, whom Burr had united to 
 win the victory over Federalism, were now united to bar the 
 further advancement of a man whom they chose to regard as an 
 interloper and a parvenu. If Burr's private life had been stain- 
 less, if his fortune had been secure, if he had been in his heart a 
 [Republican and a Democrat, if he had been a man earnest in the 
 people's cause, if even his talents had been as superior as they 
 were supposed to be, such a combination of powerful families and 
 political influence might have retarded, but could not have pre- 
 vented, his advancement; for he was still in the prime of his 
 prime, and the people naturally side with a man who is the archi- 
 tect of his own fortunes. 
 
 On the 1st of July, 1804, Burr sat in the library of Richmond 
 Hill writing to Theodosia. The day was unseasonably cold, and 
 a fire blazed upon the hearth. The lord of the mansion was 
 chilly and serious. An hour before he had taken the step which 
 made the duel with Hamilton inevitable, though eleven days 
 were to elapse before the actual encounter. He was tempted to 
 prepare the mind of his child for the event, but he forebore. 
 Probably his mind had been wandering into the past, and recall- 
 ing his boyhood ; for he quoted a line of poetry which he had 
 been wont to use in those early days. " Some very wise man has 
 said," he wrote, 
 
 " ' Oh, fools, -who think it solitude to be alone ! ' 
 
 This is but poetry. Let us, therefore, drop the subject, lest it 
 lead to another, on which I have imposed silence on myself." 
 Then he proceeds, in his usual gay and agreeable manner, again 
 urging her to go on in the pursuit of knowledge. His last 
 thoughts before going to the field were with her and for her. 
 His last request to her husband was that he should do all that in 
 him lay to encourage her to improve her mind. 
 
 The bloody deed was done. The next news Theodosia re- 
 ceived from her father was that he was a fugitive from the sudden 
 abhorrence of his fellow-citizens ; that an indictment for murder 
 
THEODOSIA BURR. 415 
 
 was hanging over his head ; that his career in New York was, in 
 all probability, over forever ; and that he was destined to be for 
 a time a wanderer on the earth. Her happy days were at an 
 end. She never blamed her father for this, or for any act of his ; 
 on the contrary, she accepted without questioning his own version 
 of the facts, and his own view of the morality of what he had 
 done. He had formed her mind and tutored her conscience. He 
 wan her conscience. But though she censured him not, her days 
 and nights were embittered by anxiety from this time to the last 
 day of her life. A few months later her father, black with hun- 
 dreds of miles of travel in an open canoe, reached her abode in 
 South Carolina, and spent some weeks there before appearing for 
 the last time in the chair of the Senate ; for, ruined as he was in 
 fortune and good name, indicted for murder in New York and 
 New Jersey, he was still Vice-President of the United States, 
 and he was resolved to reappear upon the public scene, and do 
 the duty which the Constitution assigned him. 
 
 The Mexican scheme followed. Theodosia and her husband 
 were both involved in it. Mr. Alston advanced money for the 
 project, which was never repaid, and which, in his will, he for- 
 gave. His entire loss, in consequence of his connection with that 
 affair, may be reckoned at about fifty thousand dollars. Theo- 
 dosia entirely and warmly approved the dazzling scheme. The 
 throne of Mexico, she thought, was an object worthy of her 
 father's talents, and one which would repay him for the loss of a 
 brief tenure of the Presidency, and be a sufficient triumph over 
 the men who were supposed to have thwarted him. Her boy, 
 too, — would he not be heir-presumptive to a throne ? 
 
 The recent publication of the " Blennerhassett Papers " ap- 
 pears to dispel all that remained of the mystery which the secre- 
 tive Burr chose to leave around the object of his scheme. We 
 can now say with almost absolute certainty that Burr's objects were 
 the following : The throne of Mexico for himself and his heirs ; 
 the seizure and organization of Texas as preliminary to the grand 
 design. The purchase of lands on the "Washita was for the three- 
 fold purpose of veiling the real object, providing a rendezvous, 
 and having the means of tempting and rewarding those of the 
 
416 THEODOSIA BURR. 
 
 adventurers who were not in the secret. We can also now dis- 
 cover the designed distribution of honors and places : Aaron L, 
 Emperor ; Joseph Alston, Head of the Nobility and Chief Minis- 
 ter ; Aaron Burr Alston, heir to the throne ; Theodosia, Chief 
 Lady of the Court and Empire ; Wilkinson, General-in-Chief of 
 the Army; Blennerhassett, Embassador to the Court of St. 
 James ; Commodore Truxton (pei-haps), Admiral of the Navy. 
 There is not an atom of new evidence which warrants the suppo- 
 sition that Burr had any design to sever the Western States from 
 the Union. If he himself had ever contemplated such an event, 
 it is almost unquestionable that his followers were ignorant of it. 
 
 The scheme exploded. Theodosia and her husband had joined 
 him at the home of the Blennerhassetts, and they were near him 
 when the President's proclamation dashed the scheme to atoms, 
 scattered the band of adventurers, and sent Burr a prisoner to 
 Richmond, charged with high treason. Mr. Alston, in a public 
 letter to the Governor of South Carolina, solemnly declared that 
 he was wholly ignorant of any treasonable design on the part of 
 his father-in-law, and repelled with honest warmth the charge 
 of his own complicity with a design so manifestly absurd and 
 hopeless as that of a dismemberment of the Union. Theodosia, 
 stunned with the unexpected blow, returned with her husband to 
 South Carolina, ignorant of her father's fate. He was carried 
 through that State on his way to the North, and there it was that 
 he made his well-known attempt to appeal to the civil authorities 
 and get deliverance from the guard of soldiers. From Richmond 
 he wrote her a hasty note, informing her of his arrest. She and 
 her husband joined him soon, and remained with him during his 
 trial. 
 
 At Richmond, during the six months of the trial, Burr tasted 
 the last of the sweets of popularity. The party opposed to Mr. 
 Jefferson made his cause their own, and gathered round the fall- 
 en leader with ostentatious sympathy and aid. Ladies sent him 
 bouquets, wine, and dainties for his table, and bestowed upon his 
 daughter the most affectionate and flattering attentions. Old 
 friends from New York and new friends from the West were 
 there to cheer and help the prisoner. Andrew Jackson was con- 
 
THEODOSIA BURR. 417 
 
 spicuously his friend and defender, declaiming in the streets upon 
 the tyranny of the Administration and the perfidy of Wilkinson, 
 Burr's chief accuser. Washington Irving, then in the dawn of 
 his great renown, who had given the first efforts of his youthful 
 pen to Burr's newspaper, was present at the trial, full of sympa- 
 thy for a man whom he believed to be the victim of treachery 
 and political animosity. Doubtless he was not wanting in com 
 passionate homage to the young matron from South Carolina. 
 Mr. Irving was then a lawyer, and had been retained as one of 
 Burr's counsel ; not to render service in the court-room, but in 
 the expectation that his pen would be employed in staying the 
 torrent of public opinion that was setting against his client. 
 Whether or not he wrote in his behalf does not appear. But his 
 private letters, written at Richmond during the trial, show plain- 
 ly enough that, if his head was puzzled by the confused and con- 
 tradictory evidence, his heart and his imagination were on the 
 side of the prisoner. 
 
 Theodosia's presence at Richmond was of more value to her 
 father than the ablest of his counsel. Every one appears to 
 have loved, admired, and sympathized with her. " You can't 
 think," wrote Mrs. Blenneriiassett, " with what joy and pride I 
 read what Colonel Burr says of his daughter. I never could love 
 one of my own sex as I do her." Blennerhassett himself was 
 not less her friend. Luther Martin, Burr's chief counsel, almost 
 worshipped her. " I find," wrote Blennerhassett, " that Luther 
 Martin's idolatrous admiration of Mrs. Alston is almost as exces- 
 sive as my own, but far more beneficial to his interest and injuri- 
 ous to his judgment, as it is the medium of his blind attachment to 
 her father, whose secrets and views, past, present, or to come, he 
 is and wishes to remain ignorant of. Nor can he see a speck in 
 the character or conduct of Alston, for the best of all reasons with 
 him, namely, that Alston has such a wife." It plainly appears, 
 too, from the letters and journal of Blennerhassett, that Alston 
 did all in his power to promote the acquittal and aid the fallen 
 fortunes of Burr, and that he did so, not because he believed in 
 him, but because he loved his Theodosia. 
 
 Acquitted by the jury, but condemned at the bar of public opin- 
 18* AA 
 
418 THEODOSIA BURR. 
 
 ion, denounced by the press, abhorred by the Republican party, 
 and still pursued by his creditors, Burr, in the spring of 1808, lay 
 concealed at New York preparing for a secret flight to Europe. 
 Again his devoted child travelled northward to see him once more 
 before he sailed. For some weeks both were in the city, meeting 
 only by night at the house of some tried friend, but exchanging 
 notes and letters from hour to hour. One whole night they spent 
 together, just before his departure. To her he committed his pa- 
 pers, the accumulation of thirty busy years ; and it was she who 
 was to collect the debts due him, and thus provide for his mainten- 
 ance in Europe. 
 
 Burr was gay and confident to the last, for he was strong in 
 the belief that the British Ministry would adopt his scheme and 
 aid in tearing Mexico from the grasp of Napoleon. Theodosia 
 was sick and sorrowful, but bore bravely up and won her fa- 
 ther's commendation for her fortitude. In one of the early 
 days of June father and daughter parted, to meet no more on 
 earth. 
 
 The four years of Burr's fruitless exile were to Theodosia 
 years of misery. She could not collect the debts on which they 
 had relied. The embargo reduced the rice-planters to extreme 
 embarrassment. Her husband no longer sympathized with her 
 in her yearning love for her father, though loving her as tenderly 
 as ever. Old friends in New York cooled toward her. Her 
 health was precarious. Months passed without bringing a word 
 from over the sea ; and the letters that did reach her, lively and 
 jovial as they were, contained no good news. She saw her 
 father expelled from England, wandering aimless in Sweden and 
 Germany, almost a prisoner in Paris, reduced to live on potatoes 
 and dry bread ; while his own countrymen showed no signs of 
 relenting toward him. In many a tender passage she praised his 
 fortitude. " I witness," she wrote, in a well-known letter, " your 
 extraordinary fortitude with new wonder at every new misfortune. 
 Often, after reflecting on this subject, you appear to me so supe- 
 rior, so elevated above all other men ; I contemplate you with 
 such a strange mixture of humility, admiration, reverence, love, 
 and pride, that very little superstition would be necessary to make 
 
THEODOSIA BURR. 419 
 
 me worship you as a superior being ; such enthusiasm does your 
 character excite in me. When I afterward revert to myself, how 
 insignificant do my best qualities appear ! My vanity would be 
 greater if I had not been placed so near you ; and yet my pride 
 is our relationship. I had rather not live than not be the daugh- 
 ter of such a man." 
 
 Mr. Madison was President then. In other days her father 
 had been on terms of peculiar intimacy with Madison and his 
 beautiful and accomplished wife. Burr, in his later years, used 
 to say that it was he who had brought about the match which 
 made Mrs. Madison an inmate of the Presidential mansion. 
 "With the members of Madison's Cabinet, too, he had been social- 
 ly and politically familiar. When Theodosia perceived that her 
 father had no longer a hope of success in his Mexican project, 
 she became anxious for his return to America. But against this 
 was the probability that the Administration would again arrest 
 him and bring him to trial for the third time. Theodosia ventured 
 to write to her old friend, Albert Gallatin, Secretary of the Treas- 
 ury, asking him to interpose on her father's behalf. A letter still 
 more interesting than this has recently come to light. It was 
 addressed by Theodosia to Mrs. Madison. The coldest heart 
 cannot read this eloquent and pathetic production without emo- 
 tion. She writes : — 
 
 "Madam, — You may perhaps be surprised at receiving a letter 
 from one with whom you have had so little intercourse for the last few 
 years. But your surprise will cease when you recollect that my father, 
 once your friend, is now in exile ; and that the President only can re- 
 store him to me and his country. 
 
 " Ever since the choice of the people was first declared in favor of 
 Mr. Madison, my heart, amid the universal joy, has beat with the hope 
 that I, too, should soon have reason to rejoice. Convinced that Mr. 
 Madison would neither feel nor judge from the feelings or judgment 
 of others, I had no doubt of his hastening to relieve a man whose 
 character he had been enabled to appreciate during a confidential in- 
 tercourse of long continuance, and whom [he] must know incapable 
 of the designs attributed to him. My anxiety on this subject, has, 
 however, become too painful to be alleviated by anticipations which no 
 events have yet tended to justify ; and in this state of intolerable sus- 
 
420 THEODOSIA BURR. 
 
 pense I have determined to address myself to you, and request that 
 you will, in my name, apply to the President for a removal of the proso- 
 cution now existing against Aaron Burr. I still expect it from him 
 as a man of feeling and candor, as one acting for the world and for 
 posterity. 
 
 " Statesmen, I am aware, deem it necessary that sentiments of liber- 
 ality, and even justicej should yield to considerations of policy ; but 
 what policy can require the absence of my father at present ? Even 
 had he contemplated the project for which he stands arraigned, evi- 
 dently to pursue it any further would now be impossible. There is not 
 left one pretext of alarm even to calumny ; for bereft of fortune, 
 of popular favor, and almost of friends, what could he accomplish ? 
 And whatever may be the apprehensions or the clamors of the igno- 
 rant and the interested, surely the timid, illiberal system which would 
 sacrifice a man to a remote and unreasonable possibility that he might 
 infringe some law founded on an unjust, unwarrantable suspicion that 
 he would desire it, cannot be approved by Mr. Madison, and must be 
 unnecessary to a President so loved, so honored. Why, then, is my 
 father banished from a country for which he has encountered wounds 
 and dangers and fatigue for years ? Why is he driven from his friends, 
 from an only child, to pass an unlimited time in exile, and that, too, at 
 an age when others are reaping the harvest of past toils, or ought at 
 least to be providing seriously for the comfort of ensuing years ? I do 
 not seek to soften you by this recapitulation. I only wish to remind 
 you of all the injuries which are inflicted on one of the first characters 
 the United States ever produced. 
 
 " Perhaps it may be well to assure you there is no truth in a report 
 lately circulated, that my father intends returning immediately. He 
 never will return to conceal himself in a country on which he has 
 conferred distinction. 
 
 " To whatever fate Mr. Madison may doom this application, I trust 
 it will be treated with delicacy. Of this I am the more desirous as 
 Mr. Alston is ignorant of the step I have taken in writing to you, 
 which, perhaps, nothing could excuse but the warmth of filial affection. 
 If it be an error, attribute it to the indiscreet zeal of a daughter whose 
 soul sinks at the gloomy prospect of a long and indefinite separation 
 from a father almost adored, and who can leave unattempted nothing 
 which offers the slightest hope of procuring him redress. What, in- 
 deed, would I not risk once more to see him, to hang upon him, to 
 place my child on his knee, and again spend my days in the happy 
 occupation of endeavoring to anticipate all his wishes. 
 
THEODOSIA BURR. 421 
 
 " Let me entreat, my dear Madam, that you will have the considera- 
 tion and goodness to answer me as speedily as possible ; my heart is 
 sore with doubt and patient waiting for something definitive. No 
 apologies are made for giving you this trouble, which I am sure you 
 will not deem irksome to take for a daughter, an a**" mate daughter, 
 thus situated. Inclose your letter for me + ' . «. Frederic Prevost, 
 Esq., near New Rochelle, New York. 
 
 " That every happiness may attend you, 
 " Is the sincere wish of 
 
 " Theo. Burr Alston." 
 
 This letter was probably not ineffectual. Certain it is that 
 government offered no serious obstacle to Burr's return, and 
 instituted no further proceedings against him. Probably, too, 
 Theodosia received some kind of assurance to this effect, for we 
 find her urging her father, not only to return, but to go boldly to 
 New York among his old friends, and resume there the practice 
 of his profession. The great danger to be apprehended was 
 from his creditors, who then had power to confine a debtor within 
 limits, if not to throw him into prison. "If the worst comes to the 
 worst" wrote this fond and devoted daughter, "I will leave evcry- 
 thing to suffer with you." The Italics are her own. 
 
 Pie came at length. He landed in Boston, and sent word of 
 his arrival to Theodosia. Rejoiced as she was, she replied 
 vaguely, partly in cipher, fearing lest her letter might be opened 
 on the way, and the secret of her father's arrival be prematurely 
 disclosed. She told him that her own health was tolerable ; that 
 her child, t'mn a fine boy of eleven, was well ; that "his little 
 soul warmed at the sound of his grandfather's name " ; and that 
 his education, under a competent tutor, was proceeding satisfac- 
 torily. She gave directions respecting her father's hoped-for 
 journey to South Carolina in the course of the summer ; and 
 advised him, in case war should be declared with England, to 
 offer his services to the government. He reached New York 
 in May, 1812, and soon had the pleasure of informing his daugh- 
 ter that his reception had been more friendly than he could have 
 expected, and that in time his prospects were fair of a sufficient- 
 ly lucrative practice. 
 
422 THEODOSIA BURK. 
 
 Surely, now, after so many years of anxiety and sorrow, The- 
 odosia — still a young woman, not thirty years of age, still 
 enjoying her husband's love — might have reasonably expected 
 a happy life. Alas ! there was no more happiness in store for 
 her on this side of the grave. The first letter which Burr 
 received from his son-in-law after his arrival in New York con- 
 tained news which struck him to the heart. 
 
 "A few miserable weeks since," writes Mr. Alston, " and in spite of 
 all the embarrassments, the troubles, and disappointments which have 
 fallen to our lot since we parted, I would have congratulated you on 
 your return in the language of happiness. With my wife on one side 
 and my boy on the other, I felt myself superior to depression. The 
 present was enjoyed, the future was anticipated with enthusiasm. One 
 dreadful blow has destroyed us ; reduced us to the veriest, the most 
 sublimated wretchedness. That boy, on whom all rested, — our com- 
 panion, our friend, — he who was to have transmitted down the 
 mingled blood of Theodosia and myself, — he who was to have re- 
 deemed all your glory, and shed new lustre upon our families, — that 
 boy, at once our happiness and our pride, is taken from us, — is dead. 
 We saw him dead. My own hand surrendered him to the grave ; yet 
 we are alive. But it is past. I will not conceal from you that life is 
 a burden, which, heavy as it is, we shall both support, if not with 
 dignity, at least with decency and firmness. Theodosia has endured 
 all that a human being could endure ; but her admirable mind will 
 triumph. She supports herself in a manner worthy of your daughter." 
 
 The mother's heart was almost broken. 
 
 " There is no more joy for me," she wrote. " The world is a blank. 
 I have lost my boy. My child is gone forever. May Heaven, by other 
 blessings, make you some amends for the noble grandson you have lost ! 
 Alas ! my dear father, I do live, but how does it happen ? Of what 
 am I formed that I live, and why ? Of what service can I be in this 
 world, either to you or any one else, with a body reduced to prema- 
 ture old age, and a mind enfeebled and bewildered ? Yet, since it is 
 my lot to live, I will endeavor to fulfil my part, and exert myself to 
 my utmost, though this life must henceforth be to me a bed of thorns. 
 Whichever way I turn, the same anguish still assails me. You talk of 
 consolation. Ah ! you know not what you have lost. I think Omnip- 
 otence could give me no equivalent for my boy ; no, none, — none." 
 
 She could not be comforted. Her health gave way. Her 
 
THEODOSIA BURR. 423 
 
 husband thought that if anything could restore her to tranquillity 
 and health it would be the society of her father ; and so, at the 
 beginning of winter, it was resolved that she should attempt the 
 dangerous voyage. Her father sent a medical friend from New 
 York to attend her. 
 
 " Mr. Alston," wrote this gentleman, " seemed rather hurt that you 
 should conceive it necessary to send a person here, as he or one of his 
 brothers would attend Mrs. Alston to New York. I told him you 
 had some opinion of my medical talents ; that you had learned your 
 daughter was in a low state of health, and required unusual attention, 
 and medical attention on her voyage ; that I had torn myself from my 
 family to perform this service for my friend." 
 
 And again, a few days after : — 
 
 " I have engaged a passage to New York for your daughter in a 
 pilot-boat that has been out privateering, but has come in here, and is 
 refitting merely to get to New York. My only fears are that Gover- 
 nor Alston may think the mode of conveyance too undignified, and 
 object to it ; but Mrs. Alston is fully bent on going. You must not 
 be surprised to see her very low, feeble, and emaciated. Her com- 
 plaint is an almost incessant nervous fever." 
 
 The rest is known. The vessel sailed. Off Cape Hatteras, 
 during a gale that swept the coast from Maine to Georgia, the 
 pilot-boat went down, and not one escaped to tell the tale. The 
 vessel was never heard of more. So perished this noble, gifted, 
 ill-starred lady. 
 
 The agonizing scenes that followed may be imagined. Father 
 and husband were kept long in suspense. Even when many 
 weeks had elapsed without bringing tidings of the vessel, there 
 still remained a forlorn hope that some of her passengers might 
 have been rescued by an outward-bound ship, and might return, 
 after a year or two had gone by, from some distant port. Burr, 
 it is said, acquired a habit, when walking upon the Battery, of 
 looking wistfully down the harbor at the arriving ships, as if still 
 cherishing a faint, fond hope that his Theo was coming to him 
 from the other side of the world. When, years after, the tale 
 was brought to him that his daughter had been carried off by 
 pirates and might be still alive, he said : '•' No, no, no ; if my Theo 
 
424 THEODOSIA BURR. 
 
 bad survived that storm, she would have found her way to me. 
 Nothing could have kept my Theo from her father." 
 
 It was these sad events, the loss of his daughter and her boy, 
 that severed Aaron Burr from the human race. Hope died with- 
 in him. Ambition died. He yielded to his doom, and walked 
 among men, not melancholy, but indifferent, reckless, and alone. 
 With his daughter and his grandson to live and strive for, he 
 might have done something in his later years to redeem his 
 name and atone for his errors. Bereft of these, he had not in his 
 moral nature that which enables men who have gone astray to 
 repent and begin a better life. 
 
 Theodosia's death broke her husband's heart. Few letters are 
 so affecting as the one which he wrote to Burr when, at length, 
 the certainty of her loss could no longer be resisted. 
 
 " My boy — my wife — gone both ! This, then, is the end of all the 
 hopes we had formed. You may well observe that you feel severed 
 from the human race. She was the last tie that bound us to the spe- 
 cies. What have we left ? . . . . Yet, after all, he is a poor actor who 
 cannot sustain his little hour upon the stage, be his part what it may. 
 But the man who has been deemed worthy of the heart of Theodosia 
 Burr, and who has felt what it was to be blessed with such a woman's, 
 will never forget his elevation." 
 
 o^ 
 
 He survived his wife four years. Among the papers of Theo- 
 dosia was found, after her death, a letter which she had written a 
 few years before she died, at a time when she supposed her end 
 was near. Upon the envelope was written, — " My husband. To 
 be delivered after my death. I wish this to be read immediately, 
 and before my burial." Her husband never saw it, for he never 
 had the courage to look into the trunk that contained her treas- 
 ures. But after his death the trunk was sent to Burr, who found 
 and preserved this affecting composition. We cannot conclude 
 our narrative more fitly than by transcribing the thoughts that 
 burdened the heart of Theodosia in view of her departure from 
 the world. First, she gave directions respecting the disposal of 
 her jewelry and trinkets, giving to each of her friends some token 
 of her love. Then she besought her husband to provide at once 
 for the support of " Peggy," an aged servant of her father, for- 
 
THEODOSIA BURR. 425 
 
 merly housekeeper at Richmond Hill, to whom, in her father's 
 absence, she had contrived to pay a small pension. She then 
 proceeded in these affecting terms : — 
 
 " To you, my beloved, I leave our child ; the child of my bosom, 
 •who was once a part of myself, and from -whom I shall shortly be sep- 
 arated by the cold grave. You love him now ; henceforth love him 
 for me also. And oh, my husband, attend to this last prayer of a dot- 
 ing mother. Never, never listen to what any other person tells you of 
 him. Be yourself his judge on all occasions. He has faults ; see 
 them, and correct them yourself. Desist not an instant from your en- 
 deavors to secure his confidence. It is a work which requires as much 
 uniformity of conduct as warmth of affection toward him. I know, 
 my beloved, that you can perceive what is right on this subject as on 
 every other. But recollect, these are the last words I can ever utter. 
 It will tranquillize my last moments to have disburdened myself of 
 them. 
 
 " I fear you will scarcely be able to read this scrawl, but I feel hur- 
 ried and agitated. Death is not welcome to me. I confess it is ever 
 dreaded. You have made me too fond of life. Adieu, then, thou 
 kind, thou tender husband. Adieu, friend of my heart. May Heaven 
 prosper you, and may we meet hereafter. Adieu; perhaps we may 
 never see each other again in this world. You are away, I wished to 
 hold you fast, and prevented you from going this morning. But He 
 who is wisdom itself ordains events ; we must submit to them. Least 
 of all should I murmur. I, on whom so many blessings have been 
 showered, — whose days have been numbered by bounties, — who have 
 had such a husband, such a child, and such a father. O pardon me, 
 my God, if I regret leaving these. I resign myself. Adieu, once 
 more, and for the last time, my beloved. Speak of me often to our 
 son. Let him love the memory of his mother, and let him know how 
 he was loved by her. Your wife, your fond wife, 
 
 Theo. 
 
 " Let my father see my son sometimes. Do not be unkind toward 
 him whom I have loved so much, I beseech' you. Burn all my papers 
 except my father's letters, which I beg you to return him. Adieu, 
 my sweet boy. Love your father ; be grateful and affectionate to him 
 while he lives ; be the pride of his meridian, the support of his depart- 
 ing days. Be all that he wishes ; for he made your mother happy. 
 Oh ! my heavenly Father, bless them both. If it is permitted, I will 
 hover round you, and guard you, and intercede for you. I hope for 
 happiness in the next world, for I have not been bad in this. 
 
426 THEODOSIA BUER. 
 
 " I had nearly forgotten to say that I charge you not to allow me to 
 be stripped and washed, as is usual. I am pure enough thus to return 
 to dust. Why, then, expose mv person ? Pray see to this. If it 
 does not appear contradictory or silly, I beg to be kept as long as pos- 
 sible before I am consigned to t' earth." 
 
JOHN JACOB ASTOR. 
 
JOHN JACOB ASTOR. 
 
 WE all feel some curiosity respecting men who have been 
 eminent in anything, — even in crime; and as this cu- 
 riosity is natural and universal, it seems proper that it should be 
 gratified. John Jacob Astor surpassed all the men of his 
 generation in the accumulation of wealth. He began life a poor, 
 hungry German boy, and died worth twenty millions of dollars. 
 These facts are so remarkable, that there is no one who does not 
 feel a desire to know by which means the result was produced, 
 and whether the game was played fairly. We all wish, if not 
 to be rich, yet to have more money than we now possess. We 
 have known many kinds of men, but never one who felt that he 
 had quite money enough. The three richest men now living in 
 the United States are known to be as much interested in the in- 
 crease of their possessions, and try as hard to increase them, as 
 ever they did. 
 
 This universal desire to accumulate property is right, and ne- 
 cessary to the progress of the race. Like every other proper 
 and virtuous desire, it may become excessive, and then it is a 
 vice. So long as a man seeks property honestly, and values it 
 as the means of independence, as the means of educating and 
 comforting his family, as the means of securing a safe, dignified, 
 and tranquil old age, as the means of private charity and public 
 beneficence, let him bend himself heartily to his work, and 
 enjoy the reward of his labors. It is a fine and plea-ant thing 
 to prosper in business, and to have a store to fall back upon in 
 time of trouble. 
 
 The reader may learn from Astor's career how money is ac- 
 cumulated. Whether he can learn from it how money ought to 
 
430 JOHN JACOB ASTOR. 
 
 be employed when it is obtained, he must judge for himself. In 
 founding the Astor Library, John Jacob Astor did at least 
 one magnificent deed, for which thousands unborn will honor his 
 memory. That single act would atone for many errors. 
 
 In the hall of the Astor Library, on the sides of two of the 
 pillars supporting its lofty roof of glass, are two little shelves, 
 each holding a single work, never taken down and seldom pe- 
 rused, but nevertheless well worthy the attention of those who 
 are curious in the subject of which they treat, namely, the human 
 face divine. They are two marble busts, facing each other ; one 
 of the founder of the Library, the other of its first President, 
 Washington Irving. A finer study in physiognomy than these 
 two busts present can nowhere be found ; for never were two 
 men more unlike than Astor and Irving, and never were charac- 
 ter and personal history more legibly recorded than in these por- 
 traits in marble. The countenance of the author is round, full, 
 and handsome, the hair inclining to curl, and the chin to double. 
 It is the face of a happy and genial man, formed to shine at the 
 fireside and to beam from the head of a table. It is an open, 
 candid, liberal, hospitable countenance, indicating far more power 
 to please than to compel, but displaying in the position and car- 
 riage of the head much of that dignity which we are accustomed 
 to call Roman. The face of the millionnaire, on the contrary, is 
 all strength ; every line in it tells of concentration and power. 
 The hair is straight and long ; the forehead neither lofty nor am- 
 ple, but powerfully developed in the perceptive and executive 
 organs ; the eyes deeper set in the head than those of Daniel 
 "Webster, and overhung with immense bushy eyebrows ; the nose 
 large, long, and strongly arched, the veritable nose of a man- 
 compeller ; the mouth, chin, and jaws all denoting firmness and 
 force ; the chest, that seat and throne of physical power, is broad 
 and deep, and the back of the neck has something of the muscu- 
 lar fulness which we observe in the prize-fighter and the bull ; 
 the head behind the ears showing enough of propelling power, 
 but almost totally wanting in the passional propensities which 
 waste the force of the faculties, and divert the man from his prin- 
 
JOHN JACOB ASTOR. 431 
 
 cipal object. As the spectator stands midway between the two 
 busts, at some distance from both, Irving has the larger and the 
 kinglier air, and the face of Astor seems small and set. It is 
 only when you get close to the bust of Astor, observing the 
 strength of each feature and its perfect proportion to the rest, — 
 force everywhere, superfluity nowhere, — that you recognize the 
 monarch of the counting-room ; the brain which nothing could 
 confuse or disconcert ; the purpose that nothing could divert or 
 defeat ; the man who could with ease and pleasure grasp and con- 
 trol the multitudinous concerns of a business that embraced the 
 habited and unhabited globe, — that employed ships in every 
 sea, and men in every clime, and brought in to the coffers of the 
 merchant the revenue of a king. That' speechless bust tells us 
 how it was that this man, from suffering in his father's poverty- 
 stricken house the habitual pang of hunger, arrived at the great- 
 est fortune, perhaps, ever accumulated in a single lifetime ; you 
 perceive that whatever thing this strong and compact man set 
 himself to do, he would be certain to achieve unless stopped by 
 something as powerful as a law of nature. 
 
 The monument of these two gifted men is the airy and 
 graceful interior of which their busts are the only ornament. 
 Astor founded the Library, but it was probably his regard for 
 Irving that induced him to appropriate part of his wealth for a 
 purpose not in harmony with his own humor. Irving is known 
 to us all, as only wits and poets are ever known. But of the 
 singular being who possessed so remarkable a genius for accumu- 
 lation, of which this Library is one of the results, little has been 
 imparted to the public, and of that little the greater part is fabu- 
 lous. 
 
 A hundred years ago, in the poor little village of "Waldorf, in 
 the duchy of Baden, lived a jovial, good-for-nothing butcher, 
 named Jacob Astor, who felt himself much more at home in the 
 beer-house than at the fireside of his" own house in the principal 
 street of the village. At the best, the butcher of Waldorf must 
 have been a poor man ; for, at that day, the inhabitants of a Ger- 
 man village enjoyed the luxury of fresh meat only on great days, 
 such as those of confirmation, baptism, weddings, and Christmas. 
 
432 JOHN JACOB ASTOR. 
 
 The village itself was remote and insignificant, and though situ- 
 ated in the valley of the Rhine, the native home of the vine, a 
 region of proverbial fertility, the immediate vicinity of Waldorf 
 was not a rich or very populous country. The home of Jacob 
 Astor, therefore, seldom knew any medium between excessive 
 abundance and extreme scarcity, and he was not the man to make 
 the superfluity of to-day provide for the need of to-morrow ; 
 which was the more unfortunate as the periods of abundance 
 were few and far between, and the times of scarcity extended 
 over the greater part of the year. It was the custom then in 
 Germany for every farmer to provide a fatted pig, calf, or bul- 
 lock, against the time of harvest; and as that joyful season ap- 
 proached, the village butcher went the round of the neighborhood, 
 stopping a day or two at each house to kill the animals and con- 
 vert their flesh into bacon, sausages, or salt beef. During this 
 happy time, Jacob Astor, a merry dog, always welcome where 
 pleasure and hilarity were going forward, had enough to drink, 
 and his family had enough to eat. But the merry time lasted 
 only six weeks. Then set in the season of scarcity, which was 
 only relieved when there was a festival of the church, a wedding, 
 a christening, or a birthday in some family of the village rich 
 enough to provide an animal for Jacob's knife. The wife of this 
 idle and improvident butcher was such a wife as such men usually 
 contrive to pick up, — industrious, saving, and capable ; the main- 
 stay of his house. Often she remonstrated with her wasteful and 
 beer-loving husband ; the domestic sky was often overcast, and 
 the children were glad to fly from the noise and dust of the tem- 
 pest. 
 
 This roistering village butcher and his worthy, much-enduring 
 wife were the parents of our millionnaire. They had four sons : 
 George Peter Astor, born in 1752 ; Henry Astor, born in 1754 ; 
 John Melchior Astor, born in 1759 ; and John Jacob Astor, 
 born July 17, 1763. Each of these sons made haste to fly from 
 the privations and contentions of their home as soon as they were 
 old enough ; and, what is more remarkable, each of them had a 
 cast of character precisely the opposite of their thriftless father. 
 They were all saving, industi'ious, temperate, and enterprising, 
 
JOHN JACOB ASTOR. 433 
 
 and all of them became prosperous men at an early period of 
 their career. They were all duly instructed in their father's 
 trade; each in turn carried about the streets of Waldorf the 
 Basket of meat, and accompanied the father in his harvest slaugh- 
 tering tours. Jovial Jacob, we are told, gloried in being a 
 butcher, but three of his sons, much to his disgust, manifested a 
 repugnance to it, which was one of the causes of their flight from 
 the parental nest. The eldest, who was the first to go, made his 
 way to London, where an uncle was established in business as a 
 maker of musical instruments. Astor and Broadwood was the 
 name of the firm, a house that still exists under the title of 
 Broadwood and Co., one of the most noted makers of pianos in 
 England. In his uncle's manufactory George Astor served an 
 apprenticeship, and became at length a partner in the firm. 
 Henry Astor went next. He alone of his father's sons took to 
 his father's trade. It used to be thrown in his teeth, when he 
 was a thriving butcher in the city of New York, that he had 
 come over to America as a private in the Hessian army. This 
 may only have been the groundless taunt of an envious rival. It 
 is certain, however, that he was a butcher in New York when it 
 was a British post during the revolutionary war, and, remaining 
 after the evacuation, made a large fortune in his business. The 
 bird son, John Melchior Astor, found employment in Germany, 
 and arrived, at length, at the profitable post of steward to a 
 lobleman's estate. 
 
 Abandoned thus by his three brothers, John Jacob Astor had 
 ;o endure for some years a most cheerless and miserable lot. He 
 ost his mother, too, from whom he had derived all that was good 
 n his character and most of the happiness of his childliood. A 
 tep-mother replaced her, " who loved not Jacob," nor John 
 facob. The father, still devoted to pleasure, quarrelled so bitterly 
 vith his new wife, that his son was often glad to escape to the 
 touse of a schoolfellow (living in 1854), where he would pass 
 he night in a garret or outhouse, thankfully accepting for his 
 upper a crust of dry bread, and returning the next morning to 
 .ssist in the slaughter-house or carry out the meat. It was not 
 pen that he had enough to eat ; his clothes were of the poorest 
 
 19 BB 
 
434 JOHN JACOB ASTOB. 
 
 description ; and, as to money, be absolutely bad none of it. Tbe 
 unbappiness of his home and tbe misconduct of his father made 
 him ashamed to join in the sports of the village boys ; and he 
 passed much of his leisure alone, brooding over tbe unhappiness 
 of his lot. Tbe family increased, but not its income. It is re- 
 corded of him that he tended his little sisters with care and fond- 
 ness, and sought in all ways to lessen the dislike and ill-humor of 
 his step-mother. 
 
 It is not hardship, however, that enervates a lad. It is in- 
 dulgence and luxury that do that. He grew a stout, healthy, 
 tough, and patient boy, diligent and skilful in tbe discharge of 
 his duty, often supplying tbe place of his father absent in merry- 
 making. If, in later life, be overvalued money, it should not be 
 forgotten that few men have had a harder experience of the want 
 of money at the age when character is forming. 
 
 The bitterest lot has its alleviations. Sometimes a letter would 
 reach him from over the sea, telling of the good fortune of a 
 brother in a distant land. In his old age he used to boast that in 
 his boyhood he walked forty-five miles in one day for the sole 
 purpose of getting a letter that had arrived from England or 
 America. The Astors have always been noted for the strength 
 of their family affection. Our millionnaire forgot much that he 
 ought to have remembered, but he was not remiss in fulfilling 
 the obligations of kindred. 
 
 It appears, too, that he was fortunate in having a better school- 
 master than could generally be found at that day in a village 
 school of Germany. Valentine Jeune was his name, a French i 
 Protestant, whose parents had fled from their country during the 
 reign of Louis XIV. He was an active and sympathetic teacher, 
 and bestowed unusual pains upon the boy, partly because be 
 pitied his unhappy situation, and partly because of his aptitude 
 to learn. Nevertheless, the school routine of those days was ex- 
 tremely limited. To read and write, to cipher as far as tbe Rule 
 of Tbree, to learn the Catechism by heart, and to sing the Churchj 
 Hymns " so that the windows should rattle," — these were thj 
 sole accomplishments of even the best pupils of Valentine Jeune. 
 Baden was then under the rule of a Catholic family. It was a 
 
JOHN JACOB ASTOR. 435 
 
 saying in Waldorf that no man could be appointed a swineherd 
 who was not a Catholic, and that if .a mayoralty were vacant the 
 swineherd must have the place if there were no other Catholic 
 in the town. Hence it was that the line which separated the 
 Protestant minority from the Catholic majority was sharply de- 
 fined, and the Protestant children were the more thoroughly in- 
 doctrinated. Rev. John Philip Steiner, the Protestant pastor of 
 Waldorf, a learned and faithful minister, was as punctilious in re- 
 quiring from the children the thorough learning of the Catechism 
 as a German sergeant was in exacting all the niceties of the 
 parade. Young Astor became, therefore, a very decided Protes- 
 tant ; he lived and died a member of the Church in which he was 
 born. 
 
 The great day in the life of a German child is that of his con- 
 firmation, which usually occurs in his fourteenth year. The 
 ceremony, which was performed at Waldorf every two years, was 
 a festival at once solemn and joyous. The children, long prepared 
 beforehand by the joint labors of minister, schoolmaster, and 
 parents, walk in procession to the church, the girls in white, the 
 boys in their best clothes, and there, after the requisite examina- 
 tions, the rite is performed, and the Sacrament is administered. 
 The day concludes with festivity. Confirmation also is the point 
 of division between childhood and youth, — between absolute de- 
 pendence and the beginning of responsibility. After confirmation, 
 the boys of a German peasant take their place in life as appren- 
 tices or as servants ; and the girls, unless their services are re- 
 quired at home, are placed in situations. Childhood ends, matu- 
 rity begins, when the child has tasted for the first time the bread 
 and wine of the Communion. Whether a boy then becomes an 
 apprentice or a servant depends upon whether his parents have 
 been provident enough to save a sum of money sufficient to pay 
 the usual premium required by a master as compensation for his 
 trouble in teaching his trade. This premium varied at that day 
 from fifty dollars to two hundred, according to the difficulty and 
 Respectability of the vocation. A carpenter or a blacksmith 
 fright be satisfied with a premium of sixty or seventy dollars, 
 .vhile a cabinet-maker would demand a hundred, and a musical 
 nstrument maker or a clock-maker two hundred. 
 
436 JOHN JACOB ASTOE. 
 
 On Palm Sunday, 1777, when he was about fourteen years of 
 age, John Jacob Astor was confirmed. He then consulted his 
 father upon his future. Money to apprentice him there was none 
 in the paternal coffers. The trade of butcher he knew and dis- 
 liked. Nor was he inclined to accept as his destiny for life the 
 condition of servant or laborer. The father, who thought the 
 occupation of butcher one of the best in the world, and who 
 needed the help of his son, particularly in the approaching season 
 of harvest, paid no heed to the entreaties of the lad, who saw 
 himself condemned without hope to a business which he loathed, 
 and to labor at it without reward. 
 
 A deep discontent settled upon him. The tidings of the good 
 fortune of his brothers inflamed his desire to seek his fortune in 
 the world. The news of the Revolutionary "War, which drew 
 all eyes upon America, and in which the people of all lands sym- 
 pathized with the struggling colonies, had its effect upon him. 
 He began to long for the " New Land," as the Germans then 
 styled America ; and it is believed in Waldorf that soon after the 
 capture of Burgoyne had spread abroad a confidence in the final 
 success of the colonists, the youth formed the secret determina- 
 tion to emigrate to America. Nevertheless, he had to wait three 
 miserable years longer, until the surrender of Cornwallis made it 
 certain that America was to be free, before he was able to enter 
 upon the gratification of his desire. 
 
 In getting to America, he displayed the same sagacity in adapt- 
 ing means to ends that distinguished him during his business ca- 
 reer in New York. Money he had never had in his life, beyond I| 
 a few silver coins of the smallest denomination. His father had 
 none to give him, even if he had been inclined to do so. It was 
 only when the lad was evidently resolved to go that he gave a 
 slow, reluctant consent to his departure. Waldorf is nearly three 
 hundred miles from the seaport in Holland most convenient fow 
 his purpose. Despite the difficulties, this penniless youth formed' 
 the resolution of going down the Rhine to Holland, there taking 
 ship for London, where he would join his brother, and, whild 
 earning money for his passage to America, learn the language of 
 the country to which he was destined. It appears that he dreadedj 
 
JOHN JACOB ASTOR. 437 
 
 more the difficulties of the English tongue than he did those of 
 the long and expensive journey ; but he was resolved not to sail 
 for America until he had acquired the language, and saved a lit- 
 tle money beyond the expenses of the voyage. It appears, also, 
 that there prevailed in Baden the belief that Americans were 
 exceedingly selfish and inhospitable, and regarded the poor emi- 
 grant only in the light of prey. John Jacob was determined not 
 to land among such a people without the means of understanding 
 their tricks and paying his way. In all ways, too, he endeavored 
 to get a knowledge of the country to which he was going. 
 
 With a small bundle of clothes hung over his shoulder upon a 
 stick, with a crown or two in his pocket, he said the last farewell 
 to his father and his friends, and set out on foot for the Rhine, a 
 few miles distant. Valentine Jeune, his old schoolmaster, said, 
 as the lad was lost to view : "I am not afraid of Jacob ; he '11 get 
 through the world. He has a clear head and everything right 
 behind the ears." He was then a stout, strong lad of nearly 
 seventeen, exceedingly well made, though slightly undersized, 
 and he had a clear, composed, intelligent look in the eyes, which 
 seemed to ratify the prediction of the schoolmaster. He strode 
 manfully out of town, with tears in his eyes and a sob in his 
 throat, — for he loved his father, his friends, and his native vil- 
 lage, though his lot there had been forlorn enough. While still 
 in sight of Waldorf, he sat down under a tree and thought of 
 the future before him and the friends he had left. He there, as 
 he used to relate in after-life, made three resolutions : to be hon- 
 est, to be industrious, and not to gamble, — excellent resolutions, 
 as far as they go. Having sat awhile under the tree, he took up 
 his bundle and resumed his journey with better heart. 
 
 It was by no means the intention of this sagacious youth to 
 walk all the way to the sea-coast. There was a much more con- 
 venient way at that time of accomplishing the distance, even to a 
 young man with only two dollars in his pocket. The Black For- 
 est is partly in Astor's native Baden. The rafts of timber cut in 
 the Black Forest, instead of floating down the Rhine in the man- 
 ner practised in America, used to be rowed by sixty or eighty 
 men each, who were paid high wages, as the labor was severe. 
 
438 JOHN JACOB ASTOR. 
 
 Large numbers of stalwart emigrants availed themselves of this 
 mode of getting from the interior to the sea-coast, by which they 
 earned their subsistence on the way and about ten dollars in 
 money. The tradition in Waldorf is, that young Astor worked 
 his passage down the Rhine, and earned his passage-money to 
 England as an oarsman on one of these rafts. Hard as the labor 
 was, the oarsmen had a merry time of it, cheering their toil with 
 jest and song by night and day. On the fourteenth day after 
 leaving home, our youth found himself at a Dutch seaport, with 
 a larger sum of money than he had ever before possessed. He 
 took passage for London, where he landed a few days after, in total 
 ignorance of the place and the language. His brother welcomed 
 him with German warmth, and assisted him to procure employ- 
 ment, — probably in the flute and piano manufactory of Astor 
 and Broadwood. 
 
 As the foregoing brief account of the early life of John Jacob 
 Astor differs essentially from any previously published in the 
 United States, it is proper that the reader should be informed of 
 the sources whence we have derived information so novel and un- 
 expected. The principal source is a small biography of Astor 
 published in Germany about ten years ago, written by a native 
 of Baden, a Lutheran clergyman, who gathered his material 
 in Waldorf, where were then living a few aged persons who 
 remembered Astor when he was a sad and solitary lad in his 
 father's disorderly house. The statements of this little book are 
 confirmed by what some of the surviving friends and descend- 
 ants of Mr. Astor in New York remember of his own conversa- 
 tion respecting his early days. He seldom spoke of his life in 
 Germany, though he remembered his native place with fondness, 
 revisited it in the time of his prosperity, pensioned his father, 
 and forgot not Waldorf in his will; but the little that he did say 
 of his youthful years accords with the curious narrative in the 
 work to which we have alluded. We believe the reader may 
 rely on our story as being essentially true. 
 
 Astor brought to London, according to our quaint Lutheran, 
 " a pious, true, and godly spirit, a clear understanding, a sound 
 youthful elbow-grease, and the wish to put it to good use." Dur- 
 
JOHN JACOB ASTOR. 439 
 
 ing the two years of his residence in the British metropolis, he 
 strove most assiduously for three objects: 1. To save money ; 2. 
 To acquire the English language; 3. To get information respecting 
 America. Much to his relief and gratification, he found the ac- 
 quisition of the language to be the least of his difficulties. Work- 
 ing in a shop with English mechanics, and having few German 
 friends, he was generally dependent upon the language of the 
 country for the communication of his desires ; and he was as 
 much surprised as delighted to find how many points of similarity 
 there were between the two languages. In about six weeks, he 
 used to say, he could make himself understood a little in English, 
 and long before he left London he could speak it fluently. He 
 never learned to write English correctly in his life, nor could he 
 ever speak it without a decided German accent; but he could al- 
 ways express his meaning with simplicity and force, both orally 
 and in writing. Trustworthy information respecting America, in 
 the absence of maps, gazetteers, and books of travel, was more 
 difficult to procure. The ordinary Englishman of that day re- 
 garded America with horror or contempt as perverse and rebel- 
 lious colonies, making a great to-do about a paltry tax, and giving 
 " the best of kings " a world of trouble for nothing. He prob- 
 ably heard little of the thundering eloquence with which Fox, 
 Pitt, Burke, and Sheridan were nightly defending the American 
 cause in the House of Commons, and assailing the infatuation of 
 the Government in prosecuting a hopeless war. As often, how- 
 ever, as our youth met with any one who had been in America, 
 he plied him with questions, and occasionally he heard from his 
 brother in New York. Henry Astor was already established as 
 a butcher on his own account, wheeling home in a wheelbarrow 
 from Bull's Head his slender purchases of sheep and calves. But 
 the great difficulty of John Jacob in London was the accumu- 
 lation of money. Having no trade, his wages were necessarily 
 small. Though he rose with the lark, and was at work as early 
 as five in the morning, — though he labored with all his might, 
 and saved every farthing that he could spare, — • it was two years 
 before he had saved enough for his purpose. In September, 
 1783, he possessed a good suit of Sunday clothes, in the Eng- 
 
440 JOHN JACOB ASTOR. 
 
 lish style, and about fifteen English guineas, — the total result 
 of two years of unremitting toil and most pinching economy ; 
 and here again charity requires the remark that if Astor the mil- 
 lionnaire carried the virtue of economy to an extreme, it was 
 Astor the struggling youth in a strange land who learned the 
 value of money. 
 
 In that month of September, 1783, the news reached London 
 that Dr. Franklin and his associates in Paris, after two years of 
 negotiation, had signed the definitive treaty which completed the 
 independence of the United States. Franklin had been in the 
 habit of predicting that as soon as America had become an inde- 
 pendent nation, the best blood in Europe, and some of the finest 
 fortunes, would hasten to seek a career or an asylum in the New 
 World. Perhaps he would have hardly recognized the emigra- 
 tion of this poor German youth as part of the fulfilment of his 
 prophecy. Nevertheless, the news of the conclusion of the treaty 
 had no sooner reached England than young Astor, then twenty 
 years old, began to prepare for his departure for the "New 
 Land," and in November he embarked for Baltimore. He paid 
 five of his guineas for a passage in the steerage, which entitled 
 him to sailors' fare of salt beef and biscuit. He invested part of 
 his remaining capital in seven flutes, and carried the rest, about 
 five pounds sterling, in the form of money. 
 
 America gave a cold welcome to the young emigrant. The 
 winter of 1783-4 was one of the celebrated severe winters on 
 both sides of the ocean. November gales and December storms 
 wreaked all their fury upon the ship, retarding its progress so 
 long that January arrived before she had reached Chesapeake 
 Bay. Floating ice filled the bay as far as the eye could reach, 
 and a January storm drove the ship among the masses with such 
 force, that she was in danger of being broken to pieces. It was 
 on one of those days of peril and consternation, that young Astor 
 appeared on deck in his best clothes, and on being asked the rea- 
 son of this strange proceeding, said that if he escaped with life he 
 should save his best clothes, and if he lost it his clothes would be 
 of no further use to him. Tradition further reports that he, a 
 steerage passenger, ventured one day to come upon the quarter- 
 
JOHN JACOB ASTOK. 441 
 
 deck, when the captain roughly ordered him forward. Tradition 
 adds that that very captain, twenty years after, commanded a 
 ship owned by the steerage passenger. When the ship was with- 
 in a day's sail of her port the wind died away, the cold increased, 
 and the next morning beheld the vessel hard and fast in a sea of ice. 
 For two whole months she remained immovable. Provisions 
 gave out. The passengers were only relieved when the ice ex- 
 tended to the shore, and became strong enough to afford commu- 
 nication with other ships and with the coasts of the bay. Some 
 of the passengers made their way to the shore, and travelled by 
 land to their homes ; but this resource was not within the means 
 of our young adventurer, and he was obliged to stick to the ship. 
 Fortune is an obsequious jade, that favors the strong and turns 
 her back upon the weak. This exasperating delay of two months 
 was the means of putting young Astor upon the shortest and easi- 
 est road to fortune that the continent of America then afforded 
 to a poor man. Among his fellow-passengers there was one 
 German, with whom he made acquaintance on the voyage, and 
 with whom he continually associated during the detention of the 
 winter. They told each other their past history, their present 
 plans, their future hopes. The stranger informed young Astor 
 that he too had emigrated to America, a few years before, with- 
 out friends or money ; that he had soon managed to get into the 
 business of buying furs of the Indians, and of the boatmen com- 
 ing to New York from the river settlements ; that at length he 
 had embarked all his capital in skins, and had taken them him- 
 self to England in a returning transport, where he had sold them 
 to great advantage, and had invested the proceeds in toys and 
 trinkets, with which to continue his trade in the wilderness. He 
 strongly advised Astor to follow his example. He told him the 
 prices of the various skins in America, and the prices they com- 
 manded in London. With German friendliness he imparted to 
 him the secrets of the craft : told him where to buy, how to pack, 
 transport, and preserve the skins ; the names of the principal 
 dealers in New York, Montreal, and London ; and the season of 
 i the year when the skins were most ahundant. All this was in- 
 teresting to the young man ; but he asked his friend how it was 
 19* 
 
442 JOHN JACOB ASTOR. 
 
 possible to begin such a business without capital. The stranger 
 told him that no great capital was required for a beginning. 
 With a basket of toys, or even of cakes, he said, a man could 
 buy valuable skins on the wbarves and in the markets of New 
 York, which could be sold with some profit to New York furriers. 
 But the grand object was to establish a connection with a house 
 in London, where furs brought four or five times their value in 
 America. In short, John Jacob Astor determined to lose no 
 time after reaching New York, in trying his hand at this profit- 
 able traffic. 
 
 The ice broke up in March. The ship made its way to Balti- 
 more, and tbe two friends travelled together to New York. The 
 detention in the ice and the journey to New York almost ex- 
 hausted Astor's purse. He arrived in this city, where now his 
 estate is valued at forty millions, with little more than his seven 
 German flutes, and a long German head full of available knowl- 
 edge and quiet determination. He went straight to the humble 
 abode of his brother Henry, a kindly, generous, jovial soul, who 
 gave him a truly fraternal welcome, and received with hospitable 
 warmth the companion of his voyage. 
 
 Henry Astor's prosperity had been temporarily checked by the 
 evacuation of New York, which had occurred five months before, 
 and which had deprived the tradesmen of the city of their best 
 customers. It was not only the British army that had left the 
 city in November, 1783, but a host of British officials and old 
 Tory families as well ; while the new-comers were Whigs, whom 
 seven years of war had impoverished, and young adventurers 
 who had still their career to make. During the Revolution, 
 Henry Astor had speculated occasionally in cattle captured from 
 the farmers of Westchester, which were sold at auction at Bull's 
 Head, and he had advanced from a wheelbarrow to the ownership 
 of a horse. An advertisement informs us that, about the time 
 of his brother's arrival, this horse was stolen, with saddle and 
 bridle, and that the owner offered three guineas reward for the 
 recovery of the property ; but that " for the thief, horse, saddle, 
 and bridle, ten guineas would be paid." A month after, we find 
 him becoming a citizen of the United States, and soon he began 
 to share in the returning prosperity of the city. 
 
JOHN JACOB ASTOE. 443 
 
 In the mean time, however, he could do little for his new-found 
 brother. During the first evening of his brother's stay at his 
 house the question was discussed, What should the young man do 
 in his new country ? The charms of the fur business were duly 
 portrayed by the friend of the youth, who also expressed his 
 preference for it. It was agreed, at length, that the best plan 
 would be for the young man to seek employment with some one 
 already in the business, in order to learn the modes of proceed- 
 ing, as well as to acquire a knowledge of the country. The 
 young stranger anxiously inquired how much premium would be 
 demanded by a furrier for teaching the business to a novice, and 
 he was at once astonished and relieved to learn that no such thing 
 was known in America, and that he might expect his board and 
 small wages even from the start. So, the next day, the brothers 
 and their friend proceeded together to the store of Robert 
 Bowne, an aged and benevolent Quaker, long established in the 
 business of buying, curing, and exporting peltries. It chanced 
 that he needed a hand. Pleased with the appearance and de- 
 meanor of the young man, he employed him (as tradition reports) 
 at two dollars a week and his board. Astor took up his abode in 
 his master's house, and was soon at work. "We can tell the 
 reader with certainty what was the nature of the youth's first 
 day's work in his adopted country ; for, in his old age, he was 
 often heard to say that the first thing he did for Mr. Bowne was 
 to beat furs ; which, indeed, was his principal employment during 
 the whole of the following summer, — furs requiring to be fre- 
 quently beaten to keep the moths from destroying them. 
 
 Perhaps among our readers there are some who have formed 
 the resolution to get on in the world and become rich. We ad- 
 vise such to observe how young Astor proceeded. We are far 
 from desiring to hold up this able man as a model for the young; 
 yet it must be owned that in the art of prospering in business he has 
 had no equal in America ; and in that his example may be useful. 
 Now, observe the secret. It was not plodding merely, though no 
 man ever labored more steadily than he. Mr. Bowne, discover- 
 ing what a prize he had, raised his wages at the end of the first 
 month. Nor was it merely his strict observance of the rules of 
 
444 JOHN JACOB ASTOR. 
 
 temperance and morality, though that is essential to any worthy 
 success. The great secret of Astor's early, rapid, and uniform 
 success in business appears to have been, that he acted always 
 upon the maxim that knowledge is power ! He labored un- 
 ceasingly at Mr. Bowne's to learn the business. He put all his 
 soul into the work of getting a knowledge of furs, fur-bearing 
 animals, fur-dealers, fur-markets, fur-gathering Indians, fur- 
 abounding countries. In those days a considerable number of 
 bear skins and beaver skins were brought directly to Bowne's 
 store by the Indians and countrymen of the vicinity, who had 
 shot or trapped the animals. These men Astor questioned ; and 
 neglected no other opportunity of procuring the information he 
 desired. It used to be observed of Astor that he absolutely loved 
 a fine skin. In later days he would have a superior fur hung up 
 in his counting-room as other men hang pictures ; and this, ap- 
 parently, for the mere pleasure of feeling, showing, and admiring 
 it. He would pass his hand fondly over it, extolling its charms 
 with an approach to enthusiasm ; not, however, forgetting to 
 mention that in Canton it would bring him in five hundred dol- 
 lars. So heartily did he throw himself into his business. 
 
 Growing rapidly in the confidence of his employer, he was 
 soon intrusted with more important duties than the beating of 
 furs. He was employed in birying them from the Indians and 
 hunters who brought them to the city. Soon, too, he took the 
 place of his employer in the annual journey to Montreal, then the 
 chief fur mart of the country. With a pack upon his back, he 
 struck into the wilderness above Albany, and walked to Lake 
 George, which he ascended in a canoe, and having thus reached 
 Champlain he embarked again, and sailed to the head of that 
 lake. Returning with his furs, he employed the Indians in trans- 
 porting them to the Hudson, and brought them to the city in a 
 sloop. He was formed by nature for a life like this. His frame 
 was capable of great endurance, and he had the knack of getting 
 the best of a bargain. The Indian is a great bargainer. The 
 time was gone by when a nail or a little red paint would induce 
 him to part with valuable peltries. It required skill and address 
 on the part of the trader, both in selecting the articles likely to 
 
JOHN JACOB ASTOR. 445 
 
 tempt the vanity or the cupidity of the red man, and in conduct- 
 ing the tedious negotiation which usually preceded an exchange 
 of commodities. It was in this kind of traffic, doubtless, that our 
 young German acquired that unconquerable propensity for mak- 
 ing hard bargains, which was so marked a feature in his character 
 as a merchant. He could never rise superior to this early- 
 acquired habit. He never knew what it was to exchange places 
 with the opposite party, and survey a transaction from his point 
 of view. He exulted not in compensating liberal service liber- 
 ally. In all transactions he kept in view the simple object of 
 giving the least and getting the most. 
 
 Meanwhile his brother Henry was flourishing. He married 
 the beautiful daughter of a brother butcher, and the young wife, 
 according to the fashion of the time, disdained not to assist her 
 husband even in the slaughter-house as well as in the market- 
 place. Colonel Devoe, in his well-known Market Book, informs 
 us that Henry Astor was exceedingly proud of his pretty wife, 
 often bringing her home presents of gay dresses and ribbons, and 
 speaking of her as " de pink of de Bowery." The butchers of 
 that day complained bitterly of him, because he used to ride out 
 of town fifteen or twenty miles, and buy up the droves of cattle 
 coming to the city, which he would drive in and sell at an ad- 
 vanced price to the less enterprising butchers. He gained a for- 
 tune by his business, which would have been thought immense, 
 if the colossal wealth of his brother had not reduced all other es- 
 tates to comparative insignificance. It was he who bought, for 
 eight hundred dollars, the acre of ground on part of which the 
 old Bowery Theatre now stands. 
 
 John Jacob Astor remained not long in the employment of 
 Robert Bovvne. It was a peculiarity of the business of a furrier 
 at that day, that, while it admitted of unlimited extension, it could 
 be begun on the smallest scale, with a very insignificant capital. 
 Every former's boy in the vicinity of New York had occasionally 
 a skin to sell, and bears abounded in the Catskill Mountains. 
 Indeed the time had not long gone by when beaver skins formed 
 part of the currency of the city. All Northern and Western New 
 York was still a fur-yielding country. Even Long Island fur- 
 
446 JOHN JACOB ASTOR. 
 
 nished its quota. So that, while the fur business was one that 
 rewarded the enterprise of great and wealthy companies, employ- 
 ing thousands of men and fleets of ships, it afforded an opening to 
 young Astor, who, with the assistance of his brother, could com- 
 mand a capital of only a very few hundred dollars. In a little 
 shop in "Water Street, with a back-room, a yard, and a shed, the 
 shop furnished with only a few toys and trinkets, Astor began 
 business about the year 1786. He had then, as always, the most 
 unbounded confidence in his own abilities. He used to relate 
 that, at this time, a new row of houses in Broadway was the talk 
 of the city from their magnitude and beauty. Passing them 
 one day, he said to himself : " I '11 build some time or other a 
 greater house than any of these, and in this very street." He 
 used also to say, in his old age : " The first hundred thousand 
 dollars — that was hard to get ; but afterward it was easy to 
 make more." 
 
 Having set up for himself, he worked with the quiet, indomi- 
 table ardor of a German who sees clearly his way open before 
 him. At first he did everything for himself. He bought, cured, 
 beat, packed, and sold his skins. From dawn till dark, he assid- 
 uously labored. At the proper seasons of the year, with his pack 
 on his back, he made short excursions into the country, collecting 
 skins from house to house, gradually extending the area of his 
 travels, till he knew the State of New York as no man of his 
 day knew it. He used to boast, late in life, when the Erie Canal 
 had called into being a line of thriving towns through the centre 
 of the State, that he had himself, in his numberless tramps, des- 
 ignated the sites of those towns, and predicted that one day they 
 would be the centres of business and population. Particularly he 
 noted the spots where Rochester aud Buffalo now stand, one hav- 
 ing a harbor on Lake Erie, the other upon Lake Ontario. Those 
 places, he predicted, would one day be large and prosperous cities, 
 and that prediction he made when there was scarcely a settle- 
 ment at Buffalo, and only wigwams on the site of Rochester. At 
 this time he had a partner who usually remained in the city, while 
 the agile and enduring Astor traversed the wilderness. 
 
 It was his first voyage to London that established his business 
 
JOHN JACOB ASTOR. 447 
 
 on a solid foundation. As soon as be had accumulated a few 
 bales of the skins suited to the European market, he took passage 
 in the steerage of a ship and conveyed them to London. He sold 
 them to great advantage, and established connections with houses 
 to which he could in future consign his furs, and from which he 
 could procure the articles best adapted to the taste of Indians and 
 hunters. But his most important operation in London was to 
 make an arrangement with the firm of Astor & Broadwood, by 
 which he became the New York agent for the sale of their 
 pianos, flutes, and violins. He is believed to have been the first 
 man in New York who kept constantly for sale a supply of musi- 
 cal merchandise, of which the annual sale in New York is now 
 reckoned at five millions of dollars. On his return to New York, 
 he opened a little dingy store in Gold Street, between Fulton and 
 Ann, and swung out a sign to the breeze bearing the words : — 
 
 FURS AND PIANOS. 
 
 There were until recently aged men among us who remem- 
 bered seeing this sign over the store of Mr. Astor, and in some 
 old houses are preserved ancient pianos, bearing the name of J. 
 J. Astor, as the seller thereof. Violins and flutes, also, are occa- 
 sionally met with that have his name upon them. In 1790, seven 
 years after his arrival in this city, he was of sufficient importance 
 to appear in the Directory thus : — 
 
 ASTOR, J. J., Fur Trader, 40 Little Dock Street (now part of 
 Water Street). 
 
 In this time of his dawning prosperity, while still inhabiting 
 the small house of which his store was a part, he married. Sa- 
 rah Todd was the maiden name of his wife. As a connection of 
 the family of Brevoort, she was then considered to be somewhat 
 superior to her husband in point of social rank, and she brought 
 him a fortune, by no means despised by him at that time, of three 
 hundred dollars. She threw herself heartily into her husband's 
 growing business, laboring with her own hands, buying, sorting, 
 and beating the furs. He used to say that she was as good a 
 judge of the value of peltries as himself, and that her opinion in 
 a matter of business was better than that of most merchants. 
 
448 JOHN JACOB ASTOR. 
 
 Of a man like Astor all kinds of stories will be told'; some 
 true, some false ; some founded upon fact, but exaggerated or 
 distorted. It is said, for example, that when he went into busi- 
 ness for himself, he used to go around among the shops and 
 markets with a basket of toys and cakes upon his arm, exchang- 
 ing those articles for furs. There are certainly old people among 
 us who remember hearing their parents say that they saw him 
 doing this. The story is not improbable, for he had no false 
 pride, and was ready to turn his hand to anything that was 
 honest. 
 
 Mi\ Astor still traversed the wilderness. The father of the 
 late lamented General Wadsworth used to relate that he met him 
 once in the woods of Western New York in a sad plight. His 
 wagon had broken down in the midst of a swamp. In the melee 
 all his gold had rolled away through the bottom of the vehicle, 
 and was irrecoverably lost ; and Astor was seen emerging from 
 the swamp covered with mud and carrying on his shoulder an 
 axe, — the sole relic of his property. "When at length, in 1794, 
 Jay's treaty caused the evacuation of the western forts held by 
 the British, his business so rapidly extended that he was enabled 
 to devolve these laborious journeys upon others, while he remained 
 in New York, controlling a business that now embraced the re- 
 gion of the great lakes, and gave employment to a host of trap- 
 pers, collectors, and agents. He was soon in a position to purchase 
 a ship, in which his furs were carried to London, and in which 
 he occasionally made a voyage himself. He was still observed 
 to be most assiduous in the pursuit of commercial knowledge. 
 He was never weary of inquiring about the markets of Europe 
 and Asia, the ruling prices and commodities of each, the stand- 
 ing of commercial houses, and all other particulars that could be 
 of use. Hence his directions to his captains and agents were 
 always explicit and minute„*and if any enterprise failed to be 
 profitable it could generally be distinctly seen that it was because 
 his orders had not been obeyed. In London, he became most 
 intimately conversant with the operations of the East-India 
 Company and with the China trade. China being the best 
 market in the world for furs, and furnishing commodities which 
 
JOHN JACOB ASTOK. 449 
 
 in America had become necessaries of life, he was quick to per- 
 ceive what an advantage he would have over other merchants 
 by sending his ships to Canton provided with furs as well as 
 dollars. It was about the year 1800 that he sent his first ship 
 to Canton, and he continued to carry on commerce with China 
 for twenty-seven years, sometimes with loss, generally with profit, 
 and occasionally with splendid and bewildering success. 
 
 It was not, however, until the year 1800, when he was worth 
 a quarter of a million dollars, and had been in business fifteen 
 years, that he indulged himself in the comfort of living in a house 
 apart from his business. In 1794 he appears in the Directory 
 as " Furrier, 149 Broadway." From 1796 to 1799 he figures as 
 " Fur Merchant, 149 Broadway." In 1800 he had a storehouse 
 at 141 Greenwich Street, and lived at 223 Broadway, on the site 
 of the present Astor House. In 1801, his store was at 71 
 Liberty Street, and he had removed his residence back to 149 
 Broadway. The year following we find him again at 223 Broad- 
 way, where he continued to reside for a quarter of a century. 
 His house was such as a fifth-rate merchant would now consider 
 much beneath his dignity. Mr. Astor, indeed, had a singular 
 dislike to living in a large house. He had neither expensive 
 tastes nor wasteful vices. His luxuries were a pipe, a glass of 
 beer, a game of draughts, a ride on horseback, and the theatre. 
 Of the theatre he was particularly fond. He seldom missed a 
 good performance in the palmy days of the " Old Park." 
 
 It was his instinctive abhorrence of ostentation and waste that 
 enabled him, as it were, to glide into the millionnaire without 
 being observed by his neighbors. He used to relate, with a 
 chuckle, that he was worth a million before any one suspected it. 
 A dandy bank-clerk, one day, having expressed a doubt as to 
 the sufficiency of his name to a piece of mercantile paper, Astor 
 asked him how much he thought he was worth. The clerk 
 mentioned a sum ludicrously less than the real amount. Astor 
 then asked him how much he supposed this and that leading 
 merchant, whom he named, was worth. The young man en- 
 dowed them with generous sum-totals proportioned to their style 
 of living. " Well," said Astor, " I am worth more than any of 
 
 cc 
 
450 JOHN JACOB ASTOR. 
 
 them. I will not say how much I am worth, but I am worth 
 more than any sum you have mentioned." " Then," said the 
 clerk, " you are even a greater fool than I took you for, to work j 
 as hard as you do." The old man would tell this story with 
 great glee, for he always liked a joke. 
 
 In the course of his long life he had frequent oppoi'tunities of 
 observing what becomes of those gay merchants who live up to 
 the incomes of prosperous years, regardless of the inevitable time J! 
 of commercial collapse. It must be owned that he held in utter j 
 contempt the dashing style of living and doing business which 
 has too often prevailed in New York ; and he was very slow to j 
 give credit to a house that carried sail out of proportion to its j 
 ballast. Nevertheless, he was himself no plodder when plodding 
 had ceased to be necessary. At the time when his affairs were 
 on their greatest scale, he would leave his office at two in the] 
 afternoon, go home to an early dinner, then mount his horse and] 
 ride about the Island till it was time to go to the theatre. He ■ 
 had a strong aversion to illegitimate speculation, and particularly 
 to gambling in stocks. The note-shaving and stock -jobbing op- 
 erations of the Rothschilds he despised. It was his pride and 
 boast that he gained his own fortune by legitimate commerce, j 
 and by the legitimate investment of his profits. Having an un- 
 bounded faith in the destiny of the United States, and in the 
 future commercial supremacy of New York, it was his custom, 
 from about the year 1800, to invest his gains in the purchase of 
 lots and lands on Manhattan Island. 
 
 We have all heard much of the closeness, or rather the mean- 
 ness, of this remarkable man. Truth compels us to admit, as we) 
 have before intimated, that he was not generous, except to his 
 own kindred. His liberality began and ended in his own family. 
 Very seldom during his lifetime did he willingly do a generous! 
 act outside of the little circle of his relations and descendants.; 
 To get all that he could, and to keep nearly all that he got, —4) 
 those were the laws of his being. He had a vast genius for| 
 making money, and that was all that he had. 
 
 It is a pleasure to know that sometimes his extreme closeness 
 defeated its own object. He once lost seventy thousand dollars 
 
JOHN JACOB ASTOR. 451 
 
 by committing a piece of petty injustice toward his best captain. 
 This gallant sailor, being notified by an insurance office of the 
 necessity of having a chronometer on board his ship, spoke to Mr. 
 Astor on the subject, who advised the captain to buy one. 
 
 " But," said the captain, " I have no five hundred dollars to 
 spare for such a purpose ; the chronometer should belong to the 
 ship." 
 
 " Well," said the merchant, " you need not pay for it now ; 
 pay for it at your convenience." 
 
 The captain still objecting, Astor, after a prolonged higgling, 
 authorized him to buy a chronometer, and charge it to the ship's 
 account; which was done. Sailing-day was at hand. The ship 
 Iras hauled into the stream. The captain, as is the custom, 
 handed in his account. Astor, subjecting it to his usual close 
 ecrutiny, observed the novel item of five hundred dollars for the 
 chronometer. He objected, averring that it was understood be- 
 tween them that the captain was to pay for the instrument. The 
 ■worthy sailor recalled the conversation, and firmly held to his rec- 
 ollection of it. Astor insisting on his own view of the matter, 
 the captain was so profoundly disgusted that, important as the 
 command of the ship was to him, he resigned his post. Another 
 captain was soon found, and the ship sailed for China. Another 
 house, which was then engaged in the China trade, knowing the 
 worth of this " king of captains," as Astor himself used to style 
 him, bought him a ship and despatched him to Canton two 
 months after the departure of Astor's vessel. Our captain, put 
 upon his mettle, employed all his skill to accelerate the speed of 
 his ship, and had such success, that he reached New York with a 
 full cargo of tea just seven days after the arrival of Mr. Astor's 
 ship. Astor, not expecting another ship for months, and there- 
 fore sure of monopolizing the market, had not yet broken bulk, 
 nor even taken off the hatchways. Our captain arrived on a 
 Saturday. Advertisements and handbills were immediately is- 
 sued, and on the Wednesday morning following, as the custom 
 then was, the auction sale of the tea began on the wharf, — two 
 barrels of punch contributing to the eclat and hilarity of the oc- 
 casion. The cargo was sold to good advantage, and the market 
 
452 JOHN JACOB ASTOR. 
 
 was glutted. Astor lost in consequence the entire profits of the! 
 voyage, not less than the sum named above. Meeting the cap-, 
 tain some time after in Broadway, he said, — 
 
 " I had better have paid for that chronometer of yours." 
 
 Without ever acknowledging that he had been in the wrong, I 
 he was glad enough to engage the captain's future services.! 
 This anecdote we received from the worthy captain's own lips. J 
 
 On one occasion the same officer had the opportunity of ren-| 
 dering the great merchant a most signal service. The agent oft 
 Mr. Astor in China suddenly died at a time when the property | 
 in his charge amounted to about seven hundred thousand dollars.! 
 Our captain, who was not then in Astor's employ, was perfectly J- 
 aware that if this immense property fell into official hands, as the* 
 law required, not one dollar of it would ever again find its way! 
 to the coffers of its proprietor. By a series of bold, prompt, and! 
 skilful measures, he rescued it from the official maw, and made ill 
 yield a profit to the owner. Mr. Astor acknowledged the ser-I 
 vice. He acknowledged it with emphasis and a great show off 
 gratitude. He said many times : — 
 
 "If you had not done just as you did, I should never have 
 seen one dollar of my money ; no, not one dollar of it." 
 
 But he not only did not compensate him for his services, bu 
 he did not even reimburse the small sum of money which the 
 captain had expended in performing those services. Astor was 
 then worth ten millions, and the captain had his hundred dollars 
 a month and a family of young children. 
 
 Thus the great merchant recompensed great services. He 
 was not more just in rewarding small ones. On one occasion a 
 ship of his arrived from China, which he found necessary to de- 
 spatch at once to Amsterdam, the market in New York being* 
 depressed by an over-supply of China merchandise. But 01 
 board this ship, under a mountain of tea-chests, the owner ha 
 two pipes of precious Madeira wine, which had been sent on 
 voyage for the improvement of its constitution. 
 
 " Can you get out that wine," asked the owner, " without dis- 
 charging the tea ? " 
 
 The captain thought he could. 
 
 
JOHN JACOB ASTOR. 453 
 
 " "Well, then," said Mr. Astor, "you get it out, and I'll give you 
 a demijohn of it. You '11 say it 's the best wine you ever tasted." 
 
 It required the labor of the whole ship's crew for two days to 
 Iget out those two pipes of wine. They were sent to the house 
 of Mr. Astor. A year passed. The captain had been to Am- 
 sterdam and back, but he had received no tidings of his demijohn 
 of Madeira. One day, when Mr. Astor was on board the ship, 
 ithe captain ventured to remind the great man, in a jocular man- 
 ner, that he had not received the wine. 
 
 " Ah ! " said Astor, " don't you know the reason ? It is n't 
 fine yet. Wait till it is fine, and you '11 say you never tasted 
 'such Madeira." The captain never heard of that wine again. 
 
 These traits show the moral weakness of the man. It is only 
 when we regard his mercantile exploits that we can admire him. 
 He was, unquestionably, one of the ablest, boldest, and most suc- 
 cessful operators that ever lived. He seldom made a mistake 
 in the conduct of business. Having formed his plan, he carried 
 it out with a nerve and steadiness, with such a firm and easy 
 grasp of all the details, that he seemed rather to be playing an 
 interesting game than transacting business. "He could com- 
 mand an army of five hundred thousand men ! " exclaimed one 
 'of his admirers. That was an erroneous remark. He could 
 lhave commanded an army of five hundred thousand tea-chests, 
 with a heavy auxiliary force of otter skins and beaver skins. 
 But a commander of men must be superior morally as well as 
 intellectually. He must be able to win the love and excite the 
 enthusiasm of his followers. Astor would have made a splendid 
 commissary-general to the army of Xerxes, but he could no 
 more have conquered Greece than Xerxes himself. 
 
 The reader may be curious to know by what means Mr. Astor 
 became so preposterously rich. Few successful men gain a single 
 million by legitimate commerce. A million dollars is a most 
 enormous sum of money. It requires a considerable effort of 
 the mind to conceive it. But .this indomitable little German 
 managed, in the course of sixty years, to accumulate twenty mil- 
 lions ; of which, probably, not more than two millions was the 
 fruit of his business as a fur trader and China merchant. 
 
454 joiin jacob astor. 
 
 At that day the fur trade was exceedingly profitable, as well 
 as of vast extent. It is estimated that about the year 1800 the 
 number of peltries annually furnished to commerce was about 
 six millions, varying in value from fifteen cents to five hundred 
 dollars. When every respectable man in Europe and America . 
 wore a beaver skin upon his head, or a part of one, and when a . 
 good beaver skin could be bought in Western New York for a 
 dollar's worth of trash, and could be sold in London for twenty- 
 five English shillings, and when those twenty-five English shil- 
 lings could be invested in English cloth and cutlery, and sold 
 in New York for forty shillings, it may be imagined that fur- 
 trading was a very good business. Mr. Astor had his share of 
 the cream of it, and that was the foundation of his colossal for- 
 tune. Hence, too, the tender love he felt for a fine fur. 
 
 In the next place, his ventures to China were sometimes ex- 
 ceedingly fortunate. A fair profit on a voyage to China at that 
 day was thirty thousand dollars. Mr. Astor has been known to 
 gain seventy thousand, and to have his money in his pocket with- 
 in the year. He was remarkably lucky in the war of 1812. All 
 his ships escaped capture, and arriving at a time when foreign 
 commerce was almost annihilated and tea had doubled in price, 
 his gains were so immense, that the million or more lost in the 
 Astorian enterprise gave him not even a momentary inconvenience. 
 
 At that time, too, tea merchants of large capital had an advan- 
 tage which they do not now enjoy. A writer explains the man- 
 ner in which the business was done in those days : — 
 
 " A house that could raise money enough thirty years ago to 
 send $260,000 in specie, could soon have an uncommon capital, 
 and this was the working of the old system. The Griswolds 
 owned the ship Panama. They started her from New York in 
 the month of May, with a cargo of perhaps $30,000 worth of 
 ginseng, spelter, lead, iron, etc., and $170,000 in Spanish dollars. 
 The ship goes on the voyage, reaches Whampoa in safety (a few 
 miles below Canton). Her supercargo in two months has her 
 loaded with tea, some china ware, a great deal of cassia or false 
 cinnamon, and a few other articles. Suppose the cargo, mainly 
 tea, costing about thirty-seven cents (at that time) per pound on 
 the average. 
 
JOHN JACOB A ST OR. 455 
 
 "The duty was enormous in those days. It was twice the 
 cost of the tea, at least : so that a tea cargo of $ 200,000, when 
 it had paid duty of seventy-five cents per pound (which would 
 be $400,000), amounted to $600,000. The profit was at least 
 fifty per cent on the original cost, or $ 100,000, and would make 
 the cargo worth $ 700,000. 
 
 " The cargo of teas would be sold almost on arrival (say eleven 
 or twelve months after the ship left New York in May) to whole- 
 sale grocers, for their notes at four and six months, — say for 
 $700,000. In those years there was credit given by the United 
 States of nine, twelve, and eighteen months ! So that the East- 
 India or Canton merchant, after his ship had made one voyage, 
 had the use of government capital to the extent of $400,000, on 
 the ordinary cargo of a China ship. 
 
 " No sooner had the ship Panama arrived (or any of the regu- 
 lar East-Indiamen), than her cargo would be exchanged for 
 grocers' notes for $ 700,000. These notes could be turned into 
 specie very easily, and the owner had only to pay his bonds for 
 $400,000 duty, at nine, twelve, and eighteen months, giving him 
 time actually to send two more ships with $200,000 each to 
 Canton, and have them back again in New York before the bonds 
 on the first cargo were due. 
 
 " John Jacob Astor at one period of his life had several vessels 
 operating in this way. They would go to the Pacific (Oregon) 
 and carry from thence furs to Canton. These would be sold at 
 large profits. Then the cargoes of tea to New York would pay 
 enormous duties, which Astor did not have to pay to the United 
 States for a year and a half. His tea cargoes would be sold for 
 good four and six months paper, or perhaps cash ; so that for 
 eighteen or twenty years John Jacob Astor had what was actual- 
 ly a free-of-interest loan from Government of over jive millions 
 of dollars. " * 
 
 But it was neither his tea trade nor his fur trade that gave 
 Astor twenty millions of dollars. It was his sagacity in investing 
 his profits that made him the richest man in America. When 
 he first trod the streets of New York, in 1784, the city was a 
 
 * Old Merchants of New York. First Series. 
 
^5Q JOHN JACOB ASTOR. 
 
 snug, leafy place of twenty-five thousand inhabitants, situated at 
 the extremity of the Island, mostly below Cortlandt Street. In 
 1800, when he began to have money to invest, the city had more 
 than doubled in population, and had advanced nearly a mile up 
 the Island. Now, Astor was a shrewd calculator of the future. 
 No reason appeared why New York should not repeat this doub- 
 ling game and this mile of extension every fifteen years. He 
 acted upon the supposition, and fell into the habit of buying 
 lands and lots just beyond the verge of the city. One little anec- 
 dote will show the wisdom of this proceeding. He sold a lot in 
 the vicinity of Wall Street, about the year 1810, for eight thou- 
 sand dollars, which was supposed to be somewhat under its value. 
 The purchaser, after the papers were signed, seemed disposed to 
 chuckle over his bargain. 
 
 " Why, Mr. Astor," said he, " in a few years this lot will be 
 worth twelve thousand dollars." 
 
 " Very true," replied Astor ; " but now you shall see what I 
 will do with this money. With eight thousand dollars I buy eighty 
 lots above Canal Street. By the time your lot is worth twelve 
 thousand dollars, my eighty lots will be worth eighty thousand 
 dollars " ; which proved to be the fact. 
 
 His purchase of the Richmond Hill estate of Aaron Burr was 
 a case in point. He bought the hundred and sixty acres at a 
 thousand dollars an acre, and in twelve years the land was worth 
 fifteen hundred dollars a lot. In the course of time the Island 
 was dotted all over with Astor lands, — to such an extent that 
 the whole income of his estate for fifty years could be invested in 
 new houses without buying any more land. 
 
 His land speculations, however, were by no means confined to 
 the little Island of Manhattan. Aged readers cannot have for- 
 gotten the most celebrated of all his operations of this kind, by 
 which he acquired a legal title to one third of the county of Put- 
 nam in this State. This enormous tract was part of the estate of 
 Ro^er Morris and Mary his wife, who, by adhering to the King 
 of Great Britain in the Revolutionary War, forfeited their landed 
 property in the State of New York. Having been duly attainted 
 as public enemies, they fled to England at the close of the war, 
 
JOHN JACOB ASTOR. 457 
 
 and the State sold their lands, in small parcels, to honest Whig 
 farmers. The estate comprised fifty-one thousand one hundred 
 and two acres, upon which were living, in 1809, more than seven 
 hundred families, all relying upon the titles which the State of 
 New York had given. Now Mr. Astor stepped forward to dis- 
 turb the security of this community of farmers. It appeared, and 
 was proved beyond doubt, that Roger and Mary Morris had 
 only possessed a life-interest in this estate, and that, therefore, it 
 was only that life-interest which the State could legally confis- 
 cate. The moment Roger and Mary Morris ceased to live, the 
 property would fall to their heirs, with all the houses, barns, and 
 other improvements thereon. After a most thorough examina- 
 tion of the papers by the leading counsel of that day, Mr. Astor 
 bought the rights of the heirs, in 1809, for twenty thousand 
 pounds sterling. At that time Roger Morris was no more ; and 
 Mary his wife was nearly eighty, and extremely infirm. She 
 lingered, however, for some years ; and it was not till after the 
 peace of 1815 that the claims of Mr. Astor were pressed. The 
 consternation of the farmers and the astonishment of the people 
 generally, when at length the great millionnaire stretched out his 
 hand to pluck this large ripe pear, may be imagined. A great 
 clamor arose against him. It cannot be denied, however, that he 
 acted in this business with moderation and dignity. Upon the 
 first rumor of his claim, in 1814, commissioners were appointed 
 by the Legislature to inquire into it. These gentlemen, finding 
 the claim more formidable than had been suspected, asked Mr. 
 Astor for what sum he would compromise. The lands were val- 
 ued at six hundred and sixty-seven thousand dollars, but Astor 
 replied that he would sell his claim for three hundred thousand. 
 The offer was not accepted, and the affair lingered. In 1818, 
 Mary Morris being supposed to be at the point of death, and the 
 farmers being in constant dread of the writs of ejectment which 
 her death would bring upon them, commissioners were again ap- 
 pointed by the Legislature to look into the matter. Again Mr. 
 Astor was asked upon what terms he would compromise. He 
 replied, January 19, 1819 : — 
 
 " In 1813 or 1814 a similar proposition was made to me by the 
 20 
 
458 JOHN JACOB ASTOR. 
 
 commissioners then appointed by the Honorable the Legislature 
 of this State, when I offered to compromise for the sum of three 
 hundred thousand dollars, which, considering the value of the 
 property in question, was thought very reasonable ; and, at the 
 present period, when the life of Mrs. Morris is, according to cal- 
 culation, worth little or nothing, she being near eighty-six years 
 of age, and the property more valuable than it was in 1813, I am 
 still willing to receive the amount which I then stated, with in- 
 terest on the same, payable in money or stock, bearing an interest 
 of — per cent, payable quarterly. The stock may be made pay- 
 able at such periods as the Honorable the Legislature may deem 
 proper. This offer will, I trust, be considered as liberal, and as 
 a proof of my willingness to compromise on terms which are rea- 
 sonable, considering the value of the property, the price which it 
 cost me, and the inconvenience of having so long laid out of my 
 money, which, if employed in commercial operations, would most 
 likely have produced better profits." 
 
 The Legislature were not yet prepared to compromise. It was 
 not till 1827 that a test case was selected and brought to trial 
 before a jury. The most eminent counsel were employed on the 
 part of the State, ■ — Daniel Webster and Martin Van Buren 
 among them. Astor's cause was entrusted to Emmet, Ogden, 
 and others. We believe that Aaron Burr was consulted on the 
 part of Mr. Astor, though he did not appear in the trial. The 
 efforts of the array of counsel employed by the State were 
 exerted in vain to find a flaw in the paper upon which Astor's 
 claim mainly rested. Mr. Webster's speech on this occasion be- 
 trays, even to the unprofessional reader, both that he had no case 
 and that he knew he had not, for he indulged in a strain of re- 
 mark that could only have been designed to prejudice, not con- 
 vince, the jury. 
 
 " It is a claim for lands," said he, " not in their wild and for- 
 est state, but for lands the intrinsic value of which is mingled 
 with the labor expended upon them. It is no every-day pur- 
 chase, for it extends over towns and counties, and almost takes in 
 a degree of latitude. It is a stupendous speculation. The indi- 
 vidual who now claims it has not succeeded to it by inheritance ; 
 
JOHN JACOB ASTOR. 459 
 
 he has not attained it, as he did that vast wealth which no one 
 less envies him than I do, by fair and honest exertions in com- 
 mercial enterprise, but by speculation, by purchasing the forlorn 
 hope of the heirs of a family driven from their country by a bill 
 of attainder. By the defendants, on the contrary, the lands in 
 que.-tion are held as a patrimony. They have labored for years 
 to improve them. The rugged hills had grown green under their 
 cultivation before a question was raised as to the integrity of their 
 titles." 
 
 A line of remark like this would appeal powerfully to a jury 
 of farmers. Its effect, however, was destroyed by the simple ob- 
 servation of one of the opposing counsel : — 
 
 " Mr. Astor bought this property confiding in the justice of the 
 State of New York, firmly believing that in the litigation of his 
 claim his rights would be maintained." 
 
 It is creditable to the administration of justice in New York, 
 and creditable to the very institution of trial by jury, that Mr. 
 As tor's most unpopular and even odious cause was triumphant. 
 Warned by this verdict, the Legislature consented to compromise 
 on Mr. Astor's own terms. The requisite amount of "Astor 
 stock," as it was called, was created. Mr. Astor received about 
 half a million of dollars, and the titles of the lands were secured 
 to their rightful owners. 
 
 The crowning glory of Mr. Astor's mercantile career was that 
 vast and brilliant enterprise which Washington Irving has com- 
 memorated in "Astoria." No other single individual has ever 
 set on foot a scheme so extensive, so difficult, and so costly as 
 this ; nor has any such enterprise been carried out with such sus- 
 tained energy and perseverance. To establish a line of trading- 
 posts from St. Louis to the Pacific, a four-months' journey in a 
 land of wilderness, prairie, mountain, and desert, inhabited, by 
 treacherous or hostile savages ; to found a permanent settlement 
 on the Pacific coast as the grand depot of furs and supplies ; to 
 arrange a plan by which the furs collected should be , regularly 
 transported to China, and the ships return to New York laden 
 with tea and silks, and then proceed once more to the Pacific 
 coast to repeat the circuit; to maintain all the parts of this scheme 
 
4G0 JOHN JACOB ASTOR. 
 
 without the expectation of any but a remote profit, sending ship 
 after ship before any certain intelligence of the first ventures had 
 arrived, — this was an enterprise which had been memorable if it 
 had been undertaken by a wealthy corporation or a powerful 
 government, instead of a private merchant, unaided by any re- 
 sources but his own. At every moment iu the conduct of this 
 magnificent attempt Mr. Astor appears the great man. His part- 
 ing instructions to the captain of his first ship call to mind those 
 of General Washington to St. Clair on a similar occasion. " All 
 the accidents that have yet happened," said the merchant, " arose 
 from too much confidence in the Indians." The ship was lost, a 
 year after, by the disregard of this last warning. When the news 
 reached New York of the massacre of the crew and the blowing- 
 up of the ship, the man who flew into a passion at seeing a little 
 boy drop a wineglass behaved with a composure that was the 
 theme of general admiration. He attended the theatre the same 
 evening, and entered heartily into the play. Mr. Irving relates 
 that a friend having expressed surprise at this, Mr. Astor re- 
 plied : — 
 
 " What would you have me do ? Would you have me stay at 
 home and weep for what I cannot help ? " 
 
 This was not indifference ; for when, after nearly two years of 
 weary waiting, he heard of the safety and success of the overland 
 expedition, he was so overjoyed that he could scarcely contain 
 himself. 
 
 " I felt ready," said he, " to fall upon my knees in a .transport 
 of gratitude." 
 
 A touch in one of his letters shows the absolute confidence he 
 felt in his own judgment and abilities, a confidence invariably 
 exhibited by men of the first executive talents. 
 
 " Were I on the spot," he wrote to one of his agents when the 
 affairs of the settlement appeared desperate, " and had the man- 
 agement of affairs, I would defy them all ; but, as it is, everything 
 depends upon you and the friends about you. Our enterprise is 
 grand and deserves success, and I hope in God it will meet it. 
 If my object was merely gain of money, I should say : ' Think 
 whether it is best to save what we can and abandon the place ' ; 
 but the thought is like a dagger to my heart." 
 
JOHN JACOB ASTOR. 461 
 
 He intimates here that bis object was not merely " gain of 
 money." What was it, then ? Mr. Irving informs us that it was 
 desire of fame. We should rather say that when nature endows 
 a man with a remarkable gift she also implants within him the 
 love of exercising it. Astor loved to plan a vast, far-reaching 
 enterprise. He loved it as Morphy loves to play chess, as Napo- 
 leon loved to plan a campaign, as Raphael loved to paint, and 
 Handel to compose. 
 
 The war of 1812 foiled the enterprise. "But for that war," 
 Mr. Astor used to say, " I should have been the richest man that 
 ever lived." He expected to go on expending money for several 
 years, and then to gain a steady annual profit of millions. It 
 was, however, that very war that enabled him to sustain the 
 enormous losses of the enterprise without injury to his estate, or 
 even a momentary inconvenience. During the first year of the 
 war he had the luck to receive two or three cargoes of tea from 
 China, despite the British cruisers. In the second year of the 
 war, when the Government was reduced to borrow at eighty, he 
 invested largely in the loan, which, one year after the peace, 
 stood at one hundred and twenty. 
 
 Mr. Astor at all times was a firm believer in the destiny of the 
 United States. In other words, he held its public stock in pro- 
 found respect. He had little to say of politics, but he was a 
 supporter of the old Whig party for many years, and had a 
 great regard, personal and political, for its leader and orna- 
 ment, Henry Clay. He was never better pleased than when 
 he entertained Mr. Clay at bis own house. It ought to be men- 
 tioned in this connection that when, in June, 1812, the merchants 
 of New York memorialized the Government in favor of the em- 
 bargo, which almost annihilated the commerce of the port, the 
 name of John Jacob Astor headed the list of signatures. 
 
 He was an active business man in this city for about forty-six 
 years, — from his twenty-first to his sixty-seventh year. Toward 
 the year 1830 he began to withdraw from business, and undertook 
 no new enterprises, except such as the investment of his income 
 involved. His three daughters were married. His son and heir 
 was a man of thirty. Numerous grandchildren were around 
 
462 JOHN JACOB ASTOK. 
 
 him, for whom he manifested a true German fondness ; not, how- 
 ever, regarding them with equal favor. He dispensed, occasion- 
 ally, a liberal hospitality at his modest house, though that hospi- 
 tality was usually bestowed upon men whose presence at his 
 table conferred distinction upon him who sat at the head of it. 
 He was fond, strange as it may seem, of the society of literary 
 men. For Washington Irving he always professed a warm re- 
 gard, liked to have him at his house, visited him, and made much 
 of him. Fitz-Greene Halleck, one of the best talkers of his 
 day, a man full of fun, anecdote, and fancy, handsome, graceful, 
 and accomplished, was a great favorite with him. He afterward 
 invited the poet to reside with him and take charge of his affairs, 
 which Mr. Halleck did for many years, to the old gentleman's 
 perfect satisfaction. Still later Dr. Cogswell won his esteem, and 
 was named by him Librarian of the Astor Library. For his 
 own part, though he rather liked to be read to^n his latter days, 
 he collected no library, no pictures, no objects of curiosity. As 
 he had none of the wasteful vices, so also he had none of the 
 costly tastes. Like all other rich men, he was beset continually 
 by applicants for pecuniary aid, especially by his own country- 
 men. As a rule he refused to give : and he was right. He held 
 beggary of all descriptions in strong contempt, and seemed to 
 think that, in this country, want and fault are synonymous. 
 Nevertheless, we are told that he did, now and then, bestow small 
 sums in charity, though we have failed to get trustworthy evi- 
 dence of a single instance of his doing so. It is, no doubt, ab- 
 solutely necessary for a man who is notoriously rich to guard 
 against imposture, and to hedge himself about against the swarms 
 of solicitors who pervade a large and wealthy city. If he did 
 not, he would be overwhelmed and devoured. His time would 
 be all consumed and his estate squandered in satisfying the de- 
 mands of importunate impudence. Still, among the crowd of 
 applicants there is here and there one whose claim upon the aid 
 of the rich man is just. It were much to be desired that a way 
 should be devised by which these meritorious askers could be 
 sifted from the mass, and the nature of their requests made known 
 to men who have the means and the wish to aid such. Some 
 
JOHN JACOB ASTOR. 463 
 
 kind of Benevolent Intelligence Office appears to be needed 
 among us. In the absence of such an institution we must not be 
 surprised that men renowned for their wealth convert themselves 
 into human porcupines, and erect their defensive armor at the 
 approach of every one who carries a subscription-book. True, 
 a generous man might establish a private bureau of investigation ; 
 but a generous man is not very likely to acquire a fortune of 
 twenty millions. Such an accumulation of wealth is just as wise 
 as if a man who had to walk ten miles on a hot day should, of 
 his own choice, carry on his back a large sack of potatoes. A 
 man of superior sense and feeling will not waste his life so, unless 
 he has in view a grand public object. On the contrary, he will 
 rather do as Franklin did, who, having acquired at the age of 
 forty- two a modest competence, sold out his thriving business on 
 easy tonus to a younger man, and devoted the rest of his happy 
 life to the pursuit of knowledge and the service of his country. 
 But we cannot all be Franklins. In the affairs of the world mil- 
 lionnaires are as indispensable as philosophers ; and it is fortunate 
 for society that some men take pleasure in heaping up enormous 
 masses of capital. 
 
 Having retired from business, Mr. Astor determined to fulfil 
 the vow of his youth, and build in Broadway a house larger and 
 costlier than any it could then boast. Behold the result in the 
 Astor House, which remains to this day one of our most solid, 
 imposing, and respectable structures. The ground on which the 
 hotel stands was covered with substantial three-story brick houses, 
 one of which Astor himself occupied; and it was thought at the 
 time a wasteful and rash proceeding to destroy them. Old Mr. 
 Coster, a retired merchant of great wealth, who lived next door 
 to Mr. A- tin's residence, was extremely indisposed to remove, 
 and held out long against every offer of the millionnaire. His 
 house was worth thirty thousand dollars. Astor offered him that 
 sum; but the offer was very positively declined, and the old gen- 
 tleman declared it to be his intention to spend the remainder of 
 his days in the house. Mr. Astor offered forty thousand without 
 effect. At length the indomitable projector revealed his purpose 
 to his neighbor. 
 
464 JOHN JACOB ASTOE. 
 
 " Mr. Coster,'' said he, " I want to build a hotel. I have got 
 all the other lots ; now name your own price." 
 
 To which Coster replied by confessing the real obstacle to the 
 sale. 
 
 " The fact is," said he, " I can't sell unless Mrs. Coster con- 
 sents. If she is willing, I '11 sell for sixty thousand, and you can 
 call to-morrow morninsr and ask her." 
 
 Mr. Astor presented himself at the time named. 
 
 " Well, Mr. Astor," said the lady in the tone of one who was 
 conferring a very great favor for nothing, "we are such old 
 friends that I am willing for your sake." 
 
 So the house was bought, and with the proceeds Mr. Coster 
 built the spacious granite mansion a mile up Broadway, which is 
 now known as Barnum's Museum. Mr. Astor used to relate this 
 story with great glee. He was particularly amused at the sim- 
 plicity of the old lady in considering it a great favor to him to 
 sell her house at twice its value. It was at this time that he re- 
 moved to a wide, two-story brick house opposite Niblo's, the 
 front door of which bore a large silver plate, exhibiting to awe- 
 struck passers-by the words: "Mr. Astor." Soon after the 
 hotel was finished, he made a present of it to his eldest son, or, 
 in legal language, he sold it to him for the sum of one dollar, " to 
 him in hand paid." 
 
 In the decline of his life, when his vast fortune was safe from 
 the perils of business, he was still as sparing in his personal ex- 
 penditures, as close in his bargains, as watchful over his accumu- 
 lations as he had been when economy was essential to his sol- 
 vency and progress. He enjoyed keenly the consciousness, the 
 feeling of being rich. The roll-book of his possessions was his 
 Bible. He scanned it fondly, and saw with quiet but deep de- 
 light the catalogue of his property lengthening from month to 
 month. The love of accumulation grew with his years until it 
 ruled him like a tyrant. If at fifty he possessed his millions, at 
 sixty-five his millions possessed him. Only to his own children 
 and to their children was he liberal ; and his liberality to them 
 was all arranged with a view to keeping his estate in the family, 
 and to cause it at every moment to tend toward a final consolida- 
 
JOHN JACOB ASTOR. 465 
 
 tion in one enormous mass. He was ever considerate for the 
 comfort of his imbecile son. One of his last enterprises was to 
 build for him a commodious residence. 
 
 In 1832, one of his daughters having married a European 
 nobleman, he allowed himself the pleasure of a visit to her. He 
 remained abroad till 1835, when he hurried home in consequence 
 of the disturbance in financial affairs, caused by General Jack- 
 son's war upon the Bank of the United States. The captain of 
 the ship in which he sailed from Havre to New York has related 
 to us some curious incidents of the voyage. Mr. Astor reached 
 Havre when the ship, on the point of sailing, had every state- 
 room engaged ; but he was so anxious to get home, that the cap- 
 tain, who had commanded ships for him in former years, gave up 
 to him his own state-room. Head winds and boisterous seas kept 
 the vessel beating about and tossing in the channel for many 
 days. The great man was very sick and still more alarmed. At 
 length, being persuaded that he should not survive the voyage, 
 he asked the captain to run in and set him ashore on the coast of 
 England. The captain dissuaded him. The old man urged his 
 request at every opportunity, and said at last: "I give you tou- 
 sand dollars to put me aboard a pilot-boat." He was so vehe- 
 ment and importunate, that one day the captain, worried out of 
 all patience, promised that if he did not get out of the Channel 
 before the next morning, he would run in and put him ashore. It 
 happened that the wind changed in the afternoon and wafted the 
 ship into the broad ocean. But the troubles of the sea-sick million- 
 naire had only just begun. A heavy gale of some days' duration 
 blew the vessel along the western coast of Ireland. Mr. Astor, 
 thoroughly panic-stricken, now offered the captain ten thousand 
 dollars if he would put him ashore anywhere on the wild and 
 rocky coast of the Emerald Isle. In vain the captain remon- 
 strated. In vain he reminded the old gentleman of the danger 
 of forfeiting his insurance. 
 
 "Insurance!" exclaimed Astor, "can't I insure your ship 
 myself?" 
 
 In vain the captain mentioned the rights of the other passen- 
 gers. In vain he described the solitary and rock-bound coast, 
 20* DD 
 
486 JOHN JACOB ASTOR. 
 
 and detailed the difficulties and dangers which attended its ap- 
 proach. Nothing would appease him. He said he would take 
 all the responsibility, brave all the perils, endure all the conse- 
 quences ; only let him once more feel the firm ground under his. 
 feet. The gale having abated, the captain yielded to his entrea-. 
 ties, and engaged, if the other passengers would consent to the( 
 delay, to stand in and put him ashore. Mr. Astor went into thet 
 cabin and proceeded to write what was expected to be a draft fori 
 ten thousand dollars in favor of the owners of the ship on his; 
 agent in New York. He handed to the captain the result of his 
 efforts. It was a piece of paper covered with writing that waa 
 totally illegible. 
 
 " What is this ? " asked the captain. 
 
 "A draft upon my son for ten thousand dollars," was the reply. 
 
 " But no one can read it." 
 
 " yes, my son will know what it is. My hand trembles so 
 that I cannot write any better." 
 
 " But," said the captain, " you can at least write your name. I 
 am acting for the owners of the ship, and I cannot risk their 
 property for a piece of paper that no one can read. Let one of 
 the gentlemen draw up a draft in proper form ; you sign it ; and 
 I will put you ashore." 
 
 The old gentleman would not consent to this mode of proceed- 
 ing, and the affair was dropped. 
 
 A favorable wind blew the ship swiftly on her way, and Mr. 
 Astor's alarm subsided. But even on the banks of Newfound- 
 land, two thirds of the way across, when the captain went upon 
 the poop to speak a ship bound for Liverpool, old Astor climbed 
 up after him, saying, " Tell them I give tousand dollars if they 
 take a passenger." 
 
 Astor lived to the age of eighty-four. During the last few 
 years of his life his faculties were sensibly impaired ; he was a 
 child again. It was, however, while his powers and his judgment 
 were in full vigor that he determined to follow the example of' 
 Girard, and bequeath a portion of his estate for the purpose of 
 "rendering a public benefit to the city of New York." He con- 
 sulted Mr. Irving, Mr. Halleck, Dr. Cogswell, and his own son 
 
JOHN JACOB ASTOR. 467 
 
 with regard to the object of this bequest. All his friends con- 
 curred in recommending a public library; and, accordingly, in 
 1839, he added the well-known codicil to his will which conse- 
 crated four hundred thousand dollars to this purpose. To Irving's 
 Astoria and to the Astor Library he will owe a lasting fame in 
 the country of his adoption. 
 
 The last considerable sum he was ever known to give away 
 was a contribution to aid the election to the Presidency of his 
 old friend Henry Clay. The old man was always fond of a 
 compliment, and seldom averse to a joke. It was the timely 
 application of a jocular compliment that won from him this last 
 effort of generosity. When the committee were presented to him, 
 he began to excuse himself, evidently intending to decline giving. 
 
 " I am not now interested in these things," said he. " Those 
 gentlemen who are in business, and whose property depends upon 
 the issue of the election, ought to give. But I am now an old 
 man. I have n't anything to do with commerce, and it makes no 
 difference to me what the government does. I don't make money 
 any more, and have n't any concern in the matter." 
 
 One of the committee replied : " Why, Mr. Astor, you are like 
 Alexander, when he wept because there were no more worlds to 
 conquer. You have made all the money, and now there is no 
 more money to make." The old eye twinkled at the blended 
 compliment and jest. 
 
 " Ha, ha, ha ! very good, that 's very good. Well, well, I give 
 you something." 
 
 Whereupon he drew his check for fifteen hundred dollars. 
 
 When all else had died within him, when he was at last nour- 
 ished like an infant at a woman's breast, and when, being no 
 longer able to ride in a carriage, he was daily tossed in blanket 
 for exercise, he still retained a strong interest in the care and 
 increase of his property. His agent called daily upon him to 
 render a report of moneys received. One morning this gentle- 
 man chanced to enter his room while he was enjoying his blanket 
 exercise. The old man cried out from the middle of his blanket, — 
 
 " Has Mrs. paid that rent yet ? " 
 
 " No," replied the agent. 
 
468 JOHN JACOB ASTOR. 
 
 " Well, but she must pay it," said the poor old man. 
 
 " Mr. Astor," rejoined the agent, " she can't pay it now ; she 
 has had misfortunes, and we must give her time." 
 
 " No, no," said Astor ; " I tell you she can pay it, and she will 
 pay it. You don't go the right way to work with her." 
 
 The agent took leave, and mentioned the anxiety of the old 
 gentleman with regard to this unpaid rent to his son, who counted 
 out the requisite sum, and told the agent to give it to the old man 
 as if he had received it from the tenant. 
 
 " There ! " exclaimed Mr. Astor when he received the money, 
 " I told you she would pay it, if you went the right way to work 
 with her." 
 
 Who would have twenty millions at such a price ? 
 
 On the twenty-ninth of March, 1848, of old age merely, in the 
 presence of his family and friends, without pain or disquiet, this 
 remarkable man breathed his last. He was buried in a vault in 
 the church of St. Thomas in Broadway. Though he expressly 
 declared in his will that he was a member of the Reformed Ger- 
 man Congregation, no clergyman of that church took part in the 
 services of his funeral. The unusual number of six Episcopal 
 Doctors of Divinity assisted at the ceremony. A bishop could 
 have scarcely expected a more distinguished funeral homage. 
 Such a thing it is in a commercial city to die worth twenty mil- 
 lions ! The pall-bearers were Washington Irving, Philip Hone, 
 Sylvanus Miller, James G. King, Isaac Bell, David B. Ogden, 
 Thomas J. Oakley, Ramsey Crooks, and Jacob B. Taylor. 
 
 The public curiosity with regard to the will of the deceased 
 millionnaire was fully gratified by the enterprise of the Herald, 
 which published it entire in five columns of its smallest type a 
 day or two after the funeral. The ruling desires of Mr. Astor 
 with regard to his property were evidently these two : 1. To 
 provide amply and safely for his children, grandchildren, nephews, 
 and nieces ; 2. To keep his estate, as much as was consistent 
 with his desire, in one mass in the hands of his eldest son. His 
 brother Henry, the butcher, had died childless and rich, leaving 
 his property to Mr. William B. Astor. To the descendants of 
 the brother in Germany Mr. Astor left small but sufficient pen- 
 
JOHN JACOB ASTOR. 4G9 
 
 sions. To many of his surviving children and grandchildren in 
 America he left life-interests and stocks, which seem designed to 
 produce an average of about fifteen thousand dollars a year. 
 Other grandsons were to have twenty-five thousand dollars on 
 reaching the age of twenty-five, and the same sum when they 
 were thirty. His favorite grandson, Charles Astor Bristed, since 
 well known to the public as an author and poet, was left amply 
 provided for. He directed his executors to " provide for my un- 
 fortunate son, John Jacob Astor, and to procure for him all the 
 comforts which his condition does or may require." For this pur- 
 pose ten thousand dollars a year was directed to be appropriated, 
 and the house built for him in Fourteenth Street, near Ninth 
 Avenue, was to be his for life. If he should be restored to the 
 use of his faculties, he was to have an income of one hundred 
 thousand dollars. The number of persons, all relatives or connec- 
 tions of the deceased, who were benefited by the will, was about 
 twenty-five. To his old friend and manager, Fitz-Greene Hal- 
 leck, he left the somewhat ridiculous annuity of two hundred dol- 
 lars, which Mr. William B. Astor voluntarily increased to fifteen 
 hundred. Nor was this the only instance in which the heir rec- 
 tified the errors and supplied the omissions of the will. He had 
 the justice to send a considerable sum to the brave old captain 
 who saved for Mr. Astor the large property in China imperilled 
 by the sudden death of an agent. The minor bequests and lega- 
 cies of Mr. Astor absorbed about two millions of his estate. The 
 rest of his property fell to his eldest son, under whose careful 
 management it is supposed to have increased to an amount not 
 less than forty millions. This may, however, be an exaggeration. 
 Mr. William B. Astor minds his own business, and does not im- 
 part to others the secrets of his rent-roll. The number of his 
 houses in this city is said to be seven hundred and twenty. 
 
 The bequests of Mr. Astor for purposes of benevolence show 
 good sense and good feeling. The Astor Library fund of four 
 hundred thousand dollars was the largest item. Next in amount 
 was fifty thousand dollars for the benefit of the poor of his native 
 village in Germany. " To the German Society of New York," 
 continued the will, " I give thirty thousand dollars on condition 
 
470 JOHN JACOB ASTOR. 
 
 of their investing it in bond and mortgage, and applying it for the 
 purpose of keeping an office and giving advice and information 
 without charge to all emigrants arriving here, and for the purpose 
 of protecting them against imposition." To the Home for Aged 
 Ladies he gave thirty thousand dollars, and to the Blind Asylum 
 and the Half-Orphan Asylum each five thousand dollars. To the 
 German Reformed Congregation, " of which I am a member," he 
 left the moderate sum of two thousand dollars. These objects 
 were wisely chosen. The sums left for them, also, were in many 
 cases of the amount most likely to be well employed. Twenty- 
 five thousand dollars he left to Columbia College, but unfortunate- 
 ly repented, and annulled the bequest in a codicil. 
 
 We need not enlarge on the success which has attended the 
 bequest for the Astor Library, — a bequest to which Mr. William 
 B. Astor has added, in land, books, and money, about two hun- 
 dred thousand dollars. It is the ornament and boast of the city. 
 Nothing is wanting to its complete utility but an extension of the 
 time of its being accessible to the public. Such a library, in such 
 a city as this, should be open at sunrise, and close at ten in the 
 evening. If but one studious youth should desire to avail him- 
 self of the morning hours before going to his daily work, the in- 
 terests of that one would justify the directors in opening the 
 treasures of the library at the rising of the sun. In the evening, 
 of course, the library would probably be attended by a greater 
 number of readers than in all the hours of the day together. 
 
 The bequest to the village of Waldorf has resulted in the 
 founding of an institution that appears to be doing a great deal 
 of good in a quiet German manner. The German biographer of 
 Mr. Astor, from whom we have derived some particulars of his 
 early life, expatiates upon the merits of this establishment, which, 
 he informs us, is called the Astor House. 
 
 " Certain knowledge," he says, " of Astor's bequest reached 
 Waldorf only in 1850, when a nephew of Mr. Astor's and one 
 of the executors of his will appeai'ed from New York in the tes- 
 tator's native town with power to pay over the money to the 
 pi'oper persons. He kept himself mostly in Heidelberg, and or- 
 ganized a supervisory board to aid in the disposition of the funds 
 
JOHN JACOB ASTOR. ~ 471 
 
 in accordance with the testator's intentions. This board was to 
 have its head-quarters in Heidelberg, and was to consist of profes- 
 sors in the University there, and clergymen, not less than five in 
 all. The board of control, however, consists of the clergy of 
 Waldorf, the burgomaster, the physician, a citizen named every 
 three years by the Common Council, and the governor of the In- 
 stitution, who must be a teacher by profession. This latter board 
 has control of all the interior arrangements of the Institution, and 
 the care of the children and beneficiaries. The leading objects 
 of the Astor House are: 1. The care of the poor, who, through 
 age, disease, or other causes, are incapable of labor ; 2. The rear- 
 ing and instruction of poor children, especially those who live in 
 Waldorf. Non-residents are received if there is room, but they 
 must make compensation for their board and instruction. Chil- 
 dren are received at the age of six, and maintained until they are 
 fifteen or sixteen. Besides school instruction, there is ample pro- 
 vision for physical culture. They are trained in active and in- 
 dustrious habits, and each of them, according to his disposition, is 
 to be taught a trade, or instructed in agriculture, market-garden- 
 ing, the care of vineyards, or of cattle, with a view to rendering 
 them efficient farm-servants or stewards. It is also in contem- 
 plation to assist the blind and the deaf and dumb, and, finally, to 
 establish a nursery for very young children left destitute. Cath- 
 olics and Protestants are admitted on equal terms, religious dif- 
 ferences not being recognized in the applicants for admission. 
 Some time having elapsed before the preliminary arrangements 
 were completed, the accumulated interest of the fund went so far 
 toward paying for the buildings, that of the original fifty thousand 
 dollars not less than forty-three thousand have been permanently 
 invested for the support of the Institution." 
 
 Tims they manage bequests in Germany ! The Astor House 
 was opened with much ceremony, January 9, 1854, the very year 
 in which the Astor Library was opened to the public in the city 
 of New York. The day of the founder's death is annually cele- 
 brated in the chapel of the Institution, which is adorned by his 
 portrait. 
 
 These two institutions will carry the name of John Jacob Astor 
 
472 JOHN JACOB ASTOR. 
 
 to the latest generations. But they are not the only services 
 which he rendered to the public. It would be absurd to contend 
 that in accumulating his enormous estate, and in keeping it al- 
 most entirely in the hands of his eldest son, he was actuated by a 
 regard for the public good. He probably never thought of the 
 public good in connection with the bulk of his property. Never- 
 theless, America is so constituted that every man in it of force 
 and industry is necessitated to be a public servant. If this 
 colossal fortune had been gained in Europe it would probably 
 have been consumed in what is there called " founding a family." 
 Mansions would have been built with it, parks laid out, a title of 
 nobility purchased ; and the income, wasted in barren and stupid 
 magnificence would have maintained a host of idle, worthless, 
 and pampered menials. Here, on the contrary, it is expended 
 almost wholly in providing for the people of New York the very 
 commodity of which they stand in most pressing need ; namely, 
 new houses. The simple reason why the rent of a small house 
 in New York is two thousand dollars a year is, because the sup- 
 ply of houses is unequal to the demand. "We need at this mo- 
 ment five thousand more houses in the city of New York for the 
 decent accommodation of its inhabitants at rents which they can 
 afford to pay. The man who does more than any one else to 
 supply the demand for houses is the patient, abstemious, and 
 laborious heir of the Astor estate. He does a good day's work 
 for us in this business every day, and all the wages he receives 
 for so much care and toil is a moderate subsistence for himself 
 and his family, and the very troublesome reputation of being the 
 richest man in America. And the business is done with the 
 minimum of waste in every department. In a quiet little office 
 in Prince Street, the manager of the estate, aided by two or three 
 aged clerks (one of them of fifty-five years' standing in the office), 
 transacts the business of a property larger than that of many sov- 
 ereign princes. Everything, also, is done promptly and in the 
 best manner. If a tenant desires repairs or alterations, an agent 
 calls at the house within twenty-four hours, makes the requisite 
 inquiries, reports, and the work is forthwith begun, or the tenant 
 is notified that it will not be done. The concurrent testimony of 
 
JOHN JACOB ASTOR. 473 
 
 Mr. Aster's tenants is, that he is one of the most liberal and obli"-- 
 ing of landlords. 
 
 So far, therefore, the Astor estate, immense as it is, appears to 
 have been an unmixed good to the city in which it is mainly in- 
 vested. There is every reason to believe that, in the hands of 
 the next heir, it will continue to be managed with the same pru- 
 dence and economy that mark the conduct of its present proprie- 
 tor. We indulge the hope that either the present or some future 
 possessor may devote a portion of his vast revenue to the build- 
 ing of a new order of tenement houses, on a scale that will en- 
 able a man who earns two dollars a day to occupy apartments fit 
 for the residence of a family of human beings. The time is ripe 
 for it. May we live to see in some densely populated portion of 
 the city, a new and grander Astor House arise, that shall de- 
 monstrate to the capitalists of every city in America that nothing 
 will pay better as an investment than houses for the people, 
 which shall afford to an honest laborer rooms in a clean, orderly, 
 and commodious palace, at the price he now pays for a corner of a 
 dirty fever-breeding barrack ! 
 
 THE END. 
 
 Cambridge : Stereotyped and Printed by Welch, Bigelow, & Co. 
 
OTHER WORKS OF JAMES PARTON. 
 
 I. LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON. 
 
 3 vols. Large i2mo. With Portraits. $9.00. 
 
 II. LIFE AND TIMES OF AARON BURR. 
 
 2 vols. Large i2mo. With Portraits. $6.00. 
 
 III. LIFE AND TIMES OF BENJAMIN 
 
 FRANKLIN 
 
 2 vols. Large i2mo. With Portraits. $6.00. 
 
 IV. GENERAL BUTLER IN NEW ORLEANS. 
 
 1 vol. Large i2mo. $3.00. 
 
 V. HUMOROUS POETRY OF THE ENGLISH 
 LANGUAGE. From Chaucer to Saxe. 
 
 1 vol. i2mo. With Portraits. $3.00. 
 
 These works are issued in uniform size and style with this volume. 
 
 TICKNOR & FIELDS, Publishers. 
 
F!l@? 
 
> 
 
 & 
 
 
 
 <-*. 
 
 A v 
 
 
 o x ' 
 
 <*,. v *" 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 .0 \ 
 
 
 \ 
 
 
 
 3 
 
 
 
 
 v** 
 
 
 *~ V 
 
 tf 
 
 o 
 
 
 \> 
 
 x rP 
 
 
 AV 
 
 
 $ 
 
 
 - -p 
 
 v « 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 & 
 
 
 oS "^ 
 
 
 
 
 ^ c x 
 
 f 
 
 
 
 
 *0* 
 
 OCT 
 
 
 
 
 ^ ,^ 
 
 
 . \ ' 
 
 
 ^. V 
 
 \ v 
 
 ^ \ A , i -i A " * A 
 
 v ' 
 
 
 
 V- 
 
 
 *? 
 
 A 
 
 
 
 •-> 
 
 
 
 
 
 ^ 
 ^ 
 
 
 'O0 
 
 
 
 V 
 
 >- V 
 
 «ft 
 
 ,0C 
 
 
 '> 
 
 ' 
 
 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 •** A 
 
 
 .-.S 
 

 *>. 
 
 
 
 
 & 
 ^ 
 
 
 
 ■>, 
 
 % 
 
 
 / •7-' 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 > 
 
 
 
 
 % 
 
 
 <p 
 
 
 
 
 & 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 > '^ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 -> 
 
 
 
 
 <■> 
 
 
 
 
 ■& 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ^ ' 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ■/ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ** 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 eK 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 \ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 '"OCT 
 .•I "7*-/. 
 
 
 
 +>